Deborah Crombie - And Justice There Is None

"No. I can't tell you because I don't know. I took him for a drive, then I took him back to the flat." Fern's hands were balled into fists now, and in spite of her frustration with the girl, Gemma found something about her defiance endearing.

With a sigh, she said, "I hope Alex appreciates your loyalty."

Something flickered in Fern's face- an instant of doubt? Hesitation? Then it was gone and her lips were clamped in a stubborn line. "I'm telling you, I don't know where he is."

"All right, Fern." Gemma stood, tucked her notebook in her bag, and handed Fern her card. "But I'll be back. And in the meantime, you think about whether you really want Alex to go to jail for evading the police and impeding a murder inquiry."

As soon as she reached the station, Gemma organized a twenty-four-hour watch on Fern Adams's flat and requested access to Fern's phone records. She had absolutely no doubt that Fern knew where Alex Dunn was, and that the young woman would contact him.

When her own phone rang with a summons to Superintendent Lamb's office, she thought nothing of it; her super regularly called her in to discuss cases in progress.

But to her astonishment, Lamb cleared his throat and said, "Gemma, Sergeant Franks has been to see me. I thought you should know that the sergeant has expressed some concern over your progress on this case. He feels that not enough pressure has been put on Karl Arrowood, as the obvious suspect in the murder of his wife-"

"Sir. You know that we don't have one single bit of concrete evidence. I can't confront Karl Arrowood with nothing but dicey forensics and supposition, and I certainly can't make a case to the CPS-"

"I realize that, Gemma. I'm not questioning your judgment. In fact, it seems that as well as being wealthy, Arrowood has quite a reputation for supporting charitable causes like helping the homeless. The Commissioner has had calls from a friend of Mr. Arrowood's in the Home Office, and from two prominent MP's, expressing concern for Arrowood, and he has in turn been breathing down my neck. We're certainly not going to make any rash charges at this point, although our clearance rate is under scrutiny-" He stopped and waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. "But you know all that, and that's not why I called you in here. My immediate concern is your communication with Sergeant Franks-"

"But sir, you must know that Franks resents all the female officers. He's done his best to undermine my authority since I started here."

"I also know that Gerry Franks is an experienced and able officer, and you're not doing yourself any favors by allowing personal- or gender-related- differences to sabotage your working relationship. He could be a valuable resource to you, and I don't have to tell you that we need this department to run as efficiently as possible. See what you can do to remedy the problem, eh?" It was clearly a dismissal.

"Right." Gemma stood. "Thank you, sir. If that's all-"

When Lamb nodded, she left the office, her cheeks flaming with embarrassment. She had gone out of her way to defer to Gerry Franks, trying to allow him to retain some of his dignity, and this was the thanks she got. Of course she'd been aware of his thinly concealed insubordination, but this was absolutely the last straw. She would have to find a way to deal with him. And then her own doubts flooded over her.

Had she done everything possible? Had she let her concern with her pregnancy and her future cloud her judgment? And if that were the case, how could she repair the damage?

She watched her mother fade away, day by day, month by month. The doctor's X rays had revealed a tumor in the front part of her brain, growing down into her nasal passage; surgical removal was deemed impossible. There were medications, of course, that might slow the tumor's growth, but as they made her mother violently ill and did not appear to affect the tumor, they were quickly stopped.

And yet, her father refused to give up hope. "Maybe today there will be some improvement," he would say every morning, long after Angel knew that the only possible improvement to her mother's condition was death.

She did the necessary sickroom nursing without complaint, but she loathed it. She hated the dark bed, the heavy brown-and-rose wallpaper, the smell of sickness, her mother's silent acquiescence. Most of all, she hated her mother. How could her mother abandon her, and with so little fuss? Did her mother not love her at all? Didn't parting from one's only child deserve a bit of drama, at least some railing at God?

But her mother only smiled her gentle smile, drifting in and out of her morphine-induced dreams, and when she began to fret from the pain, the doctor would increase her dosage.

As the tumor pressed its way forward, her face began to sag as if it were a plastic mask left too long before the fire; one eye socket slid down and canted sideways, her nose twisted, her forehead bulged. The pain intensified then; a simple touch would make her cry out, so that Angel could hardly bear to bathe her.

And then came the day when there was no flicker of recognition in the damaged eye, and the sole response to Angel's entreaties a soft, continuous moaning.

Angel fled next door, into Mrs. Thomas's comforting arms. Sobbing, she demanded, "Is she still in there somewhere? Or has her soul gone to God already and her body's just waiting?"

"I don't know, child," answered Mrs. Thomas, wiping her own tears with the tip of her apron. "Seems to me she's somewhere in between, still connected to her poor body but reaching out for the next place."

"But can she hear me?"

"I suspect she can, but she don't have the strength to answer. So you keep talking to her, child, tell her you love her, that she's goin' to be all right."

Angel went back, resolute, but try as she might, she could not bring herself to say those words to the unfamiliar thing her mother had become. She sat in silence, and gradually the fear came on her that God had frozen her tongue as well as her heart. When her father came home at last, she'd huddled in the same position for so long that he had to lift her and carry her from the room like a baby.

After that, the end came soon, and on a bitter January day, Angel walked in procession to Kensal Green. It was the coldest winter in memory; snow lay grimy in the gutters, and Angel's wrists and knees were blue beneath the sleeves and hem of the coat she had outgrown. There had been no one to notice, no one to help her shop for a new one.

The Thomases were there, dressed in their best but standing a little apart, and some of her father's friends from the antique stalls and the café. The service was of necessity brief, and it was too cold for weeping. Her father had made a temporary marker, in lieu of the granite stone that would take several months to carve. Miriam Wolowski, it read. Went to Sleep January 9, 1963. Many of the other headstones said the same, Angel noticed, and she felt a hot anger that people couldn't speak the truth. "Asleep" implied that a person would wake up, would come back to you: That was something her mother would never do.