Deborah Crombie - And Justice There Is None

"They were Jewish?"

"Yes. His father was a grocer, if my memory serves me. They would have had little, and Karl certainly had no exposure to fine things through his upbringing. But the antiques market was growing rapidly in those days, and I always assumed he had worked for a stallholder or a dealer as a boy." He gave a shrug of regret. "I'm sorry I can't tell you more."

It occurred to Gemma that she knew someone else in the neighborhood who had come to England as a German refugee just after the war. And it was, as Otto had said, a close-knit community. Was it stretching probability too much to think more information might be forthcoming from a different quarter?

It began as a dream. He was alone in the dark, cold and frightened, his stomach cramping with hunger. He lay in a bed that was damp and stank, and he desperately wanted his mother.

The dream moved on in interminable dreamtime… hours… days, he couldn't tell. Then suddenly his mother was there in the room with him, but she didn't answer when he called out to her. The room spun and he saw her clearly, sprawled on the floor beside the other bed, her red dress hiked up, one delicate sandaled foot hung in a fold of the counterpane.

Now he was out of his bed, creeping across the room on his hands and knees. He touched her. Her skin was cold; her breath came in labored snorts. She smelled of the stuff that came in bottles, and of the other… the sweet, sickly smell that made his throat close with dread. Tonight he would not be able to wake her.

It was only when he reached his bed again that he acknowledged the smell and the dampness were his fault. His mother would kill him when she woke, she had told him so, and he had no doubt that she meant it. Terror washed over him and he scrabbled at the wet bedclothes, willing himself desperately to disappear-

Alex woke sitting bolt upright in bed, gasping.

Where the hell had that dream come from? He couldn't remember having it before, but it was all horribly, intimately familiar to him in a way he didn't understand.

He'd had dreams occasionally where he had inhabited another person, another body, like an actor in a film. But he had been the little boy in the dream, or the little boy had been him.

Shivering now, he wrapped the duvet round his shoulders and stumbled into the kitchen. Taking a mug of hot, sweet tea into the sitting room, he sat on the floor, swathed in the comforter, watching wretchedly for the first intimation of dawn at his garden window.

Then the dream began again, and this time he knew he was awake. There was a man in the bedroom; he could smell the tobacco and the rank sweat. The man and his mother were together in her bed, making the sounds he couldn't bear to hear. He stuffed his fingers in his ears to shut out the noise, digging until he loosened the scabs from the last time.

There was blood, he was drowning in it, and through the haze he saw the blue swell of his mother's vein and the springing drop of scarlet as the needle went in.

After that she went away from him, her eyes skittering across his face as if it were a strange landscape. Nothing he said or did could reach her, and he knew that she went away because she did not love him.

As the memory faded into the pearly mauve of daybreak at his window, Alex saw that the dream-child's logic was flawed- but he also knew that logic mattered not at all.

All Saints Road was not a particularly cheerful place early on a Friday morning, Kincaid decided as he and Doug Cullen got out of the car in front of Gavin Farley's surgery. Most of the shops and businesses were closed, their windows covered by the rolling metal gratings that marked London as a cosmopolitan city. Nor did the rutted, mottled mixture of snow and slush lining the gutters help matters.

"That's Farley's car." Cullen indicated a maroon Astra parked at least a foot from the curb.

"I hope his veterinary skills are an improvement on his driving."

"Maybe that's why he leaves the Mercedes to his wife," Cullen replied with a grin as he swung open the surgery door.

Bryony Poole stood at the reception desk, a chart in her hand. She looked up at Kincaid with an instant smile of recognition that made him wish with a pang of guilt that he'd never thought of her as a suspect, but the information Cullen had dredged up about her relationship with a former lover had given him no choice but to see the interview through.

"Superintendent, isn't it?" Bryony said. "Can I help you? Gavin- Mr. Farley- is with a client at the moment, but I can tell him you're here."

"It's you we wanted a word with, actually, Miss Poole. Is there somewhere we could talk? This is Sergeant Cullen, by the way."

She nodded at Cullen, her expression more wary now. "I'm rather busy this morning, I'm afraid. And I really don't know what else I can tell you." Glancing towards the exam room that presumably held her boss, she added, "This has been awkward enough for me as it is…"

"It's not Farley we're interested in at the moment," said Cullen, stepping into the breach with enthusiasm. "Would you mind telling us where you were on Christmas Eve, Miss Poole?"

Bryony's half-smile froze on her face. "You're not serious?"

"We have to speak to anyone with access to a certain type of instrument-"

"A scalpel. Karl was killed with a scalpel, wasn't he?"

"It was in fact the same brand you use, Miss Poole," said Cullen. "The same type of scalpel that was stolen from this surgery."

"And since you haven't been able to pin anything on Gavin, you thought you'd try me! That's simply beastly! I wish I'd never told Gemma about the thefts- or about Gavin's row with Dawn."

"Or the photos?" Cullen interjected stubbornly.

"Oh, yes. I made a right fool of myself over that, didn't I? Well, I don't care what you think. I saw those photos. I know Gavin was spying on Dawn and Alex, and I'm not crazy. What I don't understand is why you think I'd have told you any of those things if I were guilty? And why on earth would I have wanted to hurt either Dawn or Karl Arrowood?"

"You might have told us because you thought it would throw suspicion on Mr. Farley, as it did. And as for motive, you do have a bit of temper, Miss Poole," Cullen told her. "There was a matter of a former boyfriend, I believe, who charged you with assault after you pushed him down the stairs-"

"And do you know that he dropped the charges because no judge would touch the case? I came home after taking my final exams at veterinary college- I had literally studied night and day for months- to find my so-called fiancé in my bed, in my flat, with a prostitute. I threw them both down the stairs, and their clothes after them." Bryony folded her arms tightly across her chest and glared at them, but her eyes had filled with furious tears.

"I think I might have done the same," Kincaid said, remembering the fury he'd felt when he'd learned of Vic's affair with Ian McClellan- and he had not been unfortunate enough to catch them in the act.

"It was not a good time in my life, but I didn't go around murdering anyone, and I certainly haven't done so now." Bryony scribbled something on a pad, tore the page loose and thrust it at Kincaid, ignoring Cullen's outstretched hand. "This is my parents' address and phone number in Wimbledon. I arrived there late in the afternoon on Christmas Eve and stayed until mid-morning on Christmas. I'm sure my parents and my assorted relatives will be able to vouch for me. Now, if you don't mind, I have a surgery scheduled this morning, and I'd like to get to work."