Deborah Crombie - And Justice There Is None

"Whose parents?" asked Otto, bewildered. "What are you talking about?"

But Kincaid had taken out his phone and was dialing Gemma again. This time the call went directly to voice mail. "Why in bloody hell would she have switched her phone off?" he muttered as he hung up. He dialed again, this time Notting Hill Station. When he had Melody Talbot on the line, he asked without preamble, "Where's Gemma? Is she there?"

"No." Melody sounded surprised, and a little worried. "She went out about an hour ago. She didn't say where she was going. Have you any idea where she is?"

Kincaid told himself Gemma could have gone anywhere- to run an errand, check on the children, to buy herself a coffee- but none of his logical suppositions lessened the dread that gripped him.

"I'm not mad, you know," Marc said as if he'd read her thoughts.

"Then let us go. The Yard is on the way," she bluffed. "You know they've traced your history. I only came along first because I thought we were friends. Talk to me, Marc. Let me help you."

"We'll talk," Marc agreed pleasantly. "But first let's make Bryony a bit more comfortable. Come over here." He gestured towards a ball of brown kitchen twine on the table. "Tie her up, hands behind her back." In a mockery of a lover's embrace, he turned Bryony towards him so that Gemma could reach her hands.

With a wary eye on the knife, Gemma did as he asked. Gemma could feel Bryony trembling.

"Now her feet," Marc commanded, and when Gemma had finished he pushed Bryony up against the wall next to the cooker. Released from his grip, Bryony slid limply down into a sitting position, knees drawn up to her chin, eyes dark with terror.

Marc stood between them, still holding the knife firmly. "You make one wrong move," he told Gemma, "and I can reach her in an instant."

"Why are you doing this?" Gemma asked softly. "I know you don't want to hurt Bryony, or me."

"Then you can listen to the truth. Someone needs to know what Karl Arrowood did. He took my parents away from me- he murdered them. And she let him do it. That's not right, is it?"

"She? Who do you mean, Marc?"

"Angel, of course. Or Marianne, if you prefer. She said that was our secret, her name, because I was special to her. She said she loved me- and I loved her, until my grandmother told me what she'd done."

"Angel couldn't have prevented Karl doing what he did. She was just as much his victim as your parents, and she suffered, too-"

"Not enough. All the time I was growing up, my grandmother told me that God would punish them, Angel and Karl. I waited and waited, but nothing happened. My grandmother died without seeing retribution."

"But surely she didn't mean for you-"

"You know what the irony of it was?" His lips curled in a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Two days after I buried her, I saw Karl on the telly. Getting an award for his humanitarian efforts. He and some political bigwig friends had raised money to benefit the homeless. 'The less fortunate,' he called them." He shook his head. "Do you know that it took my grandmother fifteen years to pay off my parents' legal fees? There were months we lived on porridge, months when she couldn't pay the electricity. Do you think Karl would have considered us less fortunate?"

"But Angel- Marianne- Why-"

"I had to sell my grandmother's bits and pieces to pay off the last of the debts, so I took her jewelry to the little shop in Camden Passage, near our flat. When I saw her, I knew God had spoken to me directly."

"You recognized Angel?"

"I thought she seemed familiar at first. Then she bent over, and I saw her locket." He touched his chest, and Gemma saw he wore a silver chain that vanished beneath his shirt. "She always wore a heart-shaped silver locket. She put my picture in it. It was still there." There was a note of wonder in his voice. "But then, I didn't know that until after I'd killed her."

He is utterly mad. Gemma put a hand on the worktop to steady herself, trying frantically to think of something within reach she could use for a weapon. If she could only distract him long enough to switch on her phone and dial 999, the open connection would lead the police to her. But how could she do so without him hurting Bryony, or her?

"Are you telling me God chose you as his means of retribution?" She willed him to keep talking. "Did you kill Marianne to punish her?"

"And Karl. He must have cared about her, once. But I had no way of making sure that he knew, and understood, what had happened. So then I thought of his wife. I saw her on the telly with him- so young, so blond, and I knew he must love her, if he were capable of loving anyone."

"But Dawn Arrowood had never hurt anyone! How could you take such an innocent life?"

"I was sorry about that." Marc spoke with chilling sincerity. "She was so beautiful- a little like my mother. But then my mother died gasping for breath, her lungs filled with fluid. Dawn was a lamb, a necessary sacrifice. I'm sure she would have understood."

"That's why you pierced the victims' lungs- because of your mother?" A horrid fascination gripped Gemma.

"And their throats-"

"My father hanged himself."

"And Karl? You had to make Karl suffer first."

Marc smiled at her, as if pleased with a bright pupil. "I sensed you were perceptive."

"Did he know who you were, when you killed him?"

"I told him. He had to know. Then he fought me, but it didn't matter in the end."

Bryony moaned, as if the flat assurance of Marc's words had pushed her past the bounds of endurance.

As Marc's eyes flicked towards Bryony, Gemma lunged at him. If she had any conscious thought, it was that she might knock him down, giving her a chance to use the phone before he could recover.

But in a flash of movement, his hands grabbed her, swinging her round. Her hip hit the steel table, hard, and the impact loosened his grip. As she fell to the floor she felt a tearing pain.

Had the knife caught her? Pushing herself up, she grabbed for Marc's ankles, but the pain bit again, fierce and insistent. She cried out, and Bryony scooted towards her along the floor.

"Gemma! What is it? Are you okay?"

"Get back," Marc hissed at Bryony.

Bryony stopped, her face very white. "Gemma, you're bleeding."

Gemma felt a wet, spreading warmth. When she touched the floor beneath her, her hand came away red and sticky.

"Marc," she whispered. He had knelt beside her, looking suddenly as bewildered as a child. "Something's wrong. You have to get someone- an ambulance-"

"I didn't mean- I never wanted to hurt you, Gemma," he whispered. "Let me help you. I can make it better." He lifted her shoulders, cradling her in his arms, and gently began to rock her.

The tires screeched as Cullen pulled into the curb, and Kincaid leapt out before the car had stopped rolling. Kincaid had ordered Melody to dispatch officers to the address on Portobello Road, but he and Cullen arrived first. The lights were out in the front of the soup kitchen, but the door swung open to his touch.

"Gemma!" he called out. There was no point in stealth- Mitchell would have heard the car, and the door.

"Here! Back here!" came an answering voice, high with panic. Not Gemma- but it struck a faint chord of recognition. Bryony.

He ran for the back.

The scene that met his eyes seemed drawn from hell. Gemma lay on the floor, cradled tenderly in Marc Mitchell's arms. A few feet away, Bryony, bound hand and foot, tried to push herself upright. The harsh light gleamed from the blade of an abandoned knife near Mitchell's side.

For an instant, Kincaid thought Mitchell held Gemma by force, then the hot-iron stench of blood reached his nostrils. She's hurt, dear God. How badly? Her face was paper-white; her eyelids fluttered as she tried to focus on his face. "Duncan," she whispered. "I can't…"