Deborah Crombie - In A Dark House

When they’d ordered – pollock and greens for Gemma, a chicken and mushroom pie for Winnie – they settled back with their drinks. “All right, first things first,” said Gemma, spreading a piece of brown, crusty bread with pale fresh butter. “How’s Jack? Is he coming up to town this weekend?”

“’Fraid not. The commission in Bristol is keeping him busy. He may not get away again until the job’s complete.”

“Can you not go to him?”

“I only have one day off a week – not long enough to go to Glastonbury and back. And even that day is subject to emergencies.”

“Sounds a bit like the police,” Gemma said ruefully. “Good thing you picked an understanding bloke.”

“It is, isn’t it?” agreed Winnie, sipping at the small glass of Pinot Grigio she’d ordered with her meal. “Although sometimes I wonder if I’d feel less guilty about juggling the job and the relationship if he weren’t so understanding. What about Duncan and the boys? Any news on the Eugenia front?”

“We’ve a preliminary hearing scheduled next week.” As if their family situation weren’t already complicated enough, Kit’s maternal grandmother, Eugenia Potts, had filed for custody of thirteen-year-old Kit. Since Kit’s legal guardian, Ian McClellan, had moved to Canada, he had allowed Kit to live with Duncan, his natural father, and Gemma.

Eugenia, however, appeared to blame Duncan for her daughter’s death, and could not bear the idea of her grandson living happily with his father. And although Kit despised his grandmother, he’d not been willing to take the DNA test that would prove Duncan’s paternity without a doubt, thus giving Duncan clear legal rights.

Kit’s stubbornness over the testing meant that Duncan and Gemma would be forced to rely on the understanding of the family court judge, and on the hope that the judge would see Kit as old enough to decide where, and with whom, he wanted to live. It was all very worrying, and since Eugenia had filed her petition the previous May, tensions had been running high in their household.

“We had an outing planned to Portobello Market tomorrow to look for some things for Kit,” Gemma told Winnie, and found herself expressing feelings she hadn’t been able to articulate to herself. “I really thought we should all be together, as a family, to reassure Kit that we’ll continue to be a family… But Duncan can’t make it…”

“Work?”

Gemma nodded. “A case came up. Here in Southwark, as a matter of fact.”

“I wouldn’t worry about your outing,” said Winnie. “Kit knows how committed you are, and the last thing he needs now is to feel any sort of divisiveness between you and Duncan.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Gemma admitted. “It’s just nerves. I suppose I hate the idea of being put on show as a model family. What if we don’t measure up?”

“You measure up as far as Kit’s concerned, and I’m sure that’s what counts.” Winnie buttered a slice of bread for herself. “What about your friend Hazel? I’m sure she’d testify on your behalf.”

“She would, but she’s in Scotland.”

“Trying to make a go of her distillery?”

Gemma nodded, fighting back the sudden, mortifying prickle of tears. After the tragic events of the previous spring, she’d encouraged Hazel to do what she thought right, even if it meant staying in Scotland, but she hadn’t realized what it would mean to lose the supportive presence of her closest friend.

She took a sip from her half pint of cider, concentrating on the feel of the bubbles against her tongue, hoping that her voice wouldn’t betray her. “She and Tim are talking, at least, and they’ve agreed for the time being not to sell the Islington house.”

“Any hope of a reconciliation?”

Gemma sighed. “I don’t know. It would be hard, after what’s happened, for either of them.” Their food arrived, and Gemma was glad of an excuse to change the subject.

“Now, why don’t you tell me why you rang?” she said, picking up her cutlery, but a cloud of steam rose from the perfectly arranged food on her plate. “I’m dying of curiosity.”

“Well, I hope I haven’t been hasty,” confessed Winnie. “But this is outside my experience, and I wasn’t sure if it was a matter for the police, so you seemed the obvious person to consult. And my parishioner wasn’t too keen on the idea of going to the police…”

“I was the unofficial solution?” Gemma asked, a little amused, imagining a teenager caught stealing, or an accumulation of traffic citations. She hoped she hadn’t been called out for a kitten stranded on a fire escape, but in any case it looked as if she was going to get a good lunch for her time.

As Winnie began to tell her about Frances Liu’s missing roommate, her amusement quickly faded.

“I’ve been round to Guy’s Hospital, where Elaine works,” Winnie continued, “and got them to tell me that not only did she not show up for work this morning, she didn’t call in. Her coworkers say she’s very punctual and dependable; she’s seldom missed work at all, and never without notice.”

“Does she have family you could ring? Boyfriend? Ex-husband?”

“Not that Fanny knows of, and that strikes me as a bit funny as well. I mean, how many people do you know without connections of some sort?”

“Had she been behaving oddly?”

“Not that Fanny noticed… or not that Fanny admits noticing, anyway.”

Deciding her food had cooled enough to taste, Gemma took a bite of meltingly tender white fish and sautéed greens. “Blimey,” she said, closing her eyes in bliss. “This is wonderful.” Swallowing, she forced her attention back to the matter at hand. “What about the local hospitals? Did you check to see if she’d been admitted?”

“I checked Guy’s and St. Thomas’s,” answered Winnie. “No one by that name, nor any Jane Does. And that left me at a dead end. I thought that perhaps if you were to talk to Fanny, you could convince her to file a missing-persons report.”

“Do you know why she’s so reluctant?”

The pub had filled to capacity since they’d come in, and Winnie leaned a little closer in order to be heard above the rising babble of voices. “She said Elaine’s very protective of her privacy, and would be angry if Fanny had called attention to her unnecessarily.” Winnie frowned and toyed with a forkful of her chicken pie. “But I also think that Fanny has a horror of making a fuss, of being seen as the hysterical invalid.”

“That’s understandable, I suppose,” Gemma said thoughtfully. “But although the most likely explanation is that her friend has done a runner, the situation is odd enough that I think she’s justified in sounding an alarm. Does she live nearby, then?” she added, thinking reluctantly of the work that would be piling up on her desk at Notting Hill. She wouldn’t be getting away early enough that evening to toast Sergeant Talley’s birthday.

“Not five minutes from here, just across from my church.” Winnie smiled. “It’ll give me a chance to show you where I slave away my days.”

Kath Warren shut herself in the toilet adjoining her office and leaned against the basin, holding on to the cold porcelain edge as if it were the only anchor in an unstable universe. She took deep breaths, counting in, counting out, and after a moment she turned on the cold tap and held her wrists beneath the stream. When the faintness began to pass, she shut the water off and reached for the towel, only to find it had disappeared from the hook – nicked by one of the shelter residents, she supposed, as per bloody usual. Tearing off a bit of toilet tissue from the roll, she dried her hands and gazed at herself in the fly-specked mirror over the basin.