Deborah Crombie - In A Dark House

She loved the view from the top end of Portobello Road, and it was never more beautiful than on a sunny autumn morning. Below them the street curved gently, lined on both sides with houses and shop fronts painted every color of the rainbow.

It made her feel she’d been picked up out of ordinary London and plunked down in the middle of somewhere more exotic – a village in Italy, or maybe the south of France – except that this, too, was typical of London, where it was not unusual for colorful and eccentric pockets to butt up against sedate Victorian villas. Snatches of music came from the buskers farther down the road, fading in and out, as if someone were twirling the dial on a cosmic radio, and the odor of garlic cooking wafted up from a basement kitchen as they passed.

It took Gemma a moment to put a name to the feeling that welled up inside her. With a start of surprise she realized it was contentment. It wasn’t only the view she loved, but all of Portobello, and Notting Hill, and the house she shared with Duncan and the boys. She loved the connections they had made – friends, neighbors, shopkeepers – and it came to her that she had never before felt so at home. Not in Islington, not even in Leyton where she had grown up.

Her parents had known that sense of community, of belonging, she was sure, but she’d always been focused on moving on, getting out, making her own life. Then, during her marriage to Rob, her pregnancy, Toby’s babyhood, she’d always been looking round the corner, anticipating what came next. Her life had been a litany of afters - after the wedding, after the baby, after she returned to work, after the divorce, after the promotion. Even living in Hazel’s garage flat, her perceptions had been colored by the knowledge that it could only be a stopgap, a temporary measure.

But now… now she didn’t want to move on. Perhaps it was partly her worry over Kit; perhaps it was the sense of life’s fragility that still lingered from her miscarriage; or perhaps it was watching the collapse of her friend Hazel’s seemingly perfect marriage.

Whatever the reason, she knew only that she wanted fiercely to hold on to things just the way they were and not take any risks that might bring about change.

The crowd thickened as Gemma and the boys crossed Chepstow Villas and entered the heart of Portobello’s antiques market, and she gripped Toby’s hand a little tighter. When Kit veered off to the right, towards the antique sporting goods shop that was one of his favorites, she pulled him back firmly. “Food first. Then we shop.”

A few minutes later, armed with hot drinks in paper cups and flaky chocolate croissants, they started a thorough perusal of the street stalls and arcades.

Gemma hadn’t expected finding an antique specimen cabinet would be easy, but three hours and four arcades later, she was beginning to despair. As the clock crept towards noon, the heat in the arcades had become suffocating, the crowds aggravating rather than exhilarating. Kit’s face had grown longer and longer, and Toby was whining because he was hungry and because she’d refused to buy him an outrageously expensive Matchbox car. If she hadn’t been so hot and tired, she’d have laughed at the look on his face when she’d tried to explain that the toys were not meant to be played with, only looked at. The concept of collecting made no sense to a five-year-old.

“What do you say we take a break for lunch?” she said, sighing with relief as they emerged once more onto the pavement. “We could go to Otto’s. Is Wes working today?”

“Yeah, I think so,” answered Kit, displaying none of his usual enthusiasm for food or for a visit to their friend Otto’s café. “Couldn’t we look just a bit longer?”

“Maybe after lunch-” Gemma broke off, realizing that the tinny sound she’d been hearing above the noise of the mob was her mobile phone. It was Duncan, she saw as she fished it from her bag, and she had a sudden sinking feeling that it was not good news.

She answered, and when she’d heard him out, said, “I’ll have to get in touch with Winnie. I’ll ring you when I’ve connected with her, and you can meet us there.”

“Gemma, you don’t have to come,” Kincaid protested. “You said the house is right across the street from Winnie’s church. Why don’t I just ask her to pop over and meet me?”

She thought of the boys, and of another missed piano lesson, and for a moment she was tempted to agree. But then she recalled Fanny Liu’s frightened face and the comfort Fanny had seemed to derive from her presence, and she felt ashamed of her selfishness. “Yes,” she said reluctantly. “I think I do.”

When she rang off, both boys were watching her.

“You have to go, right?” Kit said flatly.

“Yes,” she admitted ruefully. “But maybe we can grab a bite of lunch first.”

“And the cabinet?”

“What about next Saturday?”

“Next Saturday? But-” Kit shrugged and turned away, studying the display of antique jewelry on a street stall table with great concentration, but she’d seen the flash of panic in his eyes. Was he so worried about Monday’s hearing at the family court that he feared there wouldn’t be another Saturday?

Gently she said, “Kit, there’s no reason we can’t do this next Saturday. Maybe Duncan can-”

“Gemma-” Kit was pointing at the jewelry display.

“-come with us. You know he wanted-”

“Gemma, look.”

“At the jewelry? Whatever for?” But frowning, she followed his gaze, and then she saw what he had seen.

The glass-fronted display case lay on its back, covering most of the table’s surface. But the cabinet, although large, was shallow, and its interior was divided into dozens of small, square compartments. In the case’s current position, the compartments formed pockets, each of which held a small display of jewelry, but if it were stood upright, it would make a perfect specimen cabinet.

Their exchange had drawn the dealer’s attention. Gemma gave Kit’s shoulder a warning squeeze and said as casually as she could manage, “This for sale?”

The man lit a cigarette and squinted at her through narrowed eyes. “Well, now, that depends, luv. I’d have to find something else to put my stock in. Just how much are you willing to offer?”

The three detectives and Bill Farrell sat huddled round the video monitor in the room they’d been temporarily assigned at Borough High Street Station. After Bell’s phone call, they’d left Kate Ling to finish the postmortem. Ling had promised to let them know immediately if she found anything else significant; otherwise, she’d get the report to them as soon as the lab results came back. Kincaid, for his part, had been just as glad for an excuse to miss out on the sawing and slicing.

The CCTV tape had been loaded into the VCR, and even with the videotape in pause mode, the black-and-white image on the television screen looked blotchy and faded. Kincaid silently cursed the cheap security measures that encouraged reusing videotapes until they were bloody well useless.

“This is from the building across the street and a few yards to the east of the warehouse’s front entrance,” said the DS in charge of running the tape. “We were lucky to find a private camera scanning more than the building’s foyer, but as this is a credit reporting business, they tend to be a bit paranoid about external security. Unfortunately, the view isn’t great, as you can see.”

It took Kincaid a moment to match what he was seeing on the screen with his memory of the warehouse entrance. Then he realized that the camera’s field of vision ended at the western edge of the warehouse door. This meant that not only could they not see the side door, but they had no view of the street on which it faced.