Deborah Crombie - In A Dark House

Gemma parked the car in front of Guy’s Hospital, as she had the previous day, and walked round the corner into Borough High Street. As she looked for the address Kincaid had given her, she passed the George, the last of the ancient galleried inns of Southwark. The Tabard and the Queen’s Head had long since disappeared, but the George, with only one of its galleries intact, had not only survived but did a booming business.

Tony Novak had certainly gone for convenience, she thought as she found the address a bit farther along. It was a block of flats over a shop front, not particularly inviting, but merely a stone’s throw from Guy’s Hospital.

She was about to push the entrance buzzer when a parting of the pedestrian traffic revealed a man sitting on the curb, a few yards farther along. He was hunched over, his head cradled in his hands, his feet in the gutter. People were giving him a wide berth, as they usually did the drunk or the homeless, although you seldom saw either sitting half in the street, and the man looked ill as well as unkempt.

Although the distraction was unwelcome, Gemma couldn’t pass by without attempting to help.

She smelled the sour stench of alcohol before she reached him and felt a bit more sympathy for those who hadn’t bothered to stop. From a few feet away, she said, “Excuse me, sir. Are you all right?”

When he didn’t respond, she crouched down and looked at him more closely. He was dark-haired and tall – that much was apparent even in his present position – and slender. His clothes, although rumpled, seemed clean and of good quality, and on his wrist, bared where his shirt cuff had fallen back, was an expensive-looking watch. The man was no vagrant, and Gemma had a sudden flash of intuition. If she was wrong, she had nothing to lose.

She touched his shoulder. “Tony.”

This time he raised his head, slowly, and stared at her with bloodshot eyes. His face was long and thin, and covered with several days’ worth of stubble, and his eyes were hollow, but Gemma could see that under better circumstances he would be handsome. He didn’t speak.

“Tony,” she said again. “My name’s Gemma.” Here she hesitated but decided that if she wanted to gain his trust she’d better be honest from the beginning. He didn’t look in any state to run off. “I’m a police officer, and I think you need some help.”

He stared at her a moment longer, then grasped her arm with surprising strength. “You’ve found her. Harriet. Tell me – is she-”

“We haven’t found your daughter. We’re hoping you can help us do that. But first, let’s get you up to your flat, okay? Can you stand?”

“Don’t know,” he mumbled, but let her pull him to his feet. He swayed a little but seemed steady enough to walk without help. Gemma began to think he was not so much drunk as hungover and exhausted.

He had not lost his keys, at least, and Gemma let him lead the way up the stairs to his flat. She had to help him unlock the flat door, and once in the sitting room, he sank down on the nearest available chair as if his legs had given notice.

The flat was no more inviting from the inside than it had looked from the street. Obviously hastily converted to take advantage of the property boom, it had cheap fittings, and the walls and ceiling were already beginning to show patches of damp. The sitting room held a few pieces of nondescript furniture, and an open suitcase spilled its contents onto the floor.

“How long has it been since you’ve had anything to eat, or any sleep?” Gemma asked, as Tony looked in danger of nodding off again.

“Don’t know. Don’t remember.” He frowned and rubbed at his stubble. “Couple of days, I think.”

“Right.” Gemma went into the tiny kitchen and took stock. There was part of a loaf of bread on the counter and some cheese and butter in an otherwise pathetically empty fridge. “You’re going to have something to eat, and then we’ll talk.” She buttered bread and sliced cheese for a sandwich as the kettle boiled, then made a big mug of strong, sweet tea.

When she returned to the sitting room he had closed his eyes, but he sat up and took the food from her without protest. After the first bite, he wolfed down the sandwich as if suddenly starving, then gulped at the tea, even though it must still have been scalding.

When he looked up at her again, his eyes were more clear and focused. Picking at his shirt, he said, “God, I stink. Must have spilled the bottle.”

“Yeah.” Gemma smiled. “You do. But that can wait. First we need to talk about Harriet.”

His dark eyes filling with tears, Tony said on a sob, “Oh, God. It’s my fault.”

Gemma controlled her start of alarm. “What’s your fault, Tony?”

“I should never have left her.”

“Left Harriet?”

Just then the buzzer sounded from the street door. Tony jerked as if he’d been shot, then stood up, looking round wildly. “Laura – she’ll kill me-”

“It’s not Laura,” Gemma said, gambling that she was right. She pressed the release for the street door latch. “It’s my friend Duncan. You met him the other day.” She gave Kincaid a minute to climb the stairs, then opened the flat door before he could knock. At his startled expression, she gave a quick shake of her head and held up a hand in warning before turning back to Tony.

“Tony and I are just having a chat,” she said. “About Harriet. He’s very worried about her.”

Tony sat down again slowly, his expression wary.

She saw Kincaid take in the open suitcase, but he followed her lead and pulled up a chair without speaking.

“Tony,” she said quietly, as if they hadn’t been interrupted, “where did you leave Harriet?”

He looked from Gemma to Kincaid, then back at Gemma. “With a friend,” he whispered. “It was just for a few minutes. I – I had something to do.”

“Was this after you picked Harriet up from school?”

His eyes widened, but after a moment he nodded. “It was a treat. I was taking her out for the day, for a treat.”

“Did Laura agree that you should take Harriet out of school for the day?”

“God, no.” His face twisted in a grimace. “It was going to be our secret, Harriet’s and mine. But then I had to – she wanted some things from the flat, and I said I’d get them, but I couldn’t take her with me.”

Gemma felt Kincaid’s stir of impatience, but she nodded as if it all made perfect sense. “So you left her with your friend, while you went to the flat. Was Laura there?”

He looked at her blankly. “Laura? Of course not. She was at work, or I’d never have gone.”

“Okay,” she said. “So you picked up Harriet’s things. Then what happened?”

He rubbed a trembling hand across his stubble again. “I was supposed to meet them – Harriet and my friend. But they didn’t come. And I realized I’d no idea how to get in touch with her.”

“Your friend?”

“Beth. Her name’s Beth. I-” He shook his head. “We’d been going out for a while, but she always came here. She said there was someone else, and I never-”

“But you must have had some way to reach her?”

“Only her mobile, and now it just goes straight to voice mail. She said she worked at an estate agent’s here in the Borough, so yesterday I went round to every office, but no one knew anyone called Beth.”

Kincaid could contain himself no longer. “Are you saying you don’t know this woman’s last name?”

“It was only casual sex, for God’s sake. I never thought – I never meant-”

“You left your daughter, on the spur of the moment, with a woman whose name you didn’t even know?”

“It wasn’t like that,” protested Tony. “I needed help, and I couldn’t think of anyone else to ask, anyone who didn’t-”