Deborah Crombie - In A Dark House

“So he checks out the side entrance, just in case, and finds it unlocked, too,” said Rose. “What if – We know that Laura Novak had a connection with the women’s shelter, which overlooks that door. Maybe she was at the shelter for some reason, saw Braidwood go in, and confronted him.”

“If she saw him, why didn’t she just call the police?” argued Farrell. “And that doesn’t account for the conversation Chloe Yarwood overheard, unless Laura knew him. His uniform alone wouldn’t have been enough to prompt her comment.” He shook his head. “I don’t think we can go any further without more evidence. We’ll have to-”

“I think we’re running out of time, sir.” Rose faced him, tense with the sense of foreboding that had plagued her since the first fire. “He took a huge risk yesterday. I think he’s been working up to something, something big, and now he’s out of control.”

“What could-” Farrell stared at her, enlightenment and dismay dawning in his face. “You think he means to recreate Tooley Street, where Braidwood died a hero. Not just with similar fires, but the real thing. Hay’s Galleria?”

“What would be more fitting?” Hay’s Wharf, known as “the Larder of London,” had, like Cotton’s Wharf, been one of the great Victorian riverside warehouses. It lay between Tooley Street and the Thames, and been beautifully restored as Hay’s Galleria, a Bankside complex filled with restaurants, shops, and crafts stalls. A fire there would be disastrous, and if started in daylight, as the last fire had been, could cost civilian lives.

“Dear God. If you’re right, Rose, we can’t wait. We’ll have to bring him in now, and hope we can find substantiation. But we can’t talk to him without police present.” Farrell pulled out his mobile phone. “I’m calling Kincaid.”

Kincaid had accompanied Maura Bell back to Borough station, leaving the uniformed officers to search Beverly Brown’s meager belongings and contact social services regarding care of the children. But while Bell and Cullen tried to find an address for one Gary Brown, husband of the late Beverly, thought by Kath Warren to live somewhere in Walworth, he stood at the window overlooking Borough High Street and thought.

He knew he’d come across the name on the shelter’s file somewhere else in the course of the case; it was simply a matter of dredging through all the accumulated information until he found the right bit.

When it came to him, he turned and said to Cullen, “Hey, Doug. Gemma copied out a list of names you found at Laura Novak’s. Did you keep the original?”

“Sorry, guv. I left it for forensics, in case it had prints. Was it important?”

“I don’t know yet.” He remembered Gemma showing him the copy she’d made in her notebook. Would she have it with her now? He’d rung her to ask when Maura called out that she’d found an address for Gary Brown and that Brown had a previous conviction for assault. Covering the phone’s mouthpiece, Kincaid said, “Gemma, hang on a second. Somebody find me a pen and some paper.” When Cullen complied, he copied the list Gemma read to him. Clover Howes was one of the six names.

Ringing off, he said to Cullen and Maura, “I’m going back to the shelter. There’s something we’ve missed here. I’d be willing to wager that these other women on the list were shelter clients, but what was Laura Novak’s interest in them?”

“You think Kath Warren can tell us?” asked Cullen.

“It’s worth a try. Maura, if you want to follow up on Brown-”

“I’ll be damned if you’ll send me haring after a domestic if you’ve got a real lead.” She gave him a ferocious glare. “That’s bollocks. I’m going with you.”

Kincaid grinned. “Right, then. Brown can wait. Doug?”

“Count me in.”

They found Kath Warren alone in the office, tidying up in preparation for the end of the day. Lines of exhaustion aged her usually pert face, and she looked up at them anxiously. “If this is about the children,” she said, “we’re still waiting for social services. I’ll stay until they come. We haven’t been able to locate any other family to contact-”

“No, Kath, sit down a minute, please,” Kincaid said, motioning her back to her desk. “We just have a few more questions we need to ask you.” She sat slowly, and Kincaid took the chair that had previously been occupied by the stack of files while Cullen and Maura stood unobtrusively at the back of the room.

He unfolded the list from his pocket and handed it to Kath. “Are these women all clients of the shelter?”

“What-” Kath glanced at the sheet, and he thought she paled beneath her makeup. “Where did you get this?”

“From Laura Novak’s desk. Why would Laura have made a list of these names?”

Kath looked dismayed. “I’d no idea Laura knew. This wasn’t something we were eager to advertise to the board of directors.”

“What did Laura know, Kath? What’s special about these women?”

The paper trembled in Kath’s hand. “I told you the other day. Sometimes, when we place women in new situations, in spite of all our precautions, their abusers find them. These women – all of these women were tracked down by their husbands or boyfriends. One of them, Clover Howes, is dead. Her husband assaulted her with a poker.”

“That’s why you were moving her file,” Kincaid said slowly. “Six women? In what time period, Kath?”

“A year.” She put the sheet of paper down on her desk and smoothed it flat. “Six in the last year.”

“That’s pushing the law of averages, I’d say. And you didn’t tell your board about this?”

“We… we wanted to try to resolve it. We suspected that one of the regular clients, like Beverly, might have been selling information to the other women’s partners. Or even one of our own staff – I told you we’d had suspicions about Shawna, who works the night desk. We know she’s taken bribes from the residents to overlook minor infractions.”

“Like sneaking out at night?”

“Or alcohol in the rooms, that sort of thing. But we had no proof of anything more-”

“Wait a minute.” The pieces had begun to fall into place, all too clearly. Motive, means, opportunity – and the fact that when Kath Warren said we she wasn’t using the royal first person. He stood, leaning over the desk. “Kath, where’s Jason?”

“Oh.” Kath looked round, as if expecting Jason to pop up. “He left early. A family emergency, a sick auntie in Kent. He had to drive down on Saturday as well.”

“Really? That’s very interesting.”

“Why? What are you talking about?” Kath sounded baffled, but she’d shrunk back from him.

Kincaid thought of the subtle relationship cues he had seen between the two of them, and changed tack. “Tell me what happened on Thursday night, Kath. What was Jason doing here?”

“He wasn’t here,” she protested, more firmly than he’d expected.

“How can you be so sure?”

She looked at him, then at Cullen and Bell, who had moved up quietly to flank him on either side, and seemed to come to a decision. “Because I was. And he never came.”

“Was he supposed to?” asked Maura, with surprising sympathy.

Kath swallowed and looked down at her hands, as if avoiding their eyes made her shame easier to bear. “He was supposed to meet me here at half-past ten. I’d told Shawna she could take a couple of hours off to see her boyfriend. But I waited and waited, and Jason never came. So if you’re thinking he had something to do with Laura’s death, you’re wrong.”

Kincaid thought of Laura, making a list of women and checking off names as she discovered what had happened to them; of Laura, dropping Harriet at the sitter’s before ten o’clock, making up a story for Harriet and the sitter, because she meant to investigate something that was not appropriate to discuss with a child, and she didn’t know how long it would take. She had meant to go home that night, after she’d had a look round the shelter office on her own – that’s why she’d left the washing up in the kitchen sink – and she’d meant to go to work the next morning. But she never got to do either.