CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Murdered? Where?"

"In his drive."

"Oh, God." Gemma stood, and Geordie jumped down from the sofa, his cocker spaniel brow furrowed at her tone. "Surely not the same way?"

"It looks like it," Kincaid told her. "They're waiting for us."

"I'll change. You wake Kit and tell him what's happening. Will he be all right on his own with Toby?"

"I don't know that we've much choice, have we?"

Kit sat up in bed, his fair hair sticking up like sprouts. "Of course I'll be okay," he said, indignant. "But do you really have to go, on Christmas?"

"Yes. I'm sorry. But Father Christmas has been and left your stockings on the hearth. They were too heavy for him to lug all the way up the stairs."

Kit rolled his eyes at the fiction, and Kincaid winked. "If we're not back when Toby wakes up, you can take him downstairs. In the meantime, we'll both have our mobiles if you need anything." He tousled Kit's hair. Much to his surprise, the boy reached out and pressed his hand for a moment before letting it go.

Kincaid, deeply moved, was tempted to say, "I love you," but resisted the impulse. He didn't dare jeopardize the delicate emotional balance they had achieved.

Instead, he took Kit's hand and pulled him out of bed. "Come and look, son, before you go back to sleep. It's going to be a white Christmas."

The crime scene looked much as it had ten days earlier, except for the white frosting of snow. Gemma stamped against the cold as Gerry Franks came up to them.

"Bloody snow," Franks groused. "Ruins the bloody crime scene. It's hopeless." He was obviously no happier at being dragged out on Christmas Eve than they were, and he gave them a scathing look that included them in his displeasure.

The corpse itself had been protected with a makeshift shelter, but a fine sifting of powder lay beneath the covered area. Emergency lighting had been set up round the perimeter of the scene. "Any idea how long he's been here?" Gemma asked.

"My guess, from the state of the ground and the look of the blood, is two to three hours. Pathologist's on her way."

"Who found him?"

"The next-door neighbor, Mrs. Du Ray. She wants to talk to you- won't give her statement to anyone else." This bit of information seemed to sour Franks's disposition even further.

"All right," said Gemma. "But first we need a look at the body."

Once suited up, she and Kincaid made their way round the parked Mercedes. Gemma's sense of déjà vu intensified. There was only one car in the drive. Had Karl Arrowood already disposed of his murdered wife's?

The body lay a few feet in front of the car, half on its side. There were smudges in the snow near his hands and feet, as if he'd attempted to crawl towards the house. Kneeling, Gemma could see that the blood from his wounds had congealed into dark and syrupy clots, and she couldn't help but remember that Arrowood had been terrified at the sight of blood.

He had not been wearing an overcoat, in spite of the cold, but the dark jacket of his suit had been torn away at the front. His tie had been slashed loose; his once-white shirt was missing its top buttons where it had apparently been ripped open from the collar.

"He fought," she said to Kincaid, who knelt beside her.

"Multiple wounds in the throat, rather than a single clean cut," Kincaid agreed. He reached out with a gloved finger and moved aside the fabric of the shirt. "It's hard to tell with so much blood, but it looks as though there might have been an attempt at mutilating the chest."

"Why slash a man's chest? And if that was the killer's intent, why didn't he finish the job?"

"Perhaps he was interrupted," Kincaid mused. "Or perhaps he was afraid that the struggle had attracted attention. I can tell you one thing, though- if whoever did this managed to get home without notice, he had to have some way to dispose of his bloody clothes and clean himself up before he was seen by anyone. So he either lives alone-"

"Or has an unusual amount of privacy. As in Gavin Farley's workshop and shower. I think we should get a car on the way to Willesden even before we see Mrs. Du Ray."

"I blew it," Gemma raged to Kincaid as they stripped off their coveralls. "I should have prevented this." She had not liked Karl Arrowood, but to see such strength and force extinguished had shaken her badly.

"How? What could you have done differently?"

"If I knew that, I would have done it, wouldn't I? At least we can rule out Arrowood as the murderer-"

"Can we? What if someone learned he'd committed the first two murders and decided to take retribution into their own hands?"

"I suppose that's possible. But Karl Arrowood was a powerful man, quite a different proposition for the killer than two unsuspecting women-"

"Accounting for the lack of finesse. Dr. Ling may be able to tell us if the murders were committed by the same person. But if that's the case, it's quite a departure from the usual serial killer pattern."

Fully dressed again, they followed the walk to Mrs. Du Ray's porch, their footprints leaving dark gashes in the fresh snow. "Bloody hell, your sergeant's right about the crime scene," Kincaid muttered as he rang the bell. "Might as well wash everything down with a fire hose."

Mrs. Du Ray greeted Gemma with a whispered, "Oh, my dear." Her skin appeared paper-thin, the lines round mouth and eyes much more pronounced than a week earlier.

"I'm so sorry you had to deal with this, Mrs. Du Ray," she said. "It must have been a terrible shock."

"Yes." Mrs. Du Ray gave a small negative shake of her head, as if further words escaped her.

When they were seated in the warm kitchen, Gemma said, "Why don't you start from the beginning."

"After my supper, I did the washing up, then went upstairs to get ready for bed. Sometimes I put on my dressing gown and come back downstairs to watch a little television. When I glanced out the window, I noticed Karl's car standing in the drive. There was a faint light coming from the interior, as if perhaps one of the doors hadn't quite closed." Mrs. Du Ray spoke clearly and precisely, as if giving a report, but the blue veins stood out on her hands, clasped in her lap. "I thought I saw something dark in front of the car, but it had begun to snow, and I decided my eyes were deceiving me."

"What time was this?" asked Gemma, her notebook ready.

"Before nine o'clock. I'm sure of it because there was a program on at nine I wanted to see. I came downstairs again and made some cocoa, but I couldn't settle. I kept wondering if I had really seen something, or if my imagination had run wild. So I went back up and looked again, and this time there was a dark shape in the drive- I was sure of it- and I saw someone crossing the street from the churchyard.

"It was a young man, or at least that was my impression. He was bareheaded, with that floppy sort of Edwardian hairstyle you see young men wearing these days. He came into the drive, almost tiptoeing, and walked round the car. Then he froze, and went closer. I saw him bend over and reach out, then he turned and ran as if the hounds of hell were after him."