“I-”

“You get yourself cleaned up. We’ll wait for you.”

“But I-” Tony picked at his shirt again, holding it away from his body as if suddenly aware of his revolting state. “All right.” He stood, still a little unsteadily, but when he looked at the open suitcase his eyes filled with tears.

“Here. Let me help you.” Gemma quickly knelt beside the case, fishing out shirt and trousers, clean socks and briefs with the practiced efficiency of a mother of boys. She bundled the articles into Tony’s arms and nudged him in the direction of the bathroom.

When he’d disappeared behind the closed door, Gemma turned back to Kincaid. Her face was strained.

“You realize we now have four missing women that potentially fit the description of one body?” he said.

Gemma knelt and dug through the suitcase again. “And a missing child who very well may not be with her mother.” With a grunt of satisfaction, she pulled out a framed photograph and sat back on her heels, studying it for a moment before handing it to Kincaid.

The girl stared into the camera with the defiant seriousness of a child refusing to smile for the photographer. She had wiry dark hair pulled back tightly from her thin face, and her gray eyes held an adult intelligence. She might, Kincaid thought, be heartbreakingly beautiful in ten years’ time.

Dusting off her knees, Gemma came to stand beside him. “I’m not so sure there are four missing women,” she said, touching Harriet Novak’s face with a fingertip. “Do you still have Elaine Holland’s photograph?”

Kincaid frowned at her. “No. I gave it to Bell. What are you-”

“Think about it. Elaine Holland left work every day on the dot, but several evenings a week she told Fanny she had to work late. She’d been hinting recently to a coworker that she had a boyfriend. She had clothes tucked away that Fanny never saw. She lied to Fanny about having a mobile phone, yet Tony had no number for Beth other than a mobile phone. And the physical description… Elaine has a striking face. Not beautiful, but you can see how a man could be fascinated-”

Kincaid’s phone rang. He snapped it open with a grimace of irritation, but his impatience vanished when he heard Konnie Mueller’s voice. He listened, nodding, then said, “And nothing yet on the other one? Okay. As soon as you have a result. Right.”

As he rang off, Gemma said, “Konnie?”

He nodded. “He’s narrowed our options by one. Whoever – and wherever – Elaine Holland may be, she didn’t die in Thursday night’s fire.”

It was another ordinary Sunday lunch in the Warren semidetached house in Peckham – Kath’s sixteen-year-old son shoveling his food, eager to finish and get out of the house; her thirteen-year-old daughter picking at hers, eager to resume an interrupted phone call in her room; Kath’s husband, a commercial traveler home for the weekend, eager to make the most of his well-deserved Sunday-afternoon nap.

Kath, who had long tried to practice a daily litany of counting her blessings, felt a tide of irritation threaten to swamp her. She slammed plates coated with congealing gravy into the sink and, for once, walked off and left them.

“I’ve got to go in to work for a bit,” she called out as she grabbed her handbag and keys.

“I’ll drive you,” her son volunteered. “What about that crazy guy?”

“I’ll be fine.” Tony Novak had not made another appearance, and Kath had more pressing things to worry about.

As she climbed into the car she realized she’d added another lie to the tally that had grown past counting. It wasn’t that she had to go in to work, but that she couldn’t bring herself to stay away.

When she reached Southwark Street, she found that the crime scene tape still fluttered round Yarwood’s warehouse like the ribbon on a giant Christmas package, and that the smell of burning lingered in the air like a fog. She ducked her head as she walked by, wondering if she would ever be able to pass the building without seeing the ambulance men maneuvering their burden carefully out the door.

The shelter’s residents were unsettled as well. She’d spent yesterday – without Jason’s help – comforting and consoling, and trying to quiet the rumors flying round the shelter like contagious ghosts.

She found Jason where she’d expected, in the office, head bent over a filing cabinet. She stood in the doorway for a moment, watching him, knowing he was aware of her presence, but that he wouldn’t look up until she spoke.

He wore jeans, as he usually did when he took Sunday duty, rather than the designer shirts and ties he favored during the week, and the contrast between the rough clothes and the elegant planes of his face made the breath catch in her throat. God, one would think that knowing oneself for a fool would be enough to effect a cure, but the self-knowledge only made her despise her desire.

“How was your visit with your aunt?” she asked, when the silence had gone on as long as she could bear.

Jason looked up. “Great-aunt. She fell. She needed Mum to stay with her, and you know my mother doesn’t drive. It couldn’t be helped, Kath.” His voice was cool, dispassionate, the message clear. She was nagging, and he wasn’t going to apologize for leaving her in the lurch on a chaotic Saturday – or for anything else.

She came into the room and perched on the edge of her desk, making a pretext of straightening papers. “You missed all the excitement. Tony Novak showed up, accusing us of helping his wife run off with their child.”

Frowning, Jason paused with a paper half into a folder. “Dr. Novak? Why would he do that?”

“He says Laura threatened him, and now she and the little girl have both disappeared.”

The paper slid neatly into its ordained spot and Jason closed the file drawer. “Not very smart to give advance warning, if she meant to do a runner. It’s odd that she didn’t come to us for help, though.”

Kath rubbed her thumb across the rough edge of a fingernail. “I thought maybe there was something you weren’t telling me.”

“Me?” His wide, mobile mouth twitched in irritation. “Don’t be daft, Kath. You know Laura’s not that fond of me. If she’d come to anyone, it would have been you.” He studied her. “Look, if this is about the other night, something came up.”

“I waited,” she said, the words spilling out like acid. “And you played me for a fool.”

“It’s not always about you, Kath. Did that ever occur to you? You’ve no idea what it’s like for me, living with – My mum’s difficult. It was a bad night.”

“Your mum?” she spat back. “I lied to my kids-”

“And it’s not my sodding fault if you feel guilty. Give it a rest, Kath.”

They stared at each other, poised on the edge of a full-fledged row. Then, to her surprise, Jason looked away. “I did come, you know,” he said. “But you were gone. And it’s just as well we weren’t both here when all hell broke loose.” He flashed her one of his smiles, and she felt her anger start to melt.

Standing, he came over to her and ran his fingertip very lightly from her cheek to the corner of her mouth. She turned her face into his hand with as little volition as a moth flying into a flame.

“Am I forgiven?” he said softly.

“I-” She glimpsed a shadow at the office door, a whisper of movement that was somehow familiar. “Mouse?” she called out. “Beverly?”

But there was no answer, and when she went out into the corridor, no one was there.

“It’s not protocol,” hissed Maura Bell. She’d drawn Kincaid down to the far end of the corridor outside the interview room at the station. A shocked Tony Novak, having identified the photo of Elaine Holland as the woman he knew as Beth, waited inside the room, while at the other end of the corridor, Gemma spoke animatedly to Doug Cullen.

“I don’t care if it’s bloody protocol.” He glanced over at Gemma, then jabbed a finger at Bell. “She’s the one who got Tony Novak to cooperate. She’s the one who made the connection between Elaine Holland and Beth. She’s the one who insisted we had a child at risk. She’s going to sit in on the interview if she bloody well wants.”