Leaving him to it, Gemma glanced briefly into the bathroom. Towels hung on the warmer, bottles of shampoo and bubble bath crowded the tub’s edge, and on the basin, a ceramic cup held two toothbrushes.
She carried on into the back bedroom, undoubtedly Harriet’s. The hastily made bed sported a navy coverlet with gold stars. Under the window, brightly colored plastic crates held a jumble of books and school projects, and above the desk, a corkboard was jammed with drawings and photos of pop singers and movie stars, cut from glossy magazines.
Next to the desk stood a wardrobe, one of its doors half open, spilling out a jumper and a pair of frayed-bottomed jeans. Opening the doors all the way, Gemma checked the built-in drawers and found them stuffed to bursting with T-shirts and panties and mismatched socks – all expected, and all heartbreakingly ordinary.
Hearing a step behind her, Gemma turned as Doug came into the room. “I’ve had a look upstairs,” he told her. “There’s a box room and an office. The boffins will have to have a go at the computer, but I found this under the desk blotter.” He handed her a piece of scratch paper. In blue ink, in a neat, firm hand, was a list of women’s names.
Mary Talbot. Amy Lloyd. Tanika Makuba. Clover Howes. Ciara Donnelly. Debbie Rufey.
The first three and the last had been checked off; the fourth and fifth bore tiny penciled question marks.
“It could be anything,” said Gemma. “An invitation list for a birthday party, or a school outing. A professional group…” She took out her notebook and copied down the names, then glanced up at Doug. “But it was under the blotter?”
“Just a corner showing. There was nothing else obviously interesting on the desk itself, just the usual bills and household paperwork, and stacks of literature from different causes, mostly neighborhood things – meals for the homeless at St. John’s Waterloo, the food bank, family violence outreach. Oh, and the file drawer containing personal documents was standing half open. Seems to support Novak’s story about the passport.”
Gemma’s phone rang. Even from her pocket the sound was unexpectedly loud in the quiet house. Her first guilty thought was of the boys, needing her at home, but a look at the ID told her it was Kincaid.
When she answered, he said without preamble, “I’ve just had a call from Konnie Mueller.”
Gemma felt her doubts dissolve, leaving a hard and implacable certainty, and a spasm of grief for a woman she would never meet. “It’s not Chloe Yarwood, is it?”
“How did you know?”
She thought of the dirty dishes in the sink, the kicked-off shoes, the unopened mail, all the small telling details of a life interrupted. “Because Laura Novak didn’t run off with her daughter,” she said. “Because when Laura Novak walked out of this house on Thursday night, she had every intention of coming back.”
“We need to talk,” said the message from Kincaid as Gemma checked her voice mail an hour later. “Ring me and we’ll meet somewhere… How about the Anchor, Bankside.”
Gemma stood by her car in Ufford Street, having just come away from an exhausting visit with Winnie and Fanny Liu. When she’d told Fanny that Elaine Holland’s DNA did not match that of the victim of the warehouse fire, Fanny had pressed a hand to her mouth, stifling a sob of relief.
But Fanny’s relief soon turned to dismay when Gemma explained, as gently as she could, that they thought Elaine might have abducted ten-year-old Harriet Novak. She told of Elaine’s masquerading as the mysterious “Beth,” of her affair with Tony, of her agreeing to help him kidnap his daughter, then of her disappearance with Harriet on Friday morning.
As Gemma spoke, Fanny seemed to retreat further and further into herself, mutely shaking her head and clutching at the shawl in her lap. “No,” she whispered when Gemma stopped. “No. I don’t believe it. I don’t believe any of it. She was… we were… I thought we were… happy.”
“I don’t think there’s any doubt. Tony Novak identified Elaine’s photo. It explains so many things, including why she left without telling you on Thursday night.” Gemma reached out and took Fanny’s cold hand in her own. Beneath her fingers, the bones felt as delicate as a bird’s. “Do you have any idea why she would have taken a child? Or where she might have gone?”
“No. I – no. No, I can’t imagine.”
“Did she ever say-” began Gemma, then stopped as she saw Winnie give a barely perceptible shake of her head. “I’m sorry,” she said instead, and pressed Fanny’s hand before letting it go. “I know this is a shock. We can talk more tomorrow.” Even as she spoke, impatience gnawed at her. She knew Winnie was right, that she couldn’t push Fanny past the limits of her physical and emotional endurance. But she also knew that Harriet’s safety might be at stake, and that no one knew Elaine better than Fanny. “Ring me tonight, please, if you think of anything at all,” she added, standing to go.
Fanny’s tears had stopped. The face she turned to Gemma was bleak and empty as a paper husk, and she drew herself up with obvious effort. “She’s not coming back, ever,” she’d said then, coldly, clearly. “She might as well be dead.”
Gemma felt the skin tighten between her shoulder blades as she remembered Fanny’s expression. There was nothing more cruel than betrayal, and here they had a web of betrayals. There was Laura, who had perhaps meant to betray Tony; Tony, who meant to betray Laura; and Elaine, who had betrayed both Tony and Fanny. But while Tony’s and Laura’s motivations seemed at least understandable, Elaine’s did not.
And if it was Laura Novak who had died in the warehouse, who had killed her? Where were Elaine and Harriet, and how did Chloe Yarwood fit into it all? For if they had proof of anything, it was that Chloe Yarwood had been in the warehouse that night.
Kincaid was right; they had to talk.
Setting a fire in daylight took nerve and cunning, but he had both, and he was more than ready for the challenge. Since the burning of the warehouse on Thursday night, he had slept only feverishly, his brain teeming with images of flames and shouting firefighters.
The pleasure had been more intense than any he’d experienced, and yet it had left him with a niggling shard of discontent. He’d held the open flame of the pocket lighter to the furniture – oh, yes – but he’d missed the careful planning and plotting that had preceded his other fires; it had been like orgasm without foreplay. Now he knew he had to own the fire from beginning to end, and the desire to get it right drove him like an itch under his skin.
But this one, this one he’d worked out well in advance. He knew the building from a job he’d had some years ago, and he’d marked it then on the map he carried always in the back of his mind. The place was perfect, a neglected Victorian warehouse, set back from any main thoroughfare. This meant not only that he’d be less likely to be seen, but that the blaze would have more time to take hold before it was reported. And best yet, he knew the building had an illegal propane tank. Once he’d set alight the cardboard boxes accumulated on the ground floor, the warehouse would burn like fury.
They would come, the firemen – firefighters, he corrected himself, his lip curling at the politically correct term – like little gods in their coats and helmets and boots, and he would show them.
He thought of the photograph he kept by his bed, a faded sepia image of a Victorian fire company, all Southwark men, in full regalia. They might look like Gilbert and Sullivan caricatures to the modern eye, with their luxuriant whiskers and pointed helmets, their mongrel dogs in their laps, but these men had been real firefighters who had fought real fires. Heroes. They had been heroes the likes of which the fire service would not see again.