Julian Barnes, A History of the World in 10½ Chapters

On Friday morning, Gemma arrived at the hospital as soon as visitors were allowed on the ward. For the first time, she managed to catch the consultant as he made his rounds.

"I want you to tell me the truth," she'd said, taking him aside. "How bad is it?"

The doctor considered her, as if checking for signs of hysteria, then shrugged. He looked tired, and his skin had the slight gray tinge of someone who slept little and worked too many hours.

"Leukemia is very serious, of course," he told her. "But your mother seems to be responding to treatment. It's early days yet, and there are other options if the chemotherapy isn't successful."

With that Gemma had to be content for the moment. She waited for her mother to come back from her treatment, then sat with her while she dozed. When Vi woke, Gemma told her a bit about Erika and what had happened the night before, leaving out any mention of how close they had come to disaster. She wasn't ready to think about that quite yet.

"Will you get a conviction?" asked Vi.

"It's early days yet," Gemma told her, echoing the doctor. "We've a lot of evidence to sift through."

"And you want to be there, in the middle of it. Go," Vi scolded. "I don't need you to sit here reading silly magazines to me." She flapped a copy of Hello! at Gemma as if she were shooing a fly.

"But I want to be with-"

"Gemma, you're no better at twiddling your thumbs than I am. And I'm not going anywhere. I've stuffing in me yet."

Gemma laughed. "So you do. Okay, you've convinced me." She stood. "The nurse says I can bring Kit for a visit tomorrow. And Toby's making you a card at school today."

Patting her hair, Vi said, "I'd better have Cyn make me presentable, if I'm going to have handsome young men visiting."

But as Gemma bent to kiss her mother's cheek, Vi clasped her hand and held it. "Gemma, it's your dad I worry about. Promise me you'll look after him."

"Mum." Gemma shook her head. "Don't say things like that. You're going to get-"

"I know I am," her mum assured her. "It's just-he's got the bakery to run on his own, and with the worry on top of that-And he misses you, Gem, but he won't tell you. I shouldn't say this," she added, lowering her voice, "but you always were his favorite, and that just makes it all the harder for him."

"I'll go see him," Gemma said. "Tomorrow. I promise."

Ellen Miller-Scott had done exactly what they expected, but not even the most high-powered of solicitors had been able to engineer an immediate release for a woman who had attempted a hit-and-run in front of police officers.

When Gemma arrived at the Yard, Ellen was still "helping the police with their inquiries," which meant that she was sitting in an interview room with Kincaid and Cullen, backed by her solicitor, coolly refusing to answer any questions.

Rather than join this frustrating and unproductive party, Gemma had Melody escort Erika into the Yard, where Gemma took her detailed statement herself.

"Was I right about the gun?" Erika asked. "I had seen it in my dreams for more than fifty years."

"It is a Walther PPK," Gemma told her. "And it dates from the early thirties, when they were very popular in Germany with both police and civilian shooters. And it certainly is not legally registered to Ellen Miller-Scott, nor to her father, so I would say it's a pretty good bet he brought it back from Germany."

"But you can't prove it."

"No," Gemma said, gently. "I wish we could. But we have a warrant to search the Cheyne Walk house this afternoon. We may find other things."

"Do you think he kept it-David's book-all these years?"

"If he did," Gemma said, "will you read it?"

Erika paled, but after a moment said, "Yes. I suppose I must. I owe that much to David. And to the others."

They found the pages, tucked into a brown pasteboard file, in the safe in Joss Miller's office. David Rosenthal's name was at the top, and every margin of the thin onionskin paper was covered with tiny black script-it looked as if David had feared he would never find room to put down everything he had to tell.

In places on the top page, the ink was smeared by small brown teardrops-the unmistakable splatter of blood. Gemma could only guess that David Rosenthal had been holding his manuscript in his hands when Joseph Mueller stabbed him.

Gemma and Kincaid found other pieces of jewelry in the safe as well, although none as exquisite as Jakob Goldshtein's diamond brooch. When Dominic Scott had needed money, he had gone for the prize.

Unfortunately, it seemed that Ellen Miller-Scott had been more careful than her father. There was nothing in the house that obviously tied her to the killing of Kristin Cahill or Harry Pevensey. But as the SOCOs began their minute examination, Cullen rang to say that the lab had found blood and tissue matches from both victims on the front of the Land Rover, and that the steering wheel bore only Ellen Miller-Scott's prints.

"She can say she wiped the wheel after Dom drove the car, to protect him," said Gemma.

"She could," Kincaid agreed. "And she probably will. But that doesn't mean anyone will believe her. Let's leave them to it," he added, nodding at the techs.

As they let themselves out into the cool evening, Gemma took a last look back at the house. "Could she have saved him, do you think?"

"Dom?" Kincaid shrugged and shook his head. "I doubt we'll ever know for certain. But my guess is that she might have seen Dom's death as the solution to a very big problem. A necessary sacrifice."

Dusk had fallen while they were inside, and the lights had come on along the river. Instead of going to the car, Gemma took Kincaid's hand and they walked across the road.

They stood on the Embankment in silence, between the Battersea Bridge to the west and the Albert Bridge to the east, gazing at the river making its slow muddy way towards the North Sea.

All the victims, past and present, thought Gemma-David, Gavin, Kristin, Harry, and poor Dominic-were a drop in the ocean compared to the millions of lives taken by those like Joss Miller and his daughter, but that made their loss no less significant, nor the things they had cared about any less important.

The wind that blew off the river felt more like March than May. Gemma shivered, and Kincaid put his arm round her shoulders. She leaned against him, looking away from the sunset, and said, "Erika told me that Gavin Hoxley loved the lights on the Albert Bridge."

Doug Cullen found himself leaving the main entrance of the Yard at the same time as Melody Talbot. "Back to Notting Hill, then?" he asked, as casually as he could manage.

"Yeah. Seems a bit dull, though, after yesterday." She smiled at him, satisfaction still bright in her eyes, and he wondered how he could ever have thought her not pretty.

"As ditchwater," he agreed, trying for an air of insouciance he didn't feel.

The truth was that he had been scared shitless. All the firearms training in the world hadn't prepared him for the adrenaline rush of jumping out of a car and aiming the bloody gun at a real person. Then, when he'd seen the weapon in Ellen Miller-Scott's hand, his guts had turned to water.

But Melody-Melody had been practically bouncing with excitement, her face shining, and yet she had held her gun on Ellen Miller-Scott with the steadiness of a rock.

"You were good last night," he told her, and when Melody gave him a surprised glance, he wondered if he had sounded grudging.