And Justice There Is None (23 page)

“Hullo, boy,” Gemma said softly, holding out her hand. Geordie snuffled her fingers, gave them a lick, his tail wagging harder, then looked up at her expectantly, as if to say, “What’s next?”

Laughing, Gemma stroked his head and rubbed his silky ears. The dog promptly curled up with his head against her knee and gazed up at her devotedly.

“I’d say you’ve made a conquest.” Bryony’s pleasure was evident.

“He is lovely,” Gemma admitted. “But I couldn’t take him until the weekend,” she heard herself adding. “We’ll be moving on Saturday. And that’s if his owner agrees, of course.” Surely she had completely lost her mind, she thought, but she found she didn’t care.

“I’ll vouch for you,” said Bryony. “If you come back to the clinic with me after lunch, we’ll fill out the adoption paperwork. I’ll ring you on Sunday and we can make arrangements.”

Geordie followed Gemma as they settled at a table near the buffet with their bowls of stew, settling himself near her feet with a sigh. “I’ve never had a dog before,” Gemma confessed. “I mean, not personally. My older son—stepson—has a terrier, but he hasn’t lived with us until now. I mean my son, not the dog—Oh, it’s too complicated to explain!”

“The dog is much simpler,” Bryony answered, laughing. “Feed him, walk him, give him regular baths and lots of attention. That’s all there is to it.”

“Essentials,” said Marc, looking round at the people finishing their meals, several with dogs at their feet. “Food and care. That’s what keeps a good many of these folks on the street—they simply can’t cope with anything more complicated than that.”

“No cell phones and computerized banking?”

“Right. Overload. Their circuits just can’t handle it.”

A black woman stood and carried her dishes to the washing-up stack. She wore green wellies and what must have once been an expensive business suit beneath a worn man’s overcoat.

“Take Evelyn, for example,” said Marc. “She was in insurance. An executive of some sort. One day she just quit.”

“Thank you, Mr. Marc,” Evelyn called out as she collected her bundles from the pile by the door. “Lord bless you.”

“See you tomorrow,” Marc answered.

As Gemma ate her stew, Marc pointed out some of the other regulars to her. Some had simply lost jobs and not been able to meet their commitments, some had fallen victim to drugs, others were mentally ill.

“You know them all?” Gemma asked, pushing her empty bowl away.

“Most. Some—especially those with families—have a good chance of getting off the streets. Others, like Evelyn, have found a niche and have no intention of leaving it.”

“But that’s dreadful.”

“It is and it isn’t.” Marc shrugged. “Again, it’s down to basics, and their perspective is quite a bit different than yours. It depends on whether they can manage to sleep warm and dry, and get enough to eat. I try to take care of their minor medical needs, the things they absolutely won’t go to hospital for. And Bryony—did she tell you what she’s doing?”

Bryony colored. “It’s just an idea I had, a free weekly clinic to treat the animals. Minor things, of course, as Marc said; that’s all you can do.” Glancing at Marc, she added with a grimace, “I’m going to have to be really careful about accounting for my supplies after that incident at the surgery a couple of weeks ago. Gavin was on at me again about it this morning.”

“What happened?” asked Gemma.

“When I got to the surgery that morning, the door was unlocked. There were some things missing—not drugs, just small items: instruments, bandages. Some flea-control preparations, which bring a good price. Gavin said I must have left the surgery unlocked when I closed up the day before, although I know I didn’t. He’s taking the loss out of my paycheck.”

Gemma raised an eyebrow. “Seems a bit unfair. Bryony, I know you said you were in and out with clients when Dawn came in last Friday, but did you see her when she left? I just had the impression, when I was talking to Gavin yesterday, that perhaps something had gone on between them.”

Bryony looked uncomfortable. “It’s not good politics to tell tales on one’s boss.”

“So there was something.”

“I don’t know what; I didn’t actually hear anything except raised voices through the cubicle wall. But when Dawn left she looked furious. When I said good-bye, she didn’t even notice.”

“But you must have a theory as to what caused the row. Was there something going on between them?”

“Only in Gav’s dreams! He always flirted with her and she took it good-naturedly enough, you know, without encouraging him. My guess is he went too far. Either that or she was less tolerant that day and told him she’d had enough.”

Dawn had certainly had good reason to be less tolerant that day, thought Gemma, facing a doctor’s appointment she must have dreaded, not to mention the sick cat—

“Sid!” she exclaimed. “I completely forgot about Sid!” Realizing how daft she must sound, she amended, “Sid’s our cat. Will Geordie be all right with him?”

“I’m sure he’ll be fine,” reassured Bryony. “So far, I haven’t seen anyone or anything that Geordie
didn’t
like. I’d say the future of the relationship is entirely up to the other party.”

“T
HE KIDS WILL BE THRILLED
, I
’M SURE, BUT
I
DON’T KNOW WHAT
Duncan will say,” Gemma confessed to Melody.

“Tell him the dog’s a Christmas present. Then he can’t complain without looking like Scrooge.”

“You’re devious,” Gemma said, laughing. “Remind me to come to you for advice more often.” She nodded at the sheaf of papers in Melody’s hand. “Have you got something else for me?”

“The blood work’s come back, boss.”

“Anything helpful?”

“Inconclusive. More on the negative side than the positive, if you ask me. It looks like Arrowood picked up his wife, just like he said, but that doesn’t prove incontrovertibly that he didn’t hold her from behind first, until she bled out.”

“Difficult to do without getting some blood spatter on his clothes. And if he’d dumped some sort of protective covering anywhere in the neighborhood, we’d have found it by now.” Gemma tried to keep the discouragement from her voice—this was no more than she’d expected. Six days and virtually no progress.

“So what do we do now?”

“We keep working on the drug angle with Arrowood. Which means we talk to Alex Dunn again.”

T
HEY FOUND
A
LEX
D
UNN AT HOME, PACKING BUBBLE-WRAPPED CHINA
into a box. He seemed tired, and edgier than he had on Tuesday. Gemma suspected that he’d come into the station buffered by a surge of adrenaline that had since worn off.

“This is a Sèvres dinner service I found for a client in Nottingham,” he told them. “That’s a good deal of my business, selling to private clients. I keep an eye out at auction for them, or pick up things from other dealers that I know they want.”

Gemma found her eye drawn once again to the bright dishes she’d noticed on her first visit. “Is that pottery, or china?”

“Pottery. Made by a woman named Clarice Cliff, mainly in the twenties and thirties, the heyday of Art Deco. She started work in the potteries at thirteen, and by the time she was in her late teens she was designing her own wares.”

Moving closer to study the pieces, Gemma saw that although they all had the same bright, bold look, there was infinite variation in the patterns.

“It’s not really my field,” Alex continued, “but I fell in love with the first piece I saw and I’ve been collecting it ever since. And Dawn loved it. I was going to give her that teapot”—he nodded towards a piece dominated by red-roofed houses against a deep yellow ground—“for Christmas.”

“Is the pottery expensive?” Gemma asked, with a private sigh of regret.

“Very.”

“Would Karl have noticed?”

“Yes. Anything to do with antiques, Karl noticed. And he would certainly be aware of the value of Clarice Cliff pottery, even if it’s not the sort of thing he stocks in his shop.”

“So Karl is successful because he’s good at what he does?”

Alex gave her a puzzled look. “The antiques trade is no business for fools, and Karl has a particularly good eye for finding pieces that will bear a huge markup. Not to mention the connections with clients who can
pay
the markup.”

“We’ve been told Karl has other clients—and other uses for his business—as in laundering the money he makes in drug transactions.”

“Drugs? You’re joking.” Alex’s bark of laughter died as he read their faces. “But that’s daft! Why would Karl need to do something like that? He’s got more money than God.”

“Maybe you’re putting the cart before the horse. Maybe the drugs came first, or at least simultaneously. Did Dawn never mention anything like that to you?”

“Are you saying Dawn was aware of it?”

“We don’t know. That’s why we’re asking you.”

“I’m the last person you should’ve come to. Apparently there were a lot of things Dawn didn’t tell me.” He stuffed a wrapped teapot into the box so violently that Gemma repressed a gasp.

“You knew her better than anyone,” she said. “How do you think she would have felt about Karl’s involvement in drugs?”

“A week ago, I’d have thought she’d have left him in horror if she found out.” Alex said it savagely. “Now I’m not so sure. It’s not the sort of thing we sat around and discussed. ‘Oh, by the way, dear, how do you feel about drug trafficking?’ ”

“So what
did
you talk about?” Gemma asked. She needed to penetrate the bitter shell the young man had erected.

“Whatever you talk about with your significant other, assuming you have one. Food, music, movies, stupid television programs, the state of the world.”

“But the problem with an affair is that you
don’t
talk about the ordinary, everyday things, because you don’t share them. What to have for dinner, the size of the gas bill, your child’s cough.”

“Do you think I don’t know that?” Alex told her hotly. “Do you have any idea what I’d have given for even one day of conversations like that? You don’t appreciate it, do you? Either of you?”

Gemma said softly, “No. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“The funny thing is … She was so beautiful, the kind of woman men dream about. But it was the ordinary things I loved most about her. She had a passion for ginger ice cream. And flowers. They had a fortune in flowers delivered to the house every week, but she could go bonkers over a geranium in a pot on the patio, or a late rose blooming beside the pavement.”

“But that’s a good thing, isn’t it?” said Melody. “That she had that capacity for enjoying life?”

“Is it? I’m not so sure.” He stared at them belligerently. Then his anger seemed to dissipate and he knelt again beside his packing box. “Of course you’re right. If I were a good person, I’d wish her every bit of joy given her by anything—or anyone—instead of envying what she might have shared with someone else.

“And what I said before, it was just the doubt eating at me. I
knew
her. Even if she didn’t tell me she was pregnant, I’m absolutely certain that if she found out Karl was selling drugs, she would have left him in an instant.”

Although never very substantial, Angel lost weight rapidly after she moved into the Colville Terrace bedsit. This was in part from lack of funds, as her wage did not stretch as far as she’d expected, and in part because the single gas ring in her room didn’t encourage more than heating soup or stew from a tin. She took up smoking, finding that tobacco both dulled hunger and eased boredom, not to mention the fact that her boss gave her a discount on cigarettes
.

She grew her hair long and straight, with a fringe that brushed her eyebrows and, unable to afford the new fashions, hemmed her skirts above her knees with clumsy stitches that would have made Mrs. Thomas cringe. Her lashes were heavy with mascara, her skin pale with the latest pancake foundation
.

There were boys, of course, to impress with her newfound sense of style. As soon as word got round that she was on her own, they came into the shop in pimply droves, wanting to take her to the cinema, or out for a coffee
.

At first she was flattered, but she learned soon enough what those
invitations meant. After the first few disappointing encounters, she decided she preferred to stay in her room in the evenings, watching the telly and listening to 45s that scratched and hissed on her father’s old phonograph. Posters of the Beatles now covered the damp stains on her walls—their smiling faces watched over her like medieval saints
.

These small comforts kept her going until a bitterly cold night in March, when she came to the end of her wages, her food, and paraffin for the heater. It was two days until payday and, shivering beneath a swath of blankets as her stomach cramped from emptiness, she wondered how she was going to manage. Her employer, Mr. Pheilholz, was kind enough, but she knew he had nothing extra to give her. She could go to the Thomases, but the thought of Ronnie’s pity and contempt made her decide she’d rather die than give in to that temptation
.

Prompted by the thought of the Thomases, however, a memory came to her unbidden. She had been ill once, as a child, and her mother had soothed her with tinned chicken soup and fizzy lemonade. The recollection brought tears to her eyes. She shook it off, as she did most reminders of her former life, but the thought of her mother had triggered another vivid flash
.

She got out of bed and scrabbled in the bureau. She didn’t remember throwing away the last of her mother’s tablets—were they still there? When her mother had been too fretful to sleep, the tiny morphine tablets had given her ease. Could they help her daughter now?