And Justice There Is None (41 page)

“I found the case—or cases, I should say, as they were tried separately,” he reported. “Neil and Nina Byatt. Both were convicted of selling heroin, which had apparently been smuggled into the country in art objects that were shipped to Karl Arrowood, their employer.”

“And Arrowood was never charged?”

“According to the report, the investigating officers found no proof of his involvement.”

Kincaid frowned. “I smell a deal, Sergeant, and a nasty one. No wonder Marianne Hoffman felt responsible for what happened to her two friends, but I doubt she had much influence over Karl. Were you able to locate the Byatts’ son?”

“I rang a friend at Somerset House, who was able to turn up the record for me. Neil Wayne Byatt and Nina Judith Mitchell Byatt had a son in 1961. They named him Evan Marcus Byatt.”

“I wonder what happened to the boy when his parents died?”

“He was legally adopted by his maternal grandparents.”

“Good God, you’re amazing, Cullen.”

“It’s all in knowing what to access.”

“Mitchell?” Kincaid mused. “I wonder if he took his grandparents’ name.… He’d be near forty now, wouldn’t he? And hasn’t Gemma mentioned someone named Mitchell?”

He reached for the phone, unable to quell a sudden uneasiness.

A
LTHOUGH THE LIGHTS WERE OUT IN THE DINING AREA OF THE SOUP
kitchen, Gemma heard a murmur of voices from the back. “Anyone at home?” she called out.

“In here,” Marc answered, and as she reached the kitchen she saw that it was Bryony with him. He stood at the long, stainless steel worktable, preparing the ingredients for what looked like a chicken soup or stew. Bryony sat on a stool nearby, tearing herbs into a bowl.

“Bryony! I thought I might find you here,” Gemma improvised, seeing how she might proceed.

“Is it Geordie? He’s not worse, is he?” Bryony slid from her stool, but Gemma hurriedly waved her back.

“No, no, he’s fine. I just wanted to ask you something. Hullo, Marc,” she added, and he nodded at her without breaking the rhythm of his work, dismembering chicken carcasses with swift precision.
Turning back to Bryony, Gemma said, “It’s about your keys. Do you remember misplacing them, even briefly, before the theft in the surgery?”

“No …” Bryony frowned, her hand poised over the bowl, and Gemma caught the strong scents of thyme and rosemary. “It’s odd, though, now you mention it. When I was searching for my keys this morning, I discovered my spare set was missing from my kitchen drawer. I can’t imagine what could have happened to them.”

Who had had access to Bryony’s kitchen, other than Marc? Gemma felt her pulse quicken—perhaps her suspicions had not been so farfetched, after all. “Have you any idea how long the keys have been missing?” she asked Bryony.

“Absolutely none. I haven’t used them in ages, and it’s not the sort of thing you think to check on a regular basis, is it?”

“No,” Gemma agreed, glancing at Marc, who still seemed to be concentrating on his chopping. “Is that a New Year’s Day feast you’re preparing?” she asked, with studied casualness. “For your clients?”

He looked up at her and she thought she saw a flicker of wariness in his eyes—or had it been amusement? “It is. Not that many of them have much to celebrate, other than having endured another twelve months. Unlike some, who don’t know the meaning of lack.” There was a bite to his voice she hadn’t heard before.

“What about you, though? Surely you must take some time for yourself? I know you fed the homeless on Christmas Day—did you at least treat yourself on Christmas Eve?”

Bryony looked from Gemma to Marc with a puzzled frown—perhaps she had wondered how Marc had spent Christmas Eve, as well. The blue light from the fluorescent fixtures bleached the red from her auburn hair and gave a faint gray cast to her skin.

“And I was beginning to feel a bit neglected,” said Marc. “I thought I was the only one you hadn’t questioned about Christmas Eve, and about the night Dawn Arrowood was killed. I was here, alone, on both occasions.”

Bryony gave a startled laugh. “I’m sure that’s not what Gemma meant.”

Using the flat of his knife, Marc scraped the chicken pieces and
chopped vegetables from the steel table into an enormous pot. “Isn’t it?” he asked lightly.

“But Gemma, you can’t seriously be suggesting that Marc had something to do with the Arrowoods’ deaths? That’s—”

Gemma held up her hand to silence Bryony’s protest. The last piece of the puzzle had fallen into place. How had she not seen it before? “Marc. You said your grandmother raised you. How did you lose your parents?”

He met her eyes. “Oh, I think you know. So does Bryony, in fact, because Wesley just told everyone the whole story half an hour ago. Bryony, bring me your herbs,” he added, with a nod towards the pot.

Before Gemma could call out an instinctive warning, Bryony had slipped from her stool and gone to him. Marc’s arm snaked round her; with the other he held the knife to her long, slender throat. The bowl of herbs slid from Bryony’s grasp and shattered on the floor.

“Marc. Don’t—” Gemma jerked as her phone began to ring. She reached automatically towards her pocket, then froze when Marc shook his head.

“I wouldn’t do that, Gemma.” His grip tightened on Bryony until she whimpered. “You wouldn’t want me to cut her, would you? Switch the phone off.”

Gemma took the phone from her pocket. The insistent ringing stopped as she turned it off, and she let it fall back into her pocket. Praying that he wouldn’t take the phone from her, she tried to keep her voice calm. “I’ll do whatever you say, Marc. Just don’t hurt her.” Visions of Dawn and Karl Arrowoods’ mutilated bodies swam before her eyes, and she heard the pulse pound in her ears. He was insane, she had been unforgivably stupid, and now he held Bryony’s life in his hands.

O
TTO’S CAFÉ WAS EMPTY EXCEPT FOR AN OLDER WOMAN DRINKING A
cup of tea, her greyhound stretched out beside her chair.

“Anyone here?” Kincaid called, and Otto emerged from the kitchen.

“What can I do for you gentlemen? It’s Superintendent Kincaid, is it not?”

“Otto, is there anyone called Mitchell that comes in here? You know, one of the regular group?”

“You must be thinking of Marc Mitchell. They were all in earlier this afternoon, Marc, Bryony, Alex and Fern. Wesley was telling everyone the latest developments.”

“Marc, the chap who runs the soup kitchen? Jesus.” Kincaid had met the man when he’d come to their house, but if he’d been told his last name, it hadn’t registered. “Where is his place?”

“Just down Portobello Road, before you get to the flyover. Next to the old Portobello School entrance.”

“It’s the perfect situation,” Cullen said, excitement tightening his voice. “He lives alone, has facilities for washing things, and a kitchen where a trace of blood wouldn’t be amiss. And if Wesley told him we’d learned about his parents, he’d know it was only a matter of time until we made the connection—”

“Whose parents?” asked Otto, bewildered. “What are you talking about?”

But Kincaid had taken out his phone and was dialing Gemma again. This time the call went directly to voice mail. “Why in bloody hell would she have switched her phone off?” he muttered as he hung up. He dialed again, this time Notting Hill Station. When he had Melody Talbot on the line, he asked without preamble, “Where’s Gemma? Is she there?”

“No.” Melody sounded surprised, and a little worried. “She went out about an hour ago. She didn’t say where she was going. Have
you
any idea where she is?”

Kincaid told himself Gemma could have gone anywhere—to run an errand, check on the children, to buy herself a coffee—but none of his logical suppositions lessened the dread that gripped him.

“I’
M NOT MAD, YOU KNOW
,” M
ARC SAID AS IF HE’D READ HER
thoughts.

“Then let us go. The Yard is on the way,” she bluffed. “You know they’ve traced your history. I only came along first because I thought we were friends. Talk to me, Marc. Let me help you.”

“We’ll talk,” Marc agreed pleasantly. “But first let’s make Bryony a bit more comfortable. Come over here.” He gestured towards a ball of brown kitchen twine on the table. “Tie her up, hands behind her back.” In a mockery of a lover’s embrace, he turned Bryony towards him so that Gemma could reach her hands.

With a wary eye on the knife, Gemma did as he asked. Gemma could feel Bryony trembling.

“Now her feet,” Marc commanded, and when Gemma had finished he pushed Bryony up against the wall next to the cooker. Released from his grip, Bryony slid limply down into a sitting position, knees drawn up to her chin, eyes dark with terror.

Marc stood between them, still holding the knife firmly. “You make one wrong move,” he told Gemma, “and I can reach her in an instant.”

“Why are you doing this?” Gemma asked softly. “I know you don’t want to hurt Bryony, or me.”

“Then you can listen to the truth. Someone needs to know what Karl Arrowood did. He took my parents away from me—he murdered them. And
she
let him do it. That’s not right, is it?”

“She? Who do you mean, Marc?”

“Angel, of course. Or Marianne, if you prefer. She said that was our secret, her name, because I was special to her. She said she loved me—and I loved her, until my grandmother told me what she’d done.”

“Angel couldn’t have prevented Karl doing what he did. She was just as much his victim as your parents, and she suffered, too—”

“Not enough. All the time I was growing up, my grandmother told me that God would punish them, Angel and Karl. I waited and waited, but nothing happened. My grandmother died without seeing retribution.”

“But surely she didn’t mean for you—”

“You know what the irony of it was?” His lips curled in a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Two days after I buried her, I saw Karl on
the telly. Getting an award for his humanitarian efforts. He and some political bigwig friends had raised money to benefit the homeless. ‘The less fortunate,’ he called them.” He shook his head. “Do you know that it took my grandmother fifteen years to pay off my parents’ legal fees? There were months we lived on porridge, months when she couldn’t pay the electricity. Do you think Karl would have considered
us
less fortunate?”

“But Angel—Marianne—Why—”

“I had to sell my grandmother’s bits and pieces to pay off the last of the debts, so I took her jewelry to the little shop in Camden Passage, near our flat. When I saw her, I knew God had spoken to me directly.”

“You recognized Angel?”

“I thought she seemed familiar at first. Then she bent over, and I saw her locket.” He touched his chest, and Gemma saw he wore a silver chain that vanished beneath his shirt. “She always wore a heart-shaped silver locket. She put my picture in it. It was still there.” There was a note of wonder in his voice. “But then, I didn’t know that until after I’d killed her.”

He is utterly mad
. Gemma put a hand on the worktop to steady herself, trying frantically to think of something within reach she could use for a weapon. If she could only distract him long enough to switch on her phone and dial 999, the open connection would lead the police to her. But how could she do so without him hurting Bryony, or her?

“Are you telling me God chose you as his means of retribution?” She willed him to keep talking. “Did you kill Marianne to punish her?”

“And Karl. He must have cared about her, once. But I had no way of making sure that he knew, and understood, what had happened. So then I thought of his wife. I saw her on the telly with him—so young, so blond, and I knew he must love her, if he were capable of loving anyone.”

“But Dawn Arrowood had never hurt anyone! How could you take such an innocent life?”

“I
was
sorry about that.” Marc spoke with chilling sincerity. “She was so beautiful—a little like my mother. But then my mother died gasping for breath, her lungs filled with fluid. Dawn was a lamb, a necessary sacrifice. I’m sure she would have understood.”

“That’s why you pierced the victims’ lungs—because of your mother?” A horrid fascination gripped Gemma.

“And their throats—”

“My father hanged himself.”

“And Karl? You had to make Karl suffer first.”

Marc smiled at her, as if pleased with a bright pupil. “I sensed you were perceptive.”

“Did he know who you were, when you killed him?”

“I told him. He had to know. Then he fought me, but it didn’t matter in the end.”

Bryony moaned, as if the flat assurance of Marc’s words had pushed her past the bounds of endurance.

As Marc’s eyes flicked towards Bryony, Gemma lunged at him. If she had any conscious thought, it was that she might knock him down, giving her a chance to use the phone before he could recover.

But in a flash of movement, his hands grabbed her, swinging her round. Her hip hit the steel table, hard, and the impact loosened his grip. As she fell to the floor she felt a tearing pain.

Had the knife caught her? Pushing herself up, she grabbed for Marc’s ankles, but the pain bit again, fierce and insistent. She cried out, and Bryony scooted towards her along the floor.

“Gemma! What is it? Are you okay?”

“Get back,” Marc hissed at Bryony.

Bryony stopped, her face very white. “Gemma, you’re bleeding.”

Gemma felt a wet, spreading warmth. When she touched the floor beneath her, her hand came away red and sticky.

“Marc,” she whispered. He had knelt beside her, looking suddenly as bewildered as a child. “Something’s wrong. You have to get someone—an ambulance—”

“I didn’t mean—I never wanted to hurt
you
, Gemma,” he whispered. “Let me help you. I can make it better.” He lifted her shoulders, cradling her in his arms, and gently began to rock her.

•   •   •

T
HE TIRES SCREECHED AS
C
ULLEN PULLED INTO THE CURB, AND
Kincaid leapt out before the car had stopped rolling. Kincaid had ordered Melody to dispatch officers to the address on Portobello Road, but he and Cullen arrived first. The lights were out in the front of the soup kitchen, but the door swung open to his touch.