To Dwell in Darkness
Read To Dwell in Darkness Online
Authors: Deborah Crombie
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TO THE BEST SUPPORT GROUP A WRITER COULD HAVEâMY FELLOW JUNGLE RED WRITERS: RHYS BOWEN, LUCY BURDETTE, HALLIE EPHRON, JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING, SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL, AND HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN. YOUR FRIENDSHIP AND ENCOURAGEMENT HAVE BEEN A CONTINUING JOY AND PRIVILEGE.
JUNGLE REDS ROCK!
 CONTENTS |
No writer could be more fortunate in the number of friends who have contributed advice, support, and encouragement. Thanks to Kate Charles, Marcia Talley, Gigi Norwood, Steve Ullathorne, Barb Jungr, Abi Grant, and my fellow Jungle Red WritersâRhys Bowen, Lucy Burdette, Hallie Ephron, Julia Spencer-Fleming, Susan Elia MacNeal, and Hank Phillippi Ryan.
My agent, Nancy Yost, has, as always, been a pillar of support. My terrific editor, Carrie Feron, is more patient with me than I deserve.
Laura Maestro has once again brought the story to life with an enchanting endpaper map, and Victoria Mathews has crossed my
t
's and dotted my
i
's.
Kayti and Michael Gage have fed me, poured me wine when appropriate, and egged me on.
Rick Wilson keeps the home fires burning and makes
everything
possible.
And last but certainly not least, a huge thanks to Diane Hale, who has for more than twenty years been brainstorming buddy, first reader, medical expert, advice giver, best friend, and the one who told me repeatedly that yes, I would finish the book.
Any errors are entirely my own.
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Saint Pancras is the patron saint of children, and is invoked against perjury and false witness.
âAnonymous
In the first moment of waking, he had no idea who he was.
He floated, his mind rising slowly from the dim pool of sleep. The hard ridge of his own knuckles pressed against his cheekboneâhe realized he was lying on his side. When he moved his hand, he felt the scrape of stubble. Experimentally, he ran his tongue around his mouth, then swallowed against the fuzziness and the sour aftertaste of beer.
Sound began to filter in, little bursts like old radio static. Was it girls' voices? For a moment he thought it was his daughters, giggling with their friends. Was he home? But no, there was urgency in this conversation, not laughter. People were arguing. There was a female voice, then a male. He shifted, feeling his sleeping bag slither against his skin, then the press of the hard boards of the old wooden floor beneath him.
Not at home, then. Not in his own bed, beside his wife.
Awareness flooded in. He was in the flat in the Caledonian Road. The smell of frying chicken rose from the takeaway on the ground floor, making his already queasy stomach turn over.
He realized that the hand under his face was icy. The flat was cold.
The voices grew louder, nearer. He picked out Matthew, arrogant, impatient, impassioned. Then Paul, protesting, but sullen with it, beginning to whine.
He would talk to them. Together he and Wren could make them see sense.
Wren. Oh, God.
Memory returned, and with it despair so crushing it took his breath away. Wren was gone.
Now he knew who he was and exactly where he was. He didn't think he could bear it.
And then he remembered what he had to do that day.
London was miserably cold for mid-March. There were a few hardy crocuses showing their heads in the parks and private gardens, but hard frost had nipped the daffodils and turned the early blossoms on the fruit trees crystalline.
Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid walked to Southhampton Row from Holborn tube station, his coat collar turned up, neck swaddled in a wool scarf, gloved hands shoved deep in his overcoat pockets. The sky was as dark as gunmetal, and when he turned east into Theobald's Road, a blast of wind almost pushed him off his feet. Lowering his head, he trudged on. The weather boffins said the wind was blowing from the Siberian steppesâhe wondered if he should consider one of those Russian hats with the earflaps. At least he now understood why the Russians wore the silly-looking things.
He quickened his pace as the concrete bulk of Holborn Police Station came into view. Although its architectural design might have come straight from the Gulag, it at least promised warmth.
Holborn station. His home away from home for more than two weeks now, yet he still felt as displaced as he had on his first awkward day. And as angry.
Returning to Scotland Yard from paternity leave in mid-February, he'd found his office empty. He'd been transferred from his longtime job as head of a homicide liaison team at the Yard to an area major-incident team based here in Holborn. It was a demotion, although he had kept his rank. There had been no warning and no explanation.
His immediate superior, Chief Superintendent Denis Childs, had been called out of the country on a family emergency. That had added a second worry atop the first, as Kincaid and his family had been letting Childs's sister Liz's home in Notting Hill while her husband worked a five-year contract in Singapore.
Kincaid had come to like Liz Davies, although they had communicated only via e-mail. He hoped that the out-of-the-country emergency didn't include her.
With Kincaid's transfer to Holborn, Doug Cullen, Kincaid's detective sergeant, had been moved into a data-entry job at the Yard, ostensibly to accommodate his recovery from a broken ankle. Now Kincaid faced adjusting to a new job without Cullen's capable, nerdy presence.
Losing a good detective sergeantâa partner with whom you spent more hours than you did with your spouseâranked, in his opinion, close to divorce on the scale of life disruptions, and there'd been no compensating honeymoon with his new team.
As if conjured up by his thoughts, he glimpsed his new detective constable, George Sweeney, trotting down the steps of the LA Fitness gym across the street from the police station. Fresh from his morning workout, Sweeney wore a three-piece suit that was too expensive for a constable's salary, and no overcoat. His short hair was still damp and trendily spiked, his cheeks red from his healthy exertion.
“Morning, Guv'nor,” Sweeney said, overly hearty, as they both reached the station entrance. “You look like death warmed over,” he added, squinting at Kincaid. “A little too much partying?” Sweeney added with a wink and what came much too close to a nudge. By God, the man was irritating.
“Sick child,” Kincaid said shortly. Their three-year-old foster daughter, Charlotte, had a bad cough, and he and Gemma had taken turns to sit up with her.
“Oh, well.” Sweeney shrugged. “That means the day can only get better, right, Guv?”
Kincaid felt a sting on his cheek, and then another. The lowering sky had begun to spit sleet.
“I'm not wearing a bloody cardigan,” said Andy Monahan.
His face was set in the mulish expression Detective Sergeant Melody Talbot had come to recognize in the less than two months they'd been a couple. It had taken all her powers of persuasion to get him into the trendy clothing shop in Soho.
As Andy studied himself in the mirror, she crossed her fingers behind her back. At least he hadn't taken it off. He lifted a lapel, his lip curling in distaste. “I look like somebody's granddad. All I need is a regimental tie.”
In his late twenties, with rumpled blond hair, dark blue eyes, and a face that might be thought pretty if not for its intensity, Andy looked like a rock star girls would swoon over. “You roll up the sleeves, and wear it with a white T-shirt and Levi's,” Melody insisted. “And you certainly don't look like my granddad.”
He refused the flirtatious bait. “I'll look like Liberace's granddad. The damned thing is baby blue.”
“No rhinestones, though,” she said, grinning. “And it brings out the color of your eyes. Besides,” Melody added, going in for the kill, “you can't possibly let Poppy outdo you. Trust me.”
Andy gave her an assessing glance. “You're the woman who wears Super Detective suits to work. I should trust your fashion advice?” But his mouth had relaxed and there was a hint of a twinkle in his blue eyes. “If I buy it, will you come to the gig?”
“I'll be there. I promised I'd come.” The gig in question was late that afternoon in the main concourse at St. Pancras International, part of a March festival featuring hot indie pop and rock bands. There would be live radio coverage and a throng of rush-hour commuters. It was a mark of the meteoric success of Andy and his new partner, Poppy Jones, that they were headlining the festival.
Melody knew he was nervous. There were hints that a scout from a major recording label might attend.
“Up front? By the stage?” Andy asked, the cardigan momentarily forgotten.
This was not an argument Melody wanted to have. Not here. Not now. Melody's insistence that she not be seen publicly as Andy's girlfriend had become the biggest point of dissension in their relationship.
She had weight on her side. Both Andy's manager, Tam Moran, and Poppy's manager, Caleb Hart, wanted to make the most of the duo's onstage chemistry, and they did not see their guitarist's romance with a female detective sergeant in the Metropolitan Police as a marketing plus.
Nor did Melody think her bosses on the job would be thrilled.
