To Dwell in Darkness (22 page)

Dr. Kaleem seemed unperturbed. He sat in one of the family room chairs. “First, I'd like to ask you a few questions.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, in a posture that invited confidences. “Do you by any chance know your son's blood type?”

Lisa Cole shook her head. “I'm not sure. But I know I'm AB negative. When I was pregnant, I had to have RhoGAM injections. For the antibodies. To make sure Paul would be all right.”

“Ah. That makes it quite possible that your son was A negative, Mrs. Cole. It's fairly rare.”

Jasmine saw the confirmation in Kaleem's expression, although she wasn't sure that the parents realized the importance of what Lisa had just told him.

Dr. Kaleem went on. “Will there be hospital records anywhere that we could access? Did Paul have any medical problems or surgeries?”

“He had his appendix out when he was nine,” said Lisa Cole.

“That's very good,” Kaleem told her. “Do you remember the name of his pediatrician or his surgeon?”

She shook her head. “But I'm sure I have the records somewhere.”

Dr. Kaleem smiled at her. “No matter. It's doubtful they would have typed his blood anyway.”

“Look,” said Robert Cole, “what does all this matter? Why did you bring us here?”

“I'd just like you to look at a couple of photos.” Kaleem pulled printed sheets from a folder that he had casually set down by his chair when he came into the room. “Now, this first one. Last night, you told Detective Inspector Sidana that your son has a birthmark. Does it bear any resemblance to this?” He handed a sheet to both parents.

Robert Cole took one glance and crumpled the paper in his hand. “That's ridiculous. How do you expect us to tell anything from that? That could be the moon or one of those Rorschach things.”

Glancing over Lisa Cole's shoulder, Jasmine saw a blown-up photo of what looked like a dark comma, partly covered by the red blisters of burns. A ruler on one side gave the scale. She estimated the dark patch as about three centimeters.

Kaleem handed another sheet to Lisa, this time focusing on her. It was a boot, Jasmine saw. Or what was left of a boot. The laces had melted into a tangled mass, but a little brown leather or fabric was still visible around them and the sole seemed intact. “Do you recognize this hiking boot, Mrs. Cole?”

Lisa Cole stared at the photo. Her carefully applied blusher now stood out in clown patches against her blanched skin. “It— It looks like one of the boots I gave Paul for Christmas.” Her voice was a thread of sound. “They were expensive but he really wanted them.”

“That's enough,” broke in Robert Cole, snatching the page from his wife. “You're needlessly harassing my wife and me over some juvenile prank. We're going home. If you want to speak to us again, you can contact our solic—”

“Robert!” Lisa Cole stood and turned on her husband. She was shaking. “That's enough! Can you not see anything other than yourself and your own importance? Don't you understand what they're telling us? Paul is dead. Our son is dead.”

Kincaid had chosen a little café just a few doors up Lamb's Conduit Street from the station. It was a tiny place with cheerful red trim on the windows, an illy coffee sign and a newspaper rack out front, and benches inside the windows. He hoped it wasn't a regular morning-coffee stop for the detectives at Holborn station, but there was no one else inside.

He ordered coffee and a bacon sandwich, as he'd again skipped breakfast. When the sandwich came, it was good, but not as good as Medhi Atias's bacon butty. He'd taken the last bite when Doug and Melody came in.

Melody wore the same clothes as the day before, jeans and Andy's navy peacoat over a jumper. He wondered if she had been home at all. When Doug had rung him late last night to say that he and Melody had information for him, he'd arranged to meet them here. Looking at them now, both their faces tense with excitement, he realized he should have known they'd team up. He also saw that they'd both brought laptops.

“I'll get coffee while you get set up,” he said.

When he came back with cups for them both, they had their laptops open on a bench.

Doug began by explaining his search through police cadet classes for a graduate the right age with a name similar to Ryan Marsh. “I found this,” he said, turning the screen to Kincaid and lowering his voice, even though the shop proprietor was busy cleaning the espresso machine. “A Thames Valley class from ten years ago. Ryan Marlowe. He worked for Thames Valley for two years, was promoted into CID, then he disappeared. But during that time, he gave blood to an injured officer, and there's a record of his blood type. He was O positive.”

“Then he's not our victim,” Kincaid said.

Melody looked as if she were about to burst.

Doug nodded to her. “No. But Melody can tell you more.”

“If Ryan Marlowe is Ryan Marsh, he's not dead, either,” she said. “Or at least he wasn't dead on Wednesday, after the grenade went off.”

“What? How can you be certain?” Kincaid asked.

“Because I
saw
him. He was the man who helped me. The Good Samaritan.”

“You're sure?”

Melody nodded. “As sure as I'm looking at you. Ten years older than the photo, but it's him. Remember I said I thought he was a cop? He ran towards the fire, not away. He was trying to help.”

“You can't know that,” Kincaid told her. “Maybe he was checking his handiwork.”

“No.” Melody's head shake was vehement. “You didn't see his face. When he saw the body. He—he was . . . distraught.”

“Do you think he knew who it was?”

Melody thought for a moment. “I'm trying to remember exactly what he said. Something like, ‘There's nothing we can do for him now.' ”

“Not conclusive,” Kincaid said, frowning.

“No, but . . .” Melody chewed on a fingernail, something Kincaid had never seen her do. “I would swear he knew,” she finished. “There was just such despair in his voice. I can't explain it any better.”

“Okay, let's go with that for now,” Kincaid conceded. “According to his girlfriend, Paul Cole wanted to set off the smoke bomb and he argued with Matthew over it. What if, having been rejected by Matthew, Cole talked Ryan Marsh into letting him take it?”

Doug and Melody stared at Kincaid. Then Doug said slowly, “If Marsh thought it was a smoke bomb and then saw that it was white phosphorus, he'd have been frantic.”

“Because he felt responsible,” Melody agreed.

Kincaid studied the photo on Doug's laptop screen for a long moment. “There is another possibility. What if he thought the grenade was meant for him?”

“Shit.” Doug's eyes were wide behind his wire-framed glasses.

“That would explain why he vanished,” said Melody, so softly she might have been talking to herself. “I couldn't understand. I thought he was still beside me. And then he was gone . . .”

“It's a possibility.” Kincaid tapped the laptop screen with his forefinger. “Doug, can you send me a cropped version of this photo? We need someone to give us a definitive ID.”

“Someone in the group?” asked Doug.

“I'm not sure I want to share that with them just yet. But I know someone else I can ask.” He explained about Medhi Atias, the chicken shop owner.

“I can do better than that photo.” Melody scooted her chair closer to Kincaid and turned her laptop so that Kincaid could see the screen. “Once I knew what—and who—I was looking for, I hit the jackpot in the newspaper archives.” She scrolled through half a dozen photos, most slightly grainy. But in each one, Kincaid recognized Ryan Marsh. In some he had a short beard, in others, longer hair, or a colored bandanna tied round his head, but Melody was right. Once you knew what you were looking for, his face jumped out in every one. Although by description he had sounded ordinary, there was something about him that stood out, that drew the eye back.

“These are from the Fukushima protests. This one is Didcot. The usual nuclear power stuff,” Melody went on, going through the photos again, more slowly. “And then I found this.” She froze one on the screen. “It's from early autumn last year. I'd been looking for photos of Matthew's group protesting Crossrail.”

“This is Crossrail?” Kincaid asked, studying the image. He didn't see any digging going on.

“No. But it's a protest against the destruction of a listed building.”

The group carried the now-familiar
SAVE
HISTORIC
LONDON
placards. Kincaid picked out Matthew Quinn first, towering over the others. Beside him were Iris and Dean.

There was Ryan, on the edge of the frame, wearing a blue bandanna rather jauntily round his neck. A girl stood next to him. She had wispy brown hair cut just to her shoulders, and was looking into the camera with a slight smile. She was not one of the girls he'd met.

He enlarged the image. She was wearing a necklace, a pendant that looked like a small brown bird.

And there, behind Iris, was Paul Cole, looking straight at the camera. Had Ariel Ellis been the one taking the photo?

His phone dinged with a text. It was from Sidana, and it was timely. “Paul Cole's blood type likely match for victim,” it said. The phone dinged again with a second text. “Mother confirms ID. Organizing collection of DNA.”

Instead of replying to Sidana, Kincaid looked up at Doug and Melody. “We've got a probable confirmation on Paul Cole. Unless DNA rules him out. Now we have to decide what to do about Ryan Marsh.” He scrolled back through Melody's protest photos, thinking furiously. “Why does Ryan Marlowe disappear from view?” he asked. “If he went undercover as Ryan Marsh, was it with Thames Valley? Or with the Met? Is he still undercover, or did he go native?” Kincaid drummed his fingers on the café tabletop. “He was too careful. He left nothing behind with the group, ever. Who—or what—was he afraid of?”

“If he was still undercover,” put in Doug, “who was running him? And why? I don't believe the government any longer sees homegrown protest groups as a serious terrorist threat.”

Kincaid felt an itch between his shoulder blades. He looked round, suddenly acutely aware of their visibility through the café's glass windows. Except for them, all of the café's custom had been takeaway, and no one had lingered after picking up their coffee or breakfast rolls.

“I don't like this,” he said quietly. “We don't know enough. For now, I think this stays between the three of us, and Gemma. Doug, start with Ryan Marlowe. Birth, school records, marriage, anything you can dig up. Ryan Marsh can't have simply vanished, and his past may give us a clue as to where he is. And I want to find him before anyone else does.”

In 1857 Barlow . . . was retained by the Midland Railway as its new consulting engineer after the retirement of George Stephenson. His major commission from the Midland came with the company's extension from Bedford into London. Starting in 1862, the extension gave them independent access to London for the first time. Barlow was responsible for the arrangement of St Pancras station, the company's own terminus on Euston Road. This included the station's magnificent train shed roof; at 240ft, it was at the time of construction the largest in the world.

—networkrail.co.uk
/VirtualArchive/WH-Barlow

With the judicious use of a few tablets of his stash of over-the-counter codeine and ibuprofen—he'd never link himself to a prescription—he'd managed to get moving, build up the fire, and make himself a hot meal and a hot drink. When he'd cleaned his cooking gear, he organized his campsite a bit better, setting up another windbreak. Thank God the rain had stopped for the moment. In the morning, he could begin filtering water from the river, and if he was lucky, perhaps catch some fish for breakfast. One task at a time. He couldn't think past that. Not yet.

When he'd finished chores and banked the fire, he'd settled himself on his camp stool and dug another treasure from one of the cache tubes—a glass-lined flask filled with very good whisky. It was the last of a bottle of Balvenie, his favorite handcrafted, single-barrel Speyside Scotch. Wren had given it to him as a surprise, bought with money she'd saved up from doing odd jobs. He'd protested—she never bought anything for herself, wearing the other girls' castoffs, but she'd looked so crushed that he'd relented, but only on the condition that she share it.

Wren shied away from both drink and drugs, but she had enjoyed the whisky in very small nips.

They had, in fact, drunk it here. She was the only person he'd ever brought to the island, and only once, when he'd dared to take the Ford out of the lockup for a few days. He'd made an excuse to the group—protest business—and had picked Wren up well away from the flat. The others were used to her coming and going, and he'd hoped that their simultaneous absence wouldn't attract attention.

It had been autumn, when the trees were just beginning to show their brilliant color and the nights were turning crisp. She had been enchanted with everything—the canoe, the river, the woods, the little shelter, the fire, the brilliance of the stars. That night he had taken fresh food, steaks, and jacket potatoes, to roast in the embers. Everything had been as new to her as if she were a child.

He sipped again at the whisky, lost in memory.

Wren. The girl from nowhere. Too thin, although they didn't suffer lack in the flat in the Caledonian Road. With her wispy brown hair that never stayed in place and eyes the color of dark honey, she did make him think of a small brown bird. Her movements were quick, too, and often eerily quiet. When he'd asked her, early on, if that was her real name, she'd just smiled and said, “I was given it,” leaving him to wonder what she meant.