Melody took another bite, then mumbled through crumbs, “So how did you get started baking for the cafés?”
“I always baked. At home. In Scotland. Then, about the time I started working here, the pastry chef left and I made some things to stem the panic.” Hazel shrugged. “Before I knew it, I was working my shifts and doing all the baking. Totally mad. Then one day the owner of another café came in while I was here on my own and asked who did the baked goods. I struck a deal.”
“You’re doing this out of the kitchen in your bungalow?” Melody, who was hard-pressed to heat a frozen pizza, was impressed.
“Mostly. It’s not that difficult if you’re organized. But sometimes I use the kitchen in Islington.” Hazel colored a little and fiddled with her teacup.
Melody remembered that Gemma had lived for a while in the garage flat of Hazel and Tim’s Islington house. Was Hazel thinking of getting back together with Tim? She was trying to think of a discreet way to ask when Hazel changed the subject.
“How’s your bloke, then?” Hazel said, and it was Melody’s turn to squirm.
“He’s on tour. With Poppy. They’re taking Germany by storm at the moment, or so I hear.”
“Good for them.” Hazel sounded genuinely pleased. “Has it gone to his head yet?” she added, grinning.
“No. Not a bit,” Melody protested, perhaps a bit too quickly. She couldn’t help thinking about last night’s missed phone call. And about the screaming girls she’d seen in the videos.
She felt cold and a little queasy again. How was it possible to miss someone you had known only a few months so badly? She wanted to see Andy, to touch him, to smell the faint metallic scent his fingers picked up from his guitar strings. She wanted to curl up on the old futon in his flat and listen to him noodle on his guitar, Bert purring in her lap—
“Shit,” she said. “Bert.”
Hazel gave her a startled look. “Sorry?”
“Andy’s cat.” Melody took a breath, trying to slow her suddenly pounding heart. “His name is Bert. A neighbor in Andy’s building is feeding him but I promised I’d look in on him on the weekends.”
“Well, it’s not too late, is it?” Hazel asked gently, and Melody wondered if her flash of panic had shown. It wasn’t that she hadn’t looked in on the cat, it was that she’d completely forgotten she’d meant to. “The last time I saw you,” Hazel added, “Gemma was trying to talk you into taking a kitten.” She rolled her eyes. “I take it that you were sane enough to refuse. I can’t say the same.”
The night came back to Melody with crystal clarity. It had been a Saturday. She and Gemma were celebrating a good result on the investigation into the murder of a young girl in Brixton. They’d met Hazel at the Mitre on Holland Park Avenue for a girls’-night-out glass of wine. Melody had been fizzing, elated by their success on the case, excited for Andy, and feeling certain she was well on her way to recovering from the effects of the grenade at St. Pancras.
It had been the last night that the world had seemed manageable. The next day they’d learned that Ryan Marsh, the man who had walked into the fire at Melody’s side, was dead.
Gemma and MacKenzie drove Gwen Keating to Paddington Station. Gwen had insisted on going back to Cardiff.
“It’s the only place I can feel her,” she’d said, standing with them outside the Cusicks’ house, hugging her arms to her chest. “I don’t know this place, these people.” She gestured towards the house. “I don’t know this boy. Why would he say such a thing? Why would anyone want to hurt my baby?”
“He’s just upset,” Gemma told her.
But of course Jess was upset. He was only a little younger than Kit had been when his mother died, and Gemma knew firsthand how hard it was for children to cope with such a loss—especially if they had little in the way of emotional support.
MacKenzie had walked Gwen to her platform gate while Gemma stayed with the car, and had been uncharacteristically quiet on the drive back to Notting Hill. “I just can’t believe it,” she said at last, breaking the silence as Gemma stopped at the Notting Hill Gate traffic lights. “I can’t believe Reagan would overdose, accidentally or deliberately.”
“There’s not much point in speculating before the postmortem results come back,” Gemma cautioned. The afternoon was morphing into evening, the light going flat as low, thin clouds moved in from the west. She needed to get home. Bill Williams must be going spare stuck so long with her two little ones, and she was worried about Duncan, who hadn’t rung.
Still. She drummed her fingers on the wheel as a 52 bus roared by, turning the sharp corner into Kensington Park Road. The whole scenario of Reagan Keating’s death was bizarre. It had that feel of wrongness that set her instincts clanging and her palms itching.
It was not her business, she told herself as the lights changed and she put the car into gear. It wasn’t her shout. She had a full enough plate at Brixton nick, as well as her own family to look after, and not enough time to do either properly. She would see Jess the next time she took Toby to ballet, and she would nod and smile and he would never know that she had walked away.
The thought made her flinch.
The lights caught them again at Ladbroke Road, just a few blocks from her old nick, Notting Hill Police Station. And her old boss, Marc Lamb, who was one of the best officers she knew.
Not her job, she repeated silently. Not her shout. No one would expect her to do anything more than she’d done today. But the images came back to her—Jess, dancing, his face lit with concentration and with the joy that came from knowing his own power. The photo on Reagan’s bulletin board of the two of them, her arm thrown over his shoulders, both laughing silly buggers into the camera. Reagan Keating had loved Jess. Gemma was as sure of that as she was of anything. And what if, just what if, Jess was right?
When Kincaid walked back into the waiting area, Tom Faith and Diane Childs were standing talking to a woman in a well-cut charcoal suit. He didn’t recognize her until she turned and held out a hand in greeting.
“Detective Superintendent Kincaid,” she said. “I’ve just been checking on your guv’nor here.” It was Evelyn Trent, deputy assistant commissioner of Specialist Operations, and he hadn’t known that she even knew his name.
He shook her hand. “Ma’am.” She was a handsome woman in her fifties—or so he guessed—fine-boned, with fair skin and sleekly cut platinum hair. He’d seen her speak on command courses and at large briefings and had been impressed.
“Assistant Commissioner Neville stopped by this morning,” said Diane with a strained smile.
Kincaid understood then. The big brass—Trent, and Sir Richard Neville, the AC Crime, who commanded both Denis Childs and Kincaid directly, both paying their respects to an injured officer and his wife. They thought Denis was going to die.