Kincaid hadn’t expected Callery to remember Melody, much less to ask after her. “She’s fine. I’ll tell her you asked after her when I see her next.” He noticed Callery had a small bandage on his left hand.
Following his glance, Callery smiled. “Kitchen accident. I’m a clumsy bastard. Good to see you. We must have a pint sometime.” He nodded at Kincaid, then followed an impatient-looking Faith out the main doors. Watching the two men walk down the steps, Kincaid couldn’t tell if they were leaving together. He shrugged and continued on his way up to CID.
His team were all in. Detective Sergeant Simon Gikas, his crime scene manager, was as usual hunched over his computer keyboard. Detective Inspector Jasmine Sidana, his second in command, was on the phone. And Detective Constable George Sweeney was, quite literally, twiddling his thumbs, with his feet propped up on the rubbish bin at the side of his desk. None of them had the air of being particularly busy, although the room hummed with the expected Monday-morning activity.
“Boss,” said Gikas, looking up with a grin. “We were beginning to think you’d skived off for the day.”
“You should be so lucky.”
Ending her phone call, Sidana gave him a nod of greeting. “Boss.”
If not as effusive a welcome as he’d got from Gikas, the nod was at least friendly. They’d come a good way since he’d started at Holborn back in February. Sidana had felt she’d deserved a promotion to DCI, along with the leadership of the team, and she’d resented him bitterly. Perhaps she still did, Kincaid thought, but they’d progressed to the point where she seemed willing to work with him civilly. She was still prickly and as starchy as her trademark white shirts, but she was a good officer. He’d come to like her and to value her insights on a case.
Sweeney, who seemed in no hurry to take his feet off the rubbish bin, was the thorn in his side. The man was arrogant and his work slipshod at best. Kincaid couldn’t figure out how Sweeney had been promoted to detective constable, or placed on this team.
Before he could reprimand him, Kincaid’s phone rang. His first thought was that it was news about Denis, but when he glanced at the caller ID he saw that it was his mother. He walked into his office and closed the door as he answered.
“Mum? What’s up?” It wasn’t like Rosemary Kincaid to ring him at work. “Are the kids okay?” He worried about his sister Juliet’s two, especially Lally, who was only a few months older than Kit and had a talent for trouble.
“The children are fine,” said Rosemary, and he heard a little tremor in his mother’s warm voice. “It’s your father, darling. I didn’t want to worry you, but he’s had a little . . . episode.”
“An episode?” he repeated, not comprehending. “Mum, what are you talking about?”
“It was last night, late. He said his chest felt a bit odd. He didn’t want to make a fuss—you know how your father is—and he was sure it was just indigestion. But it didn’t go away. Finally, I made him ring Jim, and Jim admitted him to hospital right away.”
Jim Strange was his family’s GP as well as one of his parents’ closest friends.
“Is he okay? Why didn’t you call me?” Through the glass of his inner-office window, Kincaid saw Jasmine Sidana glance up at him and he made an effort to lower his voice. “Where is he now?”
“There was no point upsetting you last night,” said Rosemary. “He’s fine. He’s just going to have to have a little procedure this afternoon. A stent, the doctor says.”
“A stent? But that’s—”
“Very routine these days, according to the cardiologist.” Rosemary seemed to be making an attempt at her usual brisk manner, but the tremor was still there. “I’ll ring you as soon as he’s out of the theater,” she added. “I promise, I—”
“No,” Kincaid interrupted. “Mum, I’m coming up.”
“Don’t be silly, darling. I’m sure there’s no need. You can’t just leave work at the drop of a hat—”
“I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”
Chapter Nine
As she reached the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in Fulham Road, Gemma was still trying to work out if she’d been asked or ordered to accompany Kerry Boatman. The Chelsea and Westminster had the best burn unit in London, and she’d become quite familiar with the hospital when their friend Tam Moran, Andy Monahan’s manager, had been badly burned in the St. Pancras grenade fire.
The curved awning over the hospital’s front entrance had always made her think of a bus stop, and there was Kerry, waiting for her beneath it as if this was any ordinary meeting on any ordinary spring day. Gemma had a moment to study the other woman, unobserved, as she waited to cross the road.
The pleasantly neutral expression Kerry had worn during their interview had been replaced by a frown. She glanced at her watch and checked her phone twice before looking up and spotting Gemma.
When Gemma reached her, she said without preamble, “Gemma, look, I’m sorry to have hijacked you on this. I didn’t want to talk about it at the station, but I’m in a bit of a pinch here. My regular partner is out on maternity leave. I’ve got pressure from the brass to look into this, thanks to your posh friends”—Kerry softened the comment with a half smile—“and I’ve been assigned a sergeant who can’t open his mouth without putting his foot in it. If the pathologist is right about the foul play, this case could turn into a real political balls-up.”
“So you thought you’d make me the football?” Gemma said, eyebrows raised.
Kerry gave her a sheepish shrug. “Well, maybe a little. But I honestly thought I could use your help. And that you might have a personal interest in finding out what happened to this girl.”
As she did. “Then let’s see what we’re dealing with, shall we?”
When they were led into the mortuary’s glassed-in viewing room, the pathologist was sitting at a desk in the postmortem room itself. She was writing notes, her back to them, her straight black hair just brushing the shoulders of her scrubs and swinging a little when she moved. She must have heard their arrival because she turned just as Gemma said, “Kate?”
“Gemma!” Dr. Kate Ling stood and came towards the glass barrier, a smile on her face. It had been some time since Gemma had worked with her, but she thought Kate—who had always had the sort of delicate frame that made Gemma feel large-boned and awkward—looked thinner, and her face looked drawn. Kate’s smile, however, seemed to reflect genuine pleasure.
“How are you?” asked Kate. “And the family?”
“Everyone’s well. We haven’t seen you in donkey’s years. I thought perhaps you’d taken a post somewhere else.”
Kate gave a little grimace. “I took some time off. My mum’s been ill.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Gemma said. She’d have asked more but Kerry shifted beside her. Guessing the two weren’t acquainted, she hurried to make the introductions. “Dr. Kate Ling, this is DCI Kerry Boatman.”