MacKenzie gripped the plastic lemonade cup with both hands. “Gemma, she’s dead. Reagan’s dead. They found her under a tree in Cornwall Gardens this morning. But Jess—the boy she looks after—doesn’t know. His mum sent me to look for him.”
“Okay,” Gemma said again. “That’s terrible. But, MacKenzie, why are you here?”
“Oh.” MacKenzie looked surprised that Gemma hadn’t understood. “Because he’s a dancer. Jess is a dancer. That’s how I knew this was a good place for boys. Jess has class here every Saturday.”
Chapter Two
Until a few months ago, New Scotland Yard had felt like home to Kincaid. Now, as he entered the great glass tower just off Victoria Street, he felt like an intruder. The faces of the ground-floor security officers were unfamiliar, and they checked his identification with no flicker of acknowledgment.
Once buzzed through, he took the lift to the floor that housed Detective Chief Superintendent Childs’s office. He’d driven straight to the Yard from Holborn, hoping to catch Childs working on a Saturday. It was his former boss, after all, who had set him that example.
As long as Kincaid had worked with Denis Childs, he couldn’t say he’d ever known him well. But up until the previous autumn Childs had had his respect, and his trust. Kincaid might even have called him a friend.
They had been on good enough terms that Childs had recommended Kincaid and Gemma as long-term tenants for his sister’s Notting Hill house.
Then, the previous autumn, Childs had personally assigned Kincaid to a high-profile case involving the death of a police officer in Henley-on-Thames. Kincaid had disagreed with his superior’s actions—he had, in fact, held Childs responsible for the unnecessary deaths of two people, one of them a senior Met officer, the other the officer’s entirely innocent wife.
That had been his last case before taking family leave to care for their daughter, Charlotte. When he’d returned to the Yard in February, he’d found his office cleared out and a reassignment letter waiting on his desk. Kincaid was told his boss had taken an extended personal leave.
Denis Childs had never struck Kincaid as vengeful. So why had Childs removed him from his command and cut off all communication? And where had he been for three months?
The lift dinged as he reached Childs’s floor. As the doors opened, he took a breath and moved his shoulders, trying to ease the tension across his shoulder blades. The corridor was empty, although he felt the ever-present hum of activity in the building. Voices came from behind half-closed doors, phones rang, but no one emerged.
Although he’d avoided his own former office, the sight of the chief superintendent’s office brought an ache of familiarity. As did the sight of Childs’s personal assistant, Marjorie, working at her desk in the anteroom.
Her pleasant face lit in a smile as she looked up and saw him. “Detective Superintendent, whatever are you doing here?” Marjorie had always made him feel he was one of her favorites—but then he suspected she gave all the officers the same impression.
“How are the family?” he asked, eyeing the proliferation of photos on Marjorie’s desktop.
“My daughter’s expecting her first.” Marjorie beamed. “I’m just finishing up some things here as she’s due any day and I expect to take a few days off.”
“So you should. Congratulations,” he said, and meant it. Then he nodded towards the closed door to Childs’s inner sanctum. “I thought I might catch his highness in on a Saturday, as well.” The reference was a joke that Kincaid and Marjorie had shared, but now her face fell.
“Oh, no. I’m sorry, Mr. Kincaid, he’s not.”
Kincaid was not entirely certain that he believed her. Her eyes had flicked towards the closed door. Marjorie was cheerful, friendly, and very efficient, but guile was not her strong suit. “No overtime?” he asked. “Old habits, you know,” he added with a smile, hoping to put Marjorie at her ease again.
“Oh, no, he’s been good as gold,” she said, as if eager to be back on safe territory. “I told him he’d answer to me, otherwise.”
Kincaid propped a hip on the corner of Marjorie’s large desk. “I’ve just heard he was back. How is he?”
“Oh, brilliant, Mr. Kincaid. You won’t believe how well he’s—” She stopped suddenly and flushed. After an awkward moment, she said, “I’ll leave him a note saying you popped by, shall I? That way he’ll be sure to see it if he does come in over the weekend.”
Kincaid knew when he had been dismissed, and he could hardly storm the door. “Thanks,” he said, standing and forcing a smile. “Best wishes to your daughter. And give the chief superintendent my best.”
With a cheery wave to Marjorie, he turned and walked towards the lift.
When the lift doors had hissed shut behind him, he said, very loudly, “The bastard.”
Kincaid felt eyes on the back of his neck all the way across the main lobby. He told himself that it was daft, that no one had any interest in him, but he couldn’t shake it. The uneasiness that had begun with the Henley case and his subsequent reassignment had turned into something more the night Ryan Marsh died.
Of course, he’d always known there was corruption within the ranks of the Met. Kincaid had seen enough of human nature—and of officers seduced into minor and major transgressions—to know it was inevitable. But, until Henley, he’d never imagined it would affect him personally.
Just how deep did it go, the rot? And was Denis Childs part of it?
He was waiting in the queue to exit the Yard car park when his mobile beeped with a text. Gemma, he thought as he fished the phone out of his jacket pocket, and he’d better have an apology at the ready. He felt a renewed stab of guilt over the missed expedition to the park.
But a glance at the phone screen showed an unfamiliar number. And the text said simply, “The Duke. Roger St. 8 p.m.”
The afternoon found Gemma unexpectedly on her own in the house. Duncan had taken the two younger children and the dogs, not to Hyde Park as originally promised, but just down Ladbroke Road to Holland Park. Now, Gemma wondered if Duncan’s efficient marshaling of the children had less to do with pleasing them and more with not wanting to talk to her. He’d come in, kissed her, and apologized for snapping at her that morning, but he hadn’t met her eyes. At least the commotion of getting the children ready for their outing had kept her from worrying over MacKenzie and the boy she’d met at the ballet class.