He’d kept his temper, that day in the café, and hadn’t given Red an answer. He’d never been one to act precipitously, and so he’d gone about his daily routine for a few days, doing odd jobs, showing up at the Tabernacle for cups of tea and gossip. In the end, he decided that since he had no intention of doing what Red had instructed, the best way to counteract his threat was to neutralize it.
He went home on an unscheduled day, following his usual routine of parking the van several streets away and walking to the house. But this time he was as concerned about being spotted by one of Red’s minions as by someone from his undercover life.
On his last visit home, he’d walked right past a neighbor, unrecognized. It surprised him how much small things changed people’s perception. He’d let his hair grow shaggy and kept his beard trimmed at just past stubble length, and he’d traded his suits for flannel shirts, T-shirts, and jeans. Clothes did indeed make the man, it seemed. A good thing, he supposed, as it was less likely his cover would be blown if he ran into a friend or an acquaintance, but it also made his visits home awkward. He didn’t want the neighbors thinking his wife was entertaining strange men.
So he made a pretense of knocking, then let himself in with his key. The house reeked of turps. Following his nose, he found his wife on a ladder in the kitchen, stripping old paint off the wall beside the cooker.
She turned, startled, then said, “Darling! What are you doing here?” Jumping lightly down, she came into his arms with a smile.
He held her tightly, then stood her at arm’s length, keeping his hands on her shoulders while he looked her over. She wore old paint-spattered jeans with a tank top, and had tied a scarf over her dark hair. “You smell of turps,” he said. “And you don’t look like a policeman’s wife.”
“Just as well, since you don’t look like a policeman.” She laughed up at him. This had become their stock routine. “But, really, darling.” She searched his face. “What are you doing here? Is everything all right?”
“I think,” he said, “that we should have a cuppa.”
What Red hadn’t counted on was that he’d never kept anything from his wife. Sitting at their kitchen table, amid tins of paint and a floor covered with spread newspapers, he told her about Red’s demand.
“But that’s awful,” she said. “Those poor people, the Lawrences, lost their son. Why would the Met want to make up bad things about them?”
“Because the Met buggered the investigation very badly, and they hope that by discrediting the boy’s family they’ll draw attention away from their failure.” He didn’t say that he suspected the officers in the Lawrence investigation might have been guilty of more than ineptitude. His group of campaigners were convinced that at least one officer had been bribed by the father of one of the original suspects in Lawrence’s murder.
“That’s despicable.” She was incensed, and he loved her for it. “But they can’t make you, can they?” she added, sounding suddenly a little frightened.
Taking her hand, he told her about Red’s threat, and the photo. He’d described the campaigners to her on his weekly visits, so she nodded when he mentioned Annette Whitely. “It would have been hard work to have got even one shot that might be interpreted as intimate,” he added. “Which means that they’ve been following me.”
Her eyes widened. “But that’s dreadful. Can’t you just quit? Tell them you don’t want to do this anymore.”
“I can’t just quit. Not if I ever want to work as a copper again.” He squeezed her hand and smiled. “Well, I might get a job as a constable in Upper Footing . . .”
He’d made her laugh. “There’s no such place and you know it, Den. But, seriously—”
“I’m a police officer, love. This is what I do. And if I quit, they’d just put in someone they know would be willing to discredit the Lawrences. There has to be a way round this, some sort of compromise.”
She looked at him for a long moment. A puff of warm breeze from the open window stirred her hair, and her eyes were blue as cornflowers. He didn’t see how he could bear to go on being separated from her, taking his one night a week like a starving man’s ration, but he didn’t see a choice. “You just said it yourself, darling,” she murmured at last. “You’re a police officer, not a diplomat, and compromise isn’t your job. Promise me you’ll be very, very careful.”
The address Nita Cusick had given them for Red Fox Gin turned out to be a very ordinary lockup garage in a very ordinary suburban road in west London. “Are you sure this is it?” Gemma asked Kerry, who was driving.
“This is the right number,” said Kerry, when she’d maneuvered into a parking space. “And look.” She pointed at a small metal plaque by the garage doors, on which was depicted the head of a red fox, wearing a smile. “Clever.”
Possibly, thought Gemma, but the place was not what the “boutique” in “boutique distillery” had conjured up in her imagination.
The only thing that marked the premises as different from the surrounding houses and garages was the glossy red paint on the garage doors. There was also a side door next to the lockup doors, and beside it, a bell, and, they discovered, a small brass plate that read red fox london dry gin, distillers.
Kerry glanced at Gemma, said, “Right place, then,” and rang the bell.
After what seemed an interminable wait, a young woman answered. She was short, slightly stocky, had blue-tinted spiked hair, and wore a white cotton tank that showed off her brightly colored wrist-to-shoulder tattoos. “Sorry,” she said, in an unmistakable East London accent. “Bit understaffed today. And we’re not really open to the public.”
“We’re not public.” Kerry produced her ID. “We’d like a word with a Mr. Edward Miller.”
The young woman stared at them, then said, a little fiercely, “Edward’s not seeing visitors today. If you can leave a num—”
“I’m sorry.” Gemma stopped her with a smile. “But we really do need to see him. It’s important,” she added gently.
“Well, okay,” said the young woman, after another moment’s hesitation and a shrug of a colorful shoulder. “You’d better come in, yeah.” Opening the door fully, she led them into a room that seemed to be a combination of product display and shop. One wall was lined with glass shelves filled with perfectly aligned bottles of different varieties of Red Fox gin—at least half a dozen, to Gemma’s surprise. There was also a counter, and a seating area furnished with comfortable-looking modern furniture.
There was a door that Gemma guessed led into the garage proper, and another that she thought must lead to a room overlooking the small gated parking area they had seen to the right of the garage.
Suddenly the second door banged open and a man strode through it into the display room, saying, “Agatha, tell whoever it is to bugger—” He came to a halt as he seemed to realize the visitors had already intruded. He was tall, with a shock of unruly red hair. Unlike Gemma’s coppery locks, his hair was true ginger, the color that got you teased in the school yard. And, now, as he ran his hands through it, making him look a bit unhinged. “Agatha,” he said again, “I said I didn’t want—”