He took another swallow from his glass, not meeting their eyes. “No,” he admitted. “At least not until yesterday, and then her voice mail was full. Look, as I said, this is a bit awkward.” His blush deepening, he went on, “Reagan and I, we liked each other. But we weren’t . . . sleeping . . . together, if that’s what you think. She’d been seeing someone else, and she said she had to break it off with him completely before she—before we . . .” He cleared his throat, then said, as if challenging them, “She was a nice girl, damn it.”
“I’m sure she was,” agreed Gemma. “So when she canceled on you, and then didn’t get in touch, did you think she’d changed her mind about breaking it off with her boyfriend?”
“I didn’t know what to think. I mean, isn’t ‘a headache’ the classic excuse when a girl doesn’t want to see you?”
“Possibly. But Reagan told some other people that night that she had a headache. It may be that she really didn’t feel well.”
“But that’s not why she died, is it?” said Edward. It was the first time he’d asked anything specific about Reagan’s death.
“Mrs. Cusick didn’t tell you?” asked Kerry.
He shook his head. “No, she just said that Reagan was . . .” He swallowed. “Dead. That she was found murdered. I assumed—I couldn’t bear to think . . .”
“She wasn’t raped,” Gemma said. “Nita didn’t tell you that?”
“No. Nita was not exactly chatty. That’s the other thing that’s awkward.”
Gemma frowned. “I’m not following you.”
Edward hesitated, then said, “Look, of course I was worried when I didn’t hear from Reagan. It wasn’t like her to just leave things hanging with no explanation. I thought if she’d decided she didn’t want to go out with me, she’d at least put me out of my misery.
“I’d have called the house to check on her, but Nita . . . Reagan didn’t think Nita would approve of her seeing me, so of course I didn’t want to drop her in it. She meant to tell Nita. And she said that if Nita wasn’t comfortable with us seeing each other, she’d quit the job. She was ready to move on. The only reason she’d stayed as long as she had was because she was worried about the kid.”
“Jess?” asked Gemma, frowning. “Why?”
“He was under a lot of pressure with tryouts for the ballet school. She wanted to at least get him through that. She said he depended on her. He hadn’t dealt well with his parents’ divorce. The dad has a new girlfriend, too, which hasn’t helped.” Edward stood again. Moving to the drinks’ cabinet, he began lining the bottles up more precisely, his movements jerky. “Now, I think if I’d just called her that night, or gone to the house, or something, she might not have . . .” He kept his back to them.
“Mr. Miller,” said Gemma. “Edward. What time did you get that return text from Reagan?” She hadn’t held the mobile long enough to check the time stamp.
He turned around, sniffing. “I don’t know. The chaps had gone home. It must have been well after midnight.”
“I think you shouldn’t worry too much over what you might have done,” Gemma said, but a little absently. She was wondering how certain the pathologist could be in determining whether Reagan had died before or after midnight.
Doug Cullen had not been easily convinced to talk, much less meet.
“Why didn’t you tell me Denis was back?” he said, before Kincaid got further than a half-formed request to meet for a drink.
“I didn’t know—”
“You must have heard he’d been attacked, then. Why didn’t you have the bloody courtesy to tell me that?” Doug’s public school vowels grew stronger, as they did when he was really upset. “And why have you been treating me like a pariah the last couple of months? Now all of a sudden you want to meet for a bloody pint?”
“Look, Doug, it’s complicated. I’m in—someplace near Wallingford. If you could just meet me after work, I’ll let you know when I’m—”
“What are you doing in Wallingford? That’s where—”
“I know where Wallingford is.” Kincaid was getting irritated himself. “Just meet me. I don’t want to talk about this on the phone. Make some excuse to get out of work, but don’t tell anyone you’re seeing me. No one. Got it?”
“Why all the cloak-and-dagger? Don’t you think that’s a little extreme?” But now Doug was curious—Kincaid could hear it in his voice.
“I’ll explain everything,” he said. “I promise. Meet me at”—he thought for a moment—“the Scotch Malt Whisky Society. You know where it is. I’ll text you when I’m in the city.”
Kincaid disconnected. It was the only way to stop Doug once he got started talking.
He’d put the car into gear and was pulling out of the marina when his phone rang. Not Doug calling back, he saw when he glanced at the screen. Rashid.
“Rashid, what have you got?” he asked, clicking on. Then, with a spike of panic, “It’s not Denis, is it?”
“No. I’ve not heard anything,” Rashid assured him. “It’s that other matter. I think you’d better come in—”
“I’m outside London at the moment. Can’t you just tell me—”
“No. I’d rather not.” Rashid was unusually brusque. “And there are some things you need to see. I’m off the rota for the day, but I’ll wait in my office until you get here.”
London traffic was heavy. Kincaid was sweating and tense by the time he finally reached the hospital. He wondered if Rashid would have waited for him, but the pathologist was in his office, as he’d promised.
“Duncan,” he said, and stood. His usual dry smile was missing, and for the first time that Kincaid could remember, he closed his office door. “Thanks for coming.” Waving Kincaid into his usual chair, Rashid sat again behind his desk. “Sorry to have brought you in like this.”
Kincaid’s alarm bells ticked up another notch. “Rashid, what the hell is it?”
Rashid had picked up a pen. Turning it in his fingers, he said, “I thought—I know you’ve had a rough few months. I thought maybe you were being a tiny bit paranoid when you told me about your friend. And I apologize.”
Kincaid sat still. Whatever Rashid had found, it must be bad.
“I need you to look at some photos, if you don’t mind coming round the desk,” Rashid said, clicking his computer mouse a few times with his free hand. Kincaid stood and went to stand beside Rashid. “You’ll have seen gunshot wounds, yeah?” The slip from the pathologist’s normal and somewhat formal English into Cockney patois was even more unnerving.
Mouth dry, Kincaid nodded.
“Okay, look at this.” Rashid opened a photo on one of the two large monitors on his desk. “This is a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. We see them often enough. Normally, people hold the gun right against the skin. On the temple, or sometimes under the chin. Now, here, see the bubbling under the skin around the entry point?” He used his pen as a pointer. “That’s blowback, caused by the gases created by the projectile. Now, here’s your mate’s photo,” Rashid said, swiveling to the other monitor.
Kincaid blinked, trying to disassociate himself from what he’d seen that night. “Okay.” It could have been anyone, he told himself, this close-up view of a head and the dark point where the bullet had entered.
“No blowback, you see?” Rashid tapped the screen with the pen.