He did see. “So what does that mean?”
“It means that very few suicides manage to hold the gun away from the skin. In the midst of an argument, maybe. Or maybe they have a last-second change of heart but the reflexes can’t catch up. Highly unlikely, at any rate. And then—” He zoomed in the photo until the gunshot wound looked like an alien landscape, and Kincaid let out a little breath of relief. “Look at this. There are plastic shards in the wound. You see?” He used his pen as a pointer again. “And that means—” Rashid looked up at him, as if expecting a response from a prize pupil.
“A silencer. A drink-bottle silencer. Homemade.”
“Exactly.” Rashid sounded pleased. “It’s not impossible for a suicide to use a silencer, granted. I’ve seen it once. Guy lived alone, maybe didn’t want to disturb his neighbors. It was weeks before someone complained about the smell.”
“But not likely in this case. What else?”
“The angle of the wound is off. Not to mention that your guy was found in the middle of his sitting room. Not sitting on the chair or the sofa, not lying on the bed. How many people top themselves standing up? Again, it’s not impossible. I’ve seen that, too, with a bloke who was drunk and in a slanging match with his wife. But even he managed to press the gun to his scalp before he pulled the trigger. See what I mean?” Rashid tapped and another photo came up.
Kincaid’s stomach lurched. It was a photo of the body in situ, taken with the crime scene tech’s wide-angle lens. Ryan lay sprawled in the middle of floor in the cheap sitting room Kincaid remembered, his face turned to one side, his arms splayed, a dark pool spreading beneath his head. The fingers of his right hand were curved in the grip of a semiautomatic handgun.
For an instant, the smell hit Kincaid again. There was the warm coppery scent of fresh blood, and beneath that, excrement. He stuffed his hands in his pockets to stop them trembling.
And then, as he stared at the photo, the room surrounding the body seemed to come into sharper focus. It was the cheap sitting room, yes, but it was not exactly as he’d seen it. “There’s no backpack,” he said.
Rashid looked up at him, dark brows raised in a query.
“I remember now. I wasn’t in the room more than a minute. I saw that he was dead, and I knew I couldn’t be connected with him. But I’ve never been quite sure how I knew that it wasn’t suicide. There was a backpack, half open, by the sofa. He’d been packing. Whatever he’d left in that flat, he’d come back for it. And between the first responders and the SOCOs’ photos, somebody took it.”
“There you are, then,” said Rashid. “You were right. I’d never have ruled this as a suicide.”
“But—” Kincaid made an effort to collect himself. “How, then? How did this scene get passed as a suicide?”
“Pathologist’s call,” Rashid said, grimacing.
“Rashid, who was it? Who was the pathologist?”
“Kate Ling.”
The sheet was too tight, binding him. He tried to pick at it, but found he couldn’t move his hands. Were they tied? He tried to struggle, but his body seemed unable to obey.
“Just take it easy, Mr. Childs,” said a voice that seemed vaguely familiar. “You’re in hospital, do you remember?”
Of course, he thought, the surgery. He remembered he was having surgery. Was it over? Where was his sister? “Liz? Where’s Liz?” he tried to say, but his mouth didn’t work, either.
Gagged, he must be gagged. They’d found him out. Panic set in. He had to free himself. They would hurt Diane. Craig had said so.
“Mr. Childs, don’t struggle. We’ll have to increase your sedation again if you don’t calm down.”
Sedation? Why was he sedated? His heart pounded wildly and he tried again to free his hands.
The voice said, distantly, “His blood pressure and heart rate have shot up. We’ll try again this evening, when his wife’s here.”
And then the fog descended.
Chapter Seventeen
“According to the pathologist, she was having sex with someone,” Kerry Boatman said as she and Gemma drove back towards Kensington. “Assuming—and that’s a big assumption—that Mr. Miller is telling the truth about not having slept with the girl, was it Hugo Gold? Maybe she wasn’t as fed up with Hugo as everyone seems to think. Or she decided to give him a farewell shag.”
“You’re a bloody cynic,” said Gemma, amused.
Kerry flashed her a grin as she braked two inches from the back of a Transit van. “Goes with the job. So what if she did meet Mr. Miller when she left the club? A romantic tête-à-tête. He brought some of his poncey gin with a little extra punch to it, thinking he’d get in her knickers at last.”
“And?” asked Gemma, hoping that Kerry could theorize and keep her eyes on the road at the same time.
“She confesses that she’s just shagged Hugo. Poncey’s romantic evening is in ruins. Nice girls don’t do that. He means to have her himself, so he holds her down and tries to keep her quiet. Then, poof, she’s dead. So he lays her out like an unsullied princess.” There was anger beneath Kerry’s mockery.
“What about the text?” asked Gemma.
“He sent it himself. From her phone, which he likely tossed in a bin on the way back to wherever it is he lives.” Kerry accelerated away from the traffic light as if she were driving at Le Mans.
“Um,” said Gemma, as mildly as she could. “It sounds as if he might have an alibi, up to midnight or so.”
“So he met her after that.”
It was obvious that Kerry had taken a dislike to Edward Miller. But that didn’t make her right. Before they’d left Red Fox, they’d got the contact information for Edward’s brother Thomas, and for the others who’d stayed behind after the tasting. Agatha Smith had been one of them. Even if Gemma had been disinclined to believe Edward, she had a hard time imagining Agatha as a liar. “We need to pin down Kate Ling on the time of death,” she said. “And we need to verify what time Reagan left the club in Kensington.”
Screeching to a halt again as they came up to the Shepherd’s Bush station, Boatman nodded at the car clock. It was just past four. “We should be able to catch someone at the piano bar by the time we reach Kensington.” She accelerated smoothly away from the light into Holland Park Road. In spite of her little burst of temper, she was a good driver.
Gemma was intrigued by the temper. What was it about Edward Miller that had ticked Kerry off?
They ducked under the half-rolled-up door of the piano bar and started up the narrow stairs, Kerry already cursing. Gemma wondered if she were subject to claustrophobia. When they pushed through the door to the first floor, Kerry gasped like a swimmer coming up for air.