As he reached the police station he stopped and checked the map on his phone. The Duke in Roger Street was certainly near enough to the station, but it was several streets to the east and not easily accessible. It was a good brisk walk and he was puffing a bit by the time he reached the pub. He stopped to catch his breath and survey his surroundings.
Lamps flickered on in the nearby buildings. Much of this little part of Holborn was Georgian, but the triangular-fronted pub before him was the apex of a terraced art deco block of flats.
Kincaid whistled. The mansion block was a hidden gem, indeed, and the pub’s steel-framed art deco windows glowed cheerily. But in spite of its welcoming facade, the pub had no Saturday evening spillover onto the pavement and Kincaid wondered if he had indeed come to the right place. Perhaps it was someone from work playing a joke after all, and they’d got him out of the house for nothing. Out of the house—
Shit. Gemma and the kids. Panic welled up in his gut and for an instant he saw it, the image from his dreams, the ruined head, and blood seeping into the carpeting. Swallowing against the sudden nausea, he told himself not to be stupid.
Gemma and the kids were fine. Lifting his shaking hand to the door, he pushed it open.
His first impression was of pink. Not just pink, but the sort of mauve pink of Victorian parlors—or Victorian brothels. The walls might have been splashed with a liberal coating of Pepto-Bismol. The unexpected Victorian effect was heightened by the potted palms tucked into every available corner—there were even two on the bar itself. The place was tiny, but mirrors hung all round the walls made it appear larger. The tables and booths were filled, but the only patrons standing were at the curved wooden bar itself. The pub was a true local, then, Kincaid guessed, and perhaps a secret happily kept.
He stayed just inside the door, scanning faces. At first he thought there was no one familiar. Then he swung back, staring at the man sitting alone in the farthest booth, the one tucked away by the back door. Gone was the familiar bulk, and the once-sallow skin looked rosy in the light reflected from the pink walls. But Kincaid would have known the dark hair and the slightly slanted eyes, black as jet, anywhere.
Denis Childs raised a glass to him in greeting.
Chapter Three
“What the hell are you playing at?” Kincaid said when he reached the table. He stared at Childs, his breath coming a little too fast. “And what the hell happened to you?” he added before he could stop himself.
It wasn’t that Childs looked bad. Although his color was not quite as pink as it had seemed from across the room, he appeared remarkably healthy. The man actually had cheekbones, for God’s sake, and the hand resting on the tabletop was no longer pudgy, but large-knuckled and bony.
“Why don’t you have a beer?” Childs gestured to the filled pint on Kincaid’s side of the table. “I understand it’s quite good here. And you might consider sitting,” he added, his voice still smooth as treacle.
A glance round the room told Kincaid that the other patrons were staring at him. He slid into the booth, landing a little heavily on the hard bench, but he didn’t take up the pint. “You seemed quite sure I’d come,” he said, with a gesture at the beer.
“I thought it worth the gamble.”
“Why here?”
“It’s not far from where I live.”
“In Holborn?” Kincaid was shocked to realize he’d had no idea where Childs lived—he’d always assumed it was somewhere in the suburbs.
“A bit to the east,” Childs said. “Clerkenwell, actually. We bought the house years ago, when people thought we were daft to take on a Georgian house in central London.”
A canny decision, Kincaid thought—but then the man had always been canny. He rested his hand absently on the pint.
“Go on. It’s not poisoned,” Childs said, raising his glass and lifting a mocking eyebrow.
Kincaid hesitated, then touched the pint to Childs’s glass and sipped. The beer was good, creamy and malty with just the right hint of bitter. “Thanks. You’re not drinking beer?”
“Tonic. No beer for me these days, alas.” Childs waved a hand at himself, as if encompassing his changed appearance. “I’m a new man. Quite literally. Or at least part of me is. I had a liver transplant.”
Kincaid stared. “What? But when? No one said—”
“I had it done in Singapore. That’s why I was away. And I’d asked that it not be broadcast.”
“But—” Kincaid was still trying to digest this.
Childs sipped his tonic, then set his glass on the table and steepled his hands together—a gesture that Kincaid knew well. “One reason I went to Singapore,” he said, “is that, as you know, my sister is there. She gave me part of her liver. And”—he forestalled another question with a shake of his head—“we could have done that here, yes, but even with a donor, it can take years to get the procedure scheduled. I didn’t have years.”
“You knew,” Kincaid said, thinking of Childs’s increasingly sallow skin over the past few years. Of course. He’d been jaundiced. And he had been losing weight for at least a year before his sudden leave. “The slimming. I thought it was for your health.”
“It was for my health,” Childs agreed, “although perhaps not in the usual sense. Excess weight complicates any surgery and recovery.”
“But you didn’t—I mean—” Kincaid stopped. He’d never seen Childs drink much, but then he was discovering how little he actually knew about his former boss.
“If you’re trying to find a delicate way of asking if I was an alcoholic, the answer is no.” There was the hint of amusement in Childs’s voice. “I contracted hepatitis when I was a very green detective. It was only in the last couple of years that the extent of the damage became apparent.”
Taking another swallow from his pint, Kincaid mulled over Childs’s revelations. It explained his absence, all right, but not the things that had turned Kincaid’s life upside down. “You knew you were taking leave,” he said. It came out as an accusation. “Why didn’t you tell me you meant to transfer me?”
“Ah. I knew we’d get to that.” Childs sounded resigned. “I didn’t tell you because it was better if they thought I’d cut you loose.”
“What are you talking about?” Kincaid set his pint down, all ease gone. “Who’re ‘they’?”
“Better you don’t know. There are people who don’t like me, Duncan.” The set of Childs’s mouth was grim. “There was more than one reason I didn’t have the transplant here. I’d have been forced to wait until I was too ill to work, and there are those who would have been more than happy for an excuse to push me into early retirement.
“And with me gone, even temporarily, I thought some of that . . . ill will . . . might rub off on you. I’ve known Tom Faith at Holborn for a long time. He’s a good copper.”
“You’re implying some aren’t? At the Yard?” Kincaid’s stomach had tightened into a hard knot.
“Those are just the sort of questions you don’t need to be asking, Detective Superintendent.” There was no warmth now in Childs’s dark eyes.