Sliding the Polaroid back, Melody gave him full sarcastic payback for the newspaper dig. “You think? Although I hear Polaroids are making a comeback. No leaks, no naked pictures on the Internet. And it’s not that far-fetched that they knew each other. We guessed that Denis and Stanton both worked undercover ops for Special Branch,” she added, studying the photo again, “although not togeth— Shit.” She looked up at Kincaid. “That’s Craig. That’s Angus Craig with them. What the—”
“My guess is that he was the handler,” Kincaid said, having had time to think about it. “Which means he and Denis knew each other very well. So when Denis went to talk to Craig in Hambleden that night, it wasn’t just one senior officer doing another the courtesy of letting him know the sky was about to fall in. That’s what I thought, afterwards, you know, and I was furious with Denis.” He paused for a moment, trying to work it out. “But I think Denis either knew or suspected the sorts of things Craig had done, and that’s why he assigned me to the Meredith case. I also think it was personal. He despised Craig. But that wouldn’t have kept him from using the situation—Craig’s impending arrest—to get what he wanted.”
“I don’t understand,” said Melody. “What could he have wanted from Craig?”
“Information,” Doug answered. “Maybe he thought he could find out who’d kept Craig’s nose clean all these years.”
“What if,” Kincaid said slowly, “what if he got that information? Something big changed that night. After that, Denis started moving pieces on the board. Gemma’s transfer. My transfer. Then he organized his liver transplant. And when he came back, well enough to deal with things, he set something in motion.”
“Something that almost got him killed.” And might yet, Doug didn’t add, but Kincaid knew they were all thinking it.
“We found something else in Stanton’s cache,” Kincaid said. “A baton.”
Melody and Doug stared at him. “You mean an ordinary police-issue baton?” Melody asked.
“Denis was hit on the back of the head with something hard, something designed to convey a lot of force. An expanded baton also has reach, so the attacker could have been shorter than Denis and still had the ability to do serious damage.”
Doug halted his beer halfway to his mouth. “You think Stanton attacked Denis?”
Kincaid nodded. “I also think that if the Craigs were murdered that night, that Michael Stanton had something to do with it. He had a personal connection with Craig”—he tapped the photo—“and with Denis. But I can’t imagine he did either of those things on his own. So who was he working for?
“And who was Ryan Marsh working for? Someone must have told him to take photos of the Craigs. Someone put him in Matthew Quinn’s protest group.” He felt for the small bag he’d put on the seat beside him, and was suddenly hesitant. Did he want to know what Ryan had thought worth safekeeping? But he’d crossed that Rubicon already, and he knew there was no going back.
“What is it?” said Melody. “What aren’t you telling us?”
Kincaid put the bag on the table. “Ryan left this with a friend.” He wasn’t going to bring Medhi Atias into it. “On the day of the protest at St. Pancras. I just happened upon it this afternoon.” When they both looked at him dubiously, he said, “It’s his camera. I haven’t opened it.”
“Can I have a look?” asked Doug.
After a quick glance to make certain no one was paying them any attention, Kincaid pushed the bag across.
Unzipping the blue nylon case, Doug eased out the camera, and smiled. “Nice. It’s a Canon SLR. Big enough to take good-quality photos, small enough to slip in a pocket if you want to be unobtrusive.” He pushed the Power button. “Let’s hope it still has some battery life.” The camera made a small whirring noise and the lens extended. “Bingo.” Doug sounded relieved.
“The memory card,” Kincaid said. “Is there anything on it?”
Melody looked on as Doug began scrolling through images. “Lots of shots in and around King’s Cross/St. Pancras,” Doug said. “Ordinary, touristy stuff. The canal. Granary Square. Gasholders—isn’t that what that new development behind St. Pancras is called? It’s the old Pancras Gasworks.”
Frowning, Melody tapped Doug’s hand. “Scroll back.” Impatiently, she took the camera from him and rotated the scroll wheel herself. “That’s”—she looked up at Kincaid—“that’s the cop who was on the scene at St. Pancras, after the grenade.” Moving the wheel again, she added, “There’s half a dozen shots of him. Looks like he’s coming out of the Gasholders building. I remember him, because of the silver hair and silver suit. SO15, wasn’t he?”
Kincaid reached across for the camera, almost knocking over his beer. He stared at the screen in disbelief. “That’s Nick Callery, the detective from SO15. Why the hell was Ryan taking pictures of Nick Callery?”
Gemma had finally convinced Jess to go downstairs for a sandwich and a cold drink. Then, she’d phoned his dad, keeping a firm eye on Jess sitting in the dining area while she talked to Chris Cusick. Chris was surprised that Nita hadn’t let him know that Jess was missing, but it occurred to Gemma that Nita hadn’t let him know Jess was missing the previous Saturday, either.
“How did you find him?” Chris asked.
“I’d met him at the Tabernacle last Saturday, while I was waiting for my son to finish his class. Jess seemed—I don’t know—very happy and relaxed here. So I thought I’d give it a try. Look, Mr. Cusick, of course you’ll need to let your wife know where Jess is, but if you could keep him with you for a day or two? I think it’s very difficult for him to be there just now, with everything that’s happened. I would hate for him to run away again.”
“I’ll make sure that he doesn’t,” Cusick said. “Parminder’s off the next few days, so there will be two of us to keep an eye on him. And if Nita wants to gripe about the custody arrangement, that’s too bad.”
“Um, could you just say Jess rang you? I’d hate to get in Nita’s bad books, since she didn’t think to look here.”
“Oh. Right.” Chris Cusick’s tone made it clear that he understood exactly what she meant.
Gemma waited with Jess just inside the building’s main doors until they saw his father’s car pull up in the front. As she walked him out, Jess suddenly tugged at her hand. “I don’t want to go home.”
While Jess had been finishing his sandwich, Gemma had told him that he must tell his dad everything he’d told her, about Henry, about the inhaler, and about his mother’s reaction.
“Your dad understands that,” she said now. “He says you don’t have to go to your mum’s.”
Jess nodded, reassured.
Gemma felt reassured, too, when she saw Chris Cusick give his son a hug, and Jess bury his head for a moment against his father’s shoulder.
Waving them off, Gemma rang Kerry to check in. But Kerry had been called to another case and couldn’t talk.
With a sigh of relief for decisions temporarily delayed, Gemma picked her own children up from school and tried to make the most of what seemed the only normal day since this whole business had begun.