Then, the color drained from her face. “Denis. My God, what happened to you?”
“Can we talk?” he said. “There’s a pub just along the road.”
She looked suddenly frightened. “I can’t be seen talking to you. You know that.”
“Give me five minutes.” He gestured to the swinging pub sign. “I’ll drop back behind you. We can meet at the bar.”
She hesitated, but the light had changed and the waiting pedestrians were moving forward. “Okay. Five minutes. But that’s all.”
The pub was busy enough that they could talk at the bar without being overheard, he thought, pleased with his choice. When he edged himself in beside her, he saw that she was already drinking a gin and tonic. “I’m off wine,” she murmured without looking at him. He knew why. It had been Sheila’s drink.
When he ordered an orange juice, she gave him a quick glance of surprise. “Teetotal, Den? From the look of you, you could use a few beers.”
Now that he finally had the opportunity, he found himself at a loss for what to say. Handing his coins to the barman gave him a moment to collect himself. “You look well,” he said at last.
Lynn shrugged. “I’ll be out of this soon. Bloody boring job it is, too. New boyfriend, see? Wants me to move to Germany to live in a vegetarian commune, can you believe it?” She shook her head. “Where do they come up with this crap?” She didn’t ask where he’d been reassigned, and he didn’t offer the information. She looked older, he thought, studying her, and the tension never quite left her face.
“Lynn,” he said carefully. “About that night. Sheila. We can’t let Mickey get away with it.”
She shot him a horrified glance, then looked away. “Are you out of your sodding mind?” she hissed. “And Mickey didn’t touch her.”
“What? But—”
“I’m telling you, Mickey went to the pub with the others. When I got there, I saw Angus Craig walking away from the flat.”
He just stared.
“Drink your damned juice and stop looking at me.”
Obeying, he wet his dry mouth with a sip of juice, then said, “But— You said you rang him. You rang Angus when you found her.”
“I dialed his pager from the call box down the road. He rang me back there. He can’t have been far. Maybe he was even watching the flat.”
“But why didn’t you—”
“What? Say something to him?” Lynn took a gulp of her gin. “I wasn’t sure until I came back from the call box and really looked at her that she’d been— Her throat was bruised, and her knickers were torn—” She stopped, her eyes filling. “Jesus,” she whispered. “Poor Sheila.”
“But he— If he—” Denis tried to take it in. “That bastard. We can’t let him get away with it.”
Lynn scrubbed at her cheeks with the back of her hand and gave him a disgusted look. “Don’t be so bloody naive, Den. Just exactly who would I take that bit of information to? And what do you think would happen to me if I did? Just think about that, clever boy.
“We have nothing. Zilch. And I am not risking my career—or my life—on a lost cause.” Lynn finished her gin, setting her glass down with a little thump exactly in the center of the cardboard beer mat. “You listen to me. If you ever report this, or say anything about it to anybody, I’ll deny everything. Don’t contact me again. You got that?” She gave him a crooked smile. “Have a nice life, Denis.”
She turned and elbowed her way through the crowded pub, letting in a gust of cold air as she pulled open the door and disappeared into the street.
He stood for a long time at the bar, thinking. She was right. He had nothing. If he spoke up, he would put Lynn in danger. He would lose his job, his house, perhaps his wife. And still no one would believe him.
But, he was a good policeman. And he was a patient man. One day, Angus Craig would slip up, and he would be waiting.
Chapter Twenty-Four
By the time he reached Notting Hill, Kincaid had once again missed telling the younger children goodnight. Finding Gemma in the kitchen, folding laundry, he’d given her a tentative smile and said, “Hi, love.”
She’d looked up from folding one of Charlotte’s tiny school uniform blouses, and he could see that she was exhausted.
“I’m sor—” he began but she’d cut him off.
“I don’t want to know. Not tonight. Your mum rang, by the way. Your dad’s doing fine.” Rose, the tortie and white kitten, kept jumping into the basket of clean clothes. Gemma picked her up with obvious irritation and shooed her until she scampered out of the kitchen. “Monsters,” Gemma muttered.
He hadn’t known where to go from there that wouldn’t put him in a minefield. In silence, he’d helped her with the clothes, until she gave him a smile that barely budged the corners of her mouth. “You okay?” he ventured at last.
Sighing, Gemma held the pile of folded things to her chest. He could smell the faint scent of the drier sheet. “I don’t know. I’m afraid I may have made a horrible mistake. But I don’t want to talk about it. I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
With that, he’d had to be content.
He’d rung Lindsay Quinn as soon as he deemed it remotely acceptable, at eight o’clock on the dot on Thursday morning. He left a message, not having expected Quinn to answer. To his surprise, Quinn rang him back within fifteen minutes, arranging for Kincaid to meet him, as he had before, in the Booking Office restaurant at St. Pancras.
Kincaid had just time to leave his car at Holborn Police Station and grab the tube to St. Pancras for the nine-thirty appointment. The company of which Quinn was a major shareholder, King’s Cross Development, had offices in one of the new complexes north of King’s Cross, but Quinn had told Kincaid that he preferred to hold private meetings at the bar in the restored Renaissance Hotel, and Kincaid couldn’t say he blamed him.
The hotel was grand Victorian Gothic, stunningly renovated, and the bar, which had been St. Pancras’s original booking office, was its gem. It opened onto the ground floor of the hotel on the west, and onto the first floor of the terminal on the east. Kincaid entered through the terminal doors. When his eyes adjusted to the lower light, he picked out Lindsay Quinn at the corner table in the very back, where Kincaid had met him before. This time, he didn’t need to ask the hostess for direction, and threaded his own way to the back.
Quinn, a tall, lanky man in his fifties, his curly hair just going gray, closed his laptop and stood to greet him. “Superintendent Kincaid. Tea?” He gestured at the tea service already set up on the table. “It’s Assam this morning. I order it from an estate in Ceylon. Please, sit.”