“Elaine?” Fanny smiled. “No. I can’t imagine. Maybe she used to go out more, before we… before she moved in with me.”
Gemma was unconvinced. She could have sworn that some of the things she’d seen were a good deal less than two years old. “The really odd thing,” she continued, “was that these clothes were hidden away. Did you know there was a storage cupboard in the back of the wardrobe in that room?”
Fanny shook her head. “No. I only bought this house after my parents died, and I got sick not long after. I never really used that room for anything. But why would Elaine want to hide her things?”
“Why would Elaine tell you she didn’t have a mobile phone?” countered Gemma. “I found the box on the shelf in her wardrobe.”
“Elaine has a phone?” Fanny whispered.
“It certainly looks that way.” Gemma thought for a moment. “Fanny, didn’t you say that the evening before Elaine disappeared, she was late home from work?”
“Yes. But that wasn’t unusual. Elaine often worked late. She said she could get more done when everyone else had gone home.”
It was the classic excuse, thought Gemma, used by many an errant husband or wife, but it had obviously never occurred to Elaine’s housemate to doubt her. “Did you never ring her at work after hours?” she asked, wondering how Fanny could have been so gullible.
“No. I wouldn’t have wanted to interrupt her. She-” Fanny stopped as they heard Kincaid’s tread on the stairs.
“I’ll be off, then,” he said from the doorway. “The sooner I get these samples off to the lab, the better. Miss Liu – Fanny – we’ll let you know as soon as we have a result. Gemma, a word?” He jerked his head towards the door.
Gemma said a quick good-bye to Fanny and followed him out into the street, fuming at being summoned like a lackey. “Did I fail to notice the house was on fire?”
“What? Oh, sorry,” he said distractedly as he unlocked his car and set the collection kit in the passenger seat. “I just got a call from Cullen. Michael Yarwood’s coming into the station to look at the CCTV tape. They’re waiting for me.”
“Did you get anything?” She gestured at the kit.
“Yeah. Quite a bit of hair from the bathtub drain and a few from the bed. And I found some tissues in the bathroom waste bin. Looks like someone had a good cry, and if it wasn’t you or Winnie, we’ll have to assume it was Elaine Holland.” He shoved a hand through his hair impatiently. “Listen, I’ve got to-”
“I’m going to stop by Guy’s Hospital,” said Gemma, making the decision even as she spoke. “I want to see if I can talk to someone in Elaine’s department.”
Kincaid stared at her, his momentum temporarily halted. “Gemma, it’s not your case.”
“Someone needs to do it. Someone should already have done it.”
He frowned at the implied criticism. “We’ve had other priorities. You know this is a long shot. If you were working the case you’d have a bit more perspective.”
Gemma knew he was probably right, but she didn’t like being dismissed. And besides, she was too curious now to let it go. “Maybe you need someone without perspective, then. And what harm can it do? It’ll save your team a job.”
“All right, go,” he said after a moment’s hesitation. “We’ll talk about it when I get home. Then you can tell me how I’m going to clear this with DI Bell.”
“Anyone would think the woman was going to bite your head off,” Gemma retorted.
“Oh, I think she might do much worse than that.” He flashed his familiar grin at her as he folded himself into the little car. “You’d better hope I’m still intact by the time this case is over.”
It was only as he drove away that Gemma realized she was going to miss yet another piano lesson. “Bloody hell,” she swore as she glanced at her watch, wondering if she could go by the hospital and still get back in time to take the boys to Erika’s for tea. She could, she decided, if she didn’t dally.
She rang Wendy, her piano teacher, and made her excuses, then went in search of Winnie.
Gemma found her in the tiny church office, staring in dismay at the stacks of leaflets covering her desk. “The printer’s made a mistake on the Order of Service,” she explained. “Again. Oh, well, perhaps no one will notice we’re singing a hymn about crossing the barren dessert.”
Gemma laughed. “Maybe they’ll think you’ve run out of buns to serve at coffee hour.” She went on to update Winnie on her plans, then added, “I feel guilty, leaving Fanny like that. If this were an ordinary case – if we had a definite identification of a victim, or even some evidence of foul play – I’d have a constable or a family liaison officer stay with her until we could get a friend or family member in.”
With a sigh, Winnie said, “Except in this case, there doesn’t seem to be anyone. It’s usually only the elderly who are so isolated. I’ve offered to have volunteers from the congregation take it in turn to stay with her, but she won’t have it. I’m learning that Fanny can be unexpectedly stubborn when she has a mind to it.”
Gemma perched on the edge of Winnie’s visitor’s chair. “I know she lost her parents, but do you suppose she had any friends before her illness?”
“She lost touch with her coworkers, obviously. She was hospitalized for months. And I suppose other friends may have drifted away because they didn’t know what to say or do – I suspect that happens more often than we care to think. But I’ve never heard her mention anyone other than Elaine. It’s as if Fanny’s life started when Elaine Holland moved into her house.”
“Winnie, doesn’t the relationship between these two women strike you as odd?”
“If you’re implying that two single women living together must be lesbians,” Winnie said a little tartly, “I thought that sort of sentiment went out with our parents’ generation.”
“And our parents may have been right more often than we credit,” Gemma replied with a quick smile, “because it was socially unacceptable to tell the truth. But that’s less true now, especially as neither Elaine nor Fanny has family to disapprove. And anyway, it’s not their sexual orientation that worries me, it’s the whole emotional setup. It just feels wrong. There’s Elaine’s secretiveness, and Fanny’s dependence… At first, it seemed that Elaine was taking advantage of Fanny, but now I’m not so sure. I’m beginning to wonder who really pulled the strings in the relationship.”
Winnie fingered the small silver cross she wore over her clerical collar, a habit Gemma had observed when she was thinking. After a moment, she said, “Fanny had no trouble going against Elaine when it was something that mattered to her, like having me bring in Communion on Sundays. Elaine didn’t care for that at all.”
“I think there was more going on here than Fanny’s told either of us. The question is, does it have anything to do with Elaine’s disappearance? Maybe if you could talk to Fanny-”
“Gemma, you know I couldn’t pass on anything Fanny told me in confidence.”
“No,” Gemma agreed ruefully, “I suppose not. But you could encourage her to talk to me. That wouldn’t be against regulations.”
Winnie smothered a laugh. “It’s not the God police, you know. It’s my conscience that’s the issue. But I promise I’ll try.” Then, sobering, she gazed at Gemma for a moment before she said, “Gemma, about this body in the warehouse. I know you said it was only a possibility… but do you really think Elaine Holland is dead?”
As he drove to Borough station, Kincaid rang his longtime contact in the Home Office lab, Konrad Mueller. Mueller, in spite of his Germanic name, was half Egyptian and, although in his late thirties, still lived the life of a lad in a flat overlooking the Grand Union Canal.