First things first, though. Standing up, she dropped the donut wrapper in the bin and flicked the crumbs from her jacket. Reg Mortimer’s description of the busker in the tunnel had brought immediately to mind the controversial son of Lewis Finch, a local property developer who had made his name and fortune in the rebuilding of the Docklands. She couldn’t imagine what connection Gordon Finch could have had with the late Annabelle Hammond, but she had a pretty good idea where she might find him.
THE THREE TERRACED HOUSES AT THE end of Ferry Street had been built in the late seventies, the first phase of a massive waterside housing scheme that had failed because of the oil recession. Only the jutting angles of the rooflines were visible now over the brick wall and well-established private gardens that separated the houses from the street, but they were spectacular enough to make Kincaid wish he could see them from the river.
Janice Coppin had been his informant—when she’d heard the address last night, she’d wrinkled her nose and pronounced that the houses looked like a house of cards in the process of collapsing. He smiled now at the aptness of the description, but he found he liked the playful quality incorporated into the strong geometric design, and he wished the economic climate had allowed completion of the project.
According to Janice, in the intervening years, the economy had recovered, plummeted, and recovered again. Recently, an old building that stood between the private gardens and Ferry Street had been converted into flats, and it was here that Annabelle Hammond had lived.
The door to Annabelle’s flat faced on the side street, a bit of pavement running down to the water. A bronze plaque set into a concrete base informed Kincaid that this was Johnson’s Drawdock, and was the site of the old ferry to Greenwich. He turned and looked across Ferry Street, his eye caught by the bright red and blue cars of the Docklands Light Railway thundering across the old Millwall viaduct into Island Gardens Station, almost directly across the street.
Crime scene tape fluttered across the flat’s entrance alcove, where Gemma stood chatting with the uniformed constable left to keep an eye on things. “The lads were a wee bit impatient with the lock,” the constable was saying as Kincaid joined them. “So I’m to hang about until we get it sorted.”
“Go get yourself a cuppa,” said Gemma. “Or even a bite of lunch?” she added with an interrogatory glance at Kincaid.
Kincaid nodded. “I expect we’ll be here a few minutes. Time enough for a quick break if you’d like.”
“Right, sir. Cheers.” He gave them a wave as he started across the street towards the park.
Kincaid raised an eyebrow as he looked at what was left of the lock on Annabelle Hammond’s door. “I think ‘brutal’ might be a bit more descriptive.”
“Inconsiderate of her not to have left us with a key,” Gemma said as she pushed the door wide and Kincaid followed her in.
He glanced at her, concerned. Gemma seldom indulged in sarcasm, but when she did it was her way of whistling in the dark. The door swung closed behind them and suddenly the silent vacuum of the airless hall seemed louder than a symphony. “Good soundproofing,” he commented as he switched on the lights and scooped up the post scattered on the floor. After flipping quickly through the letters, he put them on a side table. “Nothing too interesting, but we’ll go through it later.”
“No revealing letters addressed to herself?”
“No such luck. Just bills, from the look of them.” He glanced from Gemma to the closed doors lining the T-shaped corridor. “Eenie meenie?”
Gemma considered, then pointed to the door at the other end of the T’s short arm. “That one.”
“Right.” The sand-colored Berber felt soft under his feet as he walked down the hall. “No expense spared on the carpet,” he commented.
“No expense spared anywhere, I should think,” said Gemma, close behind him. “A flat in this building must have cost a pretty penny.”
Opening the door, he found that they had chosen the sitting room. They stood on the threshold, staring. It was a large room, done in simple, spare furniture, the color scheme one of neutral sands and oatmeals. On its far side, French windows looked out over an enclosed garden, and it was the greenery framed in the glass panes that provided the room’s focal point.
“It’s beautiful,” murmured Gemma, moving into the room. “Restful. She must have loved the garden.”
From a small, flagged patio, steps led down to a walled oasis. A white wooden table and chairs stood under the trees at one end, a few pots of impatiens provided splashes of color, and on the lush rectangle of lawn, a croquet set had been abandoned, as if someone had been called away midgame.
The waiting garden gave Kincaid a stronger sense of life interrupted than he’d felt standing over Annabelle Hammond’s body in the morgue.
Turning away, he examined the room curiously. The SOCOs had been a bit more delicate in here, it seemed, and had left little evidence of their presence other than the thin dusting of fingerprint powder. There was a fireplace on the left-hand wall, fitted with gas logs and framed on either side by custom-built shelves filled with books. What people chose to read never failed to fascinate him, and he crossed the room to take a closer look.
There were a number of hardcover best-sellers, and a handful of titles that he recognized as being novels about successful women overcoming obstacles. None showed a particularly adventurous or introspective turn of mind, and all were tucked neatly between brass or alabaster bookends, with the spines arranged according to height rather than by content or author. It seemed as though Annabelle Hammond had been as tidy in her reading habits as she was in her housekeeping, and had reserved her passions for things other than books.
“Anything interesting?” asked Gemma as she came to stand beside him.
“Interesting by its absence, maybe. And obsessively neat.”
“So I noticed.” Gemma gestured towards the coffee table, where a few upscale design magazines were precisely stacked. “There’s no sign of anything in progress—no half-read books or magazines, no newspapers left open, no basket of knitting or needlework.” Turning back to the shelves, she touched the CDs stacked beside the stereo system. “She liked music, though, and her taste was a bit more eclectic. There’s jazz and classical here, as well as pop.”
His hands in his pockets, Kincaid resumed his wandering about the room, stopping to peer in the small kitchen alcove at the back. It was as neat and neutral as the sitting room, with a few expensive appliances that looked unused. The refrigerator contained a pint of milk, some orange juice, butter, a bottle of wine, and some olives. It reminded Kincaid of his own.
“She must have eaten all her meals out, or had take-away,” he said. Gemma didn’t answer, and when he stepped back into the sitting room, he saw that she was still standing before the bookshelves, staring at the single photograph in its ornate brass frame.
It was of Annabelle, alone. She stood in a meadow, wearing a barley-colored dress. She was laughing into the camera, and her hair shimmered like molten gold in the sun.
“You know,” Gemma said slowly, “I don’t think this room is about being peaceful at all. I think it’s about not competing with Annabelle.” She turned to him. “It’s a stage. Can you imagine how she would have stood out in here, against this neutral background? You wouldn’t have been able to take your eyes from her—not that I imagine that was easy to do under any circumstances.”
One could see bone structure in the dead, but not the shape of a smile, or the sparkle in a glance, and the photograph gave animation to the face they had experienced as beautifully formed but without personality. Kincaid lifted it for a closer look. “She was truly lovely. And you might be right.”