Gemma stopped her. "Is she-"
"Holding up as well as you'd expect. Kristin was an only child, and there aren't any close relatives nearby. Nor a priest, although I know someone who might come in for a bit."
Yolanda's momentary absence gave Gemma a chance to look round the flat, and although the block may have originally been owned by the council, it looked as though this flat had been bought by the owners and refurbished. The sitting room was beautifully proportioned, fitted with expensive hardwood flooring, and arranged with a pleasing assortment of antiques and contemporary furnishings. The walls had been hand finished in a pale buff that set off the artwork and furniture.
The kitchen, when Yolanda beckoned them in, confirmed Gemma's opinion. Pale blue walls set off the collection of antique china on a Welsh dresser and the warm woods of contemporary cupboards and a refectory table.
But then her attention was taken by the woman who sat at the table's end. Gemma put her age in the mid to late forties, and with her chin-length dark hair and her daughter's slight build, she might have passed for a good deal younger on a different day. But on this morning her face was ravaged by grief. The eyes she raised to Gemma's were swollen, her stare blankly uncomprehending. A mug filled with untouched tea sat before her.
Yolanda went to her and put a hand on her shoulder. "Wanda, these are the police officers I told you about. They need to ask you a few questions." She glanced up at Gemma and Kincaid, adding, "I can make you a cuppa-"
Shaking his head, Kincaid pulled out a chair and sat facing Wanda Cahill. "We won't trouble you long." Yolanda nodded and, moving back to the sink, began drying cups with a tea towel.
Gemma felt a stab of relief at Kincaid's declaration, then was ashamed of her reaction. But the pain in the room was palpable, a miasma in the air that made it seem hard to breathe. She slid into a chair at the opposite end of the table, as if the physical distance might provide some barrier.
As Gemma watched, Wanda Cahill made a visible effort to focus on Kincaid. "I don't understand," she whispered, and her voice sounded rusty, as if sobbing had rasped her throat. "They rang the bell. At first I thought it was a dream, the same dream I'd had since Kristin was a child, whenever she was away from home. And always I would wake up and know it was a dream, and then I could go back to sleep. But it didn't stop, the sound, and I couldn't-I couldn't-I knew-" She looked from Kincaid to Gemma, her brow creased, her fingers pinching at the edge of her unevenly buttoned cardigan.
Gemma knew the dream, had had it herself, waking with a jolt and thumping heart in the darkest hour of the night to the imagined sound of a knock or the bell. She would sit up in bed, listening, and when she realized the dogs were quiet, she'd know that she had imagined it, that the children were safe. But for this woman, the nightmare had become real.
She stood and went to Wanda Cahill, kneeling and taking the woman's unresisting hand in her own. "Mrs. Cahill, tell me about last night. Was Kristin at home?"
Wanda Cahill looked at Gemma with the same baffled expression she had turned on Kincaid, but after a moment a spark flared in her eyes, and she spoke, her voice stronger. "She came home after work, for dinner. It's hard for her sometimes, living at home. Her father still treats her like a child, and I try to buffer things as much as I can." Her face came alive as the recollection moved her into the past.
"Did she talk to you about anything in particular, at dinner?"
"No. But her mobile rang while we were eating, and Bob made a fuss over no phones at the table-you mustn't think he doesn't love her," she added, suddenly entreating. "He just wants things to stay the way they were when she was younger. Maybe he loves her too much-"
As Wanda's face began to crumple again, Gemma said quickly, "Do you know who rang her on her mobile?"
"No. She didn't answer. But I assumed it was the young man who called just afterwards on our phone. It was her friend from work, Giles. He was very polite, but she didn't seem particularly happy to talk to him."
"What did she say?"
"Well, he must have been asking her to do something, because she said thanks, but she couldn't, really. But Bob was grumbling at her by that time, so she left the room…"
"She didn't say anything about work? Or tell you where she was going?"
Wanda shook her head slowly, and Gemma could see the grief swamping her again, a rising tide. "No. She kissed me, the way she always does when she goes out, and said she loved me. But she was that aggravated with her dad. If he hadn't-if she hadn't-When he asked where she was going, she said out with friends, and that she wouldn't be late…"
Kincaid, who had been listening intently, spoke for the first time. "Mrs. Cahill, I'm sure that your daughter's little tiff with her father meant nothing at all. These things happen in families all the time."
"They do, don't they?" said Wanda Cahill, latching on to the offered crumb of comfort. "And she never ordinarily said, you know, who she was meeting, or where she was going. It was…she was defending her independence, I think."
"Did she ever talk about work?" asked Gemma.
"To me, sometimes. I run a small antiques shop, just across the way, so I know a bit about the business."
"Did she mention a brooch, an Art Deco diamond brooch that she'd taken in for sale?"
"Kristin? A diamond brooch?" Mrs. Cahill looked at Gemma so blankly that the answer was obvious.
"Never mind," Gemma said gently. "I'm sure it wasn't important." She started to rise. "We'll leave you to-"
"There was one thing." Wanda Cahill squeezed her hand, hanging on. "That phone call she took. She was friendly enough, at first. But when she went to her bedroom, before she closed the door, she said again, 'No, I don't want to come over,' but this time she sounded angry." Frowning, she seemed to search for a word. "Not just angry. Final."
"She won't forgive him." Kincaid slammed the car door harder than he'd intended.
"Who?" asked Gemma. "Who won't forgive who-I mean whom?"
"The mother. She won't forgive the father. And the poor bastard will probably spend the rest of his life blaming himself as well. I'll give you odds that marriage won't last a year."
"It was bad. It will be bad." Gemma touched his cheek. "I'm sorry."
"No." He covered her hand with his for a moment. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be taking it out on you. And you were brilliant with Mrs. Cahill, by the way. It made me miss you, miss doing this together, every day."
Reaching for the ignition, he glanced at her. "You hungry?"
"After that?" Gemma shook her head. "Can't bear the thought."
"All right. We'll give it a bit. No word from Doug, or from the Yard on the CCTV or Kristin's phone records, so let's pay a call on Kristin's mate Giles. Do we have a last name for him?"
Gemma checked the notes she'd made at Harrowby's. "Oliver." She gave him the address.
It was a fairly well-heeled area in Fulham, near enough to Stamford Bridge that you'd not be able to get through the streets before or after a football match, nor get a foot in the door of the local pub on a match day. Kincaid thought the young man must be doing quite well for himself as a sales assistant at the auction house, unless he, like Kristin, still lived with his parents.
But when they reached the address Gemma had written down, they found a terraced house in bad repair, obviously a rental property. Paint flaked off the cream stucco and peeled from window and door trim; dead plants drooped from a first-floor window box, and the small yard attached to the garden flat was littered with empty crisp packets and beer bottles, and smelled of rotting food and cat pee.