When asked to confirm her husband's whereabouts on the two nights in question, she had said that of course he was home in bed, and what sort of idiot did they take her for if they thought she wouldn't have noticed him leaving to go run someone down?
She'd had one child on her hip and the other wrapped round her leg, and had looked fierce enough to rip their entrails out if they threatened her family.
Khan had gone quiet and distant, and Kincaid couldn't read behind the mask. Having told them quite civilly, once he'd calmed down, that they were wasting his time and theirs, Khan had added that any documents he had copied from Harrowby's he had passed on to his journalist colleague, and that he would not give his friend permission to release them.
"And if you think I'm a hard case," he'd added with a faint smile, "you haven't met Jon. You'll not get a scrap of paper from him with anything less than a subpoena."
"Should we tackle the journalist?" Cullen asked now with what sounded like relish.
Kincaid considered, then said, "Not until we've had another word with the slippery Giles Oliver."
Gemma watched her father walk away, her anger ebbing as quickly as it had come. She wondered if she would ever learn not to bite, not to try for the last word, because it was inevitably a losing battle. All she had done was prove that he still had the capacity to hurt her, and to make her doubt herself.
But what he had said-was he right about her mum? She turned and started down the long tunnel of the makeshift corridor, her heart pounding as if she'd just run a sprint. When she reached her mother's ward, she stood at the desk, swallowing against the dryness in her mouth as she waited for the charge nurse to be free.
It was the same Pakistani man she had spoken to the first night her mum had come in, and he smiled in recognition as he handed off a chart to another nurse and turned to her.
"You can go in," he said. "She's resting, but-"
"Is she worse?" Gemma asked. "My dad said she was"-she couldn't bring herself to say the word-"that she was having a bad day."
"Oh, I wouldn't go that far." The nurse shook his head. "She's just tired from the chemo, and the antinausea medication makes her a bit sleepy. She's doing just fine. You go in and see for yourself." He waved her off, turning to someone else, and she had no choice but to follow his command, even though her heart was still skipping erratically.
The curtains were drawn round her mum's bed. Gemma took a breath, then parted them and slipped quietly into the chair by the bedside. Her mum was sleeping, just as the nurse had said, and her breathing was easy and regular.
Relief flooded through Gemma and she closed her eyes against the sudden welling of tears.
Her dad had meant to hurt her. He had always been sharp with her, and critical, and she had assumed it was because she was the eldest and he expected more. But this-she hadn't seen this. When had her father's feelings towards her changed into something more than impatience?
Sensing a change in her mum's breathing, she looked up and found her mum awake and watching her.
"I'm so sorry, Mummy," she whispered. "I didn't mean to wake you."
"I'm just glad to see you, love." Vi lifted a hand towards Gemma's wet cheek, but the IV line hampered her and she let it fall back to the bed. "You've not been crying, have you?"
"No, I-" Gemma wiped the back of her hand across her cheeks and blurted out, "Mum, why does Dad hate me?"
"Hate you? Don't be silly, love," Vi said, with a hint of her usual briskness. But even that seemed to tire her, and she sank back into her pillows, adding more quietly, "Of course your dad doesn't hate you. Whatever gave you that idea?" She searched Gemma's face and sighed. "Don't pay him any mind. He's worried, and he's taking it out on you."
"But why me? I always wanted him to be proud of me." She thought of Hugh Kincaid, Duncan's father, and of how surprised she had been when he'd treated her immediately with liking and respect.
"Oh, your dad is proud of you, in his way. But he's more frightened by you."
Gemma frowned, not understanding. "Frightened? Why?"
"Because…" Vi seemed to search for words. "Because he sees you, and what you've accomplished, as making a mockery of who he is and what he's done with his life."
"But I haven't-Cyn always stands up to him, and he doesn't-"
"But your sister has stayed safely in her pigeonhole," said Vi. "She's no threat to him."
Gemma sat back, trying to get her mind round a different view of the man who had always seemed to her so certain of himself that he measured everyone else's aspirations by his own.
"But what can I do?" she asked, bewildered.
"Nothing, lovey." Vi sighed. "Nothing but go on being yourself. But you might try"-her mother smiled-"as hard as it is, you might try being a bit more patient with him."
"Doesn't look too flash to me," said Cullen, looking at Giles Oliver's building with a grimace of distaste.
"I wouldn't be too sure," Kincaid replied. His curiosity roused by what Khan had told them, he was eager for another look at the inside of Oliver's flat.
They had struggled to park in Fulham, as they had in Wands-worth, and had at last settled for a spot in the Waitrose car park near Fulham Broadway, walking the few streets to the flat. Kincaid thought Cullen looked hot and irritable, just the thing for a good interview. And likely to be more irritable yet, he thought as they opened the building door and the smell of nicely warmed cat urine met them like a noxious cloud.
"What the-" Cullen gulped. "No wonder there's no security. No burglar worth his salt would come in here."
"That's not why Oliver doesn't need security," Kincaid said as they mounted the stairs, and he managed not to jump when the first bark shook the walls of the top landing.
Cullen, however, stopped dead in his tracks, and Kincaid grinned. "He's harmless, really. You'll be best friends before you know it."
Looking not the least bit reassured, Cullen stepped behind him. The dog's barks rose in pitch as Kincaid rapped on the door. "Giles, it's Duncan Kincaid."
After a moment there came the same sound of scuffling and swearing he and Gemma had heard before, and Giles Oliver opened the door. He'd managed to get the mastiff into a sitting position behind him, but on seeing Kincaid the dog charged forward, tail wagging like a metronome gone berserk.
Kincaid gave Cullen points for having held his ground. "Hullo, Mo," he said as the dog sniffed him thoroughly and drooled on his trouser leg. "We'd like a word, Giles."
"Again?" Giles Oliver sounded aggrieved. He'd changed from work clothes into jeans and a T-shirt that revealed the bulge of his belly and did nothing to improve his appearance. "I don't know what else I can tell you, and I was busy-"
"What happened to all your concern about Kristin?" Kincaid said, moving the dog forward so that Cullen could get in the door. The flat was hot, even with the windows open, and Oliver's limp hair was plastered to his forehead. "I thought you wanted to help."
"I didn't mean-Of course, I want to help. I was just-" A tub of ice cream sat on the coffee table, and having thoroughly examined Kincaid and a rigid Cullen, the dog wandered over and plunged his nose in. "Mo, damn it." Oliver grabbed the dog by his collar and dragged him off.
"I expect you can scrape off the top layer," Kincaid said sympathetically. "No harm done. But I'd get it back in the freezer if I were you."
Oliver gave him a dirty look but retrieved the tub and took it into the kitchen, sliding it lidless into the small freezer. The tub had left a wet ring on the polished wood finish of the table.