Gemma found herself more ready than usual to leave the bereaved in the competent hands of the family liaison officer. This one, who followed Cullen into the room, was a good-looking man about Gemma's age with curly dark hair.
As Gemma stood, he gave her a quick smile, then focused on Ellen. "Mrs. Miller-Scott? I'm Mark Lombardi. I'm very sorry for your loss." He glanced at Kincaid, said, "Sir?" and at Kincaid's nod of assent, took Gemma's place. "Mrs. Miller-Scott, can I get you anything? A cup of tea?"
"But I-" Ellen protested. "My son. What are they doing?"
As Lombardi said, "Why don't we go into the kitchen, and I'll explain everything to you," Kincaid motioned Gemma into the hallway.
"Looks like she's in good hands." He nodded towards Lombardi. "And I suspect she does better with men. Let's go see what Kate has to say."
"I-You go on." Gemma didn't usually willingly leave Kincaid at the mercy of Kate Ling's flirtatious banter, but she suddenly found she was not eager to see Dominic Scott's body again.
"Are you all right?" Kincaid asked, his brow creasing in instant concern, a habit held over from the days of her precarious pregnancy.
"I'm fine, really," she reassured him. "Just need a breath of air. Tell Kate I'll say hello when she comes down."
The crime scene techs arrived right on Kate's heels, and Gemma let them in as she let herself out. She stood for a moment on the steps, imagining the routine going on inside. The sun had come out, but the wind was still cold, and she shivered. Pulling her jacket a bit tighter, she crossed the road again, and when she reached the Embankment, looked down at the sun sparking off the broad curve of the river.
How, she wondered, could a mother care more for her dead father's opinion than for her son, whose pathetically grotesque body still hung suspended from a beam in her house?
Kate Ling stood in the door of Dominic Scott's apartment, white coveralls slung over her arm like a party wrap. "Duncan," she said as she turned to him. "You've made my day."
"Not my call, I promise. But I'm glad it's you." He was, too, as she was a good friend, and never hard on the eyes. She was perfectly turned out, as always, in tight buff trousers and a crisp white shirt, and her dark, shining hair swung straight as broom bristles round her delicate face.
Kate nodded at the room as the techs came in and started to work. "Looks to me like something just got up this poor bugger's nose."
Kincaid had yet to see Kate Ling ruffled by death-she saved her compassion for the living, and had been tactfully kind to them both when Gemma had lost the baby. "I daresay," he answered. "This poor bugger is connected to two homicides."
"You think he was the perpetrator?" Kate asked, her words punctuated by the repeated flash of the camera.
"It would explain this." But even as he said it, Kincaid wasn't sure that he believed it. It had taken ruthlessness as well as a capacity for risk to murder Kristin Cahill and Harry Pevensey, and he wasn't sure either of those things squared with the taking of one's own life, whether out of despair, fear, or guilt.
"Have enough, Joe?" Kate asked the photographer.
"Couple more, Doc." The photographer shot a few more angles, then gave her a nod of assent. "All yours, then."
"Okay, let's get him down," Kate called out to the mortuary attendants who had come in with her, and slipped on her coverall.
They were already suited, and had brought a folding ladder-they looked, Kincaid thought, like painters. And like painters, they efficiently spread a cloth on the floor, and went to work.
It was a job Kincaid did not envy. One climbed up on the ladder, and while Kate and the other attendant lifted Dom Scott's body enough to take the tension off the makeshift rope, he untied it from the beam. Then Kate and her partner gently eased the body down onto the cloth.
"Nice-looking lad," she said, studying the congested face. "And nice taste in ties." She touched the silk with a gloved fingertip. "Hermès. One of these would set you back a month's wages."
Kincaid raised an inquiring eyebrow, wondering at her sartorial knowledge, as well as what she considered his month's wages, but she merely quirked a corner of her mouth. He knew nothing of her personal life, except that she was not married, or at least if she was, she wore no ring.
Looking back at the ties, Kincaid wondered if their use had been a last bit of rebellion aimed on Dom Scott's part towards his mother-she had told her son to get dressed whether he liked it or not, as if he were a recalcitrant child, and he had made the ultimate refusal.
"He struggled," said Kate, lifting Dom's hands and examining the fingertips. "They usually do when they strangle themselves rather than breaking the neck. See, there's some bruising and torn nails, and here"-she touched the silk at his throat-"there are some little tears in the fabric."
Kincaid made an involuntary grimace and Kate shot him a quick look. "Had you met him, then, before this?"
"Yes. We'd interviewed him a couple of times."
"Always makes it harder," she said. "Fortunately, I seldom have that problem. At least there doesn't seem to have been any autoerotica involved. He kept his trousers on. But I've certainly seen more determined suicides." She looked up. "That wasn't a very good knot. Or a very big drop. And the neckties were resourceful enough, but if he'd really been determined, he'd have used a length of flex, something like a lamp cord, maybe. If you want my very professional opinion, I'd say it took him a good few minutes to die."
"His mother was here. He might have had a half-formed hope that she would find him."
"Well, speculating's your job," said Kate. "Let's see what I can tell you for certain." She pushed back the cuffs of the unbuttoned sleeves of his shirt, then turned his wrists over. "Ah. Look at this." She traced the faint white lines on the pale, smooth skin on the underside of Dom's wrists. "More on the left than on the right. Was he right-handed?"
Kincaid thought back, recalling Dom lifting a hand to pick at his shirt, or to push the hair from his forehead. "I think so. Hesitation scars?"
"Yes. And let's see what else." She pushed the left sleeve up above the elbow. The inside of Dom Scott's arm bore a trail of purple marks, some faded to scars, some fresh bruises, the punctures still visible. "And on the right, too," Kate said, pushing back the other sleeve. "I won't be surprised if we find tracks on the thighs as well, and any other place he could find to stick a needle." She looked up at Kincaid, all humor gone, her face implacable. "This boyo needed help in a big way."
Gavin Hoxley was buried the next day in Brompton Cemetery, with full police honors. Erika had found the notice in the Times, and in doing so had learned for the first time his date of birth, the names of the parents who had predeceased him, and the names of his wife and children. His death had, of course, been reported as an accident, and she recalled with bitter irony his superintendent telling her that the department took care of its own.
The preponderance of mourners, however, allowed Erika to stand back from the crowd, unnoticed. The fine May weather continued unabated, and Gavin Hoxley's widow-Linda, she was called-wore black linen, and a hat that Erika would have admired when she'd worked in the millinery department at Whiteleys, early in the war. The children, a boy and a girl, looked stodgy and dull, as if they had failed to inherit their father's looks as well as the spark that had set him apart.
At any other time, Erika would have scolded herself for the unkind thought, but on this day she did not care. She watched the grieving widow, supported on either side by an older couple who must be her parents, throw a clod of earth on the coffin, and Erika felt not even a stirring of pity.