To Dwell in Darkness (25 page)

Kincaid wasn't ready to tell her that Melody had identified Ryan Marsh as the man on the scene, and that they now believed he was—or had been—an undercover copper. Neither of those things ruled out Marsh as a murderer—or that he was going strictly on Melody's instinct.

Nor could he tell Sidana he thought that if Marsh had killed Paul Cole, the most likely motive was that Cole had somehow discovered his true identity. But when undercover cops were blown, they usually had a carefully planned exit strategy in place. There was no need to resort to murder.

Instead, he said, “Let's get this over with, shall we?”

Sidana glanced at him in surprise. “You don't like doing death notifications?”

“Despise them. Never gets easier.”

“So that's why you sent
me
to the Coles last night.”

Kincaid thought he detected the tiniest hint of humor in Sidana's tone. Could the Ice Maiden possibly be thawing? “Exactly,” he replied, straight-faced, as he started for the Ellises' front door.

Then he stopped so suddenly that Jasmine bumped into him.

“What?” she said, frowning. “You're going to run off again and leave me to it?”

“No, nothing like that. It's just that I meant to ask you to have the tech teams look for a black notebook or journal in Paul Cole's things. I should have asked the group as well. The waitress in the café at St. Pancras recognized Cole from the photo. She says she didn't see him the day of the incident, but he came in the café fairly regularly and wrote in a journal. I'd very much like to know what happened to it.”

“When did you interview the waitress? Playing maverick again?”

“No, not exactly,” he temporized. “It was last night. I just wanted to see the scene again. I'd wanted to show the photo of Paul Cole to Tam—Tam Moran, the man who was injured—but he wasn't up to it. Then I remembered Melody telling me the waitress had been so helpful, and I wondered if she might have seen something.”

“You think he might have written something useful in this notebook?” Jasmine sounded genuinely interested. She took out her phone and sent a quick text, then followed him to the door.

ELLIS
was written beside the bell for Flat 1. So it was the ground-floor flat, which Kincaid imagined was the best in the building.

He pushed the bell and identified himself when the intercom clicked on, then opened the door when it buzzed.

A man stood at the open front door to the ground-floor flat. The resemblance to Ariel Ellis was immediate in the fair, wispy hair and delicate features. But the fair hair was fading to gray, and he wore silver-rimmed reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. Kincaid guessed he was in his early fifties, but fit, slender, and attractive in a way that probably made female undergraduates fancy him.

He peered at them. “Can I help you?”

“Mr. Ellis? I'm Detective Superintendent Kincaid and this is Detective Inspector Sidana. We're from Camden CID. May we come in?”

“Of course, of course.” Ellis led them through a small entry and into a sitting room that made Kincaid look round with pleasure.

Light flowed into the room from the three tall, arched windows facing the street. A gas fire blazed in the fireplace, and except for a mirror over the mantel, every other bit of wall space seemed to be taken up by bookcases and artwork. An obviously well-used desk sat in front of the windows. Two squashy leather sofas flanked the fire. A cup and a stack of what looked like student essays filled a small end table beneath a reading lamp. The flat smelled of coffee and old books, with a hint of something that might have been cherry pipe tobacco. Radio 3 played softly from a small radio on the mantel.

This, Kincaid thought, is how he would like their Notting Hill house to look if it was theirs to do with as they liked. And then he realized that it was very much like his parents' sitting room in Cheshire.

“Let me take your coats,” said Mr. Ellis.

Sidana declined, but Kincaid, suddenly roasting after his long walk in the cold, handed over his coat. Ellis hung it on a hook in the entry, then joined them in the sitting room.

“We've come to see Ariel, Mr. Ellis,” said Kincaid. “Is she at home?”

“No. No, she's at class at the moment, but she should be back shortly. Please, sit down.”

Kincaid and Sidana took seats on the sofa opposite the one where Ellis had been marking papers.

Seeing Kincaid's glance, Ellis said, “They want to turn everything in digitally now, but I make them print their essays. I may be a dinosaur, but I don't feel I can mark an essay properly unless it's on paper. Can I get you some tea or coffee while you're waiting?” he added.

Kincaid shook his head without waiting for a response from Jasmine. He wanted to take advantage of this time with Ellis, both to prepare him for what was coming and to see what he knew. “No, thank you, Mr. Ellis.”

“If you're certain . . .” Ellis sat down facing them. “It's Dr. Ellis, actually. But I prefer to have my students call me Stephen.”

Of course he did, thought Kincaid. It was just the chummy sort of thing he would expect from a professor who took favorite students on tours of London's vanishing historic sites, and probably had them over for tea or sherry afterwards. And who wore cashmere cardigans. Kincaid felt quite sure that the man's soft gray sweater was cashmere.

“Dr. Ellis, I'm afraid we have some distressing news for Ariel. She told you that her friend, Paul Cole, was missing?”

“Paul, yes.” Ellis frowned. “Always a bit emotional, that boy. I told her I thought he'd probably gone off in a sulk.”

“They hadn't been getting on?”

“I try to mind my own business in these things,” Ellis said after a moment's hesitation. “But I could see that Paul was becoming clingy. My daughter is a bit of a rescuer, but enough is enough.”

“Did you ever fear that Paul might become violent or suicidal?”

Ellis paled. “No! Are you telling me— For God's sake, what's happened?”

“We believe we've identified Paul Cole as the victim in Wednesday's incident at St. Pancras International.”

“You don't mean—” Ellis pulled his glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose. “The person who . . . burned?”

“I'm afraid so,” said Jasmine, in a gentler voice than Kincaid had heard her use before. “Can I get you something? A glass of water?”

Ellis nodded and Jasmine went to the kitchen, returning with a glass of tap water. Kincaid wondered, not for the first time, why a glass of water was considered a remedy for shock or grief. But Ellis drank it obediently, like a child told to take medicine, and set the almost empty glass on the end table.

“I just can't believe it,” he murmured, shaking his head. “Paul . . . whatever little tiff he and Ariel might have had . . . Why would he do something like that?”

“That's what we have to find out,” said Kincaid, “and we're hoping Ariel can help us.”

“Oh, Ariel!” Ellis looked round wildly, as if his daughter had suddenly appeared. “I'll have to—”

“Don't worry, Mr. Ellis,” broke in Kincaid. “We'll break the news.”

“You don't understand.” Ellis picked up the glass again but didn't drink. “Ariel . . . she's had too much loss already in her life. Her mother died when Ariel was fourteen. A terrible accident. Ariel was impossibly lucky, but it's been difficult for her.” He gestured towards some of the paintings Kincaid had noticed over the bookcases. “That's when she started painting. The therapist recommended it.”

Kincaid looked more closely at the paintings. “These are hers? No wonder she's going for an art degree.” The canvases were large, with bold colors and photo-realistic images that faded suddenly into abstract. Some had letters and words stenciled across them. They were very striking, and not at all what he would have expected from such an ethereal girl. “She's very talented.”

Ellis nodded agreement. “Yes. I couldn't see why she would waste her time with this boy or with that group.”

“But you knew them. Many of them were your students, I believe.”

Ellis drew himself up. “I'm an historian, Mr. Kincaid. I care about the irrevocable damage being done to historical sites by rampant development. Especially by the Crossrail digging, even though they have excellent archeologists on their projects. Who knows what they may miss that may never be recovered? But I don't condone violence of any kind.”

“So do I take it you parted ways with Matthew Quinn?”

“Ah, Matthew . . . He was a brilliant structural engineering student. Did you know that? I never understood why he gave it up. The two things were not at odds that I could see. But something seemed to go wrong with him, and I could sense it spreading in the group of followers.” Ellis frowned. “Maybe I was being fanciful, but I'd encouraged Ariel to distance herself.”

“Did you have any sense that Matthew might become violent?” Kincaid asked.

Ellis frowned. “It wasn't that so much as controlling. And the beginnings, perhaps, of some sort of an obsessive-compulsive disorder. I never thought—”

The front door of the building slammed, then, a moment later, there was a rattle of keys and the front door of the flat opened.

They all froze, as if caught in some unseemly act. From the entry came Ariel's light voice. “Daddy, there's a strange car—”

Coming into the sitting room, she saw Kincaid and Jasmine, and stopped.

Just as her father said, “Darling—” Kincaid stood and interrupted him.

“Ariel, I'm very sorry. I'm afraid we have bad news about Paul.”

Her eyes widened. The bag full of books she carried dropped to the floor with a thump.

“Oh, no.” Ariel looked from Kincaid to her father, as if seeking confirmation. Then she whispered, “Please . . .” as her knees buckled and she fell with as little sound as a feather.

“You're certain you're cleared to be back at work?” Gemma asked, studying Melody, who sat on the other side of Gemma's desk in the South London Police Station CID suite. Melody appeared to be wearing the same clothes she'd worn when Gemma had met her for her tests at UCL hospital last night. “If you don't mind my saying so, you look a right mess.”

Melody smiled. “Thanks, boss. I didn't want to take the time to go home and change. I thought you'd rather have me as I am.”

“Oh, I'm not complaining, believe me,” said Gemma with a smile. “But have you been home at all? Since it happened?” she asked. Her partner looked not only wan and a bit unkempt, but as if she'd dropped half a dozen pounds in three days.

Melody shook her head. “No. Well, yes, actually, I picked up my car, but I didn't go in. I was in a rush. I went to Doug's for a bit last night.”

“A rush to see Doug?” asked Gemma. “Are you sure you're all right?” She was beginning to wonder if Melody was as well as the doctors had said.

“Oh, long story.” Melody brushed back a stray strand of dark hair and sat forward. “Tell me about the search. Did you find anything? Why didn't you interview Underwood first?”

“I thought it might unsettle him a bit if I left him to stew while we searched the flat. And that I might find something to use as ammunition.”

“Did you?”

Gemma sighed. “Nothing. I wish my kids were half as neat. What twenty-two-year-old makes his bed and does the washing up? It's a one-bedroom flat—not bad for someone his age with a job as a salesclerk.”

“Do you think he dabbles in something else?”

“If he does, there was no sign of it. All cheap IKEA furnishings. Gigantic TV. Expensive sound system. Pretty much what you'd expect for someone who works in an electronics shop. But”—Gemma tilted back in her chair and rolled a pen between her fingers—“no computer. He said his died and he just hasn't replaced it yet. He uses his phone and the computers in the shop. But my guess is that the hard drive's smashed in a bin somewhere and the computer's smashed in another.”

“Did we get a warrant for the phone?” Melody asked.

Gemma shook her head. “No. But I doubt there's anything useful on it. He's too clever by half, is Dillon Underwood.” She stood up. “Let's go see what he has to say for himself.”

Dillon Underwood was as clean as his flat. He sat across from Gemma and Melody in the interview room, looking as unconcerned as if he'd been invited for tea. He wore pressed tan trousers and a polo shirt with his shop's logo embroidered on the breast. His brown hair was buzzed short, his nails manicured. His eyes were a light brown, and Gemma found them oddly flat, unreadable. When he smiled, Gemma felt sure he whitened his teeth. There was a small nick from a shaving cut under his chin.

“Hello, Dillon,” she said, and nodded for Melody to turn on the recorder. “For the record, I'm Detective Inspector Gemma James, and this is Detective Sergeant Melody Talbot.” When he didn't speak, she went on. “You remember we talked before, Dillon.”

Melody had brought in a pen and notepad, which she placed on the table. They had agreed beforehand that good cop/bad cop was not likely to be effective with Underwood, and that Melody making a show of silent note taking might be more likely to make him edgy.

Now he leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. “Of course I remember. You interrupted my work, just like today. I'm needed at the shop.”

Gemma silently thanked him for giving her the perfect opening. She leaned forward, elbows on the table. “You're very good at your job, aren't you, Dillon?”

“Yeah. You could say that.” His mouth curved in a smirk.

“Popular with the customers?”

“They ask for me. They know I'll steer them right.”

“All the customers like you, the men and the women?”

“Well, yeah. I know my stuff.”

“I would think you'd remember them.”