To Dwell in Darkness (33 page)

He could hear children's voices and the sound of a television. A dog began to bark.

The woman who answered the door was a pretty, slightly faded blonde in her late twenties. She held the door open a body's width, blocking the dog, a Labrador mix going gray at the muzzle. “Get back, Sally,” she told the dog, then said, “Yes?” looking them over warily. “If you're Jehovah's Witnesses—”

“We're not,” Kincaid assured her. “Are you Christine Marlowe?”

“I'm Christie, yeah. No one calls me Christine. Who are you?”

“Mummy?” said one of the two little girls who'd come to stand beside her. “Who is it? Is it Daddy?” They were blond, like their mum, and Kincaid guessed the younger to be about Toby's age, the elder a year or two older.

“Go to the kitchen,” Christie Marlowe told them sharply, then asked Kincaid again, “Who are you? What do you want?”

Kincaid was glad they had Melody with them. Otherwise he sensed the woman might have slammed the door on them. He took out his warrant card. “Detective Superintendent Kincaid, Camden CID. We'd like to—”

“Oh, God.” All the color drained from Christie Marlowe's face. Her knees sagged as she grasped the door with both hands. “What's happened?” She gave a frantic look back to make sure her daughters had left the room. “Is he—”

“Mrs. Marlowe, please, can we come in? We just need to ask you a few questions.”

She stared at them, taking in their casual clothes and perhaps reassured by their expressions and the tone of Kincaid's voice. “Yes. All right.”

When she stepped back, the dog sniffed eagerly at Kincaid, ignoring Melody and Doug. “You smell my pups, don't you, girl?” Kincaid said, giving her a pat.

The television, he saw as Christie Marlowe led them into the sitting room, was playing a repeat of
Doctor Who
—typical Saturday-night children's fare. This was as normal a household as his own—kids, dogs, the smell of something on the cooker—and he realized he had no idea how he was going to ask this woman the things he needed to know.

The sitting room furniture was a matching suite that had seen better days, and they had to move toys to find a place to sit. There was a half-drunk glass of red wine on the end table, but Christie Marlowe didn't offer them anything. She sank unsteadily onto the edge of a chair. “Just tell me that Ryan's all right. That nothing's happened to him.”

Grateful for the opening, Kincaid said, “That's what we were hoping you might tell us, Mrs. Marlowe. We'd like to speak to him regarding an incident earlier in the week. He was very helpful in a public emergency, but he seems to have disappeared. Do you know where he is?”

“Oh, God,” she said again. “What incident?”

“The fire in St. Pancras station.”

“That? Where that poor boy burned?” Her hand went to her throat. “Ryan was there? Was he hurt?”

“No, we don't think so. He assisted a police officer in controlling the crowd and evacuating bystanders.”

Some of the tension seemed to drain from Christie Marlowe. She closed her eyes for a moment and leaned back into the chair, then said, “I haven't heard from him. I don't know where he is.”

At a slight nod from Kincaid, Melody leaned towards her. “Mrs. Marlowe, I was the police officer that Ryan helped. Together we cleared the crowd away from the fire, and he helped me reach the victim. I couldn't have managed without him. But then he disappeared. We think he knew the victim, and we were hoping he could tell us something about what happened. And we want to make certain that he's all right.”

“I don't know where he is,” Christie Marlowe repeated, but there were tears in her eyes.

Kincaid said, “What does Ryan do, Mrs. Marlowe?”

“He—he drives lorries. And does landscape gardening, the big sort of jobs.”

“So he's gone from home a good bit?”

She nodded. “But he almost always gets home on the weekend, or if not, he calls.”

“And this weekend, you haven't heard from him?”

Christie shook her head. “No.” It was almost a whisper.

“Your husband used to be a police officer, Mrs. Marlowe?”

“That's right. But he left. Something happened, I don't know what. They took his warrant card. Since then he's done a bit of this and a bit of that.”

“Do you know any of the people that Ryan works for now?”

She shook her head. “No. They're just jobs.”

“Does he bring you a paycheck?”

“No. Just cash—whatever he's made that week.” There had been a subtle shift in her body posture. She had been openly worried, then relieved. But now her answers felt practiced, and she hadn't questioned Kincaid's right to ask such personal questions.

She was lying. And it was a lie she was used to telling.

“Mrs. Marlowe—Christie— Can I call you Christie?” Kincaid asked. He needed a wedge of intimacy.

Christie Marlowe nodded.

Kincaid went on. “Christie, we have reason to think that for the last few years, your husband has been working as an undercover police officer. I think you know this. We're afraid he may be in some sort of trouble and we want to help him.”

“No.” She pushed herself unsteadily up from the chair. “I'm not talking to you. You'll have to go.” She darted a glance towards the kitchen, as if making certain the little girls hadn't heard.

Kincaid raised a hand. “Christie, please. Sit down. We want to help you. We want to help Ryan.”

“How do I even know who you are?” Her voice rose and he could see her make an effort to lower it before she spoke again. “You showed me a warrant card—that doesn't mean a damned thing. And you two”—she pointed at Melody and Doug—“didn't even do that. Not that it matters—anyone can make a warrant card. And anyone can lie about anything.”

“Look,” Kincaid said. “I'm going to be honest with you. Whether you believe me is up to you. This is Doug, and this is Melody. We are all Met CID officers, but we're not here officially. We're friends who work on different teams.”

Melody took it up, speaking with an earnestness Kincaid had never seen in her. “Christie, I don't know how to explain this, but those few minutes I spent with Ryan, I felt a . . . a bond. It was something I'd heard about, but it had never happened to me. We ran into the fire together. And then, when he disappeared, I just had a feeling that something was really wrong. It was Duncan's case”—she nodded at Kincaid—“but Doug and I wanted to help. This is all off the record—and anything you tell us is off the record.”

“I wish I could believe you,” said Christie Marlowe. “But even if I did, I still can't tell you anything. I don't
know
what kind of trouble Ryan is in. He doesn't tell
me
.”

The dog, who had been lying beside her mistress's chair, got up and went over to Kincaid and laid her head on his knee. “Hello, girl,” he said, and stroked her head.

“Oh, Sally.” Christie Marlowe shook her head. There were tears in her eyes. “Don't mind her. Ryan spoils her something terrible. She misses him.”

“Christie,” Kincaid said gently. “You've been married to Ryan for, what, a decade? Do you have any idea where he is? Where he might go if he was in trouble?”

She wiped her eyes and looked at them. The girls' voices were getting louder in the kitchen, as if there was a squabble brewing.

“I don't know what to do,” she said at last. She glanced at the dog, who was now happily drooling on Kincaid's knee. “Ryan always says that dogs are infinitely more trustworthy than people, and that you should pay attention to their instincts.” She sniffed, then sighed. “Ryan always had a thing about camping and canoeing. I was a big disappointment to him because I could never see any point in being wet, dirty, and uncomfortable. We—” Christie looked down at her hands. “To be honest, we hadn't been getting on at all well the last year or so. Ryan would come home most weekends, spend time with the girls and the dog, then go off to the river with his canoe.

“Then, last autumn, he didn't bring the canoe back, but he wouldn't say what happened to it.”

“Do you know where he liked to go?” asked Doug. It was the first time he'd spoken. “I like the river, too.”

“I—” Christie was looking back at her lap again, twisting her hands together. “I'm—ashamed. He—changed. Last autumn. I don't know why. He started to shut me out completely. I was afraid he was having an affair. It happens all the time, I know that, I'd always known that, but somehow I never thought Ryan would . . . So one weekend I—I followed him.” She looked up at them. “He was alone. I never admitted to him what I'd done.”

“But you can tell us where he went,” encouraged Doug.

“It was near Wallingford. The river makes some small marshy lakes there, and there are little islands in them. I saw him dig his canoe out from under some brush and head towards the islands. That's all I know. I never tried to follow him again. I should have trusted him,” she added, sounding anguished.

There was no way that Kincaid would tell her that from what they'd learned about Ryan and Wren, she might have been right.

“Thank you,” he said simply. “We'll do our best to find him and see that he's all right.”

Giving the dog a last pat, he stood. His eye was caught by a photo on the mantel. It was a family group, taken perhaps two or three years earlier judging by the age of the little girls. The man they knew as Ryan Marsh was laughing, an arm thrown round his younger daughter. What had happened to him since that day?

As they took their leave, Kincaid gave Christie a card with his mobile number on it. “If you hear anything or need anything, please ring me. And, Christie—I know you have no reason to trust us, but I think it would be better if you didn't tell anyone else we were here. Or where Ryan might be.”

“I know exactly where that is,” Doug said when they got in the car. “We'd never find those islands at night, but we can get the River Police launch to take us first thing in the morning.”

Kincaid considered it, then shook his head. “No. We still don't know what we're dealing with here. And we sure as hell don't want some sort of a standoff with the Thames River Police involved.”

“Okay,” said Doug. “Then as soon as the boat-hire places open at Wallingford in the morning, we can rent a skiff. Can you row?”

For St. Pancras Station, as for so much else in England, the First World War was the herald of change . . . on the night of February 17th, 1918 . . . five bombs were dropped by German aeroplanes on or near the station and hotel. . . . the fifth [bomb], which landed on the glass-roofed carriage approach beside the booking-office, killed twenty people and injured thirty-three. This was the greatest number of casualties suffered in any air-raid on a London station during that war.

—Jack Simmons and Robert Thorne,
St. Pancras Station
, 2012

Kincaid was awake well before dawn. Edging himself regretfully away from Gemma's warmth, he slipped out from under the duvet and headed for the shower. A half hour later, dressed in jeans, an old fisherman's jumper, and his heaviest anorak, he was on his way to Putney in Gemma's Escort.

When he picked Doug up, he saw that Doug was dressed much the same, and was not wearing his boot cast.

“What about your ankle?” Kincaid asked as they pulled away from Doug's house.

“I can't get in and out of a boat in that thing,” Doug answered. “And if I screw up my ankle, I get longer time on the desk job, rather than a stint as Detective Superintendent Slater's bag boy.”

“You're malingering,” Kincaid said, laughing.

“Wouldn't you?” There was not much humor in Doug's voice.

Kincaid was silent for a while, concentrating on his driving. The sky was just beginning to lighten in the east, and on a Sunday morning hardly a soul was stirring. He loved London in the quiet hours, when the streets were still and the city seemed to have a life independent of its inhabitants.

Soon, however, they were once again heading west on the M4, with the dawn breaking behind them.

“Where exactly are we going?” he asked Doug.

“A little boat-hire place north of Wallingford. They aren't open on a Sunday, but I managed to get the owner on the phone last night. I'll let him know when we're close and he'll meet us there.”

“Persuasive, aren't you?”

Doug grinned. “Police business. Top secret.”

They left the main road at Didcot and cut across country towards the river, winding down hedge-bordered lanes.

The last tint of rose had faded from the sky when they reached the small marina. There were canoes and kayaks on racks, and tied up to the dock, two small motor launches and a rowing skiff.

“Tell me we're taking one with a motor,” Kincaid said as he parked on the grass verge.

“Exactly how much do you want to advertise our approach? You're the one who said no police launch,” Doug countered. “Don't worry. I won't make you row.”

As good as his word, the owner was there to meet them. He took cash in advance for the use of the skiff, told them to tie it up where they'd found it, locked his office, and left without showing the least bit of curiosity.

Doug proved expert with the ropes and oars, and soon they were on the water.

Although they had driven through a few spatters as they left London, for the moment, at least, the rain was in abeyance. It was cold and still, the only breeze made by their steady passage over the water.

Facing the bow, Kincaid watched Doug row with admiration. “Not bad,” he said. “Not bad at all.”

“The benefits of a public school education,” Doug answered between strokes. “This isn't sculling, by any means, but Eton is a boat-y sort of place.”