To Dwell in Darkness (9 page)

Callery shrugged. “I think I'll watch from the viewing room. I can let you know if something pops up for me.”

“What about me, Guv?” said Sweeney.

“You can keep DCI Callery company. Call down to the Custody Suite and have the sergeant set up Interview Room One. Let's start with the Asian girl.”

Other than Iris, she was the only one in the group who had shown immediate and obvious grief.

Kincaid took the opportunity to shut himself in his office and ring Gemma. “Any news on Melody or Tam?” he asked when she answered.

“Doug rang. He was on his way to UCL A-and-E to see Melody. And I talked to Michael. Andy and Caleb both had already rung. He and Louise were on their way to Chelsea and Westminster. Hang on a sec, can you?” she said. He heard the sound of a door closing softly. “I couldn't really ask before, with the kids in the room. Tam—how bad is it?”

“I don't know.” Kincaid rubbed at the now-well-past-five-o'clock shadow along his jaw. “All I can say for certain is that he was burned and that the medics were working him over pretty thoroughly. They'd given him morphine and had him on oxygen.” Thinking back, he realized he'd have to watch the video again to see if he could work out exactly what had happened to Tam—the victim had been between him and the camera.

“Was he conscious?”

“Yeah. He recognized me. Squeezed my hand.” Kincaid cleared his throat.

“I feel useless,” said Gemma. “I'd at least go and check on Melody, but I can't leave the kids.”

“Wes—”

“He's working at the café tonight, although he did bring us dinner first.” She sighed. “I just keep thinking—if Melody had been any closer . . .”

“Don't. And it's a good thing she was there. More people might have been badly hurt if she hadn't had her wits about her. Bloody brave, what she did. But don't tell her I said so.”

Gemma chuckled, which had been his intent. He imagined her smiling, brushing a stray strand of hair from her face, and suddenly wished very much that he was home. “I'll need to interview Melody formally,” he said, “but it will probably be tomorrow. I don't hear the sounds of chaos,” he added. “What did you do, shut yourself in the loo?”

“How did you guess?”

“I know them too well. How's the littlest angel?”

“Better. Angelic.”

“Give her a kiss for me. I'll be—”

“Late. I know,” Gemma said with resigned affection. “You'll be careful?”

“I'm back at the station.” It was a nonanswer. He knew she would know it, and that she was asking about more than his safety. “Don't worry, love. I think this was a one-off. I should know more soon. But don't wait up.”

“Duncan.” Gemma stopped him as he was about to ring off. “Um, when you do get home, the children have a little surprise.”

“What? Toby set the house on fire?”

“Not quite as bad as that.” There was laughter in her voice now. “Don't let the dogs in the study. Toby and Kit brought home a cat. With kittens.”

While Jasmine Sidana started the interview recorder and identified the two of them for the tape, Kincaid studied the girl across the table. She wore an oversize sweatshirt and a down vest that she'd refused to take off even though the interview room was warm. In the utilitarian surroundings, she looked even more fragile than she had in the flat.

“Why don't you tell us your name for the tape,” he asked.

Her dark, arched brows drew together in a frown. “Cam Chen. It's not short for Camilla, so don't ever call me that.” She ruined the effect of her statement a bit by sniffing.

Kincaid nodded. “Point taken.” He'd meant to wind her up, wondering if her reaction to Matthew Quinn at the flat was a normal response for her. Apparently, she was inclined to be pugnacious.

“Right, then, Cam. Can I call you Cam?”

She nodded. “I suppose.”

“Where are you from?”

The brows drew closer together. “Wimbledon. But I live here, in London.”

“In the Caledonian Road?”

Cam shrugged. “I have a room at uni—UCL—but I don't like it. The flat's better.”

“What are you studying?”

After a moment, Cam said grudgingly, “Social anthropology.”

“Lots of job opportunities, are there?”

“Fuck you.” She glared at him. “My parents are dentists. Both of them. They get up and go to the same boring office and do the same boring thing. Every single day. Why would I sign up for that?”

Kincaid could think of a number of reasons. A nice home. Financial security. The ability to send their kids to university. And maybe they liked what they did. But he didn't say any of those things. Instead, he asked, “So, are you studying the social dynamics of a protest group?”

It had been a shot in the dark. To his surprise, Cam Chen flushed and looked away. He waited, watching her pick up her cup of canteen tea and set it down again.

“It's my graduate thesis,” she whispered.

“Do they know?” Kincaid asked.

Cam's flush deepened. “God, no. Matthew would throw me out in a heartbeat.”

“Does anyone else know?”

Cam shook her head.

“How did you get involved with the group, then, if you're not a believer in the cause?”

“I didn't say I didn't believe. I do. Crossrail sucks. Why spend all that money to move more people through London? And all that green stuff Crossrail says they're doing? Bullshit. A cover-up for corporate greed. That's who benefits from projects like this—the contractors and the developers. They add on little things like ‘creating nature preserves' just to fool the public.” Cam was sitting forward now, grasping her cup tightly. “They say they're only going to destroy one listed building. Do they really expect us to believe that?”

“How do you know all this?” Kincaid asked.

“Matthew knows people.” Cam sounded less sure of herself.

“People in other groups?”

“Well, yeah.”

“You didn't tell us how you got involved with all this. Which came first, the thesis idea or the group?” Kincaid could sense Sidana's impatience.

Cam hesitated, then said, “The group. I was in a class with Matthew. When he talked about his agenda, he was so . . . intense.”

“You fancied him?”

“No way.” Cam made a face. “I was just . . . bored.”

“Matthew's a student?”

She shook her head. “He was. Structural engineering. He dropped out.”

“No job?”

“No. He seems to manage okay.”

Kincaid wondered if Matthew Quinn was selling drugs. From the look of the flat, he doubted that any of them were users, but that didn't rule out dealing.

“Is that how the rest of the group came together—from university?”

“Some. Trish lost her job when Crossrail tore down the shop she worked in. We were picketing and she talked to us. Matthew felt sorry for her. Or he said he did. Ryan said Matthew likes people to think he's kind. Ryan—” Her face crumpled. “Why are we talking about Matthew when Ryan—when you think Ryan's dead?”

“Tell me about Ryan,” Kincaid said. “How did he come into the group?”

Cam rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes, then took a sip of her now surely cold and scummy tea. “It was in the summer,” she said, her voice shaky. “Matthew was at an antinuclear protest at Islington station, handing out leaflets. You know trains carrying highly radioactive spent fuel rods use the North London line?”

Kincaid didn't, actually, but he nodded.

“Someone introduced him to Matthew. Matthew told him all about Crossrail and he was interested. He started coming round the flat. He—knew stuff.”

“What sort of stuff?” Kincaid said when she hesitated.

“About protesting. How to organize things. Properly. You know.” Cam shrugged. “After a while, he started staying over.”

“He wasn't a student, then?”

“No way. He'd been around, Ryan had. Protested against Hinkley Point on the anniversary of Fukushima. Lots of other important things.” Frowning, she added slowly, “I did wonder, sometimes, why he bothered with a small group like us, but he said it could be big, what we were doing.”

“Do you know anything else about him? Where he came from? Any family?”

“No. Ryan didn't talk about things like that. And you didn't ask him.”

“Can you give us a description? Age? Height? Coloring?”

“Why? Can't you just—” Cam went pale. “Oh, God.”

“Just tell us,” Kincaid said gently. “The first things that come to mind.”

“He's”—Cam swallowed and sipped again at the tea—“he's, I don't know, thirtyish. Medium height. Fit—more than the rest of that lot, except maybe Matthew. Brown hair—light brown, like he might have been blond as a child. He kept it short. A stubbly beard, you know? Just a shadow, most days. Blue eyes, really blue. And—he doesn't—didn't—smile very often, but when he does it's like the sun coming out.” Tears began to run down her cheeks. “I feel sick. Who's going to—won't someone have to identify—I still don't believe it. Ryan would never do something so—so stupid.”

“Tell me about today,” Kincaid said. “The smoke bomb—was it Ryan's idea?”

“No. It was Matthew. Matthew thought we hadn't been getting enough media attention. They argued. We all argued. But Ryan convinced Matthew that if we were going to do it, he should be the one, because if anyone got arrested, he already had a record.”

Iris had said the same. When he glanced over at Sidana, he saw that she was scribbling a note.

“But it was Matthew who had the smoke bomb?”

“Yeah. He showed it to us. It was a canister, about this big.” Cam held her hands a little more than a fist's length apart. “It was a sort of camo green and had
SMOKE
stenciled on it.”

“Did Matthew say where he got it?”

“From somebody he met at a protest. There's all kind of stuff that floats around, you know?”

Kincaid did, unfortunately. Talking to Matthew Quinn was going to be interesting.

“What was the plan, then?” he asked.

“We timed it with the band playing. Some new duo. It was the opening event of the music festival, and we knew there'd be cameras. Ryan went early, so he could be in place. Then, when he saw us get out the placards, he was going to set off the smoke.”

“And what did you think would happen then?” Kincaid had to make an effort to keep the disbelief from his voice.

“We thought—Matthew thought—that it would be bonkers. That Ryan would slip away in the smoke. And that we would get on the news. We wouldn't claim any connection or anything, but we'd get some press.”

Kincaid wondered if Cam Chen had given any thought to what her suburban dentist parents would think when they saw her on the news. He said, “Did you see Matthew give Ryan the smoke bomb?”

“I—no.” Cam suddenly looked frightened and more childlike than ever. “They were in the bedroom. In the flat.”

“So Matthew could have given Ryan anything.”

“No!” Cam pushed her chair back so fast it squeaked on the tile floor. “You can't think Matthew meant to hurt Ryan. Matthew may be a wanker, but he would never do that.”

“Do you have any reason to think that Ryan might have meant to hurt himself?”

“I— No. Of course not. It had to have been an accident.”

But Kincaid had seen the hesitation. He waited, willing Jasmine Sidana not to speak or even breathe.

“He—no, he wouldn't.” There was a plea in Cam's statement. “Surely he wouldn't.”

Kincaid leaned across the table, just far enough to invite a confidence. “But you think it's just possible he might have. Why?”

“He— He hadn't been the same since Wren left.”

“Who was Wren?”

“A . . . Just a girl. Another one of Matthew's charity cases. She wasn't part of the group, although she went along with the protests and things. She was homeless, and Matthew gave her someplace to live. She was grateful.”

Again, Kincaid waited.

“Ryan liked her,” Cam said, reluctantly. “He was different with her.”

“Were they lovers?”

“I—I don't know. Not in front of the group. But I always thought . . .” There was a wistful note in her voice.

“Did you fancy him? Ryan?” asked Sidana, with such sympathy that Cam gave her a startled glance.

“We all fancied Ryan. All the girls. And all the blokes wanted to
be
him. But we couldn't . . . reach him, somehow. And Wren did.”

“What happened to Wren?” Kincaid asked.

Cam shifted in her chair. Her hand jerked, her cup tipped, and the scummy tea spread across the table like a brown amoeba. “Oh, God. Sorry.” She looked round wildly for something to mop the spill.

There was a box of cheap tissues beside the recorder—handy for weeping witnesses. Sidana pulled out a wad, blotting the tea while Cam made an effort to help.

“Cam.” The command in Kincaid's tone made the girl sit back, dropping her hands into her lap. “What happened to Wren? Tell me.” He couldn't read her dark eyes.

Kincaid thought she wasn't going to answer. But she said at last, “It was at the New Year. She left. She didn't come back.”

Hardy's biographers speculate how far this gruesome experience may have deepened the writer's tendency to see the skull beneath the skin of life.

—Simon Bradley,
St. Pancras Station
, 2007

Doug Cullen hated hospitals. He'd never really given them much thought until a broken ankle in January had precipitated his first—and so far only—overnight visit, although continued complications had made him overly familiar with the outpatient clinic. His ankle's refusal to heal had kept him, almost two months later, confined to desk duty.