The Midland Railway had been running services into London since 1840 and expanded services had led to chronic congestion and delays. In 1846 when Parliament approved the proposal of another route into London, the Great Northern Line, Midland Railway paid £20,000 for the rights to operate the service. Minds could now be concentrated on building the new station.
—Bbc.co.uk/London/St. Pancras
When Gemma went to wake Charlotte, she found her warm and slightly flushed. Sitting down on the bed, she felt the child’s forehead, then put her hand flat on Charlotte’s chest beneath her white cotton nightdress, feeling for the telltale rattle of congestion.
Charlotte’s breathing seemed unlabored, but when she opened her eyes she reached out to Gemma, her face puckered. “Mummy,” she whispered, “I had a bad dream. I dreamed something happened to the kitties.”
“The kitties are just fine.” Gemma smoothed Charlotte’s tousled hair back from her forehead. Her hand looked pale against Charlotte’s golden skin. “I’ve just checked on them.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“I want to see them,” said Charlotte, but instead of bouncing out of bed, she snuggled against Gemma and closed her eyes drowsily again.
“Oh, dear,” Gemma murmured. Although the child’s cough seemed better, she’d obviously overdone things yesterday with all the excitement over the cat and kittens. And she was obviously not going to school.
“Want to stay in your jammies awhile longer?” Gemma said now, kissing the top of Charlotte’s curly hair. “I’ll bring you some toast, and then you can see the kitties. Bryony is coming by to have a look at them, too.”
“What about school?” Charlotte asked.
“I think you can stay with Betty today, lovey.”
Charlotte’s forehead creased. “Oliver will miss me.”
“I’m sure he will. But you need to get better so that you can see him tomorrow. Now, you just cuddle up for a bit while I get things organized.”
And organizing she would have to do, Gemma thought, not just for Charlotte, but for herself. She had rung her guv’nor, Detective Superintendent Krueger, last night to tell her what had happened to Melody and that she intended to check on her this morning. But first she had another visit to make.
Caleb Hart was sitting alone in the waiting area of the burns unit at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, head bowed. Gemma said, “Caleb? Mr. Hart?” a little tentatively, as the last time she’d seen Caleb Hart she’d been interviewing him as a murder suspect.
Unlike Tam, who tended to look as though he’d put on whatever tumbled out of his cupboard—not that anything would clash with his faded tartan wool cap—Caleb Hart looked the part of a musician’s manager. Slender and fit, with neatly trimmed hair and goatee, he wore designer clothes and trendy eyeglasses. This morning, however, his clothes were rumpled and stained and his eyes red rimmed.
He looked up at her, his expression puzzled. “It’s Inspector Ja— Gemma, isn’t it? Tam talks about you and little Charlotte all the time.”
She perched on the edge of the chair next to him. “How is he this morning?”
“They have him pretty well sedated for the pain from the burn. But it’s the poisoning from the chemical that they’re really worried about,” Caleb answered, his voice hoarse.
“Have you been here all night?” she asked.
Nodding, Caleb said, “I promised Michael I’d stay while he went home to clean up.”
Caleb, Gemma remembered, for all his hip appearance, was an AA sponsor, and was accustomed to pitching in when help was needed. He sighed. “I’ve been fielding texts all morning from a producer who saw them last night and wants to put them in a demo session slot—at Abbey Road Studios, no less. But Andy won’t agree to it under the circumstances, and I don’t think Poppy will, either.”
Gemma had yet to meet Poppy, although she’d seen the duo’s viral video so many times she felt she knew her. “Would you want them to do it?” she asked Caleb.
He gave a tired shrug. “I understand how they feel. But it’s their career, and there’s nothing Tam would want more than to see them have this sort of chance.”
“Can I see him, do you think?”
Caleb glanced at his watch. “It’s about the time they’ll let someone visit for a few minutes. How alert he is will depend on his pain medication.”
Gemma stood, and Caleb stood with her, holding out his hand. “It was good of you to come.”
She hesitated, then said, “I’m sorry. About what happened before. I was—”
“Doing your job,” Caleb finished for her.
Tam looked better than Gemma had expected. He was propped up a little in the hospital bed, and although there were some small burns and scrapes on his face, his color was good. The oddest thing was seeing him without his tartan cap. He looked, with his shorn and thinning hair, naked.
The charge nurse had given her ten minutes, so she sat beside the bed in the only available chair, trying not to think about the times she’d visited her mum in hospital. Her mum’s leukemia had been in remission since the autumn, but Gemma worried about her constantly nonetheless.
After a moment, Tam’s breathing changed and his eyes fluttered open. “Gemma?”
“Hello, Tam. I just came by to see how you were doing.” She patted the hand that lay outside the sheet that was draped lightly over his midriff.
“Not looking my best, am I, lass?” he whispered, then grimaced. “Hate being a bloody nuisance. And no one will tell me anything. Is Melody—”
“Melody’s fine,” Gemma assured him.
“Was anyone else—” His face creased with distress.
She shook her head. “No. No one was killed except the man with the grenade.”
“Man?” Tam blinked at her.
“It wasn’t a man?” Gemma asked, puzzled.
“No. ’Twas just a lad.”
Gemma stared, startled. “You saw him? Before the fire?”
Tam nodded. “I looked away from the stage. Just for an instant, I don’t know why. A movement in the crowd, maybe. And I saw him, a boy wearing a backpack. I remember I thought he looked like one of the lads in the band about to play a prank.”
“Not frightened?”
“No. A bit nervous, maybe, but excited with it. And then—it was so bright—” Tam winced and lifted a hand to pick at the sheet over his stomach. “And I was burning. Who the bloody hell would have thought something could hurt so much?” He had paled, and there was a sheen of sweat on his brow.
Gemma patted his hand gently. “You rest, Tam. I’m going to get the nurse. When you’re feeling a bit better, I’m sure Duncan will be in to see you, too.”
He closed his eyes and settled back into the pillow. She thought he’d drifted off again, but when she stood, he turned his head to look at her and said, “You’ll do something for me, won’t you, lass?”
“Of course, Tam. Anything.”
“You’ll make certain Michael and Louise look after themselves.”
Caleb was asleep in his chair, head lolling to one side, when she came back through the waiting area. She didn’t disturb him, but hurried to the hospital exit and out into the bustle of Fulham Road.
She intended to call Duncan and tell him what Tam had said about the victim, reliable or not. But before she could dial, her phone rang. It was Shara MacNichols, the detective constable on her team in South London who was working leads on Mercy Johnson’s murder.
“Guv,” said Shara, “we need you. I’ve been talking to Mercy’s friends again. One of the girls has admitted she has a photo on her phone of Mercy talking to Dillon Underwood. I’m bringing her in. You’d better get to the station as soon as you can.”
Kincaid left the Royal London Hospital with more questions than he’d had before. He considered Rashid’s findings as he drove west on Whitechapel Road towards Holborn, but as he passed by Brick Lane his thoughts were drawn, as always when he visited this part of the East End, to Charlotte and to the events that had brought her to them. It was the sale of Charlotte’s parents’ Georgian house in Fournier Street that had allowed them to put her in a school where she felt comfortable.
And that led him to Tam. He hadn’t had a chance to get an update on Tam’s condition that morning. He’d made a mental note to check on him as soon as he reached the station, when his phone rang. When he saw that it was his borough commander, he put the phone on and answered.
“Sir.”
“Where are you?” asked Chief Superintendent Faith without preamble.
“Just leaving the postmortem at the Royal London, on the way to the station.”
“Anything definitive on our victim from the pathologist?”
Definitive was the last word Kincaid would choose. “No, sir. And no ID.”
“Well, you’d better hope you can come up with something palatable for the media, because you have a press conference at noon.”
“Sir?” Kincaid frowned. “What about SO15?”
“The assistant commissioner Crime just rang. Orders handed down straight from the top. The deputy commissioner doesn’t feel the case warrants SO15’s involvement. He wants it treated as a suspicious death, so it’s our bailiwick. Or yours, I should say. Although I don’t think the AC Special Operations was terribly chuffed with the decision.” These two divisions of the Met, Crime and Special Operations, were infamous for territorial scuffles.
Kincaid wondered what Nick Callery had reported to his superiors.
“DCI Callery will be joining you in the press conference,” Faith continued, as if reading his mind. “It’s important we reassure the public that we don’t feel there is a likelihood of further incidents.”
While Kincaid was beginning to think it likely that the intent of the poor bugger on the postmortem table had been only to burn himself to a crisp, he felt far from comfortable assuring the public of anything. Especially when he couldn’t ID the victim.
As Chief Superintendent Faith rang off, the traffic slowed to a creep at Aldgate, and then to a complete stop. Kincaid looked anxiously at the dashboard clock, drummed his fingers on the wheel, then decided to make good use of the holdup. He rang Doug Cullen.
“Can you talk?” he asked when Doug picked up.
“You’re asking the man locked in the dungeon with the computer?” Doug was not one to take the drudgery of being assigned to data entry at Scotland Yard with good humor.
“Seriously.”
“Yeah.” Doug sounded suddenly alert. “There’s no one else in the room just now. What’s up? Is it Melody?”
“No. I mean, I haven’t heard anything.” Kincaid nosed the car forward another inch. “Do you remember what we talked about last night?”
“You mean your mystery man?”
“Invisible would be more like it.” Kincaid told him about the search of the squat and Rashid’s findings—or lack of findings—at the postmortem. “This bloke left nothing behind him and kept nothing on his person. No phone, no credit cards, no toothbrush. Who lives like that? What have we got here?” After a moment’s hesitation, he voiced the fear that had begun to nag him. “A spook?”
There was silence on the other end of the line. Then Doug said quietly, even though he’d told Kincaid he was alone, “Or an undercover cop.”
That was a supposition Kincaid certainly didn’t intend to make public, or to share with anyone else on the team for the time being.
What on earth would an undercover cop have been doing in a group like Matthew Quinn’s?
As soon as he reached Holborn, he checked in with Simon Gikas, the case manager.
“Anything new from the SOCOs at the flat?”
“They’re still matching possessions to the group. But no bombs or bomb-making paraphernalia, or grenades.”
“Drugs?”
“One of the blokes—Lee, I think—had a tiny bit of grass. Maybe a quarter ounce. Obviously personal use, and no evidence of dealing. Did you get an ID from the postmortem?” Gikas added.
Kincaid shook his head. “Not enough left of him. Dr. Kaleem thinks he can get a decent DNA sample, but we have to have something to compare it to.” He glanced round the CID room. “Where’s Sidana?”
“She and Sweeney are prepping for the press conference.” Gikas looked at his watch. “And you have ten minutes.”
“Bugger,” Kincaid muttered, then dashed for the men’s loo. He washed his hands, combed his hair, and straightened his tie, glad he’d worn his best suit. But when he took a moment to study his reflection in the mirror, he saw that his eyes were shadowed. He looked, in fact, like he’d spent part of a short night sleeping on the floor with cats.
Shrugging, he made his way to the conference room. Sidana and Sweeney had set up a table with two chairs and mics, reporters were trickling in, and Nick Callery was there before him, looking as well turned out as he had yesterday.
“It’s your show, apparently,” Callery murmured as Kincaid sat. “I’m just here for decoration.” He seemed unperturbed, but Kincaid remembered his quick exit from the Caledonian Road flat. What, he wondered, was Callery’s stake in this, and had he wanted in or out?
When the room had gone quiet, Kincaid began taking questions.
No, they had not identified the victim. No, they had not found evidence of a terrorist plot or other terrorist activity. They were treating the incident as a suspicious death and it would be handled by Homicide. He had been named senior investigating officer.
Yes, he would be liaising with Detective Chief Inspector Callery from Special Operations in the event that any information regarding terrorist activities came to light in the course of the investigation. Yes, all rail services had been returned to normal operations, thanks to the efficiency of the British Transport Police.
“Are you considering the victim a suicide?” asked a reporter from a major newspaper.
“We cannot make that determination at this point,” Kincaid answered. “More information will be forthcoming after the inquest.” He hated police-speak, but it beat saying, “We’re bloody clueless, mate.”
A female reporter in the back of the room raised her hand. She was, God forbid, from Melody’s father’s newspaper. “We understand you’ve arrested suspects in connection with the bombing.”
“Let’s be clear,” he said sharply. “First, there was no bomb. The victim was apparently carrying an incendiary device, not an explosive. Second, we have not arrested anyone. There are, however, several witnesses to the event who are helping us with our inquiries.”
How, he wondered, had that got out? One thing he could guarantee—Melody hadn’t been the leak. The last thing she’d want was her father knowing she’d been anywhere near the damned grenade.
Sidana stood at the back of the room, behind the seated reporters. She gave him a slight nod and mimed a throat cut.
“All right, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for your time.” Kincaid stood and Callery followed suit. They exited the conference room with reporters still calling questions behind them.
“Your borough commander didn’t make an appearance,” said Callery when they’d left the public access area of the station. “I thought the uniform was meant to reassure the public.”
“Maybe it was the absence of the uniform that was meant to reassure the public.” Kincaid glanced at him. “Any idea why Special Operations signed off on this one?”
“A waste of time and resources, according to the deputy commissioner,” Callery said with a shrug, but for the first time, Kincaid thought he saw a flicker of emotion in his gray eyes.
Callery clapped him on the shoulder. “Keep me updated, will you?” He smiled. “At least if this thing goes to hell, it will be on your head, not mine.”
Back in CID, Kincaid spent an hour with Simon Gikas, Sidana, and Sweeney, going over the information that had been gathered that morning.
“What’s your impression of the group after taking Cam through their belongings this morning?” he asked Sidana.
She seemed to hesitate, then said, “They seem a bit pathetic, really. They have almost no possessions. No regular income. They all seem dependent on Matthew Quinn’s charity and that seems a bit . . . creepy.”
“Did he choose them because they were vulnerable?” Kincaid mused.
“Or was it the other way round?” said Sidana. “Maybe they’re all habitual spongers and they saw him as a target.”
It was an interesting perspective, and Kincaid reminded himself that just because she resented him didn’t mean she didn’t have valuable insight to contribute. She hadn’t got to be a DI without being good at her job.
“I can tell you a couple of interesting things.” Gikas tapped the computer screen on the worktable. In spite of the nickname, Simon Gikas was a very good-looking bloke. His dark hair and deep blue eyes had female staff scurrying to do his bidding, and he certainly got results. “There were two laptops. The warrants were a bit iffy, but because we had SO15 in the game, we were able to get forensics on them. A two-year-old could have got into them.” He shook his head in disgust. “One of them belongs to Lee Sutton, and one of them to Matthew Quinn, although I expect that most of the group used them. Sutton is big into social networks, and has about as much sense as you’d expect.”
“Drugs?” Kincaid asked.
“References, yeah. A few joint-smoking selfies. Photos from pop-up raves. Some mild porn. Pretty much typical university drop-out material. But Mr. Quinn, now, that is interesting.”
“Go on,” said Sweeney when Gikas paused. “We’re bloody dying of suspense here.”
“His browser history is stacked with visits to wacko Web sites. End-of-the-world preppers. ‘True Britain will rise again from the ashes—but only for the chosen few.’ ”
“Of course,” Sidana said under her breath.
“And when you get into the preppers, you don’t just have the wannabe Druids,” Gikas went on. “You have the paramilitary dafties.”
“Guns?” Kincaid asked. “Munitions?”
“Name your poison. It’s mostly fantasy, but it’s ugly stuff.”
“So is there a record of Quinn buying—or shopping for—the grenade?”
Gikas shook his head. “No. But”—he paused again, obviously enjoying himself—“he did buy bitcoins. And what he did with them, there’s no way to tell.”
Kincaid swore. “But surely you can trace—”
“No. That’s the whole idea. You can gamble. You can buy drugs. Or diamonds. You can buy guns. Or rocket launchers, for that matter. And no one can trace the transaction. It’s virtual cash, in unmarked bills.”
“What about personal stuff on his computer, then?” Sweeney asked.
“Unlike Sutton, Mr. Quinn stays away from social networks. His photos were all of London historical sites and ongoing construction. Of course they won’t have got to the things he deleted, but at least on the surface he seems to have been quite careful.”
Kincaid was liking this less and less. “You said you found a couple of interesting things.”
“Ah. He did his banking online. It took forensics all of fifteen minutes to crack his password. Matthew Quinn doesn’t pay rent, unless he pays it in cash—or bitcoins. But every month money is drafted into his account. The same amount, from the same source, and it’s enough to keep him and his playmates quite comfortably.”
“Do you know where it comes from?”
“According to the wire transfer records, something called KCD, Inc.”
It took Kincaid a moment to realize why the name sounded familiar. It had been Medhi Atias, the owner of the chicken shop, who’d told him that KCD, Inc., owned the building. “King’s Cross Development,” he said. The others looked at him blankly.
“The corporation owns the building. The chicken shop owner told me this morning.” More blank looks. “The chicken shop is on the ground floor,” Kincaid explained. “Matthew Quinn’s flat is on the second floor. So why is the landlord paying Matthew Quinn every month, instead of the other way round?”
“You can ask Quinn,” said Sidana.
Kincaid thought for a moment. “He doesn’t have to tell us. And why his landlord pays his rent is not necessarily germane to our inquiry, at least legally. But I’d like to know the answer, and I suspect there are better ways of finding out.” The disappointment was obvious in the team’s expressions. Forestalling them, he said, “I’m going to let them go. All of them. I don’t like it that the media got wind of the fact that we were holding them for questioning, and I don’t want bully-tactic allegations when we have no bloody idea what’s going on here. Simon, find me everything you can on KCD, Inc.”
Once settled in his office, Kincaid rang down to the custody suite and told the sergeant to release all six of the detainees.
“You want to speak to them first, Guv?” asked the sergeant.
Kincaid considered a moment, then said, “No. Just check them out.” He wanted them unsettled, and the less explanation they were given, the better.
And he wanted to be better prepared before he questioned them again.
He’d started through the transcripts of last night’s interviews when his office phone rang. It was the front-desk sergeant, telling him she’d buzzed up Melody Talbot.
As he stood, he saw Melody crossing the CID suite. Jasmine Sidana looked up and gave her a friendly nod, which Melody returned with a smile. Opening his office door, he wrapped an arm round Melody in a hug of relief. When he realized his team was watching with unabashed interest through the glass walls of his office, he let her go, ushered her into a chair, and closed the door.
Melody wore, rather than her customary scarlet wool coat, a too-large navy peacoat that he recognized as Andy’s. He had a sudden flash of memory from the night before—Tam lying on the concourse floor at St. Pancras, covered in something red. Melody’s coat, splotched in the darker red of blood and splashed with phosphorus. She would not be wearing that again.
“Should you be out of hospital?” he asked. And belatedly, “Can I get you something? A cup of tea?”
“No, I’m fine,” said Melody, although she didn’t look it. She wore no makeup, and her usually sleekly styled dark hair waved loosely around her face, as if she’d showered and forgotten to comb it. “I have to go back to hospital for more tests later this afternoon, but there was no point in my just sitting there.”
“Have you heard anything about Tam?”
She shook her head. “Not since Andy checked on him this morning. They say the burn should heal, but it’s too soon to tell how much damage the phosphorus has done.” Before he could ask another question, she went on, “I saw the press conference from Andy’s flat. Are you really holding suspects?”
“Not anymore.” At her inquiring look, he explained why he’d let the group go.
Melody listened intently. When he showed her the photos of the Caledonian Road protesters, she frowned. “I just had a glimpse in the crowd. I was more focused on the placards, and I was worried they were going to disrupt the show. But I recognize this one, because of his height and the curly hair even though he was wearing a watch cap.” She tapped a photo, then glanced up at Kincaid for confirmation. “Matthew Quinn?”
He nodded and she shuffled through the photos again. “And this one.” She tapped Cam Chen. “But the rest . . . I can’t be certain.”
“Can you tell me exactly what happened, from the time you arrived at the station?” he asked. She’d given him a brief account when he’d arrived at the scene last night, but she’d been shocked and frantic about Tam. “Every detail.”
Melody seemed to marshal her thoughts. “I was late, because there was a jumper—I think—on one of the tube lines, so the trains were delayed. I’d promised Andy I’d be there and I didn’t want to disappoint him. Andy and Poppy were already playing—I could hear them as soon as I came into the concourse. I may have pushed a bit, getting through the commuters. I’d just reached the edge of the crowd gathered round the band when I saw them”—she glanced at the photos again—“pulling out placards. I was bloody pissed off. I looked round and there was a British Transport officer heading for them.”
Kincaid nodded. “Colleen Rynski.”
“So I thought she could deal with them—the last thing I wanted was to make a police-officer scene in the middle of Andy and Poppy’s gig.” Melody sank back in her chair, looking exhausted. “Seems pretty stupid now, considering.”
“Go on,” Kincaid encouraged her.
“I saw Tam and Caleb standing outside the café. They looked pleased as punch. Wait.” Melody rubbed her hands on the knees of her jeans. “Was that before or after the placards? I can’t remember.” She sounded distressed.
“Just give it time. I’m sure it will come back to you. Go back to Tam and Caleb. When you saw them, was there anything—or anyone—that caught your attention, even for an instant?”
Melody shook her head in distress. “No. I wasn’t expecting—I wasn’t thinking . . . I turned back to watch the band, and I remember I was hoping that Andy could see me at the back of the crowd. And then—” She stopped, swallowing. “The music was loud. But I heard it. A . . . sound. I realized that everyone’s heads were turning in the same direction. Then I heard the screams start. I turned, too—and there he was. Burning.” She frowned. “No. That’s not right. At first I wasn’t even sure what it was, the light was so bright. And then I saw the outline of a man, inside the fire.”
“Why were you certain it was a man? You’re sure you didn’t see his face?”
“No, I—I don’t know. That was just what flashed through my head. And then he collapsed, right before my eyes, and I started trying to get to him while people were pushing and shoving to get away. I shouted at people to get out, but the smoke was billowing and there was feedback screeching from the sound system and I’m not sure anyone heard me.
“I bumped into a man and he grabbed me by the shoulder, hard, and told me to get back. He was holding a handkerchief over his face and I realized that he was going towards the victim, too. I identified myself and then he shouted at me to cover my face and we . . . we pushed forward together.”
Watching Melody, Kincaid realized he’d never seen her seem so unsure of herself. It was partly the clothes, he thought—usually she was as smartly turned out as any senior detective. But even off duty, more casually dressed, she’d always presented a breezy confidence made even more noticeable by her hint of reserve.
Melody Talbot had passed the test. She had run into the chaos, as all police officers were trained to do—but one never knew until faced with a crisis whether one had the bottle to meet it. But this experience seemed to have left her shaken and looking . . . ill. With a little clutch of fear, he wondered if the doctors were giving her false reassurance about her exposure to the phosphorus, but he shook it off with a mental admonition not to be daft. Of course they knew what they were about . . .
“Duncan?”
He focused on Melody with a start. “Sorry. Tell me what happened next.”
“We— We got to him. And”—she shrugged—“you saw. There was nothing we could do. He—the man with me, said something . . .” She rubbed at her face. “I can’t remember. ‘Too late,’ maybe? Something like that. But he sounded so . . . so . . . despairing, and for a moment I felt like I might pass out from the shock. And the smell. It was—horrible. Then I realized people were still screaming. And then I saw that Tam was on fire.” Melody cleared her throat. “You know most of the rest.
“I tried to secure the scene and help Tam and the other victims at the same time. There was a girl, one of the waitresses in the café. She got a fire extinguisher and helped people who were still burning. I’d like to thank her.” Melody sat up a bit straighter.
“And I’ll want to interview her,” said Duncan. “She might have seen something beforehand. Did you get a name?”
“No. But she was pretty, with short dark hair. I’d know her again anywhere. I could go with you to talk to—”
Kincaid was already shaking his head. “It’s not your case, Melody. You know I can’t take you with me on an interview.”
Her shoulders slumping, Melody glanced through the glass at the CID room. “Your new team, of course. Your DI was good at the scene last night. Very competent.” She added, with a rueful smile, “But not Doug.”
“No.” Kincaid was glad that someone liked Sidana.
“He would never say it,” Melody went on. “It would be very un-blokey—but he misses you.”
“You mean he misses all the excitement,” Kincaid said, making a joke, because it was one thing to miss your sergeant but entirely another to admit it.
He considered a moment. He’d told Melody only what he’d told the rest of the team. But who could he trust if not her? “I saw Doug last night,” he said. “He came to the station after he left you at A-and-E.” Lowering his voice, he went on to tell her about the digging Doug had done for him on the victim, Ryan Marsh, and the suspicion they’d begun to form, especially after today’s postmortem.
Melody stared at him, eyes wide. “Undercov—” She clamped her mouth shut for a moment, then said succinctly, “Shit.”
“Yeah. My thoughts exactly. Matthew Quinn meets mysterious stranger at a protest. The stranger gives his name as Ryan Marsh, and apparently has street—or group—cred for having been involved in protests. After a few more casual interactions, Ryan Marsh insinuates himself into Matthew Quinn’s little group, eventually sleeping in the flat at least part-time. When Quinn acquires a smoke bomb—or what is supposedly a smoke bomb—and wants to use it in a protest, Marsh says he’ll do it, although there is some disagreement in their stories about whether the smoke bomb was Quinn’s idea or Marsh’s. If he gets arrested, Marsh tells them, he already has a record from previous protests. The others can stay clean.
“Except there is no record. There are no arrests. No phone, no driving license, no national insurance, no credit cards.”
“The name isn’t uncommon.”
“No. But Doug is thorough and he ruled out other possible matches, as did my case manager, Simon Gikas. And why would Ryan Marsh go to the trouble to make certain he never left anything of himself behind? Not just yesterday—that might make sense if he meant to commit suicide—but every time he left the flat?”
Melody shrugged Andy’s big coat a little tighter, even though it was warm in Kincaid’s office. “Why would anyone bother with Quinn’s little group? Who would bother? If it was Counter Terrorism, SO15 wouldn’t have turned it over. Vice?”
“With no evidence of drugs, other than a little personal use? Or gambling. Or prostitution. Even if Matthew Quinn was pimping the girls—or the boys—it would be small potatoes.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Melody agreed, frowning. “But . . .” She sat forward, a little more color in her cheeks. “I have an idea. Can you send me the photos of the group?”
“Yes, but—”
“Let me do a little digging in the Chronicle photo files. Not for Ryan Marsh specifically, but for anything Matthew Quinn or his group might have been involved in. You say they were protesting Crossrail tunneling and damage to London’s historical sites. If they got themselves into any photos, I’ll bet I can find them, and it’s possible Marsh might have been photographed with the rest of the group.”
Kincaid pushed the prints on his desk into a neat stack, thinking about the individuals he’d interviewed. “They may not be willing to identify him. No one picked him out from the CCTV shots we showed them this morning. There’s something going on in the group dynamic that I don’t understand.”
“Is there someone else who could?”
He looked up at her, an idea dawning. Medhi Atias, the chicken shop proprietor, who saw them all come and go. “Yes. Yes, I think there might be.”
“Great.” Melody started to stand. “I’ll—”
“Can you do this without anyone at the paper knowing what you’re up to?”
She nodded. “I’m sure I can. I can access the files from my laptop.”
“And don’t talk to anyone about it except Doug. Not even Andy.”
“But— You don’t mean I shouldn’t speak to Gemma—”
“No, of course I didn’t mean Gemma. Although I haven’t had a chance to talk to her since last night, so I’ll need to fill her in.” And, he thought, given that Melody was Gemma’s officer, as well as her friend, Gemma might not be too happy at his pulling Melody away from her duties and into the fray of this case. But he needed help, and he didn’t want to go through official channels until he had some idea of what he was dealing with.
“All right,” he said. “Just be careful. And look after yourself, will you?”
He had just seen Melody out when his office line rang again. “Bloody hell,” he muttered as he hurried back to his desk to pick it up, thinking it was his chief superintendent—if not the AC Crime himself—ringing to tell him he’d made a balls-up of the press conference and demanding a progress report.
But it was the desk sergeant again, sounding apologetic.
“Sorry, sir, but there’s a young woman here. She’s that upset. She says she saw you on the telly—on the midday news—and she insists it’s you she wants to speak to. She says her boyfriend’s been missing since that protest yesterday and she’s worried something’s happened to him.”