In 1857 Barlow . . . was retained by the Midland Railway as its new consulting engineer after the retirement of George Stephenson. His major commission from the Midland came with the company’s extension from Bedford into London. Starting in 1862, the extension gave them independent access to London for the first time. Barlow was responsible for the arrangement of St Pancras station, the company’s own terminus on Euston Road. This included the station’s magnificent train shed roof; at 240ft, it was at the time of construction the largest in the world.
—networkrail.co.uk
/VirtualArchive/WH-Barlow
With the judicious use of a few tablets of his stash of over-the-counter codeine and ibuprofen—he’d never link himself to a prescription—he’d managed to get moving, build up the fire, and make himself a hot meal and a hot drink. When he’d cleaned his cooking gear, he organized his campsite a bit better, setting up another windbreak. Thank God the rain had stopped for the moment. In the morning, he could begin filtering water from the river, and if he was lucky, perhaps catch some fish for breakfast. One task at a time. He couldn’t think past that. Not yet.
When he’d finished chores and banked the fire, he’d settled himself on his camp stool and dug another treasure from one of the cache tubes—a glass-lined flask filled with very good whisky. It was the last of a bottle of Balvenie, his favorite handcrafted, single-barrel Speyside Scotch. Wren had given it to him as a surprise, bought with money she’d saved up from doing odd jobs. He’d protested—she never bought anything for herself, wearing the other girls’ castoffs, but she’d looked so crushed that he’d relented, but only on the condition that she share it.
Wren shied away from both drink and drugs, but she had enjoyed the whisky in very small nips.
They had, in fact, drunk it here. She was the only person he’d ever brought to the island, and only once, when he’d dared to take the Ford out of the lockup for a few days. He’d made an excuse to the group—protest business—and had picked Wren up well away from the flat. The others were used to her coming and going, and he’d hoped that their simultaneous absence wouldn’t attract attention.
It had been autumn, when the trees were just beginning to show their brilliant color and the nights were turning crisp. She had been enchanted with everything—the canoe, the river, the woods, the little shelter, the fire, the brilliance of the stars. That night he had taken fresh food, steaks, and jacket potatoes, to roast in the embers. Everything had been as new to her as if she were a child.
He sipped again at the whisky, lost in memory.
Wren. The girl from nowhere. Too thin, although they didn’t suffer lack in the flat in the Caledonian Road. With her wispy brown hair that never stayed in place and eyes the color of dark honey, she did make him think of a small brown bird. Her movements were quick, too, and often eerily quiet. When he’d asked her, early on, if that was her real name, she’d just smiled and said, “I was given it,” leaving him to wonder what she meant.
She never talked about herself. Not that everyone in the Caledonian Road gave out a potted history—and even if they did, it didn’t mean it was true—but Wren said less than anyone else. But the rest shed clues just as they shed skin and hair, unconsciously. A word here, a word there, a reference to a mother or a father or a sister or something that had happened at school. But not Wren.
He started to watch her, first with a copper’s curiosity, because she was a challenge, a puzzle to be solved. She was a Londoner, he was sure of that from her accent, and he guessed south rather than north. Middle class. But then they were mostly a middle-class bunch, living in pseudosqualor, and he thought that any of them could have gone home to beds more comfortable than sleeping bags on the flat’s old board floors. Except Wren.
And then he began to watch not just out of idle curiosity, but because he realized he liked her. They all had motives, this bunch, they always did. Rebellion, idealism, a need to be different, a need to be noticed. But Wren, Wren simply was. He’d never known anyone who lived in the moment the way she did, and with such innocent delight.
By that autumn, he’d realized that he more than liked her. He loved his wife, of course he loved his wife, they’d been together since just out of school. But this, this was something he’d never felt for anyone. And he’d known that the line, once crossed, could never be erased, but he hadn’t been able to help himself.
The night he’d brought her here had been the first time they’d slept together. He’d trembled with terror and desire, afraid to touch her, afraid she would reject him. And then, when she’d welcomed him as though it was the most natural thing in the world, he’d been so afraid he would hurt her. She seemed so fragile—and yet he knew she’d survived life on the streets, and better than he might have done.
Yet he had broken her in the end, hadn’t he? Why else would she have done what she did at New Year’s? Had she sensed that he’d compromised himself to protect her and to protect his family?
And in the end he had broken himself.
Having seen Doug and Melody off in different directions, Kincaid hesitated outside the café. Melody had sent him the most recent photo of Ryan Marlowe, the one that showed the girl with the wispy hair.
Should he check in at the station, follow up on Sidana’s probable confirmation of the victim?
No, he would let Sidana do her job without his interference. He had other fish to fry, and he needed time to think before he spoke to any of the Holborn team. Turning away from the station, he turned up his coat collar and hoped the rain would hold off for half an hour.
At the top of Lamb’s Conduit Street, he turned right and cut over to Gray’s Inn Road, continuing northwards. The wind stung his cheeks and whipped at his hair—he hoped it might clear his mind. Was he being an ass by not sharing what he suspected about Ryan Marsh with his team and with Nick Callery at SO15? He’d never been one for paranoia, but ever since the end of the case in Henley last autumn, nothing had seemed right. Not Gemma’s promotion. Not his transfer. And especially not the absence and continued silence of his former boss, Chief Superintendent Denis Childs.
Denis Childs had never been an easy man to read, but Kincaid had always liked and trusted him. He still trusted him, even though he knew Childs had manipulated him in the business over former Deputy Assistant Commissioner Angus Craig. He also knew that Childs had known more about what was going on in the Met than he had told Kincaid, but who had he been protecting? Himself? Kincaid? Or someone else?
And now Childs had quite literally dropped off the map, so Kincaid couldn’t attempt to get at the truth, and he was worried that there was more to Childs’s absence than his sister’s having been injured in Singapore.
Nor was he sure how much he could tell Gemma about his misgivings, because he hadn’t told her he suspected her promotion was meant as a sweetener to keep him from making trouble.
There was no reason any of that should influence his actions in this case. Except that he had the same sense of unseen things moving beneath dark waters, and it gave him that same itch between the shoulder blades.
Turning into the Caldedonian Road, he dodged slush thrown up by a passing car and concentrated on paying attention to his surroundings. Going northeast from King’s Cross, the road seemed drearier than ever beneath the mass of dark clouds building to the north. It couldn’t last, wouldn’t last—the high-rises and hotels and office blocks would go in, and people like Medhi Atias would be forced out. He hoped that at least the best of the Georgian buildings would be saved, even if no one except the very rich could afford to live in them. In fact, he realized he felt considerable sympathy with at least some of Matthew Quinn’s agenda.
He’d reached Quinn’s flat. There was no sign of activity to be seen in the windows, and as he gazed up at the peeling window frames, he found himself thinking that a little money, at least, wouldn’t be amiss.
The chicken shop beckoned. He pushed open the door and stepped into warmth, steam, and the smell of cooking bacon.
Medhi Atias looked up from his counter and smiled. “Mr. Kincaid. Have you come for another bacon butty?”
“Unfortunately, no. I’ve already eaten, and I’m afraid it wasn’t up to your standards.”
Atias clicked his tongue in disapproval. “You should have come here first. But never mind. What can I do for you now?”
“Some of your wonderful coffee for starters.”
Kincaid waited until Atias had given him a steaming cup, then handed across his phone with the photo Melody had sent him up on the screen. “The man—do you know him?” he asked.
All the jovial expression drained from Atias’s round face. He stared at the screen a moment longer, then handed the phone back to Kincaid. “That is Ryan. Is he—have you—” Atias shook his head.
“We don’t think it was Ryan who died at St. Pancras. But we can’t find him. Do you have any idea where he might be?”
“Who, then? Who was it who died?” asked Atias, without answering Kincaid’s question.
“We’re still working on identification. But we think it may have been a young man named Paul Cole.”
Atias looked at him blankly. “That name means nothing to me.”
Kincaid pulled up the photo of Paul Cole on his phone and handed it across again.
“That one?” said Atias, frowning as he returned the phone. “Why would he do such a thing?”
“You know him, then?”
“He came in here, sometimes with the others, sometimes on his own. Never a polite word. And complained. This, that, the next thing. Coffee too hot, coffee not hot enough. Chicken too cooked, not enough chips. Pah,” he added on a breath of disgust. “Not that I would have wished him ill, you understand.”
“No, of course not. One more thing.” Kincaid scrolled back to the photo of Ryan. “The girl beside Ryan. Do you know her?”
Atias looked again, squinting as if he might be a bit nearsighted. “I saw her sometimes, coming and going from the flat. A few times she came in with Ryan.”
“You don’t know her name?”
“No. She was very quiet. But she smiled.” Atias paused and gave his counter another wipe with his ever-present tea towel. “As if she really meant it. Really saw you. Do you know what I mean, Mr. Kincaid?”
“I think I do, yes.” Kincaid finished his coffee. “Thank you, Mr. Atias.”
“Medhi, please.”
“Medhi, then. You’ve been very helpful. You will keep this in confidence?”
“Of course. I know how to keep a secret, Mr. Kincaid.”
When Kincaid pushed the bell for the top flat, the street door buzzed open before he could identify himself. He climbed the stairs and found Iris waiting at the open door to the flat.
“We saw you,” she said, and he couldn’t tell if her tone was accusatory or frightened. “I helped you. And then you put us all in jail.”
Accusatory, then. “I’m sorry, Iris.” He went for conciliatory. “You know what happened was very serious. We had no choice.”
She stepped back to let him in, but her expression didn’t soften.
They were all there. The television was turned on—one of the morning shows on ITV—the sound muted. Trish and Dean stood in the kitchenette, and as Kincaid glanced at them, toast popped up in the toaster. The smell of warm toast filled the room.
Matthew Quinn sat next to Lee on the sofa, a laptop open on the table between them. The computer must be new, Kincaid thought, or one that had not been in the flat at the time of the search.
The sofa was low and Quinn looked slightly spiderlike, his long legs folded so that his knees were almost on a level with his ears, his hands dangling between them. Kincaid had to remind himself that there was nothing absurd about him.
Cam Chen stood in the bedroom doorway, toweling her damp black hair. She wore jeans and a jumper, but her feet were bare. Kincaid thought he caught the scent of bath salts.
What did they do all day? he wondered. The six of them, in this small, Spartan space, if they didn’t go to jobs or classes? He thought it was an environment in which small slights could fester into very large grudges. Grievances large enough, perhaps, to precipitate a murder?
Quinn reached out and snapped the laptop shut. “What do you want with us now?” he asked. “We’ve told you everything we know.”
No one asked Kincaid to sit, and the toast stood in the toaster, growing cold. “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you,” Kincaid said, watching them.
It was Cam who spoke first. She’d put one hand on the doorjamb and clutched the towel to her chest with the other. “You’re sure it’s Ryan?” Her voice shook. “Ryan’s really dead?”
Instead of answering, Kincaid said, “Why did none of you tell me about Paul Cole?”
Six blank faces looked back at him.
Dean recovered first. “Why should we have? He’s a wanker.”
“Because he was here. Because he knew about the protest and the smoke bomb. Because he argued with Matthew over being allowed to set off the smoke bomb.”
“I’d never have let him do that,” protested Matthew. “He didn’t really care about the cause. He just wanted to make himself seem important. He’d probably have—” His mouth dropped open as realization sunk in. “You’re freaking kidding me.”
“I’m afraid not. We believe we’ve identified the victim as Paul Cole.”
“Oh, dear God,” whispered Cam. “You’re telling us it was Paul? Paul is dead? Not Ryan?”
Iris sank down on the floor beside the sofa, put a hand to her mouth, and sobbed. Whether it was with relief or grief, Kincaid couldn’t tell.
Matthew shook his head. “That’s just not bloody possible. I gave the smoke bomb to Ryan.”
“Would Ryan have given it to Paul?”
“No way.”
“He might have,” said Cam, frowning. She came all the way into the room and sat on the arm of the sofa beside Lee, still hugging the towel to her. “Paul idolized Ryan. He followed him around like a puppy. I think Ryan felt sorry for—”
“So what if Ryan did give it to him?” broke in Matthew. “I keep telling you. It was a smoke bomb. Not a bloody grenade.”
“So you say,” Kincaid said “Let’s agree for the moment that Matthew gave Ryan a smoke bomb. And that Ryan told Paul he could set it off. But what if Ryan gave Paul the grenade instead of the smoke bomb?”
They all stared at him as if he’d lost his mind.
“Why?” said Matthew. “Why would Ryan do that?”
“I can think of lots of reasons. Maybe Paul knew something about Ryan that Ryan wanted kept secret, for starters.” Kincaid propped himself against the radiator and folded his arms. “Why don’t you begin by telling me what you know about Ryan Marsh.” He wanted to see if the others agreed with what Cam had told him.
“We just started seeing him around,” volunteered Iris, still sniffing. “It was in the summer, I think. He was interested in what we were doing,” she added with a note of pride. “After a while, he stayed.”
“Do you know anything else about him? Where he came from? Where he might be now?”
They shook their heads in unison. Trish spoke up. “He never talked about himself. He just . . . listened. He made everyone feel . . . important. Special.”
Kincaid saw Matthew flinch. He suspected Matthew didn’t like the idea that he needed anyone else to make him feel important.
“Then tell me about Wren,” he said.
This time the blank looks held apprehension. Cam started to speak, then looked away.
“Why do you want to know about Wren?” Matthew asked. “She was just a homeless girl. She stayed with us for a while. I used to see her outside King’s Cross. I’d give her food sometimes. And then one day I could see she was really ill. A bad cough. She needed a place to stay while she got well.”
“So you took her in. And then she just left? Sounds a bit ungrateful,” Kincaid prompted.
Again, the covert glances. “Yeah,” said Matthew. “Maybe she found greener pastures.”
“Meaning?”
Matthew shrugged. “We gave her food and a place to stay. Maybe she found something better.”
“When did she leave?”
“I don’t remember. Somewhere around the New Year.”
“Without telling you goodbye or where she was going?”
Matthew shrugged. “We’re a free community.”
Right, Kincaid thought, a free community where Matthew Quinn paid the bills and set the rules. “Could Ryan have had something to do with Wren leaving?” he asked.
“No,” said Cam. “He was gutted.” Matthew shot her a glance that could have curdled milk. “I mean, we were all gutted,” Cam amended. “We liked her.”
“Why are you asking about her when Paul is dead?” Iris pulled herself up by the arm of the sofa. “Why isn’t anyone talking about Paul?” Her face was tear streaked, but her voice was ferocious. “You are bastards, all of you. Doesn’t he deserve something?”
“Tell me about Paul,” Kincaid said. “Why was he so determined to carry the smoke bomb?”
There were more glances, then Cam spoke. “Maybe Ariel had been paying a little too much attention to Ryan.”
“Was there something going on between Ariel and Ryan?”
“No.” Cam scowled at him. “No way. Not on Ryan’s part, anyway.”
“Why didn’t any of you tell us that Paul and Ariel had been here that morning? You didn’t notice they didn’t come to the protest?” Kincaid shifted his position slightly, partly to unsettle them, partly because he kept hoping he’d see something in the flat that seemed out of place or catch an unschooled expression.
It was Lee Sutton who shrugged and answered. “We just figured Paul had gone off in a sulk because he didn’t get his way. And that Ariel didn’t come because Paul didn’t. After all, it’s not like they lived here.”
Matthew added, with another shrug, “They weren’t really part of the group.”
“Even though most of you came together through a connection with Ariel’s father?”
“Professor Ellis may have opened our eyes, but he has nothing to do with who we are now.” Matthew would not cede credit gracefully.
“Does Ariel know?” asked Cam. “About Paul?”
“We haven’t informed her that we believe we have a positive ID, no. But it was Ariel who came to us and reported Paul missing. She said they’d had a row the morning of the protest and that she was worried about him.”
“They did have a row,” Cam said slowly. “They were arguing when they left the flat. Ariel said he was making an arse of himself over the smoke thing.”
“And they left before anyone else?”
“Ages earlier,” put in Iris. “Paul was in a right huff.”
“What about Ryan? When did he leave?”
Cam frowned. “Midday, maybe. We’d agreed that everyone except Ryan would meet up outside the Marks and Spencer food store in the St. Pancras arcade. Ryan would already be in place.”
“So you have no idea where Ryan was between the time he left the flat and the demonstration?” Kincaid didn’t tell them that he knew Ryan had been in the station when the grenade went off.
“No,” said Cam. “We never knew where Ryan went when he left here.”
“Did anyone see him at the demonstration?” Kincaid looked at each of them in turn. They all shook their heads.
“What about Paul?” That question got the same response. “So Paul and Ryan could have met up anytime later that morning, or that afternoon?”
“Well, I suppose they could,” put in Dean from his spot by the toaster. “But . . . if they did, they didn’t plan it here.”
“They both had phones,” said Cam. “They could have texted and met up anywhere.”
“Matthew, when exactly did you give Ryan the smoke bomb?” Kincaid asked.
“Just before he left. Like Cam said, it was before midday. I started to explain to him how it worked, but he just clapped me on the back and told me not to worry, he bloody well knew how to do it.” Matthew sounded aggrieved.
“So he didn’t seem worried or upset?”
“No.”
“What about Paul? Had he been behaving oddly recently?”
“Other than being pissed off at Ariel, no,” said Cam.
“Do you know why they weren’t getting along?”
“No. They didn’t live here, like Lee said. It wasn’t our business.” Cam’s answer was a little too vehement.
“Do you think Paul was so upset that morning that he would have harmed himself?”
Cam stared at him. “You’re suggesting that Paul committed suicide? Like that? That’s horrible. And Paul would have run home to Mummy if he stubbed his toe. I can’t believe he would ever have deliberately hurt himself.”
“Give me another explanation, then.” Kincaid moved closer to the group, crowding their space. “Did Ryan agree to let him have the smoke bomb and give him a grenade instead? Or did someone who thought Ryan was going to set off the smoke bomb switch it with a grenade?”
There was a stunned silence while they took this in.
Cam was the one to break it. “You’re saying that either Ryan meant to kill Paul or someone meant to kill Ryan?” She stood up and started to pace, her damp towel forgotten on the floor. “I don’t believe it. That’s just mad.”
“But Paul is dead,” Kincaid said.
“And Ryan is missing.” Iris’s voice was barely a whisper. “If Ryan is alive, why didn’t he come back?”
Jasmine Sidana had sent Kincaid the most definitive news of the case so far, and his response had been a text that said merely, “Carry on.”
Well, she had done that. She’d arranged for the crime scene techs to search both Paul Cole’s room at university and his bedroom in his parents’ house. They would be looking for any evidence that tied him to the grenade, anything that intimated he’d been contemplating suicide, and they would, of course, be gathering DNA samples from his personal belongings so that the lab could get a definitive match with the DNA recovered from the corpse.
She had also made arrangements for a family liaison officer to meet with Paul Cole’s parents at their home. Unable to decide whether a male or a female officer would suit them better, she’d left it to the rota. She didn’t think a motherly touch would be appreciated by either of the Coles, but she thought Mrs. Cole could use some support, as it was unlikely she’d be getting any from her husband.
When she arrived back at Holborn Police Station, there was no sign of Kincaid.
“Has he been in at all today?” she asked Simon Gikas.
Simon looked up from his computer. “He stuck his nose in for about five minutes first thing this morning.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“Not a word.”
What the hell was he up to? Jasmine thought, slamming her bag down on her desk. “He’s not a bloody cowboy,” she muttered, then gaped, shocked by her own profanity. Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid was driving her to distraction.
Melody left the clinic at University College Hospital feeling much lighter than when she’d gone in. They had poked, prodded, and pricked her, checked her blood oxygen level and her breathing. Then, although they wanted her to come in for one more blood test, they had pronounced her fit for work as long as she didn’t overdo things. She’d smothered a grin, wondering if very enthusiastic sex in the middle of the night counted as overdoing things, but didn’t ask.
“You’re very lucky,” the doctor had told her as she signed her release form. “If you’d breathed enough of the phosphorus, your lungs and your organ function could have been permanently compromised.”
The comment was meant to be kind, but it sent Melody right back to worrying about Tam. And to worrying about the man they now thought was Ryan Marsh.
How much smoke had he breathed in the railway station? Had he touched the victim? She couldn’t remember now. Everything was such a blur. She kept replaying it in her head, trying to see him more clearly through the smoke and her own panic.
What had happened to him? Was he getting any treatment for smoke inhalation or injuries?
Standing outside the hospital, she breathed in the wind-borne petrol fumes from Euston Road, and hesitated. She’d left her car at Andy’s. From here, she could take the tube home, shower, change, and take the tube to work at Brixton.
That was what she should do. But she couldn’t stop wondering if there was something else she could do to help Duncan, something she’d missed. Or if she could help Doug trace Ryan Marlowe/Marsh.
Every time she closed her eyes she saw the anguish on his face as he looked down at Paul Cole’s charred body. Where had he gone? Why had he run? Why did she feel such a connection to this man?
Her phone rang, making her jump. She fished it from the pocket of Andy’s peacoat, expecting it to be him.
But it was Gemma, who said without preamble, “Can you come in? I arrested Dillon Underwood when he showed up for work this morning. I’ve put him in a holding cell while we execute the search warrant for his flat. I’d like you to be there, if you’re up to it.”