Chapter Twenty

When Kate arrived in the Rowlands’ neighborhood, panda cars encircled the house. The constabulary response was greater than the Comfrey murder had received – even the media vanguard had been driven out of filming range. Kate herself was obliged to park two streets down the block, then hoof it up to the Rowlands’ house. She was also compelled to show her warrant card time and again, first to one constable and then to another, as if she was a parasite, intent on feeding off a real life crime scene. It was a very different experience from riding in Hetheridge’s Lexus – halted for no more than a few seconds before the uniforms scrambled to lift away barriers and wave them through. Hetheridge was known on sight; she was forced to prove her identity again and again.

I shouldn’t complain, Kate thought, forcing a smile for the fifth constable who brusquely demanded to see her ID. They’re just preserving the scene for CID, the way they’re charged to do.

Cleared at last, Kate veered toward the house’s side entrance. It was bright with halogen security lights, as well as ever-shifting blue strobes, and guarded by several uniformed officers. There she saw a familiar figure near the rubbish bins, speaking to a tall constable in a flapping black mack.

“Oi! Chief!” she called. “I made it!”

Hetheridge’s head jerked toward her. Attired more casually than she’d ever seen him – black slacks, black polo shirt, and a wool jacket with a miniscule plaid pattern – he looked younger and better rested than when she’d seen him last. He didn’t smile or lift a hand. Instead, he turned back to the tall constable, resuming the conversation.

Kate felt a twinge of worry. This would be awkward, after all. Perhaps she should venture into the house alone? Bhar was probably there, and she could glom onto him for support. Besides, the crime scene awaited, and it would be natural for her – the junior sergeant with everything to prove – to fling herself at the evidence in desperation to make a contribution.

Kate weighed her options. She strode up to Hetheridge and waited at his elbow like a latecomer at a cocktail party, determined to insinuate herself with the best people.

“Excellent custodianship of the scene. Good observations, too. Thank you very much,” Hetheridge concluded, shaking the constable’s hand. The tall young man looked both pleased and embarrassed. Finally, he shot a smile at Kate – a “You’re my witness!” look – before flapping off toward his fellow officers. As the constable passed out of earshot, Hetheridge turned to Kate, his eyes hooded, still unsmiling.

“Sergeant. I appreciate your presence. Are you certain you’re ready to return to duty?”

“Wouldn’t be anywhere else. This isn’t a hot scene, is it?” she asked, guessing why the media had been driven so far back, and why the uniformed response had been so impressive.

“We don’t know,” Hetheridge said. “Burt Rowland burst in just as the first responders assessed the scene. He attacked an officer and had to be physically restrained by two others. He seems genuinely distraught over the death of his wife…”

“But that doesn’t mean he’s not the shooter,” Kate said. “Is he still here?”

“Under arrest, technically,” Hetheridge said. “His hands have been swabbed for gun powder residue, and his shoes and clothing will be taken for analysis as soon as we finish his interrogation. Then we can decide whether to charge him with murder or release him.”

“Blood on his clothing?” Kate asked.

“Lots. Not a splatter pattern, though, to the naked eye. Just a mass of blood absorbed into his coat and shirt when he lifted Ginny’s body and tried to resuscitate her. Some of his own blood, too, from cuts and scrapes when he scuffled with the officers.”

“Has anyone found the weapon?”

“Not yet. But come the dawn, we’ll have constables walk the property from one end to the other and see if it turns up.”

“Witnesses?”

Hetheridge shrugged. “At this point, I’ll refrain from dignifying them with that term. Let’s just say there are dozens of interested parties in the neighborhood queuing up to speak to the police. From what I can tell, they’re mostly supplying complaints about what an unpleasant and inconsiderate neighbor Mrs. Rowland was.”

“Can I see the body before we speak to Burt Rowland?”

“Absolutely.” Opening the side door, Hetheridge held it for Kate until she entered ahead of him. Stepping into the Rowlands’ mud room, half of Kate’s mind inventoried the details of her rapid-fire exchange with Hetheridge while the other half wondered what he was feeling. He had looked and sounded the same, and yet … something was different. Something was missing.

Hetheridge guided Kate through the mud room and kitchen, then down a minimalist corridor, decorated with black and white photos in square black frames. Next came the living room, where Ginny Rowland was sprawled on the floor, about three meters from the foyer. Blood was everywhere – soaking her black dress, her hair, and the shag area rug that had once been white. Blood also pooled on the hardwood floor, congealing in spots, smeared and tracked in others. Large shoe prints were visible, like a sloppy red diagram of a dance routine, as were the doggie prints Bhar had mentioned. A long stream of animal tracks traveled across the cushions of the white sofa, each paw print as red and distinct as a lipstick print.

“Bhar said she was shot in the back,” Kate said, frowning at the position of Ginny’s body. Ginny’s eyes were open, and she lay awkwardly on her side, one arm crumpled beneath her. Her chest was strangely asymmetric – a flat breast on the right, a round breast on the left. After a second, Kate realized that one of the bullets had pierced an implant, which had drained of saline or silicone as Ginny’s body emptied of blood.

“Burt Rowland lifted her up, flipped her over, and tried to perform mouth to mouth, according to the first responders,” Hetheridge sighed. “No photos had been taken, of course. And as you can see from that smear of blood,” he pointed, “Mr. Rowland obviously dragged her at least a meter from her original position. But hopefully the blood spatter team can use that,” he pointed again at a faint red stippling on the sofa, “to determine exactly where she was standing when she was shot.”

Kate nodded, ashamed to admit she was slightly nauseated by the powerful coppery odor. “Think it’s the same killer who did Malcolm Comfrey?”

Hetheridge smiled for the first time, but it was a professional smile, never touching his eyes. “You tell me, Sergeant.”

“Right.” Kate folded her arms across her chest and studied the body. It was cold in the Rowlands’ home, with a steady stream of icy air emitting from some hidden vent. She found herself rocking in an involuntary attempt to warm herself. “The Comfrey murder appears to be a crime of passion, at least to some extent. The degree of rage directed at him was made manifest by killer’s need to not only end his life, but to obliterate him – in that case, by rendering his face unrecognizable. This murder is more like an execution. The killer premeditated the act, came to Ginny Rowland’s home to carry it out, and fired multiple times to make certain she died.”

Hetheridge nodded. “So would you venture to call it a definite execution?”

“No.” Kate continued to rock, hands and face growing colder. “A professional would have shot her in the head. This killer shot Ginny in the back. Several times, yes, but in the back. To me, that means the killer knew Ginny. And even though the perpetrator wanted Ginny dead, he or she wasn’t an experienced enough killer to look her in the eye and shoot her.”

“My conclusions precisely. Thank you, Sergeant. We should proceed to questioning Burt Rowland now…”

“Tony,” Kate interrupted, holding his gaze. Of course, they weren’t alone. There were constables just outside the living room, and sounds from the investigation intruded from every side – harsh male voices, footsteps, creaking floorboards, yappy dogs barking somewhere. But Kate was too at home in CID chaos to feel constrained by it, not even the stink of a fresh corpse. She couldn’t allow this disconnection to persist between her and Hetheridge, not for another moment.

“Sergeant, it’s imperative we continue without delay. I…”

“Tony, this won’t take a minute. I just want to say …”

“Chief Hetheridge?” a uniformed officer asked from the corridor where they’d entered. His tone was apologetic, with an undercurrent of urgency. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but we have a situation outside.”

“What situation?” Hetheridge demanded in that tone of command that came so naturally to him.

“Madge Comfrey and Jules Comfrey tried to gain access to the scene. They claim to be personal friends of the Rowlands and attempted to enter through a neighbor’s back garden. Shall we arrest and hold them, sir?”

“No. This is a bit of a diplomatic situation, I’m afraid. Cut the wrong wire on this particular bomb and Scotland Yard will have another mountain of bad press to overcome. I’ll deal with it. DS Wakefield, I believe DS Bhar is already with Mr. Rowland. Please join him and begin the questioning. I’ll return as soon as I’m able.”

* * *

Burt Rowland was being detained, at least in the formal sense, in the dining room. The officers he had assaulted kept him under a watchful eye, two standing, another sitting on one of the high-backed chairs. All three officers appeared unharmed, except for blood smears on their uniforms, and the suggestion of a bruise forming on one man’s cheek. Rowland, by contrast, sat deflated at the head of the table, shoulders sagging, legs apart, feet pointed in toward one another. His coat and tie had already been taken for the lab – both items, stiff with drying blood, were sealed in large plastic evidence bags. They rested bizarrely on the sideboard, next to the china cups and saucers. Rowland’s shirt, once pastel blue with a narrow stripe, was decorated with dark blots, like a Rorschach print awaiting interpretation.

Bhar stood at the periphery of the room, texting something into his smart phone. He looked cheered to catch sight of Kate, and gave her a wave. Finishing the message, he snapped his phone closed, stowing it in his pocket. Coming up close, he muttered in Kate’s ear: “Did our lord give us permission to start?”

“Yep. Care to do the honors?”

“Burt’s a wee bit hostile toward me just now. Maybe you should try your feminine wiles?”

Nodding, Kate took a deep breath, then started toward Burt. He didn’t look up as she approached, so she pulled out a dining chair, allowing it to drag across the floor. Bhar did the same, also with exaggerated slowness and noise, but Rowland still did not acknowledge their presence. His upper lip was cut and swollen. There was a plug of dried blood in one nostril, and his left eye look pink and puffy.

“Mr. Rowland, I’m DS Kate Wakefield. This is DS Paul Bhar, whom I believe you’ve already met. I’m terribly sorry about everything you’ve suffered tonight, including your injuries.”

“Sod off. Both of you.” Burt said. His deep, resonant voice seemed incongruous coming from his slim, compact frame.

“I’m afraid we can’t just leave you to grieve,” Kate said. “We need to find out what happened to your wife. We …”

“Sod off!” Burt screamed. Flecks of spittle hit Kate in the face, and she saw directly into Rowland’s eyes – bloodshot whites, dilated pupils, and a shine of terror. “You, your pet Paki, these gorillas, the whole lot! I won’t speak to you without my solicitor! I won’t say a goddamn thing!”

Bhar put a hand on Kate’s shoulder. It was easy to interpret his non-verbal suggestion: de-escalate the situation. Leave for awhile, then return, preferably with someone new in tow, like Hetheridge, who Burt might actually consent to talk to.

Wiping her face, Kate studied Burt. The uniformed officers had moved closer, exuding obvious and somewhat overstated menace on Kate’s behalf, but she waved them back. Her instincts told her Burt wouldn’t physically attack her, so she decided to try one more tack.

“Mr. Rowland,” Kate said. “I can’t imagine how you feel right now. I can only guess you wish you could go back in time and protect your wife. And even now, your most powerful impulse must be to protect her, and show loyalty toward her.”

Burt stared at her, still rigid with fury. Slowly, his shoulders relaxed and he nodded, pressing a hand to his mouth.

“Yes,” he said softly, voice ragged. He squeezed his eyes shut, rubbed at them, and met Kate’s gaze with a visible effort. “Yes,” he repeated, stronger.

“But the desire to be loyal, and to keep her secrets, might be the very worst way to help your wife,” Kate said. “Something she shared with you, especially in the last few days, might help us catch the person who did this to her. Please tell us everything. I promise, we have no interest in anything you disclose, except as it pertains to bringing her killer to justice.”

She’d found the right words. Something in Burt’s bearing changed, and though he remained silent for several more seconds, she knew he meant to cooperate, as soon as he mastered his emotions enough to speak.

“Ginny and I have endured some financial setbacks over the past two or three years,” he began at last. “I think she was trying to solve things. She didn’t want me involved. She told me …” He stopped. “For this to make sense, I need to go back. Can I start at the beginning?”

“Please,” Kate said.

“When our problems began,” Rowland said, “I wanted to keep the matter private and solve it by any means necessary – sell our house, downsize our cars and vacations, and so on. Ginny wouldn’t have it. She thought if we gave up the trappings of wealth, and the aura of success – excess, really – we’d never recover our credibility.” Rowland’s eyes cut to Bhar. “You came in this house and called her a whore to her face, and she never blinked. She had tremendous strength. She wasn’t ashamed of anything she’d done to get ahead. The only thing that ever scared her was the notion of sliding backward, back to the life she worked so hard to escape.”

“I can understand that,” Kate said, mostly to redirect Burt’s attention before his hostility toward Bhar derailed the questioning again. “So did Ginny come up with a way to improve your finances?”

“Her first idea was to ask Malcolm for money. This was a few years ago, as I said, before he became so tight-fisted, and we were all great friends. I was against it, nonetheless, but I let her have her head. God knows, I always did. And Malcolm laughed at her. Right in front of me, like he knew I wouldn’t have the nerve to defend her. Malcolm laughed at Ginny and said he never loaned money to his friends, and if anything, she should be paying him to keep her past as an escort under wraps. I wanted to leave then, to walk away and pretend the request never happened, but when Ginny gets angry …” Burt stopped. “When Ginny got angry,” he corrected himself, voice shaking, “there was no stopping her. She told Malcolm she knew a secret about him, one he’d pay dearly to hush up, and it would cost him half a million pounds to seal her lips on the subject.”

“What secret?” Bhar asked, pen poised above his notepad.

Burt cut his eyes back to Bhar as if he’d forgotten his presence. “Jesus. Jesus, this can’t be real. I must be dreaming,” he whispered, pressing his hands to his face. “Can I have a drink? A whiskey?”

“Not yet, I’m afraid,” Kate said. “We can’t allow you to consume alcohol while giving your statement. Besides, it might make your forget something. But as soon as we’re done speaking, you can certainly have a drink. Or we can call a doctor to prescribe you a sedative.”

Burt nodded numbly, gaze drifting toward the arched passage that led from the dining room to the living room, where Ginny Rowland lay.

“Mr. Rowland,” Kate prompted. “Did Malcolm Comfrey pay half a million pounds to silence your wife?”

Burt looked surprised. “What? No – no, of course not. He called her bluff. At first he was angry, and demanded to know what she’d dug up. Then, when she told him, he laughed. Said he wouldn’t be the one to pay the price, and if Ginny wanted to torpedo two or three other lives, she was welcome to do so.”

“What was the secret?” Kate asked.

“One of those things I never would have noticed. But Ginny notices – noticed everything. She could have been a professor at University, if life had been different. She never missed a detail. Ginny and Madge were on some committee or other that was trying to raise awareness about blood donation. Influential donors were supposed to demonstrate how easy and painless giving blood can be. Ginny forced me to agree to giving blood – I’d never done it – and Madge managed to herd in Malcolm and Jules, too.

“I was sick and miserable throughout. Malcolm, Madge, and Jules did better. They were sitting in their lounge chairs, watching their blood slide down tubes and fill up plastic bags, while a nurse made the rounds. She was marking the bags with blood-type stickers. She marked Malcolm and Madge’s, and had just put a sticker on Jules’s bag when Jules asked Malcolm a question. She called him “Daddy,” and the nurse stopped what she was doing. She looked at the sticker, then went and rechecked Malcolm’s bag, and Madge’s. I didn’t notice, but Ginny caught it like one of those cadaver-sniffing dogs.” Burt gave a strained chuckle at his grotesque choice of words. “Ginny actually examined the sticker on each blood bag. It was all she talked about on the way home, how the nurse had looked from Jules to Malcolm, like she wanted to ask a question but thought better of it. Then Ginny got on the Internet and researched blood types and heredity. She woke me up out of a sound sleep to tell me Jules Comfrey couldn’t be Malcolm Comfrey’s daughter. Their blood types made it impossible.”

“How could she be sure of that? Mrs. Rowland wasn’t a doctor,” Bhar said.

“She said it was simple,” Burt replied. “Malcolm was type O, and Madge was type O, but Jules was AB negative. It’s impossible for two type Os to produce an AB negative child. Therefore, either Jules was adopted – and she wasn’t – or she was fathered by someone other than Malcolm.”

As Bhar’s pen flew over the page, Kate considered this. Something was nagging at the back of her mind. Some bit of information that had seemed inconsequential or silly when she received it – like a mild joke, or a weird dream.

“And when Ginny gave this information to Malcolm Comfrey, he laughed and refused to pay her?” Kate asked.

Burt nodded.

“Do you think he already knew?”

“I don’t know. Malcolm always maintained control. Even when he went for the jugular, he kept his voice steady. Kept a bastard smile on his face. All I know is, he told Ginny if she dropped her bombshell, as he put it, it would be Madge and Jules – and maybe the mystery father – who suffered from the revelation. He’d been disappointed in Jules almost since she was born, or so he told us, and the discovery she wasn’t actually his came as a great relief.”

“Burt!” a female voice cried. Jules Comfrey entered, face blotchy and eyes red. “God, Burt, I’m so sorry! I don’t understand why this is happening to us!”

Hetheridge appeared on her heels, with Madge Comfrey just behind him. “I will allow the Comfreys to speak briefly with Mr. Rowland,” he said, addressing Kate, Bhar, and the uniformed officers. “This breach of procedure occurs under my authority. However, I will not allow them to venture any deeper into the crime scene than – Ms. Comfrey!” he snapped, as Jules darted toward Burt Rowland with the clear intention of embracing him. “His clothing is evidence! Do not touch him!”

Jules Comfrey stopped, drawing up just short of Burt. Kate, only a short distance away, studied the younger woman more carefully than ever before. Jules was of middling height, slender, with fine-boned features that had always struck Kate as aristocratic. She had her mother’s thick, dark hair. But her best feature was her long-lashed, finely shaped, ice blue eyes.