And Justice There Is None (19 page)

“It always comes back to Otto, doesn’t it?” Gemma glanced at Melody. “Alex, what else did Otto say?”

His stare was defiant. “Otto said Karl would kill me, too, if he found out. But that’s crap, isn’t it?”

“Is that why you went to Sussex?”

“It was Fern’s idea. She meant well, but I feel a fool now for going along with it. As I said, I wasn’t myself.”

“Do you know how your friend Otto comes to know so much about Karl Arrowood? Has he told you?”

“Otto doesn’t talk about himself much. But he’s lived in the neighborhood a long time, knows a lot of people.”

“You don’t know anything about Otto’s dead wife?”

“Dead?” Alex looked puzzled. “No. I just assumed they were divorced or something, I mean, you never know these days, do you?”

“Do you know someone called Marianne Hoffman?”

“Never heard of her. Why? Is she a friend of Otto’s?”

Was it possible, Gemma wondered, that Otto could be the link between the Arrowoods and Hoffman? The café owner knew many
people in the trade, as Alex had pointed out. And he was a powerful man, skilled, she assumed, as were most cooks, with a knife.

“Let’s go back to Friday. You were getting ready for Saturday market. What does that entail?”

“Setting things out in my stall in the arcade, arranging, pricing. I’d been to an estate sale in Sussex, near my aunt’s, so I had a good deal of new stock.”

“And then?”

“I went back to the flat. I’d had a good day, and I wanted to celebrate, so I went to Otto’s for an early dinner.”

“What time was this?”

“About half past six, I think. I really wasn’t paying attention.”

“Was Otto at the café when you arrived?”

“He served me himself.”

“Everything as usual?”

“Of course. Except …” Dunn hesitated, then went on. “We had a little disagreement. I wouldn’t exactly call it an argument.”

“About what?”

“He warned me about Karl. I’d found a lovely piece of porcelain I thought I might sell him, and Otto said not to take Karl for a fool. I didn’t realize until then, you see, that everyone knew about Dawn.” He crumpled the paper cup Melody had given him in his fingers. “How could I possibly have been so flaming stupid?”

K
INCAID LISTENED AS
G
EMMA RELATED HER INTERVIEW WITH
A
LEX
Dunn. He’d picked her up at Notting Hill for a quick run into the City, where they had appointments with Karl Arrowood’s sons. Kincaid had debated surprising them, but decided there was no point in risking possible inconvenience to himself and Gemma. He had no doubt the boys’ mother would have got the wind up them already.

He had arranged to meet the elder son, Richard, in a well-known Fleet Street pub at eleven o’clock, and the younger, Sean, in the same place at half past.

They had no trouble finding a table, as the pub was just gearing
up for its lunchtime business. When Richard Arrowood walked in the door at the stroke of eleven, they recognized him instantly, a pale and less substantial copy of his father.

“Mr. Arrowood,” Kincaid called out.

“What is this about?” Arrowood asked as he sat down, adjusting his perfectly creased trouser leg at the knee. “I don’t have much time.”

“You are surely aware that your stepmother has been murdered? Brutally, I might add.”

“So? What has that to do with me?”

“Did you know Dawn well?” Gemma asked pleasantly, but Kincaid saw the tick in her jaw that meant she was clenching her teeth.

“My father had us round for drinks a few times when they were first married, and once for a meal.
She
didn’t cook, of course, just had something brought in.” From the contempt in Richard Arrowood’s voice, she might have served them fish and chips.

“And your mother cooks, I take it?” Gemma’s smile was vicious.

“My mother has nothing to do with this,” Arrowood retorted.

“I wonder,” Kincaid interposed. “Is there a particular reason why you disliked your stepmother so much? I understood that your mother and father had been divorced for several years before he married Dawn.”

“That didn’t make her any less of a money-grubbing bitch,” said Arrowood, sniffing, and Kincaid revised his estimate of the young man’s character. Not only was Richard Arrowood arrogant, rude, and unpleasant, he was astoundingly stupid.

“I would have thought your father had enough to go round.”

“Not once the fair Dawnie got her paws on it. I had some debts.” The young man’s cheeks flushed with remembered anger. “You know, the sort of thing anyone starting out in the City encounters. But Father wouldn’t lift a finger. He said helping me would threaten Dawn’s security.”

“Does one
encounter
debts, Mr. Arrowood? I always rather thought one acquired them.” Kincaid watched him realize he’d been insulted, and bridle.

“Look here, you can’t speak to me this way—”

“I can, you know. May I remind you that this is a murder inquiry, and that you may be under suspicion?”

“Suspicion? But that’s absurd.” His bravado seemed to evaporate suddenly. “I haven’t seen Dawn in ages—”

“Would you mind telling us where you were last Friday evening?”

“Friday? I—I was at a drinks party. A bloke from work had several of us round to his flat in Borough Market. My brother was there, too.”

“What time was this party?”

“We went straight from work. Half-five, maybe.”

“And how long did you stay?”

“Until a group of us went out to dinner. Around eight, I suppose.”

“And you were there all the time?”

“Of course I was bloody there! Look, you can’t—”

“We’ll need your friend’s name and address. And of course we’ll confirm this with your brother.”

Richard looked from Gemma to Kincaid. His forehead was damp with sweat, and he sniffed again, brushing the back of his hand across his nose. “I don’t think you can speak to me like this without a solicitor,” he said, but without much conviction.

“You are, of course, entitled to a solicitor at any time, Mr. Arrowood. But this is just a friendly conversation, a routine inquiry, and I don’t think you’d want it to look as though you’d something to hide. Just a bit of advice.”

“I—” A look of relief flooded Arrowood’s face, and following his gaze, Kincaid saw that his brother had arrived, a few minutes ahead of schedule. Again, the resemblance to their father was unmistakable, but Sean Arrowood was a bit stockier, a bit darker, and he came to the table with a smile and an outstretched hand.

“I’m Sean Arrowood. I know I’m early, my meeting finished ahead of schedule—is that a problem?” The quick glance he gave his brother showed concern.

“Not at all,” Kincaid reassured him. “We were just finishing up with your brother.” He nodded at Richard in dismissal, and the elder
Arrowood made his escape with a look of relief. “Perhaps you can confirm some things for us,” Kincaid continued to Sean. “I understand you were not on the best of terms with your stepmother?”

Sean looked pained. “That’s not exactly true. You have to understand that we didn’t dislike Dawn—and that we were very distressed to hear what had happened to her—but her marriage to our dad made things particularly … difficult … with our mother. She worries about our futures, although we’ve told her often enough that she needn’t. And Mother would have interpreted any friendliness towards Dawn on our part as … disloyal.”

“She did seem to have a bee in her bonnet,” Gemma said, and she and Sean shared a small conspiratorial smile. “When did you see Dawn last?”

“Um, I saw her quite recently, in fact, a few weeks ago. She rang and asked me to meet her for a coffee.”

“Was this usual?”

“No,” Sean admitted. “I was a bit taken aback, but curious.”

“She asked to see only you? Not you and Richard?”

“Dawn and I got on better. And my brother sometimes has a tendency to … overreact.”

“I take it this was a delicate matter?”

“She was concerned that Richard and I might think she had encouraged our father to treat us unfairly.”

“Did she tell you that Karl meant to cut you and Richard out of his will?”

Sean met her eyes steadily. “Apparently, Richard had been a bit intemperate in his demands, and Father was angry. I can’t say I blame him.”

“And did you tell your brother what your father meant to do?”

“I didn’t need to. Father had made his intentions quite clear, the last time Richard saw him.”

“W
HAT
I
DON’T UNDERSTAND
,”
SAID
G
EMMA, WHEN THEY WERE BACK
in the car, “is why Dawn would have wanted to intervene on Richard
and Sean’s behalf. They had treated her badly—or at least Richard had—Why not just say ‘to hell with them’?”

“Perhaps it wasn’t so much a desire to benefit them as to ease her own conscience—”

“She couldn’t deal with Karl leaving her all his money when she knew she was betraying him?” Gemma considered the idea. “But if she meant to leave him, he’d have changed the will back in his sons’ favor anyway—”

“We don’t know that she meant to leave him,” Kincaid interrupted. “But our immediate concern is Richard Arrowood. If he knew his father meant to change his will, he had a good motive for killing Dawn. We need to check out that alibi.” Opening his phone, he dialed Sean and Richard Arrowood’s friend Charles Dodd.

After a moment’s conversation, he rang off and told Gemma, “He’s out of the office on business all afternoon, according to his assistant. We’ll have to try him at home later on. Um, about this lunchtime meeting you’ve got … I could come with you.”

“To see Bernard?” She didn’t know whether to be touched or aggravated at the note of concern in his voice. “He’s expecting only me, and I don’t want to take a chance on scaring him off. I’ll be fine. Melody says the man’s a dreadful lecher, but harmless—and after Alex Dunn’s landlord, a bit of straightforward lechery sounds like good, clean fun.”

S
HE SPOTTED HIM THE MOMENT SHE WALKED INTO THE
L
ADBROKE
Arms. He sat in a corner, wearing a cap that she guessed had once been houndstooth but was now merely a mottled gray, his brown, wizened face half concealed by his pint glass. Drawing nearer, she saw that his attire was completed by a thin, grease-spotted tie and an ancient tweed jacket. She slid onto the bench, sitting no nearer to him than absolutely necessary for conversation. If his clothing was any indication, Melody had been correct about his personal hygiene.

“You must be Bernard. I’m Inspector James.” She started to show her warrant card but he waved it away.

“No need to flash that thing about in here, luv. I’ll take your word for it.” He looked her up and down. “Young Melody said you was a good looker, and you’ve not proved her wrong.”

Gemma nodded at his glass, ignoring the compliment. “Can I get you another?”

“I wouldn’t mind, luv, wouldn’t mind a bit.” He lifted the glass to his lips and reduced the level by several inches.

She fetched another pint from the bar, adding an orange juice for herself. When she returned to the table Bernard took a suspicious sniff in the direction of her glass.

“Not some kind of a teetotaler, are you?” he asked.

“Oh, no, no. It’s just that I have to go back to the station, and they frown on that sort of thing. No amount of peppermint can get you past our desk sergeant.”

“Ah.” Bernard seemed mollified. “Bet I could teach you a thing or two.”

“Another day?” Gemma awarded him her most winning smile. “Bernard, Constable Talbot said you knew a bit about Otto Popov.”

“I might.” He looked pointedly at her handbag. “Young Melody said as how you might be inclined to make it worth my while.”

Gemma opened her wallet and removed a ten-pound note. Bernard’s gaze didn’t waver. After a moment she sighed and pulled out another ten. “That’s all the department’s resources will allow, I’m afraid.”

His hand moved and the bills disappeared faster than Gemma’s eye could follow. “Right,” he said. “I suppose that’s enough to be going on with. Now, where were we?” He settled himself more comfortably, cradling his glass. “You want to know about Otto, you have to go back a ways, you have to know how things fit together. You see, I’ve been round these parts a long time, though I was born in Whitechapel. Jack the Ripper territory, that. Makes yer think, don’t it, what with this murder—”

“That’s an old chestnut, Bernard. It has nothing to do with this.”

“All right, all right, don’t get yer dander up.” He cackled, then siphoned another inch off his pint.

Gemma sighed again, sure that he meant to get his beer’s worth
out of this discussion—although how his shriveled little body could hold more than a pint or two, she couldn’t imagine.

“So what brought you to Notting Hill?” she asked.

“It was the business, you see. I started out doing little odd jobs for dealers in Bermondsey, and during the course of things I got to know folks in Notting Hill. Now
this”
—he made an expansive gesture—“was the place to be in the sixties, luv. The antiques trade was just beginning to boom—”

“But we’re not talking about the sixties.” Gemma was determined to nip extended reminiscence in the bud. “Otto can’t have been more than a child.”

“Big fer his age, weren’t he? Sixteen, seventeen, maybe, old enough to know better. But the point is, luv, that’s where it starts. Otto’s family was right off the boat from Russia, not a word of English. So they move into a street with some other Russian families, and they keep themselves to themselves. As did the Poles, and the Germans, and the Jews. They all had their own shops, their own cafés, and nobody mixes with anybody else.

“Until the blacks come along, late fifties, early sixties. And all of a sudden the Poles and the Germans and the Russians find something in common, and it’s the blacks that nobody else mixes with.” He fixed Gemma with beady eyes that were surprisingly sharp and blue. “A combustible situation, you might say. Then along comes young Karl Arrowood—”

“Arrowood? I thought we were talking about Otto.”

“I’ll be getting to that. Where’s yer patience, luv? As I were saying, along comes Karl Arrowood. Now he’s a few years older than Otto, an up-and-coming boyo with a finger in more than one pie, and he figures that Otto’s Russian relatives maybe have some connections he needs, so he hires him.”