Kissed a Sad Goodbye

remembered seeing it in the car park at Heron Quays.
    Kincaid nodded, meeting her eyes. “Careful.”
    They dashed through the pelting rain to the warehouse. The door stood open a few inches. Kincaid eased inside and Gemma followed, coming to a halt beside him in the shadowy interior.
    They heard the voices immediately, coming from the open door of Annabelle and Teresa’s office high above them. Gemma felt Kincaid touch her arm, lightly, then move away towards the staircase. She followed as quietly as she could, cursing the fact that she’d worn slick-soled shoes.
    Halfway up, she found she could distinguish the voices—Lewis’s; Gordon’s; and, though less familiar to her, William’s—if not quite make out the words. Then, as they neared the top, she heard Lewis shout, “Gordon, don’t be a bloody fool! Give it to me.”
    There was the sound of a scuffle, then the smack of something hard hitting the floorboards.
    Gemma skidded to a halt inches from Kincaid and peered through the doorway. Gordon and Lewis Finch were locked together as if frozen in the midst of a dance, Lewis’s hand clamped round Gordon’s wrist, Gordon’s fingers splayed, empty. Their eyes were fixed on the opposite side of the room, where William Hammond stooped and straightened again, a gun in his hand.
    He held it awkwardly, staring at it as if not quite certain what it was. Then he looked up at them, and Gemma saw in his faded blue eyes not surprise, but a grief so bleak it made her bones feel cold.
    He lifted the gun. Before Gemma or Kincaid could react, Lewis shouted, “William, no!” and lunged towards him.
    But William Hammond touched the barrel of the revolver to his temple and pulled the trigger.
     

CHAPTER 16
     
There is a growing movement determined to bring the river back to life.
George Nicholson, from Dockland
     
     
     
    “He loved her,” Gemma said slowly. She sat in Janice’s office at Limehouse Station, drinking revolting coffee from the machine. “Annabelle was the child of his dreams, the ! one who would carry on for him, fulfill his ambitions. How hard it must have been for her, living up to that.” Janice said, “And he couldn’t bear for her to destroy his image of her—”
    “Or his own image. William Hammond spent fifty years living a lie so thoroughly that he even convinced himself.”
    A week had passed, and they were still sorting out the details of the case. Lewis Finch had made a detailed statement, as had Gordon, and it seemed to Gemma that their I shared loss might go a long way towards healing the rift between them.
    “And Lewis?” said Janice. “He was responsible for Edwina Burne-Jones’s and the tutor’s deaths as well. Will he be prosecuted?”
    “Unlikely, I should think. There’s no evidence, except for Lewis’s own statement, and I doubt the Crown Prosecution Service would waste their time.” Softly, Gemma added, “I have a feeling Lewis Finch has paid enough.”
    Janice nodded. “I was wrong about Reg Mortimer,” she said wryly, making a face as she sipped at her coffee. “And it seems I was wrong about George Brent, too. He did know something. When I told him what happened, he remembered that the night Annabelle was killed, he’d stepped outside sometime after midnight to see his lady friend home. He saw a car come slowly up Seyssel Street and turn right into Manchester Road, and he knew the driver’s face—although he’d never actually met him, he’d seen him many times over the years.”
    “William Plammond?”
    “He must have had his car at the warehouse when Annabelle arrived unexpectedly, and that’s the way he would have gone, taking Annabelle’s body to the park. What I don’t understand is why he didn’t turn himself in when he realized he’d killed her.”
    “I suppose even then he couldn’t face the truth of what he’d done to Annabelle—or to Edwina. But it destroyed him.” Gemma thought of the way he had left his daughter’s body, so lovingly arranged... and she thought of Jo Lowell, bereft now of mother, sister, and father, burdened with the terrible knowledge of what her father had done. But she thought Jo, like Annabelle, had taken her strength from their mother, and that she would be all right.
    “There’s one good thing to come out of this, maybe,” Janice said a bit hesitantly. When Gemma looked at her, she went on with a little smile, “George Brent’s son’s been round to see me. He was an old beau, before I met