Free Where Memories Lie by Deborah Crombie Page A

don’t work—”
    “Kit, stop. You’re jumping the gun here.” Kincaid turned and grasped his son’s shoulders. “We don’t know how far advanced the cancer is. And Gran’s never been ill. That must give her a better chance.”
    “But if the treatments don’t work, the best option for bone marrow replacement is from a sibling, and Gran doesn’t have brothers or sisters.”
    Kincaid saw the unvoiced echo in his son’s eyes. And neither do I .
    Damn and blast the Internet. Sometimes it was a bigger curse than a blessing, especially with a bright and vulnerable child. Did Kit feel they had failed him by not providing him with a half brother or sister? Kincaid tried to shrug off the thought. That was a subject that had been dropped the last few months, and it had eased a tension in his relationship with Gemma.
    He heard Toby singing to himself as he thumped back down the stairs, dragging his backpack behind him. To Kit, he said, “Listen, sport, we’re all going to be late. We’ll talk more tonight.” Then, as adistraction, he added, “Did Gemma tell you about Erika’s long-lost brooch turning up for auction?”
    “Yeah.” Kit’s expression lightened. “Cool. Except Gemma said she seemed upset. Maybe I could stop by and see her after school?”
     
    “I think we’ve got a live one, guv,” the desk sergeant at Chelsea Station told Hoxley when he walked into reception.
    “Live what?” asked Hoxley, amused. Nearing retirement, Ben Watson was bald as a billiard ball, heavyset, and little inclined to stir himself except for the walk from desk to pub, but he kept an avuncular finger on the pulse of everything that went on in the station. He was also inordinately fond of fishing analogies, although Hoxley doubted he’d ever held a fishing rod in his life.
    “Your unidentified corpus. Notting Hill rang. They’ve a woman reported her husband missing. Fits the description.”
    Hoxley gave him his full attention. “Address?”
    “They’ve kept her at the station. Told them you’d be there soonest.”
    Wincing, Hoxley muttered, “Damn.” Delivering bad news was difficult enough in the familiar environment of the home, and he didn’t look forward to questioning a bereaved widow in a sterile interview room. But if indeed this was his victim’s wife, she would be prepared for the worst, and he would be able to put a name, and a life, to the man he had left on the postmortem table.
     
    Once more outside St. Paul’s tube station, Gemma hesitated. She could go straight on to work, or she could change at Notting Hill for South Kensington and make the inquiry at Harrowby’s auction house she’d promised Erika. She felt frustrated and restless, this morning’s visit to hospital having proved as fruitless as the previous evening’s. Her mum had been out of the ward, having a bone marrow biopsy, the charge nurse had revealed reluctantly, as if imparting state secrets. And no, she didn’t know how long it would take, and there was a good possibility the patient would go to X-ray and sonography as well.
    “The patient is my mother,” Gemma had snapped. The impersonalization of bureaucracy-speak irritated her just as much in the hospital as it did in the police station. But her little outburst did her no good, and after an hour’s wait she gave up the vigil. Cyn would be in later in the morning, and she would have to depend on her sister for news.
    Now, however, her patience frayed, she found herself particularly unwilling to sit in her cramped office, dealing with an onslaught of petty complaints from both sides of the police/public divide.
    On an impulse, she pulled her mobile from her bag and dialed Melody Talbot. “So what sort of Monday is it?” she asked.
    “A fairly placid one.” Melody sounded her usual brisk self, and Gemma supposed she’d just been sleepy earlier. “I’ve left a few reports for you to look over, and consigned most of the rest to the dustbin.”
    “Good riddance, I’m