He shrugged. "I don't know. Nine, or half past, maybe. Why?"

Dear G.o.d. It was possible. Nadine could have left the 12 Bar and gone straight to Kennington, then chatted up Shaun in the Prince of Wales. And taken him home.

But how to tell Andy what they suspected? Melody suddenly wished herself anywhere else, but she knew she had no choice. "We think you really did see Nadine. Tell me what she looked like."

Andy stared at her as if she were the one who was mad. "She looked like Nadine."

"No, I mean-describe her to me."

He gazed into the distance as he thought. "Well, she was older, of course. And thinner, I think. It was just a glimpse, a figure in the back of the room. She-" When he frowned, the outer ends of his eyebrows lifted like wings. "Her hair was cut in a sort of sleek way. It used to be longer"-he touched his collarbone-"and a little wavy. And she looked . . . sophisticated, I suppose. But it was her face . . . " He focused on Melody again. "Are you telling me I really saw her?" Hope lit his blue eyes.

"Duncan told us what happened when she lived next door to you, with the boys. But it wasn't your fault that Nadine left." Melody swallowed, wishing he'd offered her tea or even water, anything to wet her dry mouth. "After that . . . incident . . . Joe Peterson started a rumor at her school that she had s.e.xually a.s.saulted him. She-Nadine-lost her job. Then, when the police refused to press charges, Peterson's father filed a civil suit against her for causing emotional damage to his son. The man who berated you in the White Stag on Friday, Vincent Arnott, was the lawyer Peterson hired. And then Shaun Francis-we think it was most likely Shaun who fanned the flames of the rumor, making sure it got to school authorities."

Andy stared at her. "What are you saying?"

"We think that some time after Nadine left Crystal Palace, she went to France. But a few months ago she came back to London. She manages a designer clothing boutique in Covent Garden. The scarf"-Melody swallowed again-"the scarf that was used to gag Vincent Arnott and strangle Shaun Francis-we've traced it to the shop. Nadine's shop."

"You-You think Nadine killed them?"

"Arnott was seen leaving the White Stag with a woman. Caleb Hart saw a woman that night that fits the description you gave me. He said she was watching Arnott. And Shaun, even if he'd recognized her in the Prince of Wales, he might have been flattered. Andy, you need to be careful. We've tried to talk to her but we can't find her."

He stood so quickly that it startled Bert the cat, who disappeared into the workroom with a hiss and a bristle of orange tail. "I don't believe this. I don't believe any of this. Nadine would never hurt anyone." He was holding the Strat by the neck and now he shook it at her. "She gave me this. Did you know that? It was the one thing of her husband's she couldn't bear to part with. She had faith in me. And how did I repay her? I betrayed her. Shaun Francis was a bully and Joe Peterson was a nasty little liar, and I let them-I let them ruin her." He sounded close to tears.

"They used you, those boys. It wasn't your fault."

"That's no excuse. She was my friend. Nadine was-She was the kindest person I've ever known. I let her down. And now you're telling me she killed those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds and she's going to try to kill me? It's b.o.l.l.o.c.ks. Absolute b.o.l.l.o.c.ks."

Melody stood, too, frightened by his intensity. "Andy, I know it's hard-"

"You don't know anything." He sat again, as if his knees had refused to hold him up, and held the guitar against his chest like a shield. His face had gone blank. "I need to practice. I've got a session tomorrow with Poppy. I promised Tam I'd do at least one more, and I don't break promises."

"Andy, I-"

He looked at her as if she were a stranger. "Shut the door behind you."

"Andy, I never meant to hurt you."

For a moment, she thought he wouldn't answer; then he said, "We never mean to do a lot of things, but that doesn't undo them."

Midafternoon, she closed and locked the shop, simply because she could no longer bear to speak to anyone, or to summon a smile and a compliment for the customers who came in and ran their hands over the merchandise as if that gave them the satisfaction of temporary ownership.

She'd walked, mindlessly, through Covent Garden and Soho, until she realized that the streetlamps were coming on, and her hair and her coat were beaded with tiny drops of moisture that were soaking through to her scalp and her dress.

The chestnut vendor had set up his brazier outside the Covent Garden arcade. The fire drew her. She stopped and held her hands out towards it to warm them.

Gnarled as an old piece of driftwood, the vendor looked up at her with a toothless grin. "A pound, pretty lady, chestnuts nice and hot," he said, and she thought of men like him in the parks in Paris. She fished in her wallet for a coin and exchanged it for the hot paper bag. When she was out of his sight, she tucked the bag into her coat pocket. She couldn't bear to eat, but the warmth was comforting.

But when she cut through into Floral Street, she saw them outside her flat. She knew what they were, even in plainclothes. There was no mistaking police officers when you'd lived on the streets of Paris. She turned, careful not to hurry, and walked back towards the market. With one hand she turned up her coat collar and tucked her hair into it.

There was no point in checking the shop, not if they'd found the flat. She came out into Garrick Street by St. Paul's, the actors' church, and made her way into Charing Cross Road. Panic rolled over her in waves, making her dizzy and disoriented. A couple in hats and dark coats stood arm in arm, gazing into the window of Patisserie Valerie, and for a moment she thought she was in Paris.

No, no. She shook her head, her heart pounding, and dared to walk faster. Memories clouded her vision as careless pa.s.sersby jostled her. Then, without being quite sure how she'd got there, she found herself once again in Denmark Street, an oasis of quiet. The guitars gleamed in lamplit windows. She pa.s.sed the 12 Bar, still shuttered, with her head down. There was no refuge for her there.

Light shone from the church at the street's end. The doors to the nave stood open. It was Wednesday, she realized, clinging to the fragment of rational thought. There must be some sort of evening service. When she reached the great doors, she stopped for a moment, listening, and was rea.s.sured by the familiar rise and fall of the liturgy. There were a few people in the pews, she saw, enough so that she could slip into the next but last without being noticed.

She huddled in her coat, struggling to stand when the others did. Memories rose around her, carried by the joined voices, and the past seemed to bleed into the present. She saw Marshall, falling, and clapped a hand to her mouth to keep from crying out. The smell of wine came to her, sour, and on a new rush of dizziness, the sound of her own scream.

Her hands were now so cold that for a moment she thought she was in Paris, that first freezing winter, when she'd learned to find shelter in the empty churches.

Then, as the congregants knelt, she remembered how it was done. She glanced round. There was no one behind her. She bent, as if searching for something, a dropped hymnal or service leaflet, perhaps. As the congregants rose for the final response, she slipped into the cramped s.p.a.ce beneath the pew. Curling herself into a fetal ball and pulling her coat round her, she willed herself invisible.

There was a slow shuffle of feet, then the priest's voice, calling a good night to someone. Then, at last, quiet. The doors swung closed with the weight of centuries, and the lights went out.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

It was a strange crowd which came out to see the end of a famous London landmark. There were the connoisseurs forearmed with a knowledge of local topography. There were the sort of young men and women to be seen at almost any free entertainment in the streets. There were vast numbers of cyclists, both men and women. There were youngish men and women with traces of Bloomsbury, Hampstead and Chelsea in their clothes and speech, taking the whole affair very gravely. But among these were to be seen many elderly men and women to whom the destruction of the Palace meant the end of a chapter in their lives.

-www.sarahjyounger.com Melody hadn't slept well. She'd spent the remainder of last evening at Doug's, using Doug's laptop to read all the court records he'd accessed.

She'd gone home to Notting Hill dispirited, and once in bed, she'd tossed and turned, plagued by fragmented dreams in which something kept eluding her, something she had seen or heard but that slipped away from her like quicksilver whenever she almost grasped it.

When she woke, feeling heavy from lack of sleep and queasy with anxiety, she found she had a text message from Gemma telling her not to bother picking her up, as she was taking the tube to Putney to pick up her car. Melody groaned. She should have been up earlier.

And on top of that, the weather forecast on Radio 2 was dismal-temperatures hovering at freezing with a chance of snow and sleet-so when she'd showered, she pulled on a sweater, jeans, boots, and an old down coat she kept for forays to her parents' country house.

When she reached Brixton, she found Gemma not in the CID room but in her office.

"Bad night?" asked Gemma, glancing up at her.

"That obvious?" Melody rubbed her hands over her face. "G.o.d, I must look a fright. Sorry I didn't stop to get coffee, boss. I was late enough as it was."

Gemma gestured to a lidded paper cup on her desk. "I got it for you. You can pop it in the microwave if it's gone cold. Although," she added, casting another glance at Melody, "you look as though you might need to mainline it. Turn up anything new with Doug?"

"No." Melody had rung Gemma on her way to Doug's last night, saying just that she'd spoken to Andy and that he was all right. "I'm a bit worried about Doug's ankle, though. He's keeping off it pretty well but it doesn't seem to be improving much." She frowned, taking in the notes scattered over Gemma's desk. "Any developments here?"

"I've been checking Caleb Hart's alibis." Gemma took a sip of her own coffee, made a face, and put the cup down. "Ugh. Cold. Anyway, I finally managed to talk to the pop singer, although it took speaking to her agent and her agent having her ring me back through the station number, just to ensure I was really the police. But she said yes, she was having a bad night on Friday, and that she did ring Caleb and ask him to come to her flat in Knightsbridge. He arrived there well before eleven and stayed until the early hours of the morning."

"So he's definitely a nonstarter for Friday. And Sunday?"

"I've had forensics pick up his computer to run a check-not that he was happy about that-but I think we'll find he was online when he said he was. The video went up at nine, so I suppose it's possible he uploaded it, then drove to Kennington and somehow drugged and murdered Shaun Francis, but it seems highly unlikely.

"Oh, and I've been on the phone with Poppy's father, Tom, and he confirms what Hart told us. He did help get Hart into rehab, and the whole family has been very supportive of his sobriety. So Hart had nothing to hide."

"And"-Melody found she hated to ask-"Nadine?"

Gemma pushed her chair back and stretched. "You speak a bit of French, don't you? I should have let you take that one. I managed to get the shop owner on the phone at his home, first thing this morning. He's a very excitable Frenchman named Guy, who said-at least I think that's what he said-that we were a bunch of English idiots who couldn't be trusted to find our own a.r.s.es.

"He found Nadine living on the streets in Paris a year or so after we think she left England. She never talked about what had happened to her, but he saw something in her . . . He said"-Gemma paused, as if trying to remember the conversation word for word-"he said that even in her desperation, she had not lost her kindness. Then he said that if we didn't find her and make certain she was all right, he would personally come to London and twist our heads off. And something in French that I didn't understand but I don't think it was complimentary."

Melody was too busy thinking to smile. "That's what Andy said. That Nadine was kind. The kindest person he'd ever known. Does that sound like a person who would drug and strangle two people for revenge?"

"People change."

"If losing her husband, then being accused of a crime she didn't commit, then losing her job and her home and living rough on the streets in Paris didn't change her, why now? And where the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l is she?"

Gemma's phone rang. "It's Maura," she said as she looked at the ID. "I asked her to track down Joe Peterson's girlfriend."

When she answered, Melody listened to the one-sided conversation and watched Gemma look more and more unhappy. "You're sure?" asked Gemma. She listened for another moment, then added, "Right. Thanks, Maura. We'll get on it."

"What?" said Melody as soon as Gemma had rung off, her stomach lurching.

"Joe Peterson. Maura talked to his girlfriend. Make that ex-girlfriend. She said that Joe's father cut him off completely a few months ago and that Joe had just got worse and worse since then, even on his medication. Temper flare-ups, rows. Apparently they had a b.u.g.g.e.r of one on Friday and he hit her. She left, told him she was finished, and she hasn't been back since. She's afraid to get her things."

"Friday night?"

"No. That's the thing. Friday afternoon."

Melody and Gemma looked at each other across the desk. "He lied," said Melody. "Andy said he was a liar, even as a kid, and we know he lied about what happened with Nadine Drake. Why did we a.s.sume he was telling the truth about Friday night?"

She saw again the flat-the mess, the possessions half thrown in boxes. And then it clicked, the thing that had been nagging at her subconscious. "The poster," she said. "In Joe's flat."

"So?" Gemma looked at her blankly. "What of it?"

"It was the Crystal Palace football team. In their home colors. Navy and maroon. Don't you see? Joe follows Crystal Palace. The scarf."

Gemma's eyes widened in understanding. "The unidentified fibers found at both scenes. Fuzzy navy and maroon. And not only that, but the girlfriend said 'anxiety medication.' Xanax? We wondered where that came from. b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l and d.a.m.nation."

"And the blood," said Melody. "Oh my G.o.d, the blood. On the sheet in the hotel room. Who did we know who bled that night, besides Andy from a cut on his thumb? Joe. Andy punched Joe in the face, hard enough to make his nose bleed. You could still see the bruise on the side of his nose as well as under his eye."

"Christ." Gemma jumped up from her desk and ran for the CID room, Melody right behind her.

"Shara," called Gemma, "get me the CCTV from Friday night. Biggest monitor."

"Right, guv." Changing workstations, Shara typed in the file number, and a moment later they were all looking at the grainy footage.

"I want Arnott leaving the pub."

Shara jumped the film forward, then there he was. The smaller figure beside him was half hidden from the camera by his body, and yet there was something indefinably female about it.

"Nadine," whispered Melody. "It has to be."

Then they saw him, the hooded figure, appearing in the frame as Arnott left it, going in the same direction. No. Following.

"That's Joe Peterson," said Gemma with certainty. "Right size, right build, and something about the posture. But what the h.e.l.l happened in that hotel room? Were Peterson and Drake working together? Her friend in Paris said he found her living on the streets. I suspect that means she knew how to pick men up. And maybe tie them up as well, if that was what they fancied."

"What if . . . " Melody stared at the frozen picture, trying to imagine the scene in the pub. "What if she went to see Andy at the White Stag that night? It wouldn't have been that difficult to learn where the band was playing, even if the gig was scheduled at short notice. And she recognized Arnott. I doubt he'd have realized who she was after fifteen years-she would have just been another case to him, not someone who ruined his life. And he was drunk."

"That makes an argument for her luring him to the hotel and killing him, but it doesn't explain where Peterson comes into it." Gemma turned to Shara. "Can we see the footage from Kennington?"

They all watched carefully, first the film from Kennington Park Road, near the tube station, then the film from Kennington Road, the main thoroughfare on the opposite side of Cleaver Square.

"Look." Shara froze the frame. "There. Coming from the bus stop. It's him." The hooded figure appeared for an instant, in between other pedestrians, then vanished as the footage jumped forwards. But there had been the suggestion of a bulge beneath his jacket that might have been a scarf knotted round his neck. The time stamp showed 7:35.

"He took the bus from Crystal Palace," said Melody. "And he knew exactly where he was going. He must have known where Shaun lived and which pub he frequented. Maybe Arnott was spur of the moment, but Shaun's murder was planned. Why didn't we see him before?"

"Because we weren't looking for him," answered Gemma. She straightened. "If Nadine Drake wasn't involved in killing Arnott, she could be in serious danger. Shara, get uniform to double the watch on her flat and the shop."

"And Andy." Melody's voice caught in her throat. "The headmaster said that after Nadine was fired, Joe Peterson was ostracized at school. Shaun, his only real friend, cut him off. His marks fell. He had to leave the school, and it sounds like he's been going steadily downhill ever since. Who would he blame?"

"Shaun," said Gemma slowly, thinking it through. "Arnott, possibly as a subst.i.tute for his father, who he may not dare to confront even now. And . . . " She looked at Melody, concern in her eyes. "Do you know where Andy is?"

Melody felt as if the air had been sucked from the room. "He said he was recording with Poppy today. I a.s.sumed he meant the studio in Crystal Palace."

She woke, so cold and cramped that her limbs were paralyzed. No light yet filtered through the windows of the nave, but her body told her it was near daybreak. Her stomach cramped with emptiness. Carefully, she moved her fingers, then her toes, until she could stretch. Something was digging into her hip, a lump in her coat pocket. She remembered the chestnuts.

When she could lever herself into a sitting position on the pew, she took the package from her pocket and ate the tough, cold, mealy nuts, one at a time, sucking at bits to get enough saliva into her mouth so that she could swallow.

The windows began to appear, faint gray outlines that seemed to shift in shape as she watched.

Nadine felt the city coming to life outside the walls of the church. That, too, was something she had learned in Paris, to catch that hum, the vibration of trains beginning to run and people all around, waking, thinking, moving, talking. Each city had its own particular pulse.

And last night, London had taken her into its arms and given her shelter. With that thought came the realization that her panic had vanished while she slept. Perhaps the city-or this church-had given her more than sanctuary.

As light filled the great windows, her course came to her with sudden clarity. No more running. No more hiding. She would go to the police and tell them what she had done that night in the Belvedere Hotel.

But first, she had to find Andy.

For the third time, Andy flubbed the intro to the number they were working on and swore.

From the control booth, Caleb said, "Five-minute break, okay? In fact, why don't I go fetch us some sandwiches from the pub while you two compose yourselves?" he added, dripping sarcasm, and Andy suspected he was nipping out to call Tam and ask him what the h.e.l.l was wrong with his guitarist.

Poppy waited until Caleb disappeared from the booth window, then turned off her mic and reached across to switch Andy's off as well. Wearing a knitted reindeer sweater and an orange Peruvian cap with the earflaps turned up, she looked like an elf that had wandered in from the wrong hemisphere. Fortunately, she'd taken off her bright-pink puffy jacket and draped it over her instrument case.

"What is up with you today, guitar boy?" she asked, with a glance at the now-empty control booth. "You got sausages for fingers?"

Andy flexed his uncooperative hands. "It's the cold, maybe." A lame excuse if he'd ever heard one, and Poppy rolled her eyes.