The Sound of Broken Glass Part 1

The Sound of Broken Gla.s.s.

Deborah Crombie.

DEDICATION.

FOR LISA HASKELL AND ANN CHRIST,.

WHOSE KINDNESS AND GENEROSITY OVER THE YEARS HAVE HELPED.

MAKE LONDON MY SECOND HOME.

AND FOR STEVE ULLATHORNE,.

WHO INSISTED I WRITE A BOOK ABOUT CRYSTAL PALACE.

MAP.

PROLOGUE.

. . . Denmark Street is forever a.s.sociated with music. Earning the nickname of London's Tin Pan Alley in the 1920s, musicians have flocked to this renowned corner of Soho since its origins as a sheet music supplier in Victorian times.

-www.covent-garden.co.uk.

It had been years since she'd been in an English church. Would the place be locked early on this miserable January evening? she wondered. Moved by a sudden impulse, she waited for a break in the traffic and dodged across Charing Cross Road into Denmark Street.

And then she stopped again, mesmerized, staring in the windows of shops closed for the night but still lit to show their wares. How could she have forgotten? This was the street of guitars. The instruments, with their sinuous shapes and glowing hues, seemed to beckon.

She walked on, slowly now, past one shop and then another. The colors leapt out at her-scarlet, robin's-egg blue, honey, mahogany, palest flax, then the bold shout of black and white.

There was an allure, not only in the beauty of the instruments, but in their inaccessibility. Promise sealed behind gla.s.s. Many of the guitars had hand-lettered cards attached, describing their provenance. She liked the idea that guitars, like people, had histories.

Moving to the next shop, she found she was looking, not at guitars, but at flyers taped in the front windows of a tatty club. THE 12 BAR CLUB, according to the sign above the door.

The 12 Bar. She recognized the place now. It had been here for years-once or twice as a teenager she'd made the trek from Hampstead, and it had seemed so grown up, so sophisticated. Full of smoke then, of course, but she hadn't minded. Every guitarist worthy of the name had played the tiny, grubby club, and girls went hoping to catch a glimpse of someone famous.

She glanced again at the flyers taped to the window. The name of one band made her smile; then her breath caught in her chest and she peered more closely at the grainy black-and-white photo beneath the band's name.

That face . . . A tingle of shock ran through her. Could it be? After so long? Surely not, but . . . She smudged the cold gla.s.s with her fingertip as she read the names of the band members.

Her vision blurred. She blinked until it cleared, but the name was still the same. "Oh, dear G.o.d," she breathed, and the past came upon her like a rus.h.i.+ng tide.

CHAPTER ONE.

Crystal Palace is an area of South London between Dulwich, Croydon and Brixton. Its name has been a.s.sociated with many different things. "Crystal Palace" was originally coined by Punch magazine to describe The Great Exhibition, an iron and gla.s.s building designed by Joseph Paxton moved to Crystal Palace Park in 1854 and destroyed by fire on 30th November 1936.

-www.crystalpalace.co.uk.

Crystal Palace, August, Fifteen Years Earlier.

He sat on the front steps of the house in Woodland Road, counting the banknotes he'd stored in the biscuit tin, all that was left of his mum's wages. Frowning, he counted again. Ten pounds short. Oh, b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l. She'd found the new stash and pilfered it. Again.

Blinking back sudden tears, he scrubbed the back of his hand against his nose, trying to quell the panic rising in his stomach.

Panic and hunger. It was only Wednesday and she didn't get paid again until Sat.u.r.day. How was he going to feed the two of them on the little bit of money that was left? Not that his mum did much but pick at the eggs and toast he made her when she got up in the mornings, and once she went on at the pub she seemed to survive on cigarettes and the occasional basket of chips.

Chips. His stomach growled. "Shut it," he said aloud. He could make toast and Marmite for his supper. And next week he'd do a better job of hiding the money.

The last few months he'd taken to waiting for her outside the pub on Sat.u.r.day nights when she got her pay packet, even though she scolded him for being out alone in the center of town that late. The publican, Mr. Jenkins, handed him the money directly, accompanied by a wink and a hearty thump on the back. Mr. Jenkins wasn't too bad a bloke, although Andy was sure he kept back a bit for his mum to spend on drink.

On the nights she came home staggering, he didn't like to think where she'd got the extra cash. Nor did he like to think about what would happen when he went back to school after the summer hols. He wouldn't be home when she woke, wouldn't be able to see that she ate, wouldn't be able to make sure she stayed sober at least until she got to work.

She seemed so much worse lately, and if she lost her job . . . He shook his head, refusing to go down that path.

He'd figure out something. He always had. Maybe he could get some kind of a job, now that he was thirteen.

He blinked again, this time because sweat had started to trickle into his eyes. The sun hadn't yet dropped below the houses on the west side of Woodland Road, and hot as it was on the front steps, it was hotter still inside their ground-floor flat.

Besides, he liked watching the afternoon comings and goings in the road. And the view. Their steep street was tatty, most of the houses in disrepair, some derelict. But if he looked north, down the hill, he could see the green swath of London in the haze, and know that just below his line of vision lay the curve of the Thames.

If he walked up to the top of the hill, he could see the heart of the City, glimmering like a mirage. Someday he was going to live there, in a place where things happened. He was going to get out of b.l.o.o.d.y Crystal Palace and take his mum with him. If they lived somewhere else, maybe she would improve.

Cheered, he reconsidered the prospect of toast and Marmite. There was a tin of baked beans left in the cupboard-maybe he'd have that instead, and then the chocolate bar he'd squirreled away.

The afternoon dozed on, quiet as the grave except for the rumble of his stomach. He'd decided he couldn't put off his tea any longer when he heard the grind of a car's gearbox from the bottom of the hill. A little car was trundling up. He recognized it-a Volkswagen that had seen better days.

He recognized the driver, too, as the car pulled into the curb in front of the house next door. It was their new next-door neighbor-a widow, his mum said, although he didn't think the woman who climbed out of the car looked old enough to be a widow. More like someone's big sister, with her flowered summer dress and softly waving brown hair.

Their two houses were mirror images, the front steps and doors adjacent, so that as she climbed the steps she was almost near enough to touch. She was carrying a bag of shopping and he thought about asking if she needed help, but he was too shy.

But then, as she pa.s.sed him, she met his gaze and nodded. It was a serious nod, the kind you'd give a grown-up. He nodded back.

She s.h.i.+fted her shopping to dig in her handbag for her keys, but when she had her key in the lock, she paused. "Hot day, isn't it?" she asked.

This small remark was made with such gravity that he felt it deserved an equally sage response. Unfortunately, his tongue seemed stuck to the roof of his suddenly dry mouth. "Cooler out here," he finally managed to croak.

She seemed to consider this. "What about your garden?" she asked. "It should be shady, this time of day."

"There's nothing to see in the back." His flat had access to the long, narrow garden at the back of the house, but it was weedy and neglected. Gardening was not his mum's strong suit.

"True enough." Her smile was brief, impersonal, and he was sure she must think him an idiot. But as she clicked the key in the lock, she turned back to him as if on a sudden impulse. "Look," she said. "I'm Nadine. I've got some cold fizzy drinks in the fridge. I could bring one out for you, if you like."

There was not much, thought Duncan Kincaid, that he loved more than a crisp winter day in Hyde Park.

Even as a child in Ches.h.i.+re, he'd preferred winter-bare trees against clear, pale skies to the more fulsome glories of summer. Obviously, he wasn't the only one savoring the break in the past two weeks' miserable January weather-the park was full of people running, walking dogs, and taking children for outings.

He was, in matter of fact, doing all three.

"Papa," said Charlotte from her jogging pushchair, "I want to see the horses."

"You always want to see the horses," he teased. Papa, she'd begun calling him. Not Dad, like Kit, or Daddy, which Toby used interchangeably with Duncan. He'd asked Louise Phillips, who had been Charlotte's father's law partner, if Charlotte had called Naz that, but she'd said no, that she'd only heard Charlotte use the Pakistani abba. Papa, he thought, must have come from one of Charlotte's storybooks, perhaps even Alice in Wonderland, which remained her favorite; they had now read it so often he thought it must be burned into his brain.

"Rotten horses," Charlotte added with a giggle. "Rotten horses in Rotten Row." With a three-year-old's sense of humor, she was easily amused. "Bob wants to see horses," she added, settling her bedraggled green plush elephant more firmly in her lap so that he could enjoy the view. Charlotte had at first protested against the pushchair, insisting that she was old enough to walk, and Kincaid had convinced her only by arguing that Bob would like to ride in a buggy that was also called "Bob"-a trendy brand with the Notting Hill set.

Kincaid slowed to a walk and even Geordie, their c.o.c.ker spaniel, seemed glad of the respite. Tess, their terrier, got left at home when they went for their runs, as her little legs couldn't keep up.

Now Geordie looked inquiringly at Kincaid, his tongue lolling. "You'd like to see the horses, wouldn't you, boy?" Kincaid asked. Unfortunately, Kincaid had discovered that the sight and smell of the horses turned their normally good-natured dog into a barking, lunging demon. Geordie seemed to overestimate his size if not his own ferocity.

"Let's leave it for next time, shall we?" he suggested to Charlotte, rolling the pushchair off the path. "You could throw the ball for Geordie for a bit instead."

Her ma.s.s of caramel-colored curls tickled his nose as he unbuckled her from the buggy and swung her to the ground with a bounce. He caught the scent of the organic baby shampoo that Gemma teased him for buying, and an indefinable trace of the exotic. Distilled little girl, he thought wryly as he unclipped Geordie's lead and pulled the tennis ball from the pocket of his anorak.

Geordie dropped into a perfect sit and barked in antic.i.p.ation. This precious object was no ordinary tennis ball, but a lurid pink-and-green dog ball, its skin cracked, the squeaker long since excavated, and Geordie loved the husk from the depths of his c.o.c.ker spaniel heart.

Kincaid tossed it and both dog and girl gave chase, Geordie yipping, Charlotte shrieking. Geordie, of course, reached it first, and the two began a happy game of keep-away.

He'd stopped at the edge of a gra.s.sy hollow near the north boundary of the park, and the game gave Kincaid a chance not only to catch his breath but also to survey the park's other occupants. He watched them, jogging, walking, throwing Frisbees for dogs, and a few hardy souls just sitting and soaking up the welcome winter sun. Were they skiving off work? he wondered. A couple coming from opposite directions stopped for what seemed a casual word, but when the woman looked round, her glance seemed slightly furtive. Then she took the man's arm and they walked away.

A clandestine meeting, Kincaid thought, then admonished himself for his suspicions. It was the detective's mind, and he didn't seem able to turn it off. Not that it was much use to him, these days, although the care of children ages three, six, and fourteen certainly required vigilance.

When he and Gemma had begun fostering Charlotte at the end of the previous summer, they'd agreed that Gemma would take parental leave first, and then, if Charlotte was still not able to adjust to child care, Gemma would go back to work and Kincaid would take the same length of leave.

Things had not quite worked out as they had planned.

Rather than starting back in her post as detective inspector at Notting Hill Police Station, Gemma had been asked to fill an emergency vacancy on a murder investigation team in South London as acting detective chief inspector.

Kincaid had watched with pride-and some envy-as she settled into the new and demanding job. And while he had struggled to fit himself into the role of caregiver in their blended family, he'd also found that he'd come to know the children in ways he could never have imagined when he had been consumed with his own work.

But his intended leave had come to an end with the first of the year, and Charlotte had not, after all, been ready to start school. They'd given it a disastrous week at the local preschool. Charlotte had howled inconsolably all day, every day. Finally, even her teacher had suggested that she might need a bit more time in her new home before taking on the stress of a different environment. The severe separation anxiety suffered by a child who'd experienced a loss the magnitude of Charlotte's, Miss Love had told him, in the lecturing tone usually reserved for preschoolers, required time and patience.

As if they didn't know, Kincaid had thought, and bitten his tongue.

Now, halfway through January, Kincaid found himself questioning his supply of the requisite patience, missing his job, and worried that the job didn't seem to be missing him.

"Papa, are you sad?" asked Charlotte. The game of fetch had come to a halt. She was kneeling beside a drift of leaves at the base of a tree, studying him intently, the blue-green of her eyes startling against her pale brown skin. Charlotte had attuned herself to his moods in a way that was sometimes unnerving.

"Of course I'm not sad," he said, going to her. Geordie snuffled his face as he knelt, leaving a wet smear on his cheek. "How could I possibly be sad when I can go to the park with you? What have you found there?" he added. She'd fished something from the leaves that was definitely not Geordie's ball.

"A body." Charlotte held up her prize for his inspection. It was indeed a body-that of a Barbie doll, naked, its head slightly askew, blond hair tangled as a rat's nest. "Can I keep her?" Charlotte asked.

"I don't see why not," Kincaid said, although he was well aware of Gemma's feelings about Barbie dolls. Perhaps this one wouldn't count. The doll's skin looked sickly pink in Charlotte's hand, and its anatomically bizarre body alien. But Charlotte was a rescuer, and was already running towards the pushchair, where she wrapped the doll in an old bit of baby blanket she kept for Bob the elephant.

"She's cold," Charlotte explained, and Kincaid suddenly realized that the weather was changing. The bright blue January sky had gone hazy, and he could see a bank of dark clouds moving in from the west.

"In you go, then," he said, lifting her back into the pushchair and whistling for Geordie, "or your dolly will be cold and wet. Home, James."

"My name's not James. And I don't want to go home," protested Charlotte. "K and P, K and P," she chanted as he swiveled the pushchair and started back towards Notting Hill Gate.

"K and P, eh?" He frowned, pretending to consider. "I suppose we could stop in for a bit. Maybe we'll see MacKenzie and Oliver, eh?" Kitchen and Pantry, the coffee shop on Kensington Park Road, had become a regular weekday-morning refuge, as it was for many local mothers with small children. At least it gave Charlotte an opportunity to socialize, Kincaid told himself as he picked up his pace.

Not to mention the opportunity it gave him for adult-and, he had to admit, female-company. He did his best to ignore the fact that his capitulation got easier by the day.

"We could have played Clerkenwell." George looked up from tightening his snare drum, his round face already turning pink from the heat in the pub, his tone aggrieved.

"How many times have we played every b.l.o.o.d.y pub in North London?" Andy shot back. The fact that he knew he was in the wrong made him defensive. The gig they'd turned down had been at the Slaughtered Lamb, a good music venue with a reputation for launching up-and-coming bands. "It was time we did something different." It sounded weak, even to him.

Nick kept his head bent over the tuners on his ba.s.s, not looking at either of them. "It was time you did something different, you mean," he said, the hurt in his voice evident whingeing.

Members of bands tended to find separate personality niches. In theirs, George, despite his slightly chubby, jolly looks, was the moaner. Andy had the lead guitarist's att.i.tude. And Nick, the lead singer and ba.s.s player, had a ba.s.s player's imperturbable cool. If Nick was angry, you knew you'd crossed a line.

"Look, guys," Andy began, but he had to raise his voice over the increasing racket from the Friday-night post-happy-hour drinkers. It was a good pub, but the band was obviously secondary to the food and drink and they were jammed into a small s.p.a.ce at the back on one side of the bar. "Tam said this producer would be here-"

"To hear you," said George, now in full scowl. "Not that anyone is likely to hear anything in this place. And do you know how far away I had to park the f.u.c.king van?" They'd unloaded their equipment at the White Stag, with the van on the double yellows. Then George had driven off to find a place to put his battered Ford Transit. It had been a full twenty minutes before he'd reappeared, damp from the rain and huffing. "We might as well be marooned on a desert island. b.l.o.o.d.y Crystal Palace, I ask you."

b.l.o.o.d.y Crystal Palace was right, thought Andy, and cursed himself. He'd known it was a bad idea, but Tam had been so persuasive. As managers went, Tam wasn't a bad egg. He'd done his best for them, but lately Andy had begun to sense even Tam's good-natured optimism flagging. Bands had a shelf life, and theirs was expiring. Chances were that if they hadn't made it by now, they weren't going to.

The fact that they all knew it didn't make it any easier, or mean that they talked about it. But Nick had enrolled in an accounting course. George was working days in his dad's dry-cleaning business in Hackney. And Tam had been booking Andy more and more session work on his own. The truth was that he was better than they were, and they all knew that, too. But as much as Andy had groused about the band and about needing a change, he was finding the reality of it bitterly hard. They were mates. They'd been together, off and on, in various groups, for nearly ten years. Nick and George were the closest thing he had to family, and he'd only now begun to realize what it would mean to lose them.

"Look, guys," Andy said again. "It's only one night, all right? Then we can-"

"Tam's here." George settled onto his stool and gave a little tap on the snare for emphasis. "So where's this mysterious producer who's coming to see if you can play with a girl."

"Just shut up, will you," Andy hissed. He could see Tam pus.h.i.+ng his way through the crowd, an expectant smile on his face. Their manager's real name was Mick Moran, although few remembered it. He was a Glasgow Scot, and had acquired the nickname courtesy of the wool tam he wore, winter and summer, to cover his balding pate. The hat was so old that its red-and-green Moran tartan had long since faded into clan neutrality.

"Lads," said Tam when he reached them. "All set, then? Looks a good crowd." He rocked on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet, grinning at them.

"Right, Tam." Andy forced a smile, restraining himself from saying that the crowd looked the sort that would shout over the music and request the lamest covers imaginable. Neither Nick nor George responded, and when he glanced round, both looked mutinous.

Right, then, Andy thought. If that was their att.i.tude, so be it. He ran his pick across the strings of his Strat to check the tuning one last time, then launched into the distinctive opening chords of Green Day's "Good Riddance." He usually sang backup, but this was one of the few songs where he rather than Nick sang the lead.