Kissed a Sad Goodbye (36 page)

I
T WAS MIDMORNING BEFORE
K
INCAID STARTED
for Cambridge, after having made a stop at the Yard. He concentrated on negotiating London traffic until he reached the M11, then he popped a jazz piano tape Gemma had given him into the Rover’s tape deck and settled into the right-hand lane, determined to make good time.

The music was improvisational, the drifting notes of the piano sometimes as ethereal as wind in the grass, or as liquid as running water. After a bit, in the sort of free association often brought on by long-distance driving, the music seemed to combine his thoughts of Kit with memories of the long days of his own boyhood.

He’d spent his summer hols running wild with all the freedom of a child growing up in the country, packing his lunch in the mornings and setting out to roam, on foot or on his bike. Sometimes he’d gone with friends, and sometimes alone, if he could manage to ditch his little sister. He’d climbed trees and swum in the canals and taught himself to fish with absorbed and infinite patience.

Of course, there must have been wet days, and boring days; in retrospect, however, they were all idyllic, filled with the heady tonic of adventure. But what had made his confidence possible, he realized now, was the knowledge that when he returned home in the evenings, his mum and
dad would be home from the shop, supper would be cooking, and Miranda would be wanting him to play Monopoly or catch.

His foundation had seemed unshakable; it had never occurred to him that it could collapse as easily as a house of cards.

It was almost lunchtime when he pulled into the Millers’ drive and stopped the engine. Laura Miller had been Vic’s secretary at the university English Faculty, and a good friend as well. Her son, Colin, had been at school with Kit, although the Millers lived in Comberton, a hamlet a few miles from Grantchester. Laura’s willingness to take Kit in for the past few months had provided the boy a haven of familiarity while the school term lasted.

To Kincaid’s surprise, Laura answered his ring herself. “I thought you’d be at work,” he said, kissing her cheek.

“It’s summer hols for me, too,” she said as she let him in. She wore white shorts with a bright madras cotton blouse, and her fair skin was faintly flushed from the heat. “Come back to the kitchen. It’s cooler there.”

The house was a comfortable, suburban semidetached, filled with the trail of discarded shoes and sports equipment that marked habitation by boys. “Colin’s gone quite football-mad this summer—I don’t know what’s got into him,” Laura said as she cleared a kitchen chair of a ball and a pair of dirty socks. “Sit down and I’ll get you something cold to drink. Ginger cordial?”

When he nodded assent, she went on, “I’ve been trying to ring you this morning.” Handing him a glass filled with milky liquid and a few ice cubes, she sat down at the table. “What’s going on, Duncan? Kit came back from London doing a perfect impersonation of the sphinx—and then yesterday Ian McClellan showed up here and said he’s back in Cambridge for good. It was just this morning I finally got Kit to tell me that Ian intends to take him back to the Grantchester cottage.”

“Ian’s seen Kit, then?”

“He didn’t stay long. That’s all Kit’s been willing to say about it, he won’t talk about you at all, and he refuses to leave the house. I’m really quite worried about him.”

“I told Kit I was his dad,” Kincaid confessed reluctantly. “The night before Ian rang me up in London.”

“Oh, dear.” Laura looked aghast. “No wonder he came back in a royal funk.”

“I knew it might take a bit of getting used to, but I rather thought he liked me.… I suppose I’d even hoped he might be pleased.”

Laura shook her head. “You were Kit’s escape from his old life, someone unconnected except for those last few weeks, a friend.”

“But a father, surely—”

“I don’t think you understand, Duncan. To Kit, parents are the last people you can count on. They run away and leave you. Or die. I don’t think anything could have frightened him more.”

Kincaid stared at her, wondering how he could not have seen it. “Oh, Christ. I didn’t realize … How can I possibly sort things out with him after this?”

Frowning, Laura said, “I don’t know. I suppose you can try to reassure him that things between you won’t change.” She nodded towards the patio door. “He’s at the bottom of the garden.”

A
BANDONED GARDENING TOOLS AND A SCATTERING
of empty plastic pots near the house told him that Laura had been working in the perennial beds, which got full sun before several old oaks turned the bottom of the garden into a shady retreat. He whistled for Tess, who came up to greet him, tail wagging, but he didn’t see Kit until he’d rounded the first tree.

Kit sat with his back to the trunk, arms wrapped round his knees, regarding Kincaid with an expression of sullen wariness.

“Hullo, sport.” Kincaid squatted and scratched Tess behind the ears. “Where’s Colin?”

For a long moment Kit didn’t answer, then he said grudgingly, “Next door. He went to borrow some nails.”

In the grass, Kincaid saw what looked like the beginnings of a rudimentary platform at the end of a series of small trestles made with logs. “What’s it for?” he asked, nodding at the platform.

“Tess.” At the sound of her name, the dog left Kincaid and sat expectantly at Kit’s knee.

Kincaid squinted at the pieces of plywood. “Okay. But what’s it
for
?”

“It’s an obstacle course,” Kit said impatiently. “There’s supposed to be a ramp, and a dispenser for tennis balls, but we can’t figure out how to make the dispenser work.”

“I could probably come up with something,” Kincaid offered.

Kit shook his head. “It’s our project, Colin’s and mine. And besides, you haven’t the time.”

Kincaid ignored the dig. “I thought maybe we could get some sandwiches in Cambridge, take out a punt.”

“Punting’s stupid,” Kit said, looking away. “And Laura’s making beefburgers. I don’t want to go out.”

“Okay.” Kincaid sat down in the grass. “Maybe we could just talk, then.”

“I don’t want to talk, either.” Kit pressed his lips together and wrapped his arms tighter round his knees.

“How about if I talk, and you listen?” Kincaid suggested. “You don’t have to say anything.”

When Kit didn’t answer, he went on, picking his words carefully. “I’m sorry about what I said the other night. But it doesn’t change anything between us. It’s just a fact, like having blue eyes, or blonde hair. It doesn’t mean I’m not your friend, or that I’d have done anything differently if there weren’t that connection between us. It’s just extra, like icing on the cake.” When he paused, Kit blinked, but still didn’t look at him.

“I’m not going to stop being your friend, no matter what. You can still visit me in London, just like before, if it’s all right with Ian—”

“I’m not going back there! Not to the cottage.” Kit jumped up and turned his back on Kincaid, then kicked at the tree, but not before Kincaid had seen his eyes fill with tears. “You can’t make me!”

“Kit, I didn’t come here to make you do anything. But you can talk to me about it. Tell me why you don’t want to go back.”

Kit shook his head, but this time the gesture seemed anguished rather than stubborn.

“Is it because of your mum?” Kincaid asked very gently, praying that for once he had said the right thing.

“I can’t—” Kit’s voice broke and Kincaid could see the effort he was making to continue. “She’s not—”

When he didn’t go on, Kincaid thought furiously for a moment, then said, “Kit, do you remember when you ran away from your grandparents, and I found you at the cottage? You were asleep in your bedroom, you and Tess. And you felt safe there, didn’t you?”

After what seemed a very long while, Kit nodded.

“It wasn’t such a bad feeling, was it?” Slowly, knowing he was treading on very unsure ground, Kincaid added, “It might be a good thing, even, to remember some of the times with your mum—”

“I want to stay here, with Laura,” Kit said, turning to face him. For the first time, this seemed a plea rather than a refusal to consider alternatives.

But it was a desire Kincaid had no power to grant. He temporized, carefully. “Well, perhaps you could just go over for a visit, have a look round, see how things feel. Have you seen Nathan lately?”

“No.” Kit dug the toe of his trainer into the grass. “Not since I finished the fish project I was doing for school last month.”

“You could pay Nathan a visit. I’ll bet he’d like to see Tess.”

Kit shrugged, frowning, but didn’t reject the idea.

“I could even take you, if you like,” Kincaid offered, looking away, trying to impart an impression of nonchalance.

Kit shook his head, but slowly, as if he might be thinking about what to do. “I suppose I could ride my bike.” He looked up and met Kincaid’s eyes for the first time. “Would he be there … my dad?”

Kincaid sat down on the old garden chair the boys had been using as a carpenter’s bench. “I don’t know. How did you leave things with him?”

“He said he had a lot of things to do this week at the college, and getting the house ready, but he’d come this weekend and move my stuff—” Kit’s voice rose at the last and he clenched his hands, looking round as if the thought made him want to bolt in panic.

“Whoa. That’s ages from now,” Kincaid said soothingly. “You can only do things one day at a time, sport. Sometimes life is so bloody that’s the only way you can get through it. But the good bit about living one day at a time is that when nice things happen, you enjoy them more than people who are always thinking about the past or the future.”

Kit frowned at him, looking unconvinced, but to Kincaid’s relief, his hands and shoulders had relaxed.

The odor of grilling meat reached them, and from the kitchen Kincaid heard the murmur of voices. Knowing his time was running out, he said, “What if you go over on your own this afternoon, just for a bit of a recce, then you give me ring and we’ll talk about it. What do you say?”

The kitchen door opened and Colin came out to the edge of the patio and waved. “Mum says will you stay and have beefburgers?” he called out.

Kincaid cupped his hands and yelled, “Wouldn’t miss it!” then turned back to Kit. “Is it a deal, then?” He held out his hand, palm up, an invitation for their customary high five.

Kit looked towards the patio, where Colin was making a
face and a hurry-up gesture, then at Kincaid. He shrugged. “Okay,” he said at last. “I suppose it can’t hurt just to have a look.” With a slap of his palm against Kincaid’s, he turned and darted off towards the house, followed by a furiously barking Tess.

Kincaid watched them go, his relief at making a bit of progress marred by the awareness that he’d just done his best to give his son into the care of a man he neither liked nor trusted.

A
FTER RETURNING FROM
H
AMMOND’S
, G
EMMA SPENT
the remainder of the morning at Limehouse, sifting through the accumulated reports and the logs of telephone and house-to-house inquiries. When Janice returned at lunchtime, they called out for some sandwiches and coffee, clearing a space to eat on one of the desks in the incident room so that they could compare notes.

“Did we get Martin Lowell’s girlfriend’s statement?” Gemma asked.

“It’s here somewhere.” Janice dabbed at the bread crumbs that had fallen on the papers nearest at hand, then reshuffled them until she found the relevant copy. “Brandy Bannister, aged nineteen, resident of—”

Washing down a bite of her tuna on brown bread with a sip of tepid coffee, Gemma snorted dangerously, precipitating a fit of coughing. “Brandy Bannister?” she sputtered when she had recovered sufficiently. “Suits her. You could almost feel sorry for her if she weren’t such a nit.”

“That bad?”

When Gemma nodded, mouth full, Janice continued, “It is a bit unfortunate. You always wonder what parents could have been thinking.” She looked back at the report. “At any rate,
Brandy
says she was with Martin Lowell from eight o’clock on, when they had dinner at the Trafalgar Tavern. They left the tavern about eleven and went directly to her flat, where they gave one another full
body massages”—Janice raised an eyebrow—“and she says she’s sure she’d have known if he’d left at any time during the night.”

“Full body massages? Not the kind that would pass a licensing board.”

“Like that, was it? Do you think she’s a reliable alibi, or would she lie to protect him?”

“I think she’s too witless to carry off anything more complicated than saying she’s sure he stayed the entire night when she actually slept like a log—and if Martin killed Annabelle he’d have needed a bigger fabrication than that.”

Janice glanced at the statement again. “How so?”

“Annabelle would’ve had to contact him in the missing two hours, between the time both Mortimer and Gordon Finch say they saw her last: around ten, and before midnight, when the pathologist estimates she died.” Frowning, Gemma took another bite of tuna sandwich. “Let’s send someone round the Trafalgar—see if we can confirm they were there and stayed until eleven.”

“It’s a big place, lots of traffic. But suppose we can confirm it, what’s to say Martin didn’t go directly back to his flat and find Annabelle waiting for him?”

“I guarantee you Martin Lowell didn’t take Brandy out for a nice evening of intellectual stimulation and kiss her good night at her door.”

“Well, what if he stopped off at his flat for condoms or something, found Annabelle waiting for him, and killed her there? Then he went on to Brandy’s flat for a good time, got up in the wee hours and went back to his flat, stuffed Annabelle’s body in the boot of his car, and dumped her in the park,” Janice suggested.

“I suppose it’s possible. But he’d have to carry her body across the open courtyard of his building—not a very safe prospect even in the middle of the night. And he has a very nosy neighbor. We might send a PC to have a word.” Gemma finished her coffee and tossed the cup in the rubbish bin.

“What about Teresa Robbins? Anything new on Mortimer from her?”

“Only what we should have guessed from the beginning—she’s quite besotted with him, or at least she was until she learned Reg hadn’t told her what he knew about Annabelle’s affairs.”