Water Like a Stone (4 page)

There were a few other surprises wrapped in colored paper and tucked away in the main cabin: crayons and paints, some clever three-dimensional cards depicting canal life that the children could tack up by their beds, a book for each of them. And for seven-year-old Marie
there was a doll; for nine-year-old Joseph, his first pocketknife. To provide these things, Rowan had worked extra hours painting the traditional roses-and-castles canalware she sold to supplement their income, and the effort had exhausted her.

Not that it took much to exhaust her these days. Worry gnawed in his belly like a worm, and his helplessness in the face of her growing weakness made him so angry his hands had begun to shake continually, but he tried to hide such feelings from her. He knew why she wouldn’t seek help at a hospital or clinic—he understood the consequences as well as she did. So he did what he could: he managed the boat and the locks with only the children’s help, he’d taken over almost all the domestic chores as well, and he did what he could to comfort the children and attend to their lessons.

But it wasn’t enough—he knew it wasn’t enough, and he knew he would be lost without her.

He shifted a little on the bed’s edge so that he could pull the blanket more firmly over his wife’s shoulders. Even through his thick wool jumper he could feel the chill creeping into the boat. The narrowboat’s only heat came from the stove in the main cabin, but he dared not add more wood this late in the evening. He stored a supply on top of the boat, both for their own use and to sell to other boaters, and with the Christmastime slowdown in odd jobs, he couldn’t afford to burn their only source of cash. Nor would he be able to forage easily for more wood with snow on the ground—if the cold snap lasted more than a few days, they would be in real trouble.

Rowan’s eyelids had begun to droop again. “You sleep now, do you hear?” he whispered. “I’ll take care of everything.” And he would, too—it was just that it was becoming harder and harder to see how he was going to manage it.

Rowan was asleep, her breathing shallow but regular, and from next door the children’s voices had faded from drowsy whispers to silence. Giving his wife’s shoulder a squeeze, he moved quietly through the children’s cabin and into the stern.

He stood for a moment, gazing at the remains of the stew he’d made for dinner, still standing on the hob; at the laceware and brasses decorating the polished wood of the cabin walls; at the bright detail of the castle scene Rowan had painted on the underside of the drop table. The children had strung tinsel and a red-and-green paper chain over the windows and Marie had tacked up a drawing she’d made of Father Christmas wearing a pointed red hat.

Only embers glowed in the stove. With sudden decision, Gabe took a log from the basket and fed it into the fire. It was Christmas Eve, and he’d be damned if they’d spend it freezing. Maybe tomorrow the weather would break. Maybe he’d find a carpentry job before the New Year. He had contacts here—it was the only thing that had brought him back to the Nantwich stretch of the Cut.

Right, he thought, with the wave of bitterness that swamped him all too often these days. Maybe Father Christmas would come. Maybe the boat’s makeshift loo would work properly for once. And maybe his wife would miraculously get better, instead of more frail by the moment.

Tears stung his eyes and he blinked furiously, stabbing at the fire with the poker until the heat scorched his face. She was slipping away from him and he couldn’t bear it, not after everything they’d been through.

There was only one option that he could see. He could sell the boat. There were always collectors sniffing around the Cut, looking for traditional working narrowboats built before the 1950s, the less altered, the better. Willing to pay a handsome price to do without plumbing or central heating, they would restore the boats to their original state and show them off at boat shows. Never mind that entire families had lived in seven-by-eight-foot cabins and babies had played on top of the sheeted coal or cocoa in the cargo space—that only added to the romance.

Gabe snorted in disgust. They were fools, playing at being boat
men, and he’d not give up the
Daphne
to the likes of them. He’d been born on this boat, as had his father, and now his family was one of the last still clinging to the old way of life.

And selling the boat would only be a stopgap measure at best—he knew that. Where would they go? What would they do? They knew nothing else, and there was nowhere else they would be safe.

He thought of the face from the past that had appeared so unexpectedly today. The woman had been maneuvering her boat round the angle where the Middlewich fed into the main branch of the canal at Barbridge; skillfully, he thought, for a woman alone. Then she had looked up.

It had taken him a moment to place her in the strange context, and then he’d felt the old, familiar lurch of fear. She had recognized them as well, and had spoken to Rowan and the children in a friendly way, but he didn’t trust her. Why should he, even after what she had done for them?

She and her kind, no matter how well-meaning, meant nothing but trouble—had never meant anything but trouble for him or his people.
He’d
been the fool to think they could run away from it forever.

Moving slowly back into the children’s cabin, he stared down at their sleeping forms. The light reflecting off the snow came through the small window more brightly than a full moon. He knelt, touching his daughter’s curls with his large, calloused hand, and a fierce resolve rose in him.

He knew one thing, and it was enough. He would do whatever it took to keep what remained of his family from harm.

From the moment he had looked up and found her watching him from the stairs, Kit thought that Lally Newcombe was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He was afraid to look at her, afraid his face would betray him, yet he hadn’t been able to tear his eyes away. Around him, the commotion of dogs and greetings faded to an incomprehensible babble, and when Tess leapt from his arms, he’d felt as if he’d been stripped naked, defenseless before the dark-haired girl’s remote and considering gaze.

The entrance of Jack the sheepdog and the group exodus from the hall gave him a respite, but even then he’d been aware of Lally’s movements, as if he’d developed remote sensors on every inch of his skin. He trailed after the others, feeling as if his hands and feet had suddenly become enormous, awkward appendages more suited to a giant.

Once in the kitchen, he tried to ignore Lally, tried to look at anything other than her face and the slice of bare skin showing in the gap between her shirt and her jeans. When Rosemary spoke to him, he forced himself to focus, and to answer, pushing his voice past the lump in his throat and keeping it level.

Rosemary—his
grandmother,
he reminded himself. He still couldn’t quite get his head round it, even though he’d met her once before, at his mum’s funeral. Although he hadn’t known then that she bore any relation to him, she had been kind to him, and had stood up to Eugenia. It had been the one bright spot in that horrible day.

Eugenia, his
other
grandmother, his mother’s mother. Would he ever be able to hear “grandmother” without thinking of her? She was the only grandmother he had known until now, and his mother’s dad, Bob, the only grandfather.

As he helped Rosemary carry the tea things to the table, he glanced up at Hugh, his new grandfather, with curiosity. Hugh Kincaid was a tall man, with a lean, beaky sort of face, and a comfortable aura of the outdoors about him. But there was a bookishness, too, a hint of the faraway about his eyes, and Kit thought he might be the sort of person who held long conversations with himself.

Just now, however, he was laughing and joking with the younger boys, and Kit’s face flamed with envy. In that moment he hated Toby, hated the easy way he made friends so easily. Then he flushed again with shame, hating himself for the thought, hating himself for being so cruel to the smaller boy earlier that day.

He didn’t know what had got into him lately. Sometimes it seemed as if something alien lived between his brain and his mouth, out of control, just waiting to take over whenever he spoke. And then there were the dreams. He’d had them the first few months after his mother died, and now they had come back, worse than ever. He woke from them sick and sweating, afraid to go back to sleep, and afterwards he carried a lingering queasiness with him all through the day. Maybe he would be all right here, away from home, away from school.

The thought of school brought back that morning’s confrontation with Duncan and Gemma, and he cringed inwardly. Kit had known he would get caught out, had thought that before it happened he’d find an opportunity to confess, to explain. But the time had somehow never come, and when he’d been taken by surprise, all
the words he’d prepared vanished like wraiths and left him stupidly, painfully silent.

The clatter of dishes jerked Kit back to the present. The meal was finished and Hugh was clearing away the tea things. When Sam suggested they go outside, he was glad of any excuse to get away from his thoughts.

It was both a relief and a disappointment when Lally hung back with Gemma. He wanted to be near the girl, wanted to speak to her, yet he didn’t know what to say. But as he trooped ahead with Sam and Toby, stomping footprints in the freshly fallen powder, he began to forget his discomfort. For the first time since they’d arrived he was able to take pleasure in the moment.

The field sloped down to a distant dark smudge of trees, and halfway across it he saw two shaggy shapes that must be the ponies, one dark, one light. Jack had bounded ahead and was now circling the ponies, yipping and lunging. The dog’s white markings seemed to disappear into the snow, so that the moving black patches of his coat looked strangely disembodied. Kit stopped a moment, watching, feeling the cold sear his lungs as he breathed. The snow and the sharp, smoky, night air were glorious, London and school seemed a universe away, and the holiday felt suddenly full of promise.

Kincaid grasped the hand held out to him, studying the man with dawning recognition. “Good God, it’s not Ronnie Babcock, is it?”

“That’s Chief Inspector Babcock to you, old son,” Babcock said jovially, but his voice held the hint of self-mockery Kincaid remembered from their school days. He hadn’t seen Babcock since he’d left Cheshire for London more than twenty years ago, and the last he’d heard, Babcock had been looking at a promising career in professional football.

“I’ll be damned. I’d no idea you were on the force, Ronnie. What happened to the—”

“Knee,” Babcock interrupted shortly. “I thought I should look for something with more long-term benefits—although at the moment I couldn’t tell you what they are.” He grinned and gave a shrug that took in the snow and the surroundings, and Kincaid remembered his unexpected charm.

He’d never known Babcock really well. Their friendship had been an odd one, and had come about by chance. Babcock had been a tough, working-class kid with an attitude, and his social circle had not naturally intersected with Kincaid’s. But more than once, Kincaid had seen him stand up for a kid who was being bullied, and had witnessed an occasional gruff and rather awkward kindness, quickly masked by teasing.

Then, one day, Kincaid had gone into his parents’ bookshop after school and seen Ronnie Babcock at the cash register, finishing a transaction with one of the shop assistants. Babcock had looked furtive, and Kincaid, his curiosity aroused, had moved close enough to glimpse the other boy’s purchase as it went into the bag. The volume was not something risqué, as he’d half expected, but a battered, used edition of James Hilton’s
Lost Horizon
.

Kincaid had opened his mouth to rib Babcock about his taste in reading material when something in the boy’s expression stopped him. When Babcock had finished counting out his coins and stuffed the book into a jacket pocket, he moved away from the counter and said quietly to Kincaid, “Look, you won’t tell my mates at school, will you?”

“But—”

“It’s a poncey book, see,” Babcock added with a look of pleading. “I’d never live it down.”

Kincaid did see. He’d grown up tainted by the aura of his parents’ profession, as well as by the folly of his own occasional displays of knowledge. He’d been labeled an anorak, a bookworm, and no matter how well he did at games or how tough he was on the playground, it had stuck.

“Yeah, all right,” he’d said, grinning. “But only if you promise to tell me what you think of the book.”

After that they had talked when they’d run across each other in town, and Babcock had often come into the bookshop when he knew Kincaid was working after school, but that had seemed the natural limit of the relationship. Babcock had never invited Kincaid to his home, or vice versa, and they’d had no reason to keep up after leaving school.

Babcock had aged well, Kincaid saw now. He still looked fit, and even with his pugnacious boxer’s face, he’d acquired an air of polish unimaginable in the teenager.

“Chief inspector?” Kincaid said, raising an eyebrow. “Aren’t you a bit elevated to be taking a call on Christmas Eve?”

“My inspector’s got kiddies at home. My sergeant, too.” Babcock shrugged. “And besides, it’s not often something as interesting as a mummified baby turns up on my patch.”

Beside him, Kincaid felt Juliet flinch, and saw Babcock eyeing her with interest. He wondered if the callous reference had been deliberate on Babcock’s part.

Babcock pulled his overcoat collar a little higher on his neck and gave Kincaid a sharp glance. “Now, as much as I’d like to stand around all night in the bleeding snow waffling on about old times, why don’t you tell me exactly what you’re doing here. Scotland Yard isn’t in the habit of calling
us
to report a body.”

“You know I’m with the Yard?” Somehow Kincaid had expected Babcock to be as ignorant of his profession as he had been of Babcock’s.

Babcock smiled at Kincaid’s consternation. “It’s still a small town, mate. And I still pop into your dad’s shop now and again. You’d made superintendent, last I heard. So have you added psychic detective to your accomplishments?”

The dig was unmistakable. Kincaid realized that Babcock might not be thrilled to have Scotland Yard nosing about, especially if his
dad had been painting him as the town’s golden boy. “Look,” he said, “I’m just here for the holiday with my family. It’s my sister who found the body. She called me at my folks’, and I rang 999—”

“After having a thorough poke round and contaminating my crime scene,” Babcock finished sourly.

Kincaid raised an eyebrow. “You’d have done the same. For all I knew, it was a prank.” When Babcock nodded a reluctant acknowledgment, Kincaid went on, “You remember my sister, Juliet?” He touched Juliet’s shoulder, urging her forward.

Babcock gripped her hand in a belated shake. “I thought I recognized you. You’re Mrs. Newcombe now. I know your husband.” There was a reserve in his second comment that sounded less than reassuring, but he went on with evident sincerity. “So sorry you’ve had to deal with all this, and tonight of all nights. Can you tell me exactly what happened?”

Juliet looked white and pinched, but she answered strongly. “I’m a builder. I’m renovating the old barn for my clients, a couple from London named Bonner. I was working late, trying to finish up a few things before the holiday.”

“On your own?” Babcock’s voice held a note of skepticism.

Juliet stood a little straighter. “Yes. I’d sent my lads home. I was hoping to finish tearing out a section of mortar before the light went. And then I found…it…the baby.”

“And you didn’t ring the police right away?”

“No.” For the first time she sounded less confident. “I—I wasn’t sure—I wanted—I knew Duncan was expected at our parents’, so I thought…”

Babcock considered for a moment. “You said the new owners? How long have they had the place?”

“Just a few months. They’re boaters. They bought it with the idea of turning it into a second home, with a good mooring for their narrowboat.”

“And they’ve no previous connection with the property?”

“Not that I know of.”

Babcock looked at the figures moving in the light spilling from the old dairy, then peered up the lane into the darkness. “So these Londoners, who did they buy the barn from? The people in the big house at the top of the lane?”

“No.” The sharpness of Juliet’s answer caught Kincaid by surprise. “No. There’s a farmhouse just at the bend in the lane, about halfway down. I think the owners—the Fosters—bought the farm directly from the people who had owned the farm and the dairy barn for years. Then, last year, they decided to subdivide the property and sell off the barn and surrounding pasture. The market’s booming, with any old tumbledown outbuilding being hyped as ‘suitable for renovation.’ The dairy was a real treasure and they knew it.”

“What happened to the Smiths, then?” Kincaid asked. He remembered the old traditional Cheshire farming family who had had the place, and who had tolerated his and Juliet’s exploring the property.

“Sold up about five years ago,” Jules answered. “Retired and moved south. Shropshire, I think.”

“Smith? Bugger,” Babcock muttered with feeling, then glanced at the barn again. To Kincaid, he said, “Any idea how long—”

“Not a clue. Maybe your pathologist can hazard a guess. Is he a good man?”

Babcock smiled. “In a manner of speaking. But don’t tell her I said so.”

Embarrassed by his unconscious sexism, Kincaid grimaced. Fortunately, it seemed to have passed Juliet by. Stomping her feet to warm them, she pulled back her jacket cuff and squinted at her watch. “Look. It is Christmas Eve, and we’ve got family waiting. I don’t know what else I can tell you.”

“I’ll need a proper statement from you, but I can get that tomorrow,” Babcock conceded.

“It’s Yew Cottage, near the end of North Crofts.”

“I know the place.” Babcock turned to Kincaid. “What about you, Duncan? Ensconced in the familial bosom?”

“Yes.” Kincaid gave brief directions to his parents’ house, although it wouldn’t have surprised him to find that Babcock knew perfectly well where they lived—then fished a card from his coat pocket. “Here’s my mobile number. If you could—” He stopped as the flash of car headlamps coming down the track caught his eye.

As a white van emerged from the trees and rolled towards them, Babcock turned to look. “That’ll be the SOCOs. Dr. Elsworthy won’t be far behind.”

A man climbing from the van called out, “Hey, boss, what have we got?”

Babcock raised his hand in acknowledgment, answering merely, “Meet you at the barn.”

“Right,” he added briskly to Kincaid and Juliet. “I’ll be in touch. Mrs. Newcombe, I’ll need the names and contact information for anyone working with you on the premises, if you could get that together for me by tomorrow.” He held a hand out to Kincaid. “Good to see you, old son.”

Babcock might as well have said
Run away and play,
so obviously had his attention moved on. Kincaid felt a flare of irritation at being cast aside like a used tissue. He knew all the things running through his old friend’s mind—Babcock would be deciding how to organize the crime scene, structuring the interviews of the property’s present and former owners and of the neighbors, making arrangements for the examination of the remains—all the things Kincaid would be doing himself if it were his case.

The gears in Kincaid’s mind clicked over, his adrenaline pumped, and the exhilaration of the chase kicked into his system like a drug. He wanted to look over the crime scene with Babcock and the SOCOs, he wanted to see what the pathologist had to say about
the body of the child. It was on his lips to ask Juliet to go on without him, to tell Babcock he’d stay, when he glanced at his sister.