Water Like a Stone (6 page)

Babcock chuckled aloud as he watched his old friend drive away. Having caught the brief, unguarded expression on Kincaid’s usually composed face, he had recognized naked lust for the chase. He felt a surprising satisfaction at having discovered a kindred spirit, rising so unexpectedly from the ashes of his past life.

Brushing at a feather touch of damp on his cheek, he realized it was snowing again. “Sod it,” he said aloud, casting a glance at the sky, which seemed to loom within touching distance. He scrubbed the accumulating flakes from his hair in irritation and set off after his crime-scene techs, his amusement forgotten.

He stopped at the open doorway of the barn, nodding at the constable standing watch. What
would
be the doorway, Babcock amended, as he could see now that the opening was merely roughly framed. The interior was littered with the debris of construction—a few planks and pails lay scattered about, and a power saw had been propped against the leg of a wooden sawhorse. Near the far wall, a pick had been dropped on the dirt floor, its blade catching the light from the battery-powered lamps.

Clive Travis, his chief forensics officer, stood just inside the door,
struggling to get his paper suit on over bulky warm clothing. Travis was a small, lean man who wore his thinning sandy hair pulled back in a ponytail, and whose energetic personality mirrored his whippet-like appearance. Tonight, however, he looked anything but happy, and his fellow officer seemed no more cheerful. Sandra Barnett, the scene photographer, was quick and competent, but always appeared as if she’d rather be doing something else. Tonight, her broad face looked positively funereal.

“So, what do we have here, troops?” Babcock asked. After slipping off his overcoat and handing it to a constable, with a grimace he accepted gloves and another paper suit from Travis. Protecting the evidence from contamination was a bloody waste of time, he was sure, in an old scene that had been openly accessible, but it had to be done. It would be his head on a platter if there was a balls-up, and he hadn’t got where he was by indulging his rebellious streak—at least not very often.

“Have a look for yourself, boss.” When Babcock was properly suited, Travis slipped a torch into Babcock’s freshly gloved hand. “A babe in a manger, you might say.”

Sandra Barnett glanced at Travis and thumped down her camera case with unnecessary force. Babcock supposed he couldn’t blame her for being irritated by Travis’s irreverence, but it was one of the reasons he liked the man, that and Travis’s appreciation of the bizarre—and bizarre this case certainly was.

From where he stood, Babcock could see the pickwork in the far wall, and in the opening, a scrap of pinkish cloth and what looked like a cluster of tiny brown twigs. Maneuvering carefully around the dropped pick, he stepped closer as Travis repositioned a light so that it provided better illumination. Suddenly, his brain assembled the component parts of what he was seeing into a coherent whole.

“Jesus,” he said involuntarily, not caring if it earned a glower from Barnett. The twigs were the curled brown bones of a tiny hand. What he had seen as a clump of root filament was the tuft of
fine hair left above a wizened face. The empty and sunken eye sockets seemed to peer back at him.

No wonder Juliet Newcombe had seemed shaken. Babcock had seen much worse in the course of his career, in terms of blood and mutilation, but there was something pathetically vulnerable in this little corpse. Who could have done such a thing to a child?

The lower half of the child’s body was still encased in its mortar shroud, but from what Babcock could see, there was no obvious sign of physical trauma, nor any bloodstains on the blanket or clothing. Voices at the doorway alerted him to the arrival of the Home Office pathologist and he turned away, glad enough to have someone else take over the examination.

Dr. Althea Elsworthy strode into the barn, disdaining Travis’s offer of a paper suit with an irritable flick of her wrist. She always carried her own supply of latex gloves, and paused just inside the doorway to stuff her heavy woolen pair in the pocket of her coat and puff air into the latex replacements before pulling them on. “Mummified, is it?” she said, directing her inquiry in Babcock’s direction, although she hadn’t acknowledged him. Before he could finish nodding, she continued, “No point bothering with the astronaut gear, then, and I’m not taking off my coat in this bloody cold. I’ll be buggered if I’m courting pneumonia on Christmas Eve without a bloody good reason.”

As she paused to take stock of the room, Babcock studied her with the amazement he always felt. Tonight, her tall, thin figure was enveloped in what looked like a man’s ancient tweed overcoat, and her flyaway gray hair was covered by a navy wool watch cap. Her face, however, was as stern and uncompromising as ever. Although from her vigor he guessed her to be in her sixties, her skin was so webbed with fine lines that it resembled tanned leather.

As she passed by him, he caught a faint whiff of dog. Her dog accompanied her everywhere, in all weathers, stolidly waiting in the back of her ancient moss-green Morris Minor car. The beast appeared to be a cross between an Irish wolfhound and the Hound of
the Baskervilles, and Babcock had been known to speculate as to whether it was actually stuffed and permanently bolted into place as a deterrent against car burglars.

But that the dog was alive and not taxidermically enhanced he could personally testify. He’d once made the mistake of accepting a lift from the doctor, and the dog’s hot breath had prickled his neck all the way back to the station. He could have sworn a few drops of saliva dribbled down his collar. Riding in Elsworthy’s car had been a mistake in other respects as well—the upholstery had been so coated with dog hair that its original color was indistinguishable, and it had taken him days to remove the thick gray mat from his suit.

Tonight, he thought he detected an odor other than eau de dog emanating from the good doctor—the sharp tang of whisky. But the doctor’s eyes gleamed with their usual intelligence, and her manner was as brisk as ever. Had she been celebrating, Babcock wondered? Was there a Mr. Elsworthy waiting at home? It was not the sort of thing one would ever dare ask her, and he couldn’t imagine her offering a personal confidence. Nor was he sure he really wanted to know.

He stepped farther back, giving the doctor room to work. Stooping like a bulkily clad crane, she carefully eyed the body, then probed gently here and there with a gloved finger. She offered no commentary—small talk was never the doctor’s habit—and after a few minutes Babcock couldn’t contain his impatience.

“Well?” he asked. “How long do you think it’s been here? How old is it? Is it male or female?”

The look she shot him might have been aimed at a schoolboy talking out of turn in class. She turned back to the gaping mortar. “You might assume from the clothing that the child is female,” she said at last, with only a trace of sarcasm. “Further than that, I can’t say until I can do X-rays and a proper examination.” She peered down into the lower part of the wall cavity. “From the length of the body, I’d guess the infant was less than a year old, but not newborn.”

Babcock snorted. “Very helpful.”

“You were expecting miracles, Chief Inspector?”

He thought he glimpsed a flash of humor in her eyes. “I wouldn’t mind.”

“As to your first question,” she continued, “once your technicians have finished documenting the scene and we can remove the remains, I’ll do the preliminary exam at the morgue. Then we’ll see.” Elsworthy straightened up and peeled off her latex gloves, stuffing them into another capacious pocket as she moved towards the door.

He had reached for his mobile phone to request reinforcements, uniforms to man the perimeter and begin the house-to-house, when the doctor turned back.

“I can tell you one thing,” she said, and he paused, phone open in his hand. “This was no casual burial, no callous dumping of a corpse. If you want my opinion, I’d say it was a ritual interment.”

When Gemma and the children returned from their trek to the pony pasture, they found the kitchen tidy again and Rosemary gathering the ingredients for punch. There had been no word from Kincaid or his sister.

Sam led the children off to see his hoard of presents under the tree, and Hugh had gone up to his study, for “just a few minutes,” Rosemary informed Gemma with a roll of her eyes, adding, “He’s just acquired a rare edition of one of Dickens’s lesser-known Christmas stories. Once he gets immersed in a book, he’ll forget to eat if I don’t remind him. I suppose that sounds rather charming, but in reality, it’s quite irritating.”

Gemma had seen the same sort of single-minded focus all too often when Kincaid was working a case—in fact, it had recently almost cost him the custody of his son. She, on the other hand, found it difficult to compartmentalize the different aspects of her life. Even while concentrating on work, some part of her mind
would be wondering what sort of day Kincaid was having, and whether there was something in the fridge for the children’s dinner. She’d seen it as a curse, this inability to shut down her emotional radar when she wanted so badly to succeed at her job.

But lately she’d begun to think that the feminine hardwiring of her brain might have its compensations. The personal ones were more obvious—God forbid that
she
had failed to turn up at Kit’s custody hearing—but there were professional blessings as well.

Her promotion had required her to learn to lead her team effectively, and she’d discovered that her awareness of their moods and shifting allegiances was an invaluable tool. She was also finding that an ability to see the big picture, to synthesize, sometimes allowed the disparate pieces of an investigation to slip into place.

Now, if she could just apply some of those same skills to navigating the complexities of Duncan’s family, maybe she would actually get through this holiday. She liked Rosemary, although she didn’t know her well. Their phone conversations had consisted of superficial chitchat. Gemma had no idea what lay beneath this woman’s competent exterior.

“What are you making, exactly?” she asked, watching Rosemary transfer an assortment of bottles into a box for easy carrying to the car.

“It’s called cardinal’s hat. Very festive—and lethal if overindulged in.” She touched the bottle tops in turn. “Claret. Cognac. White rum. Red vermouth. Cranberry juice. Rose water.” Reaching into the fridge, she pulled out a bottle of champagne and held it aloft like a trophy. “Champagne. And”—she reached into the fridge again and removed a plastic bag—“rose petals to float on the top. Scavenged from my friend the florist on the square.”

Gemma couldn’t remember her parents ever drinking champagne. From the photos, she knew their wedding had been strictly chapel, a tea-and-cake affair, and any family gatherings where alcohol was served tended to run to beer and port. “Sounds very elegant
just for us,” she said, glancing a little uneasily at her casual slacks and sweater. The punch sounded as if it called for a velvet dress.

“It’s a bit much for Juliet’s taste, to be honest,” Rosemary told her, placing the rose petals carefully atop the bottles. “But Caspar likes the show.”

Gemma’s curiosity prompted her to forget her caution. “You didn’t sound earlier as if you were much bothered by what Caspar thought.”

“Oh, dear.” Rosemary glanced up, a guilty expression on her face. “Didn’t I? In front of the children?”

Gemma nodded. “Maybe I misinterpreted—”

“No.” Rosemary sighed. “Although I do try not to do that. It’s very unfair to Lally and Sam. He
is
their father, and the past year or so has been difficult enough for them without my adding to it.”

“Um…” Gemma hesitated, not sure of the line between polite concern and nosiness. On the job, she’d have had no such scruples. Temporizing, she said, “I understand Juliet changed jobs this last year?”

“That’s a very tame way of putting it,” agreed Rosemary, pushing the box out of the way and sitting across from Gemma at the big scrubbed table. “Juliet had served as general dogsbody for Caspar’s business since he and his partner set up on their own a few years ago. ‘Office manager’ was her official title, but she did everything from answering the phone to making appointments to keeping the books, and Caspar paid her a minimum wage. He said she benefited by the firm’s overall profitability, so it would be like robbing Peter to pay Paul to give her a decent salary. And while that may have been true, at least in part, it certainly did nothing for Juliet’s self-esteem.

“She was content enough at first, because it allowed her some flexibility with the children, but then I could see it wearing away at her. Anyone could guess it was only a matter of time before she bolted.”

“But setting herself up as a builder, and with no experience? Wasn’t that a bit—”

“Risky? Impractical?” Rosemary’s smile, so like her son’s, lit up her face. “I’d even say foolhardy. But she’d managed quite compli
cated DIY projects on their own house for years, as well as acting as an unpaid contractor for her friends, and it was what she’d loved doing ever since she was a child.”

Gemma wondered if Rosemary felt a little envy for the daughter who had turned away from the family business to make her own way. Had Rosemary dreamed of a life that held more than raising her children and helping with her husband’s shop?

“Our banker, an old friend of Hugh’s and mine, loaned her the start-up money. Caspar was livid, and even though she’s kept her head above water so far, he hasn’t forgiven her. I think his pride is more damaged than his pocketbook. He sees it as a sort of defection.” Rosemary looked a little abashed. “I’m talking out of turn. It’s just that—well, I can’t say these things to Juliet, and I certainly can’t discuss it with friends in town. Everyone knows everyone’s business here. But I’m worried about Juliet, and the children. Lally especially—it’s such a difficult age. And her father spoils her, which only complicates the situation further.”

“He doesn’t sound the type to spoil his children,” said Gemma, thinking that what he sounded was a right prat.