Water Like a Stone

by Deborah Crombie

  “A cozy Christmas Eve,” she repeated aloud, and gave a bitter laugh. Her eyes prickled as she thought of her children—Sam, with his ten-year-old’s innocence still intact, and Lally, fighting to maintain her wary, adolescent cool against the excitement of the holiday. They were at her parents’, waiting to meet their cousin, her brother Duncan’s newfound child.

  Cousins, she supposed she should say, recalling that the woman her brother lived with had a small son of her own. Why hadn’t they married? she wondered. Had they discovered that the secret of a happy relationship was not taking each other for granted? Or were they just cautious, not wanting to make a mistake that could bind them to years of misery? She could give them a bit of advice, if they asked her.

  Then, guiltily, she remembered that she had no corner on misery. They had lost a child this time last year, a baby born just a few weeks too early to be viable. Her face flushed with shame as she thought of her failure to call, or even to write. She had meant to, but somehow she could never manage to find the words to bridge the gap that stretched between her and the older brother she had once adored.

  And now they would be here, tonight. They were all coming to her house for a festive Christmas Eve dinner before midnight mass at St. Mary’s, and she would have to play “happy families.”

  Caspar would be civil, she was sure, the perfect host, and no one would guess that her husband had just that afternoon accused her of sleeping with his partner, Piers Dutton.

  Rage swept through her again and she swung the pick hard into the crumbling mortar. She had to go home, she had to face them all, but first she would finish this one task, an accomplishment that was hers alone and untainted by lies. She would breathe with the rhythm of the blows and think of simple things, making a doorway from the front room of the barn into what had once been a feed store. The old barn’s history stretched away from her like a ribbon; the generations of farmers who had found shelter here on frosty mornings had huddled inside on evenings like this.

  One of them had mortared over what she guessed had been a manger, leaving a smooth, graying swath that broke the uniformity of the redbrick walls. It had been a good job, neat and careful, and in a way she hated to destroy it. But the barn’s new owners wanted a doorway from what would be their kitchen/living area into the back of the house, and a doorway they would have.

  As the hole in the mortar widened enough to give her purchase, she hooked the tip of the pick into the mortar and pulled. A piece came loose, but still hung, attached by what looked to be a bit of cloth. Odd, thought Juliet, peering at it more closely. The barn had grown dim with the approaching dusk. She extricated the tip of the pick, then switched on her work lamp and trained it on the wall. She touched the stuff with her fingers. Fabric, yes—something pink, perhaps?

  She inserted the pick again and pulled, gently, until she dislodged another piece of the mortar. Now she could see more of the material, recognizing the small pattern as leaping sheep, a dirty white against stained pink. It looked like a blanket her children had had as babies. How very odd. The fabric seemed to be nestled in a cavity that had been only lightly covered with the mortar. Shifting her position so that her body wasn’t blocking the light; she tugged at the material, freeing a little more. It seemed to be wrapped round something, another layer of cloth…pinkish cloth with a row of rusted snaps.

  It’s a doll, she thought, still puzzled—a black baby doll in a pink romper suit. Why would someone put a doll inside the wall of a barn?

  Then, she realized that those were tufts of hair on the tiny head, that the face was not brown plastic but leathery skin, that sockets gaped where there should have been eyes, and that the tiny hands curled under the chin were curves of bone.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Hugh Kincaid climbed up on the ladder once more, adjusting the strand of fairy lights he’d strung over the farmhouse porch. Above the rooftop, the sky had turned the ominous color of old pewter, and his nose had begun to run from the biting cold. He didn’t dare free a hand to wipe it, however; his position was precarious enough and becoming more so by the minute as the light faded.

  His wife stood below him, hugging her jacket closed against the wind. “Hugh,” she called up to him, “come down from there before you break your bloody neck. They’ll be here any moment. Do you want your son to find you sprawled on your backside in the garden?”

  “Coming, darling.” Giving the strand one last twitch, he made his way carefully down to stand beside her. She hooked her arm through his, and together they stepped back to admire the sparkle of lights against the dark red brickwork. The house was unadorned, foursquare in the style of the Cheshire Plain, but comfortable—if a little worn around the edges, as Hugh liked to think of himself.

  “It looks a bit pathetic,” he said, eyeing the lights critically. “One lonely strand. I should have done more.”

  “Don’t be silly.” Rosemary pinched him through the thick cloth of his coat. “You’re behaving like a broody old hen, Hugh, and you’re not getting up on the roof.” Her tone was affectionate but firm, and he sighed.

  “You’re right, of course. It’s just that…” For an articulate man, he found himself unaccountably at a loss for words, and unexpectedly nervous about meeting his grandson. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have grandchildren, Juliet’s Lally and little Sam, who were even now waiting inside for the expected arrival. But there was something—and God forbid he should ever admit this to anyone, even Rosemary—there was something about his son’s son that felt special to him, and he wanted everything to be perfect.

  It shocked him that he, who had always thought himself such a progressive, emancipated man, should harbor such a sentiment, but there it was, and he found himself wondering if the boy would ever consider changing his name so that the Kincaid line would go on.

  Hugh snorted aloud at his own vanity, and Rosemary gave him a questioning look. “I’m a silly old fool,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Of course you are, but it will be all right,” she answered, and he knew she had sensed what he’d left unspoken, as she always did.

  He took his handkerchief from his coat pocket and blew his nose. Rosemary was right, he decided. The fairy lights did look cheery, and from the sitting-room window the Christmas tree twinkled as well. “What did you do with the children?” he asked, wondering why they hadn’t come out with their grandmother.

  “Sent them to watch a video. They were driving me mad, and there was nothing left for them to help with in the kitchen.” She pushed up her sleeve to glance at her watch. “It’s odd we haven’t heard from Juliet by this time,” she added.

  He sniffed, catching the tang of impending snow beneath the scent of wood smoke emanating from the kitchen stove. Through the bare trees he saw lights begin to blink on in the neighboring farmhouse and knew full dark was fast approaching. “Snow’s coming. If they’re not here soon—”

  “You think your police-superintendent son can’t find his way home in a snowstorm?” Rosemary interrupted, laughing. Before he could protest, she tensed and said, “Shhh.”

  At first, he heard only his own breathing. Then he caught it, the faint whisper of tires on tarmac. A pinprick of light came from the direction of the road, then another, as the beams of the oncoming car were sliced by the intervening trees. It made Hugh think of Morse code, a distant SOS.

  The car progressed so slowly that Hugh thought they must be mistaken, that it was only an elderly neighbor creeping home from shop or pub, but then it slowed still more and turned into the farmhouse drive, bumping along the track until it rolled to a stop before them.

  The front passenger door swung open and his son emerged, smiling, though his face looked more sharply etched than when Hugh had seen him last. As Duncan hugged his mother and pumped his father’s hand, saying, “Sorry we’re so late. Traffic was a bit of a bugger,” a small blond boy erupted from the back, followed by an equally bouncy blue roan cocker spaniel.

  Hugh’s heart gave an instant�
�s leap before he realized the boy couldn’t be Kit, he was much too young. Then the other rear door opened and a boy climbed out, clutching a small, shaggy brown terrier to his chest like a shield.

  “Dad, this is Toby,” said Duncan, with a gentling hand on the small boy’s shoulder, “and this is Kit. And Gemma, too, if she can get her bits and pieces together,” he added, smiling, as a young woman came round the car from the driver’s side. “She decided not to let me drive the last stretch, and I think our country roads have left her a bit frazzled.”

  Hugh greeted her warmly, taking in her attractive, friendly face and the coppery glint of hair drawn back with a clip, but he couldn’t keep his eyes from the boy—his grandson.

  Rosemary had warned him, of course, but still he found he was not prepared. The boy had his mother’s fair coloring, but was so like his father in the stamp of his features that Hugh felt he might have been seeing Duncan again at thirteen. Such resemblances were not uncommon, he knew, but awareness of them is usually dulled by daily proximity. It seemed to Hugh he’d been offered a rare glimpse of the march of generations, and he felt a twinge of his own mortality.

  “Come in, come in,” Rosemary was saying, “I’ve got the kettle on, and the children are dying to see you.” She shepherded them all into the front hall, but before she could divest them of their coats and luggage, Sam came galloping down the stairs, followed more slowly by his sister, Lally.

  Lally’s face was set in a pout and Sam was holding the phone aloft, waving it like a trophy wrested from the enemy. “Granddad, it’s Mummy. She wants to speak to you.”

  “Tell her we’ll ring her back in five minutes, Sam,” said Rosemary, “As soon as we’ve—”

  “She says it’s urgent, Nana.” His mission accomplished, Sam handed the phone to Hugh and sidled down the last few steps, his curious gaze fixed on Kit and Toby.

  “Juliet,” Hugh said into the phone, “what is it? Can’t it wai—”

  “Dad, is Duncan there yet?” his daughter broke in, her voice sharp and breathless.

  “Yes, he’s just come in. That’s what—”

  “Dad, tell him I need him to come to the old dairy—he knows where it is. Tell him—” She seemed to hesitate, then said, on a rising note, “Just tell him I’ve found a body.”

  “Bugger,” Kincaid muttered as he squeezed under the wheel of Gemma’s Ford Escort and slid the seat back far enough to accommodate his longer legs. His sister hadn’t stayed on the line to speak to him, but before disconnecting had told their father that her mobile battery was running low.

  Was this some sort of joke, he wondered, her revenge for all his teasing when they were children? Surely she couldn’t actually have found a body? His father had made light of it, with the children listening, but if it was true, he felt he must be the victim of a cosmic rather than a sibling prank.

  Nor had she said whether she’d called the local police, so he’d decided to check out the situation before notifying them himself. He didn’t want to add embarrassment to aggravation if it turned out she’d discovered the remains of some stray animal in the old dairy.

  His father had filled him in briefly on Juliet’s renovation project, and Kincaid remembered the place well. He and Jules had spent a good part of their childhood rambling up and down the canal towpath, and the dairy had been a familiar landmark. He would have much preferred, however, to take a trip down memory lane on a bright, sunny day rather than a miserably cold evening, and Christmas Eve to boot.

  Nor was he happy about leaving Gemma and the boys after only the briefest of introductions. Glancing at the house once more as he backed out of in the drive, he saw his dad still standing at the open door, gazing after him. Kincaid waved, then felt a bit foolish, knowing his father couldn’t see him. Then, as he watched, his dad stepped inside, the door swung closed, and the last vestiges of light and warmth vanished.

  The dairy, he remembered, was on the main branch of the Shropshire Union Canal, near Barbridge. In fact, they had passed right by it on the way to his parents’ house. As children, he and Jules had reached that stretch of the Cut by crossing the fields and then the Middlewich branch of the canal that ran nearer the farm, but tonight he would be taking the road.

  As he eased the car back out onto the main track, a few snowflakes drifted against the windscreen, and he swore. They’d outrun the snow near Crewe, but it had caught up. Heavier now, the flakes disintegrated beneath the wipers, and the tarmac gleamed wetly in the headlamps. When he reached the Chester Road, he turned back towards Nantwich, and when he had passed the turning for Barbridge he slowed, looking for the small lane he remembered.

  It came up on him suddenly and he swung the wheel hard to the left. A house loomed out of the darkness, dark spikes of chimney pots briefly visible through the swirl of snow. A Victorian lodge, neglected in his childhood; the sort of place one approached only when bolstered by a playmate’s bravado. It was occupied now, though—he’d glimpsed the glow of light in a ground-floor window.

  The house fell away behind him as the hedgerows and trees reached round the car like skeletal arms, and he navigated the track’s twists and turns as much by memory as by sight. Then the terrain leveled out as woods gave way to pasture, and ahead he saw the flicker of a lamp. Easing the car over the last few rutted yards, he pulled up beside a white builder’s van. He could see the silhouette of the old dairy now, the light clearly coming from its open doors, but as he climbed out of the car, the van door swung open and his sister jumped down from the driver’s seat.

  “Jules.” He drew her to him, feeling the slenderness of her shoulders beneath her padded jacket, and for a moment she relaxed into his arms. Then she drew away, establishing a distance between them. Her face was a pale blur against the frame of dark hair that straggled loose from a ponytail.

  “Thanks for coming,” she said. “I didn’t know who else to call.”

  Kincaid bit his tongue on the obvious—he wouldn’t pass judgment until he’d seen what she had to show him. “What are you doing out here?” he asked instead. “Staying warm?” He brushed at the snowflakes settling on his cheeks and eyelashes.

  Juliet shook her head. “No. Yes. But it’s not that. I couldn’t stay in there. Not with—” She gestured towards the barn. “You’d better come and see for yourself. You can tell me I’m not crazy.” Turning from him, she started towards the light, picking her way through the slushy ruts. He followed, taking in the jeans and the heavy boots that accompanied the padded jacket, marveling at the transformation in his sister since he had seen her last.

  His mother had told him, of course, that Juliet had left her job as office manager of her husband’s investment firm and started her own business as a builder, but he hadn’t quite been able to visualize the accompanying transformation.

  Juliet stopped just inside the door of the building and Kincaid stepped in, looking around. The light came from a battery-powered work lamp set on the dirt floor. He lifted it, chasing the shadows from the upper part of the room. Windows had been framed into the dark redbrick of the canal-facing wall, and he knew that under better circumstances the view would be spectacular. Some framing had been done on the inside as well, marking out obviously preliminary room divisions, and a few feet from the back wall, a pick lay abandoned in the dirt.

  He saw the swath of mortar set into the dark brick, a jagged hole in its center where the pick had done its work. And there was something else—was it fabric? He moved in closer, raising the lamp so that the area was illuminated clearly. Gingerly, he reached out with a finger. Then, in spite of the cold and the wind that eddied through the room, he caught an all-too-familiar whiff of decay.

  “Is it a baby?” said Juliet, her voice sounding thin in the frigid air.

  “Looks like it.” Kincaid stepped back and put his hands firmly back into the pockets of his overcoat. He needn’t have worried about his sister’s failure to call the police straightaway. “It’s been here a good while, I’m afraid.”


  “Is it—it wasn’t a newborn—” She gave him a stricken look, as if she’d realized the subject might be painful for him.

  He leaned in to examine the small body again. “No, I don’t think so. Less than a year old, would be my guess from the size, but then I’m certainly no expert. I don’t envy the forensic pathologist trying to make a determination on this one.”

  “But why would—how could—” Juliet took a breath and seemed to make an effort to pull herself together. “What do we do now?”

  Kincaid had already pulled out his phone. Punching in 999, he gave her a crooked smile. “We ruin someone else’s Christmas Eve.”

  The small entrance hall was a jumble of noise and movement, filled to bursting with adults, children, and dogs. One part of Gemma’s brain registered the smell of baking mingled with fresh evergreens, while another took in the pale green walls hung with framed illustrations from children’s books, an umbrella stand crammed full of brollies and walking sticks, and pegs draped with coats. Holly intertwined with gold ribbons and the deep red berries of yew wound up the stair rail.

  The boy who had brought the phone—Gemma guessed he must be Duncan’s nephew, Sam—was shouting something, striving to be heard over the high-pitched, frenzied barking that came from the back of the house. As Geordie and Tess joined in the chorus, Gemma tried to hush the cocker spaniel while Kit soothed the terrier in his arms.

  Rosemary Kincaid had urged her son to at least have a cup of tea, but he’d demurred, saying the sooner he looked into things, the sooner he’d be back. When he’d pressed Gemma’s shoulder with a whispered “Sorry,” she’d gripped his arm and murmured, “I’ll go with you.”

  “No. Stay with the boys,” he’d said softly, with a glance at Kit. “I can manage this, and they need you.”

  She’d subsided in unhappy silence, watching him go with a sense of mounting panic. Surely he hadn’t walked into a murder on the first day of their holiday; that was too unfair for belief. It could be anything, she told herself—in her days on the beat she’d had more than one call from citizens convinced the remains of a stray dog were human. Now it was only because she’d worked so many homicide cases that the word “body” automatically conjured up murder.