Water Like a Stone

by Deborah Crombie

  Kincaid had never been particularly fond of his brother-in-law—he found the man’s supercilious attitude exasperating—but he was distressed to hear the evident unhappiness in his sister’s voice. He knew better than to pry, however—unless he did it very tactfully.

  “How’s your new business going?” he asked.

  From the look on Juliet’s face, it had been the wrong question. “This was my first big commission. We were already behind schedule because of the weather, and now with this—” She gave a despairing little shrug. “What makes it worse is that the client is a friend of Piers—” A few more strands fluttered loose from her ponytail as she fell silent, shaking her head. “Oh, God, listen to me. I’m a selfish cow to even think about my problems, when that poor child—What do you think happened to it, Duncan? And the pink suit—was it a little girl?”

  “We can’t know that yet,” he answered gently. “But try not to think about it. Whatever happened was a long time ago—”

  “Not that long,” she broke in, surprising him. “That blanket—the children had one in the same fabric when they were small. It must have been Lally’s, I think, because it was pink, but we used it for Sam as well.”

  “Do you remember where it came from?” he asked, unable to damp down the quickening of his pulse as his investigative instincts kicked in. This was not his case, he reminded himself—it had nothing to do with him.

  “The supermarket, maybe. Or one of the chain baby shops. It was nothing special.”

  He pictured the child only a few yards distant, its flesh wasting away from its small bones, and wondered at the care with which it had been wrapped in the cheap blanket. But he had seen parents batter their children to death, then cover them tenderly, so he knew it meant nothing. Nor did he want to think about those things, not here, not now.

  “How do you do it?” Jules said softly, as if she’d read his mind. “How do you deal with things like this every day, and still put your children to bed at night without panicking? They’re so fragile, so vulnerable. You think it’s the most frightening when they’re babies, but then they get old enough to be out of your sight, out of your care, and you know that anything can happen…”

  He thought immediately of Kit, and of his own failure to anticipate trouble in that quarter. And his niece, he remembered, was almost the same age. “Jules, are you having trouble with Lally?” he asked.

  “No. No, of course not.” Juliet pulled off her glove again, but this time, after testing the vent, she stripped off the other glove, too, and rubbed her hands together in the airstream. After a moment, she said, “It’s just that…a month ago, a boy from Lally’s school was found in the canal, drowned. He was fourteen. They said there was alcohol involved.” She looked up at him, her hands still. “He was a good kid, Duncan. A good kid, a good student, never in any kind of trouble. If it can happen to a child like that…”

  “I know. It means none of them is safe.” It occurred to him then that he didn’t know his niece at all, that he couldn’t begin to guess whether or not she was at risk. “Is Lally all right? I’m sure it was very upsetting for her.”

  “I don’t know. The school provided counseling for those who wanted it, but I’m not sure if she went. She doesn’t talk to me anymore. But she’s seemed different the last few weeks, more withdrawn.” Juliet sighed. “Maybe it’s just her age. I suppose I was difficult at fourteen, too.”

  “Worse than difficult,” he said, teasing. If he had hoped for an answering smile, he was disappointed. Juliet flashed him a look he couldn’t read, then yanked her gloves on again and huddled deeper into her jacket.

  Why was it, Kincaid wondered, that he always managed to put his foot wrong with his sister?

  Ronnie Babcock felt his adrenaline start to pump as he backed out of his drive. As glad as he was of any excuse to avoid his own company, he’d expected nothing more exciting than an alcohol-fueled domestic, or perhaps a burglar taking advantage of someone away for the holiday. Certainly when his phone rang he hadn’t imagined the interred body of a child—at the least a suspicious death, at the most a homicide.

  He forced himself to slow the powerful BMW. It was still snowing and the roads would be growing treacherous. Although he liked to drive fast, he was careful of his car—God help anyone who put a nick or dent in the Black Beast, as he liked to call it. He’d bought the 320 used after Peggy had walked out, and if there were whispered comments about the male menopause around the station, he didn’t care. He’d been a poor kid, and to him the car represented everything he’d never thought he could achieve.

  Not that he thought of himself as middle-aged, mind you. As he slowed for the A51 roundabout, he tightened the knot in his tie and glanced at himself in the driving mirror. At forty-one, his hair was still thick, springing from the widow’s peak on his brow, and if there were a few gray threads mixed with the blond, they didn’t show. He’d kept his footballer’s physique, too, as well as the broken nose and the scar across his cheek where a football boot had caught him full in the face. His rather battered visage often came in handy in the interview room, and he liked to think there were women—his ex-wife notwithstanding—that found it attractive.

  The traffic was lighter than he’d expected, and he had an easy shot of it to the location of the call, skirting the north side of Nantwich on the A51. At the Burford roundabout the A51 turned north, towards Chester, and the visibility dropped to near nil in the blowing snow. He crawled along, swearing under his breath, thinking about the logistics of getting the crime-scene unit out in this weather. From the brief report he’d been given, he wasn’t sure if the actual site of the corpse was sheltered from the elements.

  His swearing increased in volume as he saw the turning too late to negotiate it. He had to drive another mile into Barbridge before he could find a place to turn the car, and this time he crept back towards the farm track at a snail’s pace. His moment of triumph was short-lived, however, when he discovered he couldn’t even see which way the track turned. Nor was the high-powered BMW designed for driving in accumulating snow on unpaved roads. He coasted to a stop, wondering if he was going to have to get out and leg it the rest of the way with the help of a torch. His overcoat was lightweight; his shoes were new and expensive and would be soaked through in minutes.

  Then, as he checked the batteries in the torch he kept in the door pocket, the curtain of white surrounding his car began to thin. After a moment, it was once more possible to pick out individual flakes, and then there were only a few solitary, erratically drifting crystals.

  Babcock suspected the reprieve was temporary, but he could now see the road a few yards beyond the car’s bonnet, and he meant to take advantage of it. He put the BMW into gear again and crept along the track, and soon he saw the panda cars’ blue lights flashing like beacons.

  When he came out into the clearing, he saw that the headlamps of the patrol cars illuminated a Ford Escort and the sort of white van used by builders and plumbers. One of the patrol officers stood talking to two civilians, and as he drew nearer Babcock could see that the taller figure was a man in a City overcoat, and the smaller, which he had first assumed to be male, seemed to be a woman dressed in rough clothing. Behind them, torches flashed within the shadowy huddle of outbuildings.

  What a godforsaken place, and how had these people come to discover a body here on Christmas Eve? He picked his way across the snowy ruts, careful of his shoes although he knew it was a hopeless prospect. At least he wouldn’t be the only one with ruined footwear, he thought with some satisfaction, considering the cut of the other man’s overcoat.

  The woman was quite pretty, dark-haired, and there was something about her that tickled his memory. Then, as the man turned towards him, his face fully illuminated in the glare of the lights, Ronnie Babcock gave an involuntary grunt of surprise. What the hell was he doing here?

  “Well, I’ll be buggered,” he said as he reached the waiting group. “If it isn’t my old mate Duncan Kincaid. Troubl
e himself.”

  Her skin was pale, and felt clammy to the touch. Worse, even in the dim light of the cabin, it seemed to Gabriel Wain that his wife’s lips were tinged with blue. When he smoothed her dark hair from her brow, she moved restlessly under his touch and opened her eyes.

  “Gabe, you won’t forget, will you?” she whispered. “They’d be so disappointed—”

  “Of course I won’t forget, woman. I’ll do it as soon as they’re asleep, I promise.” From the next-door cabin, he could hear the rustlings and occasional giggles of their son and daughter, awake past their bedtime with Christmas Eve excitement. The stockings would be laid at the ends of their bunks, even if the knitted socks held only oranges, boiled sweets, and a few knickknacks from the shop at the Venetian Marina.

  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 boatmen, 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.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  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.