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 a
nd 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.
Hunched against the cold in her padded coat, she looked more vulnerable than he had ever seen her. She was regarding him with a puzzled expression.
“Duncan, can’t we go?” she asked.
We’ve got family waiting, she had said to Babcock. He thought of Gemma and the boys, marooned at his parents’ as Christmas Eve ticked away, and cursed himself for a selfish bastard.
“Of course,” he said, and to Babcock he added, “Good luck with it, then.”
He turned and walked Juliet to her van, but as he started to get into his own car, he couldn’t resist a look back at the scene.
Babcock was still standing in the same spot, watching him, his lips curved in a knowing smile.
“Where the hell is she?” Caspar Newcombe slammed the phone back into its cradle on his desk. “It’s nearly eight o’clock and not a word from her, and we’re supposed to be serving dinner for her whole bloody clan before midnight mass.”
“Have you tried ringing her mother?” His partner, Piers Dutton, settled himself a little more comfortably in one of the client’s chairs across from Caspar’s desk and arranged one ankle over the other. Fed up with pacing round the empty house and ringing his wife’s unresponsive mobile phone, Caspar had walked the short distance to his firm and found Piers there, finishing up some paperwork. Seeing Caspar’s expression, Piers had got up from his desk and followed Caspar into his office.
Newcombe and Dutton, Investments, occupied the ground-floor premises at the end of a Georgian terrace near the town square, just a few yards from St. Mary’s Church. The building was a gem, and Caspar took great pride in their acquisition of the office suite. He’d also expected his wife to share his feelings, and to look on her position as office manager of Newcombe and Dutton as a privilege.
Instead, she had walked out on them without so much as giving notice, and had borrowed money to set herself up in business as a builder. A builder! If she had intended to humiliate him, she couldn’t have made a better choice. Not that she hadn’t always been handy around the house—in fact, he’d been pleased when she’d tackled projects that would have required calling in a professional—but this was beyond the pale. And now—now he found she’d done worse.
“I shouldn’t have to be chasing after her like she was a wayward child,” he said sulkily to Piers. Caspar eyed his own chair, an executive leather model that had cost the earth, but felt too irritated to sit. Instead, he crossed the room to the drinks cabinet and poured a good finger of Dalwhinnie single malt into two crystal tumblers. These were not just any tumblers, of course, but Finnish crystal in a contemporary design. Waterford was passé, in Caspar’s opinion, and he made a point that everything in the firm’s offices should reflect the best and most up-to-date.
That included himself, although he was forced to admit that even in the finest wool trousers and a pale yellow cashmere jumper, he still looked like the accountant he was, no matter how glorified his title. He was too tall, too thin, too dark, with fine-boned and serious features that had not been designed for the sort of nonchalant charm his partner radiated so effortlessly.
“Cheers,” said Piers now, as Caspar handed him a whisky. He sipped and took a moment to savor the taste before giving his verdict. “Very nice. You shouldn’t let Juliet raise your blood pressure, you know,” he added, peering at Caspar over his glass. “She’s probably just got hung up with family. Didn’t you say her brother was arriving? He could have been delayed by the weather.”
Caspar was not to be mollified. “I don’t see how that excuses her turning off her phone. It’s inconsiderate, under any circumstances. And that’s not to mention her inviting them all for Christmas Eve dinner without consulting me.”
“It’s Christmas, Caspar. If I can achieve détente over dinner with my lovely ex, then you can certainly put up with the in-laws. You make it sound as if they have the plague.” Piers downed another third of his drink. He was a big man, with thick fair hair that sprang from his brow in a leonine wave, and if he had begun to put on a little weight as he entered his forties, he carried it well. Tonight he wore a long denim coat over a nubby green sweater, and looked every inch the country squire.
Stinging a bit from Piers’s criticism, Caspar changed the subject. “Is Leo already at Helen’s, then?” he asked.
Leo was Piers’s fourteen-year-old son, Helen his ex-wife. Piers and Helen shared custody of the boy, but since Piers had bought the Victorian manor house a few miles from town and begun playing at country gentleman, Leo spent most of his time with his father.
Piers supported Helen very well, however, in a mock Tudor cottage on the west side of Nantwich, just the other side of the river, so perhaps Helen found it wise not to protest. Helen, unlike his own recalcitrant wife, knew on which side her bread was buttered.
“Oh, yes. Leo’s grandparents are there as well, and he’s on his best behavior. Hoping to increase the size of his Christmas check, I should imagine,” Piers added with an air of satisfaction. Leo Dutton had inherited his father’s good looks, and was already well versed in using them to his advantage.
Piers polished off the last third of his whisky, stretched, and stood. “I’d better be off. If I make Helen
keep dinner waiting, I’ll have to endure injured looks the rest of the evening. We’ll see you at church later on, shall we?”
Caspar doubted that Piers felt any more religious impulse than he did, but several of their clients were churchwardens or members of the congregation, so it behooved them to put in an appearance. Nantwich was still a small enough town that the social lives of those with money to spend on investments were closely intertwined, and the firm’s business depended on their keeping and strengthening ties with those in prominent positions.
“If we make it,” responded Caspar, with another glance at his watch. “At this rate—”
Piers turned back from the door with a sigh of exasperation. “For heaven sake’s, man, ring your mother-in-law. If you’re worried—”
“I’m not worried,” Caspar said mulishly. He downed half his drink in a rebellious gulp and felt the fire burn all the way down to his gut.
“Caspar.” Piers eyed him speculatively. “You’ve had a row, haven’t you? A flaming row.” His heavy brows drew together as he frowned. “You didn’t tell Juliet about our little talk, did you? That was to be just between us. You agreed.”
Now Caspar was torn between guilt and a desire to vent. “It just came out,” he admitted. “I didn’t intend it. She had the gall to say she’d always tried to do her best by our marriage. Bitch.” He swallowed the rest of his drink, and this time he barely felt the burn.
“Goddamn it, Caspar.” Piers no longer looked amused, and Caspar suddenly felt crowded by the other man’s physical presence. “I’d no intention of making things worse between you and Juliet. I was just looking out for your interests, because you’re my friend as well as my partner. If you couldn’t keep your mouth shut, I won’t be responsible for the consequences.” He turned away, and a moment later, Caspar heard the outside door open and then slam firmly shut.
He stood, his empty glass dangling from his nerveless fingers. Now he’d torn it. Piers was right, he should have kept his mouth shut. The last thing he’d wanted was to make Piers angry with him, or to betray his trust. He couldn’t remember Piers ever raising his voice towards him before.
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