Water Like a Stone

by Deborah Crombie

  Things had started to go wrong after they’d got to Lally’s house. They’d been in Sam’s room, admiring the younger boy’s collection of Star Wars action figures with varying degrees of enthusiasm, when Lally had heard the sound of the front door.

  “My dad,” she’d said, slipping from the room with the quickness of anticipation. Then Kit had heard raised voices, the words indistinguishable, and a few moments later Lally had come back in, much more slowly, her face shuttered.

  With the same sort of sibling radar Kit sometimes experienced with Toby, Sam stopped in the midst of demonstrating an X-wing fighter and looked questioningly at his sister.

  “Mum and Dad are having a row.” Lally had shrugged, as if it didn’t matter, and perched nonchalantly on the edge of Sam’s bed. But after that there had been an edginess to the atmosphere and Lally had begun to tease her brother so mercilessly that Kit found himself coming to the younger boy’s defense.

  Dinner was even worse. It was a relief when the meal was over and Lally pulled him aside, whispering, “Come on. We’ll say we’re going early to save seats at the church, but we’ll have time to have a smoke.”

  “Smoke?” Kit said, before he could think to hide his surprise.

  “Don’t sound so shocked.” Lally’s conspiratorial little smile turned to a pout. “Don’t tell me you don’t have a fag now and then.”

  “No,” he said honestly. “I don’t like it.” He couldn’t tell her that the smell reminded him of his grandmother Eugenia, and made him feel physically ill.

  Lally regarded him coolly. “Well, you can do what you want, as long as you’re not a telltale. Are you game?”

  “Yes, okay,” he’d agreed, hoping that once they were away from the house she wouldn’t be so prickly. To his surprise, Sam had not asked to go with them, but had given Lally a look Kit couldn’t fathom.

  He had little opportunity to enjoy his time alone with Lally, however, as her mum had given her a package of leftover food to deliver to an elderly neighbor, and by the time the task had been accomplished, she’d hurried him down the dark path into the town. “I promised to meet a friend at the Crown—that’s the old coaching inn,” she explained as they reached the square.

  Then, when the tall blond boy appeared from the shadowed archway that ran alongside the old pub, Kit gave a start of surprise. He’d assumed the friend was female, and his heart sank.

  “So this is the little coz,” the boy said, without introduction. He pulled a packet of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, gave one to Lally, then extended the pack to Kit.

  Jamming his hands farther into his pockets, Kit shook his head. “No, thanks.” To Lally, he added, “What’s your friend’s name?”

  “Leo.”

  “Aw, it’s a sissy boy.” Leo’s smile showed even white teeth in his thin face. “It even has manners.”

  Kit knew there was no good answer.

  Unexpectedly, it was Lally who rescued him. “Leave it, Leo,” she said. “We don’t have much time.” She fished in her handbag and pulled out a disposable lighter.

  “Did you bring my stuff?” Leo asked sharply, as if annoyed at her defection, and Lally looked up at him in surprise.

  “We barely got out of the house. And it’s Christmas Eve, for Christ’s sake. We have to sit in church next to our parents in a half hour’s time. That’s pushing it, even for you.”

  She tucked her hair behind her ear, then cupped the tip of the cigarette with one hand while she flicked the lighter with the other. The brief orange flare illuminated the planes of her face but left her eyes in darkness.

  The smell of the burning tobacco was pungent in the cold air, and Kit had to stop himself backing up a pace. As Leo reached for the lighter and bent over his own cigarette, Kit took the opportunity to study him. In spite of the other boy’s height, he didn’t think Leo was actually much older than he was. There was a stretched quality to him, as if he’d grown faster than his bones could tolerate. His blond hair was buzzed short, and he wore a navy wool peacoat that looked like those Kit had seen in expensive London shops. Kit was suddenly painfully aware of his serviceable padded anorak, bought a size too big so that it would fit over his uniform blazer. He looked like a geek—worse, a geek wearing hand-me-downs.

  “Are you in the same class at school, then?” he asked, trying to mask his discomfort by taking the initiative.

  Lally answered without looking at him. In spite of her bravado, she stood with her back to the arch of the old carriage entrance and kept her eyes on the square. “Yeah. We go to Marlborough School, not the comprehensive. We passed it on the way into town. But we were in primary school together, so we’ve known each other for yonks, since we were in nappies, practically.”

  “Speak for yourself,” said Leo, mocking. “I’m sure I never wore the things.”

  Was it possible that Lally and Leo weren’t a couple? Kit wondered. That if they’d known each other for years, they were just friends who hung out together? They hadn’t touched, or shown any signs of wanting to sneak off for a snog. Kit felt a leap of hope that he didn’t care to examine too closely.

  “Oh, shit,” hissed Lally, startling Kit out of his daydream. Before he could respond, she grabbed him and yanked him back into the shadow of the archway, dropping her half-smoked cigarette to the ground in the process. “There’s my granddad. And your mum.”

  “She’s not my mum,” Kit responded automatically, then felt a stab of guilt for disowning Gemma so publicly. “I mean—”

  “Did they see us?” Lally interrupted, her voice rising.

  Leo looked casually out towards the square. “Don’t think so. They’ve gone on, although the woman looked back. So that’s your stepmum?” he said to Kit, his eyebrows raised in appreciation.

  “Yeah,” Kit answered shortly. Not only did he not intend to explain his complicated family situation to Leo, he felt protective of Gemma. He hadn’t liked Leo’s salacious leer one bit. He was about to add “Mind your own business” when he caught sight of Lally’s tense face. For someone who had said she didn’t care what her parents thought, she was awfully worried about getting caught.

  “We’d better get to the church,” she said. “There’ll be hell to pay if there aren’t any seats left.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you’ll think of something to explain it, Lally, darling.” Leo’s grin was knowing. “You’re good at making up stories.”

  Kit thought he saw Lally’s face darken at the dig, but instead of answering, she peeked out to ensure that the coast was clear, then towed him across the square, leaving Leo to trail in their wake.

  When they reached the church, the pews were already filling and Lally swore again, this time under her breath. As she craned her neck, trying to find the best spot, Leo said, “I’d better find my dad, then. He’s expecting me to meet and greet and press the old birds’ willing flesh.”

  “Leo, that’s disgusting,” whispered Lally, but she was distracted by her search for seats.

  “Get your dad to let you come to my house tomorrow,” said Leo, unperturbed. “We’ll show coz here a good time.” With that worrying remark he’d disappeared, and Kit had watched with a frown as the other boy slipped through the crowd.

  Now, in the clear light of morning, the prospect had not improved. Kit had had enough experience with boys like Leo at school—they had made his last few months a misery. He knew he was on dangerous ground, that if he made one wrong step, Leo would crucify him in front of Lally.

  A sleepy voice interrupted his troubled thoughts. “Is that bacon?” said Toby as he threw back his covers and sat up, his hair standing on end like a little blond hedgehog. Kit realized that beneath his preoccupation he’d been aware of the smell of bacon frying, too, and his stomach rumbled in response.

  The household was stirring. Kit could smell coffee, now, too, and hear an occasional muted laugh from downstairs. It was time to get up, to see what the day had brought, and he found he was glad of an excuse to think of nothing more
complicated than presents and food for a few hours.

  “Look, Toby,” he said as his brother spied the stocking, “Father Christmas found you after all.”

  The distinctive low-throated rhythm of a diesel engine came first, then the rocking wash that followed the passage of another boat through the canal basin.

  Annie, who on the boat usually woke with the dawn, opened her eyes and blinked against the brilliance of the light spilling through the window over her bed. For a moment she felt disoriented, then memory flooded back. It was Christmas, and she had been late back from the midnight mass at St. Mary’s the night before.

  She lay quietly, letting her eyes become accustomed to the light, enjoying an unexpected sense of well-being. She had, she realized, slept deeply and dreamlessly for the first time in months. Had it been the singing? If so, she should do it more often. She’d wanted to sing as a child, but it hadn’t been an accomplishment her parents thought important.

  When her need for coffee overcame her unaccustomed laziness, she threw back the covers and pulled on several layers of fleece. First she turned up the central heating, sending up a silent prayer of thanks for generators, then she stoked the woodstove. Assured that the ambient temperature in the boat would eventually rise above arctic, she put water on to boil and ground her coffee beans.

  Fresh filter coffee was one of the small luxuries she allowed herself. Even though she’d read somewhere recently that filter pressed was less healthful than coffee brewed using drip or percolation, she loved the thick, syrupy strength of it. She drank it without sugar, but when she could get cream, she kept a small carton in the boat’s fridge. Marina shops weren’t always that well stocked, and not all towns on the canal system offered moorings as convenient to the shops as Nantwich.

  With her coffee in hand, she opened the salon door and stepped out onto the deck. Sun glinted off snow on the towpath, and from the accumulation on the decks and roofs of the unoccupied boats. Although the weather had cleared, the temperature had not risen enough to cause a significant melt. The basin seemed oddly deserted, even considering the weather. No smoke rose from any chimney other than hers, and there was no movement on the towpath.

  Of course, those who kept the narrowboats as second homes would be spending Christmas in their primary residences, and even most of those who lived marginal lives on the boats had someone to go to at Christmas.

  Not that she’d been without an invitation, she reminded herself as the abyss of self-pity cracked open before her. Roger had asked her to come, as he always did, and she had refused, as she always did. What would he do with her, she wondered with grim amusement, if she should change her mind?

  He had stayed in her family home when they had separated. It had seemed a sensible solution to her at the time, as she wasn’t ready to sell the property but didn’t want to leave it unattended. He paid her a nominal rent, and she’d told him that if they divorced and decided to sell, she would give him first option to buy the place. She didn’t like to think that only self-interest had kept Roger from dissolving their marriage, although she knew that, realistically, it was unlikely he could ever pay her what the house was worth.

  Nor could she deceive herself into thinking he missed her terribly. Roger was an even-tempered man who disliked disruption as much as he liked his creature comforts—living with her had not been easy for him. Still, he was thoughtful when it suited him, and she remembered that he had sent her a Christmas gift.

  Nipping back inside, she retrieved the package from the drawer where she had stowed it and took it out into the sunshine. It was neatly wrapped in hand-printed paper, and she felt sure Roger had done it himself. He was a competent, thorough man with an artistic flair, all qualities that made him a good journalist—and a good husband. It was she who had not been able to function in the marriage.

  Carefully, she pulled loose the package’s taped ends and peeled the paper off without tearing it. “Oh!” she said aloud as the gift slipped from its wrappings. That it was a book didn’t surprise her—that much she’d guessed from the package’s shape and weight—but this she hadn’t expected. Checking the flyleaf, she saw that it was a first edition of Tom Rolt’s Narrow Boat, printed in 1944. The book, an account of the author’s exploration of the canal system on his refurbished narrowboat, the Cressy, was one of the seminal books on boating life, and Rolt himself had been one of the founders of the Inland Waterways Association.

  Annie owned a modern copy, of course, and had reread it many times for its lyrical prose and haunting evocation of bygone days on the canals, but she had never seen an original edition. How like Roger to have found it for her—she would have to ring and thank him. Perhaps she’d even suggest they meet for a holiday meal.

  Slowly, she leafed through the volume, examining the woodcuts that prefaced each chapter. The artist, Denys Watkins-Pitchford, had captured the essence of life on the canals with a lovely economy of shape and line. She remembered reading in her modern edition that the drawings had been based on photographs taken by Angela Rolt, Tom’s wife.

  There was a traditional Buckby water can, the top lock at Foxton, a heron poised in marshy grass, the long-vanished warehouse that had spanned the Shropshire Union Canal at Barbridge…As Annie gazed at the images, they brought back all the enchantment she had felt at her first introduction to boating life, and that she had owed entirely to her contact with Gabriel Wain and his family.

  Of course, she had seen the canals and boats all her life, had occasionally walked a towpath or stopped to watch a boat going through a lock at Audlem. But she had never set foot on a narrowboat until the day she had been sent to interview the Wains.

  How odd that she should have seen them again just yesterday, after all these years. The worry that had nagged at her then returned with full force. The system had betrayed the Wains, and she had failed to protect them.

  Her own disillusionment was still sour in her mouth. She had been driven to social work by a profound guilt because of her own privileged upbringing, and by a hope that she could fill a void in herself by giving something to others. But over the years the hopelessness of the work had eaten away her youthful optimism. She saw so much pain and misery and cruelty that she felt the weight of it would crush her, all her actions a remedy as futile as trying to stem a flood with a finger in the dike.

  When a child she’d had removed from his own family had died from abuse inflicted by his foster father, she had wondered how long she could go on. Then what had happened to the Wains had been the last straw.

  She had walked away, shutting herself off from human contact like a crab crawling into its shell, but the damage had gone on around her. Rowan Wain and her family were still at risk.

  Could Annie live with herself if she turned away again? But if she tried to help them, had she anything to offer? Had she the strength to emerge from her self-imposed cocoon?

  The revelation came suddenly. It didn’t matter whether or not she was up to the task, or whether her infinitesimal actions would make a dent in the world’s ills. All that counted was that she should act.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  As Babcock squelched across the rutted ice in the hospital car park, he passed Dr. Elsworthy’s Morris Minor in the section reserved for doctors’ vehicles. From the rear seat, the dog’s head rose like a monolithic monster emerging from the deep. The beast gave him a distant and fathomless stare, then looked away, as if it had assessed him and found him wanting, before sinking out of sight once more. No wonder the doctor had no use for anything as modern as a car with an alarm system, Babcock thought as he gave both dog and vehicle a wide berth. She was more likely to be sued by a prospective burglar complaining of heart failure than to have her car violated.

  The sight of his sergeant, Kevin Rasansky, leaning against the wall near the morgue entrance was only slightly more heartening.

  “Morning, boss. Happy Christmas,” Rasansky called out, seemingly unperturbed by the cold or by the holiday call-out.

&nbs
p; Babcock merely grimaced in return. “Don’t be so bloody cheerful. What are you doing here? I thought you’d not want to miss Christmas morning with your family.”

  “Thought you might need a hand. Besides, forgot the batteries for the toys, didn’t I? The wife and kiddies aren’t too happy with me. And my mother-in-law’s there for the duration. Who’d have thought the morgue would be preferable?” Rasansky added as he held the door for Babcock.

  Ashamed of the relief he’d felt on leaving the care home, Babcock wasn’t about to admit he agreed, especially to his sergeant.

  Kevin Rasansky was a large young man with a round countryman’s face and clothes that never quite seemed to fit. Beneath his unprepossessing exterior, however, resided a sharp intelligence and a streak of ambition that bordered on the ruthless. Babcock found him useful, but never entirely trusted him.

  He knew from past experience that if a successful conclusion to a case meant there was any capital to be gained with the powers-thatbe, Rasansky would find a subtle way to claim it. There were the self-deprecating stories told round the water cooler or in the canteen, in which Rasansky would just happen to mention how his own humble insight or suggestion had led his superior officers to make the collar. The said superior officer could then hardly refute Rasansky’s version without sounding petty, but Babcock retaliated by making every effort to keep his sergeant firmly in his place. There was no task too unpleasant or menial for Rasansky, but this morning he had been willing to give the sergeant a break.

  “Have you been to the scene yet?” he asked as they waited for someone to buzz them through the inner doors.

  “First thing this morning.”

  “Any sign of the media?”

  “A stringer from the Chronicle, Megan Tully. But it will be old news by the time the paper comes out, and I doubt she can interest a national unless it’s a very slow news day.” By the Chronicle, Rasansky meant the local weekly.

  Dealing with the media was always a two-edged sword—the dissemination of information could be helpful to an inquiry, but the untimely release of an investigation’s details could be disastrous. Babcock was glad, therefore, to have a few days’ grace before deciding what should be released to the public. That way, if they hadn’t made an identification by the time the paper went to press, he could use the opportunity to make a public appeal.