Water Like a Stone

by Deborah Crombie

  “If you mean Annie Constantine, yes, she’s dead.”

  For an instant, she thought she would cry out from the pain in her arm. Then he released her, turning away, and it seemed to Althea that he shrank before her eyes.

  Cradling the oxygen tank against her chest, she rubbed at her arm with her free hand. Now she could see that the children were huddled on the bench by the table, their eyes enormous in frightened faces. There was no sign of Rowan.

  Gabriel spoke to his son without turning back. “Joseph, go up top and tidy up. We’ll need to pump out and fill the water tank. And take your sister with you.”

  The children stood obediently, and as they edged past Althea, she had to resist an unexpected urge to touch the boy’s curling hair. When they had gone, Gabriel Wain faced her once more, his expression unreadable.

  “I’m sorry for the trouble you’ve taken,” he said. “But we won’t be needing what you’ve brought.” He nodded at the oxygen tank.

  Althea’s heart thumped. “Your wife. Is she—”

  “Much the same. She’ll be all right.”

  She stared at him. “But she won’t. I thought I explained—” Then she realized what he had meant when he spoke to the children, and to her. “You can’t think of leaving,” she said, shocked.

  “It’s best,” he answered shortly. “Now if you’ll—”

  “Mr. Wain, I don’t think you realize how…difficult…things are going to be for your wife. I can help her. Why would you refuse her that?”

  “We can’t be doing with interference. The police—”

  “Why would the police need to speak to you? What happened to Mrs. Constantine was dreadful, but surely no one would think it had any connection with you.”

  He rubbed a hand across his unshaven chin. “You can’t know that. I—When she came to the boat, on Christmas Day. We had words.”

  “Words?”

  “A row. It was Rowan who insisted she come aboard. I’d told her we wanted nothing to do with her, to leave us be. Why should she come poking into our lives, after all this time?”

  “She only wanted to help you.”

  “And where does that leave us now?” he hissed at her, and she heard the despair.

  “With me.” Althea said this with more assurance than she felt. But even as she wondered if this man could have done such a terrible thing to Annie Constantine, she rejected it. She would swear the news had been a blow.

  Then doubt niggled at her. Could he have argued with Annie again, struck her in a fit of temper, then left her, not realizing how badly she was injured?

  “Gabriel. Did you see Annie Constantine last night?”

  “No. I never laid eyes on the woman after the two of you left the boat yesterday.” He met her eyes, and she thought she heard a note of pleading under the roughness of his tone.

  “Then you have nothing to worry about,” she said.

  He turned away, suppressing a bitter laugh. “Would that were true.” The boat rocked gently as the children moved about above decks. “I tell you we have to go. The children—we can’t risk staying.”

  Althea considered, running over the possibilities in her mind. He could move the boat, and she could meet them at some prearranged mooring to change out the oxygen—but no. She shook her head at her own stupidity.

  “Did anyone hear you arguing with Annie that day?” she asked.

  “Likely the whole of Barbridge.”

  “Then you can’t leave. Don’t you see? The police will be interviewing everyone in the area. Someone is bound to tell them they heard the two of you in a slanging match, and they’ll take your flight as an indication of guilt. It wouldn’t take them long to track you down—the waterways are finite. You’ll have to bluff it out.”

  “But—what would I say?”

  If Althea had needed reassurance, it was the ingrained honesty of a man who couldn’t manufacture a lie. “Tell them it was a boater’s row. Say she moored badly, and scraped your boat. It wouldn’t be the first time tempers were lost over a bit of bad steering.”

  Gabriel was nodding, agreeing with her.

  “Was anyone close enough to hear differently?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Then maybe they won’t take it further. And you mustn’t volunteer that you knew her.” Even as she spoke, Althea wondered what had possessed her. She, who had spent most of her working life helping the police.

  “I’ll get Sam’s things if you’ll gather up Lally’s,” Juliet told Gemma as they climbed the stairs to the first floor.

  The house seemed unsettlingly quiet, unwelcoming, and Gemma thought she must have absorbed some of Juliet’s nervousness. They had checked to make sure there was no sign of Caspar’s car at either house or office before going in, and even then they had stood in the entrance hall, listening, before doing a quick recce of the downstairs rooms.

  Chiding herself for being overimaginative, Gemma asked as briskly as she could, “What sort of things should I get?”

  What did it matter if Caspar Newcombe did come home, she told herself. Juliet certainly had every right to be there, and to take whatever personal things she needed.

  Unfortunately, Gemma had seen the results of too many domestic disputes to be entirely comforted by her own commonsense advice.

  “Oh, just undies, a change of jeans and jumpers.” Juliet pointed to the first door on the left of the upstairs hall. “God knows, whatever I chose would be wrong; I thought you might do better.” The strain between mother and daughter had been evident that morning, and Gemma had sensed Juliet’s relief when her parents had taken the children.

  Although she felt much better qualified to pick out boys’ things than girls’, Gemma followed Juliet’s direction without protest. Lally’s door was closed, and on it she had tacked a sheet of paper with a carefully hand-drawn skull and crossbones. Beneath the graphic, she had printed KEEP OUT, then below that, in parentheses, (THAT MEANS YOU, SAM!).

  “Sorry, love,” Gemma whispered, and turned the knob. The door swung open and she stood on the threshold, expelling a breath of surprise. She had been expecting openly expressed rebellion—what she found was a room that seemed to bear little imprint of its teenage occupant.

  The walls were rose, the duvet a floral mint-and-rose print, the upholstered armchair by the window a coordinating mint-and-rose stripe. A few stuffed animals sat grouped at the head of the hastily made bed; the framed prints on the walls were variations on horses grazing in dreamily impressionistic meadows. These were a child’s things—had Lally held on to them by choice? And if so, why?

  The room was too tidy as well, except for a few items of clothing tossed haphazardly on a bench at the foot of the bed and the snaggletoothed appearance of dressing-table drawers not quite shut.

  Sniffing, Gemma caught the faint drift of cheap perfume, the sort that teenage girls bought at Woolworths or the Body Shop with their pocket money, and the normality of it eased her disquiet. She was letting her imagination run away with her again. She certainly didn’t know Lally well enough to make judgments based on something as superficial as her lack of boy-band posters and black drapes.

  The sound of Juliet moving around in the next room, opening and shutting doors and drawers, spurred her into action. Juliet hadn’t given her a bag, so the first thing was to find a holdall or suitcase.

  Rummaging through the wardrobe, the best she came up with was an empty, slightly worn backpack. Setting the pack on the bed, she quickly riffled through the chest of drawers, pulling out folded panties and bras that were little more than bits of lace and padding. She smiled a bit, remembering when she had worn such things so proudly and she and her sister had fought over who needed them most.

  When her hands were full, she turned back to the bed and saw that the pack had tipped over, spilling a brightly colored bit of paper or foil onto the floor. She reached for it absently, then froze as her fingers closed round the small packet and she realized what she held.

&nbs
p; It was a condom, wrapped in colored foil.

  Gemma dumped the neatly folded clothes on the bed and reached for the backpack. She felt inside, exploring the depths until she found the pocket that had come open.

  A sharp edge jabbed her finger, and she pulled out more condoms, a half dozen, their foil wrappers as cheerful as confetti. Sinking down onto the edge of the bed, Gemma thought furiously. Surely the novelty condoms were every schoolgirl’s idea of sophistication, passed giggling from friend to friend at lunch break. Possession didn’t necessarily mean that Lally had a use for them.

  She slipped the condoms back into the bag and picked up the clothes, then stopped, her nose wrinkling. There was something else, a hint of a familiar smell.

  This time she protected her fingers with a handkerchief, searching more thoroughly and feeling along the seams of the innermost pockets. Her diligence rewarded her with a bumpy, thumbnail-size packet of cling film. Carefully, she peeled back the clear layers of plastic, but her stomach was plummeting even before she saw what the film held. Tablets. White, unstamped, some oval, some round.

  They could be anything, of course, but Gemma suspected the ovals were Xanax, or a similar tranquilizer, and the round tablets Ecstasy. The round tablets were unscored, and had that slightly homemade look. In any case, she was quite sure neither of the pills was something Lally should have.

  But there was still something more; the smell was stronger now. She felt again, and her fingers closed on a softer packet. She knew what it was before she saw the contents. Pot, and a sizable amount.

  She sat, staring down at what she held, until Juliet’s voice came anxiously from the hall. “Gemma, are you almost ready? We need to go, soon.”

  With a jerk, Gemma shoved the drugs into her pocket and stuffed the clothes into the pack, all the while swearing under her breath. She called out, “Coming,” as she hurried to pull jeans and tops from the drawers, adding them to the pack until she thought she had enough for a few days’ wear.

  Then she stopped, her hand on the doorknob, and took a breath. What the hell was she going to do about this?

  How could she tell Juliet what she had found, today of all days? And how could she not?

  “Juliet…” Gemma paused, concentrating on stirring the too-hotto-taste bowl of leek soup before her on the small café table. Suspecting that Juliet had subsisted through the morning on nothing but nerves and multiple cups of coffee, she’d insisted that they get some lunch once they were safely away from the Newcombes’ house.

  Juliet had agreed, if reluctantly, and within a quarter of an hour they were seated in the tiny tea shop called the Inglenook, just up Pillory Street from the bookshop. It was a bit late for a cooked lunch, but the proprietor had suggested his wife’s prizewinning soup, and the steam rising from Gemma’s bowl smelled heavenly. And it was just as well, she thought, that they’d missed the height of the lunch crowd, as only one other table was occupied, providing the opportunity for a fairly private conversation, if only she could figure out what to say.

  It had taken her only a moment’s contemplation to realize that she couldn’t, in good conscience, ignore what she’d found in Lally’s room. She put herself in Juliet’s place—what if someone discovered evidence that Kit had been using drugs, and didn’t tell her or Duncan? She would want to know, and would be slow to forgive anyone who kept it from her.

  That decision made, her first instinct had been to tell Duncan and let him deal with it. She’d realized quickly, however, that that was merely cowardice on her part.

  Gemma took a tiny sip of the soup, which was as good as it smelled, then made another stab at finding an opening. “It’s difficult, isn’t it, knowing what to do with teenagers, even under the best of circumstances?”

  Juliet looked up from her soup, one dark eyebrow arched in surprise, and Gemma was struck by her sudden but fleeting resemblance to Duncan. More often, she’d seen Rosemary in Juliet, and occasionally a smile or a tilt of the head that made her think of Hugh. “I suppose so,” Juliet said slowly, rotating her spoon. “Lally was such a sweet child, always eager to please. And now—sometimes I wonder what happened to that little girl, if she’s even still there.”

  Hearing the pain in Juliet’s voice, Gemma knew she’d struck a nerve. “I doubt Lally knows herself.” She ate a little more of her soup, then broke off a piece of crusty brown bread and peeled the foil cover from a packet of butter. “When I was Lally’s age, I remember my mum telling me I must have been abducted by aliens.” Juliet smiled, and encouraged, Gemma went on. “Was Lally having a difficult time even before things got so rough with Caspar?”

  Frowning, Juliet said, “I don’t know, really. It seems as if this entire year’s been hard for her, but now I wonder if there were signs earlier and I simply missed them.”

  Gemma thought of how blind they had been to the problems Kit was having at school, and swallowed a little too hastily. She coughed until her eyes watered, but waved off Juliet’s concern.

  Then she thought about Kit’s association with Lally, and felt a clutch of dread. Surely they could trust him not to get involved with drugs, whatever he might feel about Lally—he’d always seemed such a sensible boy. But a sliver of doubt wedged in her heart like an ice fragment, and she found she’d lost her appetite.

  “Of course, it’s been worse since Peter died,” said Juliet, and Gemma looked up in surprise.

  “Peter?”

  “A friend of Lally’s at school. Peter Llewellyn. He drowned in the canal. There was…” Juliet pushed her plate away, as if she, too, suddenly found it difficult to force food down, no matter how good. “There was alcohol involved. It was such a shock—Peter was the last boy anyone would have expected…And Lally, Lally seemed to take it very hard, but she wouldn’t talk to me about it.”

  Gemma saw her opening. “Was there anything else indicated in the boy’s death?”

  “Anything else? What do you mean?” The baffled tone told Gemma that Juliet wasn’t going to make this easy for her.

  “Drugs. Did they find drugs in Peter’s system?”

  “No.” Juliet shook her head. “No. Not that I heard. And I can’t imagine that they did. These kids, they’re just babies, really. I mean, experimenting with alcohol is one thing, but—”

  “Jules.” Gemma found herself using Duncan’s nickname for his sister, an intimacy she wouldn’t have contemplated an hour ago. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  Juliet looked at her, her dark gray eyes dilating with apprehension, but she didn’t speak.

  Glancing round the room, Gemma saw that the only other customer, a woman in the back corner, had taken out her mobile phone and was murmuring into it. The proprietor had disappeared into the kitchen. Still, she leaned forward and lowered her voice. “I’m sorry. There’s no easy way to say this. But when I was getting Lally’s clothes, I found some things in her backpack. Drugs.”

  “What?” Juliet said, blankly. Then, “No, that’s not possible.” But in spite of her protest, her oval face paled. “Did you say her backpack? Lally has her backpack with her.”

  “This was an old one, in the wardrobe. The one I put her clothes in.”

  Blowing out her lips in a little puff of relief, Juliet tried a smile. “Lally hasn’t used that since last year. She must have loaned it to someone who left the things in it, by accident.”

  Gemma reached out and laid her fingers lightly on Juliet’s wrist. “Juliet, I really am sorry. But no one forgets they’ve left things like this lying about. The pills, maybe, but not the other. There was marijuana, too. And even if Lally was keeping the stuff for someone else, she’s involved in something dangerous. You had to know.”

  “Pot?” whispered Juliet, her argument abandoned. “And what sort of pills?”

  Gemma sighed. “I suspect some of the pills might be a ’pam drug, Valium or Xanax. Tranquilizers. Do you or Caspar have a prescription?” When Juliet shook her head, she went on. “The other tablets look homemade—I susp
ect they’re Ecstasy.”

  “But that’s not all that bad, is it?” Juliet asked, her voice rising on a shred of hope. “I mean—I read about raves—” She brought her hands together, twisting them in her lap as if one were seeking comfort from the other. They had begun to tremble. “Oh, Christ,” she whispered. “I can’t believe it, there must be some mistake.”

  Gemma couldn’t bring herself to mention the condoms, not now.

  Silence descended on their little table. Their unfinished bowls of soup had cooled; the scattered crumbs of bread lay drying on the cheerful tablecloth. Closing her eyes, Juliet sat so still she might have fallen asleep. The woman sitting alone finished her conversation and snapped her mobile phone closed, glancing curiously at Gemma and Juliet as she made her way to the register.

  The owner emerged from the kitchen, engaging the woman in friendly banter as he rang up her bill—she was obviously a regular customer.

  Opening her eyes, Juliet fixed Gemma with a burning stare, and under cover of the voices of the owner and customer, said quietly, “I’ll kill her.” Spots of color flared high on her pale cheeks.

  “No.” Gemma had been thinking furiously, ever since she’d found Lally’s stash. “Juliet, wait. I’m not suggesting you ignore this—God forbid—but I think you should hold off for a few days before you talk to her about it.” It seemed to Gemma that both mother and daughter were stretched to the breaking point, and that a confrontation might have disastrous consequences.

  “Things are so unsettled just now—I’m afraid you may both say things you’ll regret. Wait at least until you’ve worked out a plan for you and the children, and until you’ve told her what you mean to do. Looking round, Gemma saw that the café’s owner had disappeared into the kitchen. She reached into her pocket and passed the bags surreptitiously across the small table. “Deal with this when you’re calmer.”

  Juliet gazed wide-eyed at what she held. Then she stuffed the bags into her handbag. Her shoulders slumping, she said, “Promise me this time. Promise me you won’t tell Duncan.”