Water Like a Stone

by Deborah Crombie

  Marie detached a hand from the fishing rod and held it out. The small, calloused fingers felt icily cold in Gemma’s, but the child seemed unaware of any discomfort.

  Nodding towards the boat, Gemma said, “You and your brother live on the boat with your dad?”

  “And our mum. But she’s dying,” Marie added, in the same matter-of-fact tone. “Mummy and Poppy don’t know that we know, but we do.”

  Gemma gazed at the girl, at a loss for a response. At last she said, “Has your mum been ill long?”

  “I’m not sure.” A small crease marred Marie’s smooth brow. “But I think she’s tired. It’s just that she doesn’t want to leave us.”

  “I can understand that,” offered Gemma, her heart contracting. “She must love you very much.”

  Afterwards, Gemma could never guess what signal alerted the child, but Marie suddenly ducked her head round the edge of her umbrella and looked up the towpath. In the distance, Gemma saw a man and a boy, their arms filled with firewood, walking slowly down from the Middlewich Junction.

  “That’s my poppy coming,” said Marie, tucking herself back under the black umbrella like a retreating tortoise. “You’d better go.” The cornflower-blue eyes that met Gemma’s were as calm and ancient as the sea. “He doesn’t like us talking to strangers.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Gemma found Crewe Police Station without trouble, and the temporary incident room more easily still. Although the duty sergeant had given her directions, she could have followed the scent trail of stale coffee, half-eaten takeaways, and slightly damp wool, carried on the murmur of multitudinous voices muttering into telephones. Her spirits rose at the familiarity of it, and as she entered the basement room, the sight of the battered desks and snaking telephone and computer wires brought a smile to her lips. She might have felt a fish out of water these last few days, but here she belonged.

  She saw Kincaid before he saw her. He was perched on the corner of a desk occupied by Ronnie Babcock, who was leaning back in a battered chair, phone glued to his ear. Kincaid was listening, brow creased, as if trying to make out the unheard end of the conversation. Glancing up, he saw Gemma, grinned and started to rise, but she motioned him to stay where he was and crossed the room to him.

  A few of the officers occupying the other desks looked up as she passed. Most were too occupied with their own tasks to display much curiosity, but the young constable who had been so kind to Kit that morning looked up from a stack of papers and gave Gemma a smile of recognition. Sheila Larkin was her name, Gemma remembered.

  The sergeant she’d met at the building site was there as well. He looked no more pleased to see her than he had earlier, but if he’d meant to protest her presence, he was stopped by his ringing phone. Gemma couldn’t resist giving him a cheeky little wave, and was rewarded by a full-wattage scowl.

  Gemma’s shoulder brushed Kincaid’s as she reached him. In such surroundings the contact seemed unexpectedly intimate, but she resisted the urge to touch him even as she felt a flush of pleasure in her cheeks.

  “Where have you been?” he asked softly, his breath tickling her ear.

  “Tell you later,” she whispered back, ignoring the rise of gooseflesh on her arms as she tried to catch the drift of Babcock’s conversation.

  “Right. Okay. Thanks, Doc,” Babcock was saying. “Let me know if anything else comes in. Yeah. Sorry about the balls-up.”

  Kincaid raised an interrogatory eyebrow as Babcock rang off. “Balls-up?”

  “It seems the good doctor didn’t appreciate us ringing up the forensic anthropologist directly. Not that he was willing to tell us anything. There are channels,” he added with mock severity as he nodded a greeting to Gemma.

  “So did your pathologist come up with the goods?” Kincaid asked.

  “With as many variable parameters as you’d expect from two experts hedging each other.” Babcock ran his hands through his thick fair hair, making it stand on end, then leaned back in his creaking chair, hands behind his head. “The bone doctor estimates, from the amount of decomposition and given the circumstances, et cetera, et cetera, that the remains had been in place at least five years. He confirms that the child was female, age less than one year. No obvious cause of death. But before you conclude that we’re not much further ahead”—he waggled an admonitory finger at Kincaid, as if he had protested—“the Home Office lab boffins have had some luck with the clothing. The blanket was manufactured for several years in the midnineties, and sold through a number of local outlets.”

  “My sister said the blanket looked like one she’d used with her own kids, but she couldn’t remember if it was Sam or Lally’s,” Kincaid said. “But if it was available in the midnineties, it was most likely Sam’s. Of course,” he continued, “there’s nothing to say that the blanket was acquired for this mystery infant during the period it was initially sold, but that at least gives us an outside limit on the time of death.”

  “More than five years, less than ten, if you put the blanket and bones together,” Babcock agreed, but he didn’t sound greatly encouraged. The creases at the corners of his blue eyes deepened as he frowned. “Dr. Elsworthy also informed me that she’s already conducted the postmortem on Annie Lebow. I can’t think why she didn’t let me know she’d scheduled it so quickly. I should have been there.”

  “Any unexpected results?” Kincaid asked.

  “Apparently not. Death due to blunt-force trauma.” Babcock couldn’t quite control a grimace.

  Eyeing his friend with concern, Kincaid said, “Perhaps the doctor was sparing your feelings, Ronnie, by not asking you to attend the p.m. As you knew the victim.”

  Babcock tilted his chair back into its upright position. “I never thought I’d see the day when Dr. E. worried about treading on anyone’s sensibilities. In fact, she seemed definitely off-kilter at the crime scene this morning. Maybe she’s ill.”

  “It’s not her that’s ill. At least I don’t think so,” Gemma amended, as both men stared at her in surprise. “I saw her this morning, while I was waiting with Kit. When she came back from the scene, she sat in her car for a bit, with this big dog, as if she were deliberating something. Then she got out again and walked down to one of the boats moored across from the pub. She was carrying an oxygen tank.” Gemma could see now, from the puzzled expressions on their faces, that she was going to have to admit to her afternoon’s snooping. “I walked the towpath this afternoon, from Barbridge to the dairy barn, just to get a picture in my mind of how the places fit together. When I got back to Barbridge, I met this little girl who was fishing beside the same boat the doctor visited this morning. The girl said her mother was dying, so it must have been the mother the doctor was going to see—though I must say I never knew of a pathologist making house calls.”

  “You’re quite certain it was Dr. Elsworthy?”

  Gemma bristled under Babcock’s skeptical regard. “Yes. I asked the constable on duty who she was, when I saw her go to the boat. She’s not someone you’d easily mistake.”

  “And the boat? You’re sure it was the same boat?”

  Before Gemma could reply, Kincaid said with some asperity, “Of course she’s certain, Ronnie,” then he turned to Gemma, frowning. “You said you wanted to see how the two places fit together. But we don’t know of any connection between Annie Lebow’s murder and the remains found in the barn.”

  Unwilling to air any far-flung theories in front of Ronnie Babcock, Gemma merely shrugged. “It just seemed odd, that’s all. I only wanted—”

  “Boss.” Sheila Larkin got up from her desk, picked her way through the obstacle course of cables until she reached them, and waved a handful of loose papers at Babcock. “Boss,” she repeated, making sure she had his full attention, “I’ve been looking through some of the things I found on Annie Lebow’s boat. It seems she had considerable investments with Newcombe and Dutton, here in Nantwich.” She glanced at Kincaid. “Is that any connection with your sister, Mrs. Newcomb
e?”

  “My sister’s husband’s firm,” Kincaid confirmed easily, but Gemma detected a faint note of surprise in his voice. “But you said Annie worked here in Nantwich, before she left Social Services, didn’t you, Ronnie? So I suppose it’s not unlikely she’d have dealt with Newcombe and Dutton.”

  “Newcombe and Dutton have any number of well-heeled clients in this area, and it seems that Annie Lebow certainly fit into that category,” said Babcock, steepling his fingers together. “The question is whether the disposition of those investments on her death gives her husband a motive for killing her.”

  Gemma heard the last words only vaguely, drowned out by the rush of blood in her ears. As Babcock took the papers from Larkin and began to flip through them, she grasped Kincaid’s arm. “We’d better leave the chief inspector to it,” she said, forcing a smile that made her face ache. “Your mother’s expecting us to pick up the children.”

  “But I thought she and dad were taking them home from the shop,” Kincaid said, sounding baffled.

  “Change of plans,” Gemma answered, still smiling. When Babcock turned away for a moment to speak to another officer, she dug her fingers into the flesh above Kincaid’s elbow until he winced. When he glanced at her in surprise, she mouthed, “We need to talk. Now.”

  After hasty and slightly awkward good-byes, Gemma hurried Kincaid to the Escort, which was parked on the double yellows near the police station and was remarkably ticket free.

  The car’s interior still retained a little welcome heat, but Gemma shivered as they buckled themselves in. Kincaid turned to her, looking concerned. “What’s going on, Gem? Are the kids—”

  “They’re fine—”

  “Then what is it? What have you been up to? Why were you checking out the crime scenes this afternoon?”

  Gemma shook her head. “It’s nothing to do with that. Look, is there someplace we can stop and talk?” she asked, knowing she couldn’t explain and drive at the same time. The early winter dusk was coming on fast, the mist was thickening, and she’d felt a slight glaze beneath her feet as they walked across the pavement.

  “But you said we needed to pick up the boys—”

  “It was just an excuse.”

  He stared at her, his mouth open to form another question, then suddenly nodded and settled back in his seat. “Okay. We can stop at the Crown in Nantwich. It’s halfway to the house, and we ought to be able to have a quiet word in the bar.”

  As they walked across the darkening square towards the old inn, Gemma thought of Christmas Eve, when she’d imagined she’d seen Lally and a boy who might have been Kit slip furtively into the shadows of the Crown’s coach entrance. But she’d been mistaken, she reminded herself, as the children had been waiting for them in church. She dismissed the memory with a shrug as Kincaid led her into the hotel’s lounge bar.

  The warmth generated by the crush of bodies and the blazing fire struck them like a wave, and Gemma was already shedding her coat as they squeezed round a small table in a corner. The firelight sparkled like gems from the leaded glass of the front windows, a cheerful counterpoint to the hum of conversation, but Gemma watched anxiously as Duncan fetched their drinks from the bar. Now that she’d had time to think, she wondered just exactly what she was going to say.

  Perhaps she should have spoken to Juliet first, tried to convince her to share what she’d learned about Newcombe and Dutton with Duncan.

  As Kincaid returned to the table, carrying a pint for himself and lemonade for her, she took a breath and began. “There are some things you need to know about your sister.”

  “You bastard! You can’t mean it.” Juliet rose from the sofa and backed away from Kincaid as if he’d struck her.

  “Jules, see reason, will you? And keep your voice down.” As soon as he and Gemma had reached the house, he’d maneuvered his sister as unobtrusively as he could manage into the unoccupied sitting room, but if she was going to shout at him, the whole family would be trooping in to see what was wrong. Not that he’d mind an audience, except for the children’s sake, but he had no doubt that she would.

  “Reason?” Juliet had come up against the other chesterfield, but showed no inclination to sink into its cracked leather depths. “The only reason I can see is that I should never have told Gemma, and she should never have told you. How could you possibly think I’d agree to implicate my husband in a murder inquiry?”

  “You’d not be implicating Caspar in anything. It’s his partner who’s done the fiddling, according to what you told Gemma,” he countered, trying to keep his patience. Although Gemma had warned him Juliet would react this way, he hadn’t been prepared for her fragility, or for the edge of hysteria in her voice. He went on quietly, trying to stay reasonable himself. “Look, Jules. You’ve said you’ve seen proof that Piers Dutton was skimming money from his investors’ accounts. If Annie Lebow was Piers’s client, and if she somehow found out he was cheating her, he’d have had a bang-up motive for killing her. You can’t—”

  “I don’t care. I won’t help you ruin Caspar’s business for some pie-in-the-sky idea of yours—”

  “You don’t care?” Standing, he crossed to the hearth and stabbed at the cold grate with the poker. “How can you say you don’t care that this woman was murdered? You didn’t meet her. You didn’t see her body lying on the towpath this morning, or see Kit’s face after he found her.”

  For the first time, Juliet looked ashamed, but she didn’t relax her stance. “That’s not fair. That’s not what I meant and you know it. You always twist things. But I won’t have the children jeopardized. Have you thought what it would mean for Sam and Lally if their father’s business and reputation were ruined? They’re your niece and nephew, for God’s sake, or had you forgotten?”

  The fairy lights on the Christmas tree in the corner twinkled, but the room was as cold as the fire, and Kincaid remembered, suddenly, the bitter arguments he and his sister had had in this room over long-ago differences. “Of course I hadn’t forgotten,” he said, tasting the ashes of one more unresolved quarrel. “But those things might not happen, and even if they did, they’re not insurmountable. You can recover from a financial crisis, from a damaged reputation—even from a failed marriage—and the children can deal with more than you think. But nothing can give Annie Lebow’s life back to her, and I won’t let go any opportunity to find her killer.”

  They stared at each other, deadlocked, and after a moment Juliet’s eyes filled with tears. “You’re a self-righteous shit, Duncan. You always were. You can say what you want, but I’ll deny I found anything.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Ronnie Babcock can get a warrant to search Newcombe and Dutton’s files on the basis of the connection between the firm and the victim. All he needs is a nod in the right direction. And he’ll be interviewing Piers and Caspar, regardless.”

  Juliet shook her head, once, and wrapped her arms tightly around her thin body, as if the cold had seeped into her bones. “Don’t think I’ll forgive you for this.”

  He sighed, his anger evaporating. “I’m sorry, Jules, but I haven’t a choice. Now will you make the call, or shall I?”

  There was something in the quality of silence that told Caspar the moment he opened the door that the house was empty. He stood for a moment in the foyer, listening, trying to define the difference. Had the mere physical presence of the children in their rooms, of Juliet working on her accounts at the kitchen table, created a resonance he had never noticed?

  It wasn’t that he’d really expected his family to have come home, he told himself as he hung his coat carefully in the cupboard, it was just that the habit of having them there was so ingrained in his mind that it took a conscious effort to refute it.

  Even though he’d already had a few drinks at the Bowling Green with Piers, he went into his study and poured himself a good finger of Cardhu single malt. It was a whisky he hadn’t tried before, recommended by Piers, and he’d treated himself to a bottle partly because he knew t
he expense would annoy Juliet—just as his retreating to his study to have a drink as soon as he got home had annoyed Juliet.

  Now he stood, irresolute, unable to decide whether to sit at his desk, although he really had no pressing work to do, or to wander into the kitchen or sitting room. He could turn on the telly, after all, without being sniped at by the children for interrupting one of their programs, or nagged to help them with their schoolwork. He could make himself cheese on toast for supper, if he chose, and leave the washing up for tomorrow, or even the next day, without Juliet giving him the evil eye and an exasperated sigh.

  But there didn’t seem much point in doing any of those things if there was no one to object, and he felt suddenly, frighteningly hollow, as if his insides had been scooped out like the pulp of a ripe melon. Afraid his legs wouldn’t support him, he groped for the arm of his chair, and after lowering himself carefully into it, topped up his glass with another inch of Cardhu.

  The neat whisky seared his throat and warmed his gut, and after a few sips he began to feel more substantial. The house wouldn’t be empty for long. Piers had warned him over their drinks that if Juliet was determined to split up, then he must get custody of the children, and that her financial status should be enough to convince a court that he was the more responsible parent. Caspar had agreed, adding that he’d see her stripped of every penny, but only now did he begin to wonder what he would do with the children if he had them. Juliet had managed and organized and seen to all their needs, and for just an instant his own ignorance terrified him.

  Then he shrugged and knocked back the remainder of his drink. Lally and Sam were old enough; they could manage without such coddling. What was important was that Juliet be made to see the error of her ways, and to pay.

  A small bloom of satisfaction began to replace the emptiness in his gut. He had been right to listen to Piers. Piers had seen Juliet for the manipulative bitch she was when Caspar had still been duped, and it was Piers who had kept him from following blindly while she made a mockery of him.