Deborah Crombie - Duncan Kincaid & Gemma James 09 - Now May You Weep

Chapter Eight

Had we never lov’d sae kindly, Had we never lov’d sae blindly, Never met—or never parted—

We had ne’er been broken-hearted.

—robert burns, “Ae Fond Kiss”

Gemma forced herself to walk back through the woods by the exact same route by which she had come, stopping briefly where she had noticed the crushed ferns.

Who had lain there, and when? A forensic examination might soon provide the answers.

She went on, carefully, but as she reached the last few yards of the path, she gave in to the crawling sensation between her shoulder blades and bolted out into the garden just as Hazel’s hired Honda rolled into the drive.

As Gemma started towards the car, Louise came out of the garden shed, her arms filled with freshly pulled carrots.

Louise’s ready smile of greeting faded as she took in Gemma’s expression. “Gemma, what is it? Are you all right?”

“I— Did you—” Gemma stopped, unable to force any

further sound past her vocal cords, for Hazel had emerged from the car and was walking towards her.

“Gemma—” Hazel began as she reached her, “we need to talk—”

“No. I mean—” Gemma swallowed against the earthy, pungent smell of the carrots that suddenly threatened to choke her. She swung her gaze to Louise’s puzzled face, then back to Hazel. “Hazel. It’s Donald. I’m afraid he’s dead.”

“Dead?” Louise repeated blankly, as if she hadn’t understood the word.

Hazel’s eyes widened, the expanding pupils swallowing the irises. “Wh—”

“In the meadow. He’s been shot,” Gemma said, very clearly.

Hazel shook her head. “Oh, no. There must be some mistake. That’s not possible—”

“There’s no mistake. I—I found him. Hazel, I’m so sorry.”

“No.” Hazel shook her head more vehemently. “You’re wrong. He can’t be—”

“I’m sure, Hazel,” Gemma said firmly. “Come on.

We’ll go inside—”

But Hazel jerked away from her outstretched hand.

“No. I don’t believe it. Donald can’t be dead. Where is he? What meadow?”

“We need to go into the house, love,” coaxed Gemma, but her involuntary glance at the path had betrayed her.

She reached for Hazel again, but too late. Hazel was away, flying across the garden towards the path in the woods.

“Hazel, no!” shouted Gemma, but as she started to run, Louise called out to her.

“Gemma, should I ring for an ambulance—”

“No, the police. And hurry,” Gemma answered, but the reply cost her precious seconds.

Hazel disappeared into the cover of the trees, and Gemma, hampered by her fear of damaging evidence, couldn’t quite manage to gain on her. It was only when Hazel reached Donald’s body that Gemma caught up.

Hazel stood, staring, both hands clamped hard over her mouth as if to stifle a scream. When Gemma put an arm round her, she seemed unaware of the contact.

“Hazel, it’s all—” All right, Gemma had started to say.

But it wasn’t, and all the platitudes she usually called up to comfort the bereaved seemed suddenly senseless, absurd. It wasn’t all right. It was not going to be all right.

“Hazel,” she began again. “We need to go back to the house now. The police are coming.”

“But . . . Donald . . . I shouldn’t leave him. I shouldn’t have left him. Last night. I should never have—” Hazel gave a convulsive sob and began to shake.

“Hush. Hush.” Gemma comforted her as if she were a child. “There’s nothing you can do. Come with me, now.”

Hazel moaned, pulling back towards Donald’s body, but Gemma managed to turn her back towards the house.

They had reached the woods when Hazel sagged against her, then fell to her hands and knees, her body racked by vomiting.

The spasms ceased after a few minutes and she looked up at Gemma, bewildered.

“It’s all right,” Gemma reassured her. She lifted Hazel to her feet again and urged her on. “We’ll get Louise to make us a nice cuppa when we get back to the house,”

she murmured, knowing it a ridiculous bastion against the horror of Donald’s death, but knowing also that it didn’t matter what she said, only that Hazel should hear the sound of her voice.

When they reached the garden at last, she saw Louise sitting on the bench by the kitchen door, her hands hanging limply between her knees.

Galvanized by their appearance, Louise jumped up and ran to meet them. “I’ve rung the police. And John.”

“John?” asked Gemma. “He’s not here?”

“No. He’d gone to one of the estates to pick up some free-range eggs for breakfast. He’s on his way back now.”

Breakfast? With a shock, Gemma looked at her watch and saw that it was only now just after seven. “And the others?”

“Still sleeping, as far as I know. I didn’t—should I have wakened them?”

“No. You did exactly the right thing. Now, if you’ll take Hazel inside, I’ll wait for the police.” Gemma squeezed Hazel’s arm and Louise slipped an arm round her shoulder with unexpected tenderness.

It was only as Gemma watched Louise shepherding Hazel in through the scullery door that she remembered the gun cabinet. There had been at least one shotgun, but she hadn’t looked closely—hadn’t thought anything of it at the time. Would she know now if a gun was missing?

Her mind balked at following that thought any further.

She didn’t want to consider the possibility that someone in this house—someone she knew—had fired that shot—

but she knew it was a possibility that had to be considered.

Should she examine the gun cabinet now? Hesitating, she realized that the sky had darkened, the clouds scud-ding in from the west on the rising wind. Not rain, she thought with dismay. Rain would play hell with the crime scene, diminish any hope of collecting trace evidence.

But it wasn’t her crime scene, she reminded herself.

She had no jurisdiction here, no official responsibility to investigate Donald’s murder.

But she had liked Donald, had felt an unexpected connection to him in spite of her disapproval of his relationship with Hazel—Hazel, who had loved him enough to risk her marriage.

And someone had shot him, put an irrevocable end to his future, and to any future Hazel might have had with him—and they had done it right under Gemma’s nose.

She would help the police find the bastard responsible.

She owed it to Donald—and she owed it to Hazel.

Thinking furiously, she walked round to the front of the house, but before she could collect herself, a car with the distinctive yellow stripe of the Northern Constabulary pulled into the drive.

As the officer emerged from the car, Gemma saw that she was young and female, with dark hair, very blue eyes, and a square face that might be pretty when she smiled.

Reaching Gemma, the woman whipped her notebook from her belt with no-nonsense efficiency. “Ma’am. Was it you that reported a death?”

“Yes. One of the guests here at the B&B. I found him in the meadow, just the other side of the woods.” Gemma pointed towards the river.

“And you would be?”

Belatedly, Gemma fished in the pocket of her jacket for her identification. “Gemma James. Detective inspector with the Metropolitan Police. I’m a guest here as well.”

If the officer was startled by this bit of information, she betrayed it only by the slight elevation of her eyebrows.

She spoke unintelligibly into her radio before saying to Gemma, “Ma’am. Now, if you could just show me the deceased.”

The journey across the garden and back through the woods seemed a nightmare to Gemma. Her legs began to

feel as if they were mired in clay; the distance seemed to extend itself with each step. She stopped to point out the area of crushed ferns, then again to indicate where Hazel had vomited.

“One of the other guests saw the body,” she explained,

“before I could stop her. She was sick here, as I was taking her back to the house.”

At the far edge of the woods, Gemma stopped, finding herself unable to go farther. “Just over there.” With a nod, she indicated the tussocks of heather hiding Donald.

Gemma watched as the officer continued along the path, saw the moment of hesitation as the young woman came close enough to make sense of what she saw. But the officer went on, her posture more businesslike than ever, and squatted to make a cursory examination of the body.

The yellow of her jacket stood out against the heather with the brilliance of a clump of gorse. She stood and spoke into her radio again before returning to Gemma.

“We’re to wait here for the backup from Aviemore, ma’am,” she said grimly. Her skin had paled beneath her makeup.

“What’s your name, Constable?” asked Gemma, sympathy momentarily overriding her personal worries.

“Mackenzie, ma’am.”

“You’re from around here?”

“Carrbridge. That’s just north of Aviemore, on the A,”

Constable Mackenzie added, unbending a little, as Gemma had hoped.

“I don’t suppose you see many fatalities,” Gemma said gently, thinking that the young woman couldn’t be long out of training college.

“The A is bad for motor crashes. And a few weeks ago, we had a pensioner wander off—died of exposure before we found him.”

“You haven’t worked a homicide before?”

The constable stiffened at this. “What makes you so sure it’s a homicide, ma’am?”

“No gun,” Gemma answered. “And I knew him, a bit.

I can’t believe he’d have shot himself.”

Tucking a stray hair behind her ear, Mackenzie opened her notebook again. “The deceased’s name?”

“Donald Brodie.”

Mackenzie stared at her. “Brodie of Benvulin?” When Gemma nodded, the constable said, “But you told me he was a guest at the B&B.”

“He was. It was a special cookery weekend.” As Gemma explained, all the complications of the situation came flooding back. Where had Hazel been that morning, and what was she to say about Hazel’s relationship with Donald?

Detective Chief Inspector Alun Ross knelt at the edge of his flower border, setting out a flat of lobelia. From the springy turf beneath his knees, moisture seeped through the fabric of his old gardening trousers, but he didn’t mind—it made him feel connected to the earth. Tamping the four-inch plant into the rich, composted soil, he sat back to admire his handiwork.

The tiny, star-shaped blossoms of the lobelia were a brilliant blue against the pale pink of the compact azaleas just coming into bloom behind them. A few feet farther along the border, a stand of magnificent white iris were just showing their tightly furled buds.

Although it was still early on Sunday morning, the sun soaked into his back like warm honey, and a light breeze cooled the sweat above his collar. The sound of bells came faintly over the garden wall, and in his mind’s eye he saw his tidy terraced house and square of garden as the

jewel in Inverness’s crown, and from it the tiered streets dropping down to St. Andrew’s Cathedral on Ness Walk.

As a child, he had attended services there, and he imagined his mother’s dismay if she could see him now, slacking on a Sunday morning. But this was his idea of heaven—why should he look any further?

Not that his wife had agreed with him, mind you—his ex-wife, he should say. She was married now to a fertil-izer salesman who liked to dance.

It had served Ross right, according to his daughter, Amanda, who had told him he should have taken her mum out a bit more. But then his daughter sometimes seemed to him as incomprehensible as an alien species—and how could he have explained to either of them that the last thing he’d wanted after a day on the job was to go out.

What he wanted was his own small universe, house and garden, a world he could control, an order he could impose. He came home; if it was fine enough he would work in the garden—there was always something needed doing—and if not, he did his chores round the house, then he would settle by the fire with his gardening books and catalogs and his dram of whisky.

Now his routine was undisturbed by anyone’s nagging, and he liked it just fine, thank you very much. He had seen his ex-wife not long ago, walking along Ness Bank.

She’d looked like a tart, hair newly bouffant, makeup too heavy, skirt too tight and too short. He’d been cordial enough to her and her paunchy, balding husband, but he’d been glad to make his escape—and if he’d felt a stirring of the old desire, he’d quickly banished it.

Now, setting the last of the lobelias into its new bed, he stretched in anticipation of a well-deserved break. He’d make himself a cup of tea from the kettle he’d left simmering on the kitchen hob, then he’d sit in his gazebo and

have a browse through the Sunday newspaper while the bees hummed beside him in the lavender.

But as he dusted off his knees at the kitchen door, he heard the phone ringing.

His heart sank. No one called him for a friendly chat at this hour of a Sunday morning. Looking out, he saw that the light in the garden had faded as suddenly as if someone had thrown a blanket across the sun. With a sigh of resignation, he crossed the room and lifted the phone from its cradle.

He should have known. He’d been a policeman too long to believe in such a thing as a perfect day.

The call came as Kincaid was trying to grind beans for coffee and butter Toby’s toast simultaneously, a feat he had not quite mastered. Nor was his multitasking helped by the fact that both dogs were beneath his feet, barking madly at the grinder, while Sid, the cat, hissed and batted at them from his perch on the kitchen table.

He switched off the grinder, shouted at the dogs, slid Toby’s plate precariously across the table, and grabbed the phone without glancing at the ubiquitous caller ID.

“This had better be good,” he snapped, assuming the caller was Doug Cullen, his sergeant.

There was a silence on the other end of the line, then Gemma’s voice, sounding more than taken aback.

“Duncan?”

“Oh, sorry, love. I thought you were Cullen, ringing to nag me for the umpteenth time—”

“I’ve been trying to reach you all weekend. Either the phone’s been engaged, or you haven’t answered, and your mobile is going straight to voice mail.” She sounded unexpectedly distressed.

“Doug’s been bending my ear all weekend over this re-

port I left with him,” Kincaid explained. It was fudging the truth a bit, but he didn’t want to discuss Kit over the telephone, especially when the boy might appear at any moment. The fact that Kit had not come downstairs after all the canine commotion was a clear sign that he was still shutting out Kincaid—and Toby.

When he was a boy Kincaid’s mother would have called it “a fit of the sulks”—the description a little harsh considering Kit’s circumstances. But Kincaid was beginning to find the behavior a bit aggravating.

“—and I left the spare battery for the mobile at the Yard,” he continued to Gemma. “Why didn’t you leave a message? I’d have rung you back.”

“I didn’t want to talk to the bloody machine,” Gemma said, her voice rising in an uncharacteristic quaver.

“Gemma, what’s wrong? Are you all right?”

“Yes. No. Not really. It’s Hazel.”

“Is she ill? What’s happened?”

“There’s been a death, a shooting, early this morning.

I found the body. His name was Donald Brodie, and he and Hazel were lovers before she was married. She was thinking of leaving Tim—”

“Good God.” Kincaid dumped Sid unceremoniously from the kitchen chair and sank into it. “She was having an affair with this Brodie?”

“Not exactly. At least, not until— The thing is, I don’t know what happened last night, and now I can’t talk to her. The police have everyone else sequestered in the house with a constable until the investigative team gets here from Inverness.”

“And you?”

“They’ve let me stay in the barn conversion—that’s where Hazel and I were sleeping. But she left sometime in the night, and only came back after I’d found him—

Donald.” Gemma’s voice broke, and Kincaid waited while she made an effort to get it under control. “If I’d just talked to her before the police arrived, then—”

“Gemma, I’m sure you did all you could. Look, I’ll get the next train—or the next flight to Inverness—”

“What about the children?”

“I could get Wes to come, or take them to your parents—”

“No. Just wait. But could you see Tim Cavendish? Tell him what’s happened? I don’t mean about Hazel and Donald,” she amended quickly, “just that there’s been a death, so he’ll be prepared.”

“Gemma—surely you don’t think Hazel could have shot this bloke?”

“No,” she said sharply. “Of course not. But—if there’s some connection—what if Hazel is in danger, too?”