Chapter Sixteen
“The pathologist and the scene-of-crime lads should be here anytime,” Larkin said as Babcock followed her down the towpath.
“Is the sergeant on his way?”
“Oh, he’s on his way. Just not here.” Babcock edged round a dip filled with standing water, glad he had made the decision to change into boots. It was cold as well, as the porcelain-blue sky of early morning had begun to haze over and a sharp west wind stirred the tops of the hedgerows. When Larkin cast a surprised glance over her shoulder, he added, “I’ve sent him to oversee a deconstruction crew at the dairy barn. I think we had better make sure there are no more bodies in those walls. And I’ve put in a request for the equipment we need to scan the floor.”
“Bugger,” Larkin commented succinctly. “Your Mrs. Newcombe will have a coronary. The sarge is probably not too happy, either.”
“I suspect it wouldn’t have been Sergeant Rasansky’s first choice, but it needs to be done.” Babcock wanted to see how Larkin handled herself on a major case. She was buzzed—he could tell that by the contained excitement in her voice and her step—but still she’d been kind and thorough with the witness.
And a good thing, too, as the witness had turned out to be a Scotland Yard superintendent’s son. He’d left the boy waiting for his father’s arrival in the care of the uniformed constable, but for once he had no doubt that his witness would remain available.
Babcock was debating how he felt about having Scotland Yard—and his old mate—breathing over his shoulder in a major investigation when they went round a sharp bend in the canal and he saw the lime-yellow jackets of the uniformed officers in the distance.
“There they are, boss,” Larkin informed him.
“I can see that,” he answered testily, picking up his pace a bit to keep up with her. He’d slipped up on his daily runs since the divorce, and it was telling.
The boat was half obscured by the knot of officers, but he could see that it was drifting, bow out, into the canal. There was no other sign of disturbance, or even of human habitation. In fact, the stretch of canal might have been lifted straight from a scene in The Wind in the Willows. The grass lining the towpath was emerald after the snowmelt, the dried rushes at the canal’s edge were golden, and the gleaming water reflected the twisted black trunks and feathery branches of the trees on either side of the path.
Just past the boat, the canal curved again, a seductive lure that compelled one to see what was hidden round the next bend. It was a magical place, not suited for violent death, and for the first time he had a visceral sense of how Kincaid’s son must have felt on finding the woman’s body.
Nor was it a place suited for investigation. Larkin had been right—
he’d seen no access other than the way they had come. He remembered that the boy had said he’d seen a farmhouse in the distance—had he gone some way ahead before turning back for Barbridge?
The officers parted as they drew near, allowing Babcock and Larkin an unimpeded view of the towpath, but it was not until he had moved past them that Babcock saw the crumpled form on the green grass.
Her arm was thrown across her face, as if she were sleeping, but blood had darkened the spikes of her blond hair, and her legs were splayed at an unnatural angle. Babcock knelt and very gently shifted her arm so that he could see her face.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” The shock of recognition made him feel hollow, and for a moment the face before him blurred and receded.
Blinking, he sat back on his heels and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth before looking up at Larkin accusingly. “I thought the boy said her name was Lebow.”
“The kid seemed positive in his ID, boss,” Larkin said defensively. “And no one’s been on the boat yet. Are you saying it’s not Lebow?”
He took a last look at the pale face before him. Her eyes were wide, her mouth slightly parted in an expression that might have been surprise. “When I knew her,” he said slowly, “her name was Annie Constantine.”
Although Gemma was driving, it was Kincaid who flashed his warrant card to the constable guarding access to the lane, and it was Kincaid who explained that he’d been summoned by Chief Inspector Babcock, and that he was the witness’s father.
Gemma felt another flash of the anger that had provoked her out-burst in the Kincaids’ kitchen. What was she, the chauffeur? Never had she felt more sharply her lack of official status in Kit’s life, or regretted that she couldn’t say “I’m his mum,” or at least “He’s my stepson.” Nor did anyone seem to remember that she, too, was a police officer, and might have something to contribute.
Still fuming, she eased her Escort past the panda cars lining the end of the lane, but when she saw Kit, her irritation vanished and she felt ashamed of her petty feelings.
He was sitting in the grass at the bottom of the humpbacked bridge, knees drawn up, his back against the abutment, his thin face
pinched with fright and misery. A silver emergency blanket had slipped from one shoulder, revealing the shaggy brown dog clutched in his lap.
His face brightened as he saw them and he pushed himself to his feet, letting the blanket fall to the ground.
Gemma pulled the car up parallel to an SUV parked at the end of the small lay-by near the bridge.
Kincaid was out of the car before she had come to a full stop, and so reached Kit first. By the time Gemma joined them, he’d grasped his son in a one-armed hug. For a moment, Kit turned his face to his father’s shoulder, then he straightened and pulled away, biting his lip.
Gemma wanted to throw her arms around the boy, wanted to hold him tight and stroke his hair and tell him it was okay to cry. But she held back, as she always did, afraid he would feel she was overstepping her bounds, trying to take his mother’s place. She contented herself with patting his shoulder as Kincaid said, “Kit, are you all right? Tell me what happened.”
Of course he wasn’t all right, thought Gemma, but Kit answered with obvious effort. “We were walking. I saw the boat. Then I saw her—Annie. I knew—” He shook his head.
“You didn’t see anyone else?” Kincaid asked.
“No. I told the chief inspector.”
Kincaid took him gently but firmly by the shoulders and looked in his eyes. “Did you touch anything?”
Gemma’s first thought was that this was no time to be worrying about the integrity of the crime scene, but her protest died on her lips as she read the expression on Kincaid’s face. It was not the integrity of the scene that concerned him, she realized, but the fact that Kit might have left some trace that would connect him with the woman’s death.
“Of course not.” Kit sounded incensed, and that, at least, was an improvement. “I know better than that. I kept Tess away, too.”
Hearing her name, the little terrier raised her head and licked his chin, and Gemma saw that even in Kit’s arms the dog was shivering.
“We need to get you both somewhere warm,” she said, then, turning to Kincaid, added, “Can’t DCI Babcock or one of his officers take Kit’s statement at the house?”
“No.” The protest came from Kit, not Kincaid. “I want to stay. I told the chief inspector I would. And he said he wants to see you, as soon as possible.”
Kincaid glanced at Gemma, his conflict clearly evident. She knew he felt he should stay with Kit—he wanted to stay with Kit—and yet he also wanted to go after Babcock, to see the crime scene, to be in on the action. And he was afraid that if he asked her to stay, she’d think him guilty of relegating her to child minder again.
She took pity on him. He did need to talk to Babcock. He had known the victim, and liked the woman—he was connected to this crime in a way she was not. “You go ahead,” she said, with a small smile. “Kit and I will wait for you here.”
Babcock had just slipped on a pair of latex gloves when the shifting of the uniformed officers heralded another arrival. He glanced up, expecting the SOCOs, or Dr. Elsworthy, but it was Duncan Kincaid.
Babcock met his eyes and nodded an acknowledgment.
“You agree with your son, then?” he asked. “This is the woman you met as Annie Lebow?”
After a glance at the body, Kincaid came over to him. “Yes. Have you any idea—”
“You didn’t tell me you had a son,” Babcock interrupted.
Kincaid looked startled. “You didn’t ask. I suppose it didn’t occur to me that you didn’t know. Does it matter?”
“Your son—Kit—said that the two of you met the victim, and that she’d invited you to visit her again.”
Kincaid nodded, but his expression had grown slightly wary.
“That was on Christmas Day. She was moored up above Barbridge then, on the Middlewich Branch. She asked us to come back yesterday—she said she’d let Kit steer the boat—but we didn’t manage it.”
“You didn’t know her before that?”
“No. What are you getting at, Ronnie?” Kincaid asked, drawing closer so that he wouldn’t be overheard. “And what did you mean when you said the woman we met as Annie Lebow?”
Babcock glanced down the path. There was still no sign of the techs or the pathologist. “Sheila,” he called out, “can you rustle up an extra pair of gloves and some shoe covers?”
“Rustle up?” Kincaid repeated, one eyebrow raised. “I see you didn’t outgrow your fondness for the Wild West.”
Larkin, however, complied without hesitation. Digging in the capacious pockets of her coat, she produced both gloves and elasticized paper shoe covers. “I’m a good Boy Scout, boss,” she said with a cheeky grin. “Are you going aboard before the scene-of-crime lads get here?”
Although one of the bow doors stood slightly ajar, there was no other obvious sign of disturbance to the boat. “It doesn’t look as though there was a struggle aboard, or a forced entry, so the killer may not have been on the boat at all. And we need a positive ID.
We’ll be careful.” Handing Kincaid the gloves and one set of shoe covers, Babcock fit the other set over his shoes.
After a moment’s hesitation, Kincaid followed suit. “You’re the boss, mate.”
The bow of the boat had drifted back to within a foot of the water’s edge, and Babcock wanted to take advantage of the proximity.
The hard border of the canal had been overgrown by turf, and as he knelt he immediately felt the sodden grass soak through the knees of his trousers. He leaned out, very much aware that if he fell headfirst
into the canal, he would not only be likely to freeze to death, but that if he survived, he’d never live it down. He’d be known as “arse- up Babcock” until they pensioned him off.
His fingers caught the slippery gunwale, and held, but his jubilation was brief as he felt the boat’s surprising resis tance. For a moment, he hung suspended, knowing that if the boat moved the other way he would go with it; then the fates smiled on him and the Horizon slid smoothly into the bank.
One of the uniformed officers stepped forward and grabbed the gunwale so that Babcock was able to reach the rope that hung from the center fender, drifting in the water like a pale snake. The mooring pin that had once held the rope had left dark punctures in the grass, but there was no sign of the pin itself.
The uniformed constable slipped gloves from his pocket and took the rope from Babcock. “I’ll take it, sir, until you get aboard and see if there’s a spare pin.”
Babcock climbed over the gunwale and Kincaid followed, his longer legs giving him the advantage. They both stood still, checking for any sign of disturbance, but Babcock saw no footprints, no mud or blood. The purr of the generator, which he had noticed only peripherally before, was more audible, but still barely louder than a human hum.
Easily locating a spare mooring pin in the tidy well deck, he handed it across to the constable, instructing him, “Place it as far from the original mooring as possible.” Kincaid played out several feet of line from the bow stanchion and the officer moved back towards the stern, anchoring the pin well outside the trampled area around the original site.
“That should hold her, sir,” the constable called, “even if it does rub up the paintwork a bit.”
From this vantage point, Babcock could see faint light shining through the gap left by the open half of the cabin’s double doors. He
slipped on his gloves and, with a glance at Kincaid, pulled the door wide and stepped down into the salon.
“Holy shit.” He stopped so suddenly that Kincaid bumped him from behind.
“My sentiments exactly, when I came aboard before,” Kincaid said as Babcock moved aside to make room for him. Although the words were light, Babcock could hear the strain in his voice. He felt it, too, the overwhelming sense of a life interrupted.
Although the fire in the woodstove had gone cold, the radiators still pumped out heat; the lights still shone. A book lay open on an end table beside a half-empty mug of tea. A heavy insulated jacket hung on a hook set into the paneling near the bow doors.
“I’d never have expected a social worker—especially a retired social worker—to have this kind of money,” Babcock said, still ap-praising the luxurious fittings. Put together with the pristine condition of the boat’s exterior and expensively quiet generator, it shouted
“no expense spared.”
“Social worker?” Kincaid was obviously surprised. “She was a social worker? And you knew her?”
“I worked some cases with her. But then I heard she’d retired—
oh, five, six years ago. Dropped off the map. Can’t say I blamed her, after the last case we dealt with together.”
“Rough?” Kincaid asked.
“She’d placed a child in foster care. The parents were drug users, couldn’t stay clean. You know the story. Then the foster father killed the kid. I think she blamed herself, but it was the system.”
Babcock shrugged. “Sometimes you just can’t get it right.”
Kincaid repeated his earlier question. “What did you mean about her name. Was it not Lebow?”
“You’re a per sis tent bastard.” Babcock attempted a smile. “When I knew her, her name was Constantine. I think her husband was a journalist, but I’m not sure. She never really talked about her private
life.” What he didn’t say was that he had been attracted to her. Not that she had given him any encouragement, or that he would have done anything about it if she had. Ironic, that he hadn’t known then that all those years of fidelity were a waste.
He felt another rush of queasiness as he tried to connect the body on the towpath with the woman he had known. Annie had engaged life with an intensity that was seldom comfortable, and sometimes painful, for herself as well as others, of that much he was certain.
“Was she divorced, then?” Kincaid asked, snapping Babcock back to the present.
“That could explain the name change, I suppose.”
Frowning, Kincaid said, “When you knew her, did you ever talk about James Hilton?”
Babcock gazed at him blankly, then realization dawned. “The name of the boat. Yes, we did. I’d no idea she’d remembered.” He shook his head, then scanned the cabin, forcing himself to focus.
“Has anything changed since you were aboard?” The spare contemporary design of the decor made the small space seem larger, and yet it was warmly comfortable. There were, however, no photographs.
Perhaps she had kept mementos and more personal items in the bedroom.
Kincaid shook his head. “There’s certainly no obvious sign of a struggle or an intruder. I’d guess she was interrupted sometime last night—otherwise she’d have washed up.” He gestured at the mug.
“She didn’t strike me as the type to leave things untidy.”
“No.” Babcock walked into the streamlined galley. “There’s no sign of a meal, so either she cleaned up before she sat down with her tea, or she hadn’t yet eaten.” He checked the cupboards and the fridge, finding a few basic supplies, and a generous stock of both red and white wine. “She liked her tipple,” he said, examining labels.
“And she went to some trouble to get it. This is not the plonk you’d find at your local marina.”
“A connoisseur? Or a comfort drinker?” Kincaid mused.
There was no television, Babcock realized. He thought of her, cocooned on her boat in the long winter evenings, and he could imagine that a glass of wine could easily have turned into three or four. “Why such an isolated mooring?” he asked as he moved into the passageway that led towards the stern. “You said she was up above Barbridge when you met her? If she’d stayed . . .”
“You’re thinking wrong place, wrong time?” Kincaid shook his head. “With no sign of burglary or vandalism, or of sexual assault, a random killing seems unlikely. And even up on the Middlewich, there wasn’t another boat moored in sight.”
“So if someone had been stalking her, it wouldn’t have made a difference?”
“It’s early days yet, to make assumptions one way or the other.”
Agreeing, Babcock continued on into the stateroom. It was as neat as the salon, and gave away as little about its occupant. The only photos were black-and-white reproductions of old canal boats.
The built-in bed was made, the storage units closed, and there was no sign of personal papers or an address diary. The bedside table held only a book, an alarm clock, and an empty phone cradle. He was about to call out when Kincaid’s voice came from the salon.
“There’s a mobile phone on the floor, under her chair.”
Returning to the salon, Babcock found Kincaid rising from his knees. He had left the phone in place, and almost immediately Babcock spied its silver gleam a foot back from the chair’s edge. Kneeling himself, he edged the phone out with the tip of a gloved finger.
“It’s closed, so it’s unlikely she dropped it in mid-call.”
“She might have set it in the chair and forgotten about it when she stood up,” Kincaid offered.
Babcock flipped open the phone and checked the last number dialed. The display read “Roger,” and the number was a Cheshire exchange.
“Ex-husband?” Kincaid asked, reading over his shoulder.
“I think so.” He flipped through the phone’s directory; there were
no other numbers listed. Taking out his own mobile, he rang control and asked for a reverse look-up on the number.
“Roger Constantine,” he informed Kincaid with satisfaction when he’d thanked the dispatcher and rung off. “An address in Tilston, near Malpas.” That was the southwest corner of the county, equidistant from both the Shropshire and the Welsh borders.
“As good a place as any to start. Why don’t—” Kincaid stopped, and Babcock wasn’t sure if it was because he’d realized he wasn’t the one giving the orders or if he’d heard the raised voices from the canal side.
“Sounds like we’ve got company,” Babcock said, giving himself time to consider. He wouldn’t mind having Kincaid’s input, since he had met Annie Constantine so much more recently. And that would allow him to leave Larkin in charge of the scene here. “But you’re right,” he continued, “visiting Roger Constantine would be the obvious place to start, once I’ve organized the house- to- house—or maybe I should say boat- to- boat. I take it you’d like to tag along?”
“Boss.” It was Larkin, calling from the bank. “The doc’s here.”
Babcock left the phone for the SOCOs to dissect, making a mental note to tell Travis exactly where they’d found it, then headed for the bow deck, followed by Kincaid.
By the time they reached solid ground, Dr. Elsworthy was already examining the body, her back to them. She had perfected the art of balancing in a fl at- footed squat. She wore heavy trousers and a shapeless coat, and a few strands of gray hair had escaped from beneath her woolly gray hat. To the uninitiated, she might be mistaken for a bag lady searching for useful castoffs.
Kincaid, however, seemed unsurprised, and a hush fell over the group as they waited for her to finish.
When Dr. Elsworthy rose at last, her movements seemed slower than usual, and she held her knees for a moment as if they pained her. She turned, stripping off her latex gloves with a snap, and fixed Babcock with a glare. “As you may have gathered, the victim was
struck on the back right-hand side of the head with a hard object, possibly your missing mooring pin. The external shape of the wound is compatible.
“Lividity is fixed, and rigor is fairly well established although not complete. I think you can assume death probably occurred sometime between six P.M. and midnight yesterday.” Anticipating Babcock’s groan, she pointed a finger at him. “You know the mitigating factors as well as I do, Chief Inspector. A night exposed to the elements would have retarded rigor, as would an unanticipated attack.
There are no obvious defense wounds or signs of a struggle, nor indications of sexual interference.”
As much as it galled him, Babcock knew she was right. If a victim fought his attacker, or ran just before death, the expenditure of ATP
in the muscles could bring on almost immediate rigor, while the opposite was true as well. In a victim struck from behind, rigor might be delayed for several hours. There was another factor as well, one that Babcock didn’t want to consider, but knew he must.
“Doc, was death instantaneous?”
“That I can’t tell you, Ronnie, although I may be able to say more once I get her on the table.” Elsworthy sighed and seemed to shrink a little inside her oversize coat. For the first time in Babcock’s memory, she seemed human, and suddenly vulnerable. “I can tell you that the position of the body isn’t natural—she didn’t fall that way after the blow.”
Babcock imagined Annie Constantine, snug in her salon, suddenly feeling the boat drift from the bow. She’d have set down her drink and gone up top, leaving behind her heavy coat. Had she seen that the mooring rope was loose, and perhaps thought her knot had not held?
She would have used a pole to push the boat back to the bank, then climbed ashore. Bending to retie the line, she would have seen that the mooring pin itself had gone.
But someone had been waiting, perhaps crouched in the shadow of the hedgerow. Had her assailant sprung out, hit her once, twice,
running away as she struggled up and fell again before losing consciousness?
Or had he waited long enough to make sure his blow had done its work, then lifted or dragged her a few feet, to leave her lying as if she had simply fallen asleep?
Beside him, Kincaid spoke quietly, echoing his thoughts. “Why would he—or she—have moved the body? And was she still alive when he did?”
When Gemma had tucked Kit and Tess into the passenger seat of the Escort, she went round to the driver’s side and started the car. The engine was still warm, and toasty air blasted from the heater vents.
Kit let her fold the blanket she’d retrieved around him without protest, and in a few moments, he had stopped shivering.
“That’s better,” said Gemma, smiling at him as she warmed her fingers in the airflow.
“You’ll use up all your petrol,” Kit protested, but without much conviction.
“Better than you catching pneumonia. Or Tess.”
“Dogs don’t catch pneumonia,” Kit retorted with returning spirit, but then his voice wavered and he added, “Do they?” He pulled Tess a little more firmly into his lap.
“I’m sure they don’t,” said Gemma, who wasn’t sure at all, having never owned a dog before Tess and Geordie. “She has a fur coat, after all. Remember how much she loves going out in the garden at home when it’s cold?”
Some of the anxious lines in Kit’s face relaxed. “She’d watch squirrels in an arctic blizzard.”
“And she’s never been any the worse for it, so I’m sure she’s fine, now.” Indeed, the little dog had closed her eyes, and began to snore very gently.
Gemma chose her next words carefully. She didn’t want to dam-
age the rapport they’d established, but something had been nagging at her ever since they’d found Kit’s note. “You and Tess were out awfully early this morning,” she said, without looking at him. “Did the little boys wake you?”
“No. They were still asleep. It was just that I . . . I had a bad dream.” She heard the effort it took him to keep his voice as casual as hers.
For a moment, she watched the wind move the tops of the evergreens beyond the bridge. Then she asked, “Do you want to talk about it? ”
“No!” The response had burst from him. “I mean . . . I don’t really remember,” he added after a moment, moderating his reply.
Gemma didn’t press him, but she wasn’t sure if her reluctance was due to sensitivity, or the fact that she was afraid to imagine what Kit’s nightmares might hold.
Movement in her rearview mirror caught her eye. She watched as a moss-green Morris Minor inched past her in the lay-by, and blinked in surprise as baleful eyes peered back at her from a mam-moth gray head resting on the rear seat back. Then the head disappeared as the Morris Minor stopped some yards ahead in a spot kept clear by the uniformed constable, and a figure climbed from the driver’s seat. At first Gemma thought it was a rather shabbily dressed man, but a few gray curls peeked from beneath a woolen hat, and she saw a flash of a profile that was definitely feminine.
The removal of a black medical bag and the hurried conference with the constable narrowed the identification further. This must be the pathologist. Nothing emerged from the rear of the car, however, and Gemma wondered if she had imagined the beast.
She turned to Kit for confirmation, but his eyes were downcast, and he was stroking Tess’s head with a studied concentration.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” Gemma said gently. If he needed to talk about what had happened, she would give him the opportunity.
He nodded, but didn’t speak, and Gemma waited with the hard-
won patience her job had taught her. At last, Kit’s hand fell still and he glanced at her, then away.
“She was all right yesterday,” he said, his voice thick with emotion.
“If I hadn’t— If I’d stayed—I might have stopped it somehow—”
Gemma’s breath caught in surprise. “You saw her yesterday?”
“I was with Lally and her friend Leo. She—Annie—asked us to come aboard, but I said no. I didn’t want to take anyone else on the boat. I thought—” Kit stopped, flushing, and scrubbed at his cheeks with the back of his hand.
Her own throat tightening, Gemma said, “You liked her, and that felt special. You didn’t want to share it with anyone else.”
Kit shot her a grateful look and nodded.
“I can understand that,” Gemma continued, frowning. “But why do you think it would have changed anything if you’d stayed?
Did you see something, or someone, while you were there?” The car had warmed, and she reached out and switched off the ignition.
In the sudden silence, Kit said haltingly, “No. But if he—whoever did that to her—if he’d seen me, he’d have known she wasn’t alone, and he might not—”
“No, Kit, you can’t think that.” Gemma was horrified. What if this woman’s killer had expected to find her alone, and discovered Kit there as well?
She swallowed, and made an effort to reassure him. “First of all, even if you had gone aboard, you wouldn’t have stayed more than a few minutes. And that was in the middle of the afternoon, wasn’t it, when you went after Lally?”
Kit nodded, and Gemma continued, “From what you’ve told us, I’d say it was very unlikely your friend was killed during the day.” The violence of the crime made it more probable that it had been committed under cover of darkness, although there was no guarantee. She suddenly wished desperately that she could see the crime scene and
hear what the pathologist had to say. Had the murder been random, combined with a sexual assault or a burglary gone wrong? Or had this woman been targeted?
None of these were speculations she could share with Kit, nor did she feel she could interrogate him about the state of his friend’s body. She would just have to wait for Kincaid’s report. There was one thing, however, that she could pursue.
“Kit, you said that he might not have hurt her if you’d been there.
Did you see something that made you think Annie’s attacker was a man?”
“No, but . . .” His cheeks grew a little paler. “I suppose I just didn’t think a woman could have done . . . that.”
Gemma wished she still had his innocence, that she hadn’t seen firsthand the damage that women could do. And yet, statistically, he was right—an assault was more likely to have been committed by a male.
From her side mirror, Gemma saw that the pub had apparently stirred to life. A woman came out, bearing a large thermos and a stack of polystyrene cups, and headed towards the nearest uniformed officer.
Raising her hand, Gemma placed the backs of her fingers gently against Kit’s cheek, and found his skin still cold to the touch. “Look, the publican’s bringing out hot drinks,” she said. She recognized the woman who had been serving at the bar the previous afternoon.
“Shall I fetch you something?”
“No. I had some coffee earlier.” Kit grimaced. “One of the neighbors made a cup for me. It wasn’t at all like we make at home.” Kit liked to cook breakfast on the weekends, and they had bought an espresso machine primarily so that Kit and Toby could have steamed milk as a special treat, Kit’s mixed with a bit of coffee. Homesickness shot through Gemma like a physical pain, and she could only imagine how Kit must be feeling.
“I think I’ll have some myself, then. Back in a tick,” she added as she took the excuse to slide out of the car, not wanting him to see her face.
She introduced herself to the uniformed officer, showing him her police ID, and to the manageress of the pub. She was sipping what turned out to be scalding-hot and quite respectably good coffee when she saw movement on the bridge. It was the pathologist, trudg-ing back towards her car with her bag, her face set in an abstracted scowl.
“The good Dr. E. looks even less happy than usual,” the constable muttered.
“Dr. E.?” asked Gemma. “She’s the Home Office pathologist?”
“Dr. Elsworthy.” He raised his cup and drained it without a wince before handing it back to the pub’s manageress. Gemma thought his mouth must be lined with asbestos. “Ta,” he said. “I’d better get back to my post. Don’t want the doc to set her dog on me.”
“So I did see a dog,” Gemma murmured to his retreating back.
The manageress gave her an odd look, but asked, “Is it true that someone’s been killed?” It was clear her agenda didn’t include the discussion of dogs, imaginary or otherwise. “Do you know who it is?”
“The police won’t release that information until family have been notified, ma’am,” Gemma answered, avoiding the second question, at least. There was no hope of stonewalling on the first—the human grapevine worked too well.
“I don’t know what this will do to my lunch business,” the woman said with a sigh. “The roadblock will keep the clientele away.”
“I’m sure your customers will find a way to get here. Curiosity will overcome a little minor inconvenience, believe me,” Gemma reassured her. “This will be gossip central, once the news gets round, and you might be prepared for some journalists, too.
“That’s true.” The woman brightened, then frowned again. “I wonder if I’ve enough laid in. I’d better start prep, then.” With a dis-
tracted nod at Gemma, she turned back to the pub, leaving Gemma with her still-scalding cup of coffee.
“Thanks,” Gemma called after her, belatedly. Turning back to the car, she saw that Kit had leaned back against the headrest, his eyes closed, his lips parted in the relaxation of unexpected sleep. He looked as young and defenseless as Toby, and her chest tightened with a fierce, possessive love. She would have done anything to protect him from this—Kit, the last person who needed another blow, another loss, in his short life.
She stood irresolute, not wanting to wake him by getting back into the car, sipping her coffee and gazing at the boats along the canal bank. Lined up nose to tail, they reminded her of a drawing of circus animals leading one another in a parade in one of Toby’s books.
She had seen narrowboats on the Grand Union Canal near the supermarket where she shopped at home, but had never been aboard one. Those had charmed her with their rooftop flowerpots and haphazardly strung laundry, their slightly shabby air of rakishness.
Most of the boats below, however, were buttoned up against the cold like sensible matrons, and looked rather forlornly abandoned.
But a spiral of smoke issued from the chimney of one of the more colorful crafts, and as she watched, a man came out of the cabin and looked round, briefly, before going back inside.
The sound of a car door slamming made Gemma turn, thinking that Kit had awakened, but to her surprise she saw the doctor climbing from her car once more. This time she held not her bag, but some sort of bulky equipment that on closer inspection Gemma thought was an oxygen tank.
The doctor crossed the bridge again, but rather than turning right, she went to the left, back towards the boats clustered across from the pub. She stopped beside the brightly colored narrowboat Gemma had noticed before and seemed about to call out, but before she could speak, the cabin door opened.
This time, Gemma caught a glimpse of a curly-headed child, then the doctor climbed awkwardly aboard and went inside. Since when, Gemma wondered, did pathologists make house calls?
A touch on her shoulder made her jump, but even as she drew breath to gasp, Kincaid said, “Sorry, love. I didn’t mean to give you a fright. You were miles away.”
Turning, she examined his face. His voice had been even, uninflected, but she detected a familiar undercurrent of tension. “Was it bad?” she asked, nodding in the direction of the crime scene.
“Mmmm.” He made a noise of assent in his throat. “No sign of sexual interference, though, thank God. At least Kit was spared that. And not much blood, other than beneath the head. But . . .”
He stopped, jamming his hands in his coat hard enough to tear holes in his pockets, not meeting her eyes. “But I can’t imagine, when he saw her lying there, that he didn’t think of his mum. How is he?”
Gemma looked back towards the car. Kit’s head had tilted to one side as he’d fallen into a deeper sleep, and Tess had moved to the driver’s seat. “He’s exhausted,” she said. “As much from trying to hold himself together as anything else, I think. We need to get him home.”
“Home.” Kincaid repeated the word under his breath, frowning, as if making sense of a foreign language, and gazed abstractedly at the canal.
“What—” Gemma had begun, when he turned to her and gripped her shoulders with almost painful force.
“Right,” he said. “You’re absolutely right. As soon as Babcock gets Kit’s statement, we’ll pack up and head back to London. There’s no reason we should stay here, no reason Kit should be involved in this any further. We can go home.”
Gemma stared at him, galvanized by the thought. In just a few hours, they could be back in the safe haven of their house in Notting Hill, removed from thoughts of disintegrating marriages and dead
babies, away from the horror of a violent death that encroached on their personal lives.
After all, Duncan and Kit had met the woman only briefly—
surely they had no obligation to do more than was legally necessary.
And Rosemary and Hugh would understand; they would know that Kit was the last child who should be subjected to such stress.
Glancing towards the car, she saw Kit turn restlessly in his sleep, his lips moving, but the intervening glass muffled any sound. She recalled the things he had said to her in the car, and slowly, reluctantly, shook her head.
“No,” she said. “I don’t think we can. I think we have to see this through. I think we have to let Kit see this through.”
“But—”
“It’s all mixed up in his mind,” Gemma continued, certain that she was right. “This woman’s death and his mother’s. He feels responsible, as if he somehow failed them both. And if we take him away, he’ll just carry that burden with him, wherever he goes. We can’t let that happen.”