Water Like A Stone

Chapter Twenty- four

As soon as Gemma said they had to pick up the children, he knew that it was an excuse. He stared at her, questioning, but she just gave a slight shake of her head.

Frustration gripped him. He didn’t want to leave until he’d talked to Babcock himself, found out what he’d managed to get out of Piers Dutton. At least so far it didn’t sound as if Dutton had implicated Caspar in the fraud scheme, but if Caspar was involved . . . It would mean disaster for Juliet, and it would be his fault.

And if Dutton was cleared of Annie Lebow’s murder, had he brought it about needlessly? Not that Dutton didn’t deserve a good prison term for the scams he’d pulled on his clients, but was it worth the damage to Juliet? Perhaps his sister had been right all along—he was a self-righteous bastard, concerned only with being seen to do the right thing. The fact that Caspar Newcombe was a fool didn’t make it any better.

Gemma had slipped into her coat and was glancing at him anxiously while making chitchat with Sheila Larkin. What had she found that she couldn’t say in front of—

The thought that struck him sent the blood from his head. Why s

had Caspar volunteered an alibi for Dutton? What if it wasn’t Dutton who needed an alibi, but Caspar himself?

What if Caspar had discovered that Annie Lebow meant to shop Dutton for cheating her, and had decided to make sure she didn’t have that chance? There was not only the business at stake, but Kincaid had begun to think that Caspar would do anything for Piers Dutton. Dutton, obviously, had not been so willing to do the same for him.

Suddenly as eager to be away as Gemma, he got his own coat and interrupted Gemma’s conversation with Larkin. “Tell your boss to ring us if there’s any news,” he told the DC, and although she looked surprised at his abruptness, she nodded.

“Will do.”

Taking Gemma’s arm, he hurried her up the stairs and out into an early dusk. The swollen clouds seemed to hang just above the rooftops, pressing down with a momentous weight, and fine snowflakes stung their cheeks like microscopic shards of glass.

“Is it Caspar?” he asked. “What have you found?”

“Caspar?” Gemma looked up at him, shielding her eyes against the snow. “What are you talking about?”

Relief flooded through him. He’d been paranoid, that’s all, and he was suddenly reluctant to share his suspicions. “What is it, then?”

he asked, but she’d broken away, dashing for the car and plunging into the driver’s seat.

She had the car started before he’d closed his own door, in gear before he’d buckled his seat belt. “Gemma, where’s the damned fi re?”

Gemma eased into the congestion of Crewe’s late-afternoon traffi c without looking at him and said, “Marie Wain.” When he stared blankly at her, she added, “It was there all along. Annie Lebow spent time with the children, when she was arranging care for Rowan. She should have seen it.”

“Gemma.” He reached out, covered her hand on the steering

wheel with his own. “Will you please tell me what the hell you’re talking about?”

This time she glanced at him as she downshifted for a traffi c light. “Marie Wain—the little girl I met—isn’t Marie Wain. It’s right there in Annie’s notes on the original case. Gabriel and Rowan Wain’s baby girl had brown eyes, like her brother, like her parents.

The girl they call Marie has eyes as blue as delphiniums.”

He took this in. “But . . . the girl was just a baby the last time Annie saw her, when she closed the case. She might have been mistaken—”

“No. Babies’ eyes are sometimes a cloudy, indeterminate color for the first few weeks. But after that you can tell— And with blue-eyed children it’s easier— You could see that Toby’s eyes were unmistakably blue within a day or two.”

“Are you suggesting the Wains switched their child with someone else’s? And no one noticed?” The full import hit him. “If that was the case, then the baby in the barn could be—”

“I don’t know.” She accelerated a bit too fast, and the Escort’s back tires slid a little on the glazed pavement. “But we’re going to find out.”

“Gemma, if you’re right, we should have told Babcock.”

“Not until we talk to Gabriel Wain.”

Squeaky clean and dressed in jeans and a nubby jumper, Juliet came downstairs to find her mother home from the bookshop and rushing round the kitchen like a whirlwind.

“I’ve put some things out for the children’s tea,” said Rosemary.

“There’s a cauliflower bake I had in the freezer, and some things for salad. If you can just—”

“Mummy, please. I can manage,” Juliet interrupted, but without heat. Her parents had a long- planned dinner engagement with friends in Barbridge, and she knew Rosemary was overcompensating. “Go.

Have a good time. We won’t starve.” Giving her mother an impulsive hug, she caught the familiar scent of Crabtree & Evelyn’s Lily of the Valley, and was oddly comforted.

What scents would her own children associate with her, she wondered, when they were grown? Sweat, brick, and sawdust?

“Are you certain?” asked Rosemary, touching her cheek. “Duncan and Gemma should be back soon.”

“Yes. And if you don’t get Daddy out of the house, he’ll get sucked back into the perpetual Monopoly game. I’m glad you’re not going far, though. It’s shaping up to be a foul night.”

She had bundled her mother into her coat and waved both parents off at the door, like a mother sending kids off to school, when the phone rang. Her first instinct was to reach for her mobile, then she realized she’d left it with her work clothes upstairs, and it was the house phone ringing.

The children were all in the sitting room, and when neither Lally nor Sam—who usually responded to a ringing phone with Pavlovian promptness—appeared, she padded into the kitchen herself. Lifting the handset, she gave her parents’ number.

“Juliet? Is that you?”

Surprised, she recognized her friend Gill, who had a fine-arts shop near the square in Nantwich.

“Gill?”

“I’ve been ringing and ringing your house, and your mobile,”

Gill went on. “And then I thought to try your parents.”

Juliet felt a little lurch of unease. Gill would never go to such trouble for social reasons, and it was past time for her to have closed up shop and set off for her cottage near Whitchurch. “What is it?

Has something happened?”

“It’s Newcombe and Dutton. The building’s on fire. The fi re bri-gade’s there but they haven’t got things under control yet. I don’t think anyone is inside, but when I couldn’t reach you or Caspar—”

“Caspar? You rang his mobile, too?”

“Yes. You mean he’s not with you?”

“No. Gill, look, I’m sorry. I’ve got to go. I’ll ring you later.” Juliet hung up before her friend could respond. She couldn’t answer questions, not now. Her knees felt weak with panic. Having heard the alarm in her voice, Jack got up from his bed by the stove and came over to her, wagging his bushy tail and watching her with his alert sheepdog eyes.

“It’s all right, boy,” she said, trying to reassure herself as well as the dog, but she had to grasp the kitchen table for a moment. What if Caspar had done something stupid? What if Caspar was in that building?

She had to go. She had to see what was happening.

Purpose galvanized her, channeling the rush of adrenaline into flight. It was only as she was into her coat and halfway out the door that she remembered the children.

“I have to go out. There’s a fire.” Kit’s aunt Juliet had run into the sitting room, banging the door so loudly that all the children jumped.

“Lally,” she said breathlessly, “Kit. You look after the boys. Sammy, you do what your sister tells you. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

With that, she was gone, and the children sat staring at one another in frozen surprise until Sam said, “A fire? What’s she talking about? Why would she have to go? Do you think it’s our house?”

“Of course not, silly,” answered Lally. “She’d have said.” She caught Kit’s eye, then added as she uncurled herself from the corner of the chesterfield and stood, “I have to go out, too. Kit, can you look after Sam and Toby?”

“But I don’t want—”

“Mum said for you to do what I told you. Don’t argue. And don’t snitch, or you’ll be sorry.”

Without another glance at the younger boys, she slipped into the hall and started tugging on boots and coat.

“Lally, this is daft,” protested Kit, following her. “It’s dark and it’s snowing. Where do you have to go that’s so important?”

Pulling a fleece hat from the rack by the door, she said, “I have to meet Leo. I promised. I—it doesn’t matter. I don’t have to tell you why.”

There was something in her face that frightened him, a reckless-ness—no, more than that, a desperation. It made him think that if he let her go alone, she might not come back.

And that meant he had no choice. “All right,” he said. “I’m coming with you.”

Gemma had taken the pocket torch from the door of the car, but once they left the bridge for the towpath, they discovered it only made the visibility worse, trapping them in an illuminated cone of swirling snowflakes. They moved into the shelter of the bridge, then switched the torch off and stood until their eyes adjusted. Beside her, Kincaid was a comforting presence.

The snow made a curtain on either side of the stone archway, but the flakes were bigger and softer than when they had left Crewe, and when Gemma stepped out into the open she found she could make out the outline of the canal’s edge, and the shapes of the boats huddled against it. Then she saw a sliver of light, the glow of a lamp seeping through a gap in curtains pulled tight over a porthole, and she knew the Daphne was still moored where she had last seen it.

She moved forward, Kincaid near enough behind her that she could hear him muttering as the snow soaked through his shoes.

When she reached the boat, she stopped, feeling the warmth of his body as he halted behind her and gave her shoulder a brief squeeze.

This time, she didn’t call out, but felt for the gunwale and climbed carefully into the well deck, then made room for Kincaid to do the same. Knowing the slight movement of the boat under their combined weight had announced their presence, she rapped

sharply on the cabin door. “Mr. Wain, it’s Gemma James. We need to talk to you.”

The door opened quickly, to Gemma’s surprise, and Gabriel Wain looked out at them without speaking. After a moment, he stepped back and down, and she saw that three steps led into the tiny cabin.

Gemma caught her breath as she peered in, thinking for an instant that she had happened upon a child’s playhouse. The space was so tiny, so cleverly arranged, and so welcoming with its dark- paneled walls decorated with gleaming brasses and delicate lace-edged plates.

There were homely touches of red in the curtains and the cushions on the two benches, a fire burned in the cast-iron stove tucked neatly into the corner nearest the steps, and a lantern hung from a hook in the sloping paneled ceiling.

But everything drew the eye towards the painting on the underside of a folding table now stowed in its upright position. A pale winding road, flower lined, led to a castle dreaming on a hilltop.

The colors were brilliant, the grass magically green, the sky a perfect blue, the clouds a luminous white, and the detail and perspective were the work of a master artist.

“My wife’s,” said Gabriel Wain, his voice filled with unexpected pride. “There’s no one on the Cut paints in the old way like my Rowan.”

Gemma now saw that there were other pieces on display bearing Rowan’s signature touch—a metal canalware cup in blue embellished with red and yellow roses, a water can, a bowl.

“You’ll let the cold in,” Wain added, nodding towards the door behind Gemma.

She started, realizing she’d stood frozen, with Kincaid trapped behind her, and stepped down into the cabin proper.

“You’ve kept the cabin in its original state,” Kincaid said as he came down after her, his admiration evident. He nodded at the passageway leading towards the bow. “But you’ll have built more living quarters into the old cargo space?”

“This boat was the butty of a pair, originally, so the cabin was larger,” Wain agreed. “But you didn’t come out in this weather to admire my boat, Mr.—Kincaid, is it?” He didn’t invite them to sit.

Gemma moved a bit farther into the center of the cabin and knew, from the way Kincaid positioned himself behind her, that he meant for her to take the lead. Gathering herself, she said, “Mr.

Wain, we need to know what happened to Marie.”

Wain stared at them, his eyes widening. He’d been wary, she thought, but he had not expected this. “Marie? She and Joseph are with the doctor. She’ll have told you—”

“No,” said Gemma, and although she hadn’t raised her voice, Wain stopped as if he’d been struck. “I want you to tell us what happened to Marie.”

The silence stretched in the small space, then Wain recovered enough for an attempt at bluster. “I don’t know what you’re on about. Marie’s staying with Dr. Elsworthy, just for a few—”

There was movement in the passageway, and a woman came into the cabin. Standing beside Gabriel, she laid thin fingers on his arm, the touch enough to silence him.

She had once been pretty, thought Gemma, but now she wore death like a pall. Her clothes hung loosely on her gaunt frame, her lank hair was pulled back carelessly, her skin tinged with gray. With her free arm she cradled an oxygen tank like an unnatural infant, tethered to her by a plastic umbilicus that ended in the twin prongs of a nasal canula.

“You must be Rowan,” Gemma said gently. “I’m Gemma James, and this is Duncan Kincaid.”

“You’re with the police?” asked Rowan Wain.

“We’re police officers in London, yes,” Gemma temporized, wishing she and Kincaid had discussed beforehand how they meant to handle this, “but we’re not here offi cially.”

“Then you’ve no right to be asking—”

“Gabriel, please.” Rowan used his arm for support as she lowered

herself onto a bench. “It’s no use. Can’t you see that?” She looked up at him imploringly. “And I need to tell it. Now, while I can.”

Gabriel Wain seemed to shrink before Gemma’s eyes, as if the purpose that had sustained him had gone. He lowered himself to the bench, beside his wife, and took her hand but didn’t speak. The only sound in the small space was the rhythmic puff of the oxygen as it left the tank.

“She was so perfect.” Rowan’s lips curved in a smile at the memory. “After Joseph, we were terrified it would start again, the vomit-ing, the seizures. And it had been a hard pregnancy, with everything that had happened.” She stopped, letting the oxygen do its work, closing her eyes in an effort to gather strength before going on. “But she ate, and she slept, and she grew rosy and beautiful, with no hint of trouble.

“Then, on the day she turned eight months old, I put her down for her afternoon sleep, just there.” She gestured at the passageway, and Gemma saw that a small bed was fitted into one side, just the size for a baby or a toddler. “I was making mince for tea,” continued Rowan.

“It was cold that day, and I knew Gabriel had been working hard.”

Her expression grew distant; her voice faded to a thread of sound.

“Gabe had taken Joseph with him. Joseph was almost three by then, and he was so much better, we didn’t worry as much. He liked helping his papa with his work, and I was enjoying the bit of time to myself.

“I was singing. With the radio. A man Gabriel had worked for had given him a radio that ran on batteries, so it was a special treat to listen. It was a silly song. I don’t know what it was called, but it made me happy.” She hummed a few breathy bars, and Gemma recognized the tune—ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.”

“I know the one you mean,” she said, and Rowan nodded, as if they had made a connection.

“I was thinking of what I might paint that night, when the children were in bed.” Rowan stopped. Her face grew even paler, her breathing more labored.

Moving towards her, Gemma said, “Are you all right? Let me—”

But Rowan lifted her hand from her husband’s and waved her back.

“No. Please. Let me finish. I had the mince almost ready. The light was going, and I realized it was past time for Marie to wake. I wiped my hands on the tea towel and went in to her. I was still singing.”

Gabriel shook his head, a plea of denial, but he seemed to realize he was powerless to stop her. Bowing his head, he took her hand again and they all waited. Gemma could feel Kincaid’s breath, warm on the back of her neck as he stood behind her.

“I knew straightaway. In the verses I learned as a child, the poets always compared death to sleep, but you can’t possibly mistake it.

Even under her little pink blanket, she was too still. When I touched her, she was cold, and her skin was blue.”

No one spoke. The hypnotic hiss of the oxygen regulator fi lled the room, until it seemed to Gemma that it synchronized with her heartbeat. She realized her cheeks were damp, and scrubbed at them with the back of her hand.

She had held her own child in her arms, so tiny, so perfect, and knew one couldn’t mistake the absence of life. “I’m so sorry. That must have been terrible for you,” she said, and her words seemed to give Rowan a last burst of energy.

“I tried. Oh, I tried. I did everything we’d been taught with Joseph. I puffed my own breath into her lungs until I could feel the rise and fall of her chest under my hand, but it was no use. We were down near Hurleston, and there was no one moored nearby to call for help. By the time Gabriel came . . .”

“I found them,” said Gabriel hoarsely. “Rowan holding little Marie to her breast. It was too late. Too late,” he repeated, his face etched with pain. “And then I realized what would happen if anyone knew. We would lose Joseph, too, and Rowan might go to prison. I couldn’t let that happen.

“I knew I hadn’t much time. Rowan washed her, and dressed her in her best little suit.”

“No nappy. That’s why there was no nappy,” Kincaid said softly, as if he’d just remembered something that had bothered him, and Gabriel nodded.

“It was full dark by that time. I wrapped her in her blanket and carried her to the old dairy. We couldn’t risk Rowan coming, and besides, there was Joseph to look after.” Now that he’d begun, Gabriel seemed to feel the same relief as his wife, the long-dammed words flowing from him.

“I’d been working that week for old Mr. Smith. The dairy hadn’t been used as such for years, but he’d got in mind to sell the place, and much of the mortar work was crumbling. I’d not quite fi nished the repairs, so I’d left my tools. Everything was to hand. There was a manger, half hidden behind some old milking equipment and bits of cast-off furniture—I’d seen it when I’d checked for damage. I made—

I did the best I could for Marie—” He stopped, swallowing, his face nearly as ashen as his wife’s. “And then I closed her up, safe, where nothing could get at her, and I put everything back the way it was before.

“The next day I took my pay from Mr. Smith. I didn’t want any talk—nothing out of the ordinary. Then we left the Shroppie, went up north, mostly, where no one knew us. But somehow it got harder and harder to stay away. Maybe it was meant we should be here when she was found.”

“But I don’t understand,” said Gemma. “Your daughter, the girl you call Marie, who is she?”

“I can’t tell you who she is,” answered Gabriel. Then he must have seen something in Kincaid’s expression because he added, quickly, “I don’t mean I won’t tell you. I mean I can’t, because I don’t know. But I can tell you where she came from. That first year or so, we lived in fear, thinking someone would find our baby, would somehow connect her with us. But we couldn’t leave the boat—we had nothing else—so it seemed easiest to disappear in the cities. The canals run through the worst parts, the old ware houses and slums, s

and they’d only begun to be called ‘waterfront properties.’ ” There was a hint of derision in his voice.

“We were in Manchester—I’d found some day work in a factory there—but the ware houses near the mooring were squats, taken over by drug users, prostitutes, runaways sleeping rough. Rowan got to know some of the women; she helped them when she could. One day they told her they’d found this girl dead, apparently from an overdose, her toddler crouched beside her body.”

“The mother wasn’t much more than a child herself,” put in Rowan, a spark of pity in her eyes. “And the baby, she looked as if her mother had tried to care for her, in spite of everything. She was well fed, and as clean as could be expected. But she was that frightened, poor little mite, and no one would call for help—the squatters didn’t invite the police or the socials onto their patch for any reason—and no one would take her. So we did.” Rowan said it as if it had been the simplest thing in the world, and the memory made her smile. After a moment she went on. “She was about the age our Marie would have been, and now . . . She is Marie. She doesn’t remember anything else. This life is all she knows. And we—she is our daughter, just as if I’d borne her myself.”

All the protests ran through Gemma’s head. If the mother had been identified, there might have been a father to take the child, or grandparents, all with more right than Gabriel and Rowan Wain.

And yet . . . would anyone have loved her more?

Breaking into Gemma’s musing, Rowan asked quietly, “How did you know? About Marie?”

“It was her eyes. In Annie Constantine’s notes, she said Marie’s eyes were brown.”

Rowan sighed. “Dear God. I never thought. I never knew she wrote things like that about the children.”

Moving Gemma aside, Kincaid spoke to Gabriel, his voice hard.

“Did she see it, too? Annie Constantine, when you met her again on Christmas Day? She saw the children that day, and again when she

came back with Dr. Elsworthy. Was that why you argued, because she realized Marie wasn’t your daughter? And then, if she learned about the infant found in the barn, she would have put two and two together. You would have had to stop her, whatever it took.”

Gabriel loosed his hand from his wife’s and stood. The two men faced each other across the small confines of the cabin, and Gemma felt a sudden surge of claustrophobia, as if all the air had been sucked from the space.

But there was no defiance in Gabriel Wain’s stance, and when he spoke his voice rang with desperation. “No. I’d swear she didn’t know. And if she heard little Marie had been found, she never said.”

Resting his hand on his wife’s shoulder, he went on, his words a plea. “I’d not have hurt her, even so.”

The possibilities ran through Gemma’s mind. Annie might not have seen the girl for a changeling at first, but what if something had triggered a memory on Boxing Day morning, when she’d brought Dr. Elsworthy to see to Rowan? Had she come back, later in the day, to confront the couple?

No, not Rowan. Rowan would have told her the truth—she owed Annie Constantine that, and she had been ready to tell the truth.

But if Annie had spoken to Gabriel alone . . . How far had Gabriel Wain been willing to go to protect his family?

Yet they had no proof. And if they made an accusation against Gabriel, there could be no reprieve for this family, or for Rowan, who had so little time.

Gabriel regarded them in silence. He had put himself at their mercy; now he could only wait. But Rowan said, “What will you do?” and there was hope in her voice for her children, if not for herself.

“I—” Gemma hesitated, painfully aware of the risk in either action. But then she knew, with sudden clarity, that she wouldn’t sacrifice this family without proof of Gabriel’s guilt. And that meant they had to find out who had killed Annie Constantine.

The fire was guttering by the time Juliet reached Nantwich and found a place for her van outside the ring of fire engines and snaking hoses. Two fi refighters still stood, directing streams of water into the sodden remains of Newcombe and Dutton. She pushed through the crowd of onlookers until she saw a familiar face.

“Chief Inspector! What happened? Did you— Was anyone—”

“There was no one inside, Mrs. Newcombe,” Babcock hastened to reassure her. “As to what happened, we released your husband’s partner about an hour before the blaze began. The door was padlocked, as we hadn’t got all the files out, but someone remedied that with a pair of bolt cutters.” He surveyed the damage with disgust.

“It was lucky all of Monk’s Walk didn’t go up.”

“You think Piers did this?” Juliet’s first relief was replaced with uneasiness.

“It would seem the logical assumption, yes. There’s only so much even a high- priced lawyer can do if there’s sufficient evidence of wrongdoing. It would have been worth the risk to get rid of it. A can of petrol tucked under an overcoat—” He shrugged.

“You’re sure the fire was set, then?”

“You could still smell the petrol. I’ve sent a car to Mr. Dutton’s house. If he’s not at home, do you know where we might find him?”

“I— His parents live in Chester. I don’t know where else he might go,” Juliet answered, but she was thinking furiously. This seemed much too blatant for Piers. He was a string puller, a manipulator—

direct action was not his style. And looking at the smoldering, black-ened shell of what had been Newcombe and Dutton, she sensed there had been more at stake than covering up evidence.

“—looks worse than it is,” Babcock was saying. “Even though some of the papers were strewn around the office, you’d be surprised at what we can re—”

But Juliet didn’t hear the rest. Muttering “Excuse me,” she eased

through the crush and slipped into the tree-covered tunnel of Monk’s Lane. Only light powder had drifted through the foliage, and it crunched under her feet as she ran.

By the time she veered into North Crofts and reached her front porch, a stitch in her side made her bend over, gasping until it had passed. Then she saw that the door stood slightly ajar. Her heart thumping with fear, she pushed it open and walked into her house.

It took her a moment to identify the unfamiliar smell. Petrol.

Dear God. Her feet felt weighted now as she followed the scent, and the wet footprints, down the hall and into the kitchen.

Still wearing his coat, Caspar stood at the kitchen sink, scrubbing at his hands. He looked up when she came into the room, but didn’t seem surprised to see her. “It won’t come out,” he said. “I can’t get it out.”

“Caspar, what have you done?”

He turned back to his scrubbing, his words made indistinct by the sound of the running water. “They let me watch while they carried out the files. But they didn’t get them all, so they put a padlock on the door and said they’d come back for the rest in the morning.

“Some of Piers’s things were left. I wanted to see for myself. To prove you wrong. So I went back as it was getting dark. When no one was watching, I cut the lock.”

“You cut the padlock?” Juliet said. This was a man who was known for his inability to change a lightbulb.

Caspar, seemingly unaware of the incredulity in her voice, went on. “I found your bolt cutters in the garage. I put them under my coat. A fl imsy thing, the lock. It was easy, like slicing butter. Once I was inside, I made sure the blinds were closed tight, then I used a torch to look through Piers’s files.” He turned to her, heedless of the soapy water dripping from his hands, down the front of his coat and onto the floor.

“He was cheating them. Almost all of them.” His eyes were dark s

with shock. “I couldn’t believe—I couldn’t—I came back from the house and got a can of petrol. I scattered the papers from the files. I thought if I set them alight—”

“Good God, Caspar, you could have been killed!” Juliet shouted at him. “Pouring petrol and setting it alight! Are you completely mad?” She shook her head in disgust. “And for nothing. You couldn’t have saved Piers. The police already have enough evidence to build a case against him; the rest was just icing on the cake. You might have got by, but now they’ll have you for arson and destroying evidence, and anything you could have salvaged from the business is ruined.

What in bloody hell were you thinking?”

Caspar collapsed into the nearest chair, like a scarecrow in a cashmere overcoat. Water still trickled from the tap, an echo of the tears flowing unchecked down his cheeks.

“I thought we were— I thought Piers would have done anything for me. I thought that if I burned the office he’d be—” He sounded baffl ed by his own emotions. “I just wanted to hurt him, Jules, that’s all.”

Kit followed Lally down the lane, trying to keep up with her when he felt blind and disoriented and she seemed able to see in the dark.

Gradually, the snow grew lighter, diminishing to a few dancing flakes, and Lally’s outline solidifi ed.

“Where the hell are we?” he asked, panting, when he managed a few paces by her side. They’d turned right out of the farmhouse drive, rather than left, the way he’d become accustomed to going in the car.

“Shortcut to Barbridge. You’ll see. We’ll come out at the bridge over the canal.”

“Lally, you said you had to meet Leo, but I thought you hadn’t talked to him. I mean yesterday you seemed—I don’t know—pissed off. And you haven’t been allowed to use the phone—”

“Doesn’t matter,” she said shortly. “Remember yesterday he said

for us to meet him? He will have waited last night. He’ll be there to night.”

“But I don’t un—”

“I have some things of his. Or at least, I’m supposed to have some things of his. The problem is, I don’t.” She giggled, the sound brittle as glass. “And Leo never stops until he gets what he wants.”

“What do you mean, things of his. What sort of things?”

Lally slowed enough to look at him. “Oh, Kit, don’t be so dense.

Pills. And other stuff. You sound just like Peter.”

“Peter?” Kit struggled to place the name. “Your friend who died?”

“Drowned. He drowned,” said Lally, with a vehemence Kit didn’t understand. “You even look a bit like him—that schoolboy-innocence thing.”

Kit felt the blood rise to his face, but before he could protest, she went on, “Leo called him a ponce, but he wasn’t. He was just . . . gentle. He was smart, and he was funny, and he could tell how I was feeling, you know? Without me saying.” Lally’s steps lagged until Kit had to slow his own. “And he knew how to touch me. It wasn’t that he’d been with other girls, it was just that he seemed to know what I was thinking, every minute, and he—”

“There’s the bridge,” Kit said, knowing it was idiotic but desperate to stop her saying more. He hadn’t realized Peter had been that kind of friend, and he didn’t want to think about what Lally had been doing with him—but then she’d said that he reminded her of Peter—

After that thought he no longer felt the cold, and was glad the darkness hid his blush. “About Leo,” he said, trying to focus on the other thing Lally had said. Somehow he found he wasn’t surprised that Lally had been holding drugs, or that Leo had given them to her.

“You said you had Leo’s stuff, but you don’t anymore. Why not?”

“Because someone went through my fucking backpack and took it.” The swearing didn’t quite hide the fear in her voice. They’d s

reached the stone arch of the bridge, and instead of crossing it, Lally leapt down onto the canal towpath like a mountain goat. “It must have been my mother, but then why hasn’t she said anything?” she went on. “She should have killed me, grounded me for life, and then some.”

Kit was forced to follow her again, single file, and her words came back to him in bursts, carried by the wind.

“Won’t Leo be worried about you getting in trouble?”

“No—can’t be traced to him, can it? He’ll want me to get it back, or make it up—”

“What do you mean, make it up?” asked Kit, not liking the sound of that at all.

But Lally only muttered, “You wouldn’t understand,” and kept walking, head down, as if suddenly afraid she’d said too much.

It was dark, so dark that Kit could only make out the water to his left as a deeper blackness. When something white flapped at them from the void, he jumped, grabbing Lally’s shoulder and pulling her to a halt. “What the—” Then, as his eyes adjusted, he realized where he was and what he was seeing. Beneath the wind he heard a creak of mooring ropes, saw the faint gleam of letters materializing against a dark hull. It was the Lost Horizon, and the streamer crack-ing in the wind was a loose end of the blue- and-white crime-scene tape wrapped round the boat. He was standing within inches of where Annie Lebow’s body had lain.

“Christ, Lally.” Kit thought he might be sick. “What do you mean, bringing me here?” he shouted at her. “Don’t you know—”

“Sorry, sorry.” Lally pulled at his jacket. “We’re not stopping here, but we have to go past. I didn’t think. Come on. We have to hurry.” She tugged at him until he stumbled after her, trying to shut out the images crowding into his mind: Annie, lying in the emerald grass of the towpath . . . his mother, lying against the white tile in their kitchen . . .

Then he was caught in the rushing corridor of his dream, run-

ning, running, trying to get help, while the room where his mother lay receded endlessly in front of him.

Lally’s shaking him brought him out of it.

“Kit, what’s the matter with you, for God’s sake? We have to climb the stile here. Come on.” Lally turned and vaulted halfway up, one leg over, and it looked to Kit as if she were disappearing into the hedge.

He followed her, clumsily, the brambles scratching his hands. Jumping down on the far side, his feet sank into snow that had settled in the lee of the hedge.

Lally was moving up the hill, opening a gate and motioning him through. The surface under his feet grew firmer, and he realized they were on a bridge, crossing back over the canal. “Where are we?”

“My mum’s dairy. Don’t you want to see where they found the dead baby?”

“No!” Kit said, then amended, “It’s a crime scene.”

“So what’s a little tape?” Her teeth flashed as she glanced back at him. “Besides, it’s only a couple of minutes from Leo’s house, and this is where he said to come.”

Squinting at the outline of a peaked roof against the lighter sky, Kit caught a flicker of artificial light lower down, a match or lighter, or a quickly covered torch.

“He’s here,” said Lally, her voice gone suddenly flat. She stepped over the crime-scene tape that had drooped between its stakes.

“Took your time, didn’t you?” said a voice from the darkness.

Leo stepped out of the barn’s entrance. He drew on a cigarette and the tip’s brief flare lit his face at odd angles, so that the planes stood out like shapes in a Cubist painting.

“Aren’t we going in?” asked Lally, with what Kit now recognized as manufactured disinterest.

“Nothing to see but some crumbling mortar. Disappointing.”

Leo shrugged. “I should know. I waited last night.”

“My mum didn’t let me out of her sight last night. It’s only because she went out that we could come tonight.”

“Did you bring it?” Leo asked, as if her excuses were meaning-less static, and Kit felt Lally go suddenly still.

“No. It’s at our house. My mum won’t let Sam and me go back there. She doesn’t want us to see our dad.”

“So they haven’t kissed and made up, your parents?” There was something in Leo’s voice that made the hair on Kit’s neck stand up.

Lally took a little hiccupping breath. Dead giveaway, thought Kit.

Instinctively, he reached for her, a protective hand on her shoulder.

She stepped away, but not before Leo had seen. There was a new tension in his posture, but he said lightly, “Is this your hostage, then?”

“What do you mean?” Lally asked.

“Coz, here. It’s a good night for a boys’ night out. What do you say, coz? I’ve a bottle of Absolut tucked away—no need to chill it in this weather. We can go to the clubhouse.”

“Leo—”

“Not you, Lally.” His voice was suddenly hard. “I said ‘boys’

night out.’ Go home. Go home and start thinking how you’re going to get your mother to let you back into your house.”

“Leo, I—”

“That’s the bad thing about letting people in on your secrets, Lal.” Leo spoke the words with a smile, but Kit knew it was a threat.

“You can never be sure they’ll keep quiet.”

“Go on, Lally,” said Kit, knowing only that he wanted her to get away, and that he meant to find out what Leo was holding over her. If it was drugs, Leo would implicate himself if he told. But had he seen the scars on her arms?

“But—”

“You heard the man,” echoed Leo. “Run along now. There’s a good girl.”

“You’re a bastard, Leo,” said Lally, her voice shaking, but she turned away, without another look at Kit, and in an instant was lost in the darkness.

Kit’s mouth went dry as he realized he wasn’t sure he could find his way back on his own. Follow the towpath, that was all. If he’d done it once, he could do it again.

“Not having second thoughts, are you, Kit?” Leo put the empha-sis on his name, now that Lally was gone. “Come on, have some fun.

I thought you city boys were sophisticated.”

“I don’t—”

But Leo threw an arm over his shoulders, propelling him away from the barn, and Kit realized that not only was the other boy a good six inches taller, but he was stronger than he looked. “It’s not far. Just across this field and into those trees up ahead. I’ve got a special place.

I found it not long after we moved here. I could never see what my dad wanted with this old pile of a house, but the property had its unexpected bonuses,” he continued conversationally, but he didn’t let up his grip on Kit’s shoulder.

“Why’s Lally afraid of you?” said Kit, determined to take control of the situation, in spite of the hand at his back.

“Afraid of me?” Leo sounded hurt. “Lally’s not afraid of me. We look out for each other, that’s all. She has some habits that need to be kept in check. And I make sure she doesn’t get involved with people who might not be good for her. She’s a bit fragile. I wouldn’t want someone to take advantage of her.”

“I’m not going to take advantage of her,” Kit said angrily. He tried to shrug away, but Leo’s fingers gripped like steel.

“But you like her. Admit it.”

They entered the woods. The darkness closed in until there was nothing in Kit’s universe but Leo’s hand, and Leo’s voice.

When he didn’t answer, Leo said, “That’s a shame. Peter liked her, too.”