Water Like A Stone

Chapter Two

Hugh Kincaid climbed up on the ladder once more, adjusting the strand of fairy lights he’d strung over the farmhouse porch. Above the rooftop, the sky had turned the ominous color of old pewter, and his nose had begun to run from the biting cold. He didn’t dare free a hand to wipe it, however; his position was precarious enough and becoming more so by the minute as the light faded.

His wife stood below him, hugging her jacket closed against the wind. “Hugh,” she called up to him, “come down from there before you break your bloody neck. They’ll be here any moment. Do you want your son to find you sprawled on your backside in the garden?”

“Coming, darling.” Giving the strand one last twitch, he made his way carefully down to stand beside her. She hooked her arm through his, and together they stepped back to admire the sparkle of lights against the dark red brickwork. The house was unadorned, foursquare in the style of the Cheshire Plain, but comfortable—if a little worn around the edges, as Hugh liked to think of himself.

“It looks a bit pathetic,” he said, eyeing the lights critically. “One lonely strand. I should have done more.”

“Don’t be silly.” Rosemary pinched him through the thick cloth

of his coat. “You’re behaving like a broody old hen, Hugh, and you’re not getting up on the roof.” Her tone was affectionate but firm, and he sighed.

“You’re right, of course. It’s just that . . .” For an articulate man, he found himself unaccountably at a loss for words, and unexpectedly nervous about meeting his grandson. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have grandchildren, Juliet’s Lally and little Sam, who were even now waiting inside for the expected arrival. But there was something—and God forbid he should ever admit this to anyone, even Rosemary—there was something about his son’s son that felt special to him, and he wanted everything to be perfect.

It shocked him that he, who had always thought himself such a progressive, emancipated man, should harbor such a sentiment, but there it was, and he found himself wondering if the boy would ever consider changing his name so that the Kincaid line would go on.

Hugh snorted aloud at his own vanity, and Rosemary gave him a questioning look. “I’m a silly old fool,” he said, shaking his head.

“Of course you are, but it will be all right,” she answered, and he knew she had sensed what he’d left unspoken, as she always did.

He took his handkerchief from his coat pocket and blew his nose.

Rosemary was right, he decided. The fairy lights did look cheery, and from the sitting-room window the Christmas tree twinkled as well. “What did you do with the children?” he asked, wondering why they hadn’t come out with their grandmother.

“Sent them to watch a video. They were driving me mad, and there was nothing left for them to help with in the kitchen.” She pushed up her sleeve to glance at her watch. “It’s odd we haven’t heard from Juliet by this time,” she added.

He sniffed, catching the tang of impending snow beneath the scent of wood smoke emanating from the kitchen stove. Through the bare trees he saw lights begin to blink on in the neighboring farmhouse and knew full dark was fast approaching. “Snow’s coming. If they’re not here soon—”

“You think your police-superintendent son can’t find his way home in a snowstorm?” Rosemary interrupted, laughing. Before he could protest, she tensed and said, “Shhh.”

At first, he heard only his own breathing. Then he caught it, the faint whisper of tires on tarmac. A pinprick of light came from the direction of the road, then another, as the beams of the oncoming car were sliced by the intervening trees. It made Hugh think of Morse code, a distant SOS.

The car progressed so slowly that Hugh thought they must be mistaken, that it was only an elderly neighbor creeping home from shop or pub, but then it slowed still more and turned into the farmhouse drive, bumping along the track until it rolled to a stop before them.

The front passenger door swung open and his son emerged, smiling, though his face looked more sharply etched than when Hugh had seen him last. As Duncan hugged his mother and pumped his father’s hand, saying, “Sorry we’re so late. Traffic was a bit of a bugger,” a small blond boy erupted from the back, followed by an equally bouncy blue roan cocker spaniel.

Hugh’s heart gave an instant’s leap before he realized the boy couldn’t be Kit, he was much too young. Then the other rear door opened and a boy climbed out, clutching a small, shaggy brown terrier to his chest like a shield.

“Dad, this is Toby,” said Duncan, with a gentling hand on the small boy’s shoulder, “and this is Kit. And Gemma, too, if she can get her bits and pieces together,” he added, smiling, as a young woman came round the car from the driver’s side. “She decided not to let me drive the last stretch, and I think our country roads have left her a bit frazzled.”

Hugh greeted her warmly, taking in her attractive, friendly face and the coppery glint of hair drawn back with a clip, but he couldn’t keep his eyes from the boy—his grandson.

Rosemary had warned him, of course, but still he found he was not

prepared. The boy had his mother’s fair coloring, but was so like his father in the stamp of his features that Hugh felt he might have been seeing Duncan again at thirteen. Such resemblances were not uncommon, he knew, but awareness of them is usually dulled by daily proximity. It seemed to Hugh he’d been offered a rare glimpse of the march of generations, and he felt a twinge of his own mortality.

“Come in, come in,” Rosemary was saying, “I’ve got the kettle on, and the children are dying to see you.” She shepherded them all into the front hall, but before she could divest them of their coats and luggage, Sam came galloping down the stairs, followed more slowly by his sister, Lally.

Lally’s face was set in a pout and Sam was holding the phone aloft, waving it like a trophy wrested from the enemy. “Granddad, it’s Mummy. She wants to speak to you.”

“Tell her we’ll ring her back in five minutes, Sam,” said Rosemary, “As soon as we’ve—”

“She says it’s urgent, Nana.” His mission accomplished, Sam handed the phone to Hugh and sidled down the last few steps, his curious gaze fixed on Kit and Toby.

“Juliet,” Hugh said into the phone, “what is it? Can’t it wai—”

“Dad, is Duncan there yet?” his daughter broke in, her voice sharp and breathless.

“Yes, he’s just come in. That’s what—”

“Dad, tell him I need him to come to the old dairy—he knows where it is. Tell him—” She seemed to hesitate, then said, on a rising note, “Just tell him I’ve found a body.”

“Bugger,” Kincaid muttered as he squeezed under the wheel of Gemma’s Ford Escort and slid the seat back far enough to accommodate his longer legs. His sister hadn’t stayed on the line to speak to him, but before disconnecting had told their father that her mobile battery was running low.

Was this some sort of joke, he wondered, her revenge for all his teasing when they were children? Surely she couldn’t actually have found a body? His father had made light of it, with the children listening, but if it was true, he felt he must be the victim of a cosmic rather than a sibling prank.

Nor had she said whether she’d called the local police, so he’d decided to check out the situation before notifying them himself. He didn’t want to add embarrassment to aggravation if it turned out she’d discovered the remains of some stray animal in the old dairy.

His father had filled him in briefly on Juliet’s renovation project, and Kincaid remembered the place well. He and Jules had spent a good part of their childhood rambling up and down the canal towpath, and the dairy had been a familiar landmark. He would have much preferred, however, to take a trip down memory lane on a bright, sunny day rather than a miserably cold evening, and Christmas Eve to boot.

Nor was he happy about leaving Gemma and the boys after only the briefest of introductions. Glancing at the house once more as he backed out of in the drive, he saw his dad still standing at the open door, gazing after him. Kincaid waved, then felt a bit foolish, knowing his father couldn’t see him. Then, as he watched, his dad stepped inside, the door swung closed, and the last vestiges of light and warmth vanished.

The dairy, he remembered, was on the main branch of the Shropshire Union Canal, near Barbridge. In fact, they had passed right by it on the way to his parents’ house. As children, he and Jules had reached that stretch of the Cut by crossing the fields and then the Middlewich branch of the canal that ran nearer the farm, but tonight he would be taking the road.

As he eased the car back out onto the main track, a few snowflakes drifted against the windscreen, and he swore. They’d outrun the snow near Crewe, but it had caught up. Heavier now, the flakes disintegrated beneath the wipers, and the tarmac gleamed wetly in

the headlamps. When he reached the Chester Road, he turned back towards Nantwich, and when he had passed the turning for Barbridge he slowed, looking for the small lane he remembered.

It came up on him suddenly and he swung the wheel hard to the left. A house loomed out of the darkness, dark spikes of chimney pots briefly visible through the swirl of snow. A Victorian lodge, neglected in his childhood; the sort of place one approached only when bolstered by a playmate’s bravado. It was occupied now, though—he’d glimpsed the glow of light in a ground-floor window.

The house fell away behind him as the hedgerows and trees reached round the car like skeletal arms, and he navigated the track’s twists and turns as much by memory as by sight. Then the terrain leveled out as woods gave way to pasture, and ahead he saw the flicker of a lamp. Easing the car over the last few rutted yards, he pulled up beside a white builder’s van. He could see the silhouette of the old dairy now, the light clearly coming from its open doors, but as he climbed out of the car, the van door swung open and his sister jumped down from the driver’s seat.

“Jules.” He drew her to him, feeling the slenderness of her shoulders beneath her padded jacket, and for a moment she relaxed into his arms. Then she drew away, establishing a distance between them.

Her face was a pale blur against the frame of dark hair that straggled loose from a ponytail.

“Thanks for coming,” she said. “I didn’t know who else to call.”

Kincaid bit his tongue on the obvious—he wouldn’t pass judgment until he’d seen what she had to show him. “What are you doing out here?” he asked instead. “Staying warm?” He brushed at the snowflakes settling on his cheeks and eyelashes.

Juliet shook her head. “No. Yes. But it’s not that. I couldn’t stay in there. Not with—” She gestured towards the barn. “You’d better come and see for yourself. You can tell me I’m not crazy.” Turning from him, she started towards the light, picking her way through the slushy ruts. He followed, taking in the jeans and the heavy boots s

that accompanied the padded jacket, marveling at the transformation in his sister since he had seen her last.

His mother had told him, of course, that Juliet had left her job as office manager of her husband’s investment firm and started her own business as a builder, but he hadn’t quite been able to visualize the accompanying transformation.

Juliet stopped just inside the door of the building and Kincaid stepped in, looking around. The light came from a battery-powered work lamp set on the dirt floor. He lifted it, chasing the shadows from the upper part of the room. Windows had been framed into the dark redbrick of the canal-facing wall, and he knew that under better circumstances the view would be spectacular. Some framing had been done on the inside as well, marking out obviously preliminary room divisions, and a few feet from the back wall, a pick lay abandoned in the dirt.

He saw the swath of mortar set into the dark brick, a jagged hole in its center where the pick had done its work. And there was something else—was it fabric? He moved in closer, raising the lamp so that the area was illuminated clearly. Gingerly, he reached out with a finger. Then, in spite of the cold and the wind that eddied through the room, he caught an all- too-familiar whiff of decay.

“Is it a baby?” said Juliet, her voice sounding thin in the frigid air.

“Looks like it.” Kincaid stepped back and put his hands firmly back into the pockets of his overcoat. He needn’t have worried about his sister’s failure to call the police straightaway. “It’s been here a good while, I’m afraid.”

“Is it—it wasn’t a newborn—” She gave him a stricken look, as if she’d realized the subject might be painful for him.

He leaned in to examine the small body again. “No, I don’t think so. Less than a year old, would be my guess from the size, but then I’m certainly no expert. I don’t envy the forensic pathologist trying to make a determination on this one.”

“But why

would—how could—” Juliet took a breath and

seemed to make an effort to pull herself together. “What do we do now? ”

Kincaid had already pulled out his phone. Punching in , he gave her a crooked smile. “We ruin someone else’s Christmas Eve.”

The small entrance hall was a jumble of noise and movement, filled to bursting with adults, children, and dogs. One part of Gemma’s brain registered the smell of baking mingled with fresh evergreens, while another took in the pale green walls hung with framed illustrations from children’s books, an umbrella stand crammed full of brollies and walking sticks, and pegs draped with coats. Holly intertwined with gold ribbons and the deep red berries of yew wound up the stair rail.

The boy who had brought the phone—Gemma guessed he must be Duncan’s nephew, Sam—was shouting something, striving to be heard over the high-pitched, frenzied barking that came from the back of the house. As Geordie and Tess joined in the chorus, Gemma tried to hush the cocker spaniel while Kit soothed the terrier in his arms.

Rosemary Kincaid had urged her son to at least have a cup of tea, but he’d demurred, saying the sooner he looked into things, the sooner he’d be back. When he’d pressed Gemma’s shoulder with a whispered “Sorry,” she’d gripped his arm and murmured, “I’ll go with you.”

“No. Stay with the boys,” he’d said softly, with a glance at Kit. “I can manage this, and they need you.”

She’d subsided in unhappy silence, watching him go with a sense of mounting panic. Surely he hadn’t walked into a murder on the first day of their holiday; that was too unfair for belief. It could be anything, she told herself—in her days on the beat she’d had more than one call from citizens convinced the remains of a stray dog were human. Now it was only because she’d worked so many homicide cases that the word “body” automatically conjured up murder.

“Gemma, boys,” Rosemary was saying, “come back to the kitchen.

I know it’s a bit late for tea, but I suspect none of us will be getting dinner anytime soon.” Kincaid’s mother had greeted her warmly, as she had the only other time they’d met, at Kit’s mother’s funeral. Although Rosemary’s chestnut hair had perhaps gone a bit grayer, she had the strong bone structure and fine skin that aged well, and she radiated a wiry energy.

As Gemma responded, she was aware of her own accent, her North London vowels sounding harsh and flat compared with Rosemary Kincaid’s educated Cheshire tones.

She glanced at Kincaid’s father, who had watched Duncan drive away but now came back into the hall and closed the door. Hugh Kincaid was tall, like his son, with a jutting forehead and chin and a prominent nose. His brushed- back gray-streaked hair and roll- neck fisherman’s jumper seemed to exaggerate his features, making his face seem severe. Then he smiled at her, revealing an unexpected charm, and Gemma found herself suddenly enchanted. Smiling back, she felt herself begin to relax.

“You’d better do as she says,” Hugh warned, with a glance at his wife, “or there will be consequences.” Gemma found she hadn’t expected the faint trace of Scots in his voice, although she knew he came from near Glasgow. It made her think of Hazel Cavendish, so far away in the Scottish Highlands, and she felt a pang of longing for her friend.

“Don’t pay him any mind,” Rosemary countered, laughing. “Lally, Sam, come and introduce yourselves properly.” She put a hand on the boy’s head, as if holding down a jumping jack. “This is Sam. He’s ten.

And this is Lally,” she added, glancing at the girl, who still hovered a few treads up the staircase, “who must be just a few months older than Kit, here.”

Giving the girl all her attention for the first time, Gemma noticed first the inch of midriff bared in defiance of the weather, then the shoulder-length dark hair and oval face, the lips curved in a tentative

smile. Gemma’s breath caught in her throat. The girl was striking, beautiful in that heart-piercing way possessed only by girls on the cusp of womanhood, innocence poised on the brink of knowledge.

“Hi,” Lally said, and grinned, an ordinary teenager, and Gemma shook off her flight of fancy.

“Come and see Jack,” Sam said, raising his voice over the increasingly frenzied barking from the back. “He’s our sheep—”

He was cut off by a thump and a crash, and a blur of black and white came barreling down the hall towards them. “Sheepdog,” Sam finished, grinning. “He doesn’t like to be left out of things.”

Tess launched herself into the melee from Kit’s arms and the three dogs jumped, circled, and sniffed, a shifting mass of canine pandemonium.

“Well, that seems to be all right, then,” Rosemary said in the sudden quiet, eyeing them critically. “I thought we should let them get acquainted gradually, but Jack seems to have taken care of the formalities. Let’s go see what sort of damage he’s done to my kitchen.”

She took their coats and added them to the already overloaded pegs, then led the way towards the back of the house.

Still chattering, Sam latched onto Toby. “There’s geese, too, and ponies. Do you want to see them after tea? What are your dogs called? I like the little one—she’s cute.”

Toby answered him

happily—or at least tried to, between questions—but Gemma noticed that Kit, having fallen in next to Lally, didn’t speak. She couldn’t blame him for feeling a bit intimidated meeting so many new family members at once, but hoped that he would soon relax.

When they reached the kitchen, they saw that Jack had hurled himself against the door so hard that it had slipped its latch, banging open and causing a slight dent in the hall plaster. Rosemary grumbled something under her breath that sounded like “Daft bloody dog,” then herded them all into the room, as efficient as a sheepdog herself.

Gemma looked round in delight. The room was wide rather than deep, and she suspected it stretched across most of the back of the house. To the left was the cooking area, dominated by a cream Rayburn range and an old soapstone sink. Open shelves held a selection of dark cobalt-blue china in a calico design, and a few pieces in other blue-and-white porcelain patterns Gemma didn’t recognize.

To the right was a long, scrubbed pine table, surrounded by mismatched pine chairs, all with tie-on cushions covered in a blue-and-cream floral print. The back wall held a nook for cut firewood and a small wood- burning stove. The smell of fresh baking was mouthwateringly intense, and Gemma realized she was ravenous.

While Hugh fed the stove, Rosemary filled two teapots from a kettle steaming on the Rayburn, then pulled a plate piled with scones from the warming oven. “I don’t suppose you like scones,” she said to Kit, who was standing near her, “or homemade plum jam, or clot-ted cream.”

“But I do,” answered Kit, returning her smile and adding, “Can I help you?”

Gemma breathed a small sigh of relief as Kit helped ferry plates and cups to the table, carrying on a quiet conversation with his grandmother. Within a few minutes, they were all squeezed round the table, with the dogs tussling on the floor by the fire and the lubri-cant of food and drink beginning to loosen human tongues.

Seated between Toby and Rosemary, Gemma watched her son’s manners anxiously, hoping he wouldn’t stuff his mouth too full of scone, and worse, talk through it. Kit sat on the other side of the table, between Lally and his grandfather, while Sam had wedged himself into the small space at the end.

Kit was answering his grandfather’s questions about school politely—if, as Gemma now suspected, less than truthfully—but she noticed he still hadn’t made direct eye contact with Lally.

She shifted her attention back to Rosemary, who was saying,

“. . . we’d planned to go to midnight mass after dinner at Juliet’s, if that’s all right with you, Gemma. It’s a bit of a tradition in our family.”

“I know,” said Gemma. “Duncan told me. We meant to go last Christmas, but things . . . intervened.” It had been work, of course, that had interrupted their Christmas Eve, and matters had gone steadily downhill from there.

A shadow crossed Rosemary’s face. “Gemma, dear, I’ve never had a chance to tell you in person—”

“I know. It’s all right.” Gemma made the response that had gradually become easier, and that realization gave her an unexpected sense of loss. Her grief had given her something to hold on to, an almost tangible connection with the child she had lost, but now even that was slipping away from her.

Casting about for a change of subject, she asked, “Do you always have your Christmas Eve dinner at Juliet’s?” Her own family usually went to her sister’s, although Gemma considered an evening with Cyn’s overexcited, sugar-fueled children more an ordeal than a celebration.

“Yes, she’s insisted, ever since the children were small.” Rosemary gave a worried glance at the large clock over the Rayburn. “I can’t think why she would have stayed so late at the building site on her own, and today of all days. And what could she possibly have foun—” She stopped, her eyes straying to the children, then said instead, “Do you think they’ll be long?”

Gemma hesitated over the truth. If Juliet had in fact found a body, missing Christmas Eve dinner might be the least of her worries. “I really can’t say. Is there anything we could do to help, in the meantime?”

“No. It’s just ham and salads, and those Juliet will have made ahead. Nor would Caspar thank me for messing about in his kitchen uninvited,” she added with a grimace. “Although he’s happy enough s

to help himself to my punch—” This time it was her granddaughter’s quick glance that silenced her. “Let’s give it a bit,” she amended.

“Surely we’ll hear from them soon.”

The younger boys having divided the last scone between them, Sam stacked his plate and cup and pushed away from the table.

“Nana, may we be excused? Can I show Toby and Kit the ponies?”

“You won’t be able to see a thing,” answered Rosemary, but Sam had his argument ready. “We’ll take torches, and Jack will find the ponies. May we, please?”

Toby was already bouncing in his seat with excitement, and Kit looked interested. “Mummy, you’ll come, too, won’t you?” asked Toby, pulling at Gemma’s hand.

“Yes, if Grandma Rosemary says its all right,” she answered, and found she had used Toby’s form of address for Kincaid’s mother quite naturally.

After another quick look at the clock, Rosemary gave in gracefully. “All right, then. But bundle up, and be sure to put the other dogs on leads. You don’t want them taking off across country in a strange place.”

“I should stay and help you,” protested Gemma, but Rosemary shook her head.

“Go with the children. This washing up won’t take but a minute, and Hugh will help with the table. Won’t you, dear?” She raised an eyebrow at her husband, and the gesture reminded Gemma of Duncan.

“Now you see how I suffer for my sins,” Hugh said with a grin, beginning to clear the table. Trying to imagine her dad doing the same, Gemma shook her head. In her family, even though her mother worked like a demon in the bakery all day, her father expected to be waited on at tea.

When Gemma and the boys had put on their coats and collected the dogs, she saw that Lally, who had slipped away up the stairs, had returned dressed for the outdoors as we

The old scullery off the kitchen was now used as a boot room, and Hugh suggested they trade their shoes for pairs of the spare wellies that stood lined up on a low shelf. Gemma, having struggled with boots that were a bit too small, was last out. She found that Lally had hung back, waiting for her, while the boys ran ahead. Jack dashed around them in circles, barking excitedly.

“Oh.” Gemma drew a breath of delight as she looked about her.

“How lovely.” The snow must have been falling heavily since they’d arrived, and now muffled the countryside in a thick blanket of white.

“Did you know that it’s only officially a white Christmas if a snowflake falls on the roof of the BBC in London on Christmas Day?” asked Lally as they started after the boys, the snow squeak-ing as it compressed under their boots.

“That’s hardly fair, is it?” Gemma thought of the occasional London snow, quickly marred by graffiti and turned to brown slush.

This was different, a clean white silence stretching as far as she could see, and she was suddenly glad she had come.

The dog stopped barking, and in unspoken accord, she and Lally halted so that not even the rhythmic squeak of their boots disturbed the peace. They stood together, their shoulders touching, and let the still- falling snowflakes settle on their faces and hair.

Then, faint and far away, Gemma heard the wail of a siren, and her heart sank.

He discovered the joy of possession when he was six. It had been the first day of term after the Christmas holiday, the class fractious with memories of their temporary freedom, confi ned in-doors by the miserable weather, a cold, gunmetal sleet that crept inside coats and boots. Sodden jackets and mittens had steamed on the room’s radiators, filling the air with a fetid, woolly odor that seemed to permeate his sinuses and skin. Odd how smell provided such direct and concrete link to memory; the least scent of s

damp wool brought back that day instantaneously, and with the recollection came emotion, tantalizingly intense.

Their teacher— stupid cow— had encouraged them to show off their favorite Christmas gift. He’d had the latest toy, but so did most of the others, so no one was suitably impressed. But a toady child called Colin

Squires— fat, with oversize spectacles— had

opened a leather pouch filled with agate and cat’s-eye marbles.

Both boys and girls leaned closer, reaching to touch the swirling colors of the agates and the strange, three-dimensional eyes. Colin, perspiring with pleasure, hadn’t been able to resist clicking the marbles enticingly inside his pocket long after show-and-tell was over, and at break he had demonstrated marbles games to a group of admirers.

He, however, had stood back at the edge of the circle, watching with feigned disinterest. Even then, he’d understood the necessity of planning.

Three days later, when Colin’s fleeting charm had waned and the other children had gone back to their usual games, he brushed up against Colin on the playground and came away with the bag of marbles transferred to his own pocket.

He kept his acquisition to himself, gloating over the marbles only in the privacy of his room, where he could fondle them without fear of interruption.

He knew, of course, that he had done something taboo, and that secrecy was the safest policy. What he didn’t realize until he was a few years older was that he hadn’t felt, even then, the prescribed emotion, what other people called “guilt.” Not a smidgen.