Leave the Grave Green

She shook her head vehemently. “Her dad buggered off soon as he knew I was going to have her. Rotten swine. Not heard a word from him since.”

“But Con knew about her?”

“Course he did. What do you take me for, a bloody tart?”

“Of course not,” Kincaid said soothingly, and, eyeing her empty glass, unobtrusively fetched the bottle. “Did Con get on with little Hayley, then?” he asked, dividing the last of the sherry between them.

When she didn’t answer, he thought perhaps he’d gone over the mark with the sherry, but after a moment she said, “Sometimes I wondered… if it was really her he wanted, not me. Look.” Digging in her handbag, she pulled out a worn leather wallet. “That’s Hayley. She’s lovely, isn’t she?”

It was a cheap studio portrait, but even the artificial pose and tatty props couldn’t spoil the little girl’s beauty. As naturally blond as her mother might have been as a child, she had dimples and an angelic, heart-shaped face. “Is she as good as she looks?” Kincaid asked, raising an eyebrow.

Sharon laughed. “No, but you’d never think it to look at her, would you? Con called her his little angel. He’d tease her, call her names in this silly Irish voice. ‘Me little darlin’,” she said in a credible Irish accent. “You know, things like that.” For the first time her eyes filled with tears. She sniffed and wiped the back of her hand across her nose. “Julia didn’t want any kids. That’s why he wanted the divorce, but Julia wouldn’t give it to him.”

“Julia wouldn’t divorce Connor?” Kincaid asked, thinking that although no one had actually said, that wasn’t the impression he’d had from Julia or her family.

“When the two years were up he was going to divorce her—that’s how long it takes, you know, to obtain a divorce without the other party’s consent.” She said the last bit so precisely Kincaid thought she must have memorized it, perhaps repeating something Connor had said in order to comfort herself.

“And you were going to wait for him? Another year, was it?”

“Why shouldn’t I have done?” she said, her voice rising. “Con never gave me reason to think he wouldn’t do what he said.”

Why indeed? thought Kincaid. What better prospect had she? He looked at her, sitting back a little in her chair now, with her lower lip pushed out belligerently and both hands clasped around the stem of the sherry glass. Had she loved Connor Swann, or had she merely seen him as an attractive meal ticket? And how had such an unlikely union taken place? He certainly doubted that they had moved in the same social circles. “Sharon,” he said carefully, “tell me, how did you and Connor meet?”

“In the park,” she said, nodding toward the river. “Just there, in the Meadows. You can see it from the road. In the spring, it was. I was pushing Hayley in the swings and she fell out, skinned her knee. Con came over and talked to her, and before you knew it she’d stopped her bawling and was laughing at him.” She smiled, remembering. “Him and his Irish blarney. He brought us back here to look after her knee.” When Kincaid raised an eyebrow at that, she hurried on. “I know what you’re thinking. At first I was afraid he might be… well, you know, a bit funny. But it wasn’t like that at all.”

Sharon looked relaxed now, and warm, sitting with her feet in their preposterous shoes stretched out in front of her, sherry glass cradled in her lap. “What was it like?” Kincaid asked softly.

She took her time answering, studying her glass, the fan of her darkly mascaraed lashes casting shadows on her cheeks. “Funny. What with his job and all, it seemed like Con knew everybody. Always lunches and dinners and drinks and golfing. Busy, you know, important.” She raised her eyes to Kincaid’s. “I think he was lonely. In between all those engagements, there wasn’t anything.”

Kincaid thought about the desk diary he’d seen upstairs, with its endless round of appointments. “Sharon, what was Con’s job?”

“’E was in advertising.” Wrinkling her brow, she said, “Blakely, Gill… I can never remember. In Reading, it was.”

That certainly made sense of the diary. Remembering the deposit stubs, he recited, “Blackwell, Gillock and Frye.”

“That’s it.” Pleased at his cleverness, she beamed at him.

Kincaid ran back through the checkbook register in his mind. If Connor had helped Sharon out financially, he had done it on a cash basis—there had been no checks made out in her name. Unless he had passed the money through someone else. Casually, he asked, “Do you happen to know someone called Hicks?”

“That Kenneth!” she said furiously, sitting up and sloshing what remained of her drink. “Thought you were him, didn’t I, when I first came in and heard you upstairs. Thought he’d come for what he could get, like a bloody vulture.”

Was that why she’d been so frightened? “Who is he, Sharon? What connection did he have with Con?”

A little apologetically, she said, “Con liked the horses, see? That Kenneth, he worked for a bookie, ran Con’s bets for him. ’E was always hanging about, treated me like I was dirt.”

If that were the case, Connor Swann had not played the ponies lightly. “Do you know what bookmaker Kenneth Hicks worked for?”

She shrugged. “Somebody here in the town. Like I said, he was always hanging about.”

Remembering all the Red Lion notations in the diary, Kincaid wondered if that had been their regular meeting place. “Did Con go to the Red Lion Hotel often? The one next to the chur—?”

Already shaking her head, she interrupted, “All tarted up for the tourists, that one. A posh whore, Con called it, where you couldn’t get a decent pint.”

The girl was a natural mimic, with a good memory for dialogue. When she quoted Con, Kincaid could hear the cadence of his voice, even the faint hint of Irish accent.

“No,” she continued, “it was the Red Lion in Wargrave he liked. A real pub, with good food at a decent price.” She smiled, showing a faint dimple like her daughter’s. “The food was the thing, you know—Con wouldn’t go anywhere he didn’t like the food.” Putting her glass to her lips and turning it end up, she drained the last few drops. “’E even took me there, a few times, but mostly he liked to stay at home.”