“Sorry,” said Byrne. “Tactless of me. Listen, Duncan, I really am sorry about all of this.” He shrugged his thin shoulders. “I’ll ring you after the PM.”
Kincaid, finding the words lodged in his throat, nodded his assent.
“We still haven’t a clue as to how to contact the husband. Do you think you could get something out of the boy? Or her parents? We’ll try his college in the morning.” Byrne grimaced. “Bloody nuisance.”
They made arrangements about the keys and the closing of the house, then Byrne took himself off with poorly concealed relief. Kincaid watched him drive away, followed by the other officers, then went slowly back into the house.
In the kitchen, Kit sat as if he hadn’t moved at all since Kincaid had left him. Without speaking, Kincaid made a quick search of the provisions. He found bread in the bin and cheese in the fridge, and within a few minutes had put together a cheese sandwich with butter and pickle. He’d touched as little as possible, making do with a small paring knife from the drawer and a paper towel from the roll under the cabinet. They had already contaminated the scene, but he saw no point in making it worse.
He set the sandwich before Kit and sat down opposite. “I know you think you can’t possibly eat,” he said. “But it’s important that you do. Give it a try.”
For a moment, Kit looked as if he might protest, then he raised the sandwich to his mouth and took a listless bite. He chewed mechanically at first, then he seemed to realize he was hungry and wolfed down the rest. “I hate pickle,” he said when he’d finished the last crumb.
“Sorry.” Kincaid smiled. “I’ll do better next time.”
“Are you staying?” asked Kit, a spark of hope in his eyes.
Shaking his head, Kincaid said, “Only until your grandparents come for you.”
“I won’t go,” Kit said vehemently. “I hate them. I want to stay here.”
Kincaid closed his eyes and wished desperately for Gemma. She would know what to do. She would say, “Come on, love, let’s get your things together,” in her soft, matter-of-fact way. She might even put her arm round Kit, or tousle his hair, but those were things Kincaid did not dare attempt.
He blinked and said, “You can’t stay here, Kit. And as far as I know, your grandparents are your legal guardians until we can contact your father. Have you any idea how to reach him?”
Kit shook his head impatiently. “No, I already told them. He didn’t write to us. Mummy didn’t even have an address for him.”
“We’ll find him,” Kincaid said with more certainty than he felt. “He must have left instructions with his college. But in the meantime, you’ll have to go to Reading with your grandparents, and I doubt you want your grandmother packing for you.” He gave Kit a conspiratorial smile, and after a moment Kit smiled grudgingly back.
“All right. But I’m not staying more than a day. There’s nothing to do, and they won’t even let me watch telly.”
Kincaid didn’t comment. He remembered the sterile household all too well, and suspected there would be little solace for a grieving child. He led Kit to the bottom of the stairs, and when Kit hesitated, Kincaid said, “I’ll come up in a bit, shall I? See how you’re doing.”
He watched Kit disappear up the staircase, all long legs and big feet from that angle. Then he turned and wandered down the hall into Vic’s office. Almost, he thought to see her turn from her keyboard and smile, and he knew he still hadn’t taken in the undeniable fact of her death. But he could go on pretending, and he could use his eyes to observe and his mind to record, just as he would on any case.
The room looked odd to him, and he studied it for a moment without touching anything. On Sunday, her desk had been covered with books and papers, but it had had the look of organized clutter, with everything in its proper place. Had she moved the books? One lay facedown on the floor, its pages crumpled. Vic had been almost obsessively neat—surely she would not have left a book like that?
Unless, said the small, detached voice in his mind, she had begun to feel ill, and knocked the book from its place as she got up to go to the kitchen, perhaps for a glass of water.
A logical explanation, possibly, but he couldn’t yet allow himself to think of Vic ill, in pain, frightened, alone. So he ignored the voice, and went on with his examination of her desk. A thick stack of manuscript pages lay beside the computer. He closed his eyes and thought of how it had looked on Sunday—the edges of the pages had been neatly aligned, and now they lay askew. They were also out of sequence, he discovered when he rifled through them. He thought of how much Vic had cared for her book, and he felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck.
He felt suddenly unwilling to leave the manuscript here, untended, and he straightened up, looking for some way to carry it. There, on the floor, an empty leather book satchel—it was, he imagined, what Vic used to carry papers back and forth to work. It would do.
Carefully, he put the pages into the satchel, then, seized by an urge he didn’t understand, he started on the milk crate file beside the desk. It held the original materials for the biography, letters in a strong hand he didn’t recognize—Lydia’s, of course—notes in Vic’s handwriting, photos, even a few postcards. He put them all into the bag, and anything else that seemed relevant that he could glean from her desktop, and then he carried it all outside and locked it in the boot of the Rover.
In her office once more, he had a brief look at the computer, but Vic had apparently saved her work on the hard disk rather than a floppy, and he knew he hadn’t time to access the files properly. He’d left Kit alone too long as it was, so he would just have to hope that Vic had been as obsessive about printing hard copy as she had been about everything else.
He was climbing the stairs when he realized he had not seen the notes he’d given Vic, or the copies of the poems she’d found.
Kit sat on the edge of his bed, an open grip at his feet. When Kincaid came in, he looked up and said dully, “I don’t know what to take.”
The room might have been Kincaid’s own at that age, cluttered with books, and sports equipment, and barely outgrown toys. One shelf held a collection of bird’s nests, another of rocks.
Glancing in the bag, Kincaid saw one jersey and a pair of jeans. “Um, pajamas?” he suggested. “Toothbrush? A dressing gown?”
