Deborah Crombie - Duncan Kincaid & Gemma James 09 - Now May You Weep

“Yes. One of the guests here at the B&B. I found him in the meadow, just the other side of the woods.” Gemma pointed towards the river.

“And you would be?”

Belatedly, Gemma fished in the pocket of her jacket for her identification. “Gemma James. Detective inspector with the Metropolitan Police. I’m a guest here as well.”

If the officer was startled by this bit of information, she betrayed it only by the slight elevation of her eyebrows.

She spoke unintelligibly into her radio before saying to Gemma, “Ma’am. Now, if you could just show me the deceased.”

The journey across the garden and back through the woods seemed a nightmare to Gemma. Her legs began to

feel as if they were mired in clay; the distance seemed to extend itself with each step. She stopped to point out the area of crushed ferns, then again to indicate where Hazel had vomited.

“One of the other guests saw the body,” she explained,

“before I could stop her. She was sick here, as I was taking her back to the house.”

At the far edge of the woods, Gemma stopped, finding herself unable to go farther. “Just over there.” With a nod, she indicated the tussocks of heather hiding Donald.

Gemma watched as the officer continued along the path, saw the moment of hesitation as the young woman came close enough to make sense of what she saw. But the officer went on, her posture more businesslike than ever, and squatted to make a cursory examination of the body.

The yellow of her jacket stood out against the heather with the brilliance of a clump of gorse. She stood and spoke into her radio again before returning to Gemma.

“We’re to wait here for the backup from Aviemore, ma’am,” she said grimly. Her skin had paled beneath her makeup.

“What’s your name, Constable?” asked Gemma, sympathy momentarily overriding her personal worries.

“Mackenzie, ma’am.”

“You’re from around here?”

“Carrbridge. That’s just north of Aviemore, on the A,”

Constable Mackenzie added, unbending a little, as Gemma had hoped.

“I don’t suppose you see many fatalities,” Gemma said gently, thinking that the young woman couldn’t be long out of training college.

“The A is bad for motor crashes. And a few weeks ago, we had a pensioner wander off—died of exposure before we found him.”

“You haven’t worked a homicide before?”

The constable stiffened at this. “What makes you so sure it’s a homicide, ma’am?”

“No gun,” Gemma answered. “And I knew him, a bit.

I can’t believe he’d have shot himself.”

Tucking a stray hair behind her ear, Mackenzie opened her notebook again. “The deceased’s name?”

“Donald Brodie.”

Mackenzie stared at her. “Brodie of Benvulin?” When Gemma nodded, the constable said, “But you told me he was a guest at the B&B.”

“He was. It was a special cookery weekend.” As Gemma explained, all the complications of the situation came flooding back. Where had Hazel been that morning, and what was she to say about Hazel’s relationship with Donald?

Detective Chief Inspector Alun Ross knelt at the edge of his flower border, setting out a flat of lobelia. From the springy turf beneath his knees, moisture seeped through the fabric of his old gardening trousers, but he didn’t mind—it made him feel connected to the earth. Tamping the four-inch plant into the rich, composted soil, he sat back to admire his handiwork.

The tiny, star-shaped blossoms of the lobelia were a brilliant blue against the pale pink of the compact azaleas just coming into bloom behind them. A few feet farther along the border, a stand of magnificent white iris were just showing their tightly furled buds.

Although it was still early on Sunday morning, the sun soaked into his back like warm honey, and a light breeze cooled the sweat above his collar. The sound of bells came faintly over the garden wall, and in his mind’s eye he saw his tidy terraced house and square of garden as the

jewel in Inverness’s crown, and from it the tiered streets dropping down to St. Andrew’s Cathedral on Ness Walk.

As a child, he had attended services there, and he imagined his mother’s dismay if she could see him now, slacking on a Sunday morning. But this was his idea of heaven—why should he look any further?

Not that his wife had agreed with him, mind you—his ex-wife, he should say. She was married now to a fertil-izer salesman who liked to dance.

It had served Ross right, according to his daughter, Amanda, who had told him he should have taken her mum out a bit more. But then his daughter sometimes seemed to him as incomprehensible as an alien species—and how could he have explained to either of them that the last thing he’d wanted after a day on the job was to go out.

What he wanted was his own small universe, house and garden, a world he could control, an order he could impose. He came home; if it was fine enough he would work in the garden—there was always something needed doing—and if not, he did his chores round the house, then he would settle by the fire with his gardening books and catalogs and his dram of whisky.

Now his routine was undisturbed by anyone’s nagging, and he liked it just fine, thank you very much. He had seen his ex-wife not long ago, walking along Ness Bank.

She’d looked like a tart, hair newly bouffant, makeup too heavy, skirt too tight and too short. He’d been cordial enough to her and her paunchy, balding husband, but he’d been glad to make his escape—and if he’d felt a stirring of the old desire, he’d quickly banished it.

Now, setting the last of the lobelias into its new bed, he stretched in anticipation of a well-deserved break. He’d make himself a cup of tea from the kettle he’d left simmering on the kitchen hob, then he’d sit in his gazebo and

have a browse through the Sunday newspaper while the bees hummed beside him in the lavender.

But as he dusted off his knees at the kitchen door, he heard the phone ringing.

His heart sank. No one called him for a friendly chat at this hour of a Sunday morning. Looking out, he saw that the light in the garden had faded as suddenly as if someone had thrown a blanket across the sun. With a sigh of resignation, he crossed the room and lifted the phone from its cradle.

He should have known. He’d been a policeman too long to believe in such a thing as a perfect day.

The call came as Kincaid was trying to grind beans for coffee and butter Toby’s toast simultaneously, a feat he had not quite mastered. Nor was his multitasking helped by the fact that both dogs were beneath his feet, barking madly at the grinder, while Sid, the cat, hissed and batted at them from his perch on the kitchen table.

He switched off the grinder, shouted at the dogs, slid Toby’s plate precariously across the table, and grabbed the phone without glancing at the ubiquitous caller ID.

“This had better be good,” he snapped, assuming the caller was Doug Cullen, his sergeant.

There was a silence on the other end of the line, then Gemma’s voice, sounding more than taken aback.

“Duncan?”

“Oh, sorry, love. I thought you were Cullen, ringing to nag me for the umpteenth time—”

“I’ve been trying to reach you all weekend. Either the phone’s been engaged, or you haven’t answered, and your mobile is going straight to voice mail.” She sounded unexpectedly distressed.

“Doug’s been bending my ear all weekend over this re-

port I left with him,” Kincaid explained. It was fudging the truth a bit, but he didn’t want to discuss Kit over the telephone, especially when the boy might appear at any moment. The fact that Kit had not come downstairs after all the canine commotion was a clear sign that he was still shutting out Kincaid—and Toby.