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

right, wouldn’t the dog have woken him?

When they reached the cottage door, Alison pushed Chrissy firmly behind her. “You stay back until I tell you.” Taking a breath, she called out, “Callum! Are you in there?” There was no response except more frantic whining from the dog.

Alison tried the latch. It gave easily, but the door only opened an inch. Something was blocking it. She pushed steadily until Murphy’s black nose appeared in the gap, and a moment later the dog had wriggled out. He jumped at them, whimpering, and Chrissy wrapped her arms around his sleek, black neck.

“Stay back,” Alison instructed her again, and eased her body through the opening. The stench hit her like a wave—vomit and whisky. She clamped her hand to her mouth, swallowing hard, and shone the torch down at the object blocking the doorway.

It was Callum. He lay on his side, his head only inches removed from the pool of vomit. “Oh, bloody Christ,”

whispered Alison. Was he dead? She couldn’t see his face.

Squatting, she grasped his shoulder and called his name. “Callum!” When he didn’t respond, she forced herself to touch the exposed skin of his neck. His flesh felt slightly warm, but he didn’t move. Alison leaned closer, listening. She thought she heard a faint, snoring breath.

“Mummy?” Chrissy called from outside.

“Hold on, baby,” Alison shouted back. Bloody hell, she had to get some light, so that she could see what she was doing. She stood, searching for a light switch, then remembered Callum hadn’t any electricity. “Daft sodding bugger,” she muttered, scanning the room with the torch.

There, on the table, was a paraffin lamp. It looked just like the one her granny in Carrbridge had had when she was a child.

She checked the lamp’s reservoir. Empty. But the beam of the torch showed her a paraffin tin near the stove, and she quickly filled the lamp. She lit the wick with the lighter she carried in her pocket and stood back as the bloom of warm light illuminated the cottage.

Callum lay with one arm beneath him, the other curled over his head. A foot from his hand, she glimpsed the metallic gleam of his phone, but when she snatched it up, she saw that the battery had died. She knew that Callum only charged it in the van.

Swearing under her breath, she hurried to the door and slipped through. “Here, Chrissy. You take the torch. Go up to the big house and wake Callum’s auntie. Tell her to ring for an ambulance.”

Chrissy stared back at her, eyes enormous in her pale face. “But— Is he all right?”

“I don’t know, love,” Alison answered honestly. “We need to get help, a doctor. Go. Hurry.”

Nodding, Chrissy started towards the farmhouse, her gait more uneven than usual over the rough ground. The dog, however, sat down by the door, accusing Alison with his gaze.

“What do ye expect me to do?” she said aloud, but she went back into the cottage. She was afraid to move Callum, afraid she might somehow make him worse. But she could cover him— that she remembered from her school first-aid lessons. Taking the tartan blanket from his narrow bed, she carefully laid it over him.

Her next instinct was to clean up after him, but as she went to the sink for a cloth, realization hit her. If there had been something wrong with the whisky, she shouldn’t touch anything. She saw the green glass bottle on the tabletop, and on the floor beneath it, a pottery mug tipped on its side.

She’d never known Callum to drink much, and certainly not to the point of being insensible. God, why hadn’t she listened to Chrissy? Callum was daft, and aggravating, but he had never lied to her—he’d only shown her things she didn’t want to see.

Why had she thought he would invent an illness just to get her sympathy? He’d called her for help, and she’d refused him the kindness she’d have given freely to a stranger in the street.

If he died, she would never forgive herself. Worse yet, Chrissy would never forgive her.

Chapter Eighteen

It’s ill to break the bonds that God decreed to bind, Still we’ll be the children of the heather and the wind.

Far away from home, O, it’s still for you and me That the broom is blowing in the north countrie!

—robert louis stevenson, from a poem written to Katharine de Mattos,

with a copy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Gemma pulled herself from Kincaid’s arms reluctantly, loath to leave the cocoon of rumpled sheets and the scent of sleep-sweet skin for the harsh reality of day.

But a cold, gray light shone mercilessly in through the window, and the house was stirring around them.

“What is it about holiday beds?” she asked, yawning.

“It’s never so hard to get up at home.”

Kincaid regarded her seriously. “It probably has something to do with the fact that you kept me up half the night.”

“Me?” She threw a pillow at him. “It was you kept me up!” When he covered his face with it in mimed sleep, she retaliated by snatching the duvet right off the bed.

“Hey, what do ye think ye’re doin’, hen?” he grumbled, in fair Scots.

She stared at him in surprise. “Where did you learn that?”

“I’m a man of hidden talents.” He grinned at her, re-claiming the duvet. “And you haven’t met my father. We really should remedy that someday soon.”

Gemma sat on the edge of the bed. “We should. I’d like to see your mum again. And Kit would love it—Toby, too, of course.” She hesitated, then added, “About Kit . . .

Will we ring him this morning and make arrangements to get him home?”

Kincaid sobered. “I’ve been thinking. This business with Ian is not something I want to discuss with him over the phone—it needs to be face-to-face. If it’s all right with Nathan, I think we should let Kit stay there for another day or two, until I can pick him up on my way back to London. We’ll have to let his school know, of course.”

“Um, right.”

He must have detected some lack of enthusiasm in her response, because he sat up, frowning.

“What? You don’t agree?”

“No, it’s not that. But when are we going to get home, if something doesn’t break on this case? Our hands are tied in every direction. We’ve no idea what’s going on with Tim, and Ross is focused entirely on John Innes—”

“Can you blame him, considering the fact that Innes’s gun seems to have been the murder weapon? Not to mention his dodgy alibi.”

“No,” she said, grudgingly. “I suppose not. But that doesn’t mean I buy John as the shooter. I’ll give you method, and opportunity, but not motive. Why would John Innes have killed Donald?”

“The truth is that you like John, and you don’t want to consider him as a suspect.”

“So?” Gemma countered. “That doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”

“Flawless logic, love,” Kincaid told her, grinning. “But as it happens, I’m inclined to agree with you. I did make a little headway with John last night. After half a bottle of Scotch, he announced that since he didn’t shoot Donald, he wasn’t going to dig himself another hole just to provide the chief inspector an alibi.”

“Is that all?”

“After that he descended into the maudlin. He told us at great length what a good friend Donald had been to him, and that he didn’t see how he was going to manage without him. Martin and I had to help him up to bed.”