You’d made superintendent, last I heard. So have you added psychic detective to your accomplishments?”
The dig was unmistakable. Kincaid realized that Babcock might not be thrilled to have Scotland Yard nosing about, especially if his
dad had been painting him as the town’s golden boy. “Look,” he said, “I’m just here for the holiday with my family. It’s my sister who found the body. She called me at my folks’, and I rang —”
“After having a thorough poke round and contaminating my crime scene,” Babcock finished sourly.
Kincaid raised an eyebrow. “You’d have done the same. For all I knew, it was a prank.” When Babcock nodded a reluctant acknowledgment, Kincaid went on, “You remember my sister, Juliet?” He touched Juliet’s shoulder, urging her forward.
Babcock gripped her hand in a belated shake. “I thought I recognized you. You’re Mrs. Newcombe now. I know your husband.”
There was a reserve in his second comment that sounded less than reassuring, but he went on with evident sincerity. “So sorry you’ve had to deal with all this, and tonight of all nights. Can you tell me exactly what happened?”
Juliet looked white and pinched, but she answered strongly. “I’m a builder. I’m renovating the old barn for my clients, a couple from London named Bonner. I was working late, trying to finish up a few things before the holiday.”
“On your own?” Babcock’s voice held a note of skepticism.
Juliet stood a little straighter. “Yes. I’d sent my lads home. I was hoping to finish tearing out a section of mortar before the light went. And then I found . . . it . . . the baby.”
“And you didn’t ring the police right away?”
“No.” For the first time she sounded less confi dent. “I—I wasn’t sure—I wanted—I knew Duncan was expected at our parents’, so I thought . . .”
Babcock considered for a moment. “You said the new own ers?
How long have they had the place?”
“Just a few months. They’re boaters. They bought it with the idea of turning it into a second home, with a good mooring for their narrowboat.”
“And they’ve no previous connection with the property?”
“Not that I know of.”
Babcock looked at the figures moving in the light spilling from the old dairy, then peered up the lane into the darkness. “So these Londoners, who did they buy the barn from? The people in the big house at the top of the lane?”
“No.” The sharpness of Juliet’s answer caught Kincaid by surprise. “No. There’s a farmhouse just at the bend in the lane, about halfway down. I think the owners—the Fosters—bought the farm directly from the people who had owned the farm and the dairy barn for years. Then, last year, they decided to subdivide the property and sell off the barn and surrounding pasture. The market’s boom-ing, with any old tumbledown outbuilding being hyped as ‘suitable for renovation.’ The dairy was a real treasure and they knew it.”
“What happened to the Smiths, then?” Kincaid asked. He remembered the old traditional Cheshire farming family who had had the place, and who had tolerated his and Juliet’s exploring the property.
“Sold up about five years ago,” Jules answered. “Retired and moved south. Shropshire, I think.”
“Smith? Bugger,” Babcock muttered with feeling, then glanced at the barn again. To Kincaid, he said, “Any idea how long—”
“Not a clue. Maybe your pathologist can hazard a guess. Is he a good man?”
Babcock smiled. “In a manner of speaking. But don’t tell her I said so.”
Embarrassed by his unconscious sexism, Kincaid grimaced. Fortunately, it seemed to have passed Juliet by. Stomping her feet to warm them, she pulled back her jacket cuff and squinted at her watch. “Look. It is Christmas Eve, and we’ve got family waiting. I don’t know what else I can tell you.”
“I’ll need a proper statement from you, but I can get that tomorrow,” Babcock conceded.
“It’s Yew Cottage, near the end of North Crofts.”
“I know the place.” Babcock turned to Kincaid. “What about you, Duncan? Ensconced in the familial bosom?”
“Yes.” Kincaid gave brief directions to his parents’ house, although it wouldn’t have surprised him to find that Babcock knew perfectly well where they lived—then fished a card from his coat pocket. “Here’s my mobile number. If you could—” He stopped as the flash of car headlamps coming down the track caught his eye.
As a white van emerged from the trees and rolled towards them, Babcock turned to look. “That’ll be the SOCOs. Dr. Elsworthy won’t be far behind.”
A man climbing from the van called out, “Hey, boss, what have we got? ”
Babcock raised his hand in acknowledgment, answering merely,
“Meet you at the barn.”
“Right,” he added briskly to Kincaid and Juliet. “I’ll be in touch.
Mrs. Newcombe, I’ll need the names and contact information for anyone working with you on the premises, if you could get that together for me by tomorrow.” He held a hand out to Kincaid. “Good to see you, old son.”
Babcock might as well have said
things Kincaid would be doing himself if it were his case.
The gears in Kincaid’s mind clicked over, his adrenaline pumped, and the exhilaration of the chase kicked into his system like a drug.
He wanted to look over the crime scene with Babcock and the SOCOs, he wanted to see what the pathologist had to say about s
the body of the child. It was on his lips to ask Juliet to go on without him, to tell Babcock he’d stay, when he glanced at his sister.
Hunched against the cold in her padded coat, she looked more vulnerable than he had ever seen her. She was regarding him with a puzzled expression.
“Duncan, can’t we go?” she asked.
“Of course,” he said, and to Babcock he added, “Good luck with it, then.”
He turned and walked Juliet to her van, but as he started to get into his own car, he couldn’t resist a look back at the scene.
Babcock was still standing in the same spot, watching him, his lips curved in a knowing smile.
“Where the hell is she?” Caspar Newcombe slammed the phone back into its cradle on his desk. “It’s nearly eight o’clock and not a word from her, and we’re supposed to be serving dinner for her whole bloody clan before midnight mass.”
“Have you tried ringing her mother?” His partner, Piers Dutton, settled himself a little more comfortably in one of the client’s chairs across from Caspar’s desk and arranged one ankle over the other.
Fed up with pacing round the empty house and ringing his wife’s unresponsive mobile phone, Caspar had walked the short distance to his firm and found Piers there, finishing up some paperwork. Seeing Caspar’s expression, Piers had got up from his desk and followed Caspar into his office.
Newcombe and Dutton, Investments, occupied the ground-floor premises at the end of a Georgian terrace near the town square, just a few yards from St. Mary’s Church. The building was a gem,
and Caspar took great pride in their acquisition of the office suite.
He’d also expected his wife to share his feelings, and to look on her position as office manager of Newcombe and Dutton as a privilege.
Instead, she had walked out on them without so much as giving notice, and had
