Birmingham Junction Canal had been Telford’s last projects—he had, in fact, died before their completion—and that somehow added a bittersweet touch to their beauty.
It had been Rowan Wain who had told Annie about the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, which carried the Llangollen Canal across the entire span of the Dee Valley. The first time Annie had taken the
From where she stood now, she could see the snow dusting the rooftops of Nantwich, and she thought she could just make out the dark shadow that was the tower of St. Mary’s Church. Even as a child, visiting from her home near Malpas, in southern Cheshire, she’d been fascinated by Nantwich. The black-and-white-timbered shops facing the green had made her think of a picture on a chocolate
box, and she’d liked the way the massive red stone bulk of St. Mary’s had balanced the prettiness of the surrounding buildings.
Once, she’d asked her parents to take her to Christmas Eve mass at St. Mary’s. Her mother had refused, with her usual scorn, saying there was a perfectly good church in Malpas that they were expected to attend and it would be idiotic to consider driving twenty miles through darkness and bad weather to go somewhere else.
It had been no less than Annie had expected, but to her surprise, her father had agreed, and they had gone, just the two of them. Annie had known, even then, that her father would suffer the consequences of her mother’s anger for days, but her guilt had not been able to dampen her pleasure. It had been one of the few times she’d spent alone with her busy father. They hadn’t talked much, but there had been a shared sense of adventure between them, spiced by the rebelliousness of defying her mother. She couldn’t remember another occasion when she had felt so close to him.
Years later, living with her husband in the house she’d inherited from her parents, she’d thought of asking him to go with her to midnight mass at St. Mary’s. Roger, cheerful atheist that he was, would have indulged her, but it was that very indulgence that had made her decide against it. Roger had viewed all her passions with an air of affectionate but slightly amused condescension, and that particular memory had been too precious to taint with ridicule.
Still, after five years of separation, and knowing Roger as well as she did, the temptation to confide in him was strong. She’d wanted to tell him about her encounter with the Wains, about her fears for Rowan Wain’s health. She’d even gone so far as to punch his number into her mobile phone, but at the last minute had disconnected.
It was Christmas Eve. Roger would interpret a phone call as an admission of loneliness, perhaps even an admission of defeat.
Loneliness, yes, but she’d been lonely when they were together, sometimes more than she was now. Defeat, no, not yet, even if she hadn’t found the peace she’d sought in her roving life on the Cut.
The muted throb of a diesel engine signaled the progress of a narrowboat. Looking back towards the basin, Annie saw a light moving low on the water. As the boat entered the aqueduct and glided past her, close enough to touch, the muffl ed figure at the tiller nodded a silent greeting. Annie watched the boat’s light until it disappeared, then turned back to the glimmering rooftops of Nantwich. She no longer felt so alone.
There was nothing stopping her, she realized, other than a brisk and solitary walk through the streets of the town. She would go to midnight mass at St. Mary’s, and she would celebrate in her own way those things for which she was thankful.
Chapter Five
Babcock chuckled aloud as he watched his old friend drive away.
Having caught the brief, unguarded expression on Kincaid’s usually composed face, he had recognized naked lust for the chase. He felt a surprising satisfaction at having discovered a kindred spirit, rising so unexpectedly from the ashes of his past life.
Brushing at a feather touch of damp on his cheek, he realized it was snowing again. “Sod it,” he said aloud, casting a glance at the sky, which seemed to loom within touching distance. He scrubbed the accumulating flakes from his hair in irritation and set off after his crime-scene techs, his amusement forgotten.
He stopped at the open doorway of the barn, nodding at the constable standing watch. What
Clive Travis, his chief forensics officer, stood just inside the door,
struggling to get his paper suit on over bulky warm clothing. Travis was a small, lean man who wore his thinning sandy hair pulled back in a ponytail, and whose energetic personality mirrored his whippet-like appearance. Tonight, however, he looked anything but happy, and his fellow officer seemed no more cheerful. Sandra Barnett, the scene photographer, was quick and competent, but always appeared as if she’d rather be doing something else. Tonight, her broad face looked positively funereal.
“So, what do we have here, troops?” Babcock asked. After slipping off his overcoat and handing it to a constable, with a grimace he accepted gloves and another paper suit from Travis. Protecting the evidence from contamination was a bloody waste of time, he was sure, in an old scene that had been openly accessible, but it had to be done. It would be his head on a platter if there was a balls-up, and he hadn’t got where he was by indulging his rebellious streak—
at least not very often.
“Have a look for yourself, boss.” When Babcock was properly suited, Travis slipped a torch into Babcock’s freshly gloved hand. “A babe in a manger, you might say.”
Sandra Barnett glanced at Travis and thumped down her camera case with unnecessary force. Babcock supposed he couldn’t blame her for being irritated by Travis’s irreverence, but it was one of the reasons he liked the man, that and Travis’s appreciation of the bizarre—and bizarre this case certainly was.
From where he stood, Babcock could see the pickwork in the far wall, and in the opening, a scrap of pinkish cloth and what looked like a cluster of tiny brown twigs. Maneuvering carefully around the dropped pick, he stepped closer as Travis repositioned a light so that it provided better illumination. Suddenly, his brain assembled the component parts of what he was seeing into a coherent whole.
“Jesus,” he said involuntarily, not caring if it earned a glower from Barnett. The twigs were the curled brown bones of a tiny hand. What he had seen as a clump of root filament was the tuft of
fine hair left above a wizened face. The empty and sunken eye sockets seemed to peer back at him.
No wonder Juliet Newcombe had seemed shaken. Babcock had seen much worse in the course of his career, in terms of blood and mutilation, but there was something pathetically vulnerable in this little corpse. Who could have done such a thing to a child?
The lower half of the child’s body was still encased in its mortar shroud, but from what Babcock could see, there was no obvious sign of physical trauma, nor any bloodstains on the blanket or clothing.
Voices at the doorway alerted him to the arrival of the Home Office pathologist and he turned away, glad enough to have someone else take over the examination.
Dr. Althea Elsworthy strode into the barn, disdaining Travis’s offer of a paper suit with an irritable flick of her wrist. She always carried her own supply of latex gloves, and paused just inside the doorway to stuff her heavy woolen pair in the pocket of her coat and puff air into the latex replacements before pulling them on. “Mummified, is it?”
she said, directing her inquiry in Babcock’s direction, although she hadn’t acknowledged him. Before he could finish nodding, she continued, “No point bothering with the astronaut gear, then, and I’m not taking off my coat in this bloody cold. I’ll be buggered if I’m courting pneumonia on Christmas Eve without a bloody good reason.”
As she paused to take stock of the room, Babcock studied her with the amazement he always felt. Tonight, her tall, thin fi gure was enveloped in what looked like a man’s ancient tweed overcoat, and her flyaway gray hair
