Deborah Crombie - Duncan Kincaid & Gemma James 11 - Water Like A Stone

It’s a challenge getting a boat round the bend at Barbridge Junction, I can tell you.”

“Can we see?” Kit asked, with a simple enthusiasm that Kincaid had not expected.

“I don’t see why not.” Having intended to go that way all along, Kincaid was pleased at having found something to interest his son.

He led the way through the field gate and down onto the towpath.

Here the snow had been compacted by the passage of feet, both human and canine. Bare trees stood crisply skeletal against the snow, and in the distance a trio of black birds circled. Crows, Kincaid thought, searching for carrion, and if he guessed right, not far from the site of last night’s grisly discovery.

Not that there was anything left for them to fi nd, of course, but the reminder made him wonder what was happening at the crime scene. Had they identified the child? Old cases, cold cases, were the most difficult. He didn’t envy his former schoolmate Ronnie, he told himself firmly. And yet, his curiosity nagged him.

He thought of Juliet, wondering if the image of the dead child was haunting her, wondering if that and worry over the fate of her project might have driven her back to the building site. And what in hell’s name was going on between Juliet and Caspar?

“Do you really think Aunt Juliet is all right?” asked Kit, as if he’d read his mind.

“Of course she is. Your aunt Jules is tougher than she looks, and very capable of looking after herself. I’m sure she had a good reason for going walkabout for a bit,” he answered, but even as he spoke he realized how little he really knew about his sister.

There was little wind, and in the bright sunshine he hadn’t felt the cold at first. But now he realized that his nose and the tips of his ears had gone numb, and even in gloves his hands were beginning to stiffen. Shoving his hands firmly into his pockets, Kincaid said,

“Juliet loved this walk when we were kids. She could tramp round the countryside all day, and in all weathers. She used to say she was going to be an explorer when she grew up, like Ranulph Fiennes.”

She had been full of dreams, his sister. Had any part of her life turned out as she had imagined?

“But she’s a builder instead. Isn’t that a funny job for a woman?”

Kincaid smiled. “Better not let Gemma hear you say a thing like that. It’s no more odd than a woman police officer. And Jules was always good at making things. My father used to build us stage sets, and Jules would help him.”

“You put on plays?” Kit asked, with a trace of wistfulness.

Guilt stabbed at Kincaid. Wasn’t he always too busy with work to spend time with his son?

“Shakespeare, usually,” he forced himself to answer cheerfully,

“given my dad’s penchant for the bard. I used to be able to declaim whole bits of Hamlet, but I’ve forgotten them now.”

Kincaid had a sudden vision of a summer’s afternoon, and Juliet, as Ophelia, sprawled on a blue tarp they had appropriated for a river.

“Can’t you die a little more gracefully?” he’d groused, and she’d sat up and scowled at him.

“Dead people don’t look graceful,” she’d retorted, and he’d had plenty of opportunities since to discover that she had been right. He pushed the memory away, searching for a distraction.

Kit provided it for him, pointing. “Look, there’s a boat.”

They were nearing Barbridge, and Kincaid thought it only due to the slowness of the season that they hadn’t encountered moored boats before now. “And a nice one it is, too,” he said admiringly as they drew closer. Its hull was painted a deep, glossy sapphire, with trim picked out in a paler sky blue. The elum, as the tiller was called on a narrowboat, was striped in the same contrasting colors, and everything on the boat, down to the chimney brasses, sparkled with loving care. The craft’s name was painted on its bow in crisp white script: Lost Horizon. A steady column of smoke rose from the chimney, and he heard the faint hum of the generator. Someone was definitely aboard.

As they drew alongside, the bow doors opened and a woman stepped up into the well deck. She was tall, with a slender build un-

disguised by her heavy padded jacket, and her short fair hair gleamed in the sunlight. Catching sight of them, she nodded, and Kincaid felt a start of recognition.

Last night in church she had seemed an outsider, her shield against the world penetrable only when she sang; here, she moved with the grace of familiarity. Here, he had found her in her element.

Chapter Ten

Juliet’s hand had seemed to turn the key in the ignition of its own accord, her foot had eased in the clutch, and she’d found herself driving. Her reflexes had taken over, funneling her into the most familiar route, up the A towards Nantwich.

The rolling meadows of the Cheshire Plain had slipped by, dark stubble now peeking through the snow. At each roundabout she hesitated, thinking she must turn back, but her body seemed unwilling to obey her mind’s instructions.

Suddenly, she realized she’d reached the southern outskirts of Nantwich. Swerving the car into a side street, she pulled up against the curb and lifted her trembling hands from the wheel.

What the hell had she done, leaving Caspar’s parents like that?

She had to go back, had to make some sort of excuse, but what could she say? No excuse would soften Caspar’s cold fury; she had done the unforgivable: embarrassing him in front of his parents. And what would she tell the children? That it had been the sound of her mother- in- law’s voice as she said, “Juliet, darling, if you could just give the gravy boat a little rinse?”

Rita Newcombe had turned from her state-of- the-art oven to

give Juliet a brittle smile and a nod in the direction of the gold-rimmed gravy boat on the worktop, as if Juliet were too dense to recognize a gravy boat when she saw one. Rita, Juliet knew from experience, hated to risk her manicured nails with washing up, and would no doubt find a good excuse to stick her daughter- in- law with a sink full of dirty crockery when the meal was finished as well.

Juliet had complied, her lips pressed together in irritation, but if Rita noticed her bad grace, she gave no sign. They were having stuffed goose, Rita informed her, a recipe she’d seen in a gourmet cooking magazine, and Juliet doubted the children would do more than push it around on their plates. It would never have occurred to Rita that the children would have preferred plain roast turkey, and if it had been pointed out to her, she’d have announced that the children needed a bit more sophistication—implying that Juliet was falling down on the job at home.

Now it made Juliet flush with shame to remember that when she’d first married Caspar, she’d compared her parents to his and wished hers had a bit more polish, a bit more appreciation for the finer things in life, and a little less interest in books.

How could she have been so stupid? And how could she have gone all these years without realizing how thoroughly she despised her in-laws? Rita, with her flawlessly colored hair and trendy jogging outfits—

although Juliet had never been able to imagine her actually running, or doing anything else that might cause an unladylike sweat. And Ralph—

or Rafe, as he insisted on being called—with his paunch and thinning hair, who fancied himself irresistible to anything in a skirt, and flirted shamelessly whenever Rita’s back was turned.

The Newcombes had embraced their retirement, trading in their suburban home in Crewe for a modern flat overlooking the locks in Audlem, a pretty town near the Shropshire border. The fl at was open plan and too small for the children to stay over, a defi cit that Juliet suspected was intentional.

The truth was that her mother- and father- in- law didn’t like the

disruption of grandchildren—didn’t really even like to admit that they had grandchildren, because it meant they were losing their tenacious grip on middle age.

Juliet had wiped the gravy boat dry and set it beside the stacked dishes waiting to be carried to the perfectly set table. As she turned from the sink, she’d glanced into the combined dining and sitting areas. Caspar and his father were ensconced with whiskies in the corner Rita referred to as “the nook,” and from the drone of her father-