anything else, I think. We need to get him home.”
“Home.” Kincaid repeated the word under his breath, frowning, as if making sense of a foreign language, and gazed abstractedly at the canal.
“What—” Gemma had begun, when he turned to her and gripped her shoulders with almost painful force.
“Right,” he said. “You’re absolutely right. As soon as Babcock gets Kit’s statement, we’ll pack up and head back to London. There’s no reason we should stay here, no reason Kit should be involved in this any further. We can go home.”
Gemma stared at him, galvanized by the thought. In just a few hours, they could be back in the safe haven of their house in Notting Hill, removed from thoughts of disintegrating marriages and dead
babies, away from the horror of a violent death that encroached on their personal lives.
After all, Duncan and Kit had met the woman only briefly—
surely they had no obligation to do more than was legally necessary.
And Rosemary and Hugh would understand; they would know that Kit was the last child who should be subjected to such stress.
Glancing towards the car, she saw Kit turn restlessly in his sleep, his lips moving, but the intervening glass muffled any sound. She recalled the things he had said to her in the car, and slowly, reluctantly, shook her head.
“No,” she said. “I don’t think we can. I think we have to see this through. I think we have to let
“But—”
“It’s all mixed up in his mind,” Gemma continued, certain that she was right. “This woman’s death and his mother’s. He feels responsible, as if he somehow failed them both. And if we take him away, he’ll just carry that burden with him, wherever he goes. We can’t let that happen.”
Chapter Seventeen
Althea Elsworthy stowed her medical bag in the boot, then climbed gratefully into the relative warmth of the car. Danny, who had sat up at her approach, rested his chin on the seat back and looked at her expectantly. Usually, when she returned to the car, she gave him a biscuit from the large plastic tub she kept on the floor in the front. Of course, he was quite capable of chewing through the container and helping himself, but he was an obedient dog and had never taken advantage of her absence.
“You’re a good boy,” she said, as she always did, and popped open the tub. Danny took the proferred biscuit delicately, but as he crunched the treat he scattered crumbs and spittle on the towel she kept draped over the seat back for just that purpose.
Ritual satisfied, he settled down again on the seat with his head on his paws, watching her with an eternal canine optimism she wished she shared.
While he trusted that she knew what to do next, she was struggling to understand the action she’d just taken—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say “not taken.”
Why had she remained silent? An easy enough explanation was
that the first sight of Annie Lebow’s body had left her simply too stunned to speak. Her lack of intimation seemed odd now. There had been no frisson of foreknowledge when the call came asking her to attend the body of a woman found dead on the towpath below Barbridge. Most likely a jogger struck down by a heart attack, she’d thought, and had merely been thankful that the location of the body would make it easy for her to call in on the Wains. Not even the sight of the boat had cued her.
But her job required a memory for physical detail, and the fl eece top had provided the first jolt of recognition. Then the leather boating shoes, one separated from the foot and lying on its side, as if it had been casually kicked free. After that, the sight of the fair hair, now matted, and the strong jaw, half hidden by the raised forearm, had merely served as confirmation.
Beyond that point, her failure to admit she knew the victim became harder to justify. If Ronnie Babcock hadn’t been below decks, perhaps she would have spoken to him then, when she’d got her breath back from the first shock. But there had only been his green detective constable, hovering, so she’d waited, trying to concentrate on the task at hand, trying to distance herself from the vision of Annie Lebow’s animated face seen just the previous day.
And then, when Babcock had climbed up from the depths of the boat, with him had been a tall, sharp-eyed man whom Babcock had introduced as a Scotland Yard superintendent. No explanation had been given as to why, or how so quickly, the Yard had been called to the scene of a rural suspicious death, but Althea had felt her heart give an unexpected lurch.
She’d realized that if she admitted her recent connection with Annie, she’d have to explain about the Wains.
But now that she’d had a few moments to think, doubt assailed her. Was it just coincidence that Annie Lebow had encountered a family she hadn’t seen since she’d left Social Services, then been killed? Could Gabriel Wain have had something to do with Annie’s s
death? And if so, why? Gabriel might have accepted Annie’s help grudgingly, but Althea couldn’t imagine that he would have harmed her.
With sudden impatience, she thrust her uncertainties aside. She had promised to help Rowan Wain, and now it seemed more important than ever that she keep her word. No matter that she’d have to wade through the local constabulary in order to visit the boat—if anyone inquired, she’d simply tell the truth. She was visiting a patient.
Still, she looked round before getting out of the car, and it was only when the officer watching over the bridge had gone to consult with one of his mates farther up the lane that she retrieved the oxygen tank from the boot and started for the boat. There was no point in complicating matters unnecessarily, she told herself briskly, but she couldn’t shake the unsettling feeling that she was being watched.
Although Kincaid usually disliked being driven by someone he didn’t know well, he made an effort to relax into the padded leather passenger seat of Ronnie Babcock’s BMW. He told himself he should appreciate the chance to concentrate on the landscape and clear his mind for the interview to come.
In the end, it had been Gemma who’d insisted he go with Babcock to see Roger Constantine. Listening in on Babcock’s interview with Kit had been enough to convince him that Gemma was right—
they couldn’t just walk away from this and pretend nothing had happened. And if that was the case, she’d argued, it made sense for him to make use of his connection with Babcock, especially as Babcock seemed willing to accommodate him. He’d just have to be careful to maintain his role as spectator, as he suspected Babcock would draw the line at active interference in his investigation.
“You said this fellow Constantine was a journalist?” he asked Babcock. “I wonder at our odds of catching him at home.”
Babcock narrowed his eyes in an effort of recall. “I think I remember Annie saying he was a features writer for one of the major northwest papers. Of course, we could have tried contacting him by phone first, but I’d prefer to break bad news in person if at all possible.” It sounded compassionate, but Kincaid knew there was calculation attached—it always paid to see the first reactions of those closest to the victim.
“Then we’ll hope he works from home, or that journalists take a long Christmas holiday.” Kincaid resisted the urge to pump an imaginary brake as Babcock slowed sharply for a slow- moving farm lorry.
When the way was clear, Babcock downshifted and zipped round it with ease. The road had begun to twist and turn, making an ideal showcase for the BMW’s power and maneuverability.
The character of the countryside changed rapidly as one traveled west from Nantwich. Within just a few miles, the land rose from the flat of the Cheshire Plain into gently wooded undulations, and the simple brick farmhouses began to sport brightly colored gingerbread trim. Kincaid had never learned what had inspired the architectural embellishments, but when he was a boy, the decoration had made him think of cottages in enchanted
