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

But as Annie Lebow met her eyes in the photograph, Sheila felt a connection. The crumpled body on the path had become a woman who had lived and worked and slept and dreamed, who had inhabited this small space, however lightly. In that instant of association

across time and space, Annie Lebow had become real to Sheila, and her death had become personal.

She wore boots, trousers, and a heavy woolen coat, but even from a distance and out of uniform, he could tell she was a cop. There was something in the way she moved, confident but alert, that marked her like a brand.

As he moved around the boat, from one small task to another, he watched her. She’d come up the towpath from the direction of the crime scene, and after handing a parcel to one of the uniformed officers standing guard in the parking area, she’d made her way along the houses that lined the Cut just below Barbridge.

When the woman with the frizzy hair and the pink dressing gown had come out to speak to her, panic rose in his throat. It was all he could do to keep himself still, to concentrate on what the doctor had told him. It would do no good to run. He couldn’t disguise his family or his boat, and the Cut was a small world. Once before, fear had driven him to take the Daphne into Manchester’s industrial slums, but things were different now. Even the inner-city parts of the Cut were changing as the old ware houses became desirable “water- side properties.” And no one had been looking for him then.

The woman in the pink dressing gown gestured, and even from a distance he could hear her raised voice. He didn’t need to make out the words. Bending over the strap he was repairing, he kept his eyes down and whistled tunelessly between his teeth. The soft turf of the towpath muffled footsteps, but he didn’t need sound to track the policewoman’s progress. When, a few moments later, a voice called out,

“Mr. Wain?” he looked up with feigned surprise.

She stood on the towpath, across from the bow. Up close, he could see that she was pretty in a snub- nosed sort of way, and that she was a bit older than her bouncy stride had led him to expect. Intelligence gleamed from her eyes, and his heart sank.

He nodded, his hand still on the strap, as if he were impatient at the interruption. “Aye. What’s it to you, miss?”

“Detective Constable Larkin, Cheshire police.” She held up an identification card, though she must have known he couldn’t read it at that distance. “Could I have a word?”

“Nothing’s stopping you,” he said, and began to coil the straps.

Shifting her weight ever so slightly to the balls of her feet, she squared her shoulders. “I suppose you’ve heard that a woman died last night, just down from Barbridge.” She nodded in the direction of the bridge. “Her name was Annie Lebow.”

“Aye?” he said again, standing and brushing the palms of his hands against his trousers. Now he’d put her at a disadvantage. She had to tilt her head back to look up at him.

“Did you know her?”

He shrugged. “You meet a lot of folks on the Cut.”

Larkin pulled a photograph from her coat pocket and held it out to him. Gabriel had no choice but to lean over the gunwale and take it. He squinted at the print for a moment, then handed it back. “The Horizon. You should have told me the name of the boat. It’s boats I remember, more than names or faces.”

“You’re saying you did know Ms. Lebow?” asked the detective.

“In passing.” He felt the sweat forming under his heavy fisherman’s jersey, as if the sun had suddenly come out, and hoped she couldn’t see the dampness on his brow. For a moment he was tempted to tell her the whole truth, just to have it over with, to stop the pressure squeezing his heart, but he knew he couldn’t. Not with Rowan and the children at stake.

Larkin nodded back towards the houses in Barbridge. The woman in the pink dressing gown was still standing in her garden, he saw, watching them. The old biddy must be freezing herself by now, just to satisfy her curiosity. “Mrs. Millsap says you had a row with the deceased, on Christmas Day.”

Gabriel made a swift calculation. Mrs. Millsap might have heard

raised voices, but she couldn’t have made out what was said, not from that distance. “The bloody woman scraped my boat,” he admitted, sounding aggrieved. “Reversed right into it, the silly cow.” He leaned over the gunwale, pointing at a long abrasion, just above the Daphne’s waterline. He’d done the damage himself, banging into the side of Hurleston Locks a week ago, and he hadn’t had the heart or the energy to repair it.

“Not to speak ill of the dead,” he added, “but I was that pissed off.”

“Did you threaten her?”

“Threaten? I told her to watch where she was bloody going, if you call that a threat.”

The detective studied the scrape, then shook her head, as if commiserating. “Then what happened?”

“She said she was sorry, she’d been distracted. And she offered to pay for any repairs, I’ll give her that. But I told her no, there was no need, I could fi x it myself.” He looked up at the leaden bowl of the sky. “Have to wait until it’s a bit drier, though.”

“So you parted amicably? On good terms?” she added.

He should have been used to it—people assuming boaters were stupid, or at least illiterate. Illiterate they may have been, for the most part, but they had never been stupid, and Gabriel’s parents had made sure that he learned to read well. They had known that times were changing, that hard work and a knowledge of the Cut would no longer be enough.

Controlling a flare of anger, he said, “Not on ill terms. Look, it was just an ordinary row, the sort that happens if someone cuts you off at a lock, or leaves the lock against you. What has any of it to do with this woman dying?”

“Annie Lebow died violently, Mr. Wain. We have to investigate anyone who might have wished her harm.”

“You’re saying you think I’d kill a woman I hardly knew over a

bit of scraped paint?” His anger was righteous now, and he didn’t trouble to keep it in check. “That’s downright daft.”

“We have to ask. You can understand that. We also have to ask where you were last night.”

“I was here, with my family. But I’ll not have my family brought into this. It’s nothing to do with—”

“For the moment, we just need to know we can speak with you again. You weren’t planning on leaving Barbridge?”

Seeing the detective give a covert glance at her watch, Gabriel realized she’d finished with him, and was more than likely trying to work out how to juggle more tasks than she could manage in a given amount of time.

Relief flooded through him, so intense it left his hands shaking.

She would, no doubt, be checking his story with anyone else she could find to speak to along this part of the canal, but none of the nearby boats was occupied, and he doubted if anyone other than the Millsap woman had witnessed Annie’s visit on Christmas Eve.

He shoved his telltale hands in his trouser pockets and nodded brusquely. “We’ve no plans to move on, for now,” he said, and it struck him, as he watched her walk away, that he had no plans at all.

For him, time had stopped here in Barbridge, and his future had ceased to exist.

Kit followed Lally back towards the shop, struggling to keep up with her pace. He was still trying to work out why she was angry with him, and what any of it had to do with her friend Peter, but the taut line of her back offered no helpful clues.

“Lally!” he called out as they neared the back door of the bookshop. “Wait. Can’t we talk?”

She slowed, but kept her face averted. “There’s nothing to—”

Kit caught a shadow of movement out of the corner of his eye, then

Leo stepped in front of them, as if he’d appeared from out of nowhere.

“What’s the matter, Lal?” he said. “You and coz have a falling-out?”

Lally gave a little yelp of surprise, then turned to face him, hands on her hips. “Bloody hell, Leo. Are you trying to make me wet my knickers? And no, we haven’t had a falling-out, but even if we had, it’s none of your business.”