For a moment he toyed with the idea of calling Peggy to wish her a happy Christmas, but that meant he’d probably have to carry on a civil conversation with Bert, and he doubted his Christmas spirit would stretch quite that far.
Beer and telly it was, then, and he’d better bring the duvet down
from the bedroom for a little extra warmth. He’d hate for his offi -
cers to find him frozen on his sofa when he didn’t turn up for work after the holiday. Serve Peggy right, though, the cow, he thought with a snort, if she had to make social capital out of his embarrassing demise. On the other hand, “Killed in the line of duty” would provide her with conversational fodder for years, and he didn’t intend to give her the satisfaction.
He had opened the fridge, groaning when he saw only a solitary can of Tennents and an open packet of ham that curled up at the edges, when the mobile phone clipped to his belt began to vibrate.
Even before he glanced at the number he knew it was Area Control—
no one else would be ringing him on Christmas Eve.
“Thank you, God,” he said with a sigh, and raised his eyes heav-enward in salute as he flipped open the phone.
They sat huddled in Juliet’s van, with the motor running in hopes of coaxing a little warm air from the heating vents. The windows were already fogging from their breath, and outside, the snow still drifted down, cocooning them from the outside world.
Kincaid found himself thinking of the time when he and Jules, as children, had managed to get themselves locked in their neighbor’s coal cellar for an afternoon. He’d been devouring science fi ction at the time, and as they’d sat scrunched together in the dark in what had seemed utter isolation, he’d imagined they were the last two people on earth. Fortunately, the neighbor had come home and heard their shouts, so they’d got off with no more than a bollocking and a missed meal, but he’d never forgotten the exhilarating terror of those long hours.
Beside him, Juliet took off one glove and held her bare hand in front of the vent, then grimaced and pulled it on again. “It’s bloody freezing,” she said. “Do you think the police will be long?”
Remembering how she had always refused comfort, he didn’t s
give her a reassuring answer. “Quite likely. They’ll be short-staffed tonight, and the bad weather won’t help.” After notifying the local police, he’d rung Gemma and his parents to explain the situation, but when he’d offered his phone to Juliet and asked if she needed to call Caspar, she’d said no.
Kincaid had never been particularly fond of his brother- in- law—
he found the man’s supercilious attitude exasperating—but he was distressed to hear the evident unhappiness in his sister’s voice. He knew better than to pry, however—unless he did it very tactfully.
“How’s your new business going?” he asked.
From the look on Juliet’s face, it had been the wrong question.
“This was my first big commission. We were already behind schedule because of the weather, and now with this—” She gave a despairing little shrug. “What makes it worse is that the client is a friend of Piers—” A few more strands fluttered loose from her ponytail as she fell silent, shaking her head. “Oh, God, listen to me. I’m a selfi sh cow to even think about my problems, when that poor child— What do you think happened to it, Duncan? And the pink suit—was it a little girl?”
“We can’t know that yet,” he answered gently. “But try not to think about it. Whatever happened was a long time ago—”
“Not that long,” she broke in, surprising him. “That blanket—
the children had one in the same fabric when they were small. It must have been Lally’s, I think, because it was pink, but we used it for Sam as well.”
“Do you remember where it came from?” he asked, unable to damp down the quickening of his pulse as his investigative instincts kicked in. This was not his case, he reminded himself—it had nothing to do with him.
“The supermarket, maybe. Or one of the chain baby shops. It was nothing special.”
He pictured the child only a few yards distant, its flesh wasting away from its small bones, and wondered at the care with which it had been wrapped in the cheap blanket. But he had seen parents
batter their children to death, then cover them tenderly, so he knew it meant nothing. Nor did he want to think about those things, not here, not now.
“How do you do it?” Jules said softly, as if she’d read his mind.
“How do you deal with things like this every day, and still put your children to bed at night without panicking? They’re so fragile, so vulnerable. You think it’s the most frightening when they’re babies, but then they get old enough to be out of your sight, out of your care, and you know that anything can happen . . .”
He thought immediately of Kit, and of his own failure to anticipate trouble in that quarter. And his niece, he remembered, was almost the same age. “Jules, are you having trouble with Lally?” he asked.
“No. No, of course not.” Juliet pulled off her glove again, but this time, after testing the vent, she stripped off the other glove, too, and rubbed her hands together in the airstream. After a moment, she said, “It’s just that . . . a month ago, a boy from Lally’s school was found in the canal, drowned. He was fourteen. They said there was alcohol involved.” She looked up at him, her hands still. “He was a good kid, Duncan. A good kid, a good student, never in any kind of trouble. If it can happen to a child like that . . .”
“I know. It means none of them is safe.” It occurred to him then that he didn’t know his niece at all, that he couldn’t begin to guess whether or not she was at risk. “Is Lally all right? I’m sure it was very upsetting for her.”
“I don’t know. The school provided counseling for those who wanted it, but I’m not sure if she went. She doesn’t talk to me anymore. But she’s seemed different the last few weeks, more with-drawn.” Juliet sighed. “Maybe it’s just her age. I suppose I was difficult at fourteen, too.”
“Worse than difficult,” he said, teasing. If he had hoped for an answering smile, he was disappointed. Juliet flashed him a look he couldn’t read, then yanked her gloves on again and huddled deeper into her jacket.
Why was it, Kincaid wondered, that he always managed to put his foot wrong with his sister?
Ronnie Babcock felt his adrenaline start to pump as he backed out of his drive. As glad as he was of any excuse to avoid his own company, he’d expected nothing more exciting than an alcohol- fueled domestic, or perhaps a burglar taking advantage of someone away for the holiday. Certainly when his phone rang he hadn’t imagined the interred body of a child—at the least a suspicious death, at the most a homicide.
He forced himself to slow the powerful BMW. It was still snowing and the roads would be growing treacherous. Although he liked to drive fast, he was careful of his car—God help anyone who put a nick or dent in the Black Beast, as he liked to call it. He’d bought the used after Peggy had walked out, and if there were whispered comments about the male menopause around the station, he didn’t care. He’d been a poor kid, and to him the car represented everything he’d never thought he could achieve.
Not that he thought of himself as middle-aged, mind you. As he slowed for the A roundabout, he tightened the knot in his tie and glanced at himself in the driving mirror. At forty-one, his hair was still thick, springing from the widow’s peak on his brow, and if there were a few gray threads mixed with the blond, they didn’t show.
He’d kept his footballer’s physique, too, as well as the broken nose and the scar across his cheek where a football boot had caught him full in the face. His rather battered visage often came in handy in the interview room, and he liked to think there were women—his ex-wife notwithstanding—that found it attractive.
The traffic was lighter than he’d expected, and he had an easy shot of it to the location of the call, skirting the north side of Nantwich on the A. At the Burford roundabout the A turned north, towards Chester, and the visibility dropped to near nil in the blowing
snow. He crawled along, swearing under his breath, thinking about the logistics of getting the crime-scene unit out in this weather. From the brief report he’d been given, he wasn’t sure if the actual site of the corpse was sheltered from the elements.
His swearing increased in volume as he saw the turning too late to negotiate it. He had to drive another mile into Barbridge before he could find a place to turn the car, and this time he crept back towards the farm track at a snail’s pace. His moment of triumph was short-lived, however, when he discovered he couldn’t even see which way the track turned. Nor was the high- powered BMW designed for driving in accumulating snow on unpaved roads. He coasted to a stop, wondering if he was going to have to get out and leg it the rest of the way with the help of a torch. His overcoat was lightweight; his shoes were new and expensive and would be soaked through in minutes.
