Then, as he checked the batteries in the torch he kept in the door pocket, the curtain of white surrounding his car began to thin.
After a moment, it was once more possible to pick out individual flakes, and then there were only a few solitary, erratically drifting crystals.
Babcock suspected the reprieve was temporary, but he could now see the road a few yards beyond the car’s bonnet, and he meant to take advantage of it. He put the BMW into gear again and crept along the track, and soon he saw the panda cars’ blue lights fl ashing like beacons.
When he came out into the clearing, he saw that the headlamps of the patrol cars illuminated a Ford Escort and the sort of white van used by builders and plumbers. One of the patrol officers stood talking to two civilians, and as he drew nearer Babcock could see that the taller figure was a man in a City overcoat, and the smaller, which he had first assumed to be male, seemed to be a woman dressed in rough clothing. Behind them, torches flashed within the shadowy huddle of outbuildings.
What a godforsaken place, and how had these people come to discover a body here on Christmas Eve? He picked his way across the snowy ruts, careful of his shoes although he knew it was a hope-less prospect. At least he wouldn’t be the only one with ruined foot-wear, he thought with some satisfaction, considering the cut of the other man’s overcoat.
The woman was quite pretty, dark-haired, and there was something about her that tickled his memory. Then, as the man turned towards him, his face fully illuminated in the glare of the lights, Ronnie Babcock gave an involuntary grunt of surprise. What the hell was
“Well, I’ll be buggered,” he said as he reached the waiting group.
“If it isn’t my old mate Duncan Kincaid. Trouble himself.”
Her skin was pale, and felt clammy to the touch. Worse, even in the dim light of the cabin, it seemed to Gabriel Wain that his wife’s lips were tinged with blue. When he smoothed her dark hair from her brow, she moved restlessly under his touch and opened her eyes.
“Gabe, you won’t forget, will you?” she whispered. “They’d be so disappointed—”
“Of course I won’t forget, woman. I’ll do it as soon as they’re asleep, I promise.” From the next-door cabin, he could hear the rustlings and occasional giggles of their son and daughter, awake past their bedtime with Christmas Eve excitement. The stockings would be laid at the ends of their bunks, even if the knitted socks held only oranges, boiled sweets, and a few knickknacks from the shop at the Venetian Marina.
There were a few other surprises wrapped in colored paper and tucked away in the main cabin: crayons and paints, some clever three-dimensional cards depicting canal life that the children could tack up by their beds, a book for each of them. And for seven-year-old Marie there was a doll; for nine-year-old Joseph, his first pocketknife. To
provide these things, Rowan had worked extra hours painting the traditional roses-and-castles canalware she sold to supplement their income, and the effort had exhausted her.
Not that it took much to exhaust her these days. Worry gnawed in his belly like a worm, and his helplessness in the face of her growing weakness made him so angry his hands had begun to shake continually, but he tried to hide such feelings from her. He knew why she wouldn’t seek help at a hospital or clinic—he understood the consequences as well as she did. So he did what he could: he managed the boat and the locks with only the children’s help, he’d taken over almost all the domestic chores as well, and he did what he could to comfort the children and attend to their lessons.
But it wasn’t enough—he knew it wasn’t enough, and he knew he would be lost without her.
He shifted a little on the bed’s edge so that he could pull the blanket more firmly over his wife’s shoulders. Even through his thick wool jumper he could feel the chill creeping into the boat. The narrowboat’s only heat came from the stove in the main cabin, but he dared not add more wood this late in the evening. He stored a supply on top of the boat, both for their own use and to sell to other boaters, and with the Christmastime slowdown in odd jobs, he couldn’t afford to burn their only source of cash. Nor would he be able to forage easily for more wood with snow on the ground—if the cold snap lasted more than a few days, they would be in real trouble.
Rowan’s eyelids had begun to droop again. “You sleep now, do you hear?” he whispered. “I’ll take care of everything.” And he would, too—it was just that it was becoming harder and harder to see how he was going to manage it.
Rowan was asleep, her breathing shallow but regular, and from next door the children’s voices had faded from drowsy whispers to silence. Giving his wife’s shoulder a squeeze, he moved quietly through the children’s cabin and into the stern.
He stood for a moment, gazing at the remains of the stew he’d s
made for dinner, still standing on the hob; at the laceware and brasses decorating the polished wood of the cabin walls; at the bright detail of the castle scene Rowan had painted on the underside of the drop table. The children had strung tinsel and a red-and-green paper chain over the windows and Marie had tacked up a drawing she’d made of Father Christmas wearing a pointed red hat.
Only embers glowed in the stove. With sudden decision, Gabe took a log from the basket and fed it into the fire. It was Christmas Eve, and he’d be damned if they’d spend it freezing. Maybe tomorrow the weather would break. Maybe he’d find a carpentry job before the New Year. He had contacts here—it was the only thing that had brought him back to the Nantwich stretch of the Cut.
Right, he thought, with the wave of bitterness that swamped him all too often these days. Maybe Father Christmas would come.
Maybe the boat’s makeshift loo would work properly for once. And maybe his wife would miraculously get better, instead of more frail by the moment.
Tears stung his eyes and he blinked furiously, stabbing at the fi re with the poker until the heat scorched his face. She was slipping away from him and he couldn’t bear it, not after everything they’d been through.
There was only one option that he could see. He could sell the boat. There were always collectors sniffing around the Cut, looking for traditional working narrowboats built before the s, the less altered, the better. Willing to pay a handsome price to do without plumbing or central heating, they would restore the boats to their original state and show them off at boat shows. Never mind that entire families had lived in seven- by-eight-foot cabins and babies had played on top of the sheeted coal or cocoa in the cargo space—
that only added to the romance.
Gabe snorted in disgust. They were fools, playing at being boatmen, and he’d not give up the
been born on this boat, as had his father, and now his family was one of the last still clinging to the old way of life.
And selling the boat would only be a stopgap mea sure at best—
he knew that. Where would they go? What would they do? They knew nothing else, and there was nowhere else they would be safe.
He thought of the face from the past that had appeared so unexpectedly today. The woman had been maneuvering her boat round the angle where the Middlewich fed into the main branch of the canal at Barbridge; skillfully, he thought, for a woman alone. Then she had looked up.
It had taken him a moment to place her in the strange context, and then he’d felt the old, familiar lurch of fear. She had recognized them as well, and had spoken to Rowan and the children in a friendly way, but he didn’t trust her. Why should he, even after what she had done for them?
She and her kind, no matter how well-meaning, meant nothing but trouble—had never meant anything but trouble for him or his people.
Moving slowly back into the children’s cabin, he stared down at their sleeping forms. The light reflecting off the snow came through the small window more brightly than a full moon. He knelt, touching his daughter’s curls with his large, calloused hand, and a fi erce resolve rose in him.
He knew one thing, and it was enough. He would do whatever it took to keep what remained of his family from harm.
