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

Chapter Four

From the moment he had looked up and found her watching him from the stairs, Kit thought that Lally Newcombe was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He was afraid to look at her, afraid his face would betray him, yet he hadn’t been able to tear his eyes away. Around him, the commotion of dogs and greetings faded to an incomprehensible babble, and when Tess leapt from his arms, he’d felt as if he’d been stripped naked, defenseless before the dark-haired girl’s remote and considering gaze.

The entrance of Jack the sheepdog and the group exodus from the hall gave him a respite, but even then he’d been aware of Lally’s movements, as if he’d developed remote sensors on every inch of his skin. He trailed after the others, feeling as if his hands and feet had suddenly become enormous, awkward appendages more suited to a giant.

Once in the kitchen, he tried to ignore Lally, tried to look at anything other than her face and the slice of bare skin showing in the gap between her shirt and her jeans. When Rosemary spoke to him, he forced himself to focus, and to answer, pushing his voice past the lump in his throat and keeping it level.

Rosemary—his grandmother, he reminded himself. He still couldn’t quite get his head round it, even though he’d met her once before, at his mum’s funeral. Although he hadn’t known then that she bore any relation to him, she had been kind to him, and had stood up to Eugenia. It had been the one bright spot in that horrible day.

Eugenia, his other grandmother, his mother’s mother. Would he ever be able to hear “grandmother” without thinking of her? She was the only grandmother he had known until now, and his mother’s dad, Bob, the only grandfather.

As he helped Rosemary carry the tea things to the table, he glanced up at Hugh, his new grandfather, with curiosity. Hugh Kincaid was a tall man, with a lean, beaky sort of face, and a comfortable aura of the outdoors about him. But there was a bookishness, too, a hint of the faraway about his eyes, and Kit thought he might be the sort of person who held long conversations with himself.

Just now, however, he was laughing and joking with the younger boys, and Kit’s face flamed with envy. In that moment he hated Toby, hated the easy way he made friends so easily. Then he fl ushed again with shame, hating himself for the thought, hating himself for being so cruel to the smaller boy earlier that day.

He didn’t know what had got into him lately. Sometimes it seemed as if something alien lived between his brain and his mouth, out of control, just waiting to take over whenever he spoke. And then there were the dreams. He’d had them the first few months after his mother died, and now they had come back, worse than ever. He woke from them sick and sweating, afraid to go back to sleep, and afterwards he carried a lingering queasiness with him all through the day. Maybe he would be all right here, away from home, away from school.

The thought of school brought back that morning’s confrontation with Duncan and Gemma, and he cringed inwardly. Kit had known he would get caught out, had thought that before it happened he’d find an opportunity to confess, to explain. But the time had somehow never come, and when he’d been taken by surprise, all s

the words he’d prepared vanished like wraiths and left him stupidly, painfully silent.

The clatter of dishes jerked Kit back to the present. The meal was finished and Hugh was clearing away the tea things. When Sam suggested they go outside, he was glad of any excuse to get away from his thoughts.

It was both a relief and a disappointment when Lally hung back with Gemma. He wanted to be near the girl, wanted to speak to her, yet he didn’t know what to say. But as he trooped ahead with Sam and Toby, stomping footprints in the freshly fallen powder, he began to forget his discomfort. For the first time since they’d arrived he was able to take pleasure in the moment.

The field sloped down to a distant dark smudge of trees, and halfway across it he saw two shaggy shapes that must be the ponies, one dark, one light. Jack had bounded ahead and was now circling the ponies, yipping and lunging. The dog’s white markings seemed to disappear into the snow, so that the moving black patches of his coat looked strangely disembodied. Kit stopped a moment, watching, feeling the cold sear his lungs as he breathed. The snow and the sharp, smoky, night air were glorious, London and school seemed a universe away, and the holiday felt suddenly full of promise.

Kincaid grasped the hand held out to him, studying the man with dawning recognition. “Good God, it’s not Ronnie Babcock, is it?”

“That’s Chief Inspector Babcock to you, old son,” Babcock said jovially, but his voice held the hint of self- mockery Kincaid remembered from their school days. He hadn’t seen Babcock since he’d left Cheshire for London more than twenty years ago, and the last he’d heard, Babcock had been looking at a promising career in professional football.

“I’ll be damned. I’d no idea you were on the force, Ronnie. What happened to the—”

“Knee,” Babcock interrupted shortly. “I thought I should look for something with more long- term benefits— although at the moment I couldn’t tell you what they are.” He grinned and gave a shrug that took in the snow and the surroundings, and Kincaid remembered his unexpected charm.

He’d never known Babcock really well. Their friendship had been an odd one, and had come about by chance. Babcock had been a tough, working-class kid with an attitude, and his social circle had not naturally intersected with Kincaid’s. But more than once, Kincaid had seen him stand up for a kid who was being bullied, and had witnessed an occasional gruff and rather awkward kindness, quickly masked by teasing.

Then, one day, Kincaid had gone into his parents’ bookshop after school and seen Ronnie Babcock at the cash register, finishing a transaction with one of the shop assistants. Babcock had looked furtive, and Kincaid, his curiosity aroused, had moved close enough to glimpse the other boy’s purchase as it went into the bag. The volume was not something risque, as he’d half expected, but a battered, used edition of James Hilton’s Lost Horizon.

Kincaid had opened his mouth to rib Babcock about his taste in reading material when something in the boy’s expression stopped him. When Babcock had finished counting out his coins and stuffed the book into a jacket pocket, he moved away from the counter and said quietly to Kincaid, “Look, you won’t tell my mates at school, will you?”

“But—”

“It’s a poncey book, see,” Babcock added with a look of pleading. “I’d never live it down.”

Kincaid did see. He’d grown up tainted by the aura of his parents’ profession, as well as by the folly of his own occasional displays of knowledge. He’d been labeled an anorak, a bookworm, and no matter how well he did at games or how tough he was on the playground, it had stuck.

“Yeah, all right,” he’d said, grinning. “But only if you promise to tell me what you think of the book.”

After that they had talked when they’d run across each other in town, and Babcock had often come into the bookshop when he knew Kincaid was working after school, but that had seemed the natural limit of the relationship. Babcock had never invited Kincaid to his home, or vice versa, and they’d had no reason to keep up after leaving school.

Babcock had aged well, Kincaid saw now. He still looked fi t, and even with his pugnacious boxer’s face, he’d acquired an air of polish unimaginable in the teenager.

“Chief inspector?” Kincaid said, raising an eyebrow. “Aren’t you a bit elevated to be taking a call on Christmas Eve?”

“My inspector’s got kiddies at home. My sergeant, too.” Babcock shrugged. “And besides, it’s not often something as interesting as a mummified baby turns up on my patch.”

Beside him, Kincaid felt Juliet flinch, and saw Babcock eyeing her with interest. He wondered if the callous reference had been deliberate on Babcock’s part.

Babcock pulled his overcoat collar a little higher on his neck and gave Kincaid a sharp glance. “Now, as much as I’d like to stand around all night in the bleeding snow waffling on about old times, why don’t you tell me exactly what you’re doing here. Scotland Yard isn’t in the habit of calling us to report a body.”

“You know I’m with the Yard?” Somehow Kincaid had expected Babcock to be as ignorant of his profession as he had been of Babcock’s.

Babcock smiled at Kincaid’s consternation. “It’s still a small town, mate. And I still pop into your dad’s shop now and again.