on Christmas Eve, until by their late teens all that remained of the family traditions had been attendance at midnight mass.
Not until recently had he realized how much the ritual and the structure of those childhood Christmases had mattered to him. He wanted to create something similar for their children, but he suspected that Gemma had been more enchanted by his attempt than the boys. Feeling her shiver against him, he said softly, 'Let's go back to the fire. This is a night to be in, not out. I'm glad we decided not to go to church.'
'I wanted to be here, in our home,' said Gemma, curling up in the corner of the sofa. Geordie jumped up beside her and rested his head on her knee with a contented groan, making them both laugh.
Geordie had made it abundantly clear that he was Gemma's dog. He was friendly and affectionate with everyone else- he'd even made inroads with Sid- but Gemma he followed from room to room, watching her with alert adoration.
'Does that mean that you're happy?'
'Utterly contented. Well, almost…' He saw the flash of her smile in the firelight. 'I was looking at the nursery, after I put Toby to bed, and thinking about cots.'
'Cots?'
'Toby never had a proper cot, just a bassinet, then one of those portable cots you use for traveling. I want a real nursery for this baby, with all the trimmings.'
'A boy nursery or a girl nursery?'
'Don't be sly. I'm not going to admit a preference.'
'There's nothing wrong with having a wish, you know. It won't jinx you. Or make you love the baby any less if it turns out to be the opposite.'
'It makes me feel disloyal, somehow. But if you really want to know, I'd like a girl. I dream of little girls. I stop and look at little girls' clothes in the shops.'
'I suspected as much.'
'What about you, then?'
'A girl, of course, if only to balance out the household a bit. Shall we talk about names?'
Gemma's hand went to her belly in the protective gesture that tugged at his heart. 'No… It's too soon. I-'
The phone rang, shattering their peace like glass breaking.
'Damn.' A glance at his watch told him it was almost eleven, and his heart sank. There was never a good reason for the phone to ring this time of night.
It was worse than he feared. He came back into the firelit room, knowing Gemma's face would be tense with waiting, hating to be the one to tell her.
'It's Karl Arrowood. He's been murdered.'
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A lot of laws came in the mid-sixties the police got very wise. The authorities started to try and tidy up the streets. But like everything else, the war was over and they had to take cognizance of the environment. They had to clean up the act, bring it back to its imperial grandeur. We already knew what it was all about.
– Charlie Phillips and Mike Phillips,
from
Murdered? Where?'
'In his drive.'
'Oh, God.' Gemma stood, and Geordie jumped down from the sofa, his cocker spaniel brow furrowed at her tone. 'Surely not the same way?'
'It looks like it,' Kincaid told her. 'They're waiting for us.'
'I'll change. You wake Kit and tell him what's happening. Will he be all right on his own with Toby?'
'I don't know that we've much choice, have we?'
Kit sat up in bed, his fair hair sticking up like sprouts. 'Of course I'll be okay,' he said, indignant. 'But do you really have to go, on Christmas?'
'Yes. I'm sorry. But Father Christmas has been and left your stockings on the hearth. They were too heavy for him to lug all the way up the stairs.'
Kit rolled his eyes at the fiction, and Kincaid winked. 'If we're not back when Toby wakes up, you can take him downstairs. In the meantime, we'll both have our mobiles if you need anything.' He tousled Kit's hair. Much to his surprise, the boy reached out and pressed his hand for a moment before letting it go.
Kincaid, deeply moved, was tempted to say, 'I love you,' but resisted the impulse. He didn't dare jeopardize the delicate emotional balance they had achieved.
Instead, he took Kit's hand and pulled him out of bed. 'Come and look, son, before you go back to sleep. It's going to be a white Christmas.'
The crime scene looked much as it had ten days earlier, except for the white frosting of snow. Gemma stamped against the cold as Gerry Franks came up to them.
'Bloody snow,' Franks groused. 'Ruins the bloody crime scene. It's hopeless.' He was obviously no happier at being dragged out on Christmas Eve than they were, and he gave them a scathing look that included them in his displeasure.
The corpse itself had been protected with a makeshift shelter, but a fine sifting of powder lay beneath the covered area. Emergency lighting had been set up round the perimeter of the scene. 'Any idea how long he's been here?' Gemma asked.
'My guess, from the state of the ground and the look of the blood, is two to three hours. Pathologist's on her way.'
'Who found him?'
'The next-door neighbor, Mrs. Du Ray. She wants to talk to you- won't give her statement to anyone else.' This bit of information seemed to sour Franks's disposition even further.
'All right,' said Gemma. 'But first we need a look at the body.'
Once suited up, she and Kincaid made their way round the parked Mercedes. Gemma's sense of deja vu intensified. There was only one car in the drive. Had Karl Arrowood already disposed of his murdered wife's?
The body lay a few feet in front of the car, half on its side. There were smudges in the snow near his hands and feet, as if he'd attempted to crawl towards the house. Kneeling, Gemma could see that the blood from his wounds had congealed into dark and syrupy clots, and she couldn't help but remember that Arrowood had been terrified at the sight of blood.
He had not been wearing an overcoat, in spite of the cold, but the dark jacket of his suit had been torn away at the front. His tie had been slashed loose; his once-white shirt was missing its top buttons where it had apparently been ripped open from the collar.
'He fought,' she said to Kincaid, who knelt beside her.
'Multiple wounds in the throat, rather than a single clean cut,' Kincaid agreed. He reached out with a gloved finger and moved aside the fabric of the shirt. 'It's hard to tell with so much blood, but it looks as though there might have been an attempt at mutilating the chest.'
'Why slash a man's chest? And if that was the killer's intent, why didn't he finish the job?'
'Perhaps he was interrupted,' Kincaid mused. 'Or perhaps he was afraid that the struggle had attracted attention. I can tell you one thing, though- if whoever did this managed to get home without notice, he had to have
