peaceful sway.
'That was a fortuitous wrong-turning. Come on.' Kincaid turned and began walking along the railing. 'Too bad fate doesn't prepare you for these little gifts. We should have brought a picnic.' He paused as Gemma stopped and turned her face up to the sun, her eyes half closed. 'So what's up?'
Sighing, she answered without looking at him. 'Privilege. The place reeked of privilege. Generations of it, progressive or not. I don't expect you to understand.' She faced him, arms folded across her chest, and in the light he could see gold flecks in the hazel irises of her eyes. 'Money by itself doesn't faze me. The Leveson-Gowers, for instance-they may be rolling in the stuff but they're trash. They've no taste, and I can beat them at their own game. It's the in-bred assurance that makes my skin crawl-that instinctive knowledge of the right thing to say, the right thing to do. And it's as natural to you as breathing.'
'I'm no public school product. You know that, Gemma. My parents considered themselves much too liberal to send their children to such a bastion of conservatism, even if they could have afforded it. They thought the local comprehensive was good enough for us, and I dare say it was.' He put his hands in his pockets and moved on. Gemma fell in step with him again, and when she didn't respond he continued. 'There's something else, isn't there? You usually take on the ranks of male privilege without turning a hair. I've seen you hold your own at the Yard, and stomp on a few toes while you're at it.'
'That's different,' she shot back at him. 'I know the rules.' Then she smiled a little sheepishly. 'I suppose I am a bit on the defensive today. Sorry. Shouldn't take it out on you just because you fit the general description.'
'Is it Rob?' Kincaid asked noncommittally. He had gathered from her occasional dropped comments that her ex-husband showed little interest in Toby or in maintaining a cordial relationship, and he hadn't liked to pry further.
The pavement narrowed to a single-file width on the bank's edge. Gemma stopped and looked out across the river, resting her hands on the railing's last iron post. 'I think he's skipped out on me. No checks, no phone, no forwarding address. Brilliant deduction.'
'Have you tried to trace him?'
'As much as I could without raising eyebrows in the department. I've called in some favors.' She paused, her knuckles white where she gripped the post. 'The bastard! I try not to feel angry but sometimes it seeps through the cracks. How could he do this to us?'
Kincaid waited until she blew out her breath in a gusty sigh and her hands relaxed their stranglehold on the post. 'Except he didn't,' she said. 'I did. I chose to marry Rob James against my better judgement and now I'm reaping the consequences. Complaining about it doesn't do a bloody bit of good, and besides, we can't spend our lives second-guessing every decision. We just do the best we can at the time.'
'And there's Toby,' Kincaid said gently.
'Yes. I can't imagine my life without Toby. But that brings me right back to the starting point-how am I going to manage?'
'Surely-'
'Toby's care is eating me up. It's bad enough even under ordinary circumstances, but when I work long hours on a case… I just barely made ends meet as it was.'
'Can you cut corners anywhere else?' He kept his tone as casual as he could, sensing that if he displayed the sympathy he felt, Gemma wouldn't feel comfortable later with having confided in him.
'Rob insisted on buying the house when interest was high, an investment for our future.' Her smile was bitter. 'A bloody great millstone around my neck is more like it, and a tatty one at that. Rob was full of ideas for all these do-it-yourself projects-of course they never got-' Stopping, she rubbed her face with both hands. 'Oh god, just listen to me. And I said I wouldn't take it out on you. I'm sorry.' She smiled, this time ruefully. 'I've seen enough people pour out their life stories to you without any encouragement. I should be more wary.'
'What are you going to do, Gemma?'
'I don't know. My mum's offered to help out with Toby-'
'That's great. That would-'
She was already shaking her head. 'I don't want to be obligated to them. I've managed on my own since I left school and I don't intend-'
'So who suffers for your stubbornness? Toby? Don't you think refusing help in a really rough spot is a kind of false pride?'
'It's not just that. It's… They don't really approve of what I do.' A cloud covered the sun and Gemma hugged her arms against her chest. The wind had risen, driving tiny ripples along the surface of the water. 'I'm afraid they'll pass that along to Toby, not deliberately, but that he'll pick it up in insidious little ways.
Kincaid put his hand on her elbow and turned her toward the car. 'Let's go back.' Through the soft flesh of her arm he felt firm, delicate bone, and a faint shiver as the wind whipped into their faces. He dropped his hand. 'Give yourself credit, Gemma. He's your son, and your influence is stronger than that.' He smiled a little wickedly at her doubtful expression. 'And you might give them a little credit as well-after all, they raised you and you didn't turn out too badly.'
Chapter Seventeen
Kincaid woke before dawn on Friday morning. He'd not drawn his curtains the night before, and he lay in bed watching the faint gray light steal into the eastern sky. The days of the past week ran through his mind, each one toppling the next like falling dominoes, and he felt no nearer to solving the riddle of Jasmine's death than he'd been a week ago. Frustration finally drove him to throw off the covers, but shower, toast, and coffee didn't take the edge off his nagging sense of failure.
It would be easy enough to nominate Roger Leveson-Gower as the most likely candidate, but he had not one smidgen of hard evidence. And no matter how well Roger might fit the emotional profile of a murderer, it didn't feel right The idea of Jasmine complacently letting someone she didn't know and wouldn't have been at all likely to trust give her a fatal dose of morphine was a logical stumbling block Kincaid couldn't get over.
He dawdled over shaving and dressing, but when he reached the street the milk float was just making its silent rounds and no sounds of slamming doors and starting cars marred Carlingford Road's early morning repose. The sky was clear, the air still, and on impulse he pulled the tarp from the Midget. He loved driving through London late at night or early in the morning, when the traffic was at its ebb. It gave him a sense of being at peace with the city, of being a part of it rather than at war with it.
A stack of slick, flimsy fax paper filled his in-tray. Kincaid took possession of his own chair, having arrived well before Gemma, and began to read.
Major Harley Keith had indeed been posted to India just after the War, in 1945, sporting a new commission and a new bride. He'd been stationed in Calcutta during the outbreak of 1946, and had lost both wife and baby daughter in the rioting. From what Kincaid could deduce from the unfamiliar military jargon, Keith's promotion had been minimal after that time, a once promising career stalled in mediocrity. Posted back to Britain in 1948, the Major seemed to have spent the remainder of his career pushing paper for senior officers.
Kincaid sighed and reached for the next sheet in the pile. A brief report from Dorset Constabulary informed him that one Timothy Franklin had been institutionalized twenty-five years previously in the Farrington Center for Mental Health, or as it had previously been known, the Farrington Asylum. Committal papers had been signed by Althea Franklin, the patient's mother. Franklin's condition had been listed upon admittance as schizophrenic, and he had never been released. Althea Franklin had died in Bladen Valley in 1977.
A handwritten note added by the officer compiling the report informed Kincaid that the Farrington Center was two miles north of Dorchester and a bit hard to find.
Gemma came in as he was finishing the report and his second cup of coffee. Disappointment flashed across her face before she smiled and said, 'You're bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this morning, Sir.'
'Beat you to it, didn't I?' A silly game of one-upmanship, but he enjoyed it, and he contrived to lose more often
