Dreaming of the Bones (15 page)

Vic rolled her eyes at Gemma. “Is he as liberated as he thinks he is?”

“Not half.” Gemma smiled at her and a spark of understanding passed between them.

“If you ladies have finished amusing yourselves at my expense … perhaps we could get on with things.” Kincaid sipped at his cold tea and grimaced. “Vic—”

“Let me make another pot,” Vic said, reaching for the teapot, but he glanced at his watch and shook his head.

“We’d better be getting back. Toby will have worn out his welcome at Gemma’s parents’, I’m afraid.”

Vic sat back in her chair and folded her hands in her lap, like a child awaiting bad news.

Kincaid cleared his throat. “Vic, I’ll agree with you that there are things about Lydia Brooke’s death that seem odd, but I simply don’t know what we can do about it at this point. It’s all supposition, and the police won’t even consider reopening the case without some sort of hard evidence.”

When she didn’t respond, he said, “One of the things I’ve learned over the years in police work is that sometimes we just can’t know all the answers—life doesn’t always tidy itself into neat little compartments. It’s frustrating and infuriating, but if you don’t learn when to let go, you can’t stay in the job.”

“Is that what you’re saying I should do? Let it go?”

He nodded. “Write a good book about Lydia and about her work. It’s the story that counts, not how it ends.” Shrugging apologetically, he added, “I’m sorry. I don’t want to disappoint you, but I don’t know what else to suggest.”

Vic sat quite still, her face blank with disbelief. After a moment she seemed to collect herself. “I don’t know what I expected,” she said, and gave him a brittle smile. “It was kind of you to listen to me, and to take as much trouble as you have.”

“Vic—”

“Don’t worry, Duncan. I know you mean well. You’ve been a great help, really. Not to mention the fact that your visit to the Faculty will fuel the office gossip for months. I’m sure they’ve all paid up their outstanding parking tickets, just in case you come back.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, sounding a bit injured. “I didn’t mean to make things difficult for you.”

“I should be used to difficult by now. I can’t imagine the days when I thought academia would provide a peaceful life. Do you mind if I keep your notes?”

“Not at all.”

She scooped the pages from his notebook off the lamp table and added them to the neat stack in her lap. “Will you get in trouble with your mates if I use this information in the book?”

“I’m not going to worry about it.” Kincaid’s smile held a hint of acid. “Besides, you know policemen don’t read.”

“Too right,” Vic said, making a visible effort to parry the thrust lightly. “Well, if you must go, I’ll see you out.”

In the hall, she stopped and called out to Kit.

“Just a sec,” he yelled back, and a moment later appeared from the office. “I had to pause it,” he explained. “I made it all the way to the seventh level.”

“What does that mean?” asked Gemma.

“It means I’m lean and mean and one cool dude.” Kit swaggered. “And I toasted a whole platoon of aliens.”

“Kit!” Vic tousled his hair. “You sound like some character in a bad American film. I think we’ll have to cut back on the videos.”

Ignoring this for the empty threat it undoubtedly was, Kit caught up to Kincaid at the door. “Can I look at your car? Mum says it’s awful, so it must be pretty cool.”

“Sure. You can even start it.” They went out and walked across the graveled drive to the Midget.

Gemma and Vic stood on the porch, watching them. The rain had stopped, and a few gaps in the western clouds hinted at a glorious sunset. “Is Toby your son?” asked Vic.

“He’s three. And he already loves cars. Must be genetic.”

“I know. And to think I used to believe all that stuff about raising your children free of gender stereotypes.” She laid light fingers on Gemma’s arm. “I’m glad you came.”

The Midget’s engine sputtered to life. Kit jumped out of the driver’s seat and ran across to them. “It’s really neat, Mum. Can we get one like it? Our car is
so
boring.”

Vic laughed. “I like boring.”

Kincaid had followed Kit and now shook his hand. “I’ll sell it to
you when you’re sixteen.” He pecked Vic on the cheek, then took Gemma by the elbow. “’Bye, thanks for the tea.”

There was something in Vic’s stance, thought Gemma, looking back as they pulled away, that could be read as easily as words on a page—an invisible angle of determination. Liking the pattern the words made in her mind, she repeated them to herself, and she felt an odd quickening inside her, as if something stirred in its sleep.

By the time they reached the motorway the fissures in the clouds had widened, revealing the sunset in full hue. Kincaid always thought of sunsets as feminine, and this one was particularly voluptuous, with rosy-gold billows of cloud forming shapes reminiscent of reclining Rubenesque nudes. He smiled at his metaphor and glanced at Gemma, wondering if she’d accuse him of sexism if he shared it with her.

She sat silently beside him, watching the sky, not even complaining, for once, about his car. He thought about asking her what she was thinking, but just then a passing lorry spattered sludge on the windscreen, and fighting its back draft while momentarily blinded required all his attention. When he could see again, he put a piano cassette in the tape player and concentrated on his driving.

They found the lights switched on in Gemma’s flat and a vase of daffodils on the table. Beside it lay a note from Hazel, a pot of beans, and a loaf of homemade bread. “Have a good feed,” the note read. “Gourmet beans on toast.”

“I see your fairy godmother’s been,” said Kincaid, dipping a finger into the still warm beans for a taste. “If she weren’t already taken, I’d snatch her in a minute.”

“She wouldn’t have you,” Gemma said equably. “Just count yourself lucky to get some of the fringe benefits.”

When Toby had been fed and put to bed, and they’d finished up the last of their toast and tea, Kincaid rolled up his shirtsleeves. “I’ll do the washing up,” he offered, “if I can have a glass of wine. I could swim in the tea I’ve drunk today.”

“Red or white?” Gemma stood on tiptoe as she reached for the glasses in the cupboard.

He admired the elongated line of her body as she stretched, and the curves hinted at beneath the bulk of her jumper. Stepping up behind her, he laid his hands lightly on her waist. “Mmmm, red, I think.”

Gemma slipped out of his grasp with an abstracted smile. When she’d poured them both a glass of burgundy, she cleared the dishes from the half-moon table while he ran hot water and squirted soap in the basin.

“Sit,” he ordered her as he began the soaping and rinsing. “There’s not room for us both in here—or there is, but it’s quite distracting.” When this mildly flirtatious comment received no response, he looked round as much as his dripping hands would allow. She sat in one of the slatted chairs at the table, booted feet stretched out before her, staring into the wineglass cradled in her lap. He started to speak, then thought better of it, slotting the last of the plates into the drying rack before he wiped his hands and turned to her.

“Gemma, what is it?” he asked, taking the other chair so that he could look directly into her face. “You’ve hardly said a word since we left Cambridge.”

“Oh.” She looked at him as if surprised to find him there. “I’m sorry. I was just thinking.”

“So I gathered. Care to elaborate?”

She frowned. “I’m not sure. I mean, I’m not quite sure I’ve worked out how to put it into words.”

With some trepidation, he asked, “Is this about Vic?” He’d thought taking Gemma with him the best way to allay her fears, but perhaps it had been a mistake.

To his surprise, the corners of Gemma’s mouth turned up in a smile. “I didn’t expect to like her, you know, but I did. Even though there’s still a connection between the two of you, I found I didn’t mind. I don’t know why I was so frightened of it, or why I expected to be so intimidated by her.”

“Intimidated by Vic? Why?”

Hesitating, Gemma looked away from him, then said slowly, “You know I did my A levels, but then I decided on the Academy rather than University. I thought I wouldn’t be able to talk to her—that we wouldn’t have a thing in common. Or worse, that she’d talk down to me, be all smug about her education and her career.”

“Why on earth should she—”

“No, wait, let me finish.” Gemma gave him a quelling look, her brows drawn together again. “It didn’t turn out that way at all. The things she said made sense to me, and the funny thing is, I think I understood something you didn’t.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked, thoroughly puzzled now.

“You told her that the end of her book about Lydia didn’t matter. You didn’t see that it’s the end that gives the book its truth.” He must have looked blank, because she shook her head in frustration. “Look at it this way. Vic’s right about women needing stories about other women’s accomplishments. Do you know how much it would have meant to me when I started out in the Met if I’d had another woman’s experience to guide me?

“There were less than a handful of female DCIs then, and they were playing by men’s rules. But I wanted something different. I thought that I could be a good police officer—maybe even a
better
police officer—
because
I’m a woman, not in spite of it, and there were times, especially in the beginning, that I almost gave up. There was nobody to reassure me that I had something special to offer, that I wasn’t crazy, that it could be done.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, taken aback by her intensity. “I didn’t know that’s how you felt. You’ve never said.”

“Those aren’t things that are considered
appropriate
to say.” Her smile held little humor. “And that makes other women’s stories even more important, including Lydia’s. But if Lydia killed herself, it changes her story. I’m not saying that it makes it invalid, but it does make it a
different
story.”

“I don’t understand. Surely she would still have accomplished the same things?”

“But they wouldn’t matter in the same way. Suicide is an admission of defeat. It tells us that she couldn’t put all the pieces of her dream together, and if
she
couldn’t, maybe we can’t, either.”

“Are you saying I shouldn’t have told Vic to leave it alone?”

Gemma took a belated sip of her wine. “Not exactly. I’m saying that it doesn’t matter what you said, because Vic needs Lydia not to have committed suicide, and she
can’t
let it go. And you didn’t see that.”

“What else could I have done?” he said defensively, feeling as
though he’d been tried and found wanting. “You were the one who thought I shouldn’t bother with it at all.”

Shrugging, Gemma said, “I’m allowed to change my mind, aren’t I?”

Newnham
30 January 1963
Dearest Mummy
,

Sometimes I think this poetry is a curse, not a gift. The words haunt me when I should be sleeping, haunt me when I should be working, and they’re black, cold beasts I can’t tame into acceptable shapes. Six rejections just this week, without even a hint of encouragement. Why can’t I give it up, concentrate on my studies?

Last term’s workload was difficult—this term’s may be insurmountable. If I had been better prepared I might not be floundering so now, trying to make up for the lack of depth and breadth in my reading. And what shall I do with this degree, if I somehow manage to earn one of any distinction? Teach sixth-form girls in some dreary comprehensive, in the hopes that one of them will possess the gift I lacked?

Do you know how many women manage to publish poetry? And of the few that do, most have their work reviled by the critics for being too pretty, too feminine, but if they write anything else it’s said to be unsuitable. If I’d had any sense. I’d have taken that clerk’s job in the Brighton Woolworth’s. I’d be taking the bus home in the rain, warm and dry on the upper deck, not cycling everywhere through slush and sludge, rain cape and boots perpetually soaked. I’d have met some nice fellow and I’d go to the cinema with him on Fridays, and if he were persistent enough I might bring him home for tea. Marriage and babies would lurk in the offing, and these spiky thoughts would not jostle so in my head
.

Oh, poor Mummy, forgive me this outpouring of misery. I feel small and mean, burdening you with it, but I simply couldn’t go on without the hope of comfort. Tell me these feelings will pass, that the rain will stop, that my dreadful cold will go away, that someone, somewhere, will publish one of my poems
.

Your Lydia

CHAPTER
7

Tenderly, day that I have loved, I close your eyes,

And smooth your quiet brow, and fold your thin

dead hands.

R
UPERT
B
ROOKE
,
from “Day That I Have Loved”

Vic often thought that this was her favorite time, Kit asleep, the house still and quiet except for the occasional creak as it breathed. She sat at the kitchen table with a cup of milk hot from the microwave, for once neither reading nor writing, but simply thinking about her day. This was a habit begun in the last years with Ian as a way of avoiding bed until she knew he was asleep, and now enjoyed for its own sake.

They’d never had the money to do the kitchen up properly, so she’d got creative with paint and jumble sale finds, discovering an unexpected sense of pleasure in the process. Blue on the cabinets, sunflower yellow on the rough plaster walls, junk shop jugs and pitchers on the worktops and windowsill. The Welsh dresser with its blue-and-yellow Italian pottery she’d found for a song at an estate sale, along with the small oak, drop-leaf table and her Tiffany lamp. At least she always thought of it as her Tiffany lamp—it was probably a cheap imitation, but she meant to have it valued some day, just in case.