Dreaming of the Bones (2 page)

Gemma James put down the pen and wiggled her fingers, then raised her hand to her mouth to cover a yawn. She’d never thought she’d get her report finished, and now the tension flowed from her muscles. It had been a hard day, at the end of a difficult case, yet she felt a surprising surge of contentment. She sat curled at one end of
Duncan Kincaid’s sofa while he occupied the other. He’d shed his jacket, unbuttoned his collar, pulled down the knot on his tie, and he wrote with his legs stretched out, feet rather precariously balanced on the coffee table between the empty containers from the Chinese take-away.

Sid took up all the intervening sofa space, stretched on his back, eyes half-slitted, an advert for feline contentment. Gemma reached out to scratch the cat’s exposed stomach, and at her movement Kincaid looked up and smiled. “Finished, love?” he asked, and when she nodded he added, “You’d think I’d learn not to nitpick. You always beat me.”

She grinned. “It’s calculated. Can’t let you get the upper hand too often.” Yawning again, she glanced at her watch. “Oh, Lord, is that the time? I must go.” She swung her feet to the floor and slid them into her shoes.

Kincaid put his papers on the coffee table, gently deposited Sid on the floor, and slid over next to Gemma. “Don’t be daft. Hazel’s not expecting you, and you’ll not get any good mum awards for waking Toby just to carry him home in the middle of the night.” With his right hand he began kneading Gemma’s back, just below the shoulder blades. “You’ve got knots again.”

“Ouch … Mmmm … That’s not fair.” Gemma gave a halfhearted protest as she turned slightly away from him, allowing him better access to the tender spot.

“Of course it is.” He scooted a bit closer and moved his hand to the back of her neck. “You can go first thing in the morning, give Toby his breakfast. And in the meantime—” The telephone rang and Kincaid froze, fingers resting lightly on Gemma’s shoulder. “Bloody hell.”

Gemma groaned. “Oh, no. Not another one, not tonight. Surely someone else can take it.” But she reached for her handbag and made sure her beeper was switched on.

“Might as well know the worst, I suppose.” With a sigh Kincaid pushed himself up from the sofa and went to the kitchen. Gemma heard him say brusquely, “Kincaid,” after he lifted the cordless phone from its cradle, then with puzzled intonation, “Yes? Hullo?”

Wrong number, thought Gemma, sinking back into the cushions.
But Kincaid came into the sitting room, phone still held to his ear, his brow creased in a frown.

“Yes,” he said, then, “No, that’s quite all right. I was just surprised. It
has
been a long time,” he added, a touch of irony in his voice. He walked to the balcony door and pulled aside the curtain, looking into the night as he listened. Gemma could see the tension in the line of his back. “Yes, I’m well, thanks. But I don’t see how I can possibly help you. If it’s a police matter, you should call your local—” He listened once more, the pause longer this time. Gemma sat forwards, a tingle of apprehension running through her body.

“All right,” he said finally, giving in to some entreaty. “Right. Hang on.” Coming back to the coffee table, he picked up his notepad and scribbled something Gemma couldn’t decipher upside down. “Right. On Sunday, then. Good-bye.” He pressed the disconnect button and stood looking at Gemma, phone in hand as if he didn’t know what to do with it.

Gemma could contain herself no longer. “Who was it?”

Kincaid raised his eyebrow and gave her a lopsided smile. “My ex-wife.”

CHAPTER
2

I only know that you may lie
Day-long and watch the Cambridge sky,
And, flower-lulled in sleepy grass,
Hear the cool lapse of hours pass,
Until the centuries blend and blur
In Grantchester, in Grantchester …

R
UPERT
B
ROOKE
,
from “The Old Vicarage,
Grantchester”

Following Vic’s directions, Kincaid left the M11 at Junction 12, just before Cambridge, and took the Grantchester Road from the roundabout. The Cambridgeshire sky spread wide before him in a clear light, for the April day had dawned exceptionally mild. He’d tried to persuade Gemma to change her mind and come with him, but she’d been adamant, saying she’d planned to take Toby to her parents. They’d had their Sunday breakfast and tidied up, and she’d kissed him when he’d left her Islington flat, but he felt some discomfort between them. Well, he’d see what Vic wanted—it seemed the least he could do for courtesy’s sake, if nothing else—then that would be that.

He slowed as the first straggling houses appeared, then soon the road became a neatly tended village street. At the T-junction he turned right, into the High Street as Vic had told him, watching carefully for the house on his left. “You can’t miss it,” she’d said, a smile in her voice. “You’ll see.” And almost immediately he did, for
it was a higgledy-piggledy tile-roofed house washed in bright Suffolk pink, surrounded by the new growth of roses.

Kincaid pulled into the graveled area in front of the detached garage, stopped the car, and got out, and it was only then that he realized he had absolutely no idea what he was going to say to her. He’d spent the journey remembering Vic as she’d been when he’d first known her. Her reserve had intrigued him—he’d taken it for shyness—and he’d found the seriousness with which she approached her studies endearing, even amusing. “Bloody arrogant, condescending idiot,” he said aloud, his mouth twisting with disgust. He’d assumed knowledge of her that he hadn’t earned, and had paid the consequences when she left him without a word. And now, more than ever, they were two strangers, made more so by the awkward history between them.

How had she changed, he wondered. Would he even recognize her?

Then the side door of the house opened and set his fears to rest, for her face was as familiar as his own. She came out to him, her plimsolled feet crunching on the gravel, and took his hand as easily as if they had parted on good terms only yesterday. “Duncan. Thanks so much for coming.” She tilted her head to one side, considering him as she kept hold of his hand. “I’d swear you haven’t changed a bit.”

Finding his tongue with an effort, Kincaid said, “Nor have you, Vic. You look wonderful.” She looked tired, he thought, and too thin, perhaps even a little unwell. A network of tiny lines had begun forming round her eyes, and the creases between her nose and the outer corners of her mouth stood out sharply. But her hair, though it fell now to her shoulders rather than the small of her back, was still flax fair, and if she wore more somber colors than the pastels he remembered, they gave her a dignity which suited her.

“It
has
been a long time,” she said, smiling, and he realized he’d been staring.

“Sorry. It’s just… I don’t quite know what to say and I think I’m making an utter fool of myself. Is there an etiquette manual for this sort of situation?” In the moment’s silence following his words, birdsong swelled from tree and thicket, a raucous chorus, and a coal tit whizzed past his head, scolding.

Vic laughed. “We could always invent one. Why don’t I start by inviting you in. Your car should be all right with the top down, at least for a bit.”

Kincaid remembered suddenly that his acquisition of the Midget had caused one of their final conflicts, but Vic had glanced at the car without any sign of recognition. He’d opened his mouth to offer to park it elsewhere when he saw a black-and-white flash and felt the hair stir on the top of his head as the coal tit flew another kamikaze run.

“Come on,” Vic said, turning towards the house. “You’d better dive for cover while you can.” Over her shoulder she added, “It’s such a lovely day, I’ve set lunch out in the garden. I hope you don’t mind.”

He followed her into the house and through a sitting room, where he had a fleeting impression of pale gold walls and faded chintzes, and of a grouping of silver-framed portraits on a side table; then she led him out through French doors onto a stone-flagged terrace. The garden sloped away from the house, and beyond the low wall at its end he could see a meadow, then a curving line of trees that looked as though it marked the course of a river.

“Grantchester gets its name from ‘Granta,’ the old name for the Cam,” Vic said, pointing towards the river.

“The garden’s lovely.” Dandelions and wild onions sprang up in the shaggy lawn, but there were recent signs of prep work in the beds, and against the low wall stood the garden’s crowning glory—an immense old crab apple tree, covered with bright pink blossoms.

Vic gave him the sideways glance he remembered as she gestured towards one of the chairs she’d pulled up to an ironwork table. “Here, sit down. That’s a bit generous of you. My friend Nathan says the garden’s a disgrace, but I’m not a real gardener. I just like to come out and dig in the dirt on nice days—it’s my alternative to tranquilizers.”

“I seem to remember that you couldn’t keep alive a potted plant. Or cook,” he added as he examined the lunch she’d laid out on the table—cheese, cold salads, olives, wholemeal bread, and a bottle of white wine.

Vic shrugged. “People change. And I still can’t cook,” she said with a flash of a smile, “even if I had the time. But I
can
shop, and
I’ve learned to make the most of that.” She filled their glasses, then raised hers in salute. “Here’s to progress. And old friends.”

Friends?
Kincaid thought. They had been lovers, adversaries, flatmates—but never that. Perhaps it was not too late. He lifted his glass and drank. When he had filled his plate and tasted the potato salad, he ventured, “You haven’t told me anything about yourself, about your life. The photos …” He nodded towards the sitting room doors. The man had been thin and bearded, the boy fair and sturdy. He stole a glance at Vic’s left hand, saw the faint pale mark circling her fourth finger.

She looked away as she drank some of her wine, then concentrated on a piece of bread as she buttered it. “I’m Victoria McClellan now.
Doctor
McClellan. I’m a fellow at All Saints’, and I’m a Faculty teaching officer, specializing in twentieth-century poets. That gives me more time to pursue my own work.”

“Faculty?” Kincaid said a bit vaguely. “Poets?”

“The University English Faculty. You do remember my Ph.D. thesis on the effect of the Great War on English poetry?” Vic said with the first hint of sharpness he’d heard. “The one I was struggling with when we were married?”

Kincaid made an effort to redeem himself. “That’s what you wanted, then. I’m glad for you.” Seeing that Vic still looked annoyed, he blundered on. “But I’d have thought two jobs would have meant more work, not less. You’re saying you work for the University and for your college, right? Wouldn’t you be better off to do one or the other?”

Vic gave him a pitying look. “That’s not the way it works. Being a college fellow is a bit like indentured servitude. They pay your salary and they call the shots—they can stick you with a backbreaking load of supervisions and you have no recourse. But if you’re hired by a University Faculty, well, that gives you some clout—at a certain point you can tell your college to go stuff itself. Politely, of course,” she added with a gleam of returning good humor.

“And that’s what you’ve done?” Kincaid asked. “Politely, of course.”

Vic took a sip of her wine and settled back in her chair, looking suddenly tired. “It’s not quite that simple. But yes, I suppose you could say that.”

When she didn’t pursue the topic further, Kincaid ventured, “And your husband? Is he a lecturer as well?” He kept his voice lightly even, a friendly inquiry one might make to an acquaintance.

“Ian’s at Trinity. Political science. But he’s away on sabbatical just now, writing a book about the division of the Georgian states.” Vic put down her bread and met Kincaid’s eyes. “I don’t know why I’m beating about the bush. The thing is, he’s writing this book about Russia from the south of France, and he just happened to take one of his graduate students with him. Female. In the note he left me he said he thought he must be having his midlife crisis.” She gave him a tight smile. “He asked me to be patient.”

At least, Kincaid thought, he left you a note. He said, “I’m sorry. It must be difficult for you.”

Vic drank again and picked at a bit of salad. “It’s Kit, really. Most days he’s furious with Ian. Occasionally he’s angry with me, as if it were my fault Ian left. Maybe it is—I don’t know.”

“Is that why you called me? You need help finding Ian?”

She gave a startled laugh. “That would be bloody cheek! Is that what you thought?” When he didn’t answer, she said, “I’m sorry, Duncan. I never meant to give you that impression. What I wanted to talk to you about has nothing to do with Ian at all.”

“It’s that damned McClellan woman again,” said Darcy Eliot as he unfolded the damask napkin and laid it carefully across his lap. “As if it weren’t enough to have to put up with her at College
and
in the Faculty, she came round to my rooms yesterday to pester me with her tedious questions. Gave me the most frightful headache, I can tell you.” He paused while pouring himself a glass of wine, then sipped and rolled it round his mouth with satisfaction. His mother’s Mersault was excellent, almost as good, in fact, as the store All Saints’ set aside for its Senior Fellows. “If I’d had my way, she’d never have been given a Faculty position, but Iris absolutely
dotes
on her. What can you do with all these bloody—” With his tongue loosened by several glasses of his mother’s equally excellent sherry before their ritual Sunday lunch, he’d been about to say, “With all these bloody women about the place,” but a look at his mother’s raised eyebrow brought him to a full
stop. “Never mind,” he amended hastily, burying his nose in his wine again.

“Darcy, darling,” said Dame Margery Lester as she ladled out the soup Grace had left in a tureen on the table, “I’ve met Victoria McClellan on several occasions and I thought her quite enchanting.” Margery Lester’s voice was as silvery as the hair she swept back in a classic chignon, and although she was well into her seventies, it sometimes seemed to her son that she had
condensed
rather than aged. The qualities that made Margery uniquely herself—her keen intelligence, her self-assurance, her dedication to her craft—all these seemed to have become more solid as her body inevitably diminished.