Water Like a Stone (12 page)

Annie owned a modern copy, of course, and had reread it many times for its lyrical prose and haunting evocation of bygone days on the canals, but she had never seen an original edition. How like Roger to have found it for her—she would have to ring and thank him. Perhaps she’d even suggest they meet for a holiday meal.

Slowly, she leafed through the volume, examining the woodcuts that prefaced each chapter. The artist, Denys Watkins-Pitchford, had captured the essence of life on the canals with a lovely economy of shape and line. She remembered reading in her modern edition that the drawings had been based on photographs taken by Angela Rolt, Tom’s wife.

There was a traditional Buckby water can, the top lock at Foxton, a heron poised in marshy grass, the long-vanished warehouse that had spanned the Shropshire Union Canal at Barbridge…As Annie gazed at the images, they brought back all the enchantment she had felt at her first introduction to boating life, and that she had owed entirely to her contact with Gabriel Wain and his family.

Of course, she had seen the canals and boats all her life, had occasionally walked a towpath or stopped to watch a boat going through
a lock at Audlem. But she had never set foot on a narrowboat until the day she had been sent to interview the Wains.

How odd that she should have seen them again just yesterday, after all these years. The worry that had nagged at her then returned with full force. The system had betrayed the Wains, and she had failed to protect them.

Her own disillusionment was still sour in her mouth. She had been driven to social work by a profound guilt because of her own privileged upbringing, and by a hope that she could fill a void in herself by giving something to others. But over the years the hopelessness of the work had eaten away her youthful optimism. She saw so much pain and misery and cruelty that she felt the weight of it would crush her, all her actions a remedy as futile as trying to stem a flood with a finger in the dike.

When a child she’d had removed from his own family had died from abuse inflicted by his foster father, she had wondered how long she could go on. Then what had happened to the Wains had been the last straw.

She had walked away, shutting herself off from human contact like a crab crawling into its shell, but the damage had gone on around her. Rowan Wain and her family were still at risk.

Could Annie live with herself if she turned away again? But if she tried to help them, had she anything to offer? Had she the strength to emerge from her self-imposed cocoon?

The revelation came suddenly. It didn’t matter whether or not she was up to the task, or whether her infinitesimal actions would make a dent in the world’s ills. All that counted was that she should act.

As Babcock squelched across the rutted ice in the hospital car park, he passed Dr. Elsworthy’s Morris Minor in the section reserved for doctors’ vehicles. From the rear seat, the dog’s head rose like a monolithic monster emerging from the deep. The beast gave him a distant and fathomless stare, then looked away, as if it had assessed him and found him wanting, before sinking out of sight once more. No wonder the doctor had no use for anything as modern as a car with an alarm system, Babcock thought as he gave both dog and vehicle a wide berth. She was more likely to be sued by a prospective burglar complaining of heart failure than to have her car violated.

The sight of his sergeant, Kevin Rasansky, leaning against the wall near the morgue entrance was only slightly more heartening.

“Morning, boss. Happy Christmas,” Rasansky called out, seemingly unperturbed by the cold or by the holiday call-out.

Babcock merely grimaced in return. “Don’t be so bloody cheerful. What are you doing here? I thought you’d not want to miss Christmas morning with your family.”

“Thought you might need a hand. Besides, forgot the batteries for the toys, didn’t I? The wife and kiddies aren’t too happy with me. And my mother-in-law’s there for the duration. Who’d have thought the morgue would be preferable?” Rasansky added as he held the door for Babcock.

Ashamed of the relief he’d felt on leaving the care home, Babcock wasn’t about to admit he agreed, especially to his sergeant.

Kevin Rasansky was a large young man with a round countryman’s face and clothes that never quite seemed to fit. Beneath his unprepossessing exterior, however, resided a sharp intelligence and a streak of ambition that bordered on the ruthless. Babcock found him useful, but never entirely trusted him.

He knew from past experience that if a successful conclusion to a case meant there was any capital to be gained with the powers-thatbe, Rasansky would find a subtle way to claim it. There were the self-deprecating stories told round the water cooler or in the canteen, in which Rasansky would just happen to mention how his own humble insight or suggestion had led his superior officers to make the collar. The said superior officer could then hardly refute Rasansky’s version without sounding petty, but Babcock retaliated by making every effort to keep his sergeant firmly in his place. There was no task too unpleasant or menial for Rasansky, but this morning he had been willing to give the sergeant a break.

“Have you been to the scene yet?” he asked as they waited for someone to buzz them through the inner doors.

“First thing this morning.”

“Any sign of the media?”

“A stringer from the
Chronicle,
Megan Tully. But it will be old news by the time the paper comes out, and I doubt she can interest a national unless it’s a very slow news day.” By the
Chronicle,
Rasansky meant the local weekly.

Dealing with the media was always a two-edged sword—the
dissemination of information could be helpful to an inquiry, but the untimely release of an investigation’s details could be disastrous. Babcock was glad, therefore, to have a few days’ grace before deciding what should be released to the public. That way, if they hadn’t made an identification by the time the paper went to press, he could use the opportunity to make a public appeal.

“Any luck finding the farm’s previous owners?”

“No. House-to-house has had a go again this morning. Apparently quite a few of the surrounding properties have changed hands, and the one neighbor we’ve been told might have an address is away on holiday.”

Babcock absorbed this. It meant they’d have to widen their inquiry, and that meant more manpower. “What about the incident room?” he asked. Late the previous evening, Babcock had organized a temporary incident room at the divisional headquarters in Crewe. “Do we have anyone to spare for slogging round the countryside?”

“We’ve managed to find a few warm bodies, although not particularly happy ones. They seem to think the villains should agree to a Christmas truce.”

Babcock glanced at his sergeant, surprised at the reference. During the Great War, in the first battle of Ypres, the soldiers on the British and German sides of the lines had left their trenches to exchange Christmas greetings and make gifts of their few possessions. Rasansky seemed an unlikely student of history.

“Ah, well,” he said instead, “we’d still have to deal with the holiday suicides.” With that cheerful pronouncement, the inner doors to the morgue swung open.

Dr. Elsworthy’s assistant, a large ginger-haired young woman, led them back to the examination room, saying, “She’s just starting.”

The doctor acknowledged them with a nod. In her scrubs and apron, with her flyaway gray hair tucked under a cap, she looked
years younger, and Babcock was struck again by the strong planes and angles of her face.

But if Althea Elsworthy looked more human this morning, the tiny form on the examination table looked less so. With the removal of the blanket and clothing, the child might have been a tattered scrap of a doll made from leather and hair, or the remains of a small animal left to shrivel by the side of a road. He noticed that there was very little smell, merely a faint mustiness. That, at least, was a relief. For once, he wouldn’t have to spend the postmortem trying to work out how to talk and breathe through his mouth at the same time.

When Rasansky shook his head and made a clicking sound of disgust with his teeth, Babcock remembered that the sergeant had an infant at home. If he was ever tempted to envy other people their children, a child’s body in the morgue was a sure cure.

He transferred his gaze to the X-rays clipped to the lightboard, where the white tracery of bones shone like frost on black velvet.

Elsworthy followed his glance. “Skeleton’s intact,” she said with her usual economy of words. “No evidence of blunt-force trauma, no previous fractures.”

“So what does that leave us?” Babcock asked.

“Suffocation. Drowning. Poisoning. Natural causes.” There was a gleam of humor in her eye as she added the last.

“Right.” Babcock’s lip curled with the sarcasm. “What about stabbing or puncture wounds? Gunshot?”

“Possible, but I’ve not found any damage to what’s left of the tissue, nor nicks on the bones. And I’ve very rarely seen an infant shot or stabbed. It could have been shaken, of course, but any swelling or bruising of the brain tissue has long since disappeared.”

“
It,
you said. Can you tell if the child was male or female?”

“Not conclusively, no. There’s not much organic matter left in the pelvic area, certainly not enough to tell if this child possessed a penis. And at this age it’s hard to differentiate the skeletal structure.

“But from the clothing, I’d guess female. The DNA testing should clarify it, but you’ll have to be patient.” The glance the doctor flicked at him told Babcock she knew patience was not his strong suit.

“Okay. Female, then. Jane Doe. Age?”

“From the measurements, anywhere from six months to a year, perhaps even eighteen months. Development can vary greatly, depending both on genetics and the child’s health and environment. If the child was malnourished, for instance, she might have been well under the predicted size and weight.”

As she spoke, she’d turned back to the corpse and begun probing with tweezers. Her touch seemed surprisingly gentle for such a brusque woman.

“There’s no sign of insect activity,” she went on, “so I think you can assume that the child died during a period of low temperature and was interred quite soon after death.”

Rasansky spoke for the first time. “You think she was abused, then?”

“As I’ve just said, Sergeant, there’s no specific evidence,” Elsworthy said testily. “It’s quite common that babies who have been abused show healed fractures, but the lack of such doesn’t rule out mistreatment. And most people who care for their children well don’t inter them in old barns.”

Her comment made Babcock think of his aunt’s parting words, and he asked the question he’d been holding back: “How long do you think she’d been there?”

Elsworthy frowned and continued her examination in silence for a few moments before she answered. “Probably more than a year. That, of course, is just a guess.”

“More than a year? As in five, ten, fifteen, twenty? That’s all you can tell me?”

This time Babcock was the object of the doctor’s glower. “You wanted miracles? The degree of mummification will have been affected by the amount of lime in the mortar and the stone. The lab
results may help narrow your time span down a bit, but in the meantime, you may do better with the clothing.

“Both the sleep suit and the blanket appear to contain some synthetic fibers, and the snaps on the sleep suit are only partially corroded. And”—she paused, ostensibly to probe the child’s rib cavity, but Babcock was beginning to suspect she enjoyed teasing him—“best of all, there’s still a tag on the sleep suit.”

“Wh—”

She nodded towards her assistant. “I’ve written down the brand information. The manufacturer should at least be able to give you a production span.”

“Bloody marvelous,” Babcock said with bad grace. Knowing the production span on the suit or blanket would give them a starting point, but not an end point. The things could have been stored away in a cupboard for years before they were used in the makeshift burial. “We’ll not be able to reach anyone at the manufacturer’s until after Boxing Day, at the least.” Tracing that information would be a job for Rasansky.

Ignoring his grousing, the doctor said thoughtfully, “You’ll notice that although the child was dressed in a sleeper and wrapped in a blanket, there’s no sign of a nappie. That’s rather odd, don’t you think? It suggests that the child was dressed—or re-dressed—after death. That might indicate care on the part of whoever interred her, or on the other hand, it might be part of a ritual that increases some satisfaction to the perpetrator.”

“You’re not saying we’re dealing with a serial baby killer?”

Elsworthy shrugged. “Unlikely, with the absence of gross injuries, but one should always keep an open mind, Chief Inspector. I take it you’ve had no luck tracking down the property’s previous owners?” she asked, with what might have been a trace of sympathy. “It would seem that either the mortar work was done by one of the owners, or with their knowledge.”

Babcock shook his head. “The Smiths, who were apparently an
eminently respectable older couple, seem to have vanished without a trace.”

As Annie motored north from Nantwich Basin, she felt as if she were leaving a calm oasis. Not that there was much movement evident on the canal, but in her brief stay in the basin she’d felt more at peace than she could remember in a very long time. She’d rung Roger, and although she hadn’t reached him, she had left a message suggesting they meet for a Christmas meal. Knowing Roger, he was out walking Jazz, the German shepherd he’d bought himself when she’d left—his consolation prize, he’d told her. She suspected the dog had proved better company.

And she had resolved herself to her fool’s errand. There was no reason to think that she would find the Wains’ boat where it had been yesterday, or that Gabriel and Rowan Wain would talk to her if she did, but having made the decision to try, she felt oddly euphoric. The glitch in her electrical system seemed to have healed itself. An omen, perhaps, that she was taking the right course.

Bundled in her warmest jacket and scarf, she stood at the tiller, guiding the boat back over the route she had traveled just yesterday. The smoke from the cabin drifted back and stung her eyes, but she loved the smell of it, a distillation of comfort on the crisp, cold air. Over the past few years she had learned to steer instinctively, making infinitesimal adjustments to the tiller with the slightest sway of her body.

She smiled, thinking of her first few awkward weeks on the boat, when she had bounced from one side of the canal to the other like a Ping-Pong ball. The tunnels had been the worst, the unfamiliar darkness skewing her perception so that she continually overcorrected, crashing into the dank and dripping walls.

Although she still didn’t like the tunnels, she had learned to cope,
and in the process she and the
Horizon
had become an entity, the boat an extension of her body. The boat had her own personality, her moods, and Annie had learned to sense them. Today was a good day, she thought, the tiller sensitive as a live thing, the engine thrumming like a big, contented cat.

All her perceptions seemed heightened. Perhaps it was merely the snow-muffled quiet that made her hearing sharper, the searing blue of the sky that made the scenes unfolding before her seem to jump out in crystalline definition. The snow remade the landscape, masking the familiar contours of the land and the ever-present green of the English countryside in winter. And yet what she could see—the corn stubble, the twisted shape of a dead tree, the fine tracery of the bare, shrubby growth that lined the towpath, the black iron bones of a bridge—seemed more brilliant, more intense.

She passed Hurleston Junction and the temptation of the Llangollen Canal snaking down into Wales, but for once she found escape less enticing than the course she had set. As she neared Barbridge, she began to see boats moored along the towpath, and her heart quickened as she picked out the one she sought at the line’s end.

Reducing her speed to a crawl, she slipped the
Horizon
into an empty mooring spot and jumped to the towpath to tie up. When she’d fastened the fore and aft lines to the mooring spikes, she dusted the snow from her knees and studied the
Daphne
.

The wooden hull of the Wains’ boat was distinctive, but it seemed to Annie that the bright paint seemed slightly faded, the shine on the brass chimney bands less brilliant than she had remembered. Gabriel had told her once that the
Daphne
was one of the last wooden boats built in Nurser’s Boatyard in Braunston.

When Annie had worked with the Wains, Rowan had supplemented the family’s income by painting the traditional diamond patterns and rose-and-castle designs on boats, and the
Daphne
had been a floating advertisement for her work. Rowan had also painted
canalware, covering the Buckby cans used by the boat people to carry water, as well as bowls and dippers, with her cheerful rose designs.