Water Like a Stone (37 page)

Now she glanced through the narrative idly, half listening to Kincaid and Rasansky’s conversation, half worrying about the latest development with Caspar Newcombe and Kincaid’s reaction to it.

Then a sentence caught her eye. She stopped, rereading, feeling a frisson of shock travel up her spine. Closing her eyes, she brought back the image of the little girl, fishing under her large black umbrella.

It couldn’t be. And yet—Once more she read the descriptions of the Wains’ children, so carefully noted by Annie Constantine, and she knew that she was not mistaken.

The little girl she had met was not Marie Wain.

As soon as Gemma said they had to pick up the children, he knew that it was an excuse. He stared at her, questioning, but she just gave a slight shake of her head.

Frustration gripped him. He didn’t want to leave until he’d talked to Babcock himself, found out what he’d managed to get out of Piers Dutton. At least so far it didn’t sound as if Dutton had implicated Caspar in the fraud scheme, but if Caspar
was
involved…It would mean disaster for Juliet, and it would be his fault.

And if Dutton was cleared of Annie Lebow’s murder, had he brought it about needlessly? Not that Dutton didn’t deserve a good prison term for the scams he’d pulled on his clients, but was it worth the damage to Juliet? Perhaps his sister had been right all along—he was a self-righteous bastard, concerned only with being seen to do the right thing. The fact that Caspar Newcombe was a fool didn’t make it any better.

Gemma had slipped into her coat and was glancing at him anxiously while making chitchat with Sheila Larkin. What had she found that she couldn’t say in front of—

The thought that struck him sent the blood from his head. Why
had Caspar volunteered an alibi for Dutton? What if it wasn’t Dutton who needed an alibi, but Caspar himself?

What if Caspar had discovered that Annie Lebow meant to shop Dutton for cheating her, and had decided to make sure she didn’t have that chance? There was not only the business at stake, but Kincaid had begun to think that Caspar would do anything for Piers Dutton. Dutton, obviously, had not been so willing to do the same for him.

Suddenly as eager to be away as Gemma, he got his own coat and interrupted Gemma’s conversation with Larkin. “Tell your boss to ring us if there’s any news,” he told the DC, and although she looked surprised at his abruptness, she nodded.

“Will do.”

Taking Gemma’s arm, he hurried her up the stairs and out into an early dusk. The swollen clouds seemed to hang just above the rooftops, pressing down with a momentous weight, and fine snowflakes stung their cheeks like microscopic shards of glass.

“Is it Caspar?” he asked. “What have you found?”

“Caspar?” Gemma looked up at him, shielding her eyes against the snow. “What are you talking about?”

Relief flooded through him. He’d been paranoid, that’s all, and he was suddenly reluctant to share his suspicions. “What is it, then?” he asked, but she’d broken away, dashing for the car and plunging into the driver’s seat.

She had the car started before he’d closed his own door, in gear before he’d buckled his seat belt. “Gemma, where’s the damned fire?”

Gemma eased into the congestion of Crewe’s late-afternoon traffic without looking at him and said, “Marie Wain.” When he stared blankly at her, she added, “It was there all along. Annie Lebow spent time with the children, when she was arranging care for Rowan. She should have seen it.”

“Gemma.” He reached out, covered her hand on the steering
wheel with his own. “Will you please tell me what the hell you’re talking about?”

This time she glanced at him as she downshifted for a traffic light. “Marie Wain—the little girl I met—isn’t Marie Wain. It’s right there in Annie’s notes on the original case. Gabriel and Rowan Wain’s baby girl had brown eyes, like her brother, like her parents. The girl they call Marie has eyes as blue as delphiniums.”

He took this in. “But…the girl was just a baby the last time Annie saw her, when she closed the case. She might have been mistaken—”

“No. Babies’ eyes are sometimes a cloudy, indeterminate color for the first few weeks. But after that you can tell—And with blue-eyed children it’s easier—You could see that Toby’s eyes were unmistakably blue within a day or two.”

“Are you suggesting the Wains switched their child with someone else’s? And no one noticed?” The full import hit him. “If that was the case, then the baby in the barn could be—”

“I don’t know.” She accelerated a bit too fast, and the Escort’s back tires slid a little on the glazed pavement. “But we’re going to find out.”

“Gemma, if you’re right, we should have told Babcock.”

“Not until we talk to Gabriel Wain.”

Squeaky clean and dressed in jeans and a nubby jumper, Juliet came downstairs to find her mother home from the bookshop and rushing round the kitchen like a whirlwind.

“I’ve put some things out for the children’s tea,” said Rosemary. “There’s a cauliflower bake I had in the freezer, and some things for salad. If you can just—”

“Mummy, please. I can manage,” Juliet interrupted, but without heat. Her parents had a long-planned dinner engagement with friends in Barbridge, and she knew Rosemary was overcompensating. “Go.

Have a good time. We won’t starve.” Giving her mother an impulsive hug, she caught the familiar scent of Crabtree & Evelyn’s Lily of the Valley, and was oddly comforted.

What scents would her own children associate with her, she wondered, when they were grown? Sweat, brick, and sawdust?

“Are you certain?” asked Rosemary, touching her cheek. “Duncan and Gemma should be back soon.”

“Yes. And if you don’t get Daddy out of the house, he’ll get sucked back into the perpetual Monopoly game. I’m glad you’re not going far, though. It’s shaping up to be a foul night.”

She had bundled her mother into her coat and waved both parents off at the door, like a mother sending kids off to school, when the phone rang. Her first instinct was to reach for her mobile, then she realized she’d left it with her work clothes upstairs, and it was the house phone ringing.

The children were all in the sitting room, and when neither Lally nor Sam—who usually responded to a ringing phone with Pavlovian promptness—appeared, she padded into the kitchen herself. Lifting the handset, she gave her parents’ number.

“Juliet? Is that you?”

Surprised, she recognized her friend Gill, who had a fine-arts shop near the square in Nantwich.

“Gill?”

“I’ve been ringing and ringing your house, and your mobile,” Gill went on. “And then I thought to try your parents.”

Juliet felt a little lurch of unease. Gill would never go to such trouble for social reasons, and it was past time for her to have closed up shop and set off for her cottage near Whitchurch. “What is it? Has something happened?”

“It’s Newcombe and Dutton. The building’s on fire. The fire brigade’s there but they haven’t got things under control yet. I don’t think anyone is inside, but when I couldn’t reach you or Caspar—”

“Caspar? You rang his mobile, too?”

“Yes. You mean he’s not with you?”

“No. Gill, look, I’m sorry. I’ve got to go. I’ll ring you later.” Juliet hung up before her friend could respond. She couldn’t answer questions, not now. Her knees felt weak with panic. Having heard the alarm in her voice, Jack got up from his bed by the stove and came over to her, wagging his bushy tail and watching her with his alert sheepdog eyes.

“It’s all right, boy,” she said, trying to reassure herself as well as the dog, but she had to grasp the kitchen table for a moment. What if Caspar had done something stupid? What if Caspar was in that building?

She had to go. She had to see what was happening.

Purpose galvanized her, channeling the rush of adrenaline into flight. It was only as she was into her coat and halfway out the door that she remembered the children.

“I have to go out. There’s a fire.” Kit’s aunt Juliet had run into the sitting room, banging the door so loudly that all the children jumped. “Lally,” she said breathlessly, “Kit. You look after the boys. Sammy, you do what your sister tells you. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

With that, she was gone, and the children sat staring at one another in frozen surprise until Sam said, “A fire? What’s she talking about? Why would she have to go? Do you think it’s our house?”

“Of course not, silly,” answered Lally. “She’d have said.” She caught Kit’s eye, then added as she uncurled herself from the corner of the chesterfield and stood, “I have to go out, too. Kit, can you look after Sam and Toby?”

“But I don’t want—”

“Mum said for you to do what I told you. Don’t argue. And don’t snitch, or you’ll be sorry.”

Without another glance at the younger boys, she slipped into the hall and started tugging on boots and coat.

“Lally, this is daft,” protested Kit, following her. “It’s dark and it’s snowing. Where do you have to go that’s so important?”

Pulling a fleece hat from the rack by the door, she said, “I have to meet Leo. I promised. I—it doesn’t matter. I don’t have to tell you why.”

There was something in her face that frightened him, a recklessness—no, more than that, a desperation. It made him think that if he let her go alone, she might not come back.

And that meant he had no choice. “All right,” he said. “I’m coming with you.”

Gemma had taken the pocket torch from the door of the car, but once they left the bridge for the towpath, they discovered it only made the visibility worse, trapping them in an illuminated cone of swirling snowflakes. They moved into the shelter of the bridge, then switched the torch off and stood until their eyes adjusted. Beside her, Kincaid was a comforting presence.

The snow made a curtain on either side of the stone archway, but the flakes were bigger and softer than when they had left Crewe, and when Gemma stepped out into the open she found she could make out the outline of the canal’s edge, and the shapes of the boats huddled against it. Then she saw a sliver of light, the glow of a lamp seeping through a gap in curtains pulled tight over a porthole, and she knew the
Daphne
was still moored where she had last seen it.

She moved forward, Kincaid near enough behind her that she could hear him muttering as the snow soaked through his shoes. When she reached the boat, she stopped, feeling the warmth of his body as he halted behind her and gave her shoulder a brief squeeze.

This time, she didn’t call out, but felt for the gunwale and climbed carefully into the well deck, then made room for Kincaid to do the same. Knowing the slight movement of the boat under their combined weight had announced their presence, she rapped
sharply on the cabin door. “Mr. Wain, it’s Gemma James. We need to talk to you.”

The door opened quickly, to Gemma’s surprise, and Gabriel Wain looked out at them without speaking. After a moment, he stepped back and down, and she saw that three steps led into the tiny cabin. Gemma caught her breath as she peered in, thinking for an instant that she had happened upon a child’s playhouse. The space was so tiny, so cleverly arranged, and so welcoming with its dark-paneled walls decorated with gleaming brasses and delicate lace-edged plates. There were homely touches of red in the curtains and the cushions on the two benches, a fire burned in the cast-iron stove tucked neatly into the corner nearest the steps, and a lantern hung from a hook in the sloping paneled ceiling.

But everything drew the eye towards the painting on the underside of a folding table now stowed in its upright position. A pale winding road, flower lined, led to a castle dreaming on a hilltop. The colors were brilliant, the grass magically green, the sky a perfect blue, the clouds a luminous white, and the detail and perspective were the work of a master artist.

“My wife’s,” said Gabriel Wain, his voice filled with unexpected pride. “There’s no one on the Cut paints in the old way like my Rowan.”

Gemma now saw that there were other pieces on display bearing Rowan’s signature touch—a metal canalware cup in blue embellished with red and yellow roses, a water can, a bowl.

“You’ll let the cold in,” Wain added, nodding towards the door behind Gemma.

She started, realizing she’d stood frozen, with Kincaid trapped behind her, and stepped down into the cabin proper.

“You’ve kept the cabin in its original state,” Kincaid said as he came down after her, his admiration evident. He nodded at the passageway leading towards the bow. “But you’ll have built more living quarters into the old cargo space?”

“This boat was the butty of a pair, originally, so the cabin was larger,” Wain agreed. “But you didn’t come out in this weather to admire my boat, Mr.—Kincaid, is it?” He didn’t invite them to sit.

Gemma moved a bit farther into the center of the cabin and knew, from the way Kincaid positioned himself behind her, that he meant for her to take the lead. Gathering herself, she said, “Mr. Wain, we need to know what happened to Marie.”

Wain stared at them, his eyes widening. He’d been wary, she thought, but he had not expected this. “Marie? She and Joseph are with the doctor. She’ll have told you—”

“No,” said Gemma, and although she hadn’t raised her voice, Wain stopped as if he’d been struck. “I want you to tell us what happened to
Marie
.”

The silence stretched in the small space, then Wain recovered enough for an attempt at bluster. “I don’t know what you’re on about. Marie’s staying with Dr. Elsworthy, just for a few—”

There was movement in the passageway, and a woman came into the cabin. Standing beside Gabriel, she laid thin fingers on his arm, the touch enough to silence him.

She had once been pretty, thought Gemma, but now she wore death like a pall. Her clothes hung loosely on her gaunt frame, her lank hair was pulled back carelessly, her skin tinged with gray. With her free arm she cradled an oxygen tank like an unnatural infant, tethered to her by a plastic umbilicus that ended in the twin prongs of a nasal canula.

“You must be Rowan,” Gemma said gently. “I’m Gemma James, and this is Duncan Kincaid.”

“You’re with the police?” asked Rowan Wain.

“We’re police officers in London, yes,” Gemma temporized, wishing she and Kincaid had discussed beforehand how they meant to handle this, “but we’re not here officially.”

“Then you’ve no right to be asking—”

“Gabriel, please.” Rowan used his arm for support as she lowered
herself onto a bench. “It’s no use. Can’t you see that?” She looked up at him imploringly. “And I need to tell it. Now, while I can.”

Gabriel Wain seemed to shrink before Gemma’s eyes, as if the purpose that had sustained him had gone. He lowered himself to the bench, beside his wife, and took her hand but didn’t speak. The only sound in the small space was the rhythmic puff of the oxygen as it left the tank.