Water Like a Stone (7 page)

“Oh, well, fathers and daughters.” Rosemary smiled. “To his credit, I think he does love the children. And he can display a certain earnest charm.”

Gemma must have looked askance, because Rosemary let out a peal of laughter. But before she could speak, the phone trilled and she rose to answer it. After a murmured conversation, she rang off and turned back to Gemma.

“You’ll get a chance to see for yourself, soon enough,” she said briskly. “That was Duncan, calling from his mobile. We’re to meet them at the house.”

From the moment Kit stepped into his grandparents’ sitting room, he felt he’d known it his whole life. The shelves of books and the faded
Oriental rug reminded him of Gemma’s friend Erika’s house, except that here the space was dominated by two large, scuffed brown leather chesterfields rather than a grand piano. The little wall space not filled with books held framed cartoons of odd-looking people and even funnier-looking dogs. A low fire burned in the grate, and a large fir tree had been jammed into the corner nearest the window.

Sam crouched beneath the tree, sorting packages into a pile. “I’ve got more than anyone else,” he crowed as he delved under the branches for another gift. Toby knelt beside him, and Kit could tell from his brother’s expression that he was wondering if there were any packages under the tree for him.

“You do not,” said Lally. Perched on an ottoman, she watched her brother with an expression of disdain. “And nobody cares, anyway. You’re a wanker.” She glanced at Kit from under her lashes, as if to see whether he was impressed with her vocabulary. He was. Hoping she couldn’t see him blushing, he gave an involuntary glance at the door. Gemma would box his ears for saying something like that, and he didn’t want her to think badly of Lally.

“Am not.” Sam stopped in his pawing to glare at her, while Toby, losing interest in someone else’s loot, wandered over to the hearth.

“You don’t even know what it means.”

“Do so. It’s—”

Before Sam could enlighten them, Toby interrupted. “Kit. Kit, look. They’ve got our names on them.” He was pointing to the stockings hanging from the mantel. There were four, each a different Christmas tapestry, and names were embroidered across their velvet tops. He reached up, tracing the lettering on the last one. “It says ‘Toby.’” At five, he was very proud of his rudimentary reading skills.

Moving closer, Kit saw his name beside Toby’s, and Sam and Lally’s on the other two.

“Nana didn’t want you to feel left out,” Lally informed them, which made Kit feel more awkward than ever, rather than included. The last thing he wanted was anything calling attention to the fact
that he didn’t belong, or anyone feeling sorry for him.

Having lost the focus of attention, Sam had risen from his pile of gifts and was jiggling impatiently. “Come see my Game Boy,” he demanded. “It’s upstairs. My dad gave it to me for my birthday.”

“Kit doesn’t want to see your Game Boy,” said Lally, with undeniable finality. “You take Toby.”

Sam hesitated, his inner struggle showing clearly on his face. He wanted to show off his toy to Toby, but he hated giving in to his sister’s bossiness. Pride of possession won. “Okay. But we’ll be right back. Come on, Toby.”

Kit felt his breath stop with terror as the door closed behind the younger boys. What would he find to say to Lally alone? He needn’t have worried.

“I know where Nana keeps the sherry,” Lally announced. “We can have a sip, but not enough so that she’ll notice the level’s gone down in the bottle.”

“Sherry?” Kit made a face. He’d been given a taste once at Erika’s. “But that’s nasty. Tastes like cough medicine. Why would you want to drink that?”

“It does the trick, doesn’t it?” She slipped off the ottoman and opened a cabinet near the fireplace. “Granddad keeps his whisky in here, too, but it’s really expensive, and he says he checks it to make sure it’s not evaporating.”

Kit stared at her back as she reached up for a bottle. Could that possibly be a tattoo, just where her shirt rose to reveal the top of her jeans and an inch of bare skin? She turned back to him, bottle in hand, and he tore his eyes away from her midriff.

She pulled the cork and took a drink, but he noticed it was a very small one, and she had to hide a grimace. Holding the bottle out to him, she said, “Sure you don’t want some?”

Kit shook his head, blushing. Would she think him a total prat?

“Don’t tell me you never get into your parents’ drinks cabinet at home?” Lally wiped the lip of the bottle with the hem of her shirt
and recorked it.

“They don’t keep much,” Kit answered evasively. Duncan usually had a bottle of whisky in his study, and there was often a bottle of wine or a few beers in the fridge, but he certainly wasn’t going to admit it had never occurred to him to sneak any. Besides, Duncan had let him have a taste of watered-down wine when they had friends over for dinner, and he hadn’t cared much for it.

“You have to develop an appreciation for the finer things,” said Lally, coming back to the ottoman, and Kit had the feeling she was repeating something she’d heard often. She sat, drawing her knees up under her chin, and scrutinized him.

Feeling like a specimen under the dissecting microscope, Kit squirmed and searched for something—anything—to say that might impress her.

Lally’s rescue left him feeling even more confused. “Do your parents fight?” she asked.

“I—sometimes, I suppose.” Did Lally know that Gemma wasn’t his real mother, that his mum had died? If not, he wasn’t going to tell her.

He thought of the tense silences that sometimes happened between Duncan and Gemma since she had lost the baby, and felt a coldness in his chest. He didn’t want to talk about that, either.

“My mum and dad fight all the time,” Lally went on, as if she hadn’t expected an answer. “They think we don’t hear them, but we do. That’s why Sam’s so hyper, you know. He didn’t used to be like that. Or not as bad, at least. Mum’s never home after school anymore either, since she started her business. Do you think my mum really found a body?” she asked, sitting up a bit straighter.

Not having really given it much thought, as his parents seemed to find bodies on a daily basis, Kit answered, “She said so, didn’t she? So I suppose she did.” It didn’t seem the sort of thing one would make up.

“What do you think it was like?” Lally’s eyes sparkled.

Kit flashed on the one thing he couldn’t bear to think about, the image as vivid as the day it had happened. He felt the nausea start, and the prickle of sweat on his forehead. Desperate to change the subject, he said, “Where’s your house, then?”

“Nantwich, near the square.” Lally appeared to notice his blank look. “You don’t know the town at all, do you? It’s dead boring. But you can find things to do. Once we get dinner over with tonight, we’ll go out. I’ll show you round a bit.”

The sitting-room door swung open with a bang, making Kit jump, and Sam looked in.

“Uncle Duncan just rang. We’re going to our house, all of us, in Granddad’s estate car. Nana says we have to leave the dogs.”

“My dad doesn’t like dogs in the house,” Lally explained, jumping up. “Let’s get our coats. If we hurry, we can get the best seats.”

And Kit, who never willingly left his little terrier, trailed after her without a word.

He discovered the pleasure of cruelty at eight. His mother had promised him a special treat, an afternoon on their own, the pictures, then an ice cream. But at the last minute a friend had rung and invited her out, and she had gone with nothing more than a murmured apology and a brush of her hand against his hair.

He’d felt ill with fury at first. He’d screamed and kicked at the wall in his room, but the pain quickly stopped him. It was not himself he wanted to hurt.

Nor was there anyone to hear him. His mother would have asked their neighbor Mrs. Buckham to look in on him and give him his tea, but for the moment he had the house to himself. He straightened up and wiped his runny nose on his sleeve.

Slowly, he made his way to his mother’s room. Her scent lingered, a combination of perfume and hair spray and something indefinably female. The casual clothes she’d donned for her afternoon
with him lay tossed across the bed, discarded in favor of something more elegant. Her face powder had spilled, and fanned across the glass of her vanity table like pale pink sand. He wrote “bitch” in the dust, then smeared the word away
—
even then, he had known that crudity brought less than satisfying results. And he had seen something else. Her pearl necklace, a favorite gift from his father, had slipped to the floor in a luminous tumble. He lifted it, running the smooth spheres through his fingers, then rubbing them against his cheek, feeling an unexpected and pleasurable physical stirring. With his pulse quickening, he glanced round the room. His gaze settled on just what he needed
—
the hammer left behind after his mother’s recent bout of tacking up pictures.

First he took the pearls in both hands and jerked. The string snapped with a satisfying pop that flung the beads to the carpet in a random cascade. Then he lifted the hammer and carefully, thoroughly, smashed every pearl into a splash of luminescent dust.

A gleam caught his eye
—
two had escaped and were nestled against the leg of the vanity, as if hiding. He raised the hammer, then stopped, struck by a sudden impulse, and scooped the pearls into his pocket. They felt cool and solid to his touch. He would keep them as souvenirs. Only later would he learn that such things were called mementos.

The satisfaction that coursed through him after his act of destruction was unlike anything else he’d ever known, but that had been only the beginning. He awaited discovery, trembling with dread and excitement. His mother came home and went upstairs, but there had been no explosion of anger. Instead, she locked herself in her room, complaining of a headache. It wasn’t until the next morning, when he’d faced her across the breakfast table, that he’d seen the fear in her eyes.

“I’m too big for riding in laps.” Toby squirmed half off Gemma’s knee, but she hooked her arm round his middle and pulled him firmly back.

“You’ll just have to make the best of it, won’t you?” she said, taking the opportunity to nuzzle his silky hair, something it seemed she seldom managed these days. “And what about my poor knee, having to put up with such a big boy on it? Do you hear it complaining?” She bounced him and he giggled, relaxing against her.

“Knees don’t talk, Mummy,” Toby said with assurance.

“Mine do,” Rosemary chimed in from the front passenger seat. “Especially when I’ve spent all day in the garden.”

Hugh Kincaid’s old Vauxhall estate car could theoretically have held seven comfortably, but the third seat had been filled with cartons of books. Hugh had managed to shift them so that Kit could squeeze in the back, leaving Sam, Lally, Toby, and Gemma to jam into the center seat as best they could.

It had begun to snow again, and the car was cold in spite of the number of bodies. “We’ll soon get the heater going,” Hugh said cheerfully as he turned up the blower. The blast of frigid air made
Gemma even colder and she hugged Toby to her until he wriggled like a hooked fish.

For Gemma, already disoriented by the unfamiliar terrain and her limited vision from the rear seat, the journey into town merged into a swarm of onrushing white flakes, punctuated by the yellow glare of the occasional sodium lamp and the wet gleam of black road. Ordinarily preferring to drive, she disliked the sensation of things being out of her control, and she felt a little queasy from the motion of the car.

Then, as they passed beneath a dark arch, Sam said, “Look. There’s the aqueduct. The canal goes over the road.”

“You mean the boats go overhead?” asked Kit, sounding intrigued.

“Can we see?” added Toby.

“Not tonight,” said Rosemary. “But maybe tomorrow, if the weather clears.”

There were houses now, crowding in on either side, and Sam continued his narration. “This is Welsh Row, where the Welsh would march in to kill the English. And not far from here were the brine works, where the Romans made salt. The ‘wich’ in Nantwich means salt, you know.”

“Who appointed you tour guide, Sam?” Lally said waspishly. “I’m sure they’re perfectly happy not knowing.” Lally and Kit had been talking as they left the house, and Gemma wondered if Lally was cross over having had to sit beside her brother rather than her new friend. At any rate, Gemma was glad to see Kit overcoming his shyness with his cousins.

Toby tilted his head back until he could whisper in Gemma’s ear. “Who are the Welsh, Mummy? Do they still kill the English?”

Gemma stifled a laugh. “The Welsh are perfectly nice people who live in Wales, lovey. And no, they don’t kill the English. You’re quite safe.” Wanting to encourage Sam, who had subsided into hurt silence, she peered out the window at the classical fronts of the buildings.
“From what Duncan’s said, I thought Nantwich was Tudor, but these buildings look Georgian.”

“Most of Welsh Row is Georgian,” Hugh answered, and although Sam jiggled with impatience, he didn’t interrupt as his grandfather went on. “But the town center has an exceptional number of intact Tudor buildings. It was built all of a piece, after the fire of 1583, a good bit of it with monies contributed by Elizabeth the First, who wasn’t known for her generosity. It’s thought that she feared the Spanish would invade through Ireland, and Nantwich was the last important stop that provisioned the soldiers garrisoned at Chester.”

Gemma could easily see where Sam had got his interest in local history.

“There’s no access to the town square by car,” Hugh added as he stopped at a traffic light, “but I’d be glad to take you for a little tour after dinner, if you’d like. We can walk easily from Juliet’s, and of course we’ll be going to the church.”

“There may not be time before mass,” put in Rosemary, sounding a little anxious. The box of punch ingredients clinked as she adjusted it on her knees.

“Well, if it’s possible, I’d like that very much,” Gemma told Hugh. They were passing along a very ordinary shopping precinct now, and glimpsing a Boots and a Somerfield’s supermarket among the nondescript postwar shop fronts, she felt unexpectedly disappointed.

Hugh made a quick right turn, causing Rosemary to clutch her box a bit tighter, then another, and then he was pulling up in a quiet cul-de-sac. To one side, Gemma saw ordinary redbrick terraced houses, their porches sprinkled with colored fairy lights, their postage-stamp lawns and common green muffled with snow. On the other side of the street stood a high garden wall with a wrought-iron gate at one end, and it was towards this that Hugh led them like heavily padded ducklings when they had piled out of the car.

Although it was masked by evergreens, Gemma could see that the wall was built of a dark brick, as was the house that rose behind
it. Near the gate, a narrow path overgrown with foliage led straight back from the cul-de-sac.

“The town center is only a five minutes’ walk that way,” Hugh said cheerfully, nodding at the path as he opened the gate, but Gemma could only think that she wouldn’t care to walk there alone. The atmosphere of the entire place struck her as secretive: the dark tunnel of the path, the house brooding like a fortress behind its high wall. Nor did the sight of the garden improve her first impression. Small and enclosed, it was planted entirely with shrubs sculpted in different shapes and sizes. No patch of lawn welcomed dogs—or children, for that matter.

But she could see that everything was immaculately maintained, and there were footprints leading to the door and welcoming lights in the windows. Sam charged ahead and flung open the front door, shouting, “Mum!”

It was Duncan, however, not Juliet, who came hurrying into the hall to meet them. “Jules is changing,” he explained, “and Caspar seems to have gone walkabout.”

“Did Mummy really find a body?” asked Sam, hopping from one foot to the other with impatience.

“Yes, I’m afraid she did,” Kincaid answered gravely. “I’ll let her tell you about it if she wants.”

“But what did it—”

Rosemary, still holding the punch box, forestalled her grandson. “Let’s get these things in the kitchen. Gemma, I’ll do the honors for Juliet. Take off your coats—there’s a cupboard just to your right.”

While Sam and Lally shoved their things into the cupboard willy-nilly, followed a little more carefully by Kit and Toby, Gemma took the opportunity to look about her. The sitting room to her right had forest-green walls and pristine white sofas, while the magnificent Christmas tree in one corner was decorated with white silk roses and shimmering crystal drops. The dining room on the left was just as elegant, but done in deep reds, and the long mahogany table was
already set with china and crystal, as if awaiting a feast for ghosts. The rooms had none of the slightly shabby comfort of the Kincaids’ house, and none of the effortless style. It made Gemma think of a stage set, and she could see why Juliet was happy to spend her days mucking about on a building site.

When their coats were stowed—and Gemma realized that here nothing would ever be tossed casually over the back of a chair—Hugh took the box from his wife, saying, “Just tell me where you want this.”

“In the kitchen, of course,” she snapped, but Gemma had the feeling that her sharpness was not really directed at her husband. She seemed ill at ease, and Gemma suspected it had to do with her son-in-law’s absence.

“Come see our rooms,” Sam demanded of Kit and Toby, and as the children trooped obediently after him up the wide staircase, Gemma found herself momentarily alone with Duncan. He seemed to slump a little, as if glad of a respite.

“Are you all right?” he asked, touching her cheek. “Is Kit? I’m sorry it took longer than I expected.”

“What was—” she began, but he interrupted her.

“A baby. But it had been there a long time, probably years. Jules is a bit upset.” He didn’t quite meet her eyes, and his face wore the careful expression she had come to recognize.

God, how she wished he would stop treating her as if she were made of glass, and would shatter at the mere mention of an infant. She was about to protest when she heard a rustling on the stairs. Looking up, she saw a dark-haired woman coming down, dressed in just the sort of red velvet dress Gemma had imagined appropriate for the evening. While Gemma would have recognized her from the few family photos Duncan had shown her, she had not envisioned Juliet Newcombe’s delicacy, nor the haunted look about her eyes.

“You must be Gemma,” said Juliet as she reached them. She took both Gemma’s hands in her own, and although her smile
seemed to take an effort, her voice held genuine warmth. “I’m so glad to meet you.”

At that moment, Gemma realized that she had been prepared to dislike Juliet, and felt a rising blush of shame. “I’m sorry you’ve had such a difficult night,” she told her, giving Juliet’s small, cold hands a squeeze before letting them go.

“Not the best of circumstances,” Juliet agreed. “But still, I’m glad you’re here, both of you.” She turned to Kincaid. “The children—I thought I heard—”

“Upstairs. Sam’s acting the tour guide,” answered Duncan.

“And Caspar—Has he—”

Duncan shook his head. “Not here yet. You should have rung him, Jules. Maybe he’s out looking for you.”

“I doubt that,” she answered, and this time her smile was as brittle as ice.

“Look,” Duncan said into the awkward silence that followed this conversation stopper, “Mum and Dad are in the kitchen making the famous punch. Can we help with any—”

The front door opened and Juliet froze as a man stepped into the hall, her hand raised to her breast in an unconsciously defensive gesture. “Caspar.”

Tall and thin, dark haired like his wife, Caspar Newcombe was fastidiously dressed and wore expensive-looking rimless glasses. His rather patrician good looks were marred, however, by the peevish set of his mouth and the cold glare he directed at his wife. He neither greeted nor acknowledged Gemma and Duncan. It was only when he took a step forward and listed dangerously to one side that Gemma realized he was drunk. He put a hand to the wall and propped himself up with deliberate nonchalance.

Juliet returned the glare and took the offensive. “Where have you been?”

“The Bowling Green.” Caspar made no effort to keep his voice down. “Having a bit of Christmas cheer, which I’m not likely to get
at home, am I, my dear wife? I could ask you the same, but at least I know you’ve not been dispensing your favors to my partner, because he was in the office with me. But maybe you’ve been having a bit of rough-and-tumble with one of your lads? Or is the correct term ‘coworker’ these days?” He smirked at his own cleverness.

“You bastard,” Juliet said quietly. “Did Piers just happen to suggest that to you, too, over a confidential drink? Or did you think of it yourself?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Gemma glimpsed a movement at the top of the stairs. Looking up, she saw the treaded bottom of a trainer and a ragged denim cuff disappear round the landing. Lally. She’d noticed earlier that the bottoms of Lally’s jeans were fashionably shredded. She reached out to Juliet in warning, but Juliet was speaking again, her attention so focused on her husband that the house could have come down round their ears before she noticed.

“You’re a gullible fool, Caspar,” said Juliet, her voice rising now. “But whatever you think I am, and whatever you think I’ve done,
I’m
not a liar and an embezzler.”

At least he was warm, thought Ronnie Babcock as he stood in the Fosters’ sitting room, although he suspected that soon his damp clothes would start to visibly steam. Tom and Donna Foster had invited him in, albeit grudgingly, but had not taken his coat, or given him a seat. Nor had they offered that most obvious of courtesies on such a miserable night—a drink. Maybe they’d simply thought he’d refuse on principle, but that was a charitable interpretation.

He guessed the couple to be in their mid-to late fifties, townies who had embraced the country life and brought their slice of heaven along with them, transforming the interior of what must once have been a charming traditional farmhouse into a replica of the most banal suburban semidetached.

The electric two-bar heater that had been pulled in front of the
empty brick hearth radiated waves of a harsh, dry heat that had at least defrosted Babcock’s extremities, even though half blocked by Foster’s considerable bulk. The wife was thin, with a tightly drawn face and hair lacquered a very unnatural shade of red. The sparkling sequined reindeer on her jumper was by far the most cheerful—not to mention the most tasteful—thing in the room. She’d perched on the edge of the sofa, part of a hideous three-piece suite done in peach plush, and kept glancing at the large television hulking in one corner of the room, its sound muted, as if she couldn’t bear to tear herself away.

Tired of standing around waiting for frostbite to set in while he watched the techies do their jobs, Babcock had decided to call on the previous owners of the barn. He’d gone on his own, intending to give his subordinates the rest of their evening off before the investigation swung into full gear tomorrow, but he’d begun to wish he had brought along a friendly face.

“I’d very much like to know what’s going on, Inspector,” demanded Tom Foster, as if he had summoned Babcock for an interview. “You lot have been up and down our lane all night, making a muck of things. We’ll be lucky to get our car out in the morning.” His accent was broad Mancunian. Babcock didn’t know about the wife’s, as she hadn’t spoken, even though her husband had included her in his perfunctory introductions.

“It’s Chief Inspector,” Babcock said mildly, but he didn’t apologize for the inconvenience. “Mr. Foster, I understand that, until recently, you owned the old barn down by the canal.”

“That’s right,” agreed Foster, his bald head gleaming in the glare of the ceiling light. “Bought the property as an investment five years ago, didn’t we?” If he’d hoped for confirmation from his wife, he was disappointed, as her eyes had swiveled back to the girls in skimpy Santa outfits parading across the telly screen.