WATER LIKE A STONE
DEBORAH CROMBIE
TO WARREN NORWOOD
1945–2005
Contents
PROLOGUE
Mist rose in swirls from the still surface of the…
CHAPTER ONE
Gemma James would never have thought that two adults, two…
CHAPTER TWO
Hugh Kincaid climbed up on the ladder once more, adjusting…
CHAPTER THREE
The unopened bottle of ten-year-old Aberlour stood on Ronnie Babcock’s…
CHAPTER FOUR
From the moment he had looked up and found her…
CHAPTER FIVE
Babcock chuckled aloud as he watched his old friend drive…
CHAPTER SIX
“I’m too big for riding in laps.” Toby squirmed half…
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Newcombes had walked back from church, the four of…
CHAPTER EIGHT
As Babcock squelched across the rutted ice in the hospital…
CHAPTER NINE
The temporary incident room at divisional headquarters had been filled…
CHAPTER TEN
Juliet’s hand had seemed to turn the key in the…
CHAPTER ELEVEN
At first the darkness at the water’s edge seemed absolute.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The house stood sentinel at the head of the lane…
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“I’ve left a ready meal by the microwave,” Althea Elsworthy…
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The victim clutched his head and staggered, then swayed and…
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Babcock had just hung up the phone, after a half-hour…
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“The pathologist and the scene-of-crime lads should be here anytime,”…
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Althea Elsworthy stowed her medical bag in the boot, then…
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The tag end of the crime-scene tape rose and fluttered,…
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“He’s lying, I’d say.” Babcock gave a last glance at…
CHAPTER TWENTY
“You’ll be all right?” asked Gemma, turning to Juliet as…
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Gemma found Crewe Police Station without trouble, and the temporary…
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Babcock reached Nantwich town center at half past eight the…
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Babcock had come into the station whistling under his breath,…
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
As soon as Gemma said they had to pick up…
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“I don’t like it,” Kincaid said as soon as they…
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
It was after midnight by the time Kincaid managed to…
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
New Year’s Day dawned clear and unseasonably mild. After breakfast,…
EPILOGUE
“Good God,” said Althea Elsworthy. “How on earth did the…
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
OTHER BOOKS BY DEBORAH CROMBIE
CREDITS
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
PROLOGUE
Late November
Mist rose in swirls from the still surface of the canal. It seemed to take on a life of its own, an amorphous creature bred from the dusk. The day, which had been unseasonably warm and bright for late November, had quickly chilled with the setting of the sun, and Annie Lebow shivered, pulling the old cardigan she wore a bit closer to her thin body.
She stood in the stern of her narrowboat, the Lost Horizon, gazing at the bare trees lining the curve of the Cut, breathing in the dank, fresh scent that was peculiar to water with the coming of evening. The smell brought, as it always did, an aching for something she couldn’t articulate, and an ever-deepening melancholia. Behind her, the lamps in the boat’s cabin glowed welcomingly, but for her they signaled only the attendant terrors of the coming night. The fact that her isolation was self-imposed made it no easier to bear.
Five years ago, Annie had left behind her husband of twenty years as well as her job with South Cheshire Social Services, and had bought the Horizon with money accumulated from her interest in her family’s shipping business. She’d imagined that the simplicity of life on a boat sixty feet long by a mere seven feet wide, and the physical demands of working the boat on her own, would keep her demons at bay. For a while it had worked. She’d developed a deep love of the Cut, as the traditional boating people called the canal, and an unexpected strength and pride in her own skills. Her explorations of the inland waterways had taken her from Cheshire to London, then back up the northern industrial route to Birmingham and Manchester and Leeds, until she sometimes imagined herself adrift in time, following the route of all those hardy people who had gone before her.
But lately that ghostly comfort had begun to fade, and she found herself returning more and more often to her old haunts, Cheshire and the stretch of the Shropshire Union Canal near Nantwich. Her memories came thronging back. Against the horrors she’d seen in child-protective services, the measure of her own life seemed woefully inadequate. She’d been too afraid of loss to make her own mark against the darkness, to stay in her marriage, to have a child, and now it was too late for either.
She turned back towards the lamp-lit cabin, drawn by the thought of the white wine chilling in the fridge. One glass, she told herself, just to ease the evening in, but she knew her discipline would fail as the long hours of the night ticked away. Just when, Annie wondered, had she become afraid of the dark?
Ahead, the Cut curved away between the overarching trees, offering the elusive promise of vistas unseen, unexplored, and a chill little wind snaked across the water. Scudding clouds blotted the rising moon, and Annie shivered again. With a sudden resolve, she leapt to the towpath. She’d take the boat up the Cut to Barbridge before the light faded completely. There, the bustle and sounds from the old canal-side inn would provide a welcome distraction. Perhaps she’d even go in for a drink, leave the bottle of wine safely corked, a panacea for another night. Then first thing in the morning she’d move on, away from this place where the past seemed so much more present.
Kneeling in the soft turf with her hand on the mooring strap, she felt the vibration on the path before she heard the rapid footfalls, the quick pant of breath. Before she could move, the hurtling shape was upon her. She saw the boy’s wild, white face, felt the lash of his sodden clothing as he stumbled past her. He muttered something she didn’t quite catch, but knew it for a curse, not an apology.
Then he was moving away from her, and she imagined she heard the sound of his footsteps long after his slender shape was swallowed by the darkness.
CHAPTER ONE
December
Gemma James would never have thought that two adults, two children, and two dogs, all crammed into a small car along with a week’s worth of luggage and assorted Christmas presents, could produce such a palpable silence.
It was Christmas Eve, and they’d left London as soon as she and her partner, Duncan Kincaid, could get away from their respective offices, his at New Scotland Yard, hers at the Notting Hill Division of the Metropolitan Police. They had both managed a long-overdue week’s break from their jobs and were on their way to spend the holiday with Duncan’s family in Cheshire, a prospect that Gemma viewed with more than a little trepidation.
In the backseat, her five-year-old son, Toby, had at last fallen asleep, his blond head tilted to one side, his small body sagging against the seat belt with the abandon managed only by t
he very young. Geordie, Gemma’s cocker spaniel, was sprawled half in the boy’s lap, snoring slightly.
Next to Toby sat Kit, Duncan’s thirteen-year-old, with his little terrier, Tess, curled up beside him. Unlike Toby, Kit was awake and ominously quiet. Their anticipated holiday had begun with a row, and Kit had shown no inclination to put his sense of injury aside.
Gemma sighed involuntarily, and Kincaid glanced at her from the passenger seat.
“Ready for a break?” he asked. “I’d be glad to take over.”
As a single fat raindrop splashed against the windscreen and crawled up the glass, Gemma saw that the heavy clouds to the north had sunk down to the horizon and were fast obliterating the last of the daylight. They’d crawled up the M6 past Birmingham in a stop-and-start queue of holiday traffic, and only now were they getting up to a decent speed. “I think there’s one more stop before we leave the motorway. We can switch there.” Reluctant as she was to stop, Gemma had no desire to navigate her way through the wilds of Cheshire in the dark.
“Nantwich is less than ten miles from the motorway,” Kincaid said with a grin, answering her unspoken thought.
“It’s still country in between.” Gemma made a face. “Cows. Mud. Manure. Bugs.”
“No bugs this time of year,” he corrected.
“Besides,” Gemma continued, undeterred, “your parents don’t live in the town. They live on a farm.” The word was weighted with horror.
“It’s not a working farm,” Kincaid said, as if that made all the difference. “Although there is a dairy next door, and sometimes the smell does tend to drift a bit.”
His parents owned a bookshop in the market town of Nantwich, but lived in an old farmhouse a few miles to the north. Kincaid had grown up there, along with his younger sister, Juliet, and as long as Gemma had known him he’d talked about the place as if it were heaven on earth.
By contrast, having grown up in North London, Gemma never felt really comfortable out of range of lights and people, and she wasn’t buying his glowing advertisements for country life. Nor was she thrilled about leaving their home. She had so looked forward to a Christmas unmarred by the calamities that had shadowed last year’s holidays, their first in the Notting Hill house. And she felt the children needed the security of a Christmas at home, especially Kit.
Especially Kit. She glanced in the rearview mirror. He hadn’t joined in their banter, and his face was still and implacable as he gazed out the window at the rolling Cheshire hills.
That morning, as Gemma had attempted a last-minute sort through a week’s worth of neglected post, she’d come across a letter addressed to Kincaid and bearing Kit’s school insignia. She’d ripped it open absently, expecting a fund-raising request or an announcement of some school activity. Then she’d stood in the kitchen, frozen with shock as she scanned the contents. It was from Kit’s head teacher, informing Kincaid of her concern over the recent drop in Kit’s academic performance and requesting that he schedule a conference after the holiday. Previous notes sent home with Kit by his teachers, the head had added, had come back with signatures the staff suspected had been forged.
Gemma had waited with tight-lipped restraint until Kincaid got home, then they’d confronted Kit together.
Things had not gone well. Kincaid, his anger fueled as much by Kit’s duplicity as by concern over the boy’s school performance, had shouted at his son while Toby and the dogs had cowered in the background. Kit had gone white and balled into himself as defensively as a threatened hedgehog, and Gemma found herself the peacemaker.
“It’s too late to ring the head now,” she’d said. “We’ll have to wait until term takes up again after the holidays. Why don’t we all calm down and not let this spoil our trip.” Glancing at her watch, she added, “And if we don’t get off soon, we’ll never make it to your parents’ in time for tonight’s dinner.”
Kincaid had turned away with a shrug of disgust to load the last of the luggage, and Kit had retreated into the stony silence he’d maintained since. It was ironic, Gemma thought, that although it was Kit who’d been called on the carpet, she felt that she and Duncan were the ones who had failed. They should have discussed how to handle things before they talked to Kit; perhaps they should even have spoken to the head teacher before tackling the boy.
Having recently come to at least a temporary resolution in the custody battle with Kit’s maternal grandparents that had consumed much of their last year, they’d allowed themselves to be lulled into a false sense of security. Kit had at last agreed to have his DNA tested, and when a match proved Duncan was his biological father, the court had awarded him custody dependent on the continuing evaluation of the boy’s well-being and the stability of his home life.
They should have known better than to take that achievement for granted, Gemma thought. It was too easy, and with Kit, things were never going to be easy. A simple paternity test was not going to magically erase the damage he’d suffered from his mother’s death and his stepfather’s abandonment.
As she glanced at Kincaid sitting beside her, she guessed his uncharacteristic display of anger stemmed from the fear that they might lose everything they had gained.
A rustle and a yawn came from the backseat. “Are we there yet?” piped up Toby. “I’m hungry.”
“You’re always hungry, sport,” Kincaid answered. “And we’re close. Just a bit longer.”
“Will Grandma Rosemary have mince pies for us?” Toby, as always, had jumped from a sound sleep to a high-energy state of alertness.
Gemma found it both amusing and touching that Toby, who had never met Duncan’s parents, had adopted them as comfortably as if they were his own family, while she, who had at least met Duncan’s mother once, felt as if she was facing a root canal. What if they didn’t like her? What if she didn’t live up to their expectations for their son? Kit’s mother, after all, had been an academic, a well-respected Cambridge don, while Gemma had gone straight from secondary school into the police academy, and no one in her family had ever graduated from university. Her parents were bakers, not intellectuals, and her mother’s most literary endeavor was an addiction to Coronation Street.
“Yes, lots and lots of mince pies,” answered Kincaid. “And turkey tomorrow for Christmas dinner.”
“What about tonight? I’m hungry tonight.” Toby leaned as far forward as his seat belt allowed, his eyes wide with interest.
“Your auntie Jules is cooking tonight’s dinner, I think, so you’ll just have to be patient. And polite,” Kincaid added, sounding a little uneasy. He didn’t often talk about his sister, and Gemma knew he hadn’t seen Juliet or his niece and nephew since the Christmas before last.
Toby drummed the toes of his shoes into the back of Gemma’s seat. “Why? Can’t she cook?”
“Um, she was always better at making things with her hands when she was a little girl,” Kincaid said diplomatically. “But, hey, if Gemma can learn to cook, anything is possible.”
Without taking her eyes off the road, Gemma smacked him on the arm. “Watch it, mate, or you’ll get worms in your food from now on.” Toby cackled, and to Gemma’s relief, she thought she heard a faint snicker from Kit.
“How is Father Christmas going to find me if I’m not at home?” asked Toby. “Will I have a stocking?”
“Don’t be such a baby,” said Kit. “You know there’s—”
“Kit, that’s enough,” Kincaid said sharply, and the slight rapport of a moment ago vanished instantly.
Gemma swore under her breath and gripped the steering wheel a bit tighter, but before she could think how to mend the breach, Toby shouted, “Look, Mummy, it’s snowing. It’s going to be a white Christmas!”
The large flakes drifted into the windscreen one by one, light as feathers, then came more thickly, until the swirling mist of white filled Gemma’s vision.
“A white Christmas,” Kit repeated from the backseat, his voice flat with sarcasm. “Oh, joy.”
“Bloody Caspa
r.” Juliet Newcombe swung the pick hard into the three-foot swath of mortar in the wall of the old dairy barn. “Bloody Piers.” She swung again, with equal force, enlarging the hole left by her first blow.
The light was fading fast, and the bitterly cold wind blowing off the canal held the metallic scent that presaged snow. She’d sent her crew home hours earlier, to spend Christmas Eve with their families, and it was only her stubbornness and her fury that had kept her on at the building site long past knocking-off time.
Not that she didn’t have a good reason for working late. The conversion of the old dairy barn on the Shropshire Union Canal, between Nantwich and Barbridge, was the largest commission she’d landed since striking out on her own in the building business, and a spate of unseasonably bad weather earlier in the month had thrown the project weeks behind schedule. She leaned on her pick for a moment, surveying the progress they had made.
Set where the gentle sweep of pasture met the canal, the place would be a small gem when it was finished. The building was a single story, constructed of traditional Cheshire redbrick, and slate roofed. At some point in its history, outbuildings had been added to the original single-roomed barn so that the structure now formed a U, with the wings facing the pasture. The main building hugged the edge of the Cut, and the windows they’d set into the frontage gave a wide view of the water and of the arch of the old stone bridge that crossed it.
Of the half dozen narrowboats moored below the bridge, only one sported a welcoming light and a wisp of smoke from its chimney. Perhaps its owners lived year round on the boat and were making preparations for a cozy Christmas Eve.
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