“Gemma, boys,” Rosemary was saying, “come back to the kitchen. I know it’s a bit late for tea, but I suspect none of us will be getting dinner anytime soon.” Kincaid’s mother had greeted her warmly, as she had the only other time they’d met, at Kit’s mother’s funeral. Although Rosemary’s chestnut hair had perhaps gone a bit grayer, she had the strong bone structure and fine skin that aged well, and she radiated a wiry energy.
As Gemma responded, she was aware of her own accent, her North London vowels sounding harsh and flat compared with Rosemary Kincaid’s educated Cheshire tones.
She glanced at Kincaid’s father, who had watched Duncan drive away but now came back into the hall and closed the door. Hugh Kincaid was tall, like his son, with a jutting forehead and chin and a prominent nose. His brushed-back gray-streaked hair and roll-neck fisherman’s jumper seemed to exaggerate his features, making his face seem severe. Then he smiled at her, revealing an unexpected charm, and Gemma found herself suddenly enchanted. Smiling back, she felt herself begin to relax.
“You’d better do as she says,” Hugh warned, with a glance at his wife, “or there will be consequences.” Gemma found she hadn’t expected the faint trace of Scots in his voice, although she knew he came from near Glasgow. It made her think of Hazel Cavendish, so far away in the Scottish Highlands, and she felt a pang of longing for her friend.
“Don’t pay him any mind,” Rosemary countered, laughing. “Lally, Sam, come and introduce yourselves properly.” She put a hand on the boy’s head, as if holding down a jumping jack. “This is Sam. He’s ten. And this is Lally,” she added, glancing at the girl, who still hovered a few treads up the staircase, “who must be just a few months older than Kit, here.”
Giving the girl all her attention for the first time, Gemma noticed first the inch of midriff bared in defiance of the weather, then the shoulder-length dark hair and oval face, the lips curved in a tentative smile. Gemma’s breath caught in her throat. The girl was striking, beautiful in that heart-piercing way possessed only by girls on the cusp of womanhood, innocence poised on the brink of knowledge.
“Hi,” Lally said, and grinned, an ordinary teenager, and Gemma shook off her flight of fancy.
“Come and see Jack,” Sam said, raising his voice over the increasingly frenzied barking from the back. “He’s our sheep—”
He was cut off by a thump and a crash, and a blur of black and white came barreling down the hall towards them. “Sheepdog,” Sam finished, grinning. “He doesn’t like to be left out of things.”
Tess launched herself into the melee from Kit’s arms and the three dogs jumped, circled, and sniffed, a shifting mass of canine pandemonium.
“Well, that seems to be all right, then,” Rosemary said in the sudden quiet, eyeing them critically. “I thought we should let them get acquainted gradually, but Jack seems to have taken care of the formalities. Let’s go see what sort of damage he’s done to my kitchen.” She took their coats and added them to the already overloaded pegs, then led the way towards the back of the house.
Still chattering, Sam latched onto Toby. “There’s geese, too, and ponies. Do you want to see them after tea? What are your dogs called? I like the little one—she’s cute.”
Toby answered him happily—or at least tried to, between questions—but Gemma noticed that Kit, having fallen in next to Lally, didn’t speak. She couldn’t blame him for feeling a bit intimidated meeting so many new family members at once, but hoped that he would soon relax.
When they reached the kitchen, they saw that Jack had hurled himself against the door so hard that it had slipped its latch, banging open and causing a slight dent in the hall plaster. Rosemary grumbled something under her breath that sounded like “Daft bloody dog,” then herded them all into the room, as efficient as a sheepdog herself.
Gemma looked round in delight. The room was wide rather than deep, and she suspected it stretched across most of the back of the house. To the left was the cooking area, dominated by a cream Rayburn range and an old soapstone sink. Open shelves held a selection of dark cobalt-blue china in a calico design, and a few pieces in other blue-and-white porcelain patterns Gemma didn’t recognize. To the right was a long, scrubbed pine table, surrounded by mismatched pine chairs, all with tie-on cushions covered in a blue-and-cream floral print. The back wall held a nook for cut firewood and a small wood-burning stove. The smell of fresh baking was mouthwateringly intense, and Gemma realized she was ravenous.
While Hugh fed the stove, Rosemary filled two teapots from a kettle steaming on the Rayburn, then pulled a plate piled with scones from the warming oven. “I don’t suppose you like scones,” she said to Kit, who was standing near her, “or homemade plum jam, or clotted cream.”
“But I do,” answered Kit, returning her smile and adding, “Can I help you?”
Gemma breathed a small sigh of relief as Kit helped ferry plates and cups to the table, carrying on a quiet conversation with his grandmother. Within a few minutes, they were all squeezed round the table, with the dogs tussling on the floor by the fire and the lubricant of food and drink beginning to loosen human tongues.
Seated between Toby and Rosemary, Gemma watched her son’s manners anxiously, hoping he wouldn’t stuff his mouth too full of scone, and worse, talk through it. Kit sat on the other side of the table, between Lally and his grandfather, while Sam had wedged himself into the small space at the end.
Kit was answering his grandfather’s questions about school politely—if, as Gemma now suspected, less than truthfully—but she noticed he still hadn’t made direct eye contact with Lally.
She shifted her attention back to Rosemary, who was saying, “…we’d planned to go to midnight mass after dinner at Juliet’s, if that’s all right with you, Gemma. It’s a bit of a tradition in our family.”
“I know,” said Gemma. “Duncan told me. We meant to go last Christmas, but things…intervened.” It had been work, of course, that had interrupted their Christmas Eve, and matters had gone steadily downhill from there.
A shadow crossed Rosemary’s face. “Gemma, dear, I’ve never had a chance to tell you in person—”
“I know. It’s all right.” Gemma made the response that had gradually become easier, and that realization gave her an unexpected sense of loss. Her grief had given her something to hold on to, an almost tangible connection with the child she had lost, but now even that was slipping away from her.
Casting about for a change of subject, she asked, “Do you always have your Christmas Eve dinner at Juliet’s?” Her own family usually went to her sister’s, although Gemma considered an evening with Cyn’s overexcited, sugar-fueled children more an ordeal than a celebration.
“Yes, she’s insisted, ever since the children were small.” Rosemary gave a worried glance at the large clock over the Rayburn. “I can’t think why she would have stayed so late at the building site on her own, and today of all days. And what could she possibly have foun—” She stopped, her eyes straying to the children, then said instead, “Do you think they’ll be long?”
Gemma hesitated over the truth. If Juliet had in fact found a body, missing Christmas Eve dinner might be the least of her worries. “I really can’t say. Is there anything we could do to help, in the meantime?”
“No. It’s just ham and salads, and those Juliet will have made ahead. Nor would Caspar thank me for messing about in his kitchen uninvited,” she added with a grimace. “Although he’s happy enough to help himself to my punch—” This time it was her granddaughter’s quick glance that silenced her. “Let’s give it a bit,” she amended. “Surely we’ll hear from them soon.”
The younger boys having divided the last scone between them, Sam stacked his plate and cup and pushed away from the table. “Nana, may we be excused? Can I show Toby and Kit the ponies?”
“You won’t be able to see a thing,” answered Rosemary, but Sam had his argument ready. “We’ll take torches, and Jack will find the ponies. May we, please?”
“Yes, if Grandma Rosemary says its all right,” she answered, and found she had used Toby’s form of address for Kincaid’s mother quite naturally.
After another quick look at the clock, Rosemary gave in gracefully. “All right, then. But bundle up, and be sure to put the other dogs on leads. You don’t want them taking off across country in a strange place.”
“I should stay and help you,” protested Gemma, but Rosemary shook her head.
“Go with the children. This washing up won’t take but a minute, and Hugh will help with the table. Won’t you, dear?” She raised an eyebrow at her husband, and the gesture reminded Gemma of Duncan.
“Now you see how I suffer for my sins,” Hugh said with a grin, beginning to clear the table. Trying to imagine her dad doing the same, Gemma shook her head. In her family, even though her mother worked like a demon in the bakery all day, her father expected to be waited on at tea.
When Gemma and the boys had put on their coats and collected the dogs, she saw that Lally, who had slipped away up the stairs, had returned dressed for the outdoors as well.
The old scullery off the kitchen was now used as a boot room, and Hugh suggested they trade their shoes for pairs of the spare wellies that stood lined up on a low shelf. Gemma, having struggled with boots that were a bit too small, was last out. She found that Lally had hung back, waiting for her, while the boys ran ahead. Jack dashed around them in circles, barking excitedly.
“Oh.” Gemma drew a breath of delight as she looked about her. “How lovely.” The snow must have been falling heavily since they’d arrived, and now muffled the countryside in a thick blanket of white.
“Did you know that it’s only officially a white Christmas if a snowflake falls on the roof of the BBC in London on Christmas Day?” asked Lally as they started after the boys, the snow squeaking as it compressed under their boots.
“That’s hardly fair, is it?” Gemma thought of the occasional London snow, quickly marred by graffiti and turned to brown slush. This was different, a clean white silence stretching as far as she could see, and she was suddenly glad she had come.
The dog stopped barking, and in unspoken accord, she and Lally halted so that not even the rhythmic squeak of their boots disturbed the peace. They stood together, their shoulders touching, and let the still-falling snowflakes settle on their faces and hair.
Then, faint and far away, Gemma heard the wail of a siren, and her heart sank.
He discovered the joy of possession when he was six. It had been the first day of term after the Christmas holiday, the class fractious with memories of their temporary freedom, confined indoors by the miserable weather, a cold, gunmetal sleet that crept inside coats and boots. Sodden jackets and mittens had steamed on the room’s radiators, filling the air with a fetid, woolly odor that seemed to permeate his sinuses and skin. Odd how smell provided such direct and concrete link to memory; the least scent of damp wool brought back that day instantaneously, and with the recollection came emotion, tantalizingly intense.
Their teacher—stupid cow—had encouraged them to show off their favorite Christmas gift. He’d had the latest toy, but so did most of the others, so no one was suitably impressed. But a toady child called Colin Squires—fat, with oversize spectacles—had opened a leather pouch filled with agate and cat’s-eye marbles.
Both boys and girls leaned closer, reaching to touch the swirling colors of the agates and the strange, three-dimensional eyes. Colin, perspiring with pleasure, hadn’t been able to resist clicking the marbles enticingly inside his pocket long after show-and-tell was over, and at break he had demonstrated marbles games to a group of admirers.
He, however, had stood back at the edge of the circle, watching with feigned disinterest. Even then, he’d understood the necessity of planning.
Three days later, when Colin’s fleeting charm had waned and the other children had gone back to their usual games, he brushed up against Colin on the playground and came away with the bag of marbles transferred to his own pocket.
He kept his acquisition to himself, gloating over the marbles only in the privacy of his room, where he could fondle them without fear of interruption.
He knew, of course, that he had done something taboo, and that secrecy was the safest policy. What he didn’t realize until he was a few years older was that he hadn’t felt, even then, the prescribed emotion, what other people called “guilt.” Not a smidgen.
CHAPTER THREE
The unopened bottle of ten-year-old Aberlour stood on Ronnie Babcock’s kitchen table, its ready-made red bow still attached. Babcock regarded it sourly as he added the day’s post to the already toppling pile beside the bottle, then tossed his coat over a chair filled to overflowing with unopened newspapers.
The scotch was a gift from his guv’nor, Superintendent Fogarty, and you could always trust the super to judge the appropriate level of gift giving to a T. Not a blended bottle of Bell’s, which might make it seem he undervalued his team, but nor could he be bothered to spend a quid or two extra on the twelve-year-old Aberlour. No point in splashing out more than was absolutely necessary, he would say. A diplomat to the bone, was Fogarty—no wonder he’d gone far in the force.
Not that Fogarty was a bad copper, as much as it sometimes galled Babcock to admit it. He was just a better politician, and that was what up-to-date policing required. Fogarty played golf regularly with the right county officials; he lived in a detached bungalow in the toniest part of suburban Crewe; his unfortunately bucktoothed wife appeared often in the pages of Cheshire Life. The Fogartys’ life had, in fact, been Peggy Babcock’s ideal, and she’d told Ronnie often enough what a fool he was not to emulate it.
Babcock had sneered at that, and look where it had got him. Alone in a sedate semidetached house on the Crewe Road outside Nantwich, a house he had hated from the day the estate agent had shown it to them. And Peggy, who had insisted they buy the place, had packed her bag and walked out, straight into the arms—and the flat—of the same estate agent.
He gave a convulsive shiver as the cold began to seep through the thin fabric of his suit jacket. The central-heating boiler had been wonky the past few days, but he hadn’t mustered the time or energy to have a look at it, and tonight it seemed to have gone out altogether. Now there was no chance in hell of getting the heating man to come, which meant it was going to be a long, cold Christmas.
Slipping back into his overcoat, Babcock tore the bow off the bottle of Aberlour, but stopped short of breaking the seal. The question was, did he put himself out of his misery now and suffer the hangover on Christmas morning, when he had to pay a courtesy call on his aged aunt, or did he put it off until he’d discharged his one social obligation and could sink as deep as he liked into alcohol-induced self-pity?
There were a couple of beers in the fridge, if not much else—he could make himself a sandwich and drink them while he watched Christmas Eve rubbish on the telly. Either choice was pathetic.
He’d volunteered for the holiday-call rota rather than face the evening on his own, but the citizenry of South Cheshire seemed remarkably well-behaved this Christmas Eve, more’s the pity, and he had finally given up a hope of action and left a stultifyingly quiet station.
For a moment he toyed with the idea of calling Peggy to wish her a happy Christmas, but that meant he’d probably have to carry on a civil conversation with Bert, and he doubted his Christmas spirit would stretch quite that far.
Beer and telly it was, then, and he’d better bring the duvet down from the bedroom for a little extra warmth. He’d hate for his officers to find him frozen on his sofa when he didn’t turn up for work after the holiday. Serve Peggy right, though, the cow, he thought with a snort, if she had to make social capital out of his embarrassing demise. On the other hand, “Killed in the line of duty” would provid
e her with conversational fodder for years, and he didn’t intend to give her the satisfaction.
He had opened the fridge, groaning when he saw only a solitary can of Tennents and an open packet of ham that curled up at the edges, when the mobile phone clipped to his belt began to vibrate. Even before he glanced at the number he knew it was Area Control—no one else would be ringing him on Christmas Eve.
“Thank you, God,” he said with a sigh, and raised his eyes heavenward in salute as he flipped open the phone.
They sat huddled in Juliet’s van, with the motor running in hopes of coaxing a little warm air from the heating vents. The windows were already fogging from their breath, and outside, the snow still drifted down, cocooning them from the outside world.
Kincaid found himself thinking of the time when he and Jules, as children, had managed to get themselves locked in their neighbor’s coal cellar for an afternoon. He’d been devouring science fiction at the time, and as they’d sat scrunched together in the dark in what had seemed utter isolation, he’d imagined they were the last two people on earth. Fortunately, the neighbor had come home and heard their shouts, so they’d got off with no more than a bollocking and a missed meal, but he’d never forgotten the exhilarating terror of those long hours.
Beside him, Juliet took off one glove and held her bare hand in front of the vent, then grimaced and pulled it on again. “It’s bloody freezing,” she said. “Do you think the police will be long?”
Remembering how she had always refused comfort, he didn’t give her a reassuring answer. “Quite likely. They’ll be short-staffed tonight, and the bad weather won’t help.” After notifying the local police, he’d rung Gemma and his parents to explain the situation, but when he’d offered his phone to Juliet and asked if she needed to call Caspar, she’d said no.
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