Water Like a Stone

by Deborah Crombie

  Gemma and her assailant went down in a tangle of arms and legs, both swearing, and Kincaid recognized the other voice.

  “Lally? What in hell’s name are you doing here?” he said as he lifted his niece, allowing Gemma to get to her feet, if a little ungracefully. “You could both have gone in the canal.”

  “Uncle Duncan?” the girl said tremulously. He could feel her shoulders shaking beneath his hands, and her teeth were chattering. “What are you doing here? How did you know? I didn’t know if I could find you in time—”

  “What do you mean, in time?” Kincaid said, fear shooting through him. “What’s happened? Where are Kit and the little boys?”

  “Toby and Sam are at the house, but Kit—” Lally mumbled something he couldn’t understand, then began to sob convulsively.

  “Lally, where’s Kit?” He increased the pressure on her shoulders, shaking her, but she only sobbed harder.

  “Lally, Lally.” Gemma gently disengaged the girl from Kincaid’s grasp. “It’s all right.” She wiped the tears from Lally’s cheeks with the palms of her hands. “You just have to tell us what’s happened, so we can take care of it.” There was an undertone of panic in her voice, but still it seemed to calm Lally.

  “We met Leo. I—He wanted Kit—He sent me home, but I’m afraid of what will happen to Kit. That night with Peter, he made me leave, and then—”

  “And then what?” Gemma prompted when Lally stopped. “It’s okay. You can tell us. You won’t be in trouble.”

  “Leo had some stuff. Vodka, that’s all. But he wanted me to help him get Peter drunk. And Peter went along with it. But then Leo told me to go. And Peter—” She held her hands to her face and her sob drew out to a little keening wail.

  “Peter?” said Gemma, but the pieces were cascading in Kincaid’s mind.

  “Peter? The boy who drowned?” He remembered Annie telling him, that day on the boat, about the boy she’d seen running along the towpath, his clothes wet, and how she’d assumed, when she’d heard later about the boy who drowned that night, that it was he she had seen.

  “How did you know about Peter?” asked Lally, shocked enough to stop crying.

  Kincaid made an effort to match Gemma’s patience. “Lally, on Boxing Day, do you remember when you and Kit met Annie Lebow? Was Leo with you?” When she nodded, he took a breath and said, “Did she speak to him?”

  “No, not really.” Lally wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “But he seemed anxious to get away. I thought he was just bored—he doesn’t like grown-ups much.”

  Kincaid’s thoughts raced. What if it had not been Peter Llewellyn Annie saw running that night, but Leo Dutton? Leo, dripping wet from holding the other boy under the water? And what if Annie had recognized him and realized her mistake? Gemma was staring at him, baffled, but he couldn’t take the time to explain.

  “Lally, start from the beginning. If you thought Leo had something to do with Peter’s death, why didn’t you say?”

  “Because I wasn’t sure at first. And then, when I started to suspect, Leo said—I didn’t want—”

  Leo had made her think she’d be held responsible for Peter’s drowning if she tried to implicate him, Kincaid guessed. He couldn’t let himself wonder why Leo would have hurt Peter Llewellyn, or why he might want to hurt Kit. There wasn’t time. “You said you left Kit with Leo? Where did you meet him?”

  “We met at the dairy barn. But that’s not where—Leo will have taken him to the clubhouse.”

  “Tell me exactly where it is, this clubhouse.”

  “It’s on Leo’s dad’s property, almost right on the canal, but you’d never see it if you didn’t know it was there. Leo says it’s an old tollhouse, but I don’t think they’d have put a tollhouse so far from the junction.”

  For just an instant, Kincaid heard his father in the girl’s slightly pedantic explanation, and his heart softened towards her. “It’s all right, Lally,” he said, trying to reassure himself as much as her. “We’ll find them.”

  Pulling out his mobile, he dialed Babcock.

  The building was a windowless brick cubicle, about eight feet square, with a small door sagging half off its hinges. When Leo steered him firmly through the doorway, Kit’s head just missed the lintel. Once inside, he saw that half the roof was gone. The snow-heavy clouds showing in the gap cast a diffuse light that just allowed him to make out shapes.

  Leo flicked on the torch, and the shapes resolved into upturned packing crates and some old blankets made into a nest. “Have a seat,” he said, in a tone that made it clear it was not a request. “It’s not elegant, but it’s mine,” he went on, as Kit sank reluctantly onto a packing crate. “I don’t think my father even knows this is here; he’s never explored the property. The country-squire thing is just for show.

  “No glasses, I’m afraid,” he added as he produced a bottle of vodka from behind one of the crates. “Bottoms up.”

  He sat beside Kit and took a healthy swig, then passed the bottle on. Kit tipped the bottle up, compressing his lips so that only a little liquid trickled into his mouth. It was foul, like drinking petrol, and it was all he could do to not spit it out.

  “No cheating,” Leo said. “That’s expensive vodka, not mouthwash. Drink it down.” When Kit forced down another sip, he took the bottle back and drank again. “I might have had something more to your liking if Lally hadn’t gone and lost my stash.”

  “Lally couldn’t help it.” The liquor burned all the way to Kit’s stomach, and made him feel reckless. “Her mother hasn’t let her near their house.”

  “Defending her again?” Leo’s voice was cold. Kit knew he’d made a mistake, but he stared back at the other boy, refusing to back down. “She does the damsel in distress well,” Leo went on, as if musing aloud. “Good old Peter certainly fell for it. But she wasn’t so innocent, was she?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kit answered, although he was afraid he did.

  “She’s a slut,” said Leo, suddenly harsh. “And worse than that, a careless slut. She should never have left condoms in her backpack where I would find them.”

  “But weren’t they for—I thought you and Lally—”

  “It wasn’t like that!” Leo shouted, the anger that had been simmering beneath the surface of his offhand manner suddenly boiling over. He stood, pacing in the cramped space, and Kit began to feel really frightened.

  “Oh, I could have done it, whenever I wanted,” Leo went on, his voice calmer, but Kit could hear him breathing hard. “But we were different, special. And then she ruined it because she felt sorry for pretty-boy Peter, just like she does you.”

  Kit knew that Lally hadn’t gone with Peter because she felt sorry for him, and he didn’t think she liked him because she was sorry for him, either.

  Understanding came to him with a sickening jolt. Lally had refused Leo, telling him their relationship was too special for sex. Leo had believed her, accepted it, until he discovered she’d been sleeping with Peter Llewellyn.

  And then Peter had died.

  “I’m going.” Kit pushed himself to his feet, his heart thumping.

  “Suit yourself,” said Leo, with a return of his mocking manner. “Think you can find the towpath in the dark?”

  “How hard can it be?” asked Kit, trying to match him for nonchalance. In the faint light from Leo’s covered torch, he found the door. But as he stepped out, Leo switched the torch off, and the dark descended like a cloak.

  Kit stood still, fighting panic. He thought back to the way they’d come, parallel to the canal as they’d crossed the field and entered the wood, then turning gradually to the right. They had come straight to the door side of the shed, which must mean that the way to the canal lay round the back of the cubicle.

  He felt his way round the building, then carried straight on, brushing the tree trunks with his fingertips. After a few yards, the trees thinned, and he thought he smelled the mossy scent of water, even beneath the sharp tan
g of snow in the air. Yes, he could see it now, the water reflecting very faintly the overcast sky.

  Relief quickened his steps, and it was only when he reached the water’s edge that he realized the towpath was on the far side, and there was no bridge.

  He couldn’t be that far from the dairy barn, though, if he just followed the water. The ground was tussocky, but he could man—

  The shove caught him in the middle of the back like a cannonball. He had only an instant’s sensation of falling, and then the water closed over him, cold enough to freeze his heart.

  Ronnie answered on the first ring. “I was just on my way to you. There’s been—”

  “Ronnie, we’re going to need backup.” Kincaid paused, taking the phone from his ear while he spoke to his niece. “Lally, can you get to this tollhouse from the Dutton place?”

  “There’s a track, from the gate at the back of the garden through the woods.”

  “It’s Kit,” he said to Ronnie again. “It’s looks like Leo Dutton may have been involved in Annie Lebow’s murder, and now he has Kit—”

  “Leo Dutton? But he’s just a kid. Why would—”

  “Ronnie, there’s no time.” He gave Babcock the best directions he could, adding, “You’ll need a torch.”

  “I’m just leaving Nantwich,” said Ronnie. “Can I pick you up?”

  “No. We’re at Barbridge. We’ll take the car round and be there before you. And, Ronnie, call for uniforms.”

  At the shock of the water, Kit had instinctively opened his mouth and inhaled. He thrashed wildly, struggling towards the surface, and when his head broke water he gagged and spewed up canal water mixed with the little vodka he’d drunk. Still coughing, he tried to catch his breath, then discovered he could stand. But the cold was quickly numbing his arms and legs—if he didn’t move he’d be paralyzed.

  Through the water streaming from his hair, he could make out the near bank. His arms felt leaden, but he forced himself to reach out in a long swimmer’s stroke. When his fingers touched firm bank, he grasped with all his strength. Then a crushing weight came down on his hand.

  Yelling, Kit wrenched his hand free and, with a lunge, wrapped both his arms round Leo’s ankles, pulling with all his might.

  The force of it toppled the other boy, but he fell back, rather than into the canal, and by the time Kit had managed to clamber onto the bank on his hands and knees, Leo was already back on his feet.

  With a grunt more vicious than any swear word, Leo pulled back a booted foot and kicked Kit hard in the chin.

  Kit’s head snapped back. Then he was lying in the grass, coughing on the metallic taste of the blood flowing from his lower lip. His head buzzed from the impact, and he shook it like a punch-drunk boxer as he hauled himself back up to his knees and then stood, staggering unsteadily.

  He tensed, balling his fists as he waited for the next blow, then realized that Leo was moving away from him, back towards the shed.

  “You bastard!” he shouted, and started after him. The fact that he had a chance to run, to get a head start, was banished by his fury as quickly as it had crossed his mind. No one was going to try to drown him, then kick him in the face, and get away with it. He stumbled forward, hampered by the sodden, icy weight of his clothes and shoes, and by the ringing in his head. “Is that what you did to Peter?” he gasped. “Did you push him in and hold him under?”

  Then Leo disappeared round the corner of the shed and Kit stopped, suddenly uncertain. But before he could decide whether to follow, Leo reappeared and walked towards him.

  Even in the dim light, Kit could see what Leo held in his hands.

  He stared down the barrel of the shotgun, then into Leo’s eyes, and he knew he was dead.

  “Lally, stay in the car. Wait for the police.” Kincaid had driven down Piers Dutton’s drive until the Escort’s wheels spun and stuck. The house was dark, so he knew there’d be no help from that quarter, and that they’d have to make it the rest of the way on foot.

  His niece had gone quiet in the backseat, her silence more disturbing than her earlier tears. But now she said, “No,” in a voice as implacable as his own. “You won’t find it without me. I’m coming.” Then she was out of the car and running across the back garden that lay to the left of the drive, and all they could do was follow her.

  Kincaid knew she was right, and that she had relieved him of making the choice of risking her safety at the expense of Kit’s.

  “Don’t use a torch,” Lally called back to them. “It’ll confuse you. Just stay close to me.”

  She slipped through a gate at the back of the garden and into what seemed at first glance to be impenetrable scrub. But as they followed her through the gate, he saw that a barely discernible path, no wider than a deer trail, led through the woods.

  Once he heard Gemma stumble and curse, but when he reached back to steady her, she whispered, “No, I’m fine. Hurry.” The path twisted and turned, but Kincaid’s sense of direction told him they were heading towards the canal at a slightly oblique angle.

  The path curved once more, and Lally came to a dead stop. When they cannoned into her, she steadied herself, then raised a hand to motion them to silence. Ahead, Kincaid could see a small brick building, but it was dark and there was no sign of movement.

  Lally let out an audible breath and moved forward, skirting the shed on the left as she headed towards the canal. “They’re not here. What if we’re too—”

  Kincaid and Gemma had stepped up to flank her, so that when she froze, they saw the tableau before them in the same instant.

  Kit stood to one side of a slight clearing ahead of them. Ten feet away, on the clearing’s far side, Leo Dutton held a raised shotgun.

  “You’d better stop where you are,” Leo said, so casually that Kincaid knew he had heard them before they saw him. “That’s what I call in the nick of time. And, Lally, you brought the cavalry, clever girl.”

  “Leo, I—Don’t hurt Kit. He hasn’t done any—”

  “Shut up.” With the barrel of the gun, Leo motioned to Kit to move closer to the others. Then he rotated slightly, so that he could cover them all evenly. “So now you’re a snitch, Lally, as well as a thief and a liar. But this time you can’t take it back. You can’t make it up to me.”

  “I can. I’ll do whatever you want—”

  “What? You think it’s that easy? That I’ll just let you lot walk away?” Leo’s voice rose, and the barrel of the shotgun came up with it.

  “You won’t gain anything by hurting us, Leo,” said Kincaid, as levelly as he could manage. If he could keep the boy talking, he might be able to contain him until backup arrived. “The police already know you drowned Peter Llewellyn and you killed Annie Lebow. She recognized you on Boxing Day, didn’t she, when you and Lally and Kit stopped at the boat? She’d seen you the night Peter died.

  “You were wet because you’d had to hold Peter under, weren’t you? It was harder than you’d thought to drown someone. Annie said you were ‘wild-eyed’; maybe you hadn’t known what it would feel like to kill another human being. She thought, when she heard about the drowning later, that it was Peter she had seen, and that she might have helped him.”

  “She stepped right into my path, the stupid cow. She saw my face. That day on the towpath, while Kit here was making chitchat, I could see her looking at me, trying to make the connection.”

  “You killed her?” Kit’s voice was high with shock, and Kincaid realized his mistake. Kit had guessed about Peter, but he hadn’t known enough to put the pieces together about Annie. “You killed Annie!” Kit was shouting now, blazing with rage. “She was a good person. She never did anything to hurt anyone. She didn’t deserve to die. And you—I saw her. I saw what you did to her.” Kit charged towards the other boy, in his fury oblivious to the danger.

  “No!” shouted Lally, and launched herself at Kit.

  In that instant, a twig cracked. Kincaid just glimpsed Ronnie Babcock stepping into the clearing as Leo w
hirled towards the noise and the gun discharged.

  The boom reverberated, deafening in the still night air, but beneath it Kincaid heard Ronnie’s grunt of surprise. Gemma ran towards him even as he fell.

  “Don’t move. Nobody move,” commanded Kincaid. Lally had pushed Kit down and they both froze in a crouch. Leo still held the gun, but he was visibly shaking. “Easy, Leo, easy,” Kincaid said, then to Gemma, “How bad is it?”

  She’d knelt, slipping off her coat and pressing it to Ronnie’s midriff. Her face looked white in the gloom as she glanced up at him. “We need help. Quickly.”

  Kincaid prayed that the gun had been filled with birdshot, that it had not been tightly choked, that the boy’s aim had been off. Ronnie groaned and Gemma murmured something he couldn’t hear.

  Slowly, carefully, Kincaid turned back to Leo Dutton. The gun was double-barreled. Had the boy loaded both chambers? “Leo. Put the gun down. If you do it now, that was an accident. We all saw that. But if you let a policeman die, it’s murder.”

  “You said the police already knew about Peter and that woman,” Leo countered. “So what do I have to lose?” But some of the bravado was gone; he sounded, for the first time, like a frightened teenager.

  “Oh, they know, but that’s not the same as proof, is it? Not even Lally can prove you killed Peter Llewellyn. It’s only conjecture on her part. And there’s no forensic evidence linking you to the murder of Annie Lebow, and no witnesses. Anything you’ve said tonight will be inadmissible in court.

  “But even if the police could connect you to these crimes, you’re a juvenile. You might get a few months in a psychiatric ward, then probation. Your father can pull strings.” Kincaid could only hope that Leo didn’t know his father was facing indictment for fraud, and that the influence Piers Dutton had wielded among the rich and powerful in the county might soon be a memory.

  He glanced over at Babcock, who lay alarmingly still. Gemma shook her head at him, a signal of distress.

  Kincaid dropped his voice, mustering every ounce of persuasion he possessed. “But if you let the chief inspector here die, not even your father can protect you. It won’t matter what you do to the rest of us. And there isn’t anywhere you can run that they won’t find you.”