“You’re a real prince, Kenneth,” Kincaid said generously. “How do you know Sharon thought Con intended to marry her? Did she tell you?”
“Too right, she did. Said, ‘He’ll get shut of you then, Kenneth Hicks. I’ll make sure of it.’ Stupid-”
“You know, Kenneth, if you’d been the one found floating facedown in the Thames, I don’t think we’d have had to look far for a motive.”
“You threatening me, man? You can’t do that-that’s-”
“Harassment, I know. No, Kenneth, I’m not threatening you, just making an observation.” Kincaid smiled. “I’m sure you had Connor’s best interests at heart.”
“He used to tell me things, when he’d had a few, like.” Hicks lowered his voice confidentially. “Wife had him by the balls. She crooked her little finger, he’d come running with his tail between his legs. He’d had a hell of a row with her that day, the bitch-”
“What day, Kenneth?” Kincaid said very distinctly, very quietly.
Cigarette frozen halfway to his lips, Hicks stared at Kincaid like a rat surprised by a ferret. “Don’t know. You can’t prove nothing.”
“It was the day he died, wasn’t it, Kenneth? You saw Connor the day he died. Where?”
Hicks’s close-set eyes shifted nervously away from Kincaid’s face and he drew sharply on the cigarette.
“Spit it out, Kenneth. I’ll find out, you know. I’ll start by asking these nice people here.” Kincaid nodded toward the bar. “Don’t you think that’s a good idea?”
“So what if I did have a couple of pints with him? How was I to know it was different from any other day?”
“Where and when?”
“Here, same as always. Don’t know what time,” Hicks said evasively, then added as he saw Kincaid’s expression, “Twoish, maybe.”
After lunch, Kincaid thought. Con had come straight here from Badger’s End. “He told you he’d had a row with Julia? What about?”
“Don’t know, do I? Nothin’ to do with me.” Hicks clamped his mouth shut so decisively that Kincaid changed tacks.
“What else did you talk about?”
“Nothin’. We just had a friendly pint, like. Not against the law, is it, havin’ a friendly drink with a mate?” Hicks asked, voice rising as if he might be working himself up to hysteria.
“Did you see Connor again after that?”
“No, I never. Not after he left here.” He took a last drag on his cigarette and ground it out in the ashtray.
“Where were you that night, Kenneth? From eight o’clock or so on?”
Shaking his head, Hicks said, “None of your friggin’ business, is it? I’ve had enough of your bleedin’ harassment. I ain’t done nothin’, fuckin’ filth got no right to keep after me.” He shoved his empty glass away and pushed back on his stool, watching Kincaid, the whites of his eyes showing beneath the irises.
Kincaid debated the benefit of pushing him any farther, and decided against it. “All right, Kenneth, have it your way. But stay around where I can find you, just in case we need to have another little visit.” Hicks’s stool screeched against the floor as he stood up. As he pushed past, Kincaid reached up and sank his fingers into the sleeve of his leather jacket. “If you even think about disappearing, boyo, I’ll have the lads after you so fast you won’t be able to find a hole big enough to hide your skinny backside. Do we understand each other, mate?”
After a long moment, Hicks nodded and Kincaid smiled and let him go. “There’s a good boy, Ken. See you around.”
Kincaid turned and watched Hicks scuttle out the door into the street, then he carefully wiped his fingers against his jeans.
CHAPTER 10
Not one to let good beer go to waste, Kincaid drained the last drop of his pint. He considered briefly having another, but the pub’s atmosphere didn’t encourage lingering.
Out in the street, he sniffed the air curiously. He’d noticed the smell when he arrived in town, but it seemed stronger now. Familiar but elusive… tomatoes cooking, perhaps? Finding his car free of sprayed graffiti and still in possession of its wheel covers, Kincaid stood still for a moment and closed his eyes. Hops. Of course it was hops-it was Monday and the brewery was in full operation. The wind must have shifted since he’d arrived at the pub, bringing the rich odor with it. The brewery would be closing soon, as well as most of the shops, he thought as he glanced at his watch-rush hour, such as it was, had begun in Henley.
He’d navigated his way onto the Reading Road, intent on exchanging the day’s findings with Gemma back at the Chequers, when the signpost for the Station Road carpark caught his eye. Almost without thinking he found himself making the turn and pulling the car into a vacant slot. From there it was only a few hundred yards’ walk down the Station Road to the river. On his right lay the boathouse flats, serene behind their iron fence in the dusk.
Something had been niggling at him-he couldn’t swear to the date of the last check Connor had written Kenneth. Kincaid had never finished his interrupted search of Con’s desk, and now he let himself into the flat with the key he’d used earlier, intending to have another look at the checkbook.
He stopped just inside the door. Looking around, he tried to pinpoint why the flat felt different. Warmth, for one thing. The central heating had been switched on. Con’s shoes had disappeared from beneath the settee. The untidy stack of newspapers on the end table had gone as well, but something even less definable spoke of recent human occupation. He sniffed, trying to place the faint scent in the air. Something tugged at the fringes of his mind, then vanished as he heard a noise above.
He held his breath, listening, then moved quietly toward the stairs. A scrape came, then a thump. Someone moving furniture? He’d only been a few minutes behind Kenneth leaving the pub-had the little sod beat him here, bent on destroying evidence? Or had Sharon come back, after all?
Both doors on the first landing had been pulled to, but before he could investigate, the noise came again from above. He climbed the last flight of steps, carefully keeping his feet to the edge of the treads. The studio door stood open a few inches, not enough to give him a clear view into the room. Taking a breath, he used his fist to slam the door open. He charged into the room as the door bounced against the wall.
Julia Swann dropped the stack of canvases she held in her hands.
“Jesus, Julia, you gave me a fright! What the hell are you doing here?” He stood breathing hard, adrenaline still rushing through his body.
“I gave you a fright!” She stared at him wide-eyed, holding her balled hand to her chest and flattening her black sweater between her breasts. “You probably just cost me ten years off my life, Superintendent, not to mention damage to my property.” She bent to retrieve her paintings. “I might ask you the same question-what are you doing in my flat?”
“It’s still under our jurisdiction. I’m sorry I frightened you. I had no idea you were here.” Trying to regain a semblance of authority, he added, “You should have notified the police.”
“Why should I feel obliged to let the police know I’d come back to my own flat?” She sat on the rolled arm of the chair she used for a prop in her paintings and looked at him challengingly.
“Your husband’s death is still under investigation, Mrs. Swann, and he did live here, in case you’d forgotten.” He came nearer to her and sat on the only other available piece of furniture, her worktable. His feet dangled a few inches above the floor and he crossed his ankles to stop them swinging.
“You called me Julia before.”
“Did I?” Then, it had been instinctive, involuntary. Now he used it deliberately. “Okay, Julia.” He drew the syllables out. “So what are you doing here?”
“I should think that would be rather obvious.” She gestured around her and he turned, examining the room. Paintings, both the small flower studies and the larger portraits, had been stacked against the walls, and a few had been hung. Dust had vanished from the visible surfaces, and some of the paint
s and paper familiar to him from her workroom at Badger’s End had appeared on the table. She had brought in a large pot plant and placed it near the blue velvet chair-those, along with the faded Persian rug and the brightly colored books in the case behind the chair, formed the still-life tableau he’d seen in several of the paintings at the gallery.
The room felt alive once more, and he finally identified the scent that had eluded him downstairs. It was Julia’s perfume.
She had slid down into the depths of the chair and sat quietly smoking with her legs stretched out, and as he looked at her he saw that her eyes were shadowed with fatigue. “Why did you give this up, Julia? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Studying him, she said, “You look different out of your proper policeman’s kit. Nice. Human, even. I’d like to draw you.” She stood suddenly and touched her fingers to the angle of his jaw, turning his head. “I don’t usually do men, but you have an interesting face, good bones that catch the light well.” Just as quickly, she sank into the chair again and regarded him.
He still felt the imprint of her fingers against his skin. Resisting the urge to touch his jaw, he said, “You haven’t answered me.”
Sighing, she ground the half-smoked cigarette into a pottery ashtray. “I don’t know if I can.”
“Try me.”
“You would have to know how things were with us, toward the end.” Idly, she rubbed the nap on the chair arm the wrong way. Kincaid waited, watching her. She looked up and met his eyes. “He couldn’t pin me down. The more he tried the more frustrated he got, until finally he started imagining things.”
Fastening on the first part, Kincaid asked, “What do you mean, he couldn’t pin you down?”
“I was never there for him, not in the way he wanted, not when he wanted…” She crossed her arms as if suddenly cold and rubbed her thumbs against the fabric of her sweater. “Have you ever had anyone suck you dry, Superintendent?” Before he could answer, she added, “I can’t go on calling you Super-bloody-intendent. Your name’s Duncan, isn’t it?” She gave his name a slight stress on the first syllable, so that he heard in it a Scots echo.
“What kind of things did Connor imagine, Julia?”
Her mouth turned down at the corners and she shrugged. “Oh, you know. Lovers, secret trysts, that sort of thing.”
“And they weren’t true?”
“Not then.” She lifted her eyebrows and gave him a little flirtatious smile, challenging him.
“You’re telling me that Connor was jealous of you?”
Julia laughed, and the smile that transformed her thin face moved him in a way he couldn’t explain. “It’s so ironic, isn’t it? What a joke. Connor Swann, everyone’s favorite Lothario, afraid his own wife might be messing him about.” Kincaid’s consternation must have shown, because she smiled again and said, “Did you think I didn’t know Con’s reputation? I would have to have been deaf, dumb and blind not to.” Her mirth faded and she added softly, “Of course, the more I slipped away, the more women he notched on his braces. Was he punishing me? Or was he just looking for what I couldn’t give him?” She stared past Kincaid at the window he knew must be darkening.
“You still haven’t answered my question,” he said again, but this time gently.
“What?” She came back to him from her reverie. “Oh, the flat. I was exhausted, in the end. I ran away. It was easier.” They looked at each other in silence for a moment, then she said, “You can see that, can’t you, Duncan?”
The words “ran away” echoed in his mind and he had a sudden vision of himself, packing up only the most necessary of possessions, leaving Vic in the flat they had chosen with such care. It had been easier, easier to start over with nothing to remind him of his failure, or of her. “What about your studio?” he said, shutting off the flow of memory.
“I’ve missed it, but I can paint anywhere, if I must.” She leaned back in the chair, watching him.
Kincaid thought back to his earlier interviews with her, trying to put a finger on the change he sensed. She was still sharp and quick, her intelligence always evident, but the brittle nervousness had left her. “It wasn’t easy for you, was it, those months you spent at Badger’s End?” She stared back at him, her lips parted, and he felt again that frisson along his spine that came with knowing her in a way more intimate than words.
“You’re very perceptive, Duncan.”
“What about Trevor Simons? Were you seeing him then?”
“I told you, no. There wasn’t anyone.”
“And now? Do you love him?” A necessary question, he told himself, but the words seemed to leave his lips of their own accord.
“Love, Duncan?” Julia laughed. “Do you want to split philosophical hairs over the nature of love and friendship?” She continued more seriously, “Trev and I are friends, yes, but if you mean am I in love with him, the answer is no. Does it matter?”
“I don’t know,” Kincaid answered truthfully. “Would he lie for you? You did leave the opening that night, you know. I have an independent witness who saw you go.”
“Did I?” She looked away from him, fumbling for the cigarette packet that had slipped under the chair. “I suppose I did, for a bit. It was rather a crush. I don’t like to admit it, but sometimes things like that make me feel a little claustrophobic.”
“You’re still smoking too much,” he said as she found the packet and lit another cigarette.
“How much is too much? You’re splitting hairs again.” Her smile held a hint of mischief.
“Where did you go, when you left the gallery?”
Julia stood up and went to the window, and he twisted around, watching her as she closed the blinds against the charcoal sky. Still with her back to Kincaid, she said, “I don’t like bare windows, once it’s dark. Silly, I know, but even up here I always feel someone might be watching me.” She turned to him again. “I walked along the River Terrace for a bit, had a breath of air, that’s all.”
“Did you see Connor?”
“No, I didn’t,” she answered, coming back to her chair. This time she curled herself into it with her legs drawn up, and as she moved the bell of her hair swung against her neck. “And I doubt I was gone more than five or ten minutes.”
“But you saw him earlier that day, didn’t you? At Badger’s End, after lunch, and you had a row.”
He saw her chest move with the quick intake of breath, as if she might deny it, but she only watched him quietly for a moment before answering, “It was such a stupid thing, really, such a petty little end note. I was ashamed.
“He came upstairs after lunch, bounding in like a great overgrown puppy, and I lit into him. I’d had a letter that morning from the building society-he’d not made a payment in two months. That was our arrangement, you see,” she explained to Kincaid, “that he could stay in the flat as long as he kept up the payments. Well, we argued, as you can imagine, and I told him he had to come up with the money.” Pausing, she put out the cigarette she’d left burning in the ashtray, then took another little breath. “I also told him he needed to think about making other arrangements. It was too worrying, about the payments, I mean… and things were difficult for me at home.”
“And he didn’t take that well?” Kincaid asked. She shook her head, her lips pressed together. “Did you give him a time limit?”
“No, but surely he could see that we couldn’t go on like that forever…”
Kincaid asked the question that had been bothering him from the beginning. “Why didn’t you just divorce him, Julia? Get it over with, make a clean break. This was no trial separation-you knew when you left him that it couldn’t be mended.”
She smiled at him, teasing. “You of all people should know the law, Duncan. Especially having been through it yourself.”
Surprised, he said, “Ancient history. Are my scars still visible?”
Julia shrugged. “A lucky guess. Did your wife file against you?” When he nodded, she continued, “Did you agree to
her petition?”
“Well, of course. There was no point going on.”
“Do you know what would have happened if you had refused?”
He shook his head. “I never thought about it.”
“She would’ve had to wait two years. That’s how long it takes to prove a contested divorce.”
“Are you saying that Connor refused to let you divorce him?”
“Got it in one, dear Superintendent.” She watched him as he digested this, then said softly, “Was she very beautiful?”
“Who?”
“Your wife, of course.”
Kincaid contrasted the image of Vic’s delicate, pale prettiness with the woman sitting before him. Julia’s face seemed to float between the blackness of her turtlenecked jersey and her dark hair, almost disembodied, and in the lamplight the lines of pain and experience stood out sharply. “I suppose you would say she was beautiful. I don’t know. It’s been a long time.”
Realizing that his rear had gone numb from sitting on the hard table edge, he pushed off with his hands, stretched and lowered himself to the Persian rug. He wrapped his arms around his knees and looked up at Julia, noticing how the difference in perspective altered the planes and shadows of her face. “Did you know about Con’s gambling when you married him?”
She shook her head. “No, only that he liked to go racing, and that was rather a lark for me. I’d never been-” She laughed at his expression. “No, really. You think I had this very sophisticated and cosmopolitan upbringing, don’t you? What you don’t understand is that my parents don’t do anything unless it’s connected with music.” She sighed, then said reflectively, “I loved the colors and the movement, the horses’ grace and perfect form. It was only gradually that I began to see that it wasn’t just fun for Con, not in the sense it was for me. He’d sweat during the race, and sometimes I’d see his hands tremble. And then I began to realize he was lying to me about how much he’d bet.” Shrugging, she added, “After a bit I stopped going.”
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