Julia sat up straight, her eyes widening in astonishment. “Tommy? Our Tommy? I’ve known Tommy since I was this high.” She held out a hand, toddler height. “I can’t imagine anything less likely than the two of them having a social get-together. Tommy never quite approved of Con, and I’m sure he made it clear. Very politely, of course,” she added fondly. “If Con had meant to see Tommy, surely he would have said?”
“According to Godwin, Con wanted his old job back, and thought he might help.”
Julia shook her head. “That’s piffle. Con had a screaming nervous breakdown. The firm wouldn’t have considered it.” Her eyes were peat-dark, and guileless.
Kincaid closed his eyes for a moment, in hopes that removing her face from his sight would allow him to gather his thoughts. When he opened them again he found her watching him. “What did Connor say that day, Julia? It seems to me that his behavior only became out of the ordinary after he left you at lunchtime. I think you’ve not quite told me the whole truth.”
She looked away from him, fumbling for her cigarettes, then pushed the packet away and stood up, as graceful as a dancer. Moving to the table, she unscrewed the top of a paint tube and squeezed a drop of deep blue color onto her palette. Choosing a fine brush, she dabbed a little of the color onto the painting. “Can’t seem to get the bloody thing quite right, and I’m tired of looking at it. Maybe if I-”
“Julia.”
She stopped, paintbrush frozen in midair. After a long moment, she rinsed the brush and placed it carefully beside the drawing, then turned to him. “It began ordinarily enough, just the way I told you. A little row about money, about the flat.” She came back to the arm of the chair.
“Then what happened?” He moved closer to her and touched her hand, urging her on.
Julia captured his hand between her palms and held it tightly. She looked down, rubbing the back of his hand with her fingertips. “He begged me,” she said so softly Kincaid had to strain to hear. “He literally got down on his knees and begged me. Begged me to take him back, begged me to love him. I don’t know what set him off that day. I’d thought he had pretty well accepted things.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That it was no use. That I meant to divorce him as soon as the two-year limit had passed, if he still refused to cooperate.” She met Kincaid’s eyes. “I was perfectly beastly to him, and it wasn’t his fault. None of it was.”
“What are you talking about?” Kincaid said, startled enough to forget for a moment the sensation of her fingers against his skin.
“It was all my fault, from the very beginning. I should never have married Con. I knew it wasn’t fair, but I was in love with the idea of getting married, and I suppose I thought we’d muddle through somehow.” She laughed, letting go his hand. “But the more he loved me, the more he needed, the less I had to give. In the end there was nothing at all.” Softly, she added, “Except pity.”
“Julia,” Kincaid said sharply, “you were not responsible for Connor’s needs. There are people who will suck you dry, no matter how much you give. You couldn’t-”
“You don’t understand.” She slipped from the arm of the chair, moving restlessly away from him, then turned back as she reached the worktable. “I knew when I married Con I couldn’t love him. Not him, not anyone, not even Trev, who hasn’t asked for much except honesty and affection. I can’t, do you see? I’m not capable.”
“Don’t be absurd, Julia,” Kincaid said, pushing to his feet. “Of course you-”
“No.” She stopped him with the one flat word. “I can’t. Because of Matty.”
The despair in her voice banished his anger as quickly as it had come. He went to her and drew her gently to him, stroking her hair as she laid her head against his shoulder. Her slender body fit into the curve of his arms as easily as if it had always been there, and her hair felt as silky as feathers against the palm of his hand. She smelled faintly, unexpectedly, of lilacs. Kincaid took a breath, steadying himself against the wave of dizziness that swept over him, forcing himself to concentrate on the matter at hand. “What has Matty to do with it, Julia?”
“Everything. I loved him, too, you see, but that never seemed to occur to anyone… except Plummy, I suppose. She knew. I was ill, you know… afterward. But it gave me time to think, and it was then I decided that nothing would ever hurt me like that again.” She pulled away from him just enough to look up into his face. “It’s not worth it. Nothing is.”
“But surely the alternative-a lifetime of emotional isolation-is worse?”
She came back into his arms, resting her cheek in the hollow of his shoulder. “It’s bearable, at least,” she said, her voice muffled, and he felt her breath, warm through the fabric of his shirt. “I tried to explain it to Con that day-why I could never give him what he wanted… a family, children. I had nothing to go by, you see, no blueprint for an ordinary life. And a child-I could never take that risk. You do you see that, don’t you?”
He saw himself with uncomfortable clarity, curling up like a wounded hedgehog after Vic had shattered his safe and comfortable existence. He had protected himself from risk as surely as Julia. But she, at least, had been honest with herself, while he had used work, with the convenient demands of a cop’s life, as an excuse for not making emotional commitments. “I do see it,” he said softly, “but I don’t agree with it.”
He rubbed her back, gently kneading the knotted muscles, and her shoulder blades felt sharp under his hands. “Did Connor understand?”
“It only made him more angry. It was then I was beastly to him. I said-” She stopped, shaking her head, and her hair tickled Kincaid’s nose. “Horrid things, really horrid. I’m so ashamed.” Harshly, she added, “It’s my fault he’s dead. I don’t know what he did after he left Badger’s End that day, but if I hadn’t sent him away so cruelly-” She was crying now, her words coming in hiccuping gulps.
Kincaid took her face in his hands and wiped the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs. “Julia, Julia. You don’t know that. You can’t know that. You were not responsible for Connor’s behavior, or for his death.” He looked down at her, and in her tousled hair and tear-streaked face he saw again the child of his vision, alone with her grief in the narrow white bed. After a moment he said, “Nor were you responsible for Matthew’s death. Look at me, Julia. Do you hear me?”
“How can you know that?” she asked fiercely. “Everyone thought… Mummy and Daddy never forgave-”
“Those who knew and loved you never held you responsible, Julia. I’ve spoken to Plummy. And the vicar. You’re the one who has never forgiven yourself. That’s too heavy a burden for anyone to carry for twenty years. Let it go.”
For a long moment she held his gaze, then he felt the tension drain from her body. She returned her head to his shoulder, slipped her arms around his waist and leaned against him, letting him support her weight.
Thus they stood, quietly, until Kincaid became aware of every point where their bodies made contact. For all her slenderness, her body seemed suddenly, undeniably solid against his, and her breasts pressed firmly against his chest. He could hear his blood pounding in his ears.
Julia gave a hiccuping sigh and raised her head a little. “I’ve gone and made your shirt all soggy,” she said, rubbing at the damp patch on his shoulder. Then she tilted her head so that she could look into his face and added, her voice husky with suppressed laughter, “Does Scotland Yard always render its services so… enthusiastically?”
He stepped back, flushing with embarrassment, wishing he had worn less-revealing jeans rather than slacks. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-”
“It’s all right,” she said, drawing him to her again. “I don’t mind. I don’t mind at all.”
CHAPTER 14
He woke to the sound of Tony’s voice. “Morning tea, Mr. Kincaid,” he said as he tapped on the door and entered. “And a message for you from Sergeant Makepeace at High Wycombe. Something about catching the bird yo
u wanted?”
Kincaid sat up and ran a hand through his hair, then accepted the cup. “Thanks, Tony,” he said to Tony’s departing back. So they had found Kenneth Hicks and brought him in. They wouldn’t be able to hold him long without cause. He should have checked in last night-hot tea sloshed onto his hand as awareness came flooding into his still groggy brain.
Last night. Julia. Oh, bloody hell. What have I done.? How could he have been so unprofessional? With the thought came the memory of Trevor Simons’s words, “I never meant to do it. It was just… Julia,” and of his own rather supercilious comments about the man’s loss of judgment.
He closed his eyes. Never, in all his years on the job, had he crossed that line, hadn’t even thought, really, that he needed to protect himself from the temptation. Yet even in his self-reproach he found that there was a part of him that felt no remorse, for their union had been clean and healing, a solace for old wounds and a destruction of barriers too long held.
It was not until he entered the Chequers’ dining room and saw Gemma seated alone at a table that he remembered the message he’d left for her yesterday. When had she arrived, and how long had she waited for him?
Sitting down across from her, he said, “You’re an early bird,” with as much aplomb as he could manage. “We’ll need to get on to High Wycombe as soon as we can. They’re holding Kenneth Hicks for questioning.”
Gemma answered him without a trace of her usual morning cheeriness. “I know. I’ve spoken to Jack Makepeace already.”
“Are you all right, Gemma?”
“Headache.” She nibbled without much enthusiasm on a piece of dry toast.
“Tony pour you one drink too many?” he said, attempting to humor her, but she merely shrugged. “Look,” he said, wondering if the flush of guilt he felt were visible, “I’m sorry about last night. I was… delayed.” She must have rushed here from London and waited for him, might even have been worried about him, and he had sent no word. “I should have rung you. It was thoughtless of me.” Tilting his head, he studied her, measuring her mood. “Shall I grovel some more? Would a bed of hot coals do?”
This time she smiled and he gave an inward sigh of relief. Searching for a change of subject, he said, “Tell me about Tommy Godwin.” Just then his breakfast arrived, and he tucked into eggs and bacon while Gemma gave him a brief recounting of her interview.
“I took a statement, and I’ve had the forensics lads go over his flat and car.”
“I saw Sharon Doyle again, and Trevor Simons,” he said through a mouthful of toast. “And Julia. Connor went home again after his scuffle with Tommy, Gemma. It looks as though Tommy Godwin’s out of the frame unless we can prove he met Con again later. He did ring someone from the flat, though-problem is, we’ve no earthly idea who it was.”
Julia. There had been a familiarity, an unconscious intimacy, in the way Kincaid said her name. Gemma tried to concentrate on her driving, tried to ignore the certainty that was growing in the pit of her stomach. Surely she was imagining things? And what if it were true? Why should it matter so much to her if Duncan Kincaid had formed a less-than-professional relationship with a suspect in a murder investigation? It was common enough-she’d seen it happen with other officers-and she’d never thought he was infallible. Had she?
“Grow up, Gemma,” she said under her breath. He was human, and male, and she should never have forgotten that even gods sometimes have feet of clay. But those reminders made her feel no less miserable, and she was thankful when the High Wycombe roundabouts claimed all her attention.
“I’ve had Hicks warming up nicely for you the last half-hour,” Jack Makepeace said in greeting when they found him in his office. He shook their hands, and Gemma thought he gave hers an extra little squeeze. “Thought it would do him a world of good. Too bad he didn’t quite manage to finish his breakfast.” Makepeace winked at Gemma. “He’s made his phone call-his mum, or so he says-but the cavalry’s not come to the rescue.”
Having been briefed earlier on the telephone by Makepeace, Kincaid had brought Gemma up to date in the car and suggested that she begin the interview. “He doesn’t care for women,” Kincaid said as Makepeace left them at the nondescript door of Room A. “I want you to upset his balance a bit, prime him for me.”
One interview room seldom differed much from another-they could be expected to meet some variation of small and square, and to smell of stale cigarette smoke and human sweat, but when Gemma entered the room she swallowed convulsively, fighting the instinctive urge to cover her nose. Unshaven and all too obviously unbathed, Kenneth Hicks reeked of fear.
“Christ,” Kincaid muttered in Gemma’s ear as he came in behind her. “We should’ve brought masks.” He coughed, then added at full volume as he pulled out a chair for Gemma, “Hullo, Kenneth. Like the accommodations? Not quite up to the Hilton, I’m afraid, but then what can you do?”
“Go fuck yourself,” Hicks said succinctly. His voice was nasal, and Gemma pegged his accent as South London.
Kincaid shook his head as he sat down beside Gemma, facing Hicks across the narrow laminated table. “I’m disappointed in you, Kenneth. I thought you had better manners. We’ll just record our little conversation,” he said, pushing the switch on the tape recorder. “If you don’t mind, of course. You don’t mind, do you, Kenneth?”
Gemma studied Kenneth Hicks while Kincaid nattered pleasantly on and fiddled with the recorder. Hicks’s narrow, acne-spotted face seemed permanently stamped with a surly expression. In spite of the warmth of the room, he had kept on a black leather bomber jacket, and he rubbed nervously at his nose and chin as Kincaid’s patter continued. There seemed something vaguely familiar about him, and Gemma frowned with frustration as it hovered on the fringe of her mind.
“Sergeant James will be asking you a few questions,” Kincaid said, pushing his chair back from the table a bit. He folded his arms and stretched out his legs, as if he might catnap through the interview.
“Kenneth,” she said pleasantly, when they had completed the recorded preliminaries, “why don’t you make it easy for everyone and tell us exactly what you were doing the night Connor Swann was killed?”
Hicks darted a glance at Kincaid. “I already told the other bloke, the one as brought me in here. Big ginger-haired berk.”
“You told Sergeant Makepeace that you were drinking with friends at the Fox and Hounds in Henley until closing, after which you continued the party in the friends’ flat,” said Gemma, and the sound of her voice brought Hicks’s eyes back to her. “Is that right?” she added a little more forcefully.
“Yeah, that’s right. That’s just like I told him.” Hicks seemed to gain a little confidence from her recital. He relaxed in his chair and stared at Gemma, letting his eyes rest for a long moment on her breasts.
She smiled sweetly at him and made a show of consulting her notebook. “Thames Valley CID took statements last night from the friends you named, Kenneth, and unfortunately none of them seems to remember you being there at all.”
Hicks’s skin turned the color of the room’s nicotine-stained walls as the blood drained from his face. “I’ll kill ’em, the friggin’ little shits. They’re lying their bloody heads off.” He looked from Gemma to Kincaid, and, apparently finding no reassurance in their expressions, said a little more frantically, “You can’t do me for this. I never saw Con after we had that drink at the Fox. I swear I didn’t.”
Gemma flipped another page in her notebook. “You may have to, unless you can come up with a little better accounting of your movements after half-past ten. Connor made a telephone call from his flat around then, and afterward said he meant to go out.”
“Who says he did?” asked Hicks, with more shrewdness than Gemma had credited him.
“Never mind that. Do you want to know what I think, Kenneth?” Gemma asked, leaning toward him and lowering her voice confidentially. “I think Connor rang you and asked you to meet him at the lock. You argued and Connor fell in. It
could happen to anybody, couldn’t it, Ken? Did you try to help him, or were you afraid of the water?” Her tone said she understood and would forgive him anything.
“I never!” Hicks pushed his chair back from the table. “That’s a bleedin’ lie. And how the bleedin’ hell am I supposed to have got there without a car?”
“Connor picked you up in his car,” Gemma said reasonably, “and afterward you hitched a ride back to Henley.”
“I didn’t, I tell you, and you can’t prove I did.”
Unfortunately, Gemma knew from Thames Valley’s reports that he was correct-Connor’s car had been freshly washed and vacuumed and forensics had found no significant traces. “Then where were you? Tell the truth this time.”
“I’ve told you already. I was at the Fox, then at this bloke’s. Jackie-he’s called Jackie Fawcett.”
Kincaid recrossed his ankles lazily and spoke for the first time since Gemma had begun. “Then why wouldn’t your mates give you a nice, tidy alibi, Kenneth? I can see two possibilities-the first is that you’re lying, and the second is that they don’t like you, and I must say I don’t know which I think is the more likely. Did you help out other friends the same way you helped Connor?”
“Don’t know what you’re on about.” Hicks pulled a battered cigarette pack from the pocket of his jacket. He shook it, then probed inside it with thumb and forefinger before crumpling it in disgust.
Gemma took up the thread again. “That’s what you argued about, isn’t it, Kenneth? When you met Con after lunch, did you tell him he had to pay up? Did he agree to meet you later that evening? Then when he turned up without the money, you fought with him,” she embroidered as she went along.
An element of pleading crept into Hicks’s voice. “He didn’t owe me nothin’, I told you.” He kept his eyes fixed anxiously on Kincaid, and Gemma wondered what Kincaid had done to put the wind up him like that.
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