“And they’ve no previous connection with the property?”
“Not that I know of.”
Babcock looked at the figures moving in the light spilling from the old dairy, then peered up the lane into the darkness. “So these Londoners, who did they buy the barn from? The people in the big house at the top of the lane?”
“No.” The sharpness of Juliet’s answer caught Kincaid by surprise. “No. There’s a farmhouse just at the bend in the lane, about halfway down. I think the owners—the Fosters—bought the farm directly from the people who had owned the farm and the dairy barn for years. Then, last year, they decided to subdivide the property and sell off the barn and surrounding pasture. The market’s boom-ing, with any old tumbledown outbuilding being hyped as ‘suitable for renovation.’ The dairy was a real treasure and they knew it.”
“What happened to the Smiths, then?” Kincaid asked. He remembered the old traditional Cheshire farming family who had had the place, and who had tolerated his and Juliet’s exploring the property.
“Sold up about five years ago,” Jules answered. “Retired and moved south. Shropshire, I think.”
“Smith? Bugger,” Babcock muttered with feeling, then glanced at the barn again. To Kincaid, he said, “Any idea how long—”
“Not a clue. Maybe your pathologist can hazard a guess. Is he a good man?”
Babcock smiled. “In a manner of speaking. But don’t tell her I said so.”
Embarrassed by his unconscious sexism, Kincaid grimaced. Fortunately, it seemed to have passed Juliet by. Stomping her feet to warm them, she pulled back her jacket cuff and squinted at her watch. “Look. It is Christmas Eve, and we’ve got family waiting. I don’t know what else I can tell you.”
“I’ll need a proper statement from you, but I can get that tomorrow,” Babcock conceded.
“It’s Yew Cottage, near the end of North Crofts.”
“I know the place.” Babcock turned to Kincaid. “What about you, Duncan? Ensconced in the familial bosom?”
“Yes.” Kincaid gave brief directions to his parents’ house, although it wouldn’t have surprised him to find that Babcock knew perfectly well where they lived—then fished a card from his coat pocket. “Here’s my mobile number. If you could—” He stopped as the flash of car headlamps coming down the track caught his eye.
As a white van emerged from the trees and rolled towards them, Babcock turned to look. “That’ll be the SOCOs. Dr. Elsworthy won’t be far behind.”
A man climbing from the van called out, “Hey, boss, what have we got? ”
Babcock raised his hand in acknowledgment, answering merely,
“Meet you at the barn.”
“Right,” he added briskly to Kincaid and Juliet. “I’ll be in touch.
Mrs. Newcombe, I’ll need the names and contact information for anyone working with you on the premises, if you could get that together for me by tomorrow.” He held a hand out to Kincaid. “Good to see you, old son.”
Babcock might as well have said Run away and play, so obviously had his attention moved on. Kincaid felt a flare of irritation at being cast aside like a used tissue. He knew all the things running through his old friend’s mind—Babcock would be deciding how to organize the crime scene, structuring the interviews of the property’s present and former own ers and of the neighbors, making arrangements for the examination of the remains—all the
things Kincaid would be doing himself if it were his case.
The gears in Kincaid’s mind clicked over, his adrenaline pumped, and the exhilaration of the chase kicked into his system like a drug.
He wanted to look over the crime scene with Babcock and the SOCOs, he wanted to see what the pathologist had to say about s
the body of the child. It was on his lips to ask Juliet to go on without him, to tell Babcock he’d stay, when he glanced at his sister.
Hunched against the cold in her padded coat, she looked more vulnerable than he had ever seen her. She was regarding him with a puzzled expression.
“Duncan, can’t we go?” she asked.
We’ve got family waiting, she had said to Babcock. He thought of Gemma and the boys, marooned at his parents’ as Christmas Eve ticked away, and cursed himself for a selfish bastard.
“Of course,” he said, and to Babcock he added, “Good luck with it, then.”
He turned and walked Juliet to her van, but as he started to get into his own car, he couldn’t resist a look back at the scene.
Babcock was still standing in the same spot, watching him, his lips curved in a knowing smile.
“Where the hell is she?” Caspar Newcombe slammed the phone back into its cradle on his desk. “It’s nearly eight o’clock and not a word from her, and we’re supposed to be serving dinner for her whole bloody clan before midnight mass.”
“Have you tried ringing her mother?” His partner, Piers Dutton, settled himself a little more comfortably in one of the client’s chairs across from Caspar’s desk and arranged one ankle over the other.
Fed up with pacing round the empty house and ringing his wife’s unresponsive mobile phone, Caspar had walked the short distance to his firm and found Piers there, finishing up some paperwork. Seeing Caspar’s expression, Piers had got up from his desk and followed Caspar into his office.
Newcombe and Dutton, Investments, occupied the ground-floor premises at the end of a Georgian terrace near the town square, just a few yards from St. Mary’s Church. The building was a gem,
and Caspar took great pride in their acquisition of the office suite.
He’d also expected his wife to share his feelings, and to look on her position as office manager of Newcombe and Dutton as a privilege.
Instead, she had walked out on them without so much as giving notice, and had borrowed money to set herself up in business as a builder. A builder! If she had intended to humiliate him, she couldn’t have made a better choice. Not that she hadn’t always been handy around the house—in fact, he’d been pleased when she’d tackled projects that would have required calling in a professional—but this was beyond the pale. And now—now he found she’d done worse.
“I shouldn’t have to be chasing after her like she was a wayward child,” he said sulkily to Piers. Caspar eyed his own chair, an executive leather model that had cost the earth, but felt too irritated to sit.
Instead, he crossed the room to the drinks cabinet and poured a good finger of Dalwhinnie single malt into two crystal tumblers.
These were not just any tumblers, of course, but Finnish crystal in a contemporary design. Waterford was passé, in Caspar’s opinion, and he made a point that everything in the fi rm’s offices should reflect the best and most up- to-date.
That included himself, although he was forced to admit that even in the finest wool trousers and a pale yellow cashmere jumper, he still looked like the accountant he was, no matter how glorifi ed his title. He was too tall, too thin, too dark, with fine- boned and serious features that had not been designed for the sort of nonchalant charm his partner radiated so effortlessly.
“Cheers,” said Piers now, as Caspar handed him a whisky. He sipped and took a moment to savor the taste before giving his ver-dict. “Very nice. You shouldn’t let Juliet raise your blood pressure, you know,” he added, peering at Caspar over his glass. “She’s probably just got hung up with family. Didn’t you say her brother was arriving? He could have been delayed by the weather.”
Caspar was not to be mollified. “I don’t see how that excuses her s
turning off her phone. It’s inconsiderate, under any circumstances.
And that’s not to mention her inviting them all for Christmas Eve dinner without consulting me.”