“Dad, this is Toby,” said Duncan, with a gentling hand on the small boy’s shoulder, “and this is Kit. And Gemma, too, if she can get her bits and pieces together,” he added, smiling, as a young woman came round the car from the driver’s side. “She decided not to let me drive the last stretch, and I think our country roads have left her a bit frazzled.”
Hugh greeted her warmly, taking in her attractive, friendly face and the coppery glint of hair drawn back with a clip, but he couldn’t keep his eyes from the boy—his grandson.
Rosemary had warned him, of course, but still he found he was not
prepared. The boy had his mother’s fair coloring, but was so like his father in the stamp of his features that Hugh felt he might have been seeing Duncan again at thirteen. Such resemblances were not uncommon, he knew, but awareness of them is usually dulled by daily proximity. It seemed to Hugh he’d been offered a rare glimpse of the march of generations, and he felt a twinge of his own mortality.
“Come in, come in,” Rosemary was saying, “I’ve got the kettle on, and the children are dying to see you.” She shepherded them all into the front hall, but before she could divest them of their coats and luggage, Sam came galloping down the stairs, followed more slowly by his sister, Lally.
Lally’s face was set in a pout and Sam was holding the phone aloft, waving it like a trophy wrested from the enemy. “Granddad, it’s Mummy. She wants to speak to you.”
“Tell her we’ll ring her back in five minutes, Sam,” said Rosemary, “As soon as we’ve—”
“She says it’s urgent, Nana.” His mission accomplished, Sam handed the phone to Hugh and sidled down the last few steps, his curious gaze fixed on Kit and Toby.
“Juliet,” Hugh said into the phone, “what is it? Can’t it wai—”
“Dad, is Duncan there yet?” his daughter broke in, her voice sharp and breathless.
“Yes, he’s just come in. That’s what—”
“Dad, tell him I need him to come to the old dairy—he knows where it is. Tell him—” She seemed to hesitate, then said, on a rising note, “Just tell him I’ve found a body.”
“Bugger,” Kincaid muttered as he squeezed under the wheel of Gemma’s Ford Escort and slid the seat back far enough to accommodate his longer legs. His sister hadn’t stayed on the line to speak to him, but before disconnecting had told their father that her mobile battery was running low.
Was this some sort of joke, he wondered, her revenge for all his teasing when they were children? Surely she couldn’t actually have found a body? His father had made light of it, with the children listening, but if it was true, he felt he must be the victim of a cosmic rather than a sibling prank.
Nor had she said whether she’d called the local police, so he’d decided to check out the situation before notifying them himself. He didn’t want to add embarrassment to aggravation if it turned out she’d discovered the remains of some stray animal in the old dairy.
His father had filled him in briefly on Juliet’s renovation project, and Kincaid remembered the place well. He and Jules had spent a good part of their childhood rambling up and down the canal towpath, and the dairy had been a familiar landmark. He would have much preferred, however, to take a trip down memory lane on a bright, sunny day rather than a miserably cold evening, and Christmas Eve to boot.
Nor was he happy about leaving Gemma and the boys after only the briefest of introductions. Glancing at the house once more as he backed out of in the drive, he saw his dad still standing at the open door, gazing after him. Kincaid waved, then felt a bit foolish, knowing his father couldn’t see him. Then, as he watched, his dad stepped inside, the door swung closed, and the last vestiges of light and warmth vanished.
The dairy, he remembered, was on the main branch of the Shropshire Union Canal, near Barbridge. In fact, they had passed right by it on the way to his parents’ house. As children, he and Jules had reached that stretch of the Cut by crossing the fields and then the Middlewich branch of the canal that ran nearer the farm, but tonight he would be taking the road.
As he eased the car back out onto the main track, a few snowflakes drifted against the windscreen, and he swore. They’d outrun the snow near Crewe, but it had caught up. Heavier now, the flakes disintegrated beneath the wipers, and the tarmac gleamed wetly in
the headlamps. When he reached the Chester Road, he turned back towards Nantwich, and when he had passed the turning for Barbridge he slowed, looking for the small lane he remembered.
It came up on him suddenly and he swung the wheel hard to the left. A house loomed out of the darkness, dark spikes of chimney pots briefly visible through the swirl of snow. A Victorian lodge, neglected in his childhood; the sort of place one approached only when bolstered by a playmate’s bravado. It was occupied now, though—he’d glimpsed the glow of light in a ground-floor window.
The house fell away behind him as the hedgerows and trees reached round the car like skeletal arms, and he navigated the track’s twists and turns as much by memory as by sight. Then the terrain leveled out as woods gave way to pasture, and ahead he saw the flicker of a lamp. Easing the car over the last few rutted yards, he pulled up beside a white builder’s van. He could see the silhouette of the old dairy now, the light clearly coming from its open doors, but as he climbed out of the car, the van door swung open and his sister jumped down from the driver’s seat.
“Jules.” He drew her to him, feeling the slenderness of her shoulders beneath her padded jacket, and for a moment she relaxed into his arms. Then she drew away, establishing a distance between them.
Her face was a pale blur against the frame of dark hair that straggled loose from a ponytail.
“Thanks for coming,” she said. “I didn’t know who else to call.”
Kincaid bit his tongue on the obvious—he wouldn’t pass judgment until he’d seen what she had to show him. “What are you doing out here?” he asked instead. “Staying warm?” He brushed at the snowflakes settling on his cheeks and eyelashes.
Juliet shook her head. “No. Yes. But it’s not that. I couldn’t stay in there. Not with—” She gestured towards the barn. “You’d better come and see for yourself. You can tell me I’m not crazy.” Turning from him, she started towards the light, picking her way through the slushy ruts. He followed, taking in the jeans and the heavy boots s
that accompanied the padded jacket, marveling at the transformation in his sister since he had seen her last.
His mother had told him, of course, that Juliet had left her job as office manager of her husband’s investment firm and started her own business as a builder, but he hadn’t quite been able to visualize the accompanying transformation.
Juliet stopped just inside the door of the building and Kincaid stepped in, looking around. The light came from a battery-powered work lamp set on the dirt floor. He lifted it, chasing the shadows from the upper part of the room. Windows had been framed into the dark redbrick of the canal-facing wall, and he knew that under better circumstances the view would be spectacular. Some framing had been done on the inside as well, marking out obviously preliminary room divisions, and a few feet from the back wall, a pick lay abandoned in the dirt.
He saw the swath of mortar set into the dark brick, a jagged hole in its center where the pick had done its work. And there was something else—was it fabric? He moved in closer, raising the lamp so that the area was illuminated clearly. Gingerly, he reached out with a finger. Then, in spite of the cold and the wind that eddied through the room, he caught an all- too-familiar whiff of decay.
“Is it a baby?” said Juliet, her voice sounding thin in the frigid air.
“Looks like it.” Kincaid stepped back and put his hands firmly back into the pockets of his overcoat. He needn’t have worried about his sister’s failure to call the police straightaway. “It’s been here a good while, I’m afraid.”