A Share in Death (7 page)

*   *   *

Graham Frazer’s hearty voice met him as he entered the sitting room. “Well, if it isn’t our resident narc.” Kincaid was beginning to share some of Sebastian’s antipathy for Frazer.

Angela was nowhere to be seen. The circle of faces turned toward him, a parody of last night’s innocent social gathering. Hannah was missing, as were Emma and Penny MacKenzie, but the rest seemed to draw together in a hostile shield.

“Mr. Kincaid.” Maureen Hunsinger spoke next, reproaching him with all the directness of a child whose feelings have been hurt. “You misled us.”

Cassie, who seemed to have temporarily abandoned her managerial distinction and banded with the herd, chimed in. “Oh, he’s full of surprises, is our Detective Superintendent Kincaid. All chummy with the local police, johnny-on-the-spot to the rescue. A real hero. Unfortunately, it was too late for poor Sebastian.” Her voice was light and mocking. She had recovered her control, all traces of the morning’s outburst erased. Her hair and make-up were exquisitely done and she wore rust, a matching skirt and blouse of some dull material with a webbing of fine, brown lines running through the solid color.

“I resent being treated like some common criminal, shut up together and then interrogated. And fingerprinted, for God’s sake. It’s disgraceful.” Eddie Lyle sounded aggrieved, as if Sebastian’s death had been designed merely to inconvenience him.

“You have no idea what it was like—” began Maureen, then blushed, remembering that Kincaid knew exactly what it was like.

“What have they found out? Your friends told us we were to ‘make ourselves available’ until cause of death is established. I must say it’s a hell of a way to spend one’s holiday,” said Graham Frazer. His flat, heavy face gave no hints as to what went on in the mind behind it, but his voice sounded somewhat less aggressive.

No one had offered Kincaid a drink, although they clutched theirs like protective talismans, so he answered Frazer over his shoulder as he walked to the bar and made himself a whiskey. “Look, I don’t know any more about this than the rest of you. It was purely circumstance that I happened to be first down this morning.”

“That’s all very well for you to say,” Eddie Lyle said querulously, “but you weren’t subjected to—”

“I had to make a statement just as all of you did, signed and sworn,” Kincaid interrupted as he rejoined them, then took a sip of his whiskey. No single malt scotch for the honor bar, this was the rawest of blends and it scorched his throat as it went down.

Kincaid noticed that Patrick Rennie hadn’t yet spoken, though he followed the conversation with interest. Watching which way the wind blew, thought Kincaid, with a politician’s prudence. The man looked more human than he had last night, in a pull-over and rumpled cords, his blond hair a little tousled, but how much was
manufactured image and how much the real man Kincaid couldn’t tell.

Rennie stepped in now as mediator. “I’m sure Mr. Kincaid has had just as difficult a day as any of us, and has no intention of making this a busman’s holiday. I feel we’re all being rather unfair.”

“Thanks.” Kincaid met his eyes and was surprised to see a gleam of knowing humor. A smooth operator, no doubt, but perhaps Rennie didn’t take himself too seriously, after all. There was no answering spark in Marta Rennie’s eyes. She watched her husband, but unsmilingly, not privy to the brief connection between the two men. Kincaid sensed some tension between the Rennies, but unless his overactive imagination was playing him up again, there were strange little eddies and currents of unease running all through the group, more than he felt could be accounted for by the awkwardness following Sebastian’s death.

“How are the children?” Kincaid turned to John Hunsinger, who was hovering on the edge of the group as he had last night.

“More excited than upset, at least for the day. Their dreams may be a different story.” Hunsinger’s voice was deep and a little gravelly, as if unused to wear. “They said you—”

“You were very kind to them,” Maureen broke in, “They’ve put you right up in the ranks with Doctor Who. What’s horrible is that we didn’t even realize they were gone. They could have been …”

“Where are they now?” Kincaid asked.

“Emma MacKenzie’s taken them on a nature walk. Birdwatching. Can you believe it? They seem to have made friends this morning.”

The group was breaking up, drifting away in desultory conversation now that their attention was no longer focused on Kincaid. Janet Lyle still stood near them, quietly nursing her drink, while Eddie buttonholed Marta Rennie. “I can’t think why provision hadn’t been made for an occurrence of this sort. If this were a properly run facility—” a sidelong glance at Cassie “—things like this wouldn’t be allowed to happen.”

Kincaid resisted the temptation to ask him what on earth he thought might have prevented it, and turned to Janet instead. “Janet, you have children, don’t you?”

She flushed, and spoke with a trace of the animation he had seen earlier in the day. “We have a daughter, Chloe.” In response to his slightly questioning look—he supposed he had expected a Cindy or a Jennifer—Janet said, “Eddie named her. He wanted her to be cultured, so he thought she should start off with a name that would suit her later.”

“Did it work?” Kincaid asked.

Janet’s eyes strayed to Eddie, who had moved off with Marta in the direction of the bar. “Not so you’d notice.” She grinned. “She’s a typical teenager, only her father’d never believe it. Chloe’s just about the same age as Angela Frazer, only she’s away at school and Angela’s … um, between schools, as I understand it.” Janet fell silent, her momentary energy dissipated.

Kincaid drained his glass in one swallow. The room felt stuffy and stale. The late afternoon sun beat upon the closed French windows and crumpled cigarette butts overflowed the ashtrays. Even Maureen seemed wilted by the atmosphere, not ready to charge into the gap in the conversation with her usual gusto. The tidying up, thought Kincaid, the airing and ashtray cleaning and
magazine straightening, those had been Sebastian’s touches, the little bits of grease that made the whole house run smoothly.

*   *   *

Kincaid changed in record time, even for one who was accustomed to being summoned at inopportune moments. Shoving a tie in the pocket of his tweed jacket, he locked the door of the suite behind him and ran down the stairs, escaping into the cool forecourt with a feeling of relief.

As he nosed the Midget through the gate, he spotted Hannah walking down the road from the village. He waited, watching as she came toward him with her purposeful stride. She wore a long Aran cardigan, and the last of the sun lit the dark cap of her hair. When Hannah reached his car she opened the door and got in, without looking at him, without speaking. Kincaid drove on a half mile past the gate and pulled the car onto the verge.

“They interviewed us, Duncan.” She spoke into the sudden silence as the engine died, her face still averted. “One by one, in Cassie’s office. They asked if we were together last night. Corroborating your statement, they said. They seemed to assume that I knew you were a policeman, and Nash, the fat one, insinuated … all sorts of things.” She looked at him then, her color rising as she spoke. “Can you imagine what a fool I felt? ‘A policeman?’ I said, like some fatuous idiot. Why did you lie to me, Duncan?”

Kincaid stalled, gathering his thoughts. “Oh, he’s a right sod, our jolly Inspector Nash. I’m sure it’s his standard interrogation procedure, making the …” he hesitated over his choice of words, “person uncomfortable.”

“If you mean ‘suspect’, say so. Don’t bother to mince
terms with me. Besides, I thought Chief Inspector Nash said it was suicide.”

“That’s the official line,” he said slowly. “But he has to go through the motions.” Kincaid shifted around in his seat so that he could more easily see her face in the fading light.

“But … I would have thought that we alibied each other.”

“The high temperature of the water is going to make establishing the exact time of death difficult. But I personally think it likely he was already dead when we were walking in the garden last night. Think about it. He would have gone to the pool between finishing up his duties and going home for the night, not too late, say ten or eleven.”

Hannah’s face had lost its quick color. “Before he went home for the night? You don’t think … it was suicide at all, do you?”

“I don’t think it likely, no.”

“Oh, god. You mean somebody … did that to Sebastian while we were talking just outside? And I was acting such a silly fool.”

“Quite probably, yes.”

“Now it all seems so stupid and inconsequential.” She pushed her hair back from her forehead with her fingers and sagged a little in the seat.

“We couldn’t have known. And your life isn’t trivial or inconsequential. If the things that matter to us every day weren’t important, no one’s death, Sebastian’s included, would be much loss.”

“Could we have done anything, helped him, if we’d known?”

Kincaid
took
her hand and held it in his, palm up, as if reading her fortune. “I doubt it. The shock would have been massive. His heart probably stopped almost instantly. Immediate resuscitation might have saved him, but there’s no way to be sure.”

She withdrew from him, and her voice came, sharply now, in the near darkness. “Of course, you know about these things. You’re the expert. And you still haven’t answered
my question.”

He sighed and looked away, gazing out through the smeared windscreen at the dim forms of the moors. “I didn’t deliberately intend to deceive you. I suppose I just wanted to leave my work behind for a week, to be taken, for once, at face value. You should have seen them in the lounge a few minutes ago. They didn’t know whether to spit and snarl at me for putting something over on them, or suck up and pump me for information.” He smiled. “They’ll never see me as just an ordinary mug again. From now on I’ll be a spy in the enemy’s camp. I should have known it wouldn’t work. My job’s not shed so easily.”

“I think I see what you mean,” Hannah said, examining her fingertips. “And are you a spy in our camp?”

“I don’t think so. Neither fish nor fowl, really. I’m certainly a nuisance as far as Nash is concerned, and the fact that I outrank him doesn’t help.”

“What is it, by the way? Nash never said, only rather sneeringly referred to you as ‘your friend Kincaid.’

“Superintendent.” Her eyes widened in surprise. “I know, I know,” he said before she could speak. “Newly promoted, however, so it’s not quite as bad as it sounds. I went to Bramshill.” Seeing her expression of noncomprehension,
he added, “Police College, near Reading. Special Course. It accelerates promotion to Inspector by about five years.”

What he didn’t add was that only “young officers of exceptional promise” were considered for Bramshill, and meteoric rise through the ranks was expected of its graduates. If Nash had checked his credentials he’d be aware of it, however, and would resent him all the more. “All I wanted,” he misquoted plaintively, “was a week’s holiday, and a little bit of butter for my bread.”

It brought a smile. “Weak. But nobody can be all bad who read Milne.”

“Truce, then?” he asked, extending his hand.

“Yes. All right.” She clasped his hand, briefly. “I feel like a ten year old.”

“That’s the idea.” He noted with satisfaction that some of the strain had left her face. “I’m running away.” He gestured toward his jacket. “Come to York with me for dinner, where no one knows either of us.”

She shook her head. “No. It’s been a shocking day. I think I’d rather be alone. Just drop me at the house as you go.”

Kincaid turned the car in the narrow lane and delivered Hannah as she asked, reaching across the Midget’s narrow passenger space to open her door and let her out. The lights glowed softly in the windows of Followdale House, as welcoming as death.

Sergeant Gemma James eased her Ford Escort into a space no bigger than a motorbike. Even her deft maneuvering couldn’t quite overcome the limitations of space—when she cut the engine and jerked up the handbrake, the car’s rear end stuck out into the street at an angle. Home early, an unusual feat, and still no place to park, because her neighbor’s teenage sons had cluttered every inch of the curbside with their clunkers. Even the baby had left his tricycle overturned in the middle of the path.

She unbuckled Toby from his carseat and lifted him from the car. Balancing the squirming toddler on one hip and her shopping on the other, she kicked the Escort’s door shut with unnecessary spite. She negotiated the path well enough until she caught her toe on the tricycle wheel, stumbled and swore.

An alliterative name and the mortgage on the semidetached house in Leyton were about the only things Rob had left her, and the house’s attributes were dubious—a view of Lea Bridge Road, red brick, peeling paint, a shriveled patch of front garden and next-door neighbors who seemed to be running a scrap yard.

Toby wriggled and shrieked, “Down, down,” kicking his feet against her thigh.

“Shhh. In a minute, love, in a minute.” Gemma bounced him on her hip and jingled her keys while she hunted for the right one. As she deposited Toby on the hall floor, she felt a large damp patch on the hip of her linen jacket. “Bloody hell. That’s torn it, now,” she muttered under her breath. Toby was soaking wet, and when she scooped him up again the odor of stale urine burned her nostrils. “Bloody day care,” she said. One of Toby’s blond eyebrows lifted in such a comical expression of surprise that she had to laugh.

“Bloody,” he repeated seriously, nodding his head.

“Oh, lovey.” Hugging him to her fiercely, sopping nappy and all, she whispered in his ear. “Mummy’s teaching you such bad habits. But it is bloody, it really is.” She carried him upstairs to his cot and stripped him off, then sponged his damp bottom with a wipe. “You’re too big a boy to be wearing nappies. Two already, aren’t you, love? A big boy.”

“Me two,” Toby repeated, grinning at her.

Gemma sighed. She’d taken her holiday earlier in the summer, and she didn’t see how she could possibly train him unless she could stay home with him for a few days.