partner last night. He’s a right tosser. And I got the distinct impression he has it in for your sister.”
“Has it in—”
“As in active ill will.” Babcock clarified. “As in making an opportunity to suggest she’s hysterical and not to be relied upon.”
“Why the hell—” Kincaid began, then stopped and sipped carefully at tea that was now tepid. Wariness had slipped over his face like a mask, and Babcock knew he wasn’t going to hear everything his friend knew. “Why would Piers Dutton want to undermine my sister?” Kincaid asked after a moment, his voice under control once more.
Frowning, Babcock mused aloud. “Dutton said he’d been in his house five years. But even if the child was buried before that, he could have known about the barn before he moved into the area.”
“You’re suggesting Dutton had something to do with this baby?
But then why would he recommend my sister for the renovation?”
“Well, say he knew the new own ers were determined to go ahead with the job. If he was sure the baby would be found, maybe he saw an opportunity to make life difficult for your sister.”
“Implicating himself in the process? That’s pretty farfetched,
don’t you think, Ronnie? And if he was responsible for the baby and he knew the renovation was inevitable, why not just remove the body?”
“Too risky?” Babcock suggested.
“There’s only one house between Dutton’s and the canal. All he’d need to do was pick a night when he knew his neighbors wouldn’t be home. It didn’t take Jules that long to chip out that mortar—Dutton could have done it in a few hours, then tossed the body in a ditch somewhere.”
Babcock sighed. “That’s a point. Tom Foster’s not exactly the Cerberus of South Cheshire.” Rubbing at his lower lip, he found a spot of stubble he’d missed that morning in his rush to shave in his s
arctic bathroom. He cast an envious glance at his old friend. Kincaid was one of those men who would look rakish with a day’s growth of beard, while he, with his battered face, would merely look like he’d spent the night in a skip. “Still, it’s worth checking,”
he continued. “Dutton was going through a divorce at the time.
Maybe he had an illegitimate child he didn’t want complicating things—”
“And the baby’s mother went along with the interment? Or maybe she’s buried somewhere, too? Ronnie, you’re building sand castles.”
Babcock countered with a grin. “Where’s your imagination, lad?
All those bureaucrats at the Yard drummed it out of you? For all we know, he’s walled her up in the cellar of his Victorian monstrosity.
Didn’t you read your Poe?”
“You’d better have a little firmer foundation than ‘The Cask of Amontillado’ before you apply for a warrant to start digging up Dutton’s house.”
“Okay, okay. Touché. But I think I’ll have Larkin do a little re-search into Dutton’s background.”
“Your detective constable?” Kincaid raised an amused eyebrow.
“Sharp girl. And I do believe she fancies you, you know.”
Babcock was momentarily rendered speechless. “You’re taking the piss. She’s cheeky with everyone, including you—and you’re happily attached, I take it. I met your . . . girlfriend?”
“So she said, although I think she’d prefer the term ‘partner.’
And you’re changing the subject.”
“Even if you were right—and I’m not saying you are—I have enough problems with my ex without getting involved with someone on the job. Although I have to admit, my options for meeting eligible women who’ll put up with a copper’s life are just about nil,”
Babcock conceded. Even as he spoke he remembered that Kincaid had been divorced, and that he’d heard his ex-wife had died tragically. To cover his momentary awkwardness, he said, “So, how did you get together with your Gemma?”
This time Kincaid’s smile was wicked. “She was my sergeant.”
When Althea Elsworthy saw Rowan Wain, she knew. Still, she went through the motions, listening to heart and lungs, checking capillary refill, lips and gums. The woman’s labored breathing echoed in the boat’s small cabin.
The social worker—Annie Lebow, as she was calling herself now—had given the doctor a brief history of the Wains, explaining why Rowan Wain and her husband refused to seek medical help through the system.
“Munchausen’s by proxy?” Althea had said. “Christ. Who made the diagnosis?”
When Annie told her, she shook her head and compressed her lips.
“The man’s a poisonous toad. I’m not saying that such things don’t happen now and again, mind you, parents abusing their children in order to get attention, but it should be called just that—abuse—and dealt with as such. But Sprake pulls MSBP out of his hat whenever he can’t diagnose a child or the parents refuse to cooperate with his conception of himself as God.”
“And there’s no way to have the diagnosis removed from Rowan’s records?”
“Not likely, even if the couple had unlimited funds and fancy lawyers. The boy seems all right now?”
“Remarkably well, as far as I can tell,” Annie had answered, and Althea nodded. She’d seen cases like that, where a young child failed to thrive, then, without any visible explanation, suddenly seemed to turn a corner. Certainly, both children, seen briefly peeking from behind their father in the main cabin of the narrowboat, had looked healthy, if a trifle thin. Better that, in her opinion, than
the pudginess she saw so often these days in children who spent hours in front of the telly.
“Doctor.” The whisper of Rowan Wain’s voice snapped Althea out of her woolgathering. The thin fingers Rowan placed on her arm were cold and blue as ice. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”
“Well, it’s not good, I’m afraid,” Althea admitted. “I don’t suppose I can change your mind about going to hospital?”
Rowan gave only the slightest shake of her head, but her eyes were adamant, and filled with a calm acceptance that made the doctor look away. Carefully coiling up her stethoscope and placing it in her bag, she said, “I can try to make you more comfortable. Perhaps some oxygen would help.”
“It won’t go on any records?”
“I’ll see it doesn’t.”
“Then that would be good. Thank you.” Rowan smiled. “Will you speak to my husband?”
“If you’d like, yes.” Thinking of the anxious faces of those waiting outside the tiny cabin, Althea was reminded of why she had become a pathologist—she found it much easier to deal with the dead than with the pain of the living. “I’ll come back soon,” she said.
“When I’ve arranged for the oxygen.”
Rowan’s eyes were drifting closed; even their short interview had tired her.
When the doctor emerged into the main cabin, she found only Annie and the husband, Gabriel Wain. There seemed to be a tension between them, and Althea wondered briefly if it was due to more than concern.
“I’ve sent the children up top,” Wain said, without offering any pleasantries. He, too, was thin, she realized, with the gauntness of worry, and his dark eyes were as feverish in their intensity as his rough demand when he spoke. “Say what you have to say.”
“I suspect you know what I’m going to tell you, Mr. Wain,” said Althea, speaking softly enough that she hoped her voice wouldn’t
carry into the next cabin. “Your wife is suffering from congestive heart failure. I understand your feelings about treatment, and in Rowan’s case I must say I fear her heart is too damaged for surgical intervention to be effective, even if it were possible. There are drugs that might help temporarily, but again . . . I’ve said I’d arrange some oxygen, to make her more comfortable. You do understand that this is strictly my opinion?” she added.