Deborah Crombie - Dreaming of the bones

“All right. But I’m not staying more than a day. There’s nothing to do, and they won’t even let me watch telly.”

Kincaid didn’t comment. He remembered the sterile household all too well, and suspected there would be little solace for a grieving child. He led Kit to the bottom of the stairs, and when Kit hesitated, Kincaid said, “I’ll come up in a bit, shall I? See how you’re doing.”

He watched Kit disappear up the staircase, all long legs and big feet from that angle. Then he turned and wandered down the hall into Vic’s office. Almost, he thought to see her turn from her keyboard and smile, and he knew he still hadn’t taken in the undeniable fact of her death. But he could go on pretending, and he could use his eyes to observe and his mind to record, just as he would on any case.

The room looked odd to him, and he studied it for a moment without touching anything. On Sunday, her desk had been covered with books and papers, but it had had the look of organized clutter, with everything in its proper place. Had she moved the books? One lay facedown on the floor, its pages crumpled. Vic had been almost obsessively neat-surely she would not have left a book like that?

Unless, said the small, detached voice in his mind, she had begun to feel ill, and knocked the book from its place as she got up to go to the kitchen, perhaps for a glass of water.

A logical explanation, possibly, but he couldn’t yet allow himself to think of Vic ill, in pain, frightened, alone. So he ignored the voice, and went on with his examination of her desk. A thick stack of manuscript pages lay beside the computer. He closed his eyes and thought of how it had looked on Sunday-the edges of the pages had been neatly aligned, and now they lay askew. They were also out of sequence, he discovered when he rifled through them. He thought of how much Vic had cared for her book, and he felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck.

He felt suddenly unwilling to leave the manuscript here, untended, and he straightened up, looking for some way to carry it. There, on the floor, an empty leather book satchel-it was, he imagined, what Vic used to carry papers back and forth to work. It would do.

Carefully, he put the pages into the satchel, then, seized by an urge he didn’t understand, he started on the milk crate file beside the desk. It held the original materials for the biography, letters in a strong hand he didn’t recognize-Lydia’s, of course-notes in Vic’s handwriting, photos, even a few postcards. He put them all into the bag, and anything else that seemed relevant that he could glean from her desktop, and then he carried it all outside and locked it in the boot of the Rover.

In her office once more, he had a brief look at the computer, but Vic had apparently saved her work on the hard disk rather than a floppy, and he knew he hadn’t time to access the files properly. He’d left Kit alone too long as it was, so he would just have to hope that Vic had been as obsessive about printing hard copy as she had been about everything else.

He was climbing the stairs when he realized he had not seen the notes he’d given Vic, or the copies of the poems she’d found.

Kit sat on the edge of his bed, an open grip at his feet. When Kincaid came in, he looked up and said dully, “I don’t know what to take.”

The room might have been Kincaid’s own at that age, cluttered with books, and sports equipment, and barely outgrown toys. One shelf held a collection of bird’s nests, another of rocks.

Glancing in the bag, Kincaid saw one jersey and a pair of jeans. “Um, pajamas?” he suggested. “Toothbrush? A dressing gown?”

Kit shrugged. “I suppose. They’re all in the bathroom.”

He’d need things to wear to the funeral, Kincaid realized, but he also needed a few days before he even had to think of it. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t you go and get them, and I’ll throw somethings in the bag for you?”

“All right,” Kit agreed, and when he’d gone, Kincaid went quickly to the closet. A school blazer, a tie, some dark trousers, a white shirt. They would have to do. He found some black lace-up shoes and those went in first, in the bottom of the bag. Then the other things, neatly folded, and on top of them the jeans and jersey. Next he added socks and underpants from the bureau drawers, then a Cambridge sweatshirt. Sitting back on his heels to survey the room for last-minute necessities, he spied a worn teddy bear on the shelf above Kit’s bed, and that he tucked in last.

Kit came in with a bundle of night things, and when Kincaid took them to fold he discovered the purple tunic Vic had worn on Sunday among the folds of the dressing gown. It smelled of her perfume and, very faintly, of her skin.

Their eyes met as they knelt either side of the bag, and after a moment Kincaid folded the tunic and packed it without a word.

Kit’s room was on the front of the house, and as they zipped his bag they heard the sound of car tires on gravel, then the slam of a car door.

“Just in time, eh?” said Kincaid, attempting a casual tone.

“No.” Kit sat back on his heels, almost quivering with distress.

The boy looked like a frightened rabbit ready to bolt, and Kincaid knew he mustn’t let him lose control now. “Come on, mate,” he said, standing and lifting the bag. “I’m right behind you. We’ll do this together.”

“No, wait, I forgot Nathan’s books. I can’t go without Nathan’s books.” Kit swept a pile of books from his bedside table and they stuffed them in the already bulging bag, then Kincaid guided him down the stairs with a hand on his shoulder.

Kincaid had not seen Vic’s parents since the Christmas before she left him, and he doubted whether time or circumstance would have altered their mutual dislike. He and Kit met them at the door, and he, at least, had the advantage of foreknowledge.

Eugenia Potts’s face, already red and puffy with weeping, went slack with shock at the sight of him. An expression of mild surprise furrowed Bob Potts’s bland face, and Kincaid wondered if, even now, the man felt anything at all.

“Hullo, Bob. Mrs. Potts.” He had never been able to bring himself to call her Eugenia, and Mum had been unthinkable.

“You!” she breathed. “What are you doing here?”

Her tone was accusing, but he answered as mildly as he could. “They rang me, I’m afraid. Look, you’d better come in.”

“You! What right have you to invite us into our daughter’s house?” Pushing past him as he stepped back, she continued, her voice rising, “You don’t belong here, and I’ll thank you to get-” She saw Kit then, for he’d been using Kincaid’s body as a shield. Changing gears in mid-tirade, she shrieked, “Christopher, oh, my poor darling,” while grabbing him to her and pressing his blond head against the bosom of her tweedy coat.

Kincaid saw Kit stiffen, then struggle to extricate himself. A touch on his arm reminded him that he had, as usual, forgotten Bob Potts.

“Duncan, thank you for coming,” Potts said with quiet courtesy. “But there’s no need now for you to stay Is there anything… I mean, should we…”

Feeling that perhaps he’d misjudged the man, Kincaid said softly, “No, there’s nothing you can do. Not until tomorrow, at least, and I’m sure someone will be ringing you. The police are very anxious to contact Kit’s father, however. Have you any idea-”

“That man,” hissed Eugenia, for having finished throttling Kit, she’d caught the tail end of their conversation. “I blame him for this. If he hadn’t abandoned her, none of this would have happened. My baby would be alive-”

Kit’s face lost all color, then he turned and ran from the room.

Kincaid rounded on Mrs. Potts with a shout of anger. “Enough! Keep your useless speculations to yourself, you silly woman, where they won’t do any more damage.” He left her standing open-mouthed, and ran after Kit.