Dreaming of the Bones (42 page)

Kincaid’s anger rose in a dizzying, sickening rush. Before he quite knew what he was doing, he’d grabbed the front of McClellan’s jacket with one hand and jerked him close. “That would be offensive if Vic were alive,” he said. “And now—”

“Duncan.” Gemma took his arm, pulling at him. “Duncan, let him go.”

Taking a breath, he released McClellan’s jacket and stepped back. “You’re the one who left her,” he said, jabbing his finger at McClellan. “And Kit.”

“So you want to talk about Kit, do you?” McClellan smiled and leaned back against his car, folding his arms, but a pulse beat in his neck. “I’d say you left it a bit late.”

Kincaid stared at him. “What—what are you saying?”

“I’d have known you if I’d bumped into you in an alley. She kept photos of you, did you know that? Tucked away in her favorite books, in her office, in her desk. I used to wonder whether she took them out and compared him to you, checking his progress.”

“Bloody hell,” Kincaid breathed, shaking his head. “You knew all along.”

“What?” asked Nathan, stepping between them. “What are you talking about?” He still looked ill, but his face no longer had the flush of fever.

Until that moment Kincaid had completely forgotten Nathan’s presence. “Nathan, why don’t you and Gemma—”

“I didn’t mind so much at first,” McClellan continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “She swore she didn’t know for certain, and I felt generous then. She’d chosen me, hadn’t she? And a child was a child, after all, and I was a civilized, enlightened man.” He laughed.

Nathan touched Kincaid’s arm. “Is he saying Kit’s
your
son?”

“I didn’t know,” Kincaid said quietly. “Not until a few days ago.” He turned back to McClellan. “What changed, then?”

McClellan shrugged and looked away. “I thought there would be others. A son of my own … a daughter, even. But she was too concerned with her career. ‘Not this year,’ she’d say. There was always some excuse. And all the while she watched him.” He turned his sharp glance back to Kincaid. “I must say it didn’t take her long after I left to think of an excuse to call you.”

“It was no bloody excuse, man!” Kincaid shouted, furious again. “She’s dead, for God’s sake. Don’t you feel anything for her?”

“What would you know about what I feel?” McClellan shouted back. “What I feel is none of your fucking business, so why don’t you just shut the fuck up, okay?” He wiped spittle from his lip with the back of his hand, and his eyes were wet with unshed tears.

Gemma stepped in close to McClellan, separating him from Kincaid with her body. “Look, Ian, why don’t we all start over from the beginning,” she said. “You two standing here blaming one another is not going to get us anywhere.”

“Then let me get on with things,” said McClellan with a weary gesture towards the house. “I’ve a
few more boxes to load
before I turn the keys over to the estate agent.”

Kincaid stared at him blankly. “Estate agent? “You’re not—”

“Selling up? Did you think I’d come back here, to live in this house?”

“But what about Kit?” said Kincaid, shaking his head in disbelief “He should go back to his school—”

“Who said anything about Kit? I’m going back to France, just as soon as your friend the Chief Inspector finishes checking my visa.”

“But you’re Kit’s legal guardian. You can’t just—”

“Chief Inspector Byrne said he was with his grandparents. I’m sure that’s what Vic would have wanted for him.”

“What Vic wanted? How do you know what Vic wanted?” Kincaid was shouting again. “And you—you raised him as your son. How can you abandon him like this?” Raising his hands in angry frustration, he saw that they were shaking. Oh, Christ, he was losing it. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. For Kit’s sake, he had got to pull himself together. Gemma said something softly, anxiously to Nathan, but the words were snatched by the wind.

Kincaid blinked.
Use your head, man. Pretend it’s a case, just another case
. He dropped his hands, lowered his voice. “Look, Ian. We need to talk. Why don’t we go inside for a bit?”

“I’ll make us some tea,” offered Gemma.

McClellan seemed to look at her for the first time. He shook his head. “Not in the kitchen. They said she …”

“I’ll bring it to you in the sitting room,” Gemma said. She led him towards the house, and Kincaid and Nathan followed.

“I didn’t know about Kit.” Nathan sounded bewildered. “She never said.”

Glancing at him, Kincaid thought he had the stunned look of someone who’d been punched once too often. Was he wondering what else Vic had kept from him? “Vic was good at keeping secrets. And so, I think, was Lydia. Perhaps that’s one reason Vic was so drawn to her.”

In the sitting room, Nathan perched uneasily on the footstool, while Ian sank into the chair occupied just a week ago by Vic and Kit. The room had the cold, stale smell of disuse and long-dead fires.

For a brief instant, Kincaid tried to imagine the three of them—Vic, Kit, and Ian—together as a family. What arguments had Ian’s jealousy and resentment fueled? And what wounds had Vic kept to herself? “Where were you on Tuesday, Ian?” he asked as he sat down.

“Don’t you start,” said Ian, but without much aggression. “I’ve been over all that with Chief Inspector Byrne. I was in the south of France, where I live with my lover. It was through her parents that the college reached me. I came as soon as I heard.”

The graduate student, thought Kincaid. Ian had found unquestioning
adoration from a woman too young to know better, and he was not going to give that up in order to take responsibility for an eleven-year-old boy he didn’t consider his own. “You weren’t even going to see him, were you?” he said in disgust.

“It’s not what you think,” Ian protested. “I didn’t want to upset him—”

“Bollocks! How do you think he’s going to feel when he finds out you couldn’t be bothered—”

“Shut up!” Ian rose half out of his chair. “Just bloody shut up. It’s too close. I can’t bear it. I can’t see Kit without seeing her in him, and I don’t think I can stand that. Don’t you see? I loved her—” He broke off and covered his face with his hands.

After a moment, Kincaid said, “Listen, Ian. Kit’s not with his grandparents. He ran away.” He caught a glimpse of Nathan’s startled expression and raised a restraining hand. “I found him here. He’s staying with some friends in London until we can get things sorted out.”

Ian raised his head. His eyes were bloodshot, the lids swollen. “But why would he do such a thing? He was always a good kid, in spite of—”

“All this—Vic’s death… I don’t know how bad things were with his grandmother before, but she’s impossible now. She means to keep him, and she’s not fit to do it. And I don’t know how much power her husband has over her.”

“Oh, Christ.” Ian rubbed his forehead. “Eugenia was always a bloody bitch. But I thought with Kit—”

Kincaid shook his head. “Kit won’t stay, and we can’t take a chance on what might happen to him if he runs away again.”

“I can’t have him with me, do you understand? And I can’t come back.” There was a hint of apology in Ian’s words.

“Let me tell you what I have in mind.” By the time Gemma came in with the tea, Kincaid had outlined a plan.

When they’d filled their mismatched mugs from the teapot, Kincaid said, “Ian, as far as Kit’s concerned, you’re his dad. He needs to see you. Tell him these arrangements are your idea of what’s best for him. Tell him you’ll have him for a visit at the end of term. Surely you can give him a half hour, after what he’s been through.”

Ian looked away, and Kincaid thought he would refuse even that. But after a moment, he rubbed at his face again and sighed. “All right. I’ll come this evening. And I’ll make the necessary arrangements with his grandparents. They’ve no right to dispute my decision.” He wrote Gemma’s address on a page torn from Kincaid’s notebook.

Kincaid met Ian’s eyes as he returned the pad. “Don’t tell him about me. He doesn’t need that right now.”

Ian held his gaze, then gave a barely perceptible nod of agreement. “I’ll get the rest of my things,” he said. “Now—if you don’t mind …” He gave them a slightly sardonic smile as he stood.

“Ian,” Kincaid said before he could leave the room. “You haven’t found one of Vic’s books in with your things, by any chance?” He described the Marsh memoir. “And there were some poems—”

“Lydia’s poems?” said Nathan. “The ones Vic found in the Marsh book?” He frowned at Kincaid. “Why didn’t you ask me before? Vic gave them to me.”

Cambridge, Addenbrooks Hospital
15 December
1975 Dear Mummy
,

No, I can’t come home. As much as my heart cries out to see your dear face, and to receive the comfort only you can give, I must get well on my own. Oh, physically, I’m all right—a few lacerations, bumps and bruises, nothing that won’t heal. They shall keep me in hospital, “under observation,” for another day or so, and after that Daphne will come and look after me as it’s her Christmas break
.

I honestly don’t think I meant to harm myself, though I’d toyed with the idea of the grand gesture. I saw myself noble and tragic as Virginia Woolf walking into the river, stilling the clamoring voices of madness, but it was only my own voice I wanted to silence, the one that kept telling me what I’d become
.

What have I done to deserve Daphne’s forgiveness, or yours? Why do you insist on loving me in spite of myself? I’ve spent years trying to run away from my life, my past, my self. I’ve written shallow and sensational poems which traded on others’ misery. I’ve sold my voice for a few pretentious reviews in the
Times.
I’ve shunned my friends for the
company of sycophants. I’ve tried to lose the last bit of myself that mattered, but your love held me accountable. I see now that I must try to live up to it—I can’t bear it otherwise
.

Lydia

They’d spent most of the afternoon at Parkside police station going over things with Alec Byrne, and had achieved little more than confirming that Ian McClellan’s documents did indeed show him to have been out of the country at the time of Vic’s death.

Byrne had received their account of Miss Pope’s evidence that Vic had already been ill by half past three with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. “We’ll go over the statements again, but I really don’t see that this puts us much further forwards,” he said. “We’ve no apparent motive for Dr. McClellan’s death—or for Lydia Brooke’s in the event she did not commit suicide—and now it seems that these poems you thought the murderer had stolen were simply misplaced.” Byrne steepled his long fingers together. “Quite frankly, Duncan, we’ve not had a single good lead on this case, and my manpower resources are dwindling. You know how it is. I’ve a missing child to deal with, and the mugging of an eighty-year-old woman in her bed.” He shrugged.

“You’re telling me you’re turning Vic’s case over to a file clerk. Alec—”

“If anything turns up I’ll put every available officer on it. But in the meantime …” Byrne cast a look of appeal at Gemma, then turned back to Kincaid. “What would you do if you were in my shoes?”

Kincaid had reluctantly conceded Byrne’s point, his sense of frustration mounting. Would he keep on, he wondered, if he weren’t personally involved?

By the time they’d driven back to London and pulled the car up on the double-yellows in front of Gemma’s flat he had arrived at an answer. Like Alec, he had learned to accept a percentage of failure in his job. But he had spent all his adult life learning the art of catching killers—and with knowledge came responsibility. Someone had deliberately set out to murder Vic, not only taking her life, but changing her son’s life forever. He would not give up until he knew
the truth, no matter how long it took or what it cost him. He would see justice done, for Vic … and for Lydia as well.

The morning’s wind had given way to an unexpectedly warm and hazy afternoon, and they found Kit playing in the garden with the children. He was humming tunelessly as he built something with old bits of brick, and he gave an uncomplicated smile of pleasure when he looked up and saw them watching. It seemed that at least for a few moments he’d found some solace.

Kincaid had taken him aside then, telling him that Ian had come back, but only temporarily, and would take him and Tess to the Miller family that evening. Kit stared at him a moment, his face unreadable, then turned on his heel and disappeared into the house without a word.

Now, looking out the kitchen window in the growing dusk, Kincaid wondered what he had expected Relief? Anger? Disappointment? Anything at all, he thought, would have been better than the silence in which Kit had collected his things, then gone out into the garden with Tess.

He could barely make out the outline of boy and dog huddled together on the flagstone steps. “What’s he thinking?” he said as Hazel came to stand beside him. “Why do I feel as though I’ve failed him?”

“You’ve done the best you could under the circumstances,” said Hazel softly. “Sometimes there just aren’t any right answers. And he may not really be thinking at all. Emotional overload—too much to take in at once. Give him a while to find his balance.”

“Did I make a mistake in not telling him the truth now?” Kincaid asked. “Is it better for him to think that the man he’s seen as his father doesn’t love him, or for him to learn that he’s not who he always thought he was?”

Hazel didn’t answer, and in the moment’s silence they heard a thump and faint laughter from upstairs, where Gemma was giving Holly and Toby their baths before tea. “Professionally, I’d say you’re doing the right thing,” Hazel said slowly. “Personally, I know how difficult it must be. For the time being, give him all the reassurance you can that you mean to stay in his life. Let him get used to the idea.” She touched his arm and looked up into his face. “But Duncan,
you must be absolutely sure of your commitment to him, or it’s better not to do anything at all.”

“I realize that.” He looked out into the garden. For the first time, he understood the magnitude of Gemma’s responsibility to Toby. Was he capable of making the same commitment, capable of giving Kit the stability he needed? And how would he know until he tried?