Leave the Grave Green (26 page)

The cardy turned out to be a man’s brown wool cardigan, a bit moth-eaten, and ironically reminiscent of the one Sir Gerald Asherton had worn the night Kincaid met him. Seeing Kincaid’s glance, Sharon smiled and said, “It was my granddad’s. Gran keeps it for wearing about the house.” As she followed Kincaid out into the churchyard, she continued, “Actually, she’s my great-gran, but I never knew my real gran. She died when my mum was a baby.”

Although the sun had set in the few minutes Kincaid had been inside the house, the churchyard looked even more inviting in the soft twilight. They walked to a bench across the way from the cottages, and as they sat down Kincaid said, “Is Hayley always so shy?”

“She’s always chattered like a magpie, from the day she learned to talk, even with strangers.” Sharon’s hands lay loosely in her lap, palms turned up. They might have been disembodied, so unanimated were they, and Kincaid noticed that since he’d seen her last, the small pink nails had been bitten to the quick. “It’s only since I told her about Con that she’s been like this.” She looked up at
Kincaid in appeal. “I had to tell her, didn’t I, Mr. Kincaid? I couldn’t let her think he just scarpered, could I? I couldn’t let her think he didn’t care about us.”

Kincaid gave the question careful consideration before answering. “I think you did the right thing, Sharon. It would be hard for her now, regardless, and in the long run I’m sure it’s better to tell the truth. Children sense when you’re lying, and then they have that betrayal to deal with as well as the loss.”

Sharon listened intently, then nodded once when he’d finished. She studied her hands for a moment. “Now she wants to know why we can’t see him. My auntie Pearl died last year and Gran took her to the viewing before the funeral.”

“What did you tell her?”

Shrugging, Sharon said, “Different people do things different ways, that’s all. What else could I say?”

“I imagine she wants some concrete evidence that Con is really gone. Perhaps you could take her to see his grave, afterward.” He gestured at the graves laid out so neatly in the green grass of the churchyard. “That should seem familiar enough to her.”

She turned to him again, her hands clenching convulsively. “There’s not been anyone to talk to, see? Gran doesn’t want to know about it—she disapproved of him anyway—”

“Why was that?” asked Kincaid, surprised that the woman would not have been pleased at a better prospect for her great-granddaughter.

“Marriage is marriage in the eyes of the Lord,” mimicked Sharon, and Kincaid had a sudden clear vision of the old lady. “Gran’s very firm in her beliefs. It made no difference that Con wasn’t living with
her
. And as long as Con was married I had no rights, Gran said. Turned out she knew what she was on about, didn’t she?”

“You must have girlfriends you can talk with,” said Kincaid, as there seemed no helpful answer to the last question.

“They don’t want to know, either. You’d think I’d got leprosy or something all of a sudden—they act like they’re afraid it might rub off on them and spoil their fun.” Sharon sniffed, then added
more softly, “I don’t want to talk to them about Con, anyway. What we had was between us, and it doesn’t seem right to air it like last week’s washing.”

“No, I can see that.”

They sat quietly for a few minutes as the lights began to come on in the cottages. Indistinct shapes moved behind the net curtains, and every so often a pensioner would pop out from one door and then another, putting out milk bottles or picking up papers. It made Kincaid think of those elaborate German clocks, the kind in which the little people bob cheerfully in-and-out as the hour chimes. He looked at the girl beside him, her head again bent over her hands. “I’ll see you get your things back, Sharon.
She
would want you—” Bloody hell, now he was doing it. “Mrs. Swann would like you to have them,” he corrected himself.

Her response, when it came, surprised him. “Those things I said, the other night… well, I’ve been thinking.” In the fading light he caught a quick flash of her eyes before she looked away from him again. “It wasn’t right, what I said. You know. About her…”

“About Julia having killed Connor, is that what you mean?”

She nodded, picking idly at a spot on the front of her sweatshirt. “I don’t know why I said it. I wanted to hit at someone, I guess.” After a moment she continued in a tone of discovery, “I think I wanted to believe she was as awful as Con said. It made me feel better. Safer.”

“And now?” Kincaid asked, and when she didn’t answer he continued, “You had no reason for making those accusations? Con never said anything that made you think Julia might have threatened him?”

Shaking her head, she said so softly that he had to lean close to catch it, “No.” She smelled of Pears soap, and the good, clean ordinariness of it suddenly squeezed at his throat.

The twilight deepened, and from some of the cottage windows came the blue flicker of televisions. Kincaid imagined the pensioners, all women that he had seen, having their evening meals early so that they could settle down in front of the box, uninterrupted, isolated from themselves as well as one another. He gave a
tiny shudder, shaking off the wave of melancholy that threatened him, like a dog coming out of water. Why should he begrudge them their comfort, after all?

Beside him, Sharon stirred and pulled the cardigan a little closer about her. Rubbing his hands together to warm them, he turned to her, saying briskly, “One more thing, Sharon, and then you’d better go in before you catch a chill. We have a witness who’s certain he saw Connor at the Red Lion in Wargrave after he left you that night. Con met a man who fits the description of Tommy Godwin, an old friend of the Ashertons. Do you know him, or did you ever hear Con mention him?”

He could almost hear her thinking as she sat beside him in the dark, and he thought that if he looked closely enough he would see her brow furrowed in concentration. “No,” she said eventually, “I never did.” She turned to him, pulling her knee up on the bench so that she could face him directly. “Did they… were they having a row?”

“According to the witness, it was not a particularly friendly meeting. Why?”

She put her hand to her mouth, nibbling at the nail of her index finger. Nail-biting was a form of self-mutilation that had never tempted Kincaid, and it always made him wince for the damaged flesh. He waited, lacing his own fingers together to stop himself from pulling her hand away from her mouth.

“I thought it was me made him angry,” she said in a rush. “He came back that night. He wasn’t pleased to see me—he wanted to know why hadn’t I gone back to Gran’s, like I said.” She touched Kincaid’s sleeve. “That’s why I didn’t say anything before. I felt such a bloody fool.”

Kincaid patted her hand. “Why hadn’t you gone home?”

“Oh, I did. But Gran’s bridge finished early—one of the old ladies felt a bit ill—so I came back. I was sorry I’d left in a huff before. I thought he’d be glad to see me and we could—” She gulped, unable to go on, but what she had hoped was painfully clear to Kincaid without any further elaboration.

“Was he drunk?”

“He’d had a few, but he wasn’t proper pissed, not really.”

“And he didn’t tell you where he’d been or who he’d seen?”

Sharon shook her head. “’E said, ‘What are you doing here?’ and walked past me like I was a piece of bloody furniture or something.”

“Then what? Tell me bit by bit, everything you can remember.”

Closing her eyes, she thought for a moment, then began obediently, “He went into the kitchen and fixed himself a drink—”

“Not to the drinks trolley?” asked Kincaid, remembering the plethora of bottles.

“Oh, that was just for show. Company. Con drank whiskey and he always kept a bottle on the kitchen counter,” she said, then continued more slowly. “He came back into the sitting room and I noticed he kept rubbing at his throat. ‘Are you all right?’ I asked him. ‘You’re not feeling ill, love?’ But he didn’t answer. He went upstairs into the study and closed the door.”

“Did you follow him?” Kincaid asked when she lapsed into silence.

“I didn’t know what to do. I’d started up the stairs when I heard him talking—he must have rung someone.” She looked at Kincaid and even in the dim reflected light he could see her distress. “He was laughing. That’s what I couldn’t understand. Why would he laugh when he’d hardly said boo to me?

“When he came downstairs again, he said, ‘I’m going out, Shar. Lock up when you leave.’ Well, I’d had enough by that time, I can tell you. I told him to lock his own bloody door—I wasn’t hanging about to be treated like a bloody tart, was I? I told him if he wanted to see me he could pick up the sodding phone and ring me, and I’d think about it if I hadn’t anything better to do.”

“What did Connor say to that?”

“’E just stood there, his face all blank, like he hadn’t heard a word I said.”

Kincaid had heard Sharon in full fury, and he thought Connor must have been very preoccupied indeed. “And did you? Leave, I mean?”

“Well, I had to, hadn’t I? What else was I to do?”

“The scene definitely called for a grand exit,” said Kincaid, smiling.

Sharon smiled back a little reluctantly. “I slammed the bloody door so hard I ripped my nail right off. Hurt like hell, too.”

“So you didn’t actually see him leave the flat?”

“No. I stood about for a minute. I guess I still hoped he’d come after me, say he was sorry. Silly cow,” she added bitterly.

“You weren’t silly at all. You had no way of explaining Con’s behavior—in your place I think I’d have done exactly the same.”

She took a moment to absorb this, then said haltingly, “Mr. Kincaid, do you know why Con said those things… why he treated me like that?”

Wishing he had some comfort to give her, he said, “No,” then added with more certainty than he felt, “but I’m going to find out. Come on, let’s get you inside. Your gran’ll have the police out after you.”

Her smile was as weak as his little joke, and manufactured simply to please him, he felt sure. As they reached the cottage door, he asked, “What time was it when you left Con, Sharon? Do you remember?”

She nodded at the massive tower behind them. “Church clock struck eleven just as I came round the Angel.”

After he left Sharon, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to Kincaid that he should continue down the hill and along the river to Julia’s flat. He would collect Sharon’s things while he was thinking of it, and while he was there he’d question Julia again about her movements after the gallery closed that night.

Or so said the rational, logical part of his mind. Some other part stood back and watched the machinations of the first, an amused and taunting spectator. Why didn’t he admit he hoped he might sit with her, watching the warm lamplight reflect from the shining curve of her hair? Or admit that he wanted to see again the way her lips curved up at the corners when she found something he said amusing? Or that his skin still remembered the touch of her fingers against his face?

“Bollocks!” Kincaid said aloud, banishing the spectator to the recesses of his mind. He needed to clear up a few points, that was all, and his interest in Julia Swann was purely professional.

The wind that earlier cleared the sky had died at sunset, leaving the evening still and hushed, waiting expectantly. Lights reflecting on the water’s surface made it look ice-solid, and as he passed the Angel pub and walked along the embankment, he felt the chill air hovering over the river like a cloud.

As he came opposite Trevor Simons’s gallery, he saw Simons come out the door. Hurriedly crossing the street, Kincaid found him still bent over the latch. He touched his arm. “Mr. Simons. Having a bit of trouble with your lock?”

Simons jumped, dropping the heavy key ring he’d held in his hand. “Christ, Superintendent, but you gave me a fright.” He stooped to retrieve the keys and added, “It does stick a bit, I’m afraid, but I’ve got it now.”

“On your way home?” Kincaid said pleasantly, wondering even as he asked if Simons’s itinerary included a visit to Julia. Now that she was reinstalled in the flat just down the road, they would have no more need of furtive meetings in the workshop behind the gallery.

Simons stood a little awkwardly, holding his keys in one hand and a portfolio in the other. “Yes, actually. Did you need to see me?”

“There were one or two things,” Kincaid answered, making a decision as he spoke. “Why don’t we go across the road and have a drink?”

“It won’t take more than half an hour?” Simons looked at his watch. “We’re going out for a meal tonight. My wife’s sent the children to friends—it’s more than my life’s worth to be late.”

Kincaid hastened to reassure him. “We’ll just nip across to the Angel. I promise we won’t be long.”

They found the pub busy, but it was a sedate crowd—made up, judged Kincaid, mostly of professional people having a quick drink before making their way home after work.

“Nice place,” Kincaid said as they settled comfortably at a table by one of the windows overlooking the river. “Cheers. I admit I’ve
developed rather a taste for Brakspear’s Special.” Tasting his beer, he watched his companion curiously. Simons had sounded a bit embarrassed about his dinner engagement, yet it had the ring of truth. “Sounds as though you and your wife have quite a romantic evening planned,” Kincaid said, fishing.

Simons looked away, his earlier discomfort more evident. The silver in his thick brown hair caught the light as he ran a hand through it. “Well, Superintendent, you know what women are like. She’ll be very disappointed if I don’t participate with enthusiasm.”

A boat motored slowly under the Henley Bridge, its port and starboard lights gleaming steadily. Kincaid idly pushed his beer mat back and forth with one finger, then looked up at Simons. “Did you know that Julia’s moved back into her flat?”

“Yes. Yes, I did. She rang me yesterday.” Before Kincaid could respond, Simons said more forcefully, “Look, Superintendent. I took your advice the other day. I told my wife about… what happened with Julia.” Simons’s fine-boned face looked drawn with exhaustion, and as he sipped from his whiskey and water, his hand trembled slightly.