7

“ARE YOU SURE you don’t want me to run you to the tube station?” Gemma asked as Kincaid gulped at a cup of scalding tea, and folded toast and bacon into a makeshift sandwich. “Then you’d have time to eat your breakfast sitting down.”

“Thanks, love, but I think I’d rather walk. Make hay while the sun shines – isn’t that what they say?” The morning had dawned bright and windy, but with a promise of more rain later in the day.

“Have you been listening to The Archers again?” she teased, turning from the fridge with a carton of juice in one hand.

“I confess. It’s my secret vice.” He set down his mug and gave her a one-armed hug. “No, seriously, I don’t mind the walk, and you’ve got to get the boys up if you’re going to make it to Portobello before the market’s jammed.” What he didn’t say was that he needed that brief time on his own to fold away the morning’s images, the bright kitchen filled with comforting smells, Gemma disheveled before the warmth of the Aga, the boys still safe in their beds upstairs. These were not things he wanted to carry too close to the surface when he walked into the morgue at St. Thomas’s.

“I’m sorry about this morning, about not going with you,” he added as she disengaged herself to turn a second batch of bacon cooking in the frying pan.

“You know it can’t be helped,” she answered, not glancing up from her task.

He hesitated, knowing this was not the time to discuss it, but he couldn’t be sure when he’d have another chance. Tess and Geordie were underfoot, tails wagging as they watched him expectantly, so he divided the last bite of his sandwich between them. “It worries me that Kit won’t talk about Monday.”

This time she did look at him. “He’ll be fine.” She gave him a reassuring smile. “We’ll be fine. We’ll have our treasure hunt at the market, maybe lunch at Otto’s, then after my piano lesson I’m taking them to tea at Erika’s.” Putting down her tongs, she came to him and grasped the lapels of his jacket. “Ring me when you know something. I’ll keep my phone with me.”

Her hair was sleep-tousled, her skin still free of the light makeup she wore during the day. With his thumb, he traced the faint pattern of freckles on her cheekbone. She turned her face into his hand. The tenderness of the gesture moved him to say what he’d been keeping back for weeks. “Gemma, are you sure about giving up the nursery? I think we should talk-”

“We can’t disappoint Kit now. You know that.” She stepped back, the momentary softness of her expression replaced by a bright smile. He had ventured onto forbidden ground and she’d withdrawn again. “Now go,” she added briskly, “or you’ll be late.”

She was right, of course, he admitted to himself a few minutes later as he walked up Lansdowne Road, towards Holland Park tube station. Kit had to come first just now, but acknowledging that didn’t make it any easier to deal with Gemma shutting him out – or the realization that she was, whether consciously or not, using the situation with Kit as an excuse to avoid talking about her miscarriage and the possibility of having another child.

And to add insult to injury, he’d had no luck trying to get Kit to discuss his feelings about Monday’s impending hearing. Arriving home a bit before ten the previous evening, he’d found Gemma at the piano in the dining room, practicing for her Saturday afternoon lesson. She’d been working on a simple Bach piece, and although she didn’t have much time to play, he could tell she was improving. Her tempo was still a little slow, but her fingertips moved lightly and surely over the keys.

Pausing, she’d looked up and smiled, but he’d waved her on. “Don’t stop. I’m going to check on the boys.”

He’d started up the stairs, and the dogs, having dutifully met him at the front door, settled back into position on the first landing. This had become their usual strategy for dealing with divided loyalties when the family was split between up-and downstairs. Their cat, Sid, on the other hand, operating on the principle of all things come to those who wait, would be curled on the foot of their bed.

First, he looked in on Toby, now sleeping alone in the room he’d shared with Kit until a few weeks ago. The five-year-old lay sprawled on his stomach, covers thrown back to reveal his train-printed pajamas, his stuffed bear tossed to the floor. Kincaid carefully tucked in the bear and pulled up the duvet, but there was no change in the rhythm of Toby’s slightly whuffly breathing.

Kincaid moved on to the room down the hall, once intended as the nursery. When his light knock brought no answer, he opened the door. Kit sat at his desk, hunched over a sheet of paper, drawing. A set of headphones explained his lack of response, and Kincaid could hear the tinny, muted sound of the personal CD player from across the room.

Rapping more loudly on the open door, Kincaid called out, “Hey, sport.”

Kit turned, startled, and yanked off the headphones. “Sorry. Didn’t hear you.”

“I’m not surprised.” Kincaid thought of all the times his mother had told him he was going to ruin his hearing, and refrained from further comment on the volume. “What are you listening to?” he asked instead, sitting down on the bed. Tess, Kit’s terrier, had followed him upstairs and now jumped up beside him.

“The Mighty Diamonds.” Kincaid must have looked blank, because Kit added, in the don’t you know anything? tone that had been creeping into his voice more frequently of late, “It’s reggae. Classic eighties.”

“Oh, right. I must have been listening to the Police in the eighties, myself.”

“But the Police were influenced by reggae, and by Bob Marley,” Kit told him with great seriousness, and Kincaid congratulated himself on inadvertently getting something right. He suspected that would become more and more difficult, but he meant to keep trying.

“Did you borrow the CD from Wesley?”

“He said I could.” Kit’s reply was unexpectedly defensive. “I haven’t scratched it or anything.”

“No. I’m sure you haven’t. You’re very good at looking after things,” Kincaid assured him, thinking he’d have to ask Wes for a crash course on reggae on the sly. In the meantime, he’d try an easier topic. He glanced at the paper on Kit’s desk. “Are you sketching?”

Kit held up a drawing of a tortoise, copied from the open zoology book beside it. “Galápagos tortoise.” The boy’s latest hero was Dr. Stephen Maturin, the surgeon/naturalist from Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander novels, and he’d become determined to learn to draw.

“Wow, that’s terrific,” Kincaid said, and the sincere admiration in his voice elicited a smile from Kit.

“I could use some better watercolor pencils. There’s an art supply shop off Portobello, near Otto’s. I thought maybe I could get them tomorrow.”

“Listen, sport. About tomorrow. I’m going to have to miss out on our shopping expedition. Something’s come up-”

“I know. Gemma told me.” Kit’s expression was neutral, reserved.

“I’m sorry. I wanted-”

“Don’t worry about it.” Kit shrugged and turned back to his desk. “It doesn’t matter.”

The absolution cut Kincaid to the quick.

When Kincaid arrived at the morgue, Farrell, Cullen, and Bell were there before him, and Kincaid suspected that Cullen, at least, derived some satisfaction from getting one up on his boss.

He joined them in the postmortem theatre gallery, where they looked down on Kate Ling and her assistant, and on the grotesque and blackened form on the steel dissection table. The smell made Kincaid wish he’d forgone even his light toast and bacon breakfast.