Water Like a Stone by Deborah Crombie Read Free Book Online Page B

what to say. But as he trooped ahead with Sam and Toby, stomping footprints in the freshly fallen powder, he began to forget his discomfort. For the first time since they’d arrived he was able to take pleasure in the moment.
    The field sloped down to a distant dark smudge of trees, and halfway across it he saw two shaggy shapes that must be the ponies, one dark, one light. Jack had bounded ahead and was now circling the ponies, yipping and lunging. The dog’s white markings seemed to disappear into the snow, so that the moving black patches of his coat looked strangely disembodied. Kit stopped a moment, watching, feeling the cold sear his lungs as he breathed. The snow and the sharp, smoky, night air were glorious, London and school seemed a universe away, and the holiday felt suddenly full of promise.
     
    Kincaid grasped the hand held out to him, studying the man with dawning recognition. “Good God, it’s not Ronnie Babcock, is it?”
    “That’s Chief Inspector Babcock to you, old son,” Babcock said jovially, but his voice held the hint of self-mockery Kincaid remembered from their school days. He hadn’t seen Babcock since he’d left Cheshire for London more than twenty years ago, and the last he’d heard, Babcock had been looking at a promising career in professional football.
    “I’ll be damned. I’d no idea you were on the force, Ronnie. What happened to the—”
    “Knee,” Babcock interrupted shortly. “I thought I should look for something with more long-term benefits—although at the moment I couldn’t tell you what they are.” He grinned and gave a shrug that took in the snow and the surroundings, and Kincaid remembered his unexpected charm.
    He’d never known Babcock really well. Their friendship had been an odd one, and had come about by chance. Babcock had been a tough, working-class kid with an attitude, and his social circle had not naturally intersected with Kincaid’s. But more than once, Kincaid had seen him stand up for a kid who was being bullied, and had witnessed an occasional gruff and rather awkward kindness, quickly masked by teasing.
    Then, one day, Kincaid had gone into his parents’ bookshop after school and seen Ronnie Babcock at the cash register, finishing a transaction with one of the shop assistants. Babcock had looked furtive, and Kincaid, his curiosity aroused, had moved close enough to glimpse the other boy’s purchase as it went into the bag. The volume was not something risqué, as he’d half expected, but a battered, used edition of James Hilton’s Lost Horizon .
    Kincaid had opened his mouth to rib Babcock about his taste in reading material when something in the boy’s expression stopped him. When Babcock had finished counting out his coins and stuffed the book into a jacket pocket, he moved away from the counter and said quietly to Kincaid, “Look, you won’t tell my mates at school, will you?”
    “But—”
    “It’s a poncey book, see,” Babcock added with a look of pleading. “I’d never live it down.”
    Kincaid did see. He’d grown up tainted by the aura of his parents’ profession, as well as by the folly of his own occasional displays of knowledge. He’d been labeled an anorak, a bookworm, and no matter how well he did at games or how tough he was on the playground, it had stuck.
    “Yeah, all right,” he’d said, grinning. “But only if you promise to tell me what you think of the book.”
    After that they had talked when they’d run across each other in town, and Babcock had often come into the bookshop when he knew Kincaid was working after school, but that had seemed the natural limit of the relationship. Babcock had never invited Kincaid to his home, or vice versa, and they’d had no reason to keep up after leaving school.
    Babcock had aged well, Kincaid saw now. He still looked fit, and even with his pugnacious boxer’s face, he’d acquired an air of polish unimaginable in the teenager.
    “Chief inspector?” Kincaid said,