Dreaming of the Bones

apparently, as well as her literary executor. Brooke had rung him and asked him to come round, but when he arrived later that evening he found the porch dark. She didn’t answer when he rang the bell, so he tried the door and found it unlocked. Do you know if anyone ever found out why the light was out?” Frowning, Byrne studied Kincaid. ”I suspect where you’re going with this, and I think I’ve contained my curiosity long enough. Why this interest in a straightforward case that’s been closed for almost five years? Do you think we’re not capable of doing a job properly?”
    ”Oh, bollocks, Alec. You know perfectly well that’s not true, so don’t come the injured provincial with me. Besides, it wasn’t your case. You were the new boy on the block then, remember? And isn’t it just possible that old Bill was more interested in looking at travel brochures than in doing much digging on a case that came all wrapped up in a pink ribbon?”
    For a moment Byrne seemed to be concentrating on placing his tankard in the exact center of his beer mat, then he looked up at Kincaid. ”Even supposing you’re right—and Em not sure Em willing to go that far, mind you—why are you sticking your nose in?”
    It was Kincaid’s turn to fiddle. He drew rings in the moisture on the tabletop, wishing he’d started as he meant to go on. Finally, he said, ”It’s personal.” When Byrne merely raised his brows expectantly, Kincaid went on. ”My ex-wife—her name is Victoria McClellan—is working on a biography of Brooke. She’s at All Saints’—a Fellow—and she lectures at the University as well,” he added quickly, as if Byrne had questioned her credentials.
    ”I see,” Byrne drawled. ”She asked you to ferret out the details so she could use them in her book. And you agreed?”
    Kincaid bridled at the mildly amused censure. ”Not at all. I’d not have agreed to it, for one thing, and for another, I think scandal value is the last thing on Vic’s mind. Look, Alec, I know how it sounds, but Vic isn’t given to flights of fancy. I daresay she knows Lydia Brooke down to the color of her knickers, and she doesn’t believe Brooke committed suicide.”
    ”Murder?” Byrne laughed. ”Tell that to the AC, with bells on. Just let me be there to see his face turn that lovely apoplectic purple.” His mirth subsiding, he looked pityingly at Kincaid. ” Duncan , I can tell you now, you don’t stand a hope of getting the AC to reopen this case unless you come up with some new, absolutely incontrovertible physical evidence—or you get a confession.” He shook his head and eyed his friend ruefully. ”And I’d say your chances of doing either are about on a par with the proverbial snowball’s.”

    Kincaid stood outside the police station, watching squirrels chase one another across the green expanse of Parker’s Piece. Two young men played a desultory game of Frisbee with a mongrel dog, and a woman pushing a pram crossed the space slowly on the diagonal.
    Reluctantly, Kincaid pulled his phone from his breast pocket and punched in Vic’s number. He supposed he might as well get it over with, see her while he was in Cambridge and tell her he’d done what he could. Alec Byrne was right, of course: a few unanswered questions were not going to arouse the local lads’ interest in an old case more conveniently let lie.
    As he listened to the distant ringing, a cloud skittered across the sun, momentarily erasing the long afternoon shadows. He heard a click, then Vic’s voice, and so immediate and natural did she sound that it took him a moment to realize he’d reached her answer phone. At the beep he hesitated, then hung up without leaving a message. He glanced at his watch before again consulting his notebook. There might still be time to catch her at her office, but he realized she hadn’t given him the number. Glancing up, he saw a taxi rounding the comer. If he hurried, he might just make it in person.

    A black cab delivered him swiftly to a Victorian house across the river. He stood a moment after paying the driver, regarding the sign near the gate that informed him that this was the university of Cambridge faculty of English, no unauthorized parking allowed. A heavy screen of evergreens partially concealed a graveled car park, but in a sheltered spot near the house he could see a battered Renault and an N registration Volvo. It looked as though he might find someone lingering past the stroke of