Mourn not your Dead

shop in the food court and carried their trays to one of the molded plastic tables in the common area. Will tucked into his food with relish, but with the first bite of fish, grease coated Gemma’s mouth and ran down her throat, threatening to gag her with its rancid slickness. She pushed the tray away, and when Will looked up and frowned she snapped, “Don’t lecture me, Will. I’m not hungry. And I hate mushy peas.” She pushed at the distasteful mess with the tines of her plastic fork.
    When he returned to his lunch without comment, Gemma felt a rush of shame. “I’m sorry, Will. I’m not usually like this. Really. It must be something about this case. Makes me feel all jumpy. And it’ll be worse once the press get in full swing.”
    “Sensitive, are you?” Will said as he loaded his fork with fish and peas, adding a chip for good measure. “It’s your guv and mine who’ll have to tread carefully. Heads could roll if things aren’t sorted out fast enough to please the powers that be. I’d just as soon not be in their shoes. Give me door-to-door in the rain any day.” He smiled and she felt restored to his good graces.
    When he’d mopped up the last of his lunch, she said, “Sainsbury’s then?”
    “And afterwards we’ll stop in at the station and you can get acquainted with the lads in the incident room.”
     
    NEITHER THE DELI CLERK NOR THE CHECKOUT GIRL AT SAINSBURY’S proved the least bit helpful. Gemma and Will came out into the High again discouraged, but at least Will had got his wish and the rain had receded to a soft drizzle. The pavements were thronged with shoppers, and a columned passageway held banks of flower stalls. At the bottom of the steep street, Gemma could see the soft colors of the trees lining the riverbanks.
    “You’ll have to see it in better circumstances,” said Will. “It’s lovely when the sun shines, and there’s a first-class museum in the castle.”
    “You’re mind reading again, Will.” Gemma ducked away from a woman wielding an umbrella. “It is a pretty town, even in the rain. Good place to grow up,” she said, thinking of Toby learning to fend for himself in the London streets.
    “But I didn’t—not in Guildford itself, anyway. We lived in a village near Godalming. I’m a farm boy—can’t you tell?” He held up a broad hand for her inspection. “See all those scars? A little tangle with the hay baler.” Touching the pale streak that sliced through his eyebrow, he added, “Barbed wire, that one. My parents must have despaired of raising me to adulthood in one piece.”
    “You’re an only child,” Gemma said, guessing.
    “A late blessing, they always said, in spite of the trips to the doctor’s surgery.”
    It was on the top of Gemma’s tongue to ask him what had become of the farm, but something in his expression stopped her. They walked the rest of the way back to the car park in silence.
     
    HAVING ASKED WILL TO RUN HER BACK TO HOLMBURY ST. Mary in case she was needed, she felt a fool when the constable on the Gilberts’ gate said that Kincaid and Deveney hadn’t returned, nor had Kincaid left her a message.
    “I’ve some phone calls to make,” she assured Will. “I’ll wait at the pub.” She waved him off with a smile, then slowly crossed the road. The rain had stopped, but the tarmac felt greasy beneath her feet and moisture hung heavily in the air.
    The odor of stale cigarette smoke lingered inside the pub, but there was no sign of human presence. Gemma waited for a few minutes, warming her hands at the embers of the lunchtime fire. Her stomach rumbled emptily, and once she’d become aware of it, the pang quickly became ravenous hunger. Another trip to Surrey flashed in her memory, a day when she and Kincaid had shared sandwiches in a tea shop garden, then walked along the riverbank.
    Unshed tears smarted behind her eyelids. “Don’t be a stupid bloody cow,” she said aloud. Lack of sleep and low blood sugar, that’s all that was wrong with her—nothing that a snack and nap wouldn’t fix, and she might as well take advantage of the time on her own. Scrubbing at her eyes, she marched over to the bar, but the reconnaissance didn’t turn up so much as a packet of stale crisps. She had some biscuits in her overnight bag—they would have to do.
    She’d trudged halfway up the stairs, feeling as if her calves carried lead weights, when a body flew around the landing and cannoned into her. As the blow against her