A Share in Death

sebastian floated face down, his skin mouse-colored, his yellow hair waving in anemone spikes which gave it a perverse animation. He wore, contrary to Kincaid’s first impression, a pair of bathing trunks patterned with tropical flowers.

A heavy-duty electrical cord snaked over the first-floor balcony, disappearing into the agitated water. Kincaid propelled the now-silent children back through the doors. Their faces were still with shock and he found he couldn’t remember their names. He squatted before them and said gently, “Stay here. You mustn’t touch the water. Do you understand?” They nodded solemnly and he left them, taking the shallow stairs to the balcony three at a time.

The cord stretched through the railing from the wall outlet near the far door. Kincaid grasped the plug with a fold of his dressing gown and gently pulled it free, then secured it by looping it around one of the balcony struts. Stopping briefly to reassure the children, he returned to the pool, slipped off his dressing gown and began the awkward business of removing the body from the water.

Sebastian’s skin felt flaccid and waterlogged. It still startled Kincaid, after all his close habituation with death, that something as intangible as life’s presence in the skin could be so positively experienced. Sebastian’s body, however, unlike most, was warm, warmer than his own, the flesh butter-slick and evasive.

Kincaid finally managed to heave him out of the pool by grasping him under the armpits, and Sebastian slid onto the brick surround with a small sucking noise. Kincaid rolled him over, checking for vital signs although the rapid decay caused by the body’s immersion in hot water made it an obviously futile action.

28

A share in death 29

The pool door swung open and he heard a gasp behind him. He sat back on his knees with an effort and rubbed his hands against his sides, an instinctive gesture.

Emma MacKenzie stood just inside the door, still holding the handle tightly. Thank god, thought Kincaid, that it was Emma and not Penny.

“Dear god. Sebastian. He’s dead, isn’t he?” Her voice was surprisingly gentle. She came forward and reached out her hand as if to touch him.

Kincaid nodded. “I’m afraid so. Do you think you could go to the office and ring the local police? Then perhaps you could wait and show them the way.”

“But… what about the children?”

“They’ve seen the worst, already. I don’t think a few more minutes will do any further damage. Someone must stay with the body. If I send them up alone their parents will be down in a flash, and the less disturbance before the police arrive, the better.”

Emma considered briefly, absently hugging her folded towel against her body. “All right,” she said, her brisk competence once more in evidence. Her bathing sandals flipflopped against the tiles as she left.

She had accepted his authority without question. Well, Kincaid thought, things would get difficult soon enough. He had made a right fool of himself by pretending not to be what he was, and now he would have to face the music. His policeman’s instinct was too ingrained to stifle easily. He could already feel that addictive surge of heightened perception that marked the beginning of a case. Not his case, he reminded himself, with a fierce determination. It wasn’t his jurisdiction and the local lads would only consider him a nuisance, Scotland Yard sticking its nose in, uninvited. He didn’t know any of these people, except, perhaps, Hannah. He didn’t want to have more than a casual connection with them, and he would bloody well not get involved. His conscience pricked. He had liked Sebastian. Suddenly he felt drained and shaken.

It came to him, in the quiet respite between discovery and official action, that he was suffering a degree of emotional

30 deborah grombie

shock. He always felt a surge of pity and anger when first confronted with a corpse, but he had learned to distance it, compartmentalize it. Never before had he faced the body of someone he had known, touched, spoken with just a few hours before. He felt a need to differentiate somehow, to make a personal gesture of acknowledgement. He knelt and touched Sebastian’s bare shoulder, briefly.

He shivered, his own wet skin chilling now that the first adrenaline rush had passed. No matter what odd kinship he had felt with Sebastian, it didn’t alter the fact that his death wasn’t his responsibility, he had no more official power here than an innocent bystander. And as there was nothing more he could do for Sebastian Wade, he went in to the children.

The village constable arrived soon after, still buttoning his uniform tunic. He was a large young man, with a round, rubicund face and a slightly bovine expression. “Now then, what’s all this about a gentleman being drowned in the swimming pool?”