Dreaming Of The Bones

“I’m not too stubborn to admit that I feel better.” Byrne smiled. “I knew becoming a fanatic was the only way I Could do it, so I changed my diet and I started exercising—I’m rowing again, can you believe it? Joined a club.”

Byrne had been nonchalant concerning his Cambridge blue, but he’d also made sure it got about among his fellow rookies, and his athletic prowess had done much to alleviate their distrust of his upper-class background. The suspicion Byrne’s Cambridge degree had aroused seemed odd now, in this new era of educated policing, but it seemed to Kincaid that the man had always had an instinct for being ahead of his time.

“Thanks for seeing me, Alec. I know how busy you must be.”

“You know all too well, I’d imagine—and of course that makes me wonder what you’re doing here, but I’ll try to keep my curiosity in check. I’ve had the file you asked for brought up from the dungeon. I’d suggest you take it to the canteen and look at it while you have a cuppa.” Byrne handed a folder across his desk to Kincaid. “But you owe me, old chap.”

“I’m sure you’ll find some suitable revenge.” Kincaid accepted the fat file and realigned the errant papers.

“You can buy me a pint when you’ve finished. I’m sure they’ll never miss me.”

“Privilege of rank?” Kincaid suggested.

Byrne answered in his most sardonic drawl. “Hardly worth it, otherwise, I dare say.”

“I see you didn’t handle Lydia Brooke’s case,” Kincaid said as he set two foaming pints of bitter on the table at The Free Press. The pub was tucked away in a residential street behind the station, and was, Byrne had informed him zealously, the only nonsmoking pub in Britain, at least as far as he knew.

“No, the Brooke case was Bill Fitzgerald’s, one of his last before he took his peptic ulcer and his pension off to a bungalow in Spain. He sends us a postcard occasionally.” Byrne raised his pint to Kincaid. “Cheers. May we someday do the same.”

“I’ll drink to that.” For the first time in years, Kincaid had a brief vision of his honeymoon with Vic in Majorca. Sun and rocks and scarlet bougainvillea climbing on stuccoed walls … He shook himself back to reality. “About Lydia Brooke—did you know her when you were at Cambridge?”

Byrne shook his head. “No, she left a few years before I came up, but I heard the occasional odd thing about her. I remember the case well enough, though. Just about this time of year, wasn’t it, five years ago? She died from an overdose of the medication she took for her heart arrhythmia, leaving everything to her ex-husband. It seemed a fairly obvious suicide, and it at least got her a mention on the local news. You know—’tragic death of award-winning Cambridge poet’—that sort of thing.”

Kincaid pulled his notebook from his breast pocket and flipped it open, then drank off a bit of his pint. He’d taken the bench, putting the wall at his back, and from where he sat he could see the day’s specials carefully lettered on the chalkboard over the bar. “Mushroom stroganoff,” it read, and “Courgette flan.” It followed, he supposed, that a smoke-free pub would also be vegetarian. Glancing at the notebook, he said, “I understand that Brooke had a history of more violent suicide attempts.”

“She had a reputation as a bit of an hysteric, if I remember correctly. All part of the artistic persona.”

“What crap,” Kincaid said. “In my experience, artists are more likely to be driven like furies, and are a hell of a lot more disciplined than your average accountant.” He sat back and lifted his pint once more. “Do you remember the details of the previous attempts?”

Byrne shook his head. “Not really, except that they seem to have been rather elaborately staged, as was this one.”

“Yes … except there were one or two things about this one that seemed a bit odd to me. Her clothes, for instance.”

“Clothes? I don’t remember that there was anything unusual about them.”

“That’s the point. Lydia Brooke seems to have had a heightened sense of the dramatic, I will give you that.” Kincaid smiled at Byrne, then glanced again at his notes. “According to her file, there was music repeating on the stereo when her body was discovered, Elgar’s Cello Concerto, to be exact. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the piece at all, but I’d say it’s probably the most wrenchingly sad music I’ve ever heard.”

“I know the piece,” Byrne said. He closed his eyes for a moment, then hummed a few bars, keeping time with his finger. “And I’d be inclined to agree with you. It’s quite powerful stuff.”