Leave the Grave Green

He’d navigated his way onto the Reading Road, intent on exchanging the day’s findings with Gemma back at the Chequers, when the signpost for the Station Road carpark caught his eye. Almost without thinking he found himself making the turn and pulling the car into a vacant slot. From there it was only a few hundred yards’ walk down the Station Road to the river. On his right lay the boathouse flats, serene behind their iron fence in the dusk.

Something had been niggling at him—he couldn’t swear to the date of the last check Connor had written Kenneth. Kincaid had never finished his interrupted search of Con’s desk, and now he let himself into the flat with the key he’d used earlier, intending to have another look at the checkbook.

He stopped just inside the door. Looking around, he tried to pinpoint why the flat felt different. Warmth, for one thing. The central heating had been switched on. Con’s shoes had disappeared from beneath the settee. The untidy stack of newspapers on the end table had gone as well, but something even less definable spoke of recent human occupation. He sniffed, trying to place the faint scent in the air. Something tugged at the fringes of his mind, then vanished as he heard a noise above.

He held his breath, listening, then moved quietly toward the stairs. A scrape came, then a thump. Someone moving furniture? He’d only been a few minutes behind Kenneth leaving the pub—had the little sod beat him here, bent on destroying evidence? Or had Sharon come back, after all?

Both doors on the first landing had been pulled to, but before he could investigate, the noise came again from above. He climbed the last flight of steps, carefully keeping his feet to the edge of the treads. The studio door stood open a few inches, not enough to give him a clear view into the room. Taking a breath, he used his fist to slam the door open. He charged into the room as the door bounced against the wall.

Julia Swann dropped the stack of canvases she held in her hands.

“Jesus, Julia, you gave me a fright! What the hell are you doing here?” He stood breathing hard, adrenaline still rushing through his body.

“I gave you

a fright!” She stared at him wide-eyed, holding her balled hand to her chest and flattening her black sweater between her breasts. “You probably just cost me ten years off my life, Superintendent, not to mention damage to my property.” She bent to retrieve her paintings. “I might ask you the same question—what are you doing in my flat?”

“It’s still under our jurisdiction. I’m sorry I frightened you. I had no idea you were here.” Trying to regain a semblance of authority, he added, “You should have notified the police.”

“Why should I feel obliged to let the police know I’d come back to my own flat?” She sat on the rolled arm of the chair she used for a prop in her paintings and looked at him challengingly.

“Your husband’s death is still under investigation, Mrs. Swann, and he did live here, in case you’d forgotten.” He came nearer to her and sat on the only other available piece of furniture, her worktable. His feet dangled a few inches above the floor and he crossed his ankles to stop them swinging.

“You called me Julia before.”

“Did I?” Then, it had been instinctive, involuntary. Now he used it deliberately. “Okay, Julia.” He drew the syllables out. “So what are you doing here?”

“I should think that would be rather obvious.” She gestured around her and he turned, examining the room. Paintings, both the small flower studies and the larger portraits, had been stacked against the walls, and a few had been hung. Dust had vanished from the visible surfaces, and some of the paints and paper familiar to him from her workroom at Badger’s End had appeared on the table. She had brought in a large pot plant and placed it near the blue velvet chair—those, along with the faded Persian rug and the brightly colored books in the case behind the chair, formed the still-life tableau he’d seen in several of the paintings at the gallery.

The room felt alive once more, and he finally identified the scent that had eluded him downstairs. It was Julia’s perfume.

She had slid down into the depths of the chair and sat quietly smoking with her legs stretched out, and as he looked at her he saw that her eyes were shadowed with fatigue. “Why did you give this up, Julia? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Studying him, she said, “You look different out of your proper policeman’s kit. Nice. Human, even. I’d like to draw you.” She stood suddenly and touched her fingers to the angle of his jaw, turning his head. “I don’t usually do men, but you have an interesting face, good bones that catch the light well.” Just as quickly, she sank into the chair again and regarded him.

He still felt the imprint of her fingers against his skin. Resisting the urge to touch his jaw, he said, “You haven’t answered me.”

Sighing, she ground the half-smoked cigarette into a pottery ashtray. “I don’t know if I can.”

“Try me.”