With a sudden and uncomfortable twinge, he wondered if he’d have let it go so easily if he’d been as good as she was. And just how successful had he been at real life? He pushed that nagging little thought aside. Things would get better; they always did.
Perhaps he should rethink what he’d said to Becca. But first, Mr. Craig.
Angus Craig, however, failed to materialize.
Freddie had leapt from the Audi, popping open his umbrella with the speed of a conjurer, then squelched across the car park to the haven of Leander’s lobby. Lily, the duty manager, had brought him a towel from the crew quarters, then seated him at his favorite table in the window of the first-floor dining room.
“The crew won’t be going out this morning,” he said, looking out at the curtains of rain sweeping across the river. This was rough weather, even for Leander’s crew, who prided themselves on their fortitude—although anyone who had rowed in an Oxford or Cambridge Blue Boat could tell them a thing or two about weather . . . and fortitude.
Freddie’s boat had almost been swamped one year in the Boat Race, in conditions like this. An unpleasant experience, to say the least, and a dangerous one.
“You’ve got someone joining you?” asked Lily as she poured him coffee.
“Yes.” Freddie glanced at his watch again. “But he’s late.”
“Some of the staff haven’t made it in,” said Lily. “Chef says there’s a pileup on the Marlow Road.”
“That probably explains it.” Freddie summoned a smile for her. She was a pretty girl, neat in her Leander uniform of navy skirt and pale pink shirt, her honey-brown hair pulled back in a knot. A few years earlier he’d have fancied her, but he’d learned from his mistakes since then. Now he was wiser and wearier. “Thanks, Lily. I’ll give him a bit longer before I order.”
She left him, and he sipped his coffee, idly watching the few other diners. This early in the week and this time of year, he doubted there were many overnight guests in the club’s dozen rooms, and the weather had probably discouraged most of the local members who normally came to the club for breakfast. The food was exceptionally good and surprisingly reasonably priced.
The chef would have his hands full, regardless of the slow custom in the dining room. He was also responsible for feeding the voracious appetites of the young crew, who ate in their own quarters. Rowers were always starving, hunger as ingrained as breathing.
At half past eight, well into his second cup of coffee and beginning to feel desperate for a smoke, Freddie rang Angus Craig’s number and got voice mail.
At a quarter to nine, he ordered his usual breakfast of scrambled eggs with smoked salmon, but found he’d lost his appetite. Pushing the eggs aside and buttering toast instead, he realized the rain had eased. He could see across the river now, although the watery gray vista of shops and rooftops on the opposite bank might as well have been Venice. But perhaps the traffic was moving again. He’d give Craig another few minutes.
The sound of voices in reception made him look round. It wasn’t the big, sandy-haired Craig, however, but Milo Jachym, the women’s coach, having a word with Lily. He was dressed in rain gear, and had a purposeful set to his small, sturdy frame.
“Milo,” Freddie called, standing and crossing the dining room. “Are you going out?”
“Thinking about it. We might have an hour before the next squall line moves through.” Zipping his anorak, Milo looked out of the reception doors. Following his gaze, Freddie saw that a few patches of blue were breaking through the gray sky to the west. Milo added, “I’d like to get them off the ergs and onto the water, even if it’s a short workout. Otherwise they’ll be moaning the rest of the day.”
“Can’t blame them. Bloody ergs.” All rowers hated the ergometers, the machines that were used to simulate rowing and to measure a rower’s strength. Workouts on the ergs were physically grueling without any of the pleasure that came from moving a boat through the water. The only good thing that could be said for an erg workout was that it was mindless—you could drift into a pain-filled mental free fall without ramming your boat into something and risking life and limb.
Milo grinned. “Never heard that one before.” He turned back towards the crew quarters. “I’d better get them out while it lasts.”
Freddie stopped him with a touch on the arm. “Milo, did you have a chance to speak to Becca? I was hoping you might have been able to talk some sense into her.”
“Well, I talked to her, but not sense.” Frowning, he studied Freddie. “I think you’re fighting a losing battle there. You might as well give in gracefully. And why are you so sure she can’t win?”
“You think she can?” Freddie asked, surprised.
“There’s no woman in this crew”—he nodded towards the crew quarters—“or any other I’ve seen in the last year that could out-row Rebecca at her best.”
“But she’s—”
“Thirty-five? So?”
“Yeah, I know, I know. And she’d kill me if she heard me say that.” He imitated Becca at her most pedantic. “Redgrave was thirty-eight, Pinsent, thirty-four, Williams, thirty-two . . . And Katherine Grainger won silver at thirty-three . . .” Freddie shrugged. “But they had medals behind them. She doesn’t.”
“She has the same capacity for crucifying herself. Which is what it takes. As you very well know.”
“Okay,” Freddie admitted. “Maybe you’re right. In which case, maybe I’d better apologize. But she won’t return my calls. When did you talk to her?”
“Yesterday. About half past four. She was taking a boat out. She said she’d rack it herself when she came in.” Milo frowned. “But come to think of it, I don’t remember seeing it when I went out to check the river conditions this morning. Maybe she took it out at the cottage.”
“Not likely. She’d have to have used the neighbor’s raft.” It was possible, though, Freddie thought. But, still, she’d have had to carry the shell through her neighbor’s garden to put it in her own, and she had no ready place to store the boat. And why do that when she kept the Filippi racked here?
Unless she felt ill and couldn’t make it all the way back to Leander? Though that didn’t sound like Becca. The uneasiness that had been nagging him ratcheted up a notch. He checked his watch, decided Angus Craig could bugger himself. “I’m going to check the racks.”
“I’ll come with you.” Milo paused, eyeing Freddie’s navy jacket and blue-and-pink-striped Leander tie. “You’ll get soaked, man. There’s a spare anorak by the bar.”
But Freddie was already heading out the doors. The first-floor reception area opened onto an outside balcony with a staircase leading down from either side. Freddie took the left-hand flight, towards the river and the boatyard. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, but by the time he reached the boat racks, he was impatiently pushing damp hair off his forehead.
The rack where Becca kept her Filippi was empty. “It’s not here,” he said, although Milo could see that as well as he could.
“Maybe she put it in the shed for some reason. She has a key.” Milo pulled up his hood against the drizzle and turned towards the clubhouse. The boatshed was beneath the first-floor dining room, and on a fair day, with the crews going out, the big doors would stand wide open.
This morning, however, they entered through the smaller door on the right, and Milo flicked on the lights. The space was cavernous, dim in the corners. It smelled of wood and varnish, and faintly, of sweat and mildew. The thump of weights could be heard from the gym next door.
Ordinarily, Freddie found the shed inexplicably comforting, but now his stomach clenched as all he saw were the racks of gleaming, bright-yellow Empachers. These were the fours and eights rowed by the crew. Pink-bladed oars stood up in the racks at the rear of the long room like flags. There was no sign of the white Filippi with its distinctive blue stripe.
“Okay,” Milo said. “It’s not here. We’ll ask if anyone else has seen her.” He opened the door that led into the gym and called ou
t, “Johnson!”
The promising young bowman of the coxless four appeared in the doorway in vest and shorts, toweling the sweat from his face. “We going out, Milo?” He nodded a greeting to Freddie.
“Not just yet,” answered Milo. “Steve, have you seen Becca Meredith?”
Johnson looked surprised. “Becca? No. Not since Sunday, on the river. She had a good row. Why?”
“She went out last night, and her boat’s not back.”
“Have you tried ringing her?” Johnson asked with a casualness that Freddie found suddenly infuriating.
“Of course I’ve bloody tried ringing her.” He turned to Milo. “Look, I’m going to check the cottage.”
“Freddie, I think you’re overreacting,” said Milo. “You know Becca has a mind of her own.”
“No one knows that better than me. But I don’t like this, Milo. Call me if you hear anything.”
He went out the way he’d come in, rather than going through the crew quarters in the club. He walked round the lawn to the car park, unmindful now of his shoes or his damp jacket.
Maybe he was overreacting, he thought as he climbed back into the Audi. But he rang her mobile once more, and when the call went to voice mail, he clicked off and started the engine. She might chew him up one side and down the other for intruding, but he was going to see for himself.
Although it took a bit of maneuvering to get the Audi out of the deep, slushy ruts in the gravel, he eventually managed.
A remembered dialogue played in his head. From Becca, Why can’t you get a sensible car for once?
Because you can’t sell expensive property if your prospect thinks you can’t afford the best, he always answered, but there were days he’d kill for four-wheel drive, and this was one of them.
Once out of the car park, he pulled onto the main road and turned immediately left into Remenham Lane. As he drove north, he could see the clouds building again in the western sky.
The redbrick cottage, surrounded by an overgrown garden, was set between the lane and the river. It had been Freddie’s job to keep the grounds, which he had done with regularity if not much talent. Becca had simply let things go until the place had begun to resemble Sleeping Beauty’s briar thicket.
Her battered black Nissan 4×4 sat in the drive. Becca had no interest in cars either, except as a means to pull a boat. If the Nissan wasn’t mud-spattered, it was only because the rain had washed it off. Her trailer had been pulled up on the patch of lawn beside the drive, and the Filippi was not on it.
Just as Freddie opened the Audi’s door, thunder clapped and the sky opened up. He sprinted for the cottage, sliding into the porch as if he’d just made a wicket and shaking the water from his hair.
No lights showed through the stained glass in the door. The bell didn’t work—he’d never managed to fix it—so he banged on the wood surround with his fist.
“Becca. Becca! Answer the bloody door.”
When there was no response, he fumbled for his keys and put the heavy door key in the lock.
“Becca, I’m coming in,” he called as he swung the door open.
The cottage was cold and silent.
Her handbag sat on the bench below the coat rack, where she always dropped it when she came in from work. A gray suit jacket had been tossed carelessly beside it, but otherwise, the sitting room looked undisturbed. Her yellow rowing fleece was missing from the coat hook, as was her pink Leander hat.
He called out again, glancing quickly into the kitchen and dining room. A stack of unopened mail sat on the buffet, a rinsed cup and plate in the sink, and on the worktop a bag of cat food for the neighbor’s cat she sometimes fed.
The cottage felt, in some way he couldn’t explain, profoundly empty of human presence. But he climbed the stairs and looked into the bedroom and the bathroom. The bed was made, the skirt that matched the jacket he’d seen downstairs lay across the chair, along with a white blouse and a tangled pair of tights.
The bath was dry, but the air held the faintest trace of Dolce & Gabbana’s Light Blue cologne, one of Becca’s few vanities.
He opened the door to the spare room that had once been his office, whistling in surprise when he saw the weights and the ergometer. She was serious about training, then. Really serious.
So what the hell had she gone and done?
Clattering back down the stairs, he grabbed a spare anorak from the coat hook and went out into the garden, ducking his head against the driving rain. Becca’s neighbor’s lawn had the river frontage, but he checked it just in case she’d pulled the boat up there. Seeing nothing but upturned garden furniture, he ran back to the cottage and pulled his phone out with cold and fumbling fingers. Thunder rumbled and shook the cottage.
Becca wouldn’t thank him for ringing her boss, Superintendent Peter Gaskill, but he couldn’t think what else to do next. He didn’t know Gaskill well, as Becca had been assigned to his team a short time before the divorce, but he’d met the man at police functions and the occasional dinner party.
Freddie’s call was shunted through by the department’s secretary. When Gaskill picked up, Freddie identified himself, then said, “Look, Peter, sorry to bother you. But I’ve been trying to reach Becca since yesterday, and I’m a bit worried. I wondered if perhaps there’d been an emergency at work . . .” It sounded unlikely even as he said it. He explained about the boat, adding that Becca didn’t seem to have been home since the previous evening, and that her car was still in the drive.
“We had a staff meeting this morning, an important one,” Gaskill said. “She didn’t show or return my calls, and I’ve never known her to miss a meeting. You’re certain she’s not at home?”
“I’m in the cottage now.”
There was silence on the other end of the line, as if Gaskill was deliberating. Then he said, “So what you’re telling me is that Becca went out on the river last night, in the dark, alone in a racing shell, and that neither she nor the boat have been seen since.”
Hearing it stated so baldly, Freddie felt chilled to the bone. Any arguments about her competency died on his lips. “Yes.”
“You stay there,” Gaskill told him. “I’m calling in the local force.”
Two families, for the most part strangers to one another, had spent a long weekend cooped up together in the rambling vicarage that anchored the hamlet of Compton Grenville, near Glastonbury in Somerset, while rain rumbled and poured and the water rose around them. The scene, thought Detective Inspector Gemma James, had had all the makings of an Agatha Christie murder mystery.
“Or maybe a horror film,” she said aloud to her friend and new cousin-in-law, Winnie Montfort, who stood at the old farmhouse sink in the vicarage kitchen, up to her elbows in suds. Winnie, a Church of England vicar, was married to Duncan Kincaid’s cousin Jack.
And Gemma was now married to Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid, a fact that still caused her a flutter of wonder when she reminded herself of it. Married. Really and truly. And three times, which Duncan still made a point of teasing her about. She touched her ring, liking the physical reminder.
They’d begun as professional partners, Gemma a detective sergeant assigned to Duncan’s Scotland Yard Major Crimes team. When their relationship had become personal—much against Gemma’s better judgment in those early days—Gemma had applied for detective inspector. Her promotion had been a mixed blessing. It had ended their working partnership, but it had allowed them to make their personal relationship public.
Still, Gemma had harbored deep reservations about commitment. They had both failed at first marriages; they both had sons who had been subjected to enough change and loss. And she had resisted, sometimes obstinately, what she saw as a loss of autonomy.
But Duncan had been patient, and with time Gemma had come to see that what they had was worth preserving at any risk.
So, at last, on a lovely day the past August, they’d had an informal blessing of their partnership in the garden of their home in London�
��s Notting Hill. A few weeks later, they’d made it legal in the Chelsea register office.
And now, in late October, with the older children on half-term break from school, Winnie and Jack had invited Duncan and Gemma and their respective families to Compton Grenville so that Winnie could give their marriage the formal celebration she felt it deserved.
The ceremony in Winnie’s church on Saturday afternoon had been everything Gemma had wanted; simple, personal, and heartfelt, it had sealed their partnership in a way that was somehow different. Third time’s the charm, as Duncan kept telling her. And perhaps he was right, because now circumstances had brought another child into their lives, little not-quite-three-year-old Charlotte Malik.
Winnie turned from the mountain of breakfast dishes, the result of the gargantuan farewell breakfast she’d made for the weekend’s guests. “A horror film? What?” Winnie, having wiped suds on the end of her nose, looked comically quizzical.
The green and tomato-red vicarage kitchen was a comfortable, and comforting, place, and Winnie was a good friend who had seen Gemma through some difficult times.
On this Tuesday morning, with the visit almost over and everyone gone except Duncan’s parents, Gemma and Winnie had finally snagged a moment alone for a gossipy postmortem of the weekend. Gemma had offered to do the washing-up, but Winnie had insisted that Gemma enjoy a last few minutes with Winnie and Jack’s baby daughter.
Gemma settled little Constance more comfortably in her lap. “Well, maybe horror film is a bit steep,” she amended, smiling. But her amusement faded as she thought about the blot on an otherwise perfect weekend. “Sometimes,” she said, “my sister is just a bitch.”
Winnie stripped off her washing-up gloves and came to sit at the table beside her, reaching for Constance. “Here, don’t throttle the baby by proxy.”
“Sorry,” Gemma said sheepishly. She kissed Constance’s fuzzy head before handing her over. “It’s just that she’s infuriating. Cyn, I mean, not Constance.”
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