No Mark upon Her dk&gj-14

by Deborah Crombie

  MISPER. ADULT FEMALE ROWER. PLS AND LKP LEANDER. REPORT AVAILABILITY FOR SEARCH.

  Kieran’s translation was now as automatic as breathing. Missing person . . . Both the Place Last Seen and Last Known Position, Leander Club. He felt a jolt of adrenaline, and Finn, up now, whined and danced in anticipation. He recognized the sound of a text, and he loved working almost as much as he loved Kieran.

  “Right, boy,” said Kieran. “We’ve got a job.” And thank God the worst of the storm was over, and he was steady enough on his feet to report in. But he didn’t like the sound of this, not one bit.

  In the year and a half he’d been working with Thames Valley Search and Rescue, they’d conducted more searches involving the river than he could count. That came with their territory. But they’d never had a call out for a missing rower.

  Chapter Three

  Humans constantly shed small cornflake-shaped dead skin cells known as

  rafts

  , which are discarded at the rate of about 40,000 a minute. Each raft carries bacteria and vapor representing the unique, individual scent of the person. This is the scent sought by the trained dog.

  —American Rescue Dog Association

  Search and Rescue Dogs: Training the K-9 Hero

  Tavie had designated the Leander Club as the team call-out point. As well as being the last place the victim had been seen, it provided a centralized location for the search operations, including access to power and other necessary facilities for the team.

  When Kieran turned into Leander’s drive, he saw that the other team members had begun to assemble where the lane dead-ended at the meadow. Tavie’s shiny black Toyota 4×4, with the distinctive THAMES VALLEY SEARCH AND RESCUE logo emblazoned on its side, was pulled up close to the arched club entrance, flanked by two Thames Valley police cars.

  Tavie stood beside the truck, her cap of blond hair blazing like a beacon above her black uniform, waving a handheld radio for emphasis as she talked to the uniformed constables. Sharp, high yips came from the rear of the truck. Tosh, Tavie’s German shepherd bitch, was expressing her impatience.

  Kieran saw other team members’ sturdy vehicles parked near Tavie’s Toyota, and when he glanced in his rearview mirror, more were pulling in behind him. All held dog crates.

  He found a spot up against the car park fence, and as soon as he switched off his engine, Finn began to bark, answering the chorus from the other vehicles. “Steady on, boy,” Kieran told him. Time was of the essence in a missing persons search, but so was preparation. He had taken time to have a quick wash before changing into his uniform, and had fed Finn some dry food and himself a protein bar. It could be a long day and they would need all their energy.

  As he checked his gear one last time and climbed out of the truck, he saw a tall, slender man in a sports jacket come through the archway that led to the club entrance and approach Tavie, his gestures agitated.

  At first Kieran thought he might be the club’s manager, but as he drew nearer, he could see the distress in the man’s fine-boned face. This was obviously personal.

  When he reached the group, Tavie turned to him. “Kieran, this is Mr. Atterton. He’s reported his ex-wife missing. She took a boat out from the club yesterday evening and hasn’t returned.” Tavie’s voice was matter-of-fact, the tone she used to reassure relatives.

  Kieran studied Atterton, trying to pin down a nagging sense of familiarity. The man was probably in his mid-thirties, fit, with powerful shoulders that had been disguised from a distance by the elegant cut of his jacket. Where had he seen him? His uneasiness grew.

  Atterton turned to him. “Miss Larssen says you’re a rower.” His accent immediately pegged him as upper class, university educated. “So you’ll understand. I know it sounds mad, taking a shell out at dusk. But Becca wouldn’t have been careless. She’s too experienced.”

  Kieran’s heart squeezed tight in his chest, as if all the vague dread had crystallized instantly in one spot. “Becca?”

  “Rebecca. Rebecca Meredith. My wife—my ex-wife—kept her maiden name. That’s how she was known as a rower. And now she’s training again. For the Olympics.”

  “Becca,” Kieran said again, through lips suddenly gone numb. A hole had opened in the fabric of the universe, and he felt himself falling through it.

  “Kieran, are you all right?” Tavie had waited until they were on their own, and in position, before she asked.

  She’d deployed two teams on either side of the river, each team consisting of two handlers and two dogs, to cover the area between Henley and Hambleden Lock.

  Once she’d convinced Mr. Atterton that he would be more useful staying behind at the club in case his ex-wife rang or returned, she and Kieran had driven separately down Remenham Lane, then over the farm track that gave the closest access to the river path and their segment.

  They’d stopped at the last fence that lay between them and the Thames meadow. Beyond the meadow she could see the river, bisected by Temple Island, which looked absurdly manicured against the shaggy Buckinghamshire bank on the river’s far side. They would take the dogs through the gate into the meadow, boggy from the morning’s downpour, and start downriver on foot from there.

  Fortunately, the morning’s bad weather seemed to have discouraged the usual contingent of dog walkers, joggers, and pram pushers that used the Thames Path, and once the search had been instituted, the police had cordoned off the path between Henley and Hambleden on both sides of the river. This would reduce the number of confusing scents for the dogs.

  Opening Tosh’s crate, Tavie snapped on her lead. Tosh jumped down lightly and sat, half on Tavie’s foot, looking up at her in quivering anticipation. She was eager to go to work.

  Tavie glanced back at Kieran, who still hadn’t responded. He was pulling his gear out of the back of his old green Land Rover—pack, radio, water bottle, Finn’s lead, the squeaky ball that was Finn’s reward for a find—all automatic motions—and he didn’t look at her.

  “Kieran, are you sure you’re up to this? I can do this on my own if the storm—”

  “I’m fine,” he said, still not meeting her eyes, but something in his voice made Finn stop whining to get out of his crate. The dog gazed at his master, his lip wrinkled in a puzzled expression Tavie would have found comical if she hadn’t been worried.

  She knew that Kieran had bad days, and that he was uncomfortable with storms. He’d never said much about his past, and as for the present, she knew only that he fixed boats in the little shed on the island above Henley Bridge, and that he rowed.

  But in spite of his reticence, they’d become friends. A chance meeting in the park had led her to offer him help in training Finn, then to her suggesting that Kieran join the SAR team. At first he’d resisted the idea, but as Finn grew, Kieran began to admit that the dog needed a job. Tavie never said she thought that it was Kieran who really needed a reason to get up in the morning, but as he began to ask her to recount the details of searches and finds, she saw a spark come back into his eyes.

  Before his first training session with the group, however, she’d stopped, moved by some impulse to protect him. “Kieran, you know a good many of our finds are deceased. Will that be a problem for you?”

  He’d given her a crooked smile. “Not as long as they’re strangers.”

  His answer came back to her now. She touched his arm. “Kieran, I have to ask. You turned white as a ghost when you heard this woman’s name. She’s a rower, you’re a rower, and I think it’s a pretty small world here in Henley. Do you know her?”

  Melody Talbot gazed at the bow-fronted, terraced house, furrowing her brow. “It’s, um—it’s very—suburban.” Then, seeing her companion’s crestfallen expression, she amended. “It’s nice, Doug, really it is. It’s just not exactly single-guy territory, Putney, is it?” She gave him a calculating glance. “Unless you have plans you’re not sharing, mate?”

  Doug Cullen flushed to the roots of his fair hair. “No. It’s just—I
wanted something as different as possible from the Euston flat. It’s an easy commute to the Yard. I wanted to be near the river and the rowing clubs. And it was a good deal.” He surveyed the house with obvious pride. “Just needs a bit of fixing up, is all.”

  Gazing at the peeling paint on the window frames and the door, and the damp stains in the plaster, Melody suspected that might be an understatement. “You’ve actually bought it, then?”

  “Signed the last papers an hour ago.” Doug fished a set of keys from his pocket and held them up like a trophy.

  Melody had been surprised when he’d rung her at Notting Hill Station that morning, asking her if she could meet him in Putney for lunch. She knew he’d been flat hunting. And Gemma had told her that Duncan intended to take a few days’ holiday before starting his official family leave, so she’d supposed that Doug, as Duncan’s sergeant, might be at a bit of a loose end. She hadn’t expected to be told that he’d taken the plunge into homeownership.

  “You’re full of surprises today. I never thought of you as the DIY type.” She’d never thought of Doug as the athletic type either, although he’d told her one of the reasons he’d settled on Putney was because he wanted to take up the rowing he hadn’t done since school. When she’d driven across Putney Bridge, she’d seen a lone sculler working his way upriver, and hadn’t been able to picture Doug huffing and puffing in sweaty rowing gear. She’d never seen him exert more effort than it took to attack a keyboard.

  “I can paint as well as the next bloke,” he said, sounding a little insulted. “And as for the rest, there are loads of books, and the Internet . . .”

  Melody had no doubt that Doug could find out how to fix things—his research skills rivaled her own—but she’d no idea if he had the manual aptitude. Reading about pipe wrenches and actually using one were entirely different propositions, at least in her limited experience. She wasn’t exactly the DIY type either.

  “I want to see you in your workman’s overall.” She grinned and hooked her arm through his, earning a startled glance. “Come on, then. Show me the goods.” A snake of wind eddied down the quiet residential road, swirling the brown leaves in the gutters and lifting the hair on Melody’s neck. Although the terraced houses blocked any view of the river to the north, they were near enough that she imagined she could smell its dank, earthy scent.

  Releasing Doug’s arm so that she could turn up her coat collar, she could have sworn she saw a fleeting look of relief cross his face.

  She chided herself for teasing him. She suspected he wasn’t comfortable with physical contact, and she was not usually demonstrative herself. But there was something that seemed to goad her into pushing his boundaries.

  They’d developed an odd sort of friendship in these last few months, and friendship in general was something that it seemed neither of them was very good at. She wondered, in fact, if he hadn’t been able to think of anyone else with whom he could share his new acquisition.

  Melody had always been guarded in her relationships. When she was younger, she’d never been sure if people liked her for herself or were just sucking up to her because of her father. Then, after she’d joined the police, she hadn’t wanted to let anyone get close because she’d been afraid of being rejected because of her dad.

  But Gemma had learned the truth, as had Doug Cullen, and then Melody had gone to Duncan. Although she didn’t work directly with Duncan, their friendship had made her feel that he was the senior officer to whom she most owed the truth.

  When Duncan had heard her story, he’d given her an assessing look before nodding once. “Your family is no one else’s business,” he’d said, “as long as you don’t make it so.” That had been that. The revelation had given Melody, for what seemed like the first time, the opportunity to be herself. And it had changed her relationship with Doug Cullen in some indefinable way.

  “It’s two up and three down, basically,” said Doug, leading the way up the steps to the front door. “But there’s a garden.”

  The door, in spite of its dilapidated frame, had some nice Victorian stained glass in pale greens and golds. When they stepped inside and Doug closed the door behind them, the watery sun came through the panes, making Melody think of the light in a spring wood. The original black-and-white-tiled floor was intact, and a staircase led up to what Melody assumed were the bedrooms.

  Doug motioned her forward with a little theatrical bow, the light from the stained glass glinting off his glasses and giving his blond hair a greenish tint. “My humble abode.”

  To the left behind the stairs, Melody saw a cupboard, and tucked next to that, a small toilet. Beyond that a door led into a tiny galley kitchen.

  But on the right-hand side of the hall, two adjacent doors opened into the two rooms that ran the length of that side of the house. When she walked into the front room, she saw that the wall between the two rooms had been partially removed, letting light flood straight through the house, and in the rear, French doors opened onto the garden.

  “Oh,” she said, on a breath of involuntary surprise. “It’s lovely. Small, but lovely.”

  Doug nodded, flushing again with obvious pleasure at her response. “There’s a full bath upstairs, and I’ll use one room for the bedroom and another for an office. The kitchen needs new cupboards and worktops. And in here”—he waved a proprietary hand at the living areas—“a new carpet, and a bit of paint, of course.”

  “Not going to stick with magnolia, then?” Melody asked, teasing. The walls were the color of curdled cream, with lighter patches where pictures had hung. Both sitting and dining room had fireplace surrounds that looked original, but the interiors had been boarded over.

  Doug shuddered. “No. And definitely not gray. I’ve had enough gray to last a lifetime.”

  “You could use the colors in the stained glass,” Melody said, considering. “With this light, it would be lovely. And you’ll have to put in some gas fires.” Melody walked to the back door and looked out. Steps led down to an oval of broken paving stones. Beyond that was a weedy patch of lawn surrounded on three sides by neglected beds.

  Melody, who could live anywhere she chose if she accepted more of her father’s help, felt a stir of envy. Not that there was anything wrong with her mansion flat in Notting Hill, except that it felt nothing like a home. It was also on the top floor of her building, its only access to the outdoors a tiny balcony. And lately she had developed an unexpected urge to get her hands in the dirt, to smell growing things.

  “I could help with the garden, if you like,” she offered, a bit hesitantly, turning back to him. “In the spring.”

  “Have you ever in your life worked in a garden?” There was a hint of mockery in Doug’s voice.

  “I suspect I know more about gardening than you do about painting and plumbing,” she said, equably enough. “I used to follow my grandparents’ gardener in Bucks around like a shadow. How hard can it be, compost and bulbs and things?” She studied him. “What about you? You grew up in St. Alban’s, didn’t you? Suburban mecca. Surely you must have had a garden.”

  He shrugged. “I was at school except for hols from the time I was eight. My dad mowed the lawn with a rotary mower. It was his Sunday relaxation and he wasn’t inclined to share.”

  Melody knew that Doug was also an only child, and that his father was a barrister from a well-off family that had put Doug down for Eton before he was born. But although Melody’s father could be autocratic, stubborn, and infuriating, he and her mother had always been generous with their time and attention.

  She had a sudden vision of Doug as a lonely and awkward boy, with a father who couldn’t bring himself to give his little son the pleasure of learning to push a lawn mower.

  Not wanting him to see compassion in her expression, she studied the fireplace surround, wiping dust from the mantel with a fingertip. “You’ll have to give a dinner party, once you’re settled,” she said.

  “No table. And probably not much else for a while. The only
things I’m bringing from the Euston flat are the bed and my audio stuff.”

  Several comments sprang to Melody’s mind, but none of them seemed appropriate, and all made her feel the color start to rise in her face. God forbid she should start blushing as badly as Doug. “Fresh start?” she asked, instead, keeping her gaze averted.

  “Totally. Only thing is, I’ve no idea where to begin.” He gazed round the room, looking a little lost, as if just now contemplating the enormity of the undertaking. Then he shoved his wire-framed glasses up on his nose and glared at her, as if daring her to contradict him. “I’ve been told I’ve no sense of style.”

  “Hmm.” Taking in his off-the-rack suit and uninspired tie, Melody thought she might be inclined to agree, but she wasn’t about to say so. There was obviously history here. “Well, what do you like?”

  “That’s the trouble.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. I hate my flat. It’s bare and depressing. And I hate my parents’ house. Dark, stuffy, and full of my mum’s knickknacks. Nothing was ever meant to be touched.”

  “There should be a happy medium somewhere.” Melody turned slowly in a circle as she considered the rooms. She wondered what she would choose for herself if she wiped the slate bare of the hand-me-downs from her mum, the things that just “didn’t suit anymore” in her parents’ Kensington town house. “I’d start by finding some things you like and not worrying about whether they go together,” she said. “There’s a great auction room in Chelsea, near the power station in Lot’s Road. You could have a look, see what tickles your fancy.”

  Good God, had she really said tickles your fancy? What was wrong with her today?

  But Doug seemed oblivious to any innuendo. He nodded and said, as if it were a novel idea, “I suppose I could.”

  “It’ll come right. You’ll see.” Melody felt suddenly claustrophobic, even in the empty rooms. “I think you’ve done brilliantly, Doug. I love the house. But I’d better be getting back to Notting Hill.”

  “I promised you lunch,” he said.