The likely suspect? Kincaid felt as though he’d fallen into a Christie novel. “Really, sir?” He kept his tone at mild surprise. “That’s news to me. If, by the likely suspect, you mean Mr. Atterton, he is helping us with our inquiries. However, we have no solid evidence that he was involved in Rebecca Meredith’s death.”
Crossing his ankles, Kincaid did his best to keep his expression bland. A throb of anger had begun behind his temples. “But then I understand that you know Mr. Atterton. In fact, you had a breakfast appointment with him on Tuesday morning. It’s too bad you weren’t able to make it. I’m sure someone with your knowledge and experience could have provided Freddie Atterton with some much-needed support and advice when he discovered his ex-wife was missing.”
For just an instant, calculation was visible in Craig’s face, then he arranged his expression into one of slight disdain. “I’d met the man, yes, but I’d no idea at the time that he’d been married to DCI Meredith. Nor did I know that his investment schemes were just that—schemes.”
“So you did some checking on Freddie Atterton after you arranged to meet him at Leander?”
“Of course I did, Superintendent. I was a police officer for more than thirty years, in case you’d forgotten.”
Kincaid had certainly not forgotten. “And that’s why you didn’t show up on Tuesday morning?” He gave a little shrug of disapproval. “You might have rung to cancel.”
Craig stared at him as if he’d gone utterly daft. “Superintendent, are you criticizing my manners? Atterton is little better than a con man and hardly deserved the courtesy. If you must know, I was put out with myself for having been taken in, even briefly.” He put his large hands on the edge of his desk and pushed his chair back, a signal that the interview was over. “And you, I think, are supposed to be investigating a murder, not wasting my time.”
Kincaid, however, was not going to be dismissed. “I understand that you knew DCI Meredith rather better than you did her ex-husband.” The pulse in his temples increased to a sledgehammer-like pounding as his heart rate shot up.
He had just crossed his Rubicon, and there would be no going back.
“What are you talking about?” said Craig softly, all pretense of civility gone from his voice.
“I’m talking about the fact that DCI Meredith accused you of rape. And that Peter Gaskill, her superior officer, convinced her not to file charges against you. But her agreement was based on the fact that he promised her that measures would be taken against you within the force.”
The florid color had drained from Craig’s face. “How dare—”
“But that didn’t happen, did it?” Kincaid said, leaning forward, holding Craig’s gaze. “And Becca Meredith only learned the extent to which those promises had been broken a few weeks ago. I wonder what she threatened to do, and what you would have done to keep her quiet.”
Craig’s burly chest expanded as he took a breath. “That woman was certifiably mad. She’s lucky she wasn’t thrown out of the force for making accusations of that sort. Gaskill and I both showed her clemency she didn’t deserve.”
“Oh, but it’s not quite that simple, sir.” Kincaid used the title as a mockery. The room suddenly seemed very warm, and he had to fight the temptation to move away from the fire. “Because Rebecca Meredith knew the way things worked,” he said. “So before she went to Gaskill, she had a rape test done. She listed the assailant as unknown, but the DNA sample was kept as evidence. Gaskill knew that. You knew that. The question is whether or not Becca Meredith had decided to risk her career by using that evidence against you.”
“DNA samples mean nothing. I had sex with the woman, yes. But she was asking for it,” Craig said viciously, “and there was no way the bitch was ever going to prove otherwise.”
Kincaid supposed he should have felt vindicated by Craig’s admission, but the venom in the man’s voice made him feel sick. Were those the things Craig would have said about Gemma if he’d been successful in his attempt to assault her? And about other women, who had been guilty of no more than trust?
“Peter Gaskill did her a favor by convincing her not to tell the world what a slut she was,” Craig went on. He clasped his right hand round the large glass paperweight on his desk, his fingers clenching and unclenching. “She’d have ruined her career and sullied the reputation of the force.”
Kincaid couldn’t contain his sarcasm. “While yours would have remained unblemished?”
“You are impertinent, and I’ve had just about enough of this.” Craig’s color had come back in full strength. His face was almost purple with fury. The dog’s barking, which had been an ongoing counterpoint to their conversation, suddenly escalated, perhaps in response to the menace in its master’s tone.
Craig scowled and swore. “Bloody dog. I’m going to kill it one of these days.”
Then, turning his attention back to Kincaid, he said, “Now, Superintendent, I think you can see yourself out. But don’t think I won’t be reporting you to your superiors or that you won’t bear the consequences for this intrusion.”
Kincaid stood slowly. “You, sir, are not above rules, or the force of the law.” He wondered, God help him, if that were true, but there was no help for it now. “And just so we are clear, are you telling me you had nothing to do with the murder of Rebecca Meredith?”
“Of course I didn’t.” Craig’s disdain was scathing. “I’m warning you, Superintendent. Don’t make a bigger fool of yourself than you already have.”
“Then you won’t mind telling me where you were on Monday evening, sir,” Kincaid said, ignoring the threat. “Between, oh, let’s say four o’clock and six.”
He saw Craig bite back his first retort, saw the swift calculation again in the pale eyes, as if he were weighing what he had to lose by answering. Then Craig said, “I was here until five. After that, I had a drink in the pub. That’s my usual routine.”
“That would be the Stag and Huntsman?”
Craig gave him a curt nod. “That’s right.”
“And before that, is there anyone who can verify that you were at home?”
“My wife.” Craig bit off the words as if they were shards of glass.
“I’ll need to speak to her,” Kincaid said.
“She’s not at home. If she were, the damned dog wouldn’t be yapping.”
“Then I suppose I’ll have to come back. Thank you for your cooperation, sir.” Kincaid turned as if to go, then swung back. “Oh, one more thing, sir. Last night, about eight o’clock. Where were you?”
He saw the surprise in the widening of Craig’s eyes, in the minute relaxation of the muscles round his mouth.
Craig hadn’t been expecting the question, and Kincaid stood struck just as dumb, wondering if he had made a dreadful, irretrievable mistake.
“I was at a meeting in London,” said Craig, with a gleam of malice. “With people you would do well not to cross.”
Chapter Seventeen
“I mean, look at rowing. There are extremely compelling reasons to stop during a race, and in almost every race I can remember I’ve thought to myself ‘If only I could stop rowing I would never want anything again. I would rest forever. I don’t care what the consequences are of my stopping. Nothing can be as bad as this.’ ” [Jake Cornelius]
—Mark de Rond
The Last Amateurs
“I want a bow,” said Charlotte.
“And you shall have one, lovey,” Gemma told her. They were sitting on the floor in Betty Howard’s colorful, crowded flat, picking through Betty’s stock of wide grosgrain ribbon.
“Blue.” Charlotte’s delicate little face was set in determination. This was serious business. For Gemma, not quite realizing what she was getting herself into, had promised her an Alice in Wonderland–themed party for her birthday on Saturday.
Fortunately, Betty had offered to make her a dress—or more accurately, a costume. Charlotte, entranced with the John Tenniel illustrations in Kit’s old edition of Alice
, had spent hours pouring over the color plates in which Alice wore a yellow dress with a blue pinafore, and atop that, another starched white pinny.
Gemma had shown the book to Betty with some trepidation, but Betty had just laughed and said, “Sure I can make that, Gemma. Piece of cake for an old hand like me. You think I didn’t whip up things like that for my own girls?”
A seamstress since childhood, Betty had started in millinery at sixteen, then gone on to sew everything from clothes, to soft furnishings, to costumes for the Notting Hill Carnival. With her five girls grown and only her son, Gemma’s friend Wesley, still at home, she ran a thriving little business from her flat in Westbourne Park Road.
This afternoon Gemma had brought Charlotte for a final fitting. And a good thing it was the last, Gemma thought, because unless Charlotte was allowed to take the dress home, there was no way Gemma was getting her out of it without a tantrum. If Gemma had wished Charlotte would take more interest in girly things, she’d now been repaid in spades.
“What about this one?” Gemma asked, spying a piece of ribbon in a cornflower blue that exactly matched the blue pinafore. “Will that do, Betty?”
Betty eyed the length from her place at the sewing machine. “Should be long enough. Did you get a clip?”
Reaching for her handbag, Gemma pulled out the hairdresser’s clip she’d picked up at a chemist’s shop.
As Betty took the clip and the ribbon, she said to Charlotte, “You’ll have your Alice Bow in no time, little miss.”
Charlotte, who had picked up the book and was once more engrossed in studying the illustrations, looked up at Gemma. “I want yellow hair.”
“Well, that, lovey, is one thing you cannot have. And look.” Gemma took the book from her and turned to another of the Tenniel plates. “In this one, Alice has red hair, just like mine. So Alice can have hair any color she likes.”
Charlotte nodded in tentative agreement, but her brow was creased in a frown. “Not curly.”
“Why not curly?” Gemma twined a finger in the mop of Charlotte’s curls. “I’ll bet Alice wished she had hair like yours.”
“She did?”
“I’m sure she did.”
From the sewing machine, Betty grinned. “You don’t think Alice wished she had hair like mine?” Her kinky dark hair was going gray, and most days she tucked it up in a bright bandanna. Today she wore a scarf in the same yellow as Charlotte’s dress.
Charlotte giggled. “That’s silly.”
“Not to me, it isn’t,” said Betty with a smile. But when her eyes met Gemma’s, Gemma knew they were both thinking of the day when Charlotte might wish her skin was the same color as Alice’s.
Charlotte reached for Gemma’s bag and began to root inside. “I want a clip,” she said.
Gently, Gemma took the bag back. She had a surprise buried in its depths that she’d have to be more careful to keep from prying little hands and eyes.
A few weeks ago, she’d found an antique brown-glass pharmacy bottle in a stall at Portobello. She’d bought a fancy paper label for it, on which she had hand-lettered the legend DRINK ME. It was to be the centerpiece of the cake Wes was making for the party.
“There’s not another one,” she said. “You’ll have to wait for your bow. And you can’t wear that until Saturday, mind you. Don’t forget. Why don’t you go help Betty?” she added as a distraction.
Gemma watched Charlotte as she jumped up and padded over to the sewing machine in her stockinged feet. The idea of being separated from the child in just a few days’ time suddenly took her breath away. How was she going to bear it?
And yet, when she’d gone to the station that morning, she’d felt as if she were coming home. She’d realized how much she’d missed the camaraderie, the routine, and most of all, the intellectual challenge. Would there ever be any happy middle ground? she wondered.
Well, she would find out soon enough—if, that is, she got to start back at work on Monday. She’d had a word with Alia about doing a temporary child-minding stint—Plan B, in case Duncan got hung up in this case.
And it was looking increasingly tricky.
Especially after last night. His reaction when she’d told him about her encounter with Angus Craig worried her. Her husband—she was still trying that one on—was an even-tempered man, a man whose habit was to think things through before he acted. But the fact that he was slow to anger made the strength of it all the more powerful, and what she’d seen in his face last night had been cold fury.
She couldn’t downplay her experience with Craig—she was as certain as she’d ever been of anything that she’d been in real danger that night in Leyton. Nor could she have kept it from Kincaid. But now she was very much afraid that he was going to do something rash.
And with no part in the investigation, she felt helpless and frustrated at her lack of control.
Her hopes that she and Melody would come up with something useful that morning had come to naught, although Melody had said she’d keep looking through the files.
Gemma didn’t believe she’d been wrong about Craig’s pattern. But perhaps it had been overly optimistic to think that other female officers who’d been Craig’s victims might have reported the rape without naming the assailant.
“There you are, little missy,” said Betty. While Gemma had been musing, Betty had bunched the ribbon and stitched it into a bow on the machine, then handwhipped the bow to the clip. Now she fastened it in the cloud of Charlotte’s hair.
Charlotte, her face rapt, touched it with exploratory fingers, then ran to Gemma. “I wanna see.”
“Oh, my,” said Gemma, turning her in a twirl so that she could admire the full effect. “I’m not sure if you look more like Alice or a princess. Here, let’s have a look, shall we?” She was digging in her handbag for her compact mirror when she saw the message light flashing on her phone. How had she missed a call?
Her heart gave the little skip it always did when she was separated from the children or Duncan. But when she checked the message log, she saw that the call had been from Melody, and it had been followed by a text.
It said, “Urgent, boss. Must talk.”
Gemma looked up. “Betty, would you mind if Charlotte stayed for just a bit? Something’s come up.”
Kincaid pulled out of the Craigs’ gravel drive into the road that wound back through Hambleden. Dusk had settled over the rooftops, washing the hamlet in rose and gold. Lights were blinking on, making luminous pools of windows. Smoke spiraled up from chimneys.
It was such a cliché, Kincaid thought as he gazed at the village, trying to distance himself from the rage that was still causing his hands to shake. A place of perfection, with a monster dwelling at its heart.
Beauty and evil, nested one within the other.
Did the evil go unacknowledged in this place? he wondered. Or were others aware but powerless?
Reaching the Stag and Huntsman, he made a sudden swerve into the car park. He wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to find out. Besides, if he didn’t check Craig’s alibi now, before his guv’nor learned of his visit to Craig, he might not have another chance.
He found a space for the Astra and locked it. Then, after a moment’s consideration, he turned off his phone and walked into the pub. He might as well gain himself a little time.
The Stag and Huntsman, he saw immediately, was a welcoming establishment, old-fashioned by nature rather than design, the sort of place one would want to go of an evening for a regular drink before dinner.
It was still quiet, and the clientele looked local and at ease. He hoped that, for once, Angus Craig would forgo his evening tipple.
Making his way to the snug, he took a seat at the bar and ordered a pint of Loddon Hoppit. According to the chalkboard behind the bar, it was a local beer, and Kincaid found the name irresistible.
The beer, when the barman brought it, was a shimmering red-amber, and Kincaid could smell the hops before he tasted it.
“That’
s good ale,” he said to the barman, wiping the foam from his upper lip.
“Brewed just outside Reading,” said the barman. He was a lean man who didn’t look as if he overindulged in his own wares. “You’re not from around here, I take it?” he continued, knowing full well, Kincaid felt sure, that he was not.
Well, it would do as a conversation starter, and the tiny room was empty except for the two of them, a nice advantage. Kincaid decided to stick as close to the truth as possible.
“London.” He drank some more of the Loddon, reminding himself that he had to drive back to Henley, and that the beer was meant as window dressing. “Scotland Yard, actually,” he added, lowering his voice to a confidential tone. “I’m here about the rower who drowned the other day.”
He felt a stab of guilt at referring to Becca Meredith so impersonally. It now seemed to him as if he had known her, and her loss felt like the loss of a friend.
“Terrible thing, that.” The barman sounded genuinely sorry. “My mate’s wife is on the search and rescue team. They always take it hard. Can’t say I blame them.”
“No. Nor can I.” Kincaid thought of Kieran and Tavie, wondered how Kieran was coping.
“Well, it can’t be easy for you either, in your job. I guess you’ve been to the scene, down at the Mill?” There was a definite query at the end of the barman’s sentence. So the man did like a bit of a gossip—a quality that in Kincaid’s experience was necessary to a successful publican. “Hambleden is a bit off the beaten track.”
“I’ve been to see Assistant Commissioner Craig, to tell the truth,” Kincaid said. “A courtesy call. We are working on his home turf, after all.”
“Ah. I’m sure he appreciated that.”
It was a pleasant, noncommittal answer. But Kincaid had seen the telltale change of expression, the shifting of the bartender’s eyes away from his. This man knew Angus Craig for what he was.
“It was he who recommended you,” Kincaid went on. “The best beer, he said, and his local.” He took another sip of his pint. “Lucky man. He comes in most days, I take it?”
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