No Mark upon Her dk&gj-14

by Deborah Crombie

  Freddie took a startled step back. “Abbott. It’s Abbott. What of it?”

  Waving his hands in agitation, Doug turned to Kincaid. “That’s who Becca saw, that last day. Remember, at Charlotte’s party, I said I’d got her name from Sergeant Patterson? The old friend who came into the station—it was Chris Abbott.”

  Kincaid stared at him. A female police officer, a female police officer who knew Angus Craig—and hadn’t Freddie also told him, after he’d been to the mortuary, that his friend’s wife was a cop?

  Bloody hell. He’d been so focused on Angus Craig—and on proving Denis Childs wrong about Freddie—that he’d walked right over a bloody land mine and hadn’t seen it. He was the one who’d been blind and stupid.

  “Christ,” he said. “She—this Chris Abbott—has to have been one of the victims. But did Becca find out that day, or did she already know? Something happ—”

  “Victims?” Freddie broke in. “What the hell are you talking about? Victims of what?” He looked from Kincaid to Cullen, but it was Kincaid who answered.

  There was no longer any need to protect Freddie from Craig or vice versa. Freddie would have to know the truth and it might as well be now. “Look,” Kincaid said. “Why don’t we sit down.”

  “I’m tired of being told to sit,” Freddie retorted. He was less fragile today, edgy, rocking on the balls of his feet, and the look he gave them was challenging. “Say whatever it is you’ve got to say.”

  “Okay, then,” Kincaid agreed, although he was still reluctant. “A year ago, Becca reported a sexual assault. She didn’t identify her assailant. She did, however, tell her superior officer, Peter Gaskill, what had happened.

  “Deputy Assistant Commissioner Craig had offered her a lift home after a Met function in London. He asked to come in to use the toilet. He then assaulted her.

  “Afterwards, he threatened her. He told her he’d make sure she lost her job, and her credibility, if she told anyone what had happened.”

  Any doubts Kincaid might have harbored about Freddie’s knowledge disappeared in that moment.

  Shock made Freddie’s features sharp, as if the skin had fallen away from his bones.

  Then the rage flooded in, suffusing his face, and Kincaid remembered that this was a man who had been strong enough—and bloody-minded enough—to earn the oars mounted on the sitting room wall.

  As had his friend, Kincaid realized, with dawning horror. Becca’s killer had known how to drown a rower and had been strong enough to do it. Kieran’s attacker had rowed near enough to the boatshed to throw a bomb through the window, then disappeared, a feat that had required speed and accuracy in a boat. Had it—

  “I’ll kill him,” said Freddie. “That bastard Craig. She wouldn’t have stood for it, Becca wouldn’t. He killed her, didn’t he, to shut her up. And you—” He turned on Kincaid, his hands balled into fists. “You knew all along, didn’t you? You’ve been protecting him. You’re just as bad as—”

  “Freddie, shut up and listen to me.” Kincaid had to restrain himself from shaking him. “I haven’t been protecting Craig. I’ve been trying to find proof that he killed Becca and attacked Kieran Connolly, but I don’t think he did.

  “And now he’s dead. He killed himself, and his wife, last night.”

  “What?” Freddie stood, his hands still raised, looking like a boxer reeling from a knockout blow. “But why—what—”

  “We found out something else about Craig,” Kincaid said. “Something that had nothing to do with Becca. Something he knew he couldn’t cover up.”

  “Then—if it wasn’t Craig—who killed Becca?” Freddie’s handsome face contorted as he bit back a sob. “Why would someone else kill her?”

  Kincaid thought of the man Kieran had seen on the riverbank and of big, friendly Finn, suddenly frightened into a frenzy by the sight of a man in the street.

  And he went back to Freddie’s friend Ross Abbott, the rower, the Oxford Blue—a rower whose wife had known Becca and Angus Craig. But why, if Craig had raped Chris Abbott, would her husband kill Becca, not Craig? And why was Ross Abbott so frantic now to learn what Freddie knew about Craig?

  Kincaid shook his head. He didn’t have all the pieces, but he felt the violence building, the hair on the back of his neck rising in atavistic anticipation. This wasn’t over.

  And if Ross Abbott was their killer, he’d targeted Kieran once. After that afternoon’s encounter with Kieran and Finn, he would be even more certain that Kieran posed a threat.

  “Freddie,” he said. “Your friend Ross Abbott—where is he now?”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Winning at all costs is wrong, plain and simple. Certain basic, universal rules exist, and to be a true champion you must live by these rules. The consequences of doing otherwise might take a physical toll . . . or it might take a soul-killing psychological toll. Both consequences are devastating.

  —Brad Alan Lewis

  Wanted: Rowing Coach

  “She’s lying,” said Gemma as she and Melody got back into the Escort. They’d run to escape a pattering of rain, but now that they were protected the shower seemed to have stopped.

  “Yes, but about which part?” Melody responded. “How she left things with Becca? Or how she found out about Craig’s suicide?”

  “It’s certainly possible that she heard about Craig from someone at work.” That had been Abbott’s curt response to Gemma’s last question. Then she’d come close to shoving them out the door, and they’d had no recourse but to leave as gracefully as they could. “It’s been more than twelve hours since the first reports began to come in about Craig,” Gemma went on, making no move to start the car, “and you know rumors are flying like wildfire. So . . . that I might believe. But Abbott was prepared to be asked about Becca, and to me she seems close to panic. I think she’s involved in Becca Meredith’s death.”

  Had Chris Abbott been so convinced that the truth would ruin her career and her reputation that she’d been willing to kill to protect her past? Gemma wondered.

  “I suppose Becca could have told her about her training routine, but she’d still have needed time off work to watch Becca, to find a good ambush spot, and she’d have had to juggle the time away from her kids as well,” mused Melody. “But she was a rower, so she’d have known how to tip the boat and hold Becca under—”

  “Her kids,” said Gemma as realization hit her. “Christ. Melody, did you get the ages of her kids from her personnel file?”

  Frowning, Melody pulled the pages from her bag. It seemed they had not been strictly window dressing. She flipped through them, then stopped, her finger holding her place. “The older boy, Landon, is nine. The younger one, Logan, is four.”

  “Four?” Gemma’s stomach plummeted. “Shit.” She looked at her partner. “Four, Melody. He’s four. And we’re blinking idiots.”

  “Oh, God.” Melody’s eyes went wide. “The little one. He’s Craig’s baby, isn’t he? You don’t usually just happen to have protection when you’re being raped. But why didn’t she just abort—”

  “Maybe she doesn’t believe in it. Maybe she really wanted another child and she wasn’t sure whose he was—”

  “Or maybe she didn’t want to tell her husband what had happened—or at least not the whole truth,” put in Melody. “Maybe she stuck to the story in the police report, rather than admitting she’d gone up to Craig’s room. Even if her intentions were innocent, it was questionable behavior, especially if her husband’s jealous.”

  Gemma thought about the photos again, of the possessive drape of Ross Abbott’s arm across his wife’s shoulders. She didn’t think this was a man who would want to admit that his little son was another man’s child, no matter the circumstances of the boy’s conception. Or particularly in the circumstances of the child’s conception.

  “Whatever Ross Abbott might have known before,” she said, “after Becca’s visit on Saturday, he had the whole truth. And whatever Chris Abbott knew about Becca’s t
raining routine, she will have told—”

  A movement in the rearview mirror caught Gemma’s eye.

  Chris Abbott had come out of her house and was running towards the street, fumbling in her handbag. When she reached a white Mercedes SUV, she yanked keys from the bag and flung the car door open. When Abbott’s headlamps flashed on, Gemma realized how dark it had become.

  “Boss?” said Melody.

  “What’s she up to?” said Gemma. “Something’s happened.” She started the Escort, throwing it into gear as she watched Abbott in the mirror.

  “Boss—” said Melody again, but as Abbott pulled out and barreled down the street towards them, Gemma backed up, then jerked the Escort’s wheels hard and stepped on the pedal. The car shot into the street, barely missing the Lexus parked in front, and screeched to a stop directly in Abbott’s path.

  Abbott slammed the Mercedes to a halt, an inch from the Escort’s side panel. She was out of the Merc while it was still rocking from the sudden brake.

  “What the fuck do you thing you’re doing?” she shouted. “Move your damned car, you bloody—” Then she saw Gemma get out of the driver’s side and stopped dead. “You,” she said, but it came out a croak.

  “Where are you going, Chris?” asked Gemma. She reached Melody, who’d climbed out of the Escort’s passenger side, but she didn’t take her eyes off Abbott.

  “None of your business. I told you. Get out of my way.” Abbott’s mouth was pinched in a tight, white line.

  “I’m not going anywhere. And neither are you, unless you reverse out of here, and I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon.” Another car was coming down the lane behind Abbott, and Gemma suspected they’d have an irate motorist added to the mix any moment. “Get us backup,” she mouthed to Melody.

  Abbott looked over her shoulder, saw the oncoming car, then turned back to Gemma. “You move your car, or your job won’t be worth the paper your warrant card’s printed on.”

  “That’s not going to work with me,” said Gemma, keeping her voice level. “You’re a cop, Chris. Whatever you’ve done, you know the only thing that will help you now is to talk to us.”

  “Done?” Abbott shrieked at her. “I haven’t done anything. You don’t know what you’re talking about. And if you don’t let me out of here, God help us, you’re going to be the one regretting it. I won’t be responsible.”

  “Responsible for what, Chris?”

  “Backup’s coming,” whispered Melody, moving the phone cupped in her hand down to her side.

  “I don’t know.” Chris’s anger seemed to collapse, and her voice rose in a wail of despair. “But my gun’s gone.”

  “Your gun?” Gemma felt her own jolt of panic as she thought about Duncan. Where was he now? Why the hell hadn’t she called him and told him what she suspected?

  “Don’t look so surprised. I work bloody Vice, for God’s sake. You know people who know where to get things. After that bastard Craig, I said I’d never let anything like that happen to me again. You’d have done the same.”

  Gemma nodded. “Yeah, I would. Especially if I thought I might need to protect my kids.” She saw a little of the tightness leave Abbott’s body as she heard the sympathy in Gemma’s voice. It didn’t matter that Abbott would have used the same technique herself hundreds of times, her body had responded to Gemma’s tone with a will of its own.

  “Where’s your gun, Chris?” Gemma asked, as gently as if she were talking to an old friend. “Think about your kids. They need you, and that means you need to do the right thing now.”

  The car behind Abbott flashed its headlamps, then beeped its horn. Gemma cursed the driver under her breath. The last thing she needed right now was a confrontation.

  A bearded man leaned out the window. “Move your damned show, ladies,” he called. “This isn’t the freaking Globe.”

  A siren whooped faintly in the distance. Abbott looked back again, then forward, her head whipping round. There was no way out.

  Then suddenly, she sagged, her body curved in despair, fear etching lines like crevasses in her thin face.

  “I keep it on the top shelf of the bedroom cupboard, where the kids can’t reach it,” she said. “It’s gone. My gun’s gone. Ross has it.”

  “I’ve no idea where Ross went,” said Freddie. “I told you, he just took off.”

  “Does he live in Henley?” Kincaid asked, trying to master a sense of urgency so strong that his palms were beginning to sweat. He knew he had to keep Freddie calm, steer him away from the thought of what Craig had done to Becca, if he were going to get anything helpful from him. The large space of Freddie Atterton’s flat suddenly seemed breathlessly stuffy. The humidity must be rising.

  “No, he lives in Barnes.” Freddie sounded confused. “But he rows out of Henley Rowing Club. Why do you want to know?”

  “Why not row out of Leander?” asked Doug. “Especially as he was a Blue?”

  Freddie fidgeted and moved away from them for the first time, going to the far end of the dining table, where he pulled out a chair, but didn’t sit. “To tell the truth, some of the members don’t like him. He’s a bit of a braggart, Ross, and he tends to make too much of his connections and possessions. Not that he’s the only one, but you know the sort of thing. And to hear him tell it,” he added with a bitter little laugh and a glance at the Oxford oar, “you’d think we won the Boat Race. Anyway, his membership was . . . discouraged.”

  Kincaid raised an eyebrow. “But you’re still friends?”

  “We keep in touch. He keeps in touch, really. Although I hadn’t heard from him for some time before Becca . . .” Freddie swallowed. “I was surprised when he called, actually. I’d heard rumors that some of the investments he’d made for his firm had gone belly-up. But that day, when he took me to the mortuary, he said he was doing well. Brilliantly. I remember thinking it was just like Ross to be going on about his new car when—when—”

  Kincaid hurried to redirect him. “What else did he say to you that day?”

  “That Chris had heard about Becca at work. That he and Chris were . . . sorry. But—” Pressing his knuckles to his lip, Freddie gazed somewhere between Kincaid and Doug, his eyes unfocused. “But—but then, when we were having drinks, he kept asking me what the police knew about Becca’s death. And he made me realize I might be a suspect. It hadn’t even occurred to me until then that someone could think I killed her.”

  Kincaid saw Doug’s quick glance and knew they were on the same page. Ross Abbott had been fishing, and in the process, he’d tried to frighten Freddie, perhaps in the hopes that he would do something that would make him appear guilty. It smacked of premeditation. And viciousness.

  “But why are you asking about Ross?” said Freddie. “And why did Kieran’s dog go off on him like that?”

  Why indeed? Kincaid thought. Could Finn have recognized Ross’s scent from the scene of Becca’s murder? Why the fear, though, unless he’d associated the scent with Kieran’s unease by the riverbank. But surely that wasn’t enough to—

  Realization struck. Fire was enough. Fire in the boatshed, the dog’s terror and the man’s. If Finn had recognized Ross Abbott’s scent from the attack on the boatshed, then he’d have had a bloody good reason to go bonkers.

  And by now Kieran would have realized that as well.

  Kincaid followed Freddie to the end of the dining table. There was something that still didn’t make sense to him. “You said you’d seen Kieran yesterday. Where?”

  Freddie looked reluctant. More than reluctant. Embarrassed. He stood with the chair back between them, as if he needed armor. “It wasn’t anything.”

  “Out with it, Freddie. It’s important. Where?”

  “I went to see the boatshed. I wanted to see where he lived. Where he and Becca— It was stupid.” He shook his head. “But while I was standing there staring at the place like a sodding idiot, Kieran showed up with the dogs. I could tell he thought I was a bit weird, but I explained I’d
come to thank him. I went across to the shed with him. We looked at the damage. We talked. And it was—okay.” Freddie sounded as if that still surprised him. “He seems like a good bloke. Bloody shame about the workshop, but maybe he can put it right. And”—he met Kincaid’s eyes at last—“I saw the boat, the boat he was building for Becca. It’s—” Description failed him.

  “Did you see Ross anywhere near Kieran’s shed?”

  “Ross? No. But this afternoon he rang me and said he wanted to meet at the Red Lion. And when I got there, he started asking about Craig.”

  “At the Red Lion—did you say anything to Ross about Kieran? About where he was staying?”

  “No.” Freddie sounded incensed. “I told you, Ross took off right after we saw Kieran. And besides, Kieran didn’t tell me where he was staying. But why would Ross care?”

  Kincaid didn’t answer. He was visualizing the town center in the fading light, Kieran struggling to control the dogs as he walked up Market Place towards Tavie’s. Had he looked back?

  And Ross—he’d have seen which direction Kieran took. When he left Freddie, he could have ducked into a doorway until he was sure Freddie wasn’t watching, then followed Kieran. Even if he’d been too far behind to see Kieran going into Tavie’s house, he’d have known the direction Kieran had taken. And he could have waited, hoping for another glimpse.

  Ross Abbott was good at waiting.

  Kincaid’s dread grew. Taking out his phone, he found Kieran’s number and dialed.

  Two rings, three, then a woman’s voice said a tentative hello.

  “Sorry,” Kincaid said. “I was trying to reach Kieran. Is this his—”

  “Superintendent? It’s Tavie. He left his phone in my kitchen.” She sounded perplexed. “I can’t imagine why he’d—”

  “Do you know where he went?”

  “He left a note on my chalkboard. Something about ‘going to the cottage.’ Did he mean . . . her cottage? Becca Meredith’s? Why would he do that now?” There was a hint of hurt in Tavie’s voice.

  “He didn’t say?”