No Mark upon Her

by Deborah Crombie

  “One of the searchers is a rower. He recognized her. But we will need you to make a formal identification, when you feel up to it. Unless there’s someone else—”

  “No, no. Becca’s parents are divorced and she isn’t—she wasn’t—close to either. Her mother’s in South Africa and Becca hadn’t had contact with her dad for years. Oh, God, I’ll have to tell her mum.”

  Cullen came back from the kitchen bearing a glass and a bottle of whisky. “I’ve put the kettle on, but in the meantime . . .” As he uncorked the bottle and poured a neat finger for Atterton, Kincaid saw that it was fifteen-year-old Balvenie. Rebecca Meredith had had good taste in scotch, it seemed, but the bottle had hardly been touched.

  Atterton bumped the glass against his teeth as he took a swallow. “It’s my scotch,” he said, and started to laugh. “Becca hated scotch. She kept it for me. How appropriate. She’d have thought this was too bloody funny for words.”

  Then his face contorted and he gave a gulp of a sob. The glass slipped from his fingers, bouncing soundlessly on the carpet, and the smell of whisky rose in the air like a wave of sorrow.

  “Bastard,” said Tavie.

  The German shepherd cocked her head and raised a dark inquiring eyebrow.

  “Not you, Tosh.” Tavie stopped pacing the confines of her small sitting room and looked down at her dog, smiling in spite of herself. She knelt and rubbed Tosh’s head. “And not your doggie buddy either. He was a good boy.”

  Encouraged by her tone, Tosh got up from her spot before the fire and ran to her toy basket. Pushing her nose into the jumble of toys, she came up with a squeaky tennis ball and pranced back to Tavie with the ball in her mouth, looking inordinately pleased with herself.

  “Okay, just the once,” said Tavie, making an effort to sound firm. She tossed the ball into the kitchen and Tosh scrambled after it. Shrill squeaks signaled a successful retrieval. But the dog seemed to sense her mistress’s mood because when she returned with the ball, she went back to her place by the fire, squeaking her treasure but not begging for another throw.

  But the play session reminded Tavie that she’d had to reward Finn that afternoon, after they’d made the find, taking his ball from Kieran’s pocket and giving the Lab a good romp and much praise. The first and foremost rule of search and rescue was that the handler must reward the dog after a find, and show just as much enthusiasm for a deceased find as a live one. The dogs must feel they had done their jobs well, no matter the outcome.

  But Kieran . . . Kieran had stood, white and speechless, as she radioed Control.

  Kieran had not looked after his own dog.

  And Kieran had lied. Kieran had known the victim, and he hadn’t admitted it to her.

  “Bastard,” she said again, but she knew it was just as much her fault as his. She’d thought he was ready for anything a search might bring. She’d thought, in her self-satisfied righteousness, that by training Kieran and bringing him into the team she’d given him purpose, and a cure-all for whatever demons drove him. Worst of all, she’d thought she knew him. And that she could trust him.

  But she could see now that he’d lied to her from the call-out, or at least from the briefing at Leander when he’d learned the victim’s name.

  Making another circuit round the room, she glanced at the reports stacked and carefully restacked on her small dining table. She’d debriefed the team and written up the log. There was nothing more she could do tonight, and she was on early rota at work tomorrow. She should heat up the single portion of vegetable curry she’d bought from Cook, the shop near the police station, and have an early night.

  She had every reason to stay in. It was turning cold, and the sitting room in her higgledy-piggledy house near the fire station was as welcoming as she could make it. She’d bought the little two-up, two-down terraced house after the divorce. It might have been a comedown from the suburban life she’d led with Beatty, but it was what she’d been able to afford, and it had given her a fresh start. Then, when she’d been assigned to the fast-response car out of Henley Fire Station, which meant she only had to walk across the street to work, she’d begun to think that the house was a charm, and that the rest of her life would fall just as neatly into place.

  Looking round the cozy room, with its hand-painted furniture and crewel-worked rugs, the windows curtained in cheery red and white, the mantel and picture rail adorned with carefully placed treasures, she thought of the woman whose house she had searched that day. A woman who, like her, had dealt with trauma on a daily basis. But Rebecca Meredith seemed to have felt no need to insulate herself from the stress of her job by making her home a place of solace.

  Rebecca Meredith must have found that solace—if she had found it at all—on the river. Or through something else, Tavie thought. Not food, not alcohol, if she’d been a serious rower. Sex, then?

  But that thought made Tavie’s face feel hot. The one thing she’d left out of her report was the dogs’ response to the panties she’d chosen as a scent article. And Kieran hadn’t given her a chance to talk to him about it.

  It had been fully dark by the time they’d returned to their cars after looking at Rebecca Meredith’s boat. While Tavie had been speaking to the Scotland Yard detective, Kieran had cadged a ride with Scott and disappeared, leaving Tavie to ask Sarah for a lift back to her own car below Remenham. When she got there, Kieran’s old Land Rover had been gone, and he hadn’t appeared for the team debriefing in the Leander Club car park.

  Although Tavie hadn’t wanted to field questions from curious club members or from the ex-husband, if he was still around, she’d drawn the meeting out, hoping that Kieran might turn up. While the other team members laughed and chatted, stowed gear, and played with the dogs, she’d waited, until at last she stood alone in the car park, feeling idiotic.

  She’d rung him then, and again when she got home. After the third try, she stopped leaving messages.

  “Damn him,” she said now, but her anger was becoming steadily more tinged with worry.

  The house suddenly felt stuffy rather than comforting. She took one more turn round the room, then bent and switched off the fire. Tosh sat up, the ball still in her mouth, a bit of dribble hanging from her lower lip. As soon as Tavie turned in the direction of the coat hook, the dog was on her feet, dancing in anticipation and making Tavie trip.

  “Okay, okay,” Tavie told her as she reached for her jacket. “You can come. We’ll go for a little walk.”

  And if that little walk just happened to take them to Mill Meadows, she’d have her chat with Kieran if she had to shout at him across the Thames.

  Chapter Seven

  Henley is a picturesque malting town and former port that straddles the Thames about 35 miles from London . . . The modern sport of rowing was born on the mile-and-a-half stretch of Henley Reach when the first Oxford vs. Cambridge Boat Race took place in 1829, which then begot Henley Regatta in 1839, which became Henley Royal Regatta after His Royal Highness Prince Albert (later HRH the Prince Consort) patronized it in 1851.

  —Rory Ross with Tim Foster

  Four Men in a Boat: The Inside Story of the Sydney Coxless Four

  Milo had turned up just as he’d promised, and in Kincaid’s view it seemed a timely intervention. Milo moved awkwardly to clasp Freddie’s hand, but Freddie seemed too shocked to respond.

  “I’m sorry, Freddie. Really sorry,” Milo said. “I still can’t believe it. If only I’d—” He caught Kincaid’s glance and stopped.

  “What am I going to do?” Freddie looked up, but his gaze was unfocused. Kincaid wasn’t sure he had heard Milo at all.

  Cullen had brought a tea towel to mop up the spilled whisky, and then mugs of tea, but he’d been very careful to set Freddie’s cup on the side table rather than handing it to him. The smell of the spilled whisky still lingered, but Milo didn’t comment on it.

  “I’ll do anything I can to help, Freddie,” Milo went on. “You know that. So will everyone at the club. What sor
t of arrangements will you be making?”

  “I— Oh, God, I hadn’t thought.” Freddie looked ill. “Becca hated funerals. She said once after a particularly awful one that she wanted to be cremated with as little fuss as possible. But”—he stopped and looked at Kincaid—“you’ll be needing to keep her . . .” His face twisted. “Body.”

  “There will be an inquest in a few days,” Kincaid said. “You’ll have to wait to make any funeral arrangements until after the coroner’s ruling. It’s rout—”

  Milo broke in. “But surely—there’s no question about what happened. Becca’s death was an accident.”

  Instead of answering, Kincaid turned to Freddie. “Do you know anyone who might have wanted to harm your ex-wife, Mr. Atterton?”

  “Hurt Becca?” Freddie stared at him. “Why would anyone want to hurt her? She may have been hard to get on with sometimes, but to think someone would deliberately— That’s daft.”

  Kincaid glanced round the cottage. The décor might be spare, but it was expensive, and the cottage itself must be worth a pretty penny. “Let’s look at it another way, Mr. Atterton. Who stands to gain from your wife’s death?”

  Freddie Atterton appeared utterly baffled. “Gain?”

  “Did she have a will?”

  “When we were married, yes. I’ve no idea if she changed it.”

  “And if she didn’t?”

  “Then—” Freddie pushed his hair back with a shaking hand. “Then I suppose everything comes to me.”

  Tavie walked down the steps from her front door into West Street. Tosh, looking most undignified for a German shepherd, bunny-hopped down the stairs beside her. The fire training tower across the street loomed in the darkness, a hulking shape, but she and Tosh had both climbed it many times in SAR training and it held no fears for either of them.

  The dampness that had risen from the river at dusk had dissipated, leaving the air chilly and crisp. She could see stars overhead, and somewhere a fire was burning.

  Tavie loved autumn, and as she walked down into Market Place, Tosh trotting easily at her knee, she realized how much she loved this simple thing. When they were working, she and the German shepherd were connected, but they were joined by an invisible line of tension, as if Tosh were the head of an arrow and Tavie the stabilizing end of the shaft.

  But when they walked for pleasure, as they did now, swinging along side by side, there was a synchronicity between them quite unlike anything Tavie had ever experienced.

  She felt herself begin to relax as she took her rhythm from the dog, and her mood began to lift.

  Leaving the market square, they crossed Duke Street, and she thought perhaps they would go only as far as the river, after all. Maybe she had overreacted about Kieran, and should wait and talk to him tomorrow.

  Then, up ahead, she saw a dog tethered to a potted tree outside Magoos, the bar where everyone in Henley seemed to eventually meet and mingle. A black Lab. A black Lab that turned from his vigilant watch over the bar’s doorway and began to wag happily when he saw them. Finn.

  Tosh strained at her lead and Tavie checked her, the ease of a moment before shattered.

  “Hello, boy. What are you doing here?” she said as she reached Finn. Kneeling, she let him give her a slobbery Labrador kiss while she rubbed his ears. What the hell was Kieran thinking, leaving him outside a bar? Tethering a trained dog outside a shop for a moment or two was one thing, but this—Finn was a valuable dog. Anyone could have walked off with him.

  Anyone could have done what she was doing right now, she thought as she unlooped Kieran’s tidy knot. When she’d freed the dog, she tried to peer in the windows of the bar, but the half-shutters blocked her view.

  And what the hell was Kieran doing in Magoos? she asked herself. She’d never seen him drink more than a pint, and that was when he’d been more or less coerced by the team. She’d certainly never seen him in a bar on his own.

  His lead untied, Finn jerked her into motion, pulling towards the door of the bar and whining. Tavie hesitated a moment, then tightened her hold on both dogs and charged through the door. Tuesday nights were fairly quiet—no live music, no pub quiz, no DJ—but there was still a good crowd in the long, narrow bar.

  Heads turned, and the noise level dropped a fraction. Mike, the bartender, looked up from the glass he was wiping. “Tavie.” His quick smile faded. “Hey, you can’t bring the dogs—” But Tavie was already shaking her head.

  “I’m not staying.” She’d seen Kieran, alone at a table against the wall. Before him sat an almost empty glass and a large bottle of Strongbow cider. Finn had seen him, too, and strained at his lead, giving a little yelp of excitement.

  Tavie stopped, reining in the dogs, before she reached the table. “Kieran.”

  He looked up, his long face made suddenly younger by his expression of surprise. But the surprise turned quickly to dismay, then fear. As he started to rise, he bumped the table, sloshing the cider in the glass. “What— Tavie— What are you doing with Finn? Is he all—”

  “Outside. Now.” Tavie turned and started back towards the door, Tosh at her knee. Finn whimpered in frustration and pulled the other way. But Tavie was strong for her size, and she had handled big dogs since her childhood in Yorkshire. Finn came with her.

  The buffet of chilly air as she stepped outside did nothing to calm her. She spun to face Kieran as he stumbled out a moment later, but she didn’t release his dog. “You,” she spat at him. “You don’t deserve this dog. Leaving him in the street. What the hell were you doing, Kieran?”

  “I—I was only going to be five minutes. I didn’t think it would hurt—”

  “Like you didn’t think it would hurt when you lied to me about knowing that woman today?”

  Her anger seemed to sober him. “Tavie, please.” He reached out, slowly, for Finn’s lead, and this time she released it. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d stand me down. And I had to know. I had to know if she was all right—if I could—”

  “You compromised my search.” Tavie realized that passersby were giving them a wide berth and made an effort to lower her voice. “And my chain of evidence,” she hissed at him. “Those panties— It was you the dogs were alerting on. You—you were . . .” She couldn’t go on. If it was Kieran’s scent the dogs had picked up on the victim’s underclothes, it could only be because he had touched them, and why would he have done that unless he had slept with her? Her mind skittered away from the picture. She felt sick.

  Why had she imagined that he led a celibate life, living alone in his shed, working on his boats, healing, waiting for—God, had she actually thought he was waiting for her? And all the while, he’d been . . .

  She had been a fool.

  “Don’t report for call-out, Kieran,” she said, and even though she knew she’d said enough, she couldn’t stop herself from going on. “You’ve done enough damage as it is. I’ll have to think what to do about my report.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” He shook his head, his shoulders slumping. “Nothing matters. I can’t keep anyone safe.”

  They had ushered Freddie and Milo out of Rebecca Meredith’s cottage, leaving the constable on duty until a forensics team could go over the house in the morning.

  Once back in Henley, Kincaid had dropped Cullen—who had come straight from Putney without so much as a toothbrush—at the Boots on Bell Street while he hunted for the designated hotel parking and then retrieved his overnight bag from the Astra. He’d driven by the hotel while searching for the parking area, so found his way back easily enough on foot to the rambling old inn between the river and the church.

  The Red Lion Hotel stood just opposite Leander Club on the town side of the Thames. The two buildings made Kincaid think of sentinels on either side of Henley Bridge, but of the two, the redbrick, wisteria-covered hotel had claims to historical authenticity. Gazing up at it, however, Kincaid thought he preferred the Leander pink hippo to the garish red lion displayed ove
r the hotel’s portico.

  He’d been tempted to go home—it was less than an hour’s drive once the traffic had settled. But when he’d rung Gemma from the car, she’d told him that Melody was there, that they were having a girls’ night, and that she could manage perfectly well without him. “I’ve coped with three children on my own since I’ve been off work,” she’d said with a little asperity. “I think I can handle them one more night. You do what you must to get this business wrapped up.”

  Gemma was right, of course. The earlier he got on with things the next morning, the sooner he could get back to London.

  He’d need to get in touch with Becca Meredith’s solicitor first thing, and he wanted to have another word with Freddie Atterton, and with the staff and crew at Leander. Perhaps by that time, he’d have heard something from the forensics crews at the boat and the cottage, and from Rashid.

  At the thought of the morning’s interviews, he glanced down at his bag. He had clean jeans, a wool sweater, and a pair of shoes to replace his mud-stained trainers, but this was not exactly professional attire, especially if he had to deal with the press. Doug at least had been wearing a suit.

  Then he realized that he did have a suit—he’d got married in it on Saturday. Again.

  Cullen, arriving just then with a bulging Boots carrier bag in hand, said, “What’s so funny?”

  Kincaid grinned. “Nothing.” He gazed up at the hotel. “I was just thinking that the wisteria would be glorious in the spring. It must be ancient.”

  Cullen looked at him quizzically. “I don’t know about that. I’m not very good with plants. But the inn dates back to the sixteenth century, and the first recorded guest of note was Charles I.”

  “Not an auspicious omen,” Kincaid said. “Let’s hope we don’t end up with our heads on the block. And that the food and the beds have improved over the last five hundred or so years. I’m starving.” It was after seven, and food was beginning to seem a distant memory.