Kincaid gave the dog a last pat, then stared past Gemma, his eyes unfocused. “Unless—unless she had more ammunition or new ammunition. Unless she’d found some way to prove that what happened to her wasn’t consensual. Or—look at the timeline . . .” He ran his hand through his hair, his habit when he was thinking, making the ends stand up like hedgehog bristles.
“If you were a target four years ago, and Meredith was raped a year ago,” he went on, “what was Craig doing in the years in between? And even in the years before that?” Kincaid looked at her, his gaze sharp now. “If this is his pattern, I’d stake my life he’s a repeater. You and Becca Meredith can’t have been his only targets.” He leaned across the table and gripped her fingers so hard she winced. “What would you have done, Gem?”
She thought it out, as repugnant as it was. “I wouldn’t have had anyone to turn to, no one I at least thought I could trust, the way Becca did Peter Gaskill. And I’d have known, like Becca, that it would end my career if I went public, no matter the outcome. But I’d have wanted—something—something that might one day give me the power to—to damage him.”
She thought of other women, police officers with husbands or children, with careers they’d worked hard to achieve, or just paychecks that put much-needed food on the table. “What if some of the others—and I think you’re right, we have to assume there are others—what if they filed rape reports, but listed the assailant as unknown? Then there would be a record, and DNA on file, if there was ever a chance to use it against him.”
And if any of the women had done so, had they lived in silence afterwards, for months? Years? Would the lie have corroded the very fabric of their lives?
Inspiration struck Gemma. “I could ask Melody,” she said. “She’s working with Project Sapphire. We could check the files. Unsolved cases. There would be a profile, and more than just his targeting of female police officers.” Gemma shifted restlessly in her chair as she thought it through. “If a woman lied about something like that, she’d put as much truth in the report as possible. It’s human nature, the easiest way. So there would be similarities in the reports, if you knew what you were looking for.”
Kincaid nodded. “You might turn up something. Would Melody be willing to keep this confidential? This is one occasion when I’d just as soon we went outside channels.” His expression told her that his disagreement with Denis Childs was not going to be easily dismissed.
“But we’re making one really big assumption here,” he went on, “which is that Craig only targets police officers. If he operates outside the box, we’re talking needle in a haystack.”
“Oh, God.” Gemma thought of other women, more lives tainted, ruined. Then she shook her head. “No. I don’t think so. He has to have leverage. It’s the job that gives him that. And he’ll look for it.”
She closed her eyes, trying to recall the details of that evening in the pub, four long years ago. Her mates had been teasing her about being newly and officially single. Craig could easily have overheard. And by asking a few innocent questions, he could have learned that she’d just been promoted and was ambitious about her job. But apparently no one had mentioned Toby.
Something occurred to her. “He was playing a bit close to home, wasn’t he, with Becca Meredith? And I don’t mean just geographically. She was a DCI and less likely to be intimidated by his threats. I was only a lowly sergeant when he meant to try it with me, and just barely that. Maybe, with Becca, he was getting too comfortable.”
“Or pushing the envelope, more likely,” Kincaid said. “Needing more risk, more stimulation. And if he was matey with Gaskill, he must have thought he was home fr—” His phone rang. “Damn.” He fished it from his jeans pocket and checked the caller ID. “It’s Singla, the DI from Henley. I’ll have to take it.”
She watched his face as he listened to the tinny voice issuing from the phone speaker. The crease deepened between his brows. He glanced at the kitchen clock, then back at her, nodding even though his caller couldn’t see. “Right. I’m on my way,” he said. But when he ended the call, he sat and stared at Gemma, looking puzzled.
“What’s happened?” she asked. “Have they arrested Atterton?”
“No. No, he’s fine, as far as I know. But it sounds as though someone’s just tried to murder one of the SAR team.”
Chapter Twelve
Low areas collect scent, just as they do water. As with looping, a scent pool may produce an alert that the dog cannot work to its source because of shifting winds. These alerts must be marked on both the handler’s and the Control maps.
—American Rescue Dog Association
Search and Rescue Dogs: Training the K-9 Hero
Tavie and Ian managed to get Kieran as far as the lawn of the next-door cottage before the engine began pumping a jet of water onto the burning shed. But from there he refused to budge. He sank to the ground, his arm round Finn, blood and tears streaming down his face as he watched the flames turn to black smoke.
Tavie looked a question at Ian.
“We’re far enough, I think,” he said. Lights were appearing on the river as other residents arrived in boats and some ferried part of the brigade crew across. “They’ll have it damped down soon.”
John and his wife, a pleasant-looking middle-aged woman, had come back to their own lawn. “Can we help? Is it safe enough, now?” the woman asked Tavie. “I’m Janet, by the way.” Then she turned to Kieran. “Kieran, I’m so sorry. Anything we can do . . .”
Kieran made a sound that might have been a whimper.
“How about a towel and some water?” Tavie said briskly. “And John, can you direct the boats?” They both went quickly to their tasks.
“Now.” Tavie turned to Kieran. “I’m going to have a look at your head.”
“Leave it,” Kieran mumbled, but the protest was weak. His gaze was fixed on the fire.
Tavie opened her bag and started pulling out supplies, taking the opportunity to say quietly to Ian, “Radio the captain. Tell him what Kieran said about the petrol bomb. They’ll need to keep onlookers away from the scene and notify the police as soon as possible.”
When Janet returned with towels and a bowl filled with water, Tavie thanked her and waved her away. Kieran jerked when she began to dab at his face.
“Hold still, damn it.” She shone her torch on the damage, but as she wiped the blood away, she breathed a sigh of relief. The gash ran from his forehead into his scalp, messy, but shallow. The bleeding had already slowed to a seep.
“You need stitches. We’ll get you to A & E in no time.”
Kieran started to shake his head and winced. “Just close it up, Tavie. It’s nothing. And I’m not concussed.”
“Oh, yeah? We’ll see about that.” Using her small torch, she looked at his pupils and found them normal and reactive, a good sign. But when she saw his eyes move with little repetitive jerks, she sat back, concerned. “Kieran, you’ve got nystagmus. Have you been drinking?” She hadn’t smelled alcohol on his breath, but checking for involuntary movement of the pupils was a common sobriety test for both medics and law enforcement.
“No. It’s vertigo,” he said reluctantly. “Chronic. There was a bomb, in Iraq . . .”
“Oh, bloody hell, Kieran.” She hadn’t known that his injury had given him vertigo. That explained the eye movement and his sporadic “bad days.” “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
He glanced at her, then back at the diminishing blaze. “Would you have let me on the team if I had?”
She didn’t want to admit he was right. “And what were you going to do if you fell flat on your face in the field?”
“Tell you I tripped.” He gave a ghost of a smile. “And it’s not always this bad.” A note of pleading entered his voice. “Really. It’s just the storm, and the last few days, and—and the bang on the head . . .”
“You’re definitely going to hospital.”
“No. Tavie, please.” He put his hand on her arm, and it occurr
ed to her that he seldom touched her voluntarily. “I’ll stay here. John can lend me a sleeping bag. I don’t want to leave the shed.”
“Don’t be daft.”
“I’ll sleep in the Land Rover, then, by the museum. I’ve done it often enough.”
“Kieran—”
“I’m conscious. You can’t force me.”
Nor could she. And when she thought of what associations hospitals must have for him, after Iraq, she put her mind to coming up with another solution.
“Come to me, then,” she said. “You and Finn. I can put you up until you’re sorted. And keep an eye on you.”
A uniformed police officer—a sergeant by his stripes—appeared out of the darkness. “This the owner of the shed?” he asked, peering at Kieran. When Kieran nodded, the sergeant went on. “What’s all this about a petrol bomb? Neighbor said you repair boats in there. Sure you didn’t get careless and set some solvent alight, mate?”
All Tavie’s fear and adrenaline suddenly condensed into a wave of fury, cold and bright. She stood up, her face inches from the sergeant’s, and jabbed her finger at his chest. “Don’t you dare take that tone with my patient. Detective Inspector Singla’s already been informed about this attack. For your information, this man was on yesterday’s SAR team, and he bloody well knows a petrol bomb when he sees one. He could have been killed tonight.”
Finn had been glued to Kieran’s side, but now he stood and made a low sound in his throat, a hint of a growl.
The sergeant gave him a wary glance and backed off a step. “Singla, is it? Don’t know him.”
“You will. Thames Valley CID. And he didn’t seem the sort to suffer fools gladly.”
“Now, look here. There’s no need to—”
Finn growled again, a bit more loudly this time.
The sergeant took another step back and seemed to decide to err on the side of prudence. “Right. DI Singla. I’ll just make certain Control is on it.”
But then, having distanced himself from Tavie and the dog by a few feet, he puffed up with renewed authority. “Mind you, whether this was arson or an accident, it’s a crime scene, and you”—he looked at Kieran—“are not to go on the property. Or remove anything from it. We’ll need a fixed address for you, Mr.—”
“Connolly,” said Tavie.
“Mr. Connolly, then,” said the sergeant. “Someone will be along to interview you shortly. And I’d advise you to keep that dog under control.”
“Finn, easy,” said Kieran.
“Mr. Connolly is going to stay with me. They both are.” Tavie gave the sergeant her address.
Kieran put his head in his hands.
Tavie looked at Kieran standing in the middle of her sitting room and wondered what on earth she was going to do with him.
He not only towered over her, he dwarfed the small room. And he was swaying slightly, like a large tree about to topple.
“Sit,” she ordered, as if he were one of the dogs, and pointed at the biggest chair.
He sat, if a little unsteadily, and she felt more comfortable now that she could look down at him. She realized she’d spent most of her time with Kieran in unenclosed spaces, where the foot’s difference in their heights hadn’t seemed so apparent.
And then, as she looked round the sitting room that suddenly felt claustrophobic, it occurred to her that the only men who had even set foot in her house were her mates from the fire and ambulance brigades who had helped her move.
The little house had been her rebellion against the sort of life she’d led with her ex, Beatty. She’d lived with her parents until she and Beatty married, when she’d moved into the flat Beatty owned in Leeds. A year later, they’d both taken jobs in Oxfordshire, and the semi-detached house on the new estate outside Reading seemed to have scooped them up of its own volition.
Eight long years later, their marriage had been fractured beyond repair, and that suburban life had paled for them both. Beatty had discovered that what he really wanted was a pliant woman who needed a manly man, and had no trouble acquiring an obliging red-haired nurse.
And Tavie had found that what she really wanted was to make her own choices, thank you very much, and that had included buying a house that hadn’t suited anyone’s wishes but her own.
Hence the doll’s house, and she’d loved it. She loved her single life, her job, her dog, and her work with SAR. Still, there were times when the house had begun to seem a bit empty, but sudden occupation by a large, bloody, surly man and his equally large dog was not quite the solution she’d had in mind.
The dogs, having finished greeting each other with thorough sniffing and much tail wagging, sat, too.
“Okay,” she said, glancing round the room a little wildly. “Let’s get your feet up.” Spotting the small trunk she used to store extra blankets, she pulled it over and plopped a cushion on top. “There you are, then.”
“I’m not crippled. I’ve just had a bang on the head.” Kieran glared at her, but the effect was somewhat lessened by the butterfly bandage on his forehead, which pulled the corner of his eyebrow up in an involuntary query.
There’d always been a rakish quality to his looks, she thought, with his pale skin, deep blue eyes, and dark, shaggy hair. Maybe a scar would suit him. At least this one would be visible.
She eyed the length of her small sofa. “I’ll sleep down here,” she said. “You can take the bed. It’s a queen-size, so I don’t think your feet will dangle off the end.” The bed was one of the few things she’d kept from the divorce.
Kieran leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. His face looked gaunt in repose, and when he spoke, his voice was heavy with exhaustion. “Tavie, I am not going to take your bed. I appreciate everything you’re doing for me. I really do.” He touched an exploratory fingertip to the bandage on his forehead, then winced. “But that’s too much. I’ll sleep on the floor. And as soon as they’ll let me, I’ll go back to the shed. I can buy another camp bed if I need to.”
Remembering the flames and aware of how much damage the pumped water would have caused, Tavie shook her head. “Kieran, there may not be anything le—”
“I have to see.” He sat up, urgency back in his voice. “It’s all I have. Whatever there is.”
Tavie sank down on the edge of the sofa. Immediately, Tosh came over and rested her head on Tavie’s knee, looking up at her with her dark shepherd brows drawn in a V. She, too, seemed unsettled by the change in their household routine. Tavie stroked the soft spot on the top of her head. “The boat—the one under the tarp—you said you were building it for her. Did you mean Rebecca Meredith?”
“I’d wanted to build a wooden shell since I first started rowing, as a kid,” he said more quietly. “My father was a furniture maker, so I knew about wood. It was— She seemed— I thought my boat might take her to the Olympics.
“It was daft, a stupid daydream.” He shook his head. “Even if she’d wanted the shell, no Olympic committee would have let her compete in a wooden boat. She’d have had the best carbon-fiber racing single money could buy.”
“Could she have done it?” Tavie asked. “The Olympics? Was she—was she that good?”
Kieran rubbed his fingers against the stubble on his jaws and blinked hard. “I’d never seen anyone row like that. For her, it was like breathing. Perfection. But winning takes more than that gift. It takes obsession, and she had that, too.”
“And you . . .” Tavie took a breath. She knew she was treading on forbidden territory, but she had to ask. “Where did you fit into that obsession?”
Kieran’s smile was brief, self-mocking. “I was . . . convenient.”
“How did you—I mean—” Tavie could feel herself blushing—“I know it’s none of my business, but how did the two of you—”
But he seemed almost relieved to talk about it. “Last summer. I used to see her rowing when I was out on the river in the evenings. Then one day she had trouble with one of her riggers, and I stopped to help. We chatted.”
Finn, having failed in his attempts to get Tosh interested in a rope tug, settled at Kieran’s feet. Kieran put his hand on Finn’s head, a mirror image of Tavie and Tosh, and for a moment she wondered if they would be whole without their dogs. Who had Kieran been with Rebecca Meredith, without Finn for armor?
He went on, his words slowing as the memory caught him up. “After that, we seemed to take our boats out at the same time. We’d row pieces, but I couldn’t quite beat her, even with the advantage of my height. And we’d talk.
“Then one evening I didn’t go. I was having—a bad day. She knew where I lived—we’d rowed upriver past the shed dozens of times. So she came to see if I was all right.”
The silence stretched into awkwardness. “And after that, you were,” said Tavie lightly, past the tightness in her throat.
Kieran shrugged, gave her the same half-mocking smile as earlier. “I always knew I was a diversion. I’m just not sure from what.”
“Yesterday . . .” Tavie thought about how to put it, then continued hesitantly. “Yesterday you said she was too good to have had an accident on a calm evening. And then tonight—the boatshed. You said it was a petrol bomb. Why? Why would someone do that to you, unless it was to do with . . .” She suddenly had trouble with the name, although yesterday she had so blithely told the dogs to Find Rebecca. Rebecca Meredith had been no more than that to her yesterday. A name. “To do with her,” she finished.
His face closed, like a shutter coming down. “I don’t know.”
“Kieran—”
Shaking his head at her, he put his hands on the arms of the chair and struggled to stand. “I should go, Tavie. It’s not—I don’t want to—whoever threw that bottle tonight could come back.”
So much for getting to spend the night in his own bed beside Gemma, Kincaid thought. He’d thrown his overnight bag back in the car and driven straight to Henley, without stopping to pick up Cullen.
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