bruising—fingernail marks, abrasions—and there were none. He was clean as a whistle. And I doubt very much if a woman could have rendered him unconscious without her hands suffering some trauma from the struggle.”
Kincaid digested this for a moment. “So what you’re telling me is”—he touched the tip of one index finger to the other—“that
“Most drownings are accidental, and almost always alcohol-related. We won’t know his blood alcohol until the report comes back from the lab, but I’d be willing to bet it was quite high. However”—up came the traffic warden hand again as Kincaid opened his mouth to speak—“if you want my off-the-record opinion…” Winstead sipped from his coffee again, although Kincaid had long since abandoned his, finding an inconspicuous spot for the cup among the litter on Winstead’s desk. “Most accidental drownings are also fairly straightforward. Bloke goes out fishing with his friends, they all have a few too many, bloke falls in and his friends are too pissed to pull him out. Corroborating stories from several witnesses—end of case. But in this instance,” the intelligent boot-button eyes fixed on Kincaid, “I’d say there are a good deal too many unanswered questions. No indications of suicide?”
Kincaid shook his head. “None.”
“Then I’d say there’s not much doubt he was helped into that river in one way or another, but I’d also say you’re going to have a hell of a time proving it.” Winstead smiled as if he’d just delivered a welcome pronouncement.
“What about time of death?”
“Sometime between when he was last seen and when he was found.” Winstead chortled at his own humor. “Seriously, Superintendent, if you want my intuitive stab at it, I’d say between nineish and midnight, or perhaps nine and one o’clock.”
“Thank you, I think.” Kincaid stood up and held out a hand. “You’ve been… um, extremely helpful.”
“Glad to be of service.” Winstead shook Kincaid’s hand and smiled, the Pooh Bear resemblance more pronounced than ever. “We’ll get the report to you as soon as the lab work comes back. Can you find your way to the front? Cheerio, then.”
As Kincaid left the office he glanced back. The skull seemed to be superimposed upon Winstead’s chubby form, and as Winstead waved Kincaid could have sworn the skull grinned a little more widely.
Kincaid left the hospital feeling little further forward than before. Although now more certain of the fact, he still had no concrete proof that Connor had been murdered. Nor had he a plausible motive, or any real suspects.
Hesitating when he reached his car, he glanced at his watch. Once Gemma had managed to track down Tommy Godwin, she would be on her way to interview Dame Caroline, and as long as she was looking into the Asherton end of things, he had better concentrate on Connor. Connor was the key—until he knew more about Connor nothing else would fall into place.
It was time he did a little prying into the part of Connor’s life that did not seem to be connected to the Ashertons. Using his phone, he ascertained the address of Gillock, Blackwell, Gillock and Frye, then took the road south to Maidenhead and Reading.
* * *
He never came to Reading without thinking of Vic. She had grown up here, gone to school here, and as he’d entered the city from the north, he made a quick detour down the street where her parents had lived. The suburb boasted comfortable semidetached houses and well-tended gardens, with an occasional garden gnome peeking tastefully from behind a hedge. He had found the neighborhood dreadful then, and he discovered that time had done nothing to soften his opinion.
Easing the car to a halt, he let the engine idle while he studied the house. So unaltered did it appear that he wondered if it had been held in some sort of stasis while time eddied around it, and he had changed and aged. He saw it as he’d seen it the first time Vic took him home to meet her parents, down to the determined shine on the brass letterbox. They had looked upon him with well-bred disapproval, dismayed that their beautiful and scholarly daughter should have taken up with a policeman, and with a stab of discomfort he remembered that he had felt faintly ashamed of his less-than-conventional family. His parents had always cared more for books and ideas than the acquisition of middleclass possessions, and his childhood in their rambling house in the Cheshire countryside had been far removed from this tidy, ordered world.
He slipped the Midget into first gear and eased out the clutch, listening to the engine’s familiar sputtering response. Perhaps Vic had chosen someone more suitable for the second go-round. He, at least, was well out of it. With that thought came a sense of release and the welcome realization that he did, actually, finally, mean it.
The snarl of Reading traffic hadn’t improved since his last visit, and as he sat drumming his fingers on the steering wheel in the queue for city-center parking, he remembered how much he had always disliked the place. It combined the worst of modern architecture with bad city planning, and the results were enough to make anyone’s blood pressure rise.
Once he’d parked the car he found the modern block of offices which housed the advertising agency without too much difficulty. A pretty receptionist greeted him with a smile as he entered the third-floor suite. “Can I help you, sir?” she asked, and her voice held a hint of curiosity.
He knew she must be trying to catalogue him—not a familiar client or supplier, no briefcase or samples to mark him as a commercial traveler—and he couldn’t resist teasing her a bit. Her short bobbed dark hair and heart-shaped face gave her an appealing innocence. “Nice office,” he said, looking slowly around the reception area. Modular furniture, dramatic lighting, art-deco advertising prints carefully framed and placed—it added up, he thought, to clever use of limited funds.
“Yes, sir. Is there someone you wanted to see?” she asked a little more forcefully, her smile fading.
He removed his warrant card and handed her the open folder. “Superintendent Duncan Kincaid, Scotland Yard. I’d like to speak to someone about Connor Swann.”
“Oh.” She looked from his face to the card and back again, then her brown eyes filled with tears. “Isn’t it just awful? We only heard this morning.”
“Really? Who notified you?” he asked, casually retrieving his card.
She sniffed. “His father-in-law, Sir Gerald Asherton. He rang John—that’s Mr. Frye—”
A door opened in the hallway behind her desk and a man came out, shrugging into a sport jacket. “Melissa,
