No Mark upon Her

“Duncan, you know as well as I do what happens whenever a police officer of any rank dies under suspicious circumstances.” Childs’s tone was unusually impatient. “You can expect our fevered friends from the media on your doorstep by tomorrow morning. DCI Meredith’s life, and her career, will be put under the microscope.” Childs paused, and Kincaid could imagine him steepling his fingers in his familiar Buddha pose. “Of course,” Childs went on, “the best result would be that you find Meredith’s death an unfortunate accident. Ring me in the morning.” With that, Chief Superintendent Childs hung up.

And without, Kincaid realized, answering his question.

He sat on, under the portico, gazing at the phone in his hand, replaying the conversation in his head. Surely he had misinterpreted what he’d heard. Because he could have sworn that his guv’nor had just suggested that he fix the outcome of an investigation.

Chapter Eight

It is an annual four-and-a-quarter rowing race from Putney to Mortlake on the river Thames between two of the most prestigious universities in the world, Oxford and Cambridge. The competitors train twice a day, six days a week, striving to achieve their goal of representing their universities. Everything else in their lives becomes secondary. It is not done for money but for honour and the hope of victory. There is no second place, as second is last. They call it simply The Boat Race

.

—David and James Livingston

Blood Over Water

The persistently ringing phone pricked at Freddie’s consciousness. He wanted to swat the sound away, but his brain didn’t seem willing to connect with his body. It was only when the noise stopped that he managed to open one eye. He was lying on his back, but what he saw was not his bedroom ceiling.

He squinched his eye shut again while he tried to place the image. Arched ceiling. White. Black beams. Recognition dawned. His sitting room.

With mounting panic, he opened both eyes and lifted his head. Pain shot through his skull, but before he closed his eyes again, he’d seen that he was lying on his sofa, and that he was still wearing his dress shirt and trousers, although not his shoes or—he felt his collar—his tie. His phone lay on the coffee table, beside an empty bottle of Balvenie. There were two glasses. A recollection flickered. Milo. He’d had a few drinks with Milo. But what—

The phone started to ring again, as if his thoughts had triggered it, and he groaned. “Just shut it,” he tried to say, but his voice came out in a croak. He grabbed for the phone and the motion brought on a wave of nausea, and with it, memory.

Becca. Oh, God. The pieces clicked together in his fuzzy brain. Milo had brought him home and poured him scotch after scotch. They’d stopped at the off-license on the way back from the cottage, after the Scotland Yard man had told him he couldn’t take Becca’s bottle of Balvenie. Because it wasn’t his. Because it might be evidence. Because Becca was dead.

Freddie lurched to his feet and staggered to the bathroom. He fell to his knees, his forehead resting on the cool seat of the toilet, and vomited until there was nothing left to come up.

When the heaving finally stopped, he lifted his head and sat with his back against the wall, cataloging what he saw, as if that could block out knowledge. Gray-stained plank floor. Gray walls. Glass shower. White porcelain sink. The freestanding tub, its body wrapped in black, riveted metal. And above it all, glimpsed when he painfully raised his eyes, the crystal chandelier.

When he’d bought this flat after the divorce, he’d hired an interior designer from London, hoping, he supposed, that Becca would somehow be impressed with his new lifestyle.

When she’d come to see the flat, she’d gazed at the chandelier, then given him the look. The look that meant she thought he had utterly lost the plot.

“It’s supposed to be eclectic,” he’d said, defending himself.

“Was she pretty?” Becca had replied.

When Freddie’s phone started to ring again, he realized he’d left it in the sitting room. He suddenly wondered if it might be someone calling to tell him it was all a mistake, that the body they’d found wasn’t Becca after all. Who was this guy who had identified her, anyway? This rower.

He pulled himself up and stumbled back into the sitting room, his heart racing, but by the time he got there, the ringing had stopped. He looked at the long list of missed calls—all unfamiliar numbers—and then saw that there was one message. His pulse skipped. What if—

But when he played it back, a female voice identified herself as a reporter from the London Chronicle, and wondered if he would be willing to give them a quote about his ex-wife.

Freddie sank onto the sofa, his phone dangling in his hand.

It was true, then. It had to be true. And he realized what he was going to have to do that day.

The phone rang once more, the vibration running through his fingers like a shock. He dropped the phone, made a scoop at it, and fumbled it up again. If it was that reporter, he was going to tell her to sod off.

But the name on the caller ID was familiar, and Freddie nearly sobbed with relief as he answered. “Ross?”

“Oh, shit, mate,” said Ross Abbott. “Chris heard at work. She wanted me to tell you—I wanted to tell you— we’re so sorry. Is there anything I can do?”

Freddie looked at the two dark blue Oxford oars mounted on the wall in the sitting room. They had rowed together, twice, he and Ross Abbott, and they’d been friends since they were spotty boys in the same public school. He clutched at the lifeline of the familiar.

“Ross, I have to—I have to go to the morgue today. To identify her. Will you go with me?”

Kincaid had not slept well, in spite of the luxury of his canopy bed. He realized it had been months since he’d spent the night away from Gemma, and he missed the quiet rhythm of her breathing, her warmth as her body touched his in the night. Not that they’d spent many nights in the last two months without Charlotte crawling in between them in the wee hours of the morning, but he found he missed that, too.

Lately, Charlotte had taken to snuggling with her back against Gemma and her head on his shoulder, her curly hair tickling his nose. When she drifted off to sleep again, whoever was most awake would pick her up and tuck her back into her own bed, but he always did it with a bit of reluctance. He’d missed that stage with Kit. And Toby, so busy when awake, had always slept as if someone had flipped his Off switch.

When light began to filter through the crack in the heavy bedroom curtains, he got up, showered, and dressed in his wedding finery. Not for the first time, he was glad he’d worn an ordinary suit for Winnie’s blessing, rather than morning getup. He’d look a right prat trying to conduct an investigation in that.

Eager to get to the incident room at the police station, he rang Cullen and crushed his partner’s hopes of the full-monty breakfast in the hotel dining room. “There’s a nice cafe—Maison Blanc, I think—on the way to the station,” Kincaid said. “We can pick up coffee and pastries, and you can fill me in on your research as we walk.”

A few minutes later, they met in the hotel reception area. Stepping outside, they were greeted with watery sunshine and air that felt almost balmy. Kincaid looked up at the clouds creeping across the sky and frowned. “I don’t trust this weather. But, for the time being, it will make things easier for the forensics team at the boat.” He started up Market Place at a good clip. “So, what did you find on Mr. Atterton?” he asked.

Cullen pushed his glasses up on his nose, then clasped his hands behind his back as he walked, settling into lecturing mode. “Frederick Thomas Atterton, after his father, Thomas, a well-respected banker in the City. Grew up in Sonning-on-Thames, a village just east of Reading. Real Kenneth Grahame country, according to Melody.”

“Melody?”

“There was only so much I could do with just a phone.” Cullen shrugged, a little apologetically. “Had to enlist