No Mark upon Her

Charlotte shook her head. “No. I want to get bigger.”

This gave Kincaid a pang, but he said, “Then you should close your eyes and go to sleep, because the sooner it’s tomorrow, the closer it will be to your birthday.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“All right.” Charlotte shut her eyes tight, but after a moment they flew open again. “Will you stay until I’m fast asleep?”

“Yes. I promise.”

“Will you check on me after?”

“Yes. Now snuggle up, and sweet dreams.” He pulled up the duvet again, and this time Charlotte covered his hand with hers and kept it tucked under her chin.

After a moment, her eyelids fluttered, then closed, and to his amazement he felt her hand relax and saw that she was drawing the deep regular breaths of sleep.

Looking down at her hand atop his, he thought he had never seen anything so lovely. Her tiny, pale brown fingers were loosely curled, her nails like pink pearls. He felt such wonder that this child had come unexpectedly into his life, and that she had begun to love him. And he never wanted to do anything that would make him less than the father she deserved.

Very, very gently, he brushed his lips against her cheek and eased his hand free.

Looking up, he saw Gemma standing in the doorway, watching them. She smiled. “You’re a miracle worker.”

“It was Alice.” He stood. “What about Toby?”

“Reading something a bit less challenging. A Pirates of the Caribbean comic.”

“As long as it’s not the Daily Mirror.”

“Not yet, anyway.” She studied him. “Come down to the kitchen. I’m just going to put the kettle on, and you’re going to tell me what happened today.”

They sat in the kitchen, the dogs settled contentedly under their feet. Gemma’s Clarice Cliff teapot held pride of place on the table between them, but they drank out of chipped, mismatched mugs, treasures acquired on Saturday browses through Portobello Market. Kincaid had checked on Toby and Kit, and then, when he’d taken the dogs out, he’d discovered that it was still raining lightly and that the temperature had dropped. The kitchen’s dark blue Aga radiated a comforting heat.

Marshaling his thoughts, he told Gemma everything they’d learned that morning about Rebecca Meredith’s death, and then, more slowly, he related the gist of his conversation with Denis Childs. “I don’t want to take this case,” he said when he’d finished.

“You’d resign as SIO?” Gemma looked shocked. “But you can’t.”

“I’m supposed to be going on leave, in case you’ve forgotten.”

She sighed. “No, of course not. And I want you finished with this as much as you do. But to walk away from a case like this—you know what it would do to your career.”

“Would you have me . . . adjust”—his lips twisted—“the direction of an investigation to protect a senior officer in the Met?”

“No, but—” Gemma met his eyes with the honest gaze he loved. “What about Rebecca Meredith? Don’t you want to know who killed her? Doesn’t she deserve an answer, regardless of the consequences?”

“You do realize just how bad the consequences could be if it turns out that Craig killed her? And what we have at stake?” His gesture took in the house, and the children snug in their rooms upstairs.

Gemma divided the dregs of the pot between their cups, then added the last of the milk from the little Clarice Cliff jug. After a moment, she said, “I have more faith in Denis Childs than that. This senior officer—what did you say his name was? Craig?”

“Angus Craig. A good Scottish name that I’d be inclined to like under other circumstances, but—” He broke off when he saw Gemma wasn’t listening. “What—”

“Sandy-haired? Not too tall, a bit burly?” Her voice had gone up an octave.

“I’ve only met him a few times, but that would describe him. Why—”

“Oh, my God.” Gemma’s eyes were wide. “Rebecca Meredith said he offered her a lift, then asked to come in to use the loo?”

“Yes. Gemma, what—”

She stopped him, her words coming out in a rush. “It was after I’d passed my sergeant’s exam, a month or two before I was assigned to you. I went to a party at a pub in Victoria. I don’t remember the occasion—it very well may have been a leaving do for someone—but I was encouraged to go by some new mates at the Yard.

“All in all, a nice enough evening, but by the time things broke up, it was pissing down rain. I hadn’t taken my car in because I didn’t want to drink and drive, and as the group was breaking up someone said the Central Line to Leyton had been shut down.” Gemma hesitated. “He offered me a lift.”

“You mean Craig?”

“One and the same, I’m certain of it. He was very—solicitous. Courteous in a sort of paternal way. And a deputy assistant commissioner to boot . . . I suppose I was flattered.” She swallowed and rotated her mug a quarter turn on the scrubbed pine table. “So I accepted. We made chitchat on the drive, about nothing in particular. Films, I think. Then, when we got to Leyton, he asked if he could come in. He’d said he wasn’t over the limit, but he’d had a pint or two, and you know, he’d gone a bit out of his way to drive me home and he needed to use the loo.

“So I said of course, although I was horrified thinking of the state of the house, and I invited him in.”

Kincaid shifted uneasily in his chair, disturbing Geordie, their cocker spaniel, who had been sleeping on his feet. Geordie gave a disgruntled whumf and resettled himself. “Go on,” Kincaid said tightly, not taking his eyes from Gemma’s face. He didn’t like where this was going at all.

“I hadn’t said anything about my personal situation—why would I, to a senior officer I didn’t know? I was uncomfortable enough with being a newly divorced single mother, and I was hoping it wouldn’t damage my career prospects.” She glanced at him, then looked away. “So I suppose he assumed I was alone.

“But that night my mum had come over to look after Toby, and of course Toby had thrown a total wobbly and had refused to go down. So when Craig walked into the house and saw my mum pacing the sitting room with a red- faced, tear-streaked toddler over her shoulder, he turned round and walked right back out again with barely a good night.

“I thought it was odd, but that maybe he was embarrassed at having asked to use the loo, or that maybe he thought he’d step in a dirty nappie if he came any further.” She shrugged. “And then I forgot about it. I never ran into him after that. But—”

“But what?” said Kincaid, feeling cold. He knew he was constructing the same scenario.

“What if my mum hadn’t been there that night? What if—what if Angus Craig meant to do to me what he did to Rebecca Meredith?”

By the time Kieran made it back to the boatshed, it was well past dark. Soaked through and shivering, he felt light-headed, as if his brain was disconnected from his body. His ears had begun to ring, which was often a sign that the vertigo was about to get worse.

Switching on a light, he rubbed Finn’s wet coat with a towel, then poured the dog some dry food. But the thought of making something for himself brought the hovering nausea on again.

When had he last eaten? The protein bar before they’d started yesterday’s search? No wonder he was feeling wonky.

He sank down onto the camp bed, images stuttering through his mind like frames in a bad film reel. He knew he should get dry, at least, but the steps required to achieve such a simple thing seemed beyond his capabilities.

And he knew he should tell someone what he had seen, but who?

He didn’t think Tavie would even talk to him, much less hear him out. The policeman from the Yard? He’d seemed like the sort of man who might listen, but Kieran didn’t know how to get in touch. He couldn’t imagine trying to explain himself to an officer at the local nick, even if he could get himself there.

His head swam and he gripped the edge of the bed, bracing for the onset of full-tilt vertigo. When it didn’t come, he breathed a sigh of relief. Finn finished the last scrap of his food and came over to lie on the floor at his