No Mark upon Her

And then, when he had rowed right up to the shed with his petrol bomb, Kieran remembered, Finn had lifted his head, nostrils flaring, a moment before the bottle crashed through the window. Both the window and the door of the shed had been open to clear solvent fumes.

It hadn’t been the sound of voices that had alerted Finn that night. The wind had been blowing downriver. Finn had caught the bastard’s scent.

And tonight—tonight Finn had associated that scent with Kieran’s fear on the riverbank and with the terror of the fire.

His hand still unsteady, Kieran lifted his phone again.

Then he stopped, his fingers going lax on the keypad. There was something more.

He closed his eyes and tried to bring back the man’s face, first glimpsed in that instant when he’d walked out of the Red Lion after Freddie.

But what Kieran saw against the blackness of his eyelids was not the scene outside the Red Lion, but a photograph. And in that photograph, he saw a younger version of that likeness amid a group of faces, all in a frame on a shelf in Becca’s cottage . . . a photo of a Boat Race crew.

“He’s a bit bonkers, don’t you think?” said Cullen when Kincaid had told him about Kieran’s call.

“Maybe not as much as you’d think.” Kincaid was already dialing Freddie Atterton’s number. After a few rings, the call went to voice mail. Kincaid swore, but didn’t leave a message. Disconnecting, he turned to Cullen. “We’ll try the flat.”

After a brief word with Owen Morris and DC Bell, they were on their way back to Henley.

“So, is this a case of what the dog did in the night or what the dog didn’t do in the night?” asked Cullen as they turned into the Marlow Road at Hambleden Mill.

Kincaid was not in the mood for flippancy. “We may never know why Edie Craig’s dog was loose two hours before the fire. But if Kieran Connolly says his dog was panicked, I believe him. I also believe someone tried to kill Connolly, and I’m not convinced it was Angus Craig.”

“If Peter Gaskill and his cronies were Craig’s alibi for the attack on Connolly, I’m not sure I’d give the alibi too much credence,” argued Doug. “And it seems rather obvious that Craig liked to burn things up.”

“Does it?” Kincaid braked hard behind a car with hire-car plates going miles below the limit. “Anybody can buy a tin of petrol. And I’d swear Craig didn’t know about the attack on Kieran. The bastard was too self-obsessed to be that good an actor.”

“What about Becca Meredith?”

“I’m still not certain we can fit him for it. The bartender at the pub in Hambleden had no reason to lie about the time Craig came in that evening. And Craig’s motive is still questionable, unless Becca found out about Jenny Hart, and I don’t think she did.”

“Then—”

“Damned if I know. But I’d feel a whole lot better if I had Freddie Atterton in my sight.”

When Freddie buzzed them into the Malthouse and opened the door of his flat, Kincaid’s relief swiftly turned to anger. “Where the hell were you?” he said, pushing past Freddie without giving him a chance to invite them in. “Why the hell didn’t you answer your phone?”

“I just didn’t pick up,” said Freddie, looking puzzled. “I was on long distance with Becca’s mother, making arrangements to meet her at the airport—”

Kincaid waved him into silence. “Okay. But before that. You were at the Red Lion with another man—who was he?”

“What? How did you—”

“Kieran Connolly rang me.”

“Oh, yeah, Kieran.” Freddie frowned. “I saw Kieran, all right. What was up with that? His dog, the lovely black Lab—he went absolutely bonkers. I thought he was going to take Ross down in the street. And then the other one, the Alsatian, went just as mad. I thought they were trained search dogs, not attack dogs.”

“They are search dogs, and they’re very well socialized,” Kincaid said, frowning. “Which makes it even odder that Finn would go after your mate like that. Your friend—Ross. Tell me about him.”

“I did. Remember? He’s my mate who took me to the mortuary. We’re old friends from Oxford.”

That was right. Kincaid remembered Freddie saying something about a university friend who had taken him to make the formal identification of Becca’s body. “Kieran said you and your friend seemed to be arguing when he first saw you. Why?”

“Ross kept asking me what I knew about Angus Craig. I told him the guy stood me up for a meeting, and I thought he was a right prick.

“But Ross had had more than a few drinks, and he gets . . . stroppy. He said he couldn’t believe Becca never told me about Craig. He said”—Freddie stopped, color flushing his face—“he said he’d never realized I was blind and stupid.

“He was always a bit of a shit, Ross, and to tell the truth I never thought he deserved to be in the bloody boat. But to say something like that—he can’t have been suggesting Becca had an affair with Craig. I don’t believe it.”

“What did you tell him?” asked Kincaid, his mind racing.

“Nothing. Kieran showed up with the dogs just then and all hell broke loose. And after that, Ross took off like the hounds of hell were after him. Can’t say I blame him, but—”

“Why was your friend so interested in Angus Craig?” Kincaid broke in.

“I’ve no idea. I didn’t even know he knew him. But I suppose it would make sense that Chris did.”

“Chris?”

“Ross’s wife. She’s a DCI with the Met, like Becca, though they worked in different divisions.”

“Chris?” said Doug, his voice rising. “What’s her last name?”

Freddie took a startled step back. “Abbott. It’s Abbott. What of it?”

Waving his hands in agitation, Doug turned to Kincaid. “That’s who Becca saw, that last day. Remember, at Charlotte’s party, I said I’d got her name from Sergeant Patterson? The old friend who came into the station—it was Chris Abbott.”

Kincaid stared at him. A female police officer, a female police officer who knew Angus Craig—and hadn’t Freddie also told him, after he’d been to the mortuary, that his friend’s wife was a cop?

Bloody hell. He’d been so focused on Angus Craig—and on proving Denis Childs wrong about Freddie—that he’d walked right over a bloody land mine and hadn’t seen it. He was the one who’d been blind and stupid.

“Christ,” he said. “She—this Chris Abbott—has to have been one of the victims. But did Becca find out that day, or did she already know? Something happ—”

“Victims?” Freddie broke in. “What the hell are you talking about? Victims of what?” He looked from Kincaid to Cullen, but it was Kincaid who answered.

There was no longer any need to protect Freddie from Craig or vice versa. Freddie would have to know the truth and it might as well be now. “Look,” Kincaid said. “Why don’t we sit down.”

“I’m tired of being told to sit,” Freddie retorted. He was less fragile today, edgy, rocking on the balls of his feet, and the look he gave them was challenging. “Say whatever it is you’ve got to say.”

“Okay, then,” Kincaid agreed, although he was still reluctant. “A year ago, Becca reported a sexual assault. She didn’t identify her assailant. She did, however, tell her superior officer, Peter Gaskill, what had happened.

“Deputy Assistant Commissioner Craig had offered her a lift home after a Met function in London. He asked to come in to use the toilet. He then assaulted her.

“Afterwards, he threatened her. He told her he’d make sure she lost her job, and her credibility, if she told anyone what had happened.”

Any doubts Kincaid might have harbored about Freddie’s knowledge disappeared in that moment.

Shock made Freddie’s features sharp, as if the skin had fallen away from his bones.

Then the rage flooded in, suffusing his face, and Kincaid remembered that this was a man who had been strong enough—and bloody-minded enough—to earn the oars mounted on the sitting room wall.

As had his friend, Kincaid realized, with dawning horror. Becca’s killer had known how to drown a rower and had been strong enough to do it. Kieran’s attacker had rowed near enough to the boatshed to throw a bomb through the window, then disappeared, a feat that had required speed and accuracy in a boat. Had it—