“Backup’s coming,” whispered Melody, moving the phone cupped in her hand down to her side.
“I don’t know.” Chris’s anger seemed to collapse, and her voice rose in a wail of despair. “But my gun’s gone.”
“Your gun?” Gemma felt her own jolt of panic as she thought about Duncan. Where was he now? Why the hell hadn’t she called him and told him what she suspected?
“Don’t look so surprised. I work bloody Vice, for God’s sake. You know people who know where to get things. After that bastard Craig, I said I’d never let anything like that happen to me again. You’d have done the same.”
Gemma nodded. “Yeah, I would. Especially if I thought I might need to protect my kids.” She saw a little of the tightness leave Abbott’s body as she heard the sympathy in Gemma’s voice. It didn’t matter that Abbott would have used the same technique herself hundreds of times, her body had responded to Gemma’s tone with a will of its own.
“Where’s your gun, Chris?” Gemma asked, as gently as if she were talking to an old friend. “Think about your kids. They need you, and that means you need to do the right thing now.”
The car behind Abbott flashed its headlamps, then beeped its horn. Gemma cursed the driver under her breath. The last thing she needed right now was a confrontation.
A bearded man leaned out the window. “Move your damned show, ladies,” he called. “This isn’t the freaking Globe.”
A siren whooped faintly in the distance. Abbott looked back again, then forward, her head whipping round. There was no way out.
Then suddenly, she sagged, her body curved in despair, fear etching lines like crevasses in her thin face.
“I keep it on the top shelf of the bedroom cupboard, where the kids can’t reach it,” she said. “It’s gone. My gun’s gone. Ross has it.”
“I’ve no idea where Ross went,” said Freddie. “I told you, he just took off.”
“Does he live in Henley?” Kincaid asked, trying to master a sense of urgency so strong that his palms were beginning to sweat. He knew he had to keep Freddie calm, steer him away from the thought of what Craig had done to Becca, if he were going to get anything helpful from him. The large space of Freddie Atterton’s flat suddenly seemed breathlessly stuffy. The humidity must be rising.
“No, he lives in Barnes.” Freddie sounded confused. “But he rows out of Henley Rowing Club. Why do you want to know?”
“Why not row out of Leander?” asked Doug. “Especially as he was a Blue?”
Freddie fidgeted and moved away from them for the first time, going to the far end of the dining table, where he pulled out a chair, but didn’t sit. “To tell the truth, some of the members don’t like him. He’s a bit of a braggart, Ross, and he tends to make too much of his connections and possessions. Not that he’s the only one, but you know the sort of thing. And to hear him tell it,” he added with a bitter little laugh and a glance at the Oxford oar, “you’d think we won the Boat Race. Anyway, his membership was . . . discouraged.”
Kincaid raised an eyebrow. “But you’re still friends?”
“We keep in touch. He keeps in touch, really. Although I hadn’t heard from him for some time before Becca . . .” Freddie swallowed. “I was surprised when he called, actually. I’d heard rumors that some of the investments he’d made for his firm had gone belly-up. But that day, when he took me to the mortuary, he said he was doing well. Brilliantly. I remember thinking it was just like Ross to be going on about his new car when—when—”
Kincaid hurried to redirect him. “What else did he say to you that day?”
“That Chris had heard about Becca at work. That he and Chris were . . . sorry. But—” Pressing his knuckles to his lip, Freddie gazed somewhere between Kincaid and Doug, his eyes unfocused. “But—but then, when we were having drinks, he kept asking me what the police knew about Becca’s death. And he made me realize I might be a suspect. It hadn’t even occurred to me until then that someone could think I killed her.”
Kincaid saw Doug’s quick glance and knew they were on the same page. Ross Abbott had been fishing, and in the process, he’d tried to frighten Freddie, perhaps in the hopes that he would do something that would make him appear guilty. It smacked of premeditation. And viciousness.
“But why are you asking about Ross?” said Freddie. “And why did Kieran’s dog go off on him like that?”
Why indeed? Kincaid thought. Could Finn have recognized Ross’s scent from the scene of Becca’s murder? Why the fear, though, unless he’d associated the scent with Kieran’s unease by the riverbank. But surely that wasn’t enough to—
Realization struck. Fire was enough. Fire in the boatshed, the dog’s terror and the man’s. If Finn had recognized Ross Abbott’s scent from the attack on the boatshed, then he’d have had a bloody good reason to go bonkers.
And by now Kieran would have realized that as well.
Kincaid followed Freddie to the end of the dining table. There was something that still didn’t make sense to him. “You said you’d seen Kieran yesterday. Where?”
Freddie looked reluctant. More than reluctant. Embarrassed. He stood with the chair back between them, as if he needed armor. “It wasn’t anything.”
“Out with it, Freddie. It’s important. Where?”
“I went to see the boatshed. I wanted to see where he lived. Where he and Becca— It was stupid.” He shook his head. “But while I was standing there staring at the place like a sodding idiot, Kieran showed up with the dogs. I could tell he thought I was a bit weird, but I explained I’d come to thank him. I went across to the shed with him. We looked at the damage. We talked. And it was—okay.” Freddie sounded as if that still surprised him. “He seems like a good bloke. Bloody shame about the workshop, but maybe he can put it right. And”—he met Kincaid’s eyes at last—“I saw the boat, the boat he was building for Becca. It’s—” Description failed him.
“Did you see Ross anywhere near Kieran’s shed?”
“Ross? No. But this afternoon he rang me and said he wanted to meet at the Red Lion. And when I got there, he started asking about Craig.”
“At the Red Lion—did you say anything to Ross about Kieran? About where he was staying?”
“No.” Freddie sounded incensed. “I told you, Ross took off right after we saw Kieran. And besides, Kieran didn’t tell me where he was staying. But why would Ross care?”
Kincaid didn’t answer. He was visualizing the town center in the fading light, Kieran struggling to control the dogs as he walked up Market Place towards Tavie’s. Had he looked back?
And Ross—he’d have seen which direction Kieran took. When he left Freddie, he could have ducked into a doorway until he was sure Freddie wasn’t watching, then followed Kieran. Even if he’d been too far behind to see Kieran going into Tavie’s house, he’d have known the direction Kieran had taken. And he could have waited, hoping for another glimpse.
Ross Abbott was good at waiting.
Kincaid’s dread grew. Taking out his phone, he found Kieran’s number and dialed.
Two rings, three, then a woman’s voice said a tentative
“Sorry,” Kincaid said. “I was trying to reach Kieran. Is this his—”
“Superintendent? It’s Tavie. He left his phone in my kitchen.” She sounded perplexed. “I can’t imagine why he’d—”
“Do you know where he went?”
“He left a note on my chalkboard. Something about ‘going to the cottage.’ Did he mean . . . her cottage? Becca Meredith’s? Why would he do that now?” There was a hint of hurt in Tavie’s voice.
“He didn’t say?”
“No. But—”
“How long ago?”
“He hadn’t come home when I left for the shops an hour ago, so I know it’s been less than that.”
It suddenly seemed very important to Kincaid that Kieran wasn’t alone. “Did he take Finn?”
“Yes, but he left Tosh here. Superintendent, what’s—”
“Just stay there, Tavie. I can’t explain right now. And if Kieran comes back, tell him to call me. Right away. Don’t let him go anywhere else, and don’t let anyone in the house.”
He hung up before she could ask anything more.
Freddie was watching him as if he’d gone suddenly daft, but Doug had had no trouble following the one-sided
