No Mark upon Her

by Deborah Crombie

  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 hello.

  “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 conversation. “Where?” he asked.

  “Becca’s cottage. Freddie, do you have—”

  His phone rang, startling him. Thinking it was Kieran, he picked up with a rush of relief. “Thank God. What were—”

  “Duncan?”

  “Gemma?” he said, surprised. “Look, love, sorry, but I can’t talk—”

  “There’s something you should know,” she broke in. “I should have rung you sooner. There’s this guy, Ross Abbott. His wife—”

  “I know who Ross Abbott is.” Kincaid’s gut clenched. “How do you—never mind. What’s happened?”

  “I think he may have had a pretty good reason to kill Becca Meredith. And now he’s got a gun. I don’t know what he means to—”

  “I do,” said Kincaid.

  The rumble of thunder came with a gust of rain and a spatter of wind, just as Kieran dug the key from beneath the flowerpot at the corner of the cottage.

  It was dark enough now that Kieran couldn’t see the approaching storm, but he didn’t need to—he could sense it. His head felt full, as if it might explode. Beside him, Finn whined. He knew the signs as well as Kieran.

  Kieran flinched as thunder cracked, nearer, but he rose unsteadily to his feet and said, “I’m going to be okay, boy.” He wasn’t going to let the damned weather keep him from doing what he’d come here for.

  The porch was dark, and he fumbled at the lock, wishing he’d brought his torch from the Land Rover. It had seemed odd to park on the verge in front of the cottage. Always before, he’d parked up by the church, so as, according to Becca, not to give the neighbors food for gossip.

  The lock clicked open and he stepped inside, Finn at his knee, and switched on the lights.

  As the lamps illuminated the familiar sitting room in a warm glow, Kieran’s heart contracted with the buffet of memories. He’d been so focused on his task he hadn’t realized how the cottage would feel with Becca gone.

  “Not just gone. Dead,” he said aloud, and steeled himself. The photo was on the shelf in the bookcase, just where he remembered. Crossing the room, he took it down and sat carefully on the sofa beside the lamp, Finn settling at his feet.

  Kieran held the photo between his hands, examining it, and the frozen faces captured in the photo stared back at him. He picked out Freddie, looking impossibly young, gazing into the camera with hungry defiance.

  Then, beside Freddie, the man he’d seen at the Red Lion. Younger, leaner, less heavy in the jaw, but unmistakably the same.

  And he remembered the story Becca had told him, the night she’d taken the photo down and held it under this very lamp. It was late summer, after dark, and they’d made love half on the sofa, half on the floor. Then, lazily curled up beneath a throw, they’d begun—of course—to talk about rowing. It was all they’d ever talked about, really.

  “Do you know how easy it is to nobble a rower before a race?” she’d asked.

  “I’ve heard of it being done,” he’d said. “I’ve never seen it happen. At least not that I know of.”

  “I have.” Slipping from beneath the blanket, she’d padded, naked, to the bookcase, and he’d admired the long, muscled line of her back. She took the photo down and came back to the sofa, snuggling under the blanket again, her bare shoulder resting against his.

  She’d touched the now-familiar face in the photo, and he remembered how he’d always thought her hands remarkably delicate for a tall woman—that is, if you didn’t notice the calluses from the oar grips on her palms. “This guy—he was bowside—barely made the second boat. But he always thought he deserved better than he got, and he was convinced he should have been in the Blue Boat. He bitched and moaned for weeks, until Freddie told him to shut up and get on with his job.

  “He kept quiet after that, and I didn’t think any more of it until it was too late.”

  “What happened?” Kieran had sat up, interested.

  “They usually keep the crew pretty sequestered before the race, but some of the wives and girlfriends were invited to a press party the day before. The guys weren’t supposed to be drinking, it was all squash and lemonade and everyone on the very proper sportsmanlike up-and-up, with some fancy canapés to make up for the lack of alcohol.

  “But other people were being served drinks, and when I saw him”—she tapped the photo— “switch his glass with the guy rowing the same position in the Blue Boat, I thought it was just a prank, maybe a bit of vodka in the lemonade or something.”

  She’d looked up at Kieran then, her hazel eyes flashing with an anger that hadn’t faded. “Until the next day, when the Blue Boat went out with him in it. I couldn’t believe it.

  “I’d got a place on one of the following launches, cold and rough as it was that day. Not very pleasant, but I wanted to see Freddie win. It meant so much to him, to all the crew. They’d worked so hard, and they were all my friends.”

  “What happened to the guy who was supposed to be in the Blue Boat?” Kieran asked.

  “Ill, the rumors were. Maybe food poisoning, oysters on the canapés at the press party the day before. Later, I found out he was so dehydrated that they had to send him to hospital. But,” Becca added, her voice dripping sarcasm, “what unexpected good fortune for his replacement. Except that his replacement couldn’t bloody do the job. He wasn’t fit enough, he wasn’t good enough, and by the halfway mark you could see him weighing down the boat like a lead anchor. Oxford never had a chance. But he got his sodding Blue.”

  “What happened afterwards? You reported it?”

  She’d shaken her head. “No. And I’ve never forgiven myself. But his fiancée was one of my best friends. We rowed together, we were going into the police together after uni. When I told her what I’d seen, she said I had to be mistaken. She begged me not to say anything, for her sake, and after all, I had no proof.

  “Not that I’d have needed any. Hearsay would have been enough to damn him forever in the sacred community of Old Blues.” The note of derision was unmistakable.

  “So you didn’t tell? Not even your ex-husb
and?”

  “No. Not after I’d promised my friend.” Becca had shivered and drawn the blanket up to her chin. The anger drained from her face. “But it didn’t matter that I didn’t tell. It ruined our friendship anyway—the secret ate away at it like a cancer. Obligation made her hate me more in the end than outright betrayal would have. Betrayal, maybe, we could have got past.”

  “Why tell me now?” Kieran had asked, brushing a stray strand of hair from her face.

  “Because—” She’d shrugged, her brow furrowed. “Because you don’t know them. You don’t belong in that world. That”—she’d smiled, touching his cheek—“is a good thing.” Then, she’d trailed her fingers along his bare arm, making him shiver in turn, but her eyes had still been far away. “And because,” she’d added slowly, “I needed to remind myself that secrets kept only fester.”

  The image of Becca, for a few moments so vivid, faded, and Kieran sat alone in the cold cottage, holding nothing but a photo.

  A photo of a man who had killed Becca and tried to kill him, he was certain now. But if this man had been willing to murder Becca to keep his secret, why had he waited all these years? What had changed?

  Thunder cracked, and the wind blew a fusillade of rain against the old cottage windows. Kieran jerked and the photo slid from his hands, bouncing on the faded carpet that covered the floorboards in front of the sofa.

  But there’d been another sound, beneath the drumming of the rain—or had there? He couldn’t pinpoint it. His ears were ringing now, his head pounding, his palms sweating, the storm bringing the onslaught of adrenaline that he’d tried so hard to learn to control.

  Finn raised his head, listening. Maybe, thought Kieran, his mouth dry, maybe he wasn’t crazy. Maybe Finn had heard something, too.

  He held his breath, but the only sound that came to him was his heart beating in his ears. It must have been a car door he’d heard, or some other ordinary noise—a neighbor coming home, someone calling their cat in from the rain. Not shelling, not here.

  All he had to do was calm down, he told himself, and remember that his mind could control his body. He would be all right if he just—

  Finn stood, the motion so fast it knocked Kieran’s knees sideways. The fur rose along the dog’s neck and back like a stiff-bristled brush.

  And then he growled.

  As hard as Tavie had worked to make a new life for herself, and as much as she’d come to enjoy being on her own, she found her house without Kieran’s large—and sometimes awkward—presence, weirdly and uncomfortably empty.

  Why had he gone to Becca Meredith’s cottage? Was it because he was grieving? But this had been sudden, hence the dashed note on the chalkboard. And he’d been in a panic, or he’d never have forgotten his phone.

  Then when she’d talked to Superintendent Kincaid, he’d been short with her. Not rude, but abrupt in the way she recognized, a commanding officer working out strategies in an emergency. But he hadn’t said where he was or how long it would take him to get to Kieran.

  The thought of Kieran, alone at the Remenham cottage, facing some unknown danger, made up her mind in an instant. She pocketed his phone, in case the superintendent called back, then ran through the sitting room, grabbing her jacket off the hook by the door.

  Tosh’s yip stopped her. The German shepherd danced eagerly at her feet, then nipped at the lead hanging on its own hook. “I know you want to go,” said Tavie.

  She was torn. Knowingly, she risked the dog’s safety every time they went out on a search, because that was their job, Tosh’s job, and Tavie knew the rules and the risks. But this—she had no idea what she might be walking into. No, she decided. Fearing for Kieran was bad enough—she couldn’t put Tosh in a situation where she was blind to the danger.

  Kneeling, she cupped her dog’s muzzle in her hand. “Not this time, girl. You stay here.” She gave a last glance at her safe haven, absently tucking the lead in her pocket as she ruffled Tosh’s coat. “Guard the house, girl.”

  They’d taken the Astra, against Freddie’s protests that he knew the road better and his Audi was faster. But taking Freddie had been against Kincaid’s better judgment—he was not going to compound it by letting a civilian drive.

  He’d only been convinced to let Freddie come with them because Freddie knew the cottage, and more important, because Freddie knew Ross Abbott. Maybe as a friend, Freddie could convince Abbott to be sensible.

  If they weren’t too late.

  The rain was coming down in sheets now, rendering the Astra’s windscreen wipers virtually useless, and Kincaid was struggling to follow the lane. He’d no idea how close he was to Remenham.

  “Here,” said Freddie. “Cut the lights.”

  “I can’t bloody see as it is,” Kincaid replied, but he slowed and switched off the headlamps. The world changed, as drastically as a photo seen in negative, the landscape now visible as a vista in blacks and silvery grays.

  “Now the engine. Coast into the verge. We’re close.”

  Kincaid wondered if Freddie had entertained secret fantasies of tactical ops, but he trusted his judgment on their position.

  As the Astra came to a stop, wipers down, the rain closed in on them like a curtain and roared against the roof.

  Then, the downpour lessened for a moment, and Kincaid made out the dim shape of a car parked ahead of them on the verge.

  “It’s Ross’s,” said Freddie flatly, and Kincaid knew that their worst fears were confirmed.

  Doug had called for backup, asking them to come in quietly, but Kincaid had no idea how long it would take. Beside him, Doug clicked off his seatbelt. “Guv, you sure you don’t want me to call again?” His voice was a little high.

  “No time. We’ve got to get in there.” Was it the right decision? he asked himself. But he couldn’t sit and wait, knowing Kieran’s life was in danger.

  “Water rats it is, then,” said Doug with forced nonchalance. None of them had weather gear, so any entrance they made was likely to resemble specters from the deep.

  Kincaid turned to Freddie in the backseat. “Your keys.” When Freddie handed them over, Kincaid added, “You stay back unless I tell you otherwise. Agreed?”

  He had to assume Freddie’s nod was the best answer he was going to get. “Quietly, then.”

  As soon as he stepped out into the rain, he realized that no one was likely to hear the soft closing of car doors. He was instantly soaked, water plastering his hair, running in rivulets down his face. From the corner of his eye, he saw Doug take off his glasses and slip them into his inside pocket, and he wondered if Cullen would be more blind with the water-fogged glasses or without them. A fine trio they made.

  And after all his admonishments, it was Freddie who had to lead the way. They passed Kieran’s Land Rover, parked hard by the garden gate, and then they could see, through a gap in the sitting room curtains, light inside the cottage.

  Oriented now, Kincaid motioned Doug and Freddie back. He’d seen something else—a crack of light seeping from the cottage’s front door. Someone had failed to shut it all the way.

  He sidled up to the door, feeling for a moment ridiculously like a cop in an American TV show. In his career, there had been few moments when he’d wished he carried a gun, but this was one of them. He thought he heard a low growling sound.

  Peering in, he saw Kieran sitting on the floor with his back against the sofa, his arms wrapped in a bear hug round a struggling, snarling Finn. All the dog’s attention was focused on the man who stood between Kincaid and Kieran, his back to the door.

  Ross Abbott, Kincaid assumed.

  The widening of Kieran’s eyes as he glanced towards the door gave Kincaid away.

  Abbott spun round, and Kincaid saw that he held a small-caliber handgun. It looked like a toy in Abbott’s large hands, but it was certainly big enough to do someone fatal damage. The gun bobbed and waved as Abbott moved back a step, trying to keep Kieran and Kincaid in his sight at the same time. He was obviously not
used to handling a gun. Kincaid wasn’t sure if that frightened him more or less.

  “Get back,” said Abbott.

  Kincaid raised both hands, palms open, and stepped into the room. “It’s Ross, isn’t it? Why don’t you put the gun down. I’m sure this is all a misunderstanding. I’m Duncan, by the way,” he added, taking another step forward.

  “You’re a bloody cop. Don’t take me for a fool. Do you think I don’t know a cop when I see one?” Abbott sounded close to hysteria, but he’d instinctively moved farther from the door, leaving Kincaid more room to advance.

  “Your wife is worried about you,” Kincaid said, not bothering to deny his identity. Gemma had told him everything she’d learned from Chris Abbott, but now he had to decide how much he should reveal to Ross.

  “You’ve been talking to my wife? You bastard.” The gun steadied on Kincaid.

  The low rumble of Finn’s growl rose into a snarl again. From the corner of his eye, Kincaid saw Kieran grip him tighter.

  “Your wife talked to some of my colleagues, Ross,” he said. “We know what Angus Craig did to her. We know you have good reason to be upset. But Craig’s dead, and there’s no reason to keep secrets anymore.” He wasn’t going to tell Abbott they knew he’d murdered Becca, not when he had a gun in his hand.

  “Right.” Abbott flicked his eyes from Kincaid to Kieran and back, but there was no way he could easily keep them both in view. “And I’m Father Christmas. He”—he gestured with the gun towards Kieran—“saw me. At the river. He’s not walking out of here. And now neither are you.”

  Freddie’s voice came from behind Kincaid. “What about me, Ross? Going to shoot your old friend, too?”

  A glance showed Kincaid that Doug had come in behind Freddie, his glasses back in place. Kincaid swore under his breath. They were into damage limitation now. How many of them could Abbott take down before someone got the gun away from him?

  Kincaid tried to keep his voice calm. There was obviously no point in further subterfuge, but maybe he could talk Abbott down. “Don’t be a complete idiot, man. Your wife knows everything, and so do we. Harming anyone else will only make things worse for you and your family.”