No Mark Upon Her (18 page)

“Yesterday he seemed a bit off to me, that Kieran
bloke.” Doug’s voice crackled as the mobile signal faded in and out. “You’d have
thought that boat was the Holy Grail, the way he was fussing over it. Maybe
he
killed Becca Meredith, then tried to blow
himself up.”

“I can’t see him trying to burn his dog to death,”
Kincaid said. He’d dealt with suicides who had shot their dogs, but not
something like this. But if the relationship between man and dog was as close as
it seemed, he supposed Kieran could have sedated the dog and set the blaze as
some sort of ritual funeral pyre.

He thought it much more likely, however, that
someone
had
thrown a Molotov cocktail through Kieran
Connolly’s window. “Nor do we have any idea why Connolly would have murdered
Becca Meredith,” he went on.

“He was a rower,” Doug said. “He’d have known how
to capsize her.”

“True enough.” Kincaid was driving down Remenham
Hill, with the lights of Henley ahead. “But that’s means without motive, which
doesn’t do us much good. I’m almost there. I’ll ring you when I know more.” He
disconnected and was soon across the bridge and through the town center.
Checking the address Singla had given him, he pulled the car up in West Street,
not far from the fire station.

Warm light shone through the leaded windows of the
little terraced house. As he knocked, the murmur of voices from inside was
immediately drowned out by a chorus of barking.

“Tosh, Finn, easy,” a woman commanded, and Kincaid
recognized the team leader’s voice from the previous day. The barking stopped
and the door swung open.

“Superintendent Kincaid, isn’t it?” Tavie Larssen
looked surprised. “I thought it would be DI Singla.”

When Kincaid had met her yesterday, she’d been
wearing a dark SAR uniform. Tonight she was in her paramedic’s uniform, which
was black as well. The severe, dark clothing suited her, he thought, giving some
authority to her small frame and delicate features.

“He sent me. May I come in?”

“Oh, of course.” She stepped back and grabbed a
black Labrador retriever by the collar. Connolly’s dog—what was his name?
“Sorry, Finn’s not used to the house protocol,” said Tavie, answering his
unspoken question.

She opened a tin on the table by the door, looked
the Lab in the eyes, and said, “Sit.” The dog plopped his rear onto the floor
immediately and was joined by the German shepherd, who sat as well. They snapped
up the two dog biscuits Tavie fished from the tin with an alacrity that made
Kincaid fear for her fingers. “Good dogs,” she said. “Go lie down.”

They did.

No longer distracted by the dogs, Kincaid focused
on Kieran Connolly, who sat across the room. Connolly’s forehead was bandaged,
his face still smudged with soot and blood, his brown T-shirt and carpenter’s
trousers splashed with darker brown splotches. He started to rise, but Kincaid
waved him back. “No need to get up.”

“Here.” Tavie gestured Kincaid towards the sofa.
“I’ll just make some tea, shall I?” she said, a little uncertainly.

“That would be brilliant.”

“Right.” She smiled at him, then glanced at
Connolly with a slight frown before stepping into the adjoining kitchen.

Through the doorway, Kincaid could see a
cream-colored enamel range, and on the room’s two high, wide ledges, an antique
mirror and a few pretty china plates. In the center of the kitchen, a vase of
bright autumn foliage and berries stood on a plain wooden table.

Tavie filled an old kettle and set it on the range,
then began placing mugs on a tray.

Turning his attention to the sitting room, Kincaid
thought that it was just as simple and appealing as the kitchen. There was a
wooden chair painted in light blues and greens, adorned with a red throw, a
stack of books on the floor beside it. A small table held a globe, and wide
ledges like the ones in the kitchen displayed a few unframed portraits in oil.
Sisal carpeting covered the floor, and a gas fire burned in an iron fireplace
with a tile surround. Tosh, the German shepherd, had curled up on a floral
hooked rug before the fire. Beside her, dog toys spilled from a woven
basket.

It was very much a single woman’s house, Kincaid
thought, and it reminded him of the tiny garage flat that Gemma had lived in
before they’d moved into the Notting Hill house together.

Kieran Connolly, squeezed into the small
upholstered armchair, looked as awkward as the proverbial bull in the china
shop, and just as unhappy. Finn had settled at his master’s feet.

Kincaid sat carefully on the sofa, suddenly aware
of his own long legs. “How are you feeling?” he asked Connolly, who
shrugged.

“I’ll live.” He reached up as if to touch the
wound, then dropped his hand. “Tavie says I’m going to look like Harry
Potter.”

“That might not be a bad thing.” Kincaid smiled,
hoping to put him at ease. “Can you tell me what happened tonight?”

Tavie came back into the room, bearing a tray with
a teapot and mugs decorated in an alternating pattern of blue-and-white hearts
and stars. A fanciful touch for a serious woman, Kincaid thought.

“I was—I was having a bit of a rest,” Connolly
said. The glance he gave Tavie told Kincaid there was some shared meaning to
this. “On the camp bed in my shed. I repair boats, and I live in the shop.
There’s just the one room.”

Kincaid took a cup from Tavie, nodded yes to milk
and shook no to sugar. She poured Kieran’s without asking—black, with two
spoonfuls—and sat on the edge of the painted chair. “Go on,” Kincaid prompted
Kieran.

“There was a crash. Glass breaking. Then flames
shooting up. For a minute I thought—” Kieran wrapped both hands round his mug.
The tea sloshed. He was trembling. “It was like Iraq . . .” He held
the mug to his lips, sipped, swallowed, and this seemed to steady him. “But then
I saw the bottle burning. What was left of it. It was a wine bottle—I could tell
because the label stayed in one piece. So did the neck, with the burning rag
stuffed in it.

“Finn was barking like mad and pushing at me. I
knew I had to get him out. We reached the door. Then there was this—this sort of
sucking whoosh. I knew what it was—the air goes just before an explosion. I
grabbed Finn by the collar and dived for the lawn.”

Kieran closed his eyes for a moment, then drank the
rest of his tea as if suddenly very thirsty. “The next thing I remember is Tavie
telling me to get up.”

“Something like that,” she agreed drily, but she
looked pale. “I thought you were bloody dead.” Refilling Kieran’s mug, she said,
“Good thing your neighbors didn’t dither calling 999. But still, you must have
been out for several minutes. That’s quite a blow. You need to get an
X-ray—”

He gave her a look that clearly meant this was one
argument she was not going to win. “I’m fine. Just a little shaky.”

Kincaid held his mug out for a refill as well,
although after the pot of tea at home with Gemma, he was about ready to swim in
the stuff. “Kieran, do you have any idea why someone would have done this to
you?”

“I— It’s crazy. You’ll think I’m mad.”

“No, I won’t.” Kincaid leaned forward, resting his
cup on his knee. “Why don’t you tell me.”

Kieran looked up, met Kincaid’s eyes, assessing
him. Whatever he saw there seemed to swing the balance in Kincaid’s favor. “I
saw something. On Monday evening, before Becca went out on the river. And on
Sunday, the same time.”

“What do you mean, you saw something?” asked Tavie.
“You didn’t tell me.”

“I didn’t have a chance.” He looked back to
Kincaid. “I was running. Since the days have got shorter, I’ve been rowing in
the mornings and running in the evenings. You know where we found the
Filippi?”

Kincaid nodded. “Yes. And you were upset. You said
that Becca Meredith wouldn’t have capsized on a calm evening. That she was too
good a rower.”

“No one believed me.” Kieran’s face was set in a
scowl.

“We did, actually,” Kincaid reassured him. “And I
believe you now. Is that where you saw something? Where we found the boat?”

“No. But that’s not where she went in the
water.”

Kincaid sat forward, his pulse quickening. “How do
you know?”

“Because I know where she
did
go in.”

“What?” said Tavie. “Kieran, what are you—”

The German shepherd, who had been lying quietly by
the hearth, raised her head and barked, punctuation to her mistress’s alarm.

“Okay, okay.” Kincaid held up his hand like a
traffic cop. “Let’s all take it easy. Kieran, why don’t you back up and start
from the beginning.”

Kieran shifted in his chair and shot another uneasy
glance at Tavie. “Look, I know it sounds as if I was some sort of a stalker, but
it wasn’t like that. When I first met Becca, last summer, I was rowing in the
evenings—I told Tavie that. But now I’ve been taking my shell out at first
light. Then, in the evenings, I’d run the river path about the time I knew Becca
would be rowing. That made it easy for us to . . . to meet up
afterwards.”

Tavie shifted on the edge of her chair. When
Kincaid glanced at her, the expression on her delicate face was one of
disapproval. And, Kincaid thought, possibly hurt.

“Sometimes I’d go to the cottage, after she’d taken
the shell back to Leander.” Kieran threw that out like a challenge, as if her
unspoken response had irritated him. Then, he sighed. “But mostly, I just liked
to watch her row. It was—beautiful—you can’t imagine.”

“I wish I’d seen her,” said Kincaid, and he
did.

Kieran nodded, an acknowledgment. “I was never as
good as that, nowhere near, but I could tell when she was doing something wrong,
getting into a bad pattern. I suppose I was sort of an unofficial coach.
But—this last weekend, she was—different.” He hesitated, looking uncomfortable
again.

“Would you like to speak to me on your own?”
Kincaid asked, wondering if the problem lay with Tavie.

Kieran hesitated, then said, “No. No, I want Tavie
to stay. It’s just that—how things were with Becca and me . . . When I
try to explain it, it sounds—weird. But it didn’t
seem
that way. What we did together was something that was just
between us.”

“Okay. I get that,” Kincaid reassured him. “So what
was odd about last weekend?”

“I didn’t see her on the river on Friday evening.
Or on Saturday morning, which was usually her biggest training day. So I went to
the cottage. Just to make sure she was all right, you know, not ill or anything.
The Nissan wasn’t in the drive. I thought she wasn’t home, so I was surprised
when she came out.”

Kieran’s frown drew down the corner of his bandage.
“But she was—I don’t know—tense. Preoccupied. Not”—his lips tightened—“pleased
to see me. She said she’d taken the train home the night before, and she’d never
done that, not once in the time I’d known her.

“And then, when I offered to run her into London to
pick up the car, she was—short with me. She said she had things to do.”

“Did she say what?”

“No. I just left. What else could I do?” Kieran
shrugged. “I saw her out on Sunday evening, rowing, but she didn’t speak to me.
I thought—I thought maybe I’d done something wrong, something to upset her, but
I couldn’t imagine what. Then, on Monday, I must have been a bit early for my
run, or she was a bit late going out from Leander, because I missed her
altogether.”

His face twisted with grief. “If I’d just been
there . . .” He rubbed a hand across his mouth. “I might have stopped
him.”

“Stopped who, Kieran? You said you saw something.
Are you saying you saw
someone
?”

Kieran nodded. “I thought he was a fisherman. On
the Bucks bank, between Temple Island and the last meadow. The woods are heavy
there, but there’s a little green hollow between the path and the bank. He was
there on Sunday when Becca was rowing, then again on Monday evening, the same
time. When I thought about it afterwards, I realized he wasn’t actually fishing,
although he had some gear. It was more like he was—waiting.

“So, this afternoon, I went to look. There was a
footprint in the mud, and the edge of the bank looked churned up, as if there’d
been a struggle. Becca would have been rowing close to shore there, going
upriver, and as late as she was, it would have been almost completely dark
. . . She wouldn’t have seen someone until she was right on top of
them.”

“How deep is the river there?” Kincaid asked.

“Not very. A few feet, maybe, that close to the
bank.”

“So you think this—fisherman—could have waded in
and capsized her?”

“He’d have to have known how.”

“Ah.” Kincaid sat back in his chair, feeling the
weight of what had happened to Becca Meredith. Kieran’s story made sense, put
together with what they had already learned. “I think perhaps he did. You see,
we found evidence, both on the body and the shell. It looks as if she was held
under the boat with her own oar.”

“Oh, God.” Kieran’s face grew almost as white as
the gauze on his forehead. “I thought—I thought I was just being paranoid.” His
eyes filled. “Why? Why would someone do that to her?”

“I was hoping you might tell me.”

Shaking his head, Kieran said, “I can’t imagine.
Becca was—she could be sharp with people, you know? She had to be tough, with
her job, and rowers in general aren’t the most patient sort. But she’d never
deliberately hurt someone.”

“What about her competition? Would someone have
wanted to put her out of the running that badly?”

“Oh, no.” Kieran sounded horrified. “Not the girls
at Leander. I know them—they’re great. I’ve worked on their boats. And besides,
I don’t think anyone really knew how serious Becca was or how good she was.
That’s one reason she rowed in the evenings, and on Saturdays she stayed
downriver, away from the crew’s normal training course. She didn’t want people
clocking her.”