No Mark upon Her

Chapter Twelve

Low areas collect scent, just as they do water. As with looping, a scent pool may produce an alert that the dog cannot work to its source because of shifting winds. These alerts must be marked on both the handler’s and the Control maps.

—American Rescue Dog Association

Search and Rescue Dogs: Training the K-9 Hero

Tavie and Ian managed to get Kieran as far as the lawn of the next-door cottage before the engine began pumping a jet of water onto the burning shed. But from there he refused to budge. He sank to the ground, his arm round Finn, blood and tears streaming down his face as he watched the flames turn to black smoke.

Tavie looked a question at Ian.

“We’re far enough, I think,” he said. Lights were appearing on the river as other residents arrived in boats and some ferried part of the brigade crew across. “They’ll have it damped down soon.”

John and his wife, a pleasant-looking middle-aged woman, had come back to their own lawn. “Can we help? Is it safe enough, now?” the woman asked Tavie. “I’m Janet, by the way.” Then she turned to Kieran. “Kieran, I’m so sorry. Anything we can do . . .”

Kieran made a sound that might have been a whimper.

“How about a towel and some water?” Tavie said briskly. “And John, can you direct the boats?” They both went quickly to their tasks.

“Now.” Tavie turned to Kieran. “I’m going to have a look at your head.”

“Leave it,” Kieran mumbled, but the protest was weak. His gaze was fixed on the fire.

Tavie opened her bag and started pulling out supplies, taking the opportunity to say quietly to Ian, “Radio the captain. Tell him what Kieran said about the petrol bomb. They’ll need to keep onlookers away from the scene and notify the police as soon as possible.”

When Janet returned with towels and a bowl filled with water, Tavie thanked her and waved her away. Kieran jerked when she began to dab at his face.

“Hold still, damn it.” She shone her torch on the damage, but as she wiped the blood away, she breathed a sigh of relief. The gash ran from his forehead into his scalp, messy, but shallow. The bleeding had already slowed to a seep.

“You need stitches. We’ll get you to A & E in no time.”

Kieran started to shake his head and winced. “Just close it up, Tavie. It’s nothing. And I’m not concussed.”

“Oh, yeah? We’ll see about that.” Using her small torch, she looked at his pupils and found them normal and reactive, a good sign. But when she saw his eyes move with little repetitive jerks, she sat back, concerned. “Kieran, you’ve got nystagmus. Have you been drinking?” She hadn’t smelled alcohol on his breath, but checking for involuntary movement of the pupils was a common sobriety test for both medics and law enforcement.

“No. It’s vertigo,” he said reluctantly. “Chronic. There was a bomb, in Iraq . . .”

“Oh, bloody hell, Kieran.” She hadn’t known that his injury had given him vertigo. That explained the eye movement and his sporadic “bad days.” “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

He glanced at her, then back at the diminishing blaze. “Would you have let me on the team if I had?”

She didn’t want to admit he was right. “And what were you going to do if you fell flat on your face in the field?”

“Tell you I tripped.” He gave a ghost of a smile. “And it’s not always this bad.” A note of pleading entered his voice. “Really. It’s just the storm, and the last few days, and—and the bang on the head . . .”

“You’re definitely going to hospital.”

“No. Tavie, please.” He put his hand on her arm, and it occurred to her that he seldom touched her voluntarily. “I’ll stay here. John can lend me a sleeping bag. I don’t want to leave the shed.”

“Don’t be daft.”

“I’ll sleep in the Land Rover, then, by the museum. I’ve done it often enough.”

“Kieran—”

“I’m conscious. You can’t force me.”

Nor could she. And when she thought of what associations hospitals must have for him, after Iraq, she put her mind to coming up with another solution.

“Come to me, then,” she said. “You and Finn. I can put you up until you’re sorted. And keep an eye on you.”

A uniformed police officer—a sergeant by his stripes—appeared out of the darkness. “This the owner of the shed?” he asked, peering at Kieran. When Kieran nodded, the sergeant went on. “What’s all this about a petrol bomb? Neighbor said you repair boats in there. Sure you didn’t get careless and set some solvent alight, mate?”

All Tavie’s fear and adrenaline suddenly condensed into a wave of fury, cold and bright. She stood up, her face inches from the sergeant’s, and jabbed her finger at his chest. “Don’t you dare take that tone with my patient. Detective Inspector Singla’s already been informed about this attack. For your information, this man was on yesterday’s SAR team, and he bloody well knows a petrol bomb when he sees one. He could have been killed tonight.”

Finn had been glued to Kieran’s side, but now he stood and made a low sound in his throat, a hint of a growl.

The sergeant gave him a wary glance and backed off a step. “Singla, is it? Don’t know him.”

“You will. Thames Valley CID. And he didn’t seem the sort to suffer fools gladly.”

“Now, look here. There’s no need to—”

Finn growled again, a bit more loudly this time.

The sergeant took another step back and seemed to decide to err on the side of prudence. “Right. DI Singla. I’ll just make certain Control is on it.”

But then, having distanced himself from Tavie and the dog by a few feet, he puffed up with renewed authority. “Mind you, whether this was arson or an accident, it’s a crime scene, and you”—he looked at Kieran—“are not to go on the property. Or remove anything from it. We’ll need a fixed address for you, Mr.—”

“Connolly,” said Tavie.

“Mr. Connolly, then,” said the sergeant. “Someone will be along to interview you shortly. And I’d advise you to keep that dog under control.”

“Finn, easy,” said Kieran.

“Mr. Connolly is going to stay with me. They both are.” Tavie gave the sergeant her address.

Kieran put his head in his hands.

Tavie looked at Kieran standing in the middle of her sitting room and wondered what on earth she was going to do with him.

He not only towered over her, he dwarfed the small room. And he was swaying slightly, like a large tree about to topple.

“Sit,” she ordered, as if he were one of the dogs, and pointed at the biggest chair.

He sat, if a little unsteadily, and she felt more comfortable now that she could look down at him. She realized she’d spent most of her time with Kieran in unenclosed spaces, where the foot’s difference in their heights hadn’t seemed so apparent.

And then, as she looked round the sitting room that suddenly felt claustrophobic, it occurred to her that the only men who had even set foot in her house were her mates from the fire and ambulance brigades who had helped her move.

The little house had been her rebellion against the sort of life she’d led with her ex, Beatty. She’d lived with her parents until she and Beatty married, when she’d moved into the flat Beatty owned in Leeds. A year later, they’d both taken jobs in Oxfordshire, and the semi-detached house on the new estate outside Reading seemed to have scooped them up of its own volition.

Eight long years later, their marriage had been fractured beyond repair, and that suburban life had paled for them both. Beatty had discovered that what he really wanted was a pliant woman who needed a manly man, and had no trouble acquiring an obliging red-haired nurse.

And Tavie had found that what she really wanted was to make her own choices, thank you very much, and that had included buying a house that hadn’t suited anyone’s wishes but her own.

Hence the doll’s house, and she’d loved it. She loved her single life, her job, her dog, and her work with SAR. Still, there were times when the house had begun to seem a bit empty, but sudden occupation by a large, bloody, surly man and his equally large dog was not quite the solution she’d had in mind.

The dogs, having finished greeting each other with thorough sniffing and much tail wagging, sat, too.

“Okay,” she said, glancing round the room a little wildly. “Let’s get your feet up.” Spotting the small trunk she used to store extra blankets, she pulled it over and plopped a cushion on top. “There you are, then.”

“I’m not crippled. I’ve just had a bang on the head.” Kieran glared at her, but the effect was somewhat lessened by the butterfly bandage on his forehead, which pulled the corner of his eyebrow up in an involuntary query.

There’d always been a rakish quality to his looks, she thought, with his pale skin, deep blue eyes, and dark, shaggy hair. Maybe a scar would suit him. At least this one would be visible.

She eyed the length of her small sofa. “I’ll sleep down here,” she said. “You can take the bed. It’s a queen-size, so I don’t think your feet will dangle off the end.” The bed was one of the few things she’d kept from the divorce.

Kieran leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. His face looked gaunt in repose, and when he spoke, his voice was heavy with exhaustion. “Tavie, I am not going to take your bed. I appreciate everything you’re doing for me. I really do.” He touched an exploratory fingertip to the bandage on his forehead, then winced. “But that’s too much. I’ll sleep on the floor. And as soon as they’ll let me, I’ll go back to the shed. I can buy another camp bed if I need to.”

Remembering the flames and aware of how much damage the pumped water would have caused, Tavie shook her head. “Kieran, there may not be anything le—”

“I have to see.” He sat up, urgency back in his voice. “It’s all I have. Whatever there is.”

Tavie sank down on the edge of the sofa. Immediately, Tosh came over and rested her head on Tavie’s knee, looking up at her with her dark shepherd brows drawn in a V. She, too, seemed unsettled by the change in their household routine. Tavie stroked the soft spot on the top of her head. “The boat—the one under the tarp—you said you were building it for her. Did you mean Rebecca Meredith?”

“I’d wanted to build a wooden shell since I first started rowing, as a kid,” he said more quietly. “My father was a furniture maker, so I knew about wood. It was— She seemed— I thought my boat might take her to the Olympics.

“It was daft, a stupid daydream.” He shook his head. “Even if she’d wanted the shell, no Olympic committee would have let her compete in a wooden boat. She’d have had the best carbon-fiber racing single money could buy.”

“Could she have done it?” Tavie asked. “The Olympics? Was she—was she that good?”

Kieran rubbed his fingers against the stubble on his jaws and blinked hard. “I’d never seen anyone row like that. For her, it was like breathing. Perfection. But winning takes more than that gift. It takes obsession, and she had that, too.”

“And you . . .” Tavie took a breath. She knew she was treading on forbidden territory, but she had to ask. “Where did you fit into that obsession?”

Kieran’s smile was brief, self-mocking. “I was . . . convenient.”

“How did you—I mean—” Tavie could feel herself blushing—“I know it’s none of my business, but how did the two of you—”

But he seemed almost relieved to talk about it. “Last summer. I used to see her rowing when I was out on the river in the evenings. Then one day she had trouble with one of her riggers, and I stopped to help. We chatted.”

Finn, having failed in his attempts to get Tosh interested in a rope tug, settled at Kieran’s feet. Kieran put his hand on Finn’s head, a mirror image of Tavie and Tosh, and for a moment she wondered if they would be whole without their dogs. Who had Kieran been with Rebecca Meredith, without Finn for armor?

He went on, his words slowing as the memory caught him up. “After that, we seemed to take our boats out at the same time. We’d row pieces, but I couldn’t quite beat her, even with the advantage of my height. And we’d talk.

“Then one evening I didn’t go. I was having—a bad day. She knew where I lived—we’d rowed upriver past the shed dozens of times. So she came to see if I was all right.”

The silence stretched into awkwardness. “And after that, you were,” said Tavie lightly, past the tightness in her throat.

Kieran shrugged, gave her the same half-mocking smile as earlier. “I always knew I was a diversion. I’m just not sure from what.”

“Yesterday . . .” Tavie thought about how to put it, then continued hesitantly. “Yesterday you said she was too good to have had an accident on a calm evening. And then tonight—the boatshed. You said it was a petrol bomb. Why? Why would someone do that to you, unless it was to do with . . .” She suddenly had trouble with the name, although yesterday she had so blithely told the dogs to Find Rebecca. Rebecca Meredith had been no more than that to her yesterday. A name. “To do with her,” she finished.

His face closed, like a shutter coming down. “I don’t know.”

“Kieran—”

Shaking his head at her, he put his hands on the arms of the chair and struggled to stand. “I should go, Tavie. It’s not—I don’t want to—whoever threw that bottle tonight could come back.”

So much for getting to spend the night in his own bed beside Gemma, Kincaid thought. He’d thrown his overnight bag back in the car and driven straight to Henley, without stopping to pick up Cullen.

When he’d rung Cullen from his mobile, Doug had offered to take the train straightaway, but Kincaid told him to wait until morning. “Let me talk to this guy, Kieran, and see what happened. I told Singla I wanted the first interview.”

“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.”

“Milo Jachym knew.”

“You’ve talked to Milo?” Kieran looked surprised, then nodded, thinking about it. “Yeah, Milo knew. But he’d coached her, and they were friends. He’s a good guy.”

Kincaid reserved judgment. Milo seemed like a nice bloke, and had appeared genuinely grieved about Becca’s death as well as concerned about Freddie. But how many more chances would Milo have to get one of his own female crew an Olympic slot? Not to mention that Becca would have trusted him if he’d called to her from the bank—and he would certainly have known how to capsize a rower.

Tavie, who’d been sitting on the edge of her chair, making an obvious effort not to interrupt, stood up and went to her dining table. Shuffling through a stack of papers, she said, “Kieran, this place—you mean upstream from Temple Island, right?”

“Yeah, it’s—”

Tavie held up a sheet of paper. “I know exactly where it is. The team on that sector had a minor alert there. It’s in the log.”

“What do you mean, a minor alert?” Kincaid asked.

“The dogs showed some interest, but seemed confused and moved on. We log any alert—sometimes they’ll form a pattern that will help us locate a victim. But this was isolated.”

Kincaid frowned. “Could the dogs have picked up Becca’s scent there, even though she was never on shore?”

“It’s possible. And he—Kieran’s fisherman—may have had it on his clothes or gear.”

“They picked up her scent from the Filippi,” Kieran said, “and it was in the water.”

“Right.” Kincaid thought of the times he’d watched Geordie, their cocker spaniel, run in the park, ears flying, nose to the ground, and he’d envied the rich sensory world that was beyond his perception. “Can I make copies of your log and your maps? I’ll have someone return the originals to you as soon as possible.”

When Tavie nodded, he turned back to Kieran. “You saw this fisherman from the opposite bank. Would you recognize him?”

“It was almost dark both days, and he wore a hat that shadowed his face. The only thing I’d be willing to swear to was that it was a man.”

“Not a tall woman?”

Kieran thought for a moment. “No. The body shape was wrong. Too wide in the shoulders. And something about the way he stood—with his legs apart.”

“Okay, we’ll go with that. But that leaves us with another big question. If we assume that the same person attacked you, how did he know who you were and where you lived? Could he have recognized you and been afraid you’d recognized him?”

“I—I don’t know. I run almost every day, and I suppose people round here know who I am, but—there’s something more. This afternoon, when I found the hollow, I could have sworn someone was watching me. Eyes between the shoulder blades. You know the feeling.”

“You think he saw you there?”

“I thought I was imagining things. But I suppose it’s possible . . .” A slight shudder ran through Kieran’s body. Finn lifted his head and Kieran reached down to stroke the dog, as if comforting them both.

“Could he have followed you today?” Kincaid asked.

“I think I’d have seen someone crossing the meadow behind me, even in the dusk.” Kieran paused, thinking it through. “But he’d have known the footpath crosses the Marlow Road. If he got back to the road by a shorter way and picked up a car, he could have seen me as I came back into Henley . . .”

“You and Finn are not exactly unnoticeable,” Kincaid agreed. “What about before the fire tonight? Did you hear anything, see anything?”

Eyes wide, Kieran said, “I’d forgotten. There was a splash. Finn heard it, too, I think. It might have been an oar.”

“So you think your arsonist came by boat?”

“It is an island. And if he’d docked farther up or down, he’d have walked through my neighbors’ gardens to get to my place, then had to go back again. The properties are very small. He’d have taken a huge risk of being seen.” Kieran’s face hardened. “My guess is he threw the damned bottle from a boat and hoped for the best. Bastard.”

Kincaid thought of the myriad of boats moored up and down both sides of Henley Bridge and gave an inner groan. Someone could easily have taken a skiff from one of the boat hire firms. Uniform branch would have their work cut out for them, trying to trace a temporarily missing boat.

He stood. There were many things to set in motion. “The arson team will get started on your shed at first light, Kieran. We’ll see what they turn up. In the meantime, I certainly think it best if you stay here.

“Tavie, I’m going to send a uniformed officer for the map and the log. I want someone guarding that spot until I can get the SOCOs there in the morning.”

Kieran pushed himself up out of the chair, although he wobbled a bit. Both the dogs jumped up as well, panting gently in anticipation of a new activity.

“Thank you,” Kieran said simply.

“I’m the one should be thanking you. Both of you.” He included Tavie with a brief smile, then turned back to Kieran. “But there’s one thing I don’t understand. Why didn’t you tell us yesterday, when we found the Filippi, that you had a relationship with Rebecca Meredith?”

“I—I just—I suppose all I could think was to do what she wanted. And she didn’t want anyone to know about us.”

“Why? You were both single adults.”

“I used to believe it was because she was ashamed of me.” Kieran looked down at his blood- and soot-spattered clothes. “Even at the best of times, I’m not exactly the guy you introduce at office parties or take to your family’s Christmas dinner.”

“Would her ex-husband have minded that she was seeing someone?”

Kieran considered. “I don’t think so. At least, they seemed to be friends. But she said—one time when we’d had as much of a row as you could have with Becca, because she would just shut you out—she said that she couldn’t be seen to have a—a relationship with anyone.”

From the way Kieran colored and glanced at Tavie, Kincaid suspected that those weren’t the exact words Becca had used. “Why not?” he asked.

“She said she couldn’t risk it being used as ammunition against her.”