No Mark upon Her

Chapter Eighteen

Our partnership worked, not by luck, but by intense practice, a little creativity, and total cooperation in pursuit of our common goal.

—Brad Alan Lewis

Assault on Lake Casitas

When Kincaid reached Henley, he drove down New Street into Thames Side, past the Hotel du Vin and Freddie Atterton’s flat. He pulled the Astra into a parking spot facing the river, from where he could see the lights of Henley Bridge, and on the far side, Leander.

It was now fully dark, but he imagined the scene as it would have looked on Monday, a little earlier in the evening—the light fading on the river, the sliver of a boat, ghostly white in the dim light, pushing away from Leander’s landing raft.

Rolling down the Astra’s window, he listened, imagining the quiet splish of the oars, the rhythmic creak of the shell’s seat as it moved up and down on the runners, the thunk of the oars moving against the oarlocks as the boat whispered past. And then it vanished into the darkness.

Reluctantly, he turned his gaze from the river and switched his phone on, checking for messages. There was nothing from Chief Superintendent Childs, but his relief was short-lived as he thought out the implications.

Did that mean that Craig had not complained about Kincaid’s visit and accusations? That he was waiting to see if his threats had been enough to warn Kincaid off?

And if that was the case, was that further evidence of his guilt?

Or was it just that Craig was marshaling his support and the retaliation was yet to come?

No matter, Kincaid thought, whether Craig struck back now or later—he had no more evidence against Craig than he had before he’d spoken to him. In fact, with Craig’s possible alibis for both Monday evening and Wednesday night, he had even less.

He gazed out at the river again, putting together the timeline as he’d worked it out. If Becca had left Leander a little after half past four, she’d have rounded Temple Island and started back upriver sometime between five and half past.

Could Craig have murdered Becca at five o’clock, then walked, wet and muddy, back to his car, driven back to Hambleden, got himself cleaned up, and strolled blithely into the pub before six?

Certainly not without his wife’s knowledge, if she’d been at home, but Kincaid thought he could safely say that they would not get a damning statement from Edie Craig.

It would take physical evidence to tie Craig to the crime—matching hair, fiber, or footprints from the scene of Becca’s murder to his car or person. But even that would be questionable, as they had no absolute proof that Becca had been killed at the spot Kieran had indicated. In any case, there was nothing concrete enough against Craig to allow Kincaid to float a request for comparison.

And even if he could pin Becca’s murder on Craig, it looked as if Craig had a solid alibi for the time of the attack on Kieran’s boatshed.

But if Craig hadn’t attacked Kieran, who had? Not Freddie Atterton, if the phone records and his former mother-in-law confirmed his alibi.

Kincaid debated staying in Henley. Should he have another word with Freddie? Question Kieran again? He felt boxed in—but he knew there was something on the other side of the wall, if he could only see it. And if he asked the right people the right questions. But who and what?

The air blowing down the river was cold. He shivered and rolled up his window, having almost made up his mind to put up at the Red Lion, when his phone rang. It startled him so much that he almost dropped it, but when he’d fumbled it right side up, he saw that it was Doug.

“Guv,” said Doug as soon as Kincaid answered. “I’m just back at the Yard. I’ve—”

“Have you seen the chief super?” Kincaid interrupted.

“No, but—”

“Well, make yourself invisible. I’ve put my foot in a wasp’s nest and I don’t want you getting stung.”

There was a moment’s silence as Doug digested this. Then he said, “I’m in your office, and I think the chief has gone for the day.” Carefully he added, “Um, I take it the visit didn’t go well?”

“Depends on your point of view.” Kincaid made an effort to keep his voice calm. “I have absolutely no doubt that he raped Rebecca Meredith. He as much as admitted it. But I’m not seeing anything that will let us tie him to her murder.”

“What about Connolly’s boatshed?”

Kincaid shifted uncomfortably. “Craig was surprised when I asked him where he was on Wednesday night. I don’t think he knew what had happened. And, apparently, at the time, he was in London, meeting with very important people, as he put it.”

“Ah. Would one of those important people happen to have been Peter Gaskill?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me.”

“That’s one of the things I was calling to tell you,” Doug said with an air of satisfaction. “I’ve done some checking. Seems they’re very matey, your friend and Gaskill. As in, Gaskill owes Craig his promotion.”

“You didn’t talk to Gaskill, did you?” Kincaid asked with a jolt of alarm.

“No. I’d have avoided him in any case, but he was out this afternoon. Golfing.”

“Is that so?” Kincaid found he wasn’t surprised. “What a coincidence. Our friend was golfing as well. Who did you talk to?”

“DC Bisik. It seems Sergeant Patterson was right about it not being a good idea to be seen talking to us. She was seconded to another division by the end of the day yesterday.”

“What?” Kincaid’s hand tightened on the phone. “Where?”

“Dulwich. I’ve checked with the station there. She reported for duty this morning, although the inspector seemed rather surprised to find that he needed another detective sergeant.”

Gaskill’s doing, no doubt, Kincaid thought. And probably Craig’s, setting in motion a chain of commands that had resulted in DS Patterson’s quick removal. He wondered how many of the links in the chain were willing participants.

“She’d gone home by the time I rang the station. Bisik gave me her mobile number,” Doug continued, “but she’s not answering.”

“No,” Kincaid said. “I doubt that she would.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “I suspect she learned her lesson about talking out of school.”

“Well, we need to speak to her again, regardless. The thing is, Bisik could only think of one thing that was different about Becca’s day on Friday. Another female officer came in, a DCI from Vice. Apparently she was an old mate of Becca’s. Bisik wasn’t introduced to her, but he had the impression that Kelly Patterson was. He also had the idea that Becca and this copper might have gone out for drinks.

“Gaskill would know who she was, I’m sure, but I doubt you want me asking him,” Doug added. “Nor the guv’nor.”

“No.” Kincaid thought about their strategy. “If Patterson doesn’t return your calls tonight, can you be at her station first thing in the morning? Unofficially.”

He couldn’t quite get his head round the fact that he couldn’t go to his own chief superintendent with this. How much did Childs know? Was he privy to all of Craig’s and Gaskill’s maneuvering, or was he merely following orders he’d been given?

Kincaid still found it hard to believe that the man he’d thought he knew, and thought of as his friend, as well as his superior, would countenance protecting Craig if he knew the truth about him.

Should he try to—

“Hang on,” said Doug. “E-mail just came in on your computer. It’s the lab results from the SOCOs on Freddie Atterton’s car and the things they took from his flat.” There was a moment’s pause as Doug read, and Kincaid could imagine him pushing his glasses up on his nose. Then Doug went on. “You can say I told you so to the guv’nor. There were no traces of grass or mud from the riverbank, either in the car or on the clothing. No fiber match. And the footprint at the site was a size smaller than Atterton’s shoes.

“And”—there was a spark of excitement in Doug’s voice—“in the debris against the bank, they found a chip of paint that matches the Filippi’s hull.”

“So she was killed there,” Kincaid said slowly. “And not by Freddie Atterton.” He thought about Freddie and Kieran Connolly, both about the same size and height. “I’d wager the smaller shoe size rules out Kieran as well.”

“You were thinking Connolly might have made up the whole story about seeing the man on the riverbank, then torched his own boatshed for verisimilitude?”

“Watch it with the big, university words,” Kincaid told him with a trace of returning humor. “But, yes, I’d considered it, although I didn’t think it likely.”

But if they ruled out Freddie, and they ruled out Kieran, that brought them back to Angus Craig, and Kincaid back to square one. How the hell could they—

His phone buzzed with an incoming call. Gemma. “Hold on. Or let me just ring you back,” he said to Doug, and clicked over.

Gemma didn’t give him an opportunity to say more than hello. Her words tumbled out on a rising wave of excitement. “We found something. Or I should say Melody did. Going through Sapphire’s unsolved rape records. The rape and murder of a female senior police officer. Six months ago. It fits his pattern.”

When she came to a breathless halt, his hands had gone cold and he felt queasy. “Is there any proof?” he asked.

“There might be a witness. The barmaid at the pub where the woman was drinking right before she was killed. We won’t be able to contact her until tomorrow.”

“Have you or Melody spoken to anyone else about this?”

“No, I didn’t—”

“Well, don’t.” He knew his voice was sharp, but he had to make his point. “Call whoever you talked to at the pub and tell them not to speak to anyone about this—no, have Melody do it. I don’t want you involved any more than necessary. Where are you now?”

“I’m just about to pick up Charlotte from Betty’s.”

“Get Charlotte and go home,” he said, his voice grim. “Stay there. Don’t talk to anyone. Tell Melody not to talk to anyone. I don’t want this going any further until we know for certain if the barmaid can give us an ID.”

“You think he’s really dangerous, don’t you?” Gemma sounded subdued now, the rush of excitement gone.

“Yes. I do.” He thought of the venom, and the overweening arrogance, that had spewed from Angus Craig, and he wished he had never let Gemma anywhere near this case. “Just be careful, love. I’ll be home in an hour.”

He rang Doug as he drove back to London, filling him in on Gemma’s news and asking him to keep trying to reach Kelly Patterson.

When he reached Notting Hill at last, he was glad to see their house, with its cheery red front door and the lights shining in the windows. He tried not to think about the fact that they were, at least in some sense, indebted to Denis Childs for it.

Gemma greeted him as he walked in, brushing his lips with hers, then resting her cheek against his just an instant longer than usual. “Are you hungry?” she asked, stepping back. “It’s pizza again, I’m afraid. I stopped at Sugo’s on the way home.” With a little smile, she added, “We’re going to turn into pizzas if we’re not careful.”

“Toby would be thrilled with that. What would he choose, do you think? Pepperoni?” Kincaid hung up his overcoat, fished from the boot of the Astra. He bent to stroke Geordie and Sid, their rather large black cat. Sid had developed a doglike sense of prescience regarding Kincaid’s arrival, and always seemed to have settled down nonchalantly for a nap on the hall bench just five minutes beforehand.

“You’d be artichoke, then.”

“Shhh. Don’t tell the children,” Kincaid said, making an effort at normalcy. “Maybe I’ll have to get a bit more inventive on the dinner front when I’m home full-time. I am, after all, going to be a proper househusband.”

Gemma gave him a quick glance, a question in it, but merely said, “The children have been fed and the little ones bathed. Charlotte’s waiting for you to say good night. Artichoke and ham pizza warming in the oven for you, after.”

“Right. Thanks, love.” The house was warm, and as he glanced into the sitting room, he saw that Gemma had lit the gas fire. The room, however, was empty. “Boys upstairs, then?

“Supposed to be reading.” Gemma rolled her eyes. “Heaven knows what Toby’s really doing. Kit will be texting.”

“Lally?”

Gemma nodded. “I suspect we’re going to have to rethink the unlimited texting option.”

They’d given Kit a basic mobile phone for his birthday at the end of June, both for safety reasons and because they’d hoped it would help him fit in better at school. However, hours spent texting his cousin Lally every day had not been what they had in mind. And while Kincaid loved his niece, he knew she was both emotionally volatile and needy. He didn’t think that much contact with her was healthy for Kit.

“I’ll check on them.” He slipped off his suit jacket, hanging it on the coat rack next to his overcoat and the little ones’ macs, then climbed the stairs to Charlotte’s marigold-yellow bedroom on the first floor.

He peeped through the half-open door. The bedside lamp was switched on low, casting a pool of light on the small huddle beneath the bedclothes. As he came into the room, he saw that Charlotte was fast asleep. The covers were drawn up to her nose, but one small hand was free, stretched towards the bright blue hair bow on the bedside table.

He sat on the edge of the bed and smoothed her hair back from her forehead. She didn’t stir. Carefully he leaned down and kissed the corner of her eyebrow, conscious of the stubble on his jaw, then tucked her hand beneath the duvet.

He was glad he’d come home.

Tiptoeing out, he checked on both boys, pleased to find that Toby was doing nothing more destructive than building a railway track on their floor.

Kit was, at least ostensibly, reading, but as Kincaid came in, he saw the boy slip his phone under his pillow.

Gemma was right, Kincaid realized, but dealing with the combined issues of the phone use and Kit’s relationship with his cousin would have to wait a bit longer. He had other things to settle at the moment.

When he came back downstairs after speaking to the boys, Gemma had put out a plate for him with the pizza slices, and had poured him a glass of red wine. She’d opened the bottle of Bordeaux he’d been saving.

Tess, Kit’s terrier, had been upstairs, curled on the foot of Kit’s bed, but Geordie had stayed in the kitchen with Gemma. Now he settled on the floor, resting his head on Kincaid’s foot with a sigh. Sid kept watch on them from the far chair, his eyes on the pizza. The cat was an incorrigible food thief.

Gemma was drinking tea and had a stack of papers beside her cup. When he started to reach for them, she stopped his hand with hers. “Eat first.”

Obediently, he ate a slice of pizza, his favorite, and drank half a glass of the wine. But he had no appetite, and the wine he’d been anticipating as a special treat left an acrid taste in his mouth.

He thought of the fire burning invitingly in the sitting room. But here they were in the kitchen, which was where all their important conversations seemed to take place. Was it the same in other families? he wondered. He had an instant’s intense longing for his parents’ kitchen in Cheshire, where everything momentous in his family had been discussed. And where he and Juliet, as children, had inevitably felt safe.

But he felt no security tonight, even here. He pushed his plate away and reached for the papers, and this time Gemma didn’t stop him.

She watched him as he read, and when he looked up, her expression was somber. “It was him, wasn’t it?”

He nodded. “I think so.”

“He was escalating, wasn’t he? Taking on more powerful women, becoming more violent. He took a big risk with Becca Meredith, and he got away with it. That must have made him feel invincible.” She reached across the table and touched the papers. “Do you think this woman—Jenny Hart—do you think she told him she wouldn’t be blackmailed into silence?”

Picking up the pages again, he glanced at the crime-scene photos. The coffee table in Jenny Hart’s sitting room had been overturned. There was broken glass on the floor, as well as scattered magazines and newspapers. “Not just that,” he said. “She fought, hard.” He looked up at Gemma. “The other women—did they report injuries, bruising, any throttling?”

“Bruising, yes,” said Gemma. “One victim had a shattered cheekbone.”

Kincaid thought of Angus Craig’s powerful arms and shoulders. When he raped, Craig had used surprise, strength, and intimidation, probably in that order. But with Jenny Hart, perhaps he’d been past caring about the intimidation part of the equation. Perhaps his need for violence had passed the point of no return.

Kincaid guessed that up until Jenny Hart, Craig’s rapes had been crimes of opportunity, although he must have gone to functions and pubs hoping he would find a suitable target.

Had Hart been different? Had he known where she drank, and when she was likely to be there? Had he intended murder when he’d met Jenny Hart in the pub that night?

If so, Becca Meredith’s murder seemed a small and rather cautiously executed action. Why had he not surprised her in her home, if he knew she lived alone?

Kincaid answered his own question. Because Craig had known what he was dealing with in Becca Meredith, and he would have known that she wouldn’t be taken defenseless again.

But what Kincaid still didn’t understand was why Craig had chosen to kill Becca Meredith now, rather than a year ago when she’d first threatened to expose him.

What the hell had triggered it? And hadn’t Craig thought Gaskill would be suspicious if Becca died mysteriously? Or was Gaskill so crooked that Craig had felt sure he could depend on him even then . . .

“Earth to Duncan.” Gemma waved a hand in front of his face. “You’re right away with the fairies, love. How about you talk to me.”

“I don’t like this,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t like you or Melody being involved with this. Craig has too much power.” The idea of Gemma having even peripheral contact with the man made him see red.

“I’ll take over the Jenny Hart inquiry from here on,” he went on. “Doug and I will interview the barmaid tomorrow—although it might be better if Doug was out of it as well.”

Gemma gave him the look that meant she wasn’t having it. “And if the guv’nor calls you off before you have the chance?” she asked. “What then? You’ll be dead in the water and nobody will be able to touch Craig. Let Melody do the interview. It’s a legitimate Project Sapphire follow-up, and she doesn’t have to clear it with anyone. If she gets a positive ID, you can take it from there.”

She was right, although he hated to admit it. He drank a little more of his wine, then said reluctantly, “All right. But it’s Melody’s interview, not yours,” he cautioned. “I don’t want you connected with this in any way.”

“Of course not,” said Gemma, but she looked like the Cheshire Cat.

He felt his blood pressure shoot up. “You’ve got to take this seriously, Gemma. Have you really looked at these photos?” Smacking his palm on the stack of papers for emphasis, he said, “I don’t think you realize just how dangerous this man is. I don’t want—”

His phone rang. He’d put it on the table when he sat down to eat, and the vibration made the cutlery rattle against his plate. Geordie lifted his head and growled.

“Bloody hell,” Kincaid muttered as he reached for the offending instrument. “Now what? I swear I’m going to throw the damned thing in the bog next time it rings.”

The tightening in his jaw made him realize he was still waiting for Angus Craig’s ax to fall.

But once again it wasn’t the chief superintendent ringing to pass along Craig’s ire or to give Kincaid an official reprimand.

According to the phone ID, it was Detective Constable Imogen Bell.

“Sir,” she said when he answered, sounding surprisingly diffident. “It’s DC Bell here. Sorry to bother you so late, and you’re probably at home—I checked with the Red Lion but they said you’d gone . . .”

“Never mind where I am, Bell. Out with it.” Meeting Gemma’s inquiring glance across the table, he shrugged in consternation.

“Sorry, sir,” said Bell. “Didn’t mean to pry.” She sounded even more uncomfortable. “It’s just that—I, um, I’ve a little problem here. I seem to . . . well, I seem to have lost Freddie Atterton.”