No Mark upon Her

Chapter Twenty-four

Winning at all costs is wrong, plain and simple. Certain basic, universal rules exist, and to be a true champion you must live by these rules. The consequences of doing otherwise might take a physical toll . . . or it might take a soul-killing psychological toll. Both consequences are devastating.

—Brad Alan Lewis

Wanted: Rowing Coach

“She’s lying,” said Gemma as she and Melody got back into the Escort. They’d run to escape a pattering of rain, but now that they were protected the shower seemed to have stopped.

“Yes, but about which part?” Melody responded. “How she left things with Becca? Or how she found out about Craig’s suicide?”

“It’s certainly possible that she heard about Craig from someone at work.” That had been Abbott’s curt response to Gemma’s last question. Then she’d come close to shoving them out the door, and they’d had no recourse but to leave as gracefully as they could. “It’s been more than twelve hours since the first reports began to come in about Craig,” Gemma went on, making no move to start the car, “and you know rumors are flying like wildfire. So . . . that I might believe. But Abbott was prepared to be asked about Becca, and to me she seems close to panic. I think she’s involved in Becca Meredith’s death.”

Had Chris Abbott been so convinced that the truth would ruin her career and her reputation that she’d been willing to kill to protect her past? Gemma wondered.

“I suppose Becca could have told her about her training routine, but she’d still have needed time off work to watch Becca, to find a good ambush spot, and she’d have had to juggle the time away from her kids as well,” mused Melody. “But she was a rower, so she’d have known how to tip the boat and hold Becca under—”

“Her kids,” said Gemma as realization hit her. “Christ. Melody, did you get the ages of her kids from her personnel file?”

Frowning, Melody pulled the pages from her bag. It seemed they had not been strictly window dressing. She flipped through them, then stopped, her finger holding her place. “The older boy, Landon, is nine. The younger one, Logan, is four.”

“Four?” Gemma’s stomach plummeted. “Shit.” She looked at her partner. “Four, Melody. He’s four. And we’re blinking idiots.”

“Oh, God.” Melody’s eyes went wide. “The little one. He’s Craig’s baby, isn’t he? You don’t usually just happen to have protection when you’re being raped. But why didn’t she just abort—”

“Maybe she doesn’t believe in it. Maybe she really wanted another child and she wasn’t sure whose he was—”

“Or maybe she didn’t want to tell her husband what had happened—or at least not the whole truth,” put in Melody. “Maybe she stuck to the story in the police report, rather than admitting she’d gone up to Craig’s room. Even if her intentions were innocent, it was questionable behavior, especially if her husband’s jealous.”

Gemma thought about the photos again, of the possessive drape of Ross Abbott’s arm across his wife’s shoulders. She didn’t think this was a man who would want to admit that his little son was another man’s child, no matter the circumstances of the boy’s conception. Or particularly in the circumstances of the child’s conception.

“Whatever Ross Abbott might have known before,” she said, “after Becca’s visit on Saturday, he had the whole truth. And whatever Chris Abbott knew about Becca’s training routine, she will have told—”

A movement in the rearview mirror caught Gemma’s eye.

Chris Abbott had come out of her house and was running towards the street, fumbling in her handbag. When she reached a white Mercedes SUV, she yanked keys from the bag and flung the car door open. When Abbott’s headlamps flashed on, Gemma realized how dark it had become.

“Boss?” said Melody.

“What’s she up to?” said Gemma. “Something’s happened.” She started the Escort, throwing it into gear as she watched Abbott in the mirror.

“Boss—” said Melody again, but as Abbott pulled out and barreled down the street towards them, Gemma backed up, then jerked the Escort’s wheels hard and stepped on the pedal. The car shot into the street, barely missing the Lexus parked in front, and screeched to a stop directly in Abbott’s path.

Abbott slammed the Mercedes to a halt, an inch from the Escort’s side panel. She was out of the Merc while it was still rocking from the sudden brake.

“What the fuck do you thing you’re doing?” she shouted. “Move your damned car, you bloody—” Then she saw Gemma get out of the driver’s side and stopped dead. “You,” she said, but it came out a croak.

“Where are you going, Chris?” asked Gemma. She reached Melody, who’d climbed out of the Escort’s passenger side, but she didn’t take her eyes off Abbott.

“None of your business. I told you. Get out of my way.” Abbott’s mouth was pinched in a tight, white line.

“I’m not going anywhere. And neither are you, unless you reverse out of here, and I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon.” Another car was coming down the lane behind Abbott, and Gemma suspected they’d have an irate motorist added to the mix any moment. “Get us backup,” she mouthed to Melody.

Abbott looked over her shoulder, saw the oncoming car, then turned back to Gemma. “You move your car, or your job won’t be worth the paper your warrant card’s printed on.”

“That’s not going to work with me,” said Gemma, keeping her voice level. “You’re a cop, Chris. Whatever you’ve done, you know the only thing that will help you now is to talk to us.”

“Done?” Abbott shrieked at her. “I haven’t done anything. You don’t know what you’re talking about. And if you don’t let me out of here, God help us, you’re going to be the one regretting it. I won’t be responsible.”

“Responsible for what, Chris?”

“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 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-husband?”

“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.”

Ross ignored him, his attention now focused on Freddie. “You’re a shit, Freddie Atterton. You were always a prick with your supercilious it’s all about the crew crap. That was fine for you, because you were better than the rest of us. Did you think I didn’t know you were sneering at me?” Ross bared his teeth in a smile. “I’ve wanted to hurt you for fifteen years, and now I’ll be more than happy to shoot you, too.”

The gun steadied, leveled at Freddie.

Kincaid tensed, calculating how fast he could reach Ross, praying Freddie would keep him focused a moment longer.

But it was Kieran who spoke. “Why are you talking about Craig and this bastard’s wife? He killed Becca because she knew the truth about him.”

Ross swung back towards Kieran, but Kieran seemed oblivious to the gun. “He cheated in the Boat Race,” he said. “Becca told me. He sabotaged another rower to get his position, and he lost Oxford the race. But his wife was Becca’s friend, and Becca promised her she wouldn’t tell.”

“That bitch,” Ross shouted. The gun wobbled, then steadied again, this time aimed at Kieran. “That’s a lie, you—”

But Freddie moved towards him, his voice cold with disgust. “So that’s what it was, Ross. Did you slip him laxatives? I always suspected, you know. It was just too convenient, that food poisoning, but I couldn’t just come out and accuse a crewmate, could I? It wouldn’t have been sporting, and we couldn’t have that.

“But Becca—so Becca knew all along.” Freddie didn’t hide his satisfaction. “Becca used it against you in the end, didn’t she? When Chris refused to help her bring down Craig, she threatened to tell.

“And that was the one thing you knew would ruin you utterly, wasn’t it, Ross, old buddy? You betrayed your boat, your crewmates. No one would touch you if they knew. You’d have been blackballed for life. You’ve been trading on that Blue for fifteen years, with all your deals and your sucking up to anyone it impressed, and she was going to take it all away from you. So you killed her, you sniveling little cow—”

“Shut up.” Ross looked round wildly, then turned back to Freddie. “Just shut the fuck—”

But Freddie came closer. “And you needed that next deal desperately, didn’t you, Ross? Everything was crumbling. Your credit card wasn’t declined by mistake in the bar, was it? You were the one drowning.”

One look at Ross Abbott’s expression told Kincaid that if Freddie had meant to make Ross give up, the strategy had gone horribly wrong. Behind Freddie, he saw Doug’s white, frightened face, and he knew he had to stop this, whatever the cost.

“Ross, we can work this—” he began, but Freddie seemed determined to throw petrol on the fire.

“You don’t seriously think you’re going to kill all of us and walk away?” Freddie taunted him. “After what you’ve done?”

“Just watch me,” said Ross, and pointed the gun at Freddie’s chest.

There was a flurry of motion as Finn managed to free himself from Kieran’s grasp. A black blur, the dog launched himself at Ross.

Ross spun and fired, more from surprise than intent, it seemed to Kincaid in a fraction of disjointed thought.

The dog went down with a squeal of pain. Ross staggered back towards the door, as if shocked by the gun’s recoil, and Kieran sprang to his feet with a scream of rage and horror.

Kincaid dived towards Ross, aiming for his gun arm, just as another figure hurtled through the front door, swinging a long stick.

He, no—his brain registered, she—Tavie, it was Tavie, and it wasn’t a stick, it was an oar. The oar made a thwacking sound as it connected with Ross’s shoulder. The gun flew out of his hand, skittering across the floor and under a table.

Kincaid plowed into Ross. He heard the grunt of pain and the whoosh of exhaled breath as Ross hit the floor beneath him. Then Kincaid had him pinned, and Freddie and Doug were piling onto him, grabbing for Ross’s thrashing arms and legs. Freddie got Ross by his thinning hair and smacked his head against the floor.

“Stop! Both of you, stop! Just hold him,” Kincaid shouted, but Freddie, his face tight with fury, got in another good thump.

Tavie stood over them like a small ninja, the oar raised to strike again, but the cracks on the head seemed to have stunned Ross momentarily.

“Hold him,” grunted Kincaid, reaching for his belt. Ross had gone down on his stomach, and Kincaid meant to keep him that way. Handcuffs, he thought. Why did he never have bloody handcuffs?

Then Tavie lowered the oar and reached in her pocket. “Here,” she said, sounding surprised. “It’s Tosh’s lead. I brought it by accident.” She handed him the supple length of leather.

As Kincaid wrapped the lead round Ross’s wrists and yanked hard, Freddie said wonderingly, “That’s Becca’s old Oxford oar. Where did you—”

“It was in a bin at the side of the porch. The first thing that came to—” Tavie stopped with a gasp as she glanced past him, then her voice rose in a wail of distress. “Oh, God! Finn!”

It was then that Kincaid realized Kieran wasn’t with them. When he looked up, he saw Kieran on the floor in the middle of the room, cradling Finn in his lap.

Kincaid couldn’t see any blood, but the dog was panting, the whites of his eyes showing. As Tavie knelt beside them, Kieran lifted a hand from the dog’s dark coat, and it came away bright red.

“No,” whispered Kieran, looking up at Tavie imploringly. “Please, no. I can’t—I can’t tell how bad it is.”

While Tavie ran her small, deft hands over the dog, talking quietly, Kincaid levered himself off Ross. Freddie held Ross’s shoulders down. Doug sat on Ross’s feet, his phone out, shouting for backup to hurry the hell up, for an ambulance, and for God’s sake a vet.

Ross spat a stream of curses at them all and Freddie steadily and repeatedly told him to shut up or he’d bloody thump him again.

They were all, Kincaid thought with a delayed sense of astonishment, okay.

Except the dog.

Finn, who had identified Becca’s killer. Finn, who had tried his best to protect them. Kincaid couldn’t bear the thought of Kieran, who had lost so much, losing him, too.

Crossing the room, Kincaid scooped the gun from under the table. Then, keeping an eye on Ross and his captors, he knelt by Tavie and Kieran.

She was using Kieran’s sweater as a compress, and the oatmeal-colored wool was soaked with blood. But it was the dog’s shoulder she was treating, not his head or chest.

“Is he—”

Looking up, Tavie brushed her hair back from her forehead with her free hand, leaving a red smear. “It’s messy, and I’m more used to treating people, but I think it’s just a flesh wound. I can see entry and exit through the shoulder, and the bullet seems to have missed bone and organs.”

“Good boy,” whispered Kieran, and Finn’s tail thumped. Kieran’s voice was still shaky, but his hands were not, and he was assisting Tavie with steady confidence.

“It’s all right,” said Kieran, more strongly, as if reassuring himself. But it was Tavie’s eyes he met. “Everything is going to be all right.”