No Mark upon Her

Chapter Two

In the single shell I found my instrument . . .

—Sara Hall

Drawn to the Rhythm

Freddie Atterton swiped his member’s tag over the scanner at the entrance to the Leander car park, then drummed his fingers on the steering wheel while he waited for the gate bar to rise. The Audi’s wipers swished, all but useless at moving the sheets of water streaming across the windscreen. Peering forward as the bar lifted, he eased out the clutch and felt the gravel shift under the car’s tires as he inched forward.

“Sodding rain,” he muttered as he pulled into the nearest available space. The car park was fast turning into a bog. He’d be lucky if he could get the car out again. Nor was there any way he was getting from the car to the clubhouse without ruining his hand-stitched Italian leather shoes, or keeping his jacket from getting soaked before he could get his umbrella up.

Killing the engine, he glanced at his watch—five minutes to eight. There wasn’t time to wait it out. He didn’t want to dash dripping into the club and find his prospective investor there before him. This breakfast meeting was too important to start it off looking like a drowned—and harried—rat.

And he’d meant to be better informed. Damn Becca for not ringing him back last night. He’d tried her again this morning, but she still hadn’t picked up on either phone.

With more than a decade as an officer in the Metropolitan Police, Becca knew almost everyone who was anyone in the force. Freddie had thought she might be able to give him some tips on his prospect, who was a recently retired Met officer. Not that one expected run-of-the-mill Metropolitan Police officers to be flush enough to sink money into what Freddie admitted was a still slightly sketchy property deal.

But this bloke, Angus Craig, had been a deputy assistant commissioner, and he lived in a nearby village that was definitely on the poncey end of the spectrum. Freddie had run into him over drinks at a local club the previous week, and when they’d got chatting, Craig had said he liked the idea of putting his money into something he could keep an eye on. Freddie had hoped that Becca could tell him whether or not Craig was a serious player.

And God help Freddie if not. He’d bought the run-down farm and outbuildings on the Thames below Remenham, intending to turn the place into upmarket flats—tasteful country living with city luxury and a river view. But then the market had dived, and now he was overextended and couldn’t get the damned thing off the ground.

He pulled his phone from his jacket pocket and checked it once more, just in case he’d missed a call, but there was no message light. His irritation inched over into vague worry. Stubborn Becca might be, but they’d managed to keep up an odd sort of friendship after the divorce, and if nothing else, he’d expected her to ring him to tell him to mind his own business.

Maybe he had been out of line, telling her off about the rowing. But he couldn’t believe she really meant to put her career as a detective chief inspector in jeopardy for a pipe dream of an Olympic gold medal that any sane person would have given up years ago. He’d felt the siren call of rowing, too, and God knew he’d been competitive, but at some point you realized you had to let it go and get on with real life. As he had.

With a sudden and uncomfortable twinge, he wondered if he’d have let it go so easily if he’d been as good as she was. And just how successful had he been at real life? He pushed that nagging little thought aside. Things would get better; they always did.

Perhaps he should rethink what he’d said to Becca. But first, Mr. Craig.

Angus Craig, however, failed to materialize.

Freddie had leapt from the Audi, popping open his umbrella with the speed of a conjurer, then squelched across the car park to the haven of Leander’s lobby. Lily, the duty manager, had brought him a towel from the crew quarters, then seated him at his favorite table in the window of the first-floor dining room.

“The crew won’t be going out this morning,” he said, looking out at the curtains of rain sweeping across the river. This was rough weather, even for Leander’s crew, who prided themselves on their fortitude—although anyone who had rowed in an Oxford or Cambridge Blue Boat could tell them a thing or two about weather . . . and fortitude.

Freddie’s boat had almost been swamped one year in the Boat Race, in conditions like this. An unpleasant experience, to say the least, and a dangerous one.

“You’ve got someone joining you?” asked Lily as she poured him coffee.

“Yes.” Freddie glanced at his watch again. “But he’s late.”

“Some of the staff haven’t made it in,” said Lily. “Chef says there’s a pileup on the Marlow Road.”

“That probably explains it.” Freddie summoned a smile for her. She was a pretty girl, neat in her Leander uniform of navy skirt and pale pink shirt, her honey-brown hair pulled back in a knot. A few years earlier he’d have fancied her, but he’d learned from his mistakes since then. Now he was wiser and wearier. “Thanks, Lily. I’ll give him a bit longer before I order.”

She left him, and he sipped his coffee, idly watching the few other diners. This early in the week and this time of year, he doubted there were many overnight guests in the club’s dozen rooms, and the weather had probably discouraged most of the local members who normally came to the club for breakfast. The food was exceptionally good and surprisingly reasonably priced.

The chef would have his hands full, regardless of the slow custom in the dining room. He was also responsible for feeding the voracious appetites of the young crew, who ate in their own quarters. Rowers were always starving, hunger as ingrained as breathing.

At half past eight, well into his second cup of coffee and beginning to feel desperate for a smoke, Freddie rang Angus Craig’s number and got voice mail.

At a quarter to nine, he ordered his usual breakfast of scrambled eggs with smoked salmon, but found he’d lost his appetite. Pushing the eggs aside and buttering toast instead, he realized the rain had eased. He could see across the river now, although the watery gray vista of shops and rooftops on the opposite bank might as well have been Venice. But perhaps the traffic was moving again. He’d give Craig another few minutes.

The sound of voices in reception made him look round. It wasn’t the big, sandy-haired Craig, however, but Milo Jachym, the women’s coach, having a word with Lily. He was dressed in rain gear, and had a purposeful set to his small, sturdy frame.

“Milo,” Freddie called, standing and crossing the dining room. “Are you going out?”

“Thinking about it. We might have an hour before the next squall line moves through.” Zipping his anorak, Milo looked out of the reception doors. Following his gaze, Freddie saw that a few patches of blue were breaking through the gray sky to the west. Milo added, “I’d like to get them off the ergs and onto the water, even if it’s a short workout. Otherwise they’ll be moaning the rest of the day.”

“Can’t blame them. Bloody ergs.” All rowers hated the ergometers, the machines that were used to simulate rowing and to measure a rower’s strength. Workouts on the ergs were physically grueling without any of the pleasure that came from moving a boat through the water. The only good thing that could be said for an erg workout was that it was mindless—you could drift into a pain-filled mental free fall without ramming your boat into something and risking life and limb.

Milo grinned. “Never heard that one before.” He turned back towards the crew quarters. “I’d better get them out while it lasts.”

Freddie stopped him with a touch on the arm. “Milo, did you have a chance to speak to Becca? I was hoping you might have been able to talk some sense into her.”

“Well, I talked to her, but not sense.” Frowning, he studied Freddie. “I think you’re fighting a losing battle there. You might as well give in gracefully. And why are you so sure she can’t win?”

“You think she can?” Freddie asked, surprised.

“There’s no woman in this crew”—he nodded towards the crew quarters—“or any other I’ve seen in the last year that could out-row Rebecca at her best.”

“But she’s—”

“Thirty-five? So?”

“Yeah, I know, I know. And she’d kill me if she heard me say that.” He imitated Becca at her most pedantic. “Redgrave was thirty-eight, Pinsent, thirty-four, Williams, thirty-two . . . And Katherine Grainger won silver at thirty-three . . .” Freddie shrugged. “But they had medals behind them. She doesn’t.”

“She has the same capacity for crucifying herself. Which is what it takes. As you very well know.”

“Okay,” Freddie admitted. “Maybe you’re right. In which case, maybe I’d better apologize. But she won’t return my calls. When did you talk to her?”

“Yesterday. About half past four. She was taking a boat out. She said she’d rack it herself when she came in.” Milo frowned. “But come to think of it, I don’t remember seeing it when I went out to check the river conditions this morning. Maybe she took it out at the cottage.”

“Not likely. She’d have to have used the neighbor’s raft.” It was possible, though, Freddie thought. But, still, she’d have had to carry the shell through her neighbor’s garden to put it in her own, and she had no ready place to store the boat. And why do that when she kept the Filippi racked here?

Unless she felt ill and couldn’t make it all the way back to Leander? Though that didn’t sound like Becca. The uneasiness that had been nagging him ratcheted up a notch. He checked his watch, decided Angus Craig could bugger himself. “I’m going to check the racks.”

“I’ll come with you.” Milo paused, eyeing Freddie’s navy jacket and blue-and-pink-striped Leander tie. “You’ll get soaked, man. There’s a spare anorak by the bar.”

But Freddie was already heading out the doors. The first-floor reception area opened onto an outside balcony with a staircase leading down from either side. Freddie took the left-hand flight, towards the river and the boatyard. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, but by the time he reached the boat racks, he was impatiently pushing damp hair off his forehead.

The rack where Becca kept her Filippi was empty. “It’s not here,” he said, although Milo could see that as well as he could.

“Maybe she put it in the shed for some reason. She has a key.” Milo pulled up his hood against the drizzle and turned towards the clubhouse. The boatshed was beneath the first-floor dining room, and on a fair day, with the crews going out, the big doors would stand wide open.

This morning, however, they entered through the smaller door on the right, and Milo flicked on the lights. The space was cavernous, dim in the corners. It smelled of wood and varnish, and faintly, of sweat and mildew. The thump of weights could be heard from the gym next door.

Ordinarily, Freddie found the shed inexplicably comforting, but now his stomach clenched as all he saw were the racks of gleaming, bright-yellow Empachers. These were the fours and eights rowed by the crew. Pink-bladed oars stood up in the racks at the rear of the long room like flags. There was no sign of the white Filippi with its distinctive blue stripe.

“Okay,” Milo said. “It’s not here. We’ll ask if anyone else has seen her.” He opened the door that led into the gym and called out, “Johnson!”

The promising young bowman of the coxless four appeared in the doorway in vest and shorts, toweling the sweat from his face. “We going out, Milo?” He nodded a greeting to Freddie.

“Not just yet,” answered Milo. “Steve, have you seen Becca Meredith?”

Johnson looked surprised. “Becca? No. Not since Sunday, on the river. She had a good row. Why?”

“She went out last night, and her boat’s not back.”

“Have you tried ringing her?” Johnson asked with a casualness that Freddie found suddenly infuriating.

“Of course I’ve bloody tried ringing her.” He turned to Milo. “Look, I’m going to check the cottage.”

“Freddie, I think you’re overreacting,” said Milo. “You know Becca has a mind of her own.”

“No one knows that better than me. But I don’t like this, Milo. Call me if you hear anything.”

He went out the way he’d come in, rather than going through the crew quarters in the club. He walked round the lawn to the car park, unmindful now of his shoes or his damp jacket.

Maybe he was overreacting, he thought as he climbed back into the Audi. But he rang her mobile once more, and when the call went to voice mail, he clicked off and started the engine. She might chew him up one side and down the other for intruding, but he was going to see for himself.

Although it took a bit of maneuvering to get the Audi out of the deep, slushy ruts in the gravel, he eventually managed.

A remembered dialogue played in his head. From Becca, Why can’t you get a sensible car for once?

Because you can’t sell expensive property if your prospect thinks you can’t afford the best, he always answered, but there were days he’d kill for four-wheel drive, and this was one of them.

Once out of the car park, he pulled onto the main road and turned immediately left into Remenham Lane. As he drove north, he could see the clouds building again in the western sky.

The redbrick cottage, surrounded by an overgrown garden, was set between the lane and the river. It had been Freddie’s job to keep the grounds, which he had done with regularity if not much talent. Becca had simply let things go until the place had begun to resemble Sleeping Beauty’s briar thicket.

Her battered black Nissan 4×4 sat in the drive. Becca had no interest in cars either, except as a means to pull a boat. If the Nissan wasn’t mud-spattered, it was only because the rain had washed it off. Her trailer had been pulled up on the patch of lawn beside the drive, and the Filippi was not on it.

Just as Freddie opened the Audi’s door, thunder clapped and the sky opened up. He sprinted for the cottage, sliding into the porch as if he’d just made a wicket and shaking the water from his hair.

No lights showed through the stained glass in the door. The bell didn’t work—he’d never managed to fix it—so he banged on the wood surround with his fist.

“Becca. Becca! Answer the bloody door.”

When there was no response, he fumbled for his keys and put the heavy door key in the lock.

“Becca, I’m coming in,” he called as he swung the door open.

The cottage was cold and silent.

Her handbag sat on the bench below the coat rack, where she always dropped it when she came in from work. A gray suit jacket had been tossed carelessly beside it, but otherwise, the sitting room looked undisturbed. Her yellow rowing fleece was missing from the coat hook, as was her pink Leander hat.

He called out again, glancing quickly into the kitchen and dining room. A stack of unopened mail sat on the buffet, a rinsed cup and plate in the sink, and on the worktop a bag of cat food for the neighbor’s cat she sometimes fed.

The cottage felt, in some way he couldn’t explain, profoundly empty of human presence. But he climbed the stairs and looked into the bedroom and the bathroom. The bed was made, the skirt that matched the jacket he’d seen downstairs lay across the chair, along with a white blouse and a tangled pair of tights.

The bath was dry, but the air held the faintest trace of Dolce & Gabbana’s Light Blue cologne, one of Becca’s few vanities.

He opened the door to the spare room that had once been his office, whistling in surprise when he saw the weights and the ergometer. She was serious about training, then. Really serious.

So what the hell had she gone and done?

Clattering back down the stairs, he grabbed a spare anorak from the coat hook and went out into the garden, ducking his head against the driving rain. Becca’s neighbor’s lawn had the river frontage, but he checked it just in case she’d pulled the boat up there. Seeing nothing but upturned garden furniture, he ran back to the cottage and pulled his phone out with cold and fumbling fingers. Thunder rumbled and shook the cottage.

Becca wouldn’t thank him for ringing her boss, Superintendent Peter Gaskill, but he couldn’t think what else to do next. He didn’t know Gaskill well, as Becca had been assigned to his team a short time before the divorce, but he’d met the man at police functions and the occasional dinner party.

Freddie’s call was shunted through by the department’s secretary. When Gaskill picked up, Freddie identified himself, then said, “Look, Peter, sorry to bother you. But I’ve been trying to reach Becca since yesterday, and I’m a bit worried. I wondered if perhaps there’d been an emergency at work . . .” It sounded unlikely even as he said it. He explained about the boat, adding that Becca didn’t seem to have been home since the previous evening, and that her car was still in the drive.

“We had a staff meeting this morning, an important one,” Gaskill said. “She didn’t show or return my calls, and I’ve never known her to miss a meeting. You’re certain she’s not at home?”

“I’m in the cottage now.”

There was silence on the other end of the line, as if Gaskill was deliberating. Then he said, “So what you’re telling me is that Becca went out on the river last night, in the dark, alone in a racing shell, and that neither she nor the boat have been seen since.”

Hearing it stated so baldly, Freddie felt chilled to the bone. Any arguments about her competency died on his lips. “Yes.”

“You stay there,” Gaskill told him. “I’m calling in the local force.”

Two families, for the most part strangers to one another, had spent a long weekend cooped up together in the rambling vicarage that anchored the hamlet of Compton Grenville, near Glastonbury in Somerset, while rain rumbled and poured and the water rose around them. The scene, thought Detective Inspector Gemma James, had had all the makings of an Agatha Christie murder mystery.

“Or maybe a horror film,” she said aloud to her friend and new cousin-in-law, Winnie Montfort, who stood at the old farmhouse sink in the vicarage kitchen, up to her elbows in suds. Winnie, a Church of England vicar, was married to Duncan Kincaid’s cousin Jack.

And Gemma was now married to Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid, a fact that still caused her a flutter of wonder when she reminded herself of it. Married. Really and truly. And three times, which Duncan still made a point of teasing her about. She touched her ring, liking the physical reminder.

They’d begun as professional partners, Gemma a detective sergeant assigned to Duncan’s Scotland Yard Major Crimes team. When their relationship had become personal—much against Gemma’s better judgment in those early days—Gemma had applied for detective inspector. Her promotion had been a mixed blessing. It had ended their working partnership, but it had allowed them to make their personal relationship public.

Still, Gemma had harbored deep reservations about commitment. They had both failed at first marriages; they both had sons who had been subjected to enough change and loss. And she had resisted, sometimes obstinately, what she saw as a loss of autonomy.

But Duncan had been patient, and with time Gemma had come to see that what they had was worth preserving at any risk.

So, at last, on a lovely day the past August, they’d had an informal blessing of their partnership in the garden of their home in London’s Notting Hill. A few weeks later, they’d made it legal in the Chelsea register office.

And now, in late October, with the older children on half-term break from school, Winnie and Jack had invited Duncan and Gemma and their respective families to Compton Grenville so that Winnie could give their marriage the formal celebration she felt it deserved.

The ceremony in Winnie’s church on Saturday afternoon had been everything Gemma had wanted; simple, personal, and heartfelt, it had sealed their partnership in a way that was somehow different. Third time’s the charm, as Duncan kept telling her. And perhaps he was right, because now circumstances had brought another child into their lives, little not-quite-three-year-old Charlotte Malik.

Winnie turned from the mountain of breakfast dishes, the result of the gargantuan farewell breakfast she’d made for the weekend’s guests. “A horror film? What?” Winnie, having wiped suds on the end of her nose, looked comically quizzical.

The green and tomato-red vicarage kitchen was a comfortable, and comforting, place, and Winnie was a good friend who had seen Gemma through some difficult times.

On this Tuesday morning, with the visit almost over and everyone gone except Duncan’s parents, Gemma and Winnie had finally snagged a moment alone for a gossipy postmortem of the weekend. Gemma had offered to do the washing-up, but Winnie had insisted that Gemma enjoy a last few minutes with Winnie and Jack’s baby daughter.

Gemma settled little Constance more comfortably in her lap. “Well, maybe horror film is a bit steep,” she amended, smiling. But her amusement faded as she thought about the blot on an otherwise perfect weekend. “Sometimes,” she said, “my sister is just a bitch.”

Winnie stripped off her washing-up gloves and came to sit at the table beside her, reaching for Constance. “Here, don’t throttle the baby by proxy.”

“Sorry,” Gemma said sheepishly. She kissed Constance’s fuzzy head before handing her over. “It’s just that she’s infuriating. Cyn, I mean, not Constance.”

“Well, I can understand Cyn feeling a little uncomfortable this weekend. She and your parents were the outsiders—”

“Uncomfortable?” Gemma shook her head. “You’re too diplomatic. That’s a nice way of saying she behaved like an absolute harpy.” Before Winnie could protest, she went on. “But it’s not just that. She’s been horrible since we found out Mum was ill.” Their mother, Vi, had been diagnosed with leukemia the previous spring. “I realize that’s Cyn’s way of dealing with her own worry. I can understand that, even though I want to strangle her. But now, with Charlotte, there’s no excuse.”

“What about Charlotte?” Winnie asked, her kind face suddenly creased with concern.

“I think Cyn told her kids not to play with her. Didn’t you notice?”

“Well, I did think they seemed a little . . . awkward—”

“How could she? They’re going to be cousins, for heaven’s sake.” The anger in Gemma’s voice made Constance screw up her little face in a frown. Gemma took a calming breath, then reached out to stroke the baby’s cheek with a finger. “Sorry, lovey.” Constance had Winnie’s English-rose complexion, Jack’s bright blue eyes, and the downy beginnings of Jack’s blond hair.

But Charlotte, with her caramel curls and light-brown skin, was every bit as beautiful, and a wave of fury swept over Gemma at the idea that anyone could think differently, or treat her differently, because of her color. “I heard Cyn call Charlotte something unrepeatable,” she admitted. “I could just kill her.”

“Gemma, you must have been prepared—”

“Oh, we were warned, all right. The social worker was very thorough. ‘Mixed-race children are sometimes not accepted by adoptive parents’ extended families,’ ” she quoted. “But I suppose I’d seen too many rainbow children adverts,” she added with a sigh. If her sister had been rude, her parents had remained standoffish with the child, which upset Gemma deeply. “Charlotte’s been through enough without this.”

She and Duncan had become foster parents to the little girl in August, after their investigation into the disappearance of her parents.

“How is she doing, really?” Winnie asked, jiggling Constance, who was beginning to fuss. “This weekend has been so hectic that I’ve never really had a chance to ask, or to say how lovely she is.”

“Yes,” said Gemma, her voice softening. “She is, isn’t she?” Her arms felt suddenly empty without the baby, and she watched Winnie holding her daughter with an affection tinged only very slightly with envy. “But—” She hesitated, listening to the happy childish shrieks coming from the back garden. Charlotte’s excited shouts rose unmistakably over the boys’. Perhaps, thought Gemma, she was overreacting, making too much of normal adjustment issues.

“But?” prompted Winnie, settling Constance over her shoulder.

“She doesn’t sleep well,” Gemma confessed. “She dreams, I think, and sometimes when she wakes, she’s inconsolable. She—” Gemma stopped, making an effort to steady her suddenly wobbly voice. “She calls out for her mummy and daddy. It makes me feel so—so—” She shrugged.

“Helpless. Yes, I can imagine. But she’s becoming very attached to you. I’ve seen that.”

“Sometimes a bit too attached, I’m afraid. Downright clingy.”

She and Duncan had agreed that they’d take family leave in turns until they felt Charlotte was secure enough in her new situation to attend child care during the day.

Gemma had gladly taken the first stint, but she was due to return to her post as detective inspector at Notting Hill Police Station the following week, and she felt a little guilty over how much she was looking forward to work and adult company. She worried whether she was really doing the right thing in planning to go back to work. “I just hope Duncan will be able to cope on his own.”

“Give the man credit,” Winnie said with a grin, nodding towards the garden, where Duncan and Jack were stomping in puddles with the children. “He seems to be doing pretty well. He obviously adores Charlotte. And if the two of you are going to make this commitment, she needs to be as bonded to him as she is to you.” She gave Gemma a searching glance. “You are sure about this? There must be other placements that would keep her out of her grandmother’s clutches.”

Gemma leaned forward, hugging herself to stop an involuntary shiver. “I cannot imagine being without her,” she said with complete certainty. “And I wouldn’t trust anyone else to keep her safe, although I don’t think it’s likely that Charlotte’s family is going to have much leverage anytime soon.”

Charlotte’s grandmother and her uncles had been arrested in August, and it looked as though they would be playing Happy Families in prison for a good while to come.

“We’re officially fostering for the time being,” Gemma went on. Hesitating, she added, “But we intend to apply for permanent custody, and eventually adoption. I just hope my family will come round, and that nothing will happen to muck up Duncan’s leave—”

She was interrupted by a loud crash, then the clump of feet in the hall.

“Toby, boots off,” Gemma heard Duncan shout, but it was too late. Her six-year-old son cannoned through the door, his red Wellies mud-spattered, his blond hair sticking straight up in damp spikes. He looked, as usual, like an imp from hell.

The door swung open again, this time revealing Charlotte, who had obediently removed her boots. In her striped socks and pink mac, she ran straight to Gemma and climbed into her lap. She wrapped her arms round Gemma’s neck in a fierce hug, as she did whenever they had been separated for more than a few minutes. But when she looked up, she was beaming, her face flushed and her eyes sparkling. Gemma thought she had never seen the child look happier.

“I jumped biggest,” Charlotte announced.

“Did not,” said Toby. At his grand age, he considered himself superior in all ways.

Duncan came into the kitchen. Tall, tousled, and as red-cheeked from the cold as the children, he looked quite as damp as Toby, if a bit cleaner. Glancing out the window, Gemma saw that the rain was coming down harder than ever.

“You, sport,” Duncan said severely to Toby, “are incorrigible.” Pointing at the muddy boot prints on the floor, he pulled some towels from the kitchen roll and handed them over. “Apologize to Auntie Winnie and mop up. And then”—looking almost as impish as Toby, he grinned at Gemma and abandoned his policeman voice—“Dad’s ordered us all outside, rain or not. He’s stage-managing at his most annoyingly coy, and he’s roped in Jack and Kit. Knowing Dad, I shudder to think.” He rolled his eyes for emphasis, and Gemma couldn’t help but smile. She had adored Duncan’s dad from the moment she’d met him, but Hugh Kincaid was not always the most practical of souls.

“He says he has a surprise for us,” Duncan went on. “And that we are absolutely, positively, going to love it. I think we’d better go see what he’s done.”

The rain came in waves that spattered against the windows of the converted boatshed like buckshot.

Kieran Connolly clenched his jaw, trying to ignore the sound, but the rumble of thunder over Henley made him shudder. It was just rain, he told himself, and he would be fine. Just fine, and the shed had withstood worse.

It was one of several such structures scrunched between the summer cottages on the small islands that dotted the Thames between Henley and Marsh Lock. Built of wood siding on a concrete pad, it had not been meant for human habitation, but it suited Kieran well enough. The single space provided him with a workshop, a camp bed, a woodstove, a primus, and a primitive toilet and shower. There was nothing more he needed—although he suspected that if Finn had been given his choice, he’d have preferred someplace that allowed him a run in the park without having to motor from island to shore in the little skiff Kieran kept tied up at his small floating dock.

Not that Finn couldn’t have swum the distance. A Labrador retriever, he was bred to it, but Kieran had taught him not to go in the water without permission. Otherwise, Kieran wouldn’t have been able to leave him when he rowed, as he did every morning, or he’d be sculling up and down the Thames with a big black dog paddling in his wake.

Almost every morning, Kieran amended, when the thunder rumbled again. He didn’t go out in storms. The boatshed shook in another gust and the windows rattled in concert. He jerked involuntarily, pain searing his hand. Glancing down, he saw a spot of blood on the fine sandpaper he’d been using to smooth a fiberglass patch on the old Aylings double he had upside down on trestles. He’d sanded his own damned knuckles. Shit. His hands were shaking again.

Finn whined and pushed his blunt snout against Kieran’s knee. The thunder cracked again and the shed vibrated like a kettledrum. Or an artillery barrage.

“It’s just rain, boy.” Kieran heard the tremor in his voice and grimaced in disgust. Some reassurance he was, sweating and quaking like a leaf. Pathetic. Making an effort to steady his hand, he folded the sandpaper and set it on his worktable.

But even if he could make his hand obey, he had no command over his knees. When they threatened to buckle, he staggered two steps to the wall and slid down with his back against it. He felt as if the very air were a massive weight, pressing him down, squeezing his lungs. Finn nuzzled him and climbed half into his lap, and as he wrapped his arms round the dog, he couldn’t tell which of them whimpered. “Sorry, boy, sorry,” he whispered. “It’ll be okay. We’ll be okay. It’s just a little rain.”

He repeated to himself the rational explanation for his physical distress. Damage to middle ear, due to shelling. Swift changes in barometric pressure may affect equilibrium. It was a familiar mantra.

The army doctors had told him that, as if he hadn’t known it himself. They’d also told him that he’d been heavily concussed, and that he’d suffered some loss of hearing. “Not enough,” he said aloud, and cackled a little wildly at his own humor. Finn licked his chin and Kieran hugged him harder. “It will pass,” he whispered, meaning to reassure them both.

The room reeled, bringing a wave of nausea so intense he had to swallow against it. That, too, was related to his middle ear, or so they’d told him. An inconvenience, they’d said. He slid a little farther down the wall, and Finn shifted the rest of his eighty-pound weight into his lap.

So inconvenient, along with the shakes and the sweats and the screaming in his sleep, that they’d discharged him. Bye-bye, Kieran Connolly, Combat Medical Technician, Class 1, and here’s your bit of decoration and your nice pension. He’d used the pension to buy the boatshed.

He’d rowed at Henley in his teens, crewing for a London club. To a kid from Tottenham who’d stumbled across the Lea Rowing Club quite by accident, Henley had seemed like paradise.

It was just him and his dad, then. His mum had scarpered when he was a baby, but it was not something his dad ever talked about. They’d lived in a terraced street that had hung on to respectability by a thread, his dad repairing and building furniture in the shop below the flat. Kieran, white and Irish in a part of north London where that made him a minority, had been well on his way to life as a petty thug.

Kieran stroked Finn’s warm muzzle and closed his eyes, trying to use the memory to quell the panic, the way the army therapist had taught him.

It had been hot, that long ago Saturday in June, just after his fourteenth birthday. He’d stolen a bike on a dare, ridden it in a wild, heart-hammering escape through the streets of Tottenham to the path that ran down along the River Lea. And then, with the trail clear behind him, his legs burning and the sun beating down on his head, he’d seen the single shells on the water.

The sound of the storm faded from his consciousness as the memory drew him in.

He’d stopped, gazing at the water, all thought of pursuit and punishment gone in an instant. The boats were stillness in motion, graceful as dragonflies, skimming the surface of the mercury-gleaming river, and the sight had gripped and squeezed something inside him that he hadn’t known existed.

All that afternoon, he’d watched, and in the dimness of the evening, he’d pedaled slowly back to Tottenham and returned the bike, ignoring the taunts of his mates. The next Saturday he’d gone back to the river, drawn by something he couldn’t articulate, a longing that until then had only teased the feathery edges of his imagination.

Another Saturday, and another. He learned that the boat place was called the Lea Rowing Club. He began to name the boats; singles, doubles, pairs, quads, fours, and the eights—if the singles had made him think of dragonflies, the eights were giant insects, moving in a rhythm that seemed both alien and familiar and that made him think of the pictures of Roman galleys he’d seen in school history books.

And they talked to him, the oarsmen, when they noticed him hanging about. He was tall, even then. Awkward, scrawny, black-haired, pale-skinned even at summer’s height—all in all, not a very prepossessing specimen. But although he hadn’t realized it then, his inches had made him rowing material, and they’d been assessing his potential.

After a bit, they’d let him help load the boats onto the trailers or lift them back onto the trestles that waited in the boatyard like cradles. One day a man tossed him a cloth and nodded at a dripping single. “Wipe it down, if you want,” he’d said. Other days, it was a wrench to adjust the rigging, oil for the seat runners, filler for the dents in the fiberglass.

By that August, he’d become the club dogsbody, his mates forgotten, his dull terraced street subsumed by the river. He learned that the burly-shouldered man who gave him chores was a coach. And when one day the coach had looked him levelly in the eyes and handed him a pair of oars, the world had opened like an oyster, and Kieran Connolly had seen that he might be something other than a poor Irish kid with no future.

The Lea—and rowing—had given him that. His coach had encouraged him to join the army. He could row, Coach said, and get an education, too. And so he had done, training as a medic, rowing in eights and fours, and then in the single scull that had been his true love since that very first day on the Lea.

What neither he nor his coach had foreseen in those halcyon days before 9/11 was that the world would change, and that Kieran would see four tours of duty in Iraq. On the last, his unit had been taken out by an improvised explosive device, and he had been the only survivor.

There’d been nothing left for him in Tottenham when he came home. His dad had been taken by cancer, the house sold to pay his debts, although Kieran had managed to salvage his father’s woodworking tools. After that, he couldn’t bear to go back to the Lea, to meet anyone he had known, or who—worse still—might offer him sympathy.

So he’d bought an old Land Rover and drifted round the south of England, sleeping in a tent, always drawn by the rivers, but unable to imagine what he might do or where he might fit.

Then, early one May morning, two months after his discharge, he’d stood on Henley Bridge, watching the scullers, feeling as insubstantial as a ghost.

Later he’d walked through town, intending to buy some supplies, and he’d seen the advert for the boatshed in an estate agent’s window. It had seemed like a spar held out to a drowning man.

A few weeks later, now the proud owner of the one-room shed, he’d moved in his few possessions, bought a used single shell, and begun to row for the first time in years. It was, he thought, like riding a bike—once learned, never forgotten. His body, still healing, had protested, but he’d kept on, and slowly he’d grown stronger.

There was a small fixed dock that allowed him to tie up the little motor skiff he’d bought, and the boatshed’s small floating raft gave him a private place from which to launch the shell. He’d had no interest in rowing from a club, or competing again. He rowed for sanity now, not sport.

But it was impossible to row on the Thames at Henley every day without encountering other rowers, and a few had recognized him from his competition days. A few others remembered that he had a knack for fixing boats, and as the months passed, he’d found himself taking on a repair here and there.

The jobs helped fill his days between morning row and evening run, and when he wasn’t working on someone else’s boat, he’d begun very tentatively to work on a design for a wooden racing single. He was, after all, a furniture maker’s son. To him, wooden boats had a life and grace not found in fiberglass, and the project was in a way a tribute to his father.

But he’d had no one to talk to but himself, and that small voice was little buffer against the memories that thronged inside his head and kept him awake in the night.

And then one day he’d gone to pick up a boat that needed patching, and he’d seen the pen full of puppies in the owner’s garden.

He’d come away with the boat, and Finn.

That fat, black, wriggly puppy had, in the two years since, given Kieran a reason to get up in the morning. Finn was more than a companion, he was Kieran’s partner, and that union had given Kieran something he’d thought gone from his life—a useful job.

Not that Tavie didn’t deserve credit, too, but if it weren’t for Finn, he’d never have met Tavie.

Finn, as if aware that he was the subject of Kieran’s ruminations, spread his back toes in a luxurious doggy stretch and settled his heavy head a bit more comfortably on Kieran’s knee.

Shifting position, Kieran grimaced at the prickle of pins and needles. His legs had gone to sleep. And, he realized, the storm was passing. The rain was pattering now, not ricocheting, the shed was no longer shaking in the wind, and his nausea had passed.

“Get off, you great beast,” he said, groaning, but he stroked Finn’s ears while he gingerly flexed his legs to get the circulation back.

He felt another tingle, but this time it was his phone, vibrating in his back pocket as it binged the arrival of a text.

“Shift it, mate,” he said, gently moving the dog before scrabbling for his phone as he stood.

The text was from Tavie—she was the call-out coordinator that morning.

MISPER. ADULT FEMALE ROWER. PLS AND LKP LEANDER. REPORT AVAILABILITY FOR SEARCH.

Kieran’s translation was now as automatic as breathing. Missing person . . . Both the Place Last Seen and Last Known Position, Leander Club. He felt a jolt of adrenaline, and Finn, up now, whined and danced in anticipation. He recognized the sound of a text, and he loved working almost as much as he loved Kieran.

“Right, boy,” said Kieran. “We’ve got a job.” And thank God the worst of the storm was over, and he was steady enough on his feet to report in. But he didn’t like the sound of this, not one bit.

In the year and a half he’d been working with Thames Valley Search and Rescue, they’d conducted more searches involving the river than he could count. That came with their territory. But they’d never had a call out for a missing rower.