No Mark upon Her

Chapter Six

You make your own success in the single scull. You win or lose by your own toughness. You alone are responsible for the outcome of the race. The sheer, unadulterated pleasure of winning a single sculling race, regardless of the level, from novice to elite, is enough to keep you training for another three years

.

—Brad Alan Lewis

Assault on Lake Casitas

“Wait,” Kincaid said. “Back up a bit. You’re telling me that Rebecca Meredith was training for the Olympics? But she wasn’t a member of the Leander crew.”

“Didn’t have to be,” Milo answered. “Becca was a member of the club. She could represent Leander in a race. But even that wasn’t necessary. Anyone can compete in an Olympic trial.”

Cullen frowned for a moment, then his face cleared. “Brad Lewis.”

Milo Jachym was already nodding in agreement. Kincaid felt as if he were playing table tennis without the ball. “What are you talking about?”

“Brad Alan Lewis,” Cullen explained. “He won gold in double sculls at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984. And he did it from completely outside the system, and with next to no financial backing.”

“And Becca is—was”—Milo’s lips tightened in a spasm of distress—“not dissimilar in character. Stubborn. Obsessive. Determined to do things her way. And like Lewis, she knew it was her last opportunity.”

“But you said her ex-husband was furious when he found out she was training. Why, if she really did have a chance at something that big?”

“I— He was concerned about her safety, I assumed, because she was going out so late. But it was the only way she could row every day.”

“Unless,” Kincaid said thoughtfully, “she quit the job. And that—”

The phone in his pocket vibrated once, then again—an incoming call. Irritating as the interruption was, he couldn’t afford to let it go.

He didn’t recognize the number on the display, but he knew DI Singla’s voice immediately. “Superintendent, there’s a man at Rebecca Meredith’s cottage,” said Singla. “He’s threatening the constable I put on watch there. Do you want me to have him picked up? He says he’s her husband.”

“You are an absolute dear.” Gemma stretched her legs out under the kitchen table and raised her glass to Melody in salute. Melody had not only arrived with a very nice bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, but had picked up pizza, dripping with olive oil and garlic, from Sugo’s, Gemma’s favorite Italian bistro at Notting Hill Gate.

“Good thing I left the car at the flat,” Melody said, pouring herself another generous measure. “And if I come across any vampires on the walk home, they’ll take one whiff of me and run the other way.” She blew out a breath, as if testing her theory.

Melody lived in a mansion block on Kensington Park Road, and declared that the half-mile walk between her flat and Duncan and Gemma’s house in St. John’s Gardens provided just the right amount of exercise after an overindulgence in food and drink.

“Do you suppose garlic has a calming effect on children, too?” Gemma asked. “I think they’re probably related to vampires.”

By the time they’d reached home, Toby had been overexcited, and Charlotte even more clingy and fretful. While Toby had refused to sit still, dancing around the table with his slice of pizza, teasing the dogs, the cat, and Charlotte, Charlotte had agreed to eat her supper only if held in Gemma’s lap. Kit, unusually unsociable, had grabbed half a pizza and disappeared upstairs, plate in one hand and phone in the other.

“I can do the washing-up,” offered Melody. “Dab hand in the kitchen.”

Gemma considered. “You know, I’ve never actually seen you cook. But you get top votes for deliveryperson.”

“I can cook,” Melody protested, grinning. “Um, cheese, biscuits, wine . . .” She furrowed her brow, then shrugged. “Well, maybe not so much. But I really can wield a mean Fairy Liquid.” She started to stand, but Gemma waved her back into her chair.

“It’s only pizza boxes. Easily done when the kids are in bed.” Knowing bedtime would be an ordeal and wanting to enjoy her visit with Melody, Gemma had bribed the little ones with the promise of a video in the sitting room. Once she’d convinced Toby that he really did not need to watch Peter Pan for the hundredth time, she’d settled them down with The Lion King and breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Now she could hear Toby singing along tunelessly.

“The West End in his future, for certain,” said Melody, and they both giggled.

“Only if he can swashbuckle,” Gemma said, meditating on Toby’s possibly brilliant career. “But maybe, if I’m lucky, he’ll put Charlotte to sleep, and not just future audiences.”

She thought her friend looked unusually relaxed. Melody had changed into jeans, but still wore the bright pink cardigan she’d had on earlier, and her cheeks were flushed from taking the dogs for a quick outing while Gemma was settling the kids.

“And that would be a blessing? Putting Charlotte to sleep?”

“Some nights. Most nights,” Gemma admitted. “And even when she does go to sleep, she wakes up with bad dreams.”

“Does she dream about her parents, then?” Melody asked.

Gemma swirled the wine in her glass. “Sometimes. Sometimes she calls out for them.” She didn’t want to confess, as she had to Winnie, how helpless and inadequate she felt when Charlotte woke up sobbing, “Mummy! Daddy!” Only recently had she begun calling out for Gemma as well, but Gemma wasn’t sure that was an improvement.

Melody glanced towards the sitting room and lowered her voice. “I’d think that was pretty normal, under the circumstances. I can’t imagine what it must be like for a child to lose her parents, her home, everything familiar . . .”

“The odd thing,” Gemma answered slowly, “is that except for the separation anxiety, during the day it seems as if she’s adjusting quite well. She does talk about her mum and dad in the present tense, as if they were just away somewhere, but she doesn’t ask to go home.”

“Have you taken her back there?”

Gemma shook her head. “No. We didn’t think that was a good idea. But Louise is getting ready to put the house up for sale, and we wanted her to have some familiar things.”

Louise Phillips had been Charlotte’s father’s law partner and was now the executor of the estate.

Although art dealers—including Pippa Nightingale, who had represented Sandra Gilles, Charlotte’s mother—were begging for the textile collages that remained in Sandra’s studio, Lou Phillips had decided she would store all Sandra’s works and her notebooks until Charlotte was of age and could sell or keep them as she saw fit. Her mother’s art would be a legacy for Charlotte’s future, and the money from the sale of the Fournier Street house, which should be considerable, would go into a fund to pay for her education.

“So I took her to the park one day when the boys were at school,” Gemma went on, “and asked her to play a game. She had to close her eyes and name her favorite thing from every room in her old house.”

“I can’t think of a thing I’d save from my flat even in a fire,” Melody said, sounding wistful. “It’s not like this house.”

Gemma looked round at her cheerful blue and yellow kitchen, with her treasured Clarice Cliff tea set on the shelf above the cooker, then glanced into the dining room, where her piano held pride of place.

She’d loved this house from the moment Duncan had shown it to her, when she’d thought their lives held a very different future. And it seemed to her, oddly, that in making Charlotte feel at home, she had grown deeper into the house as well, learning every nook and cranny, every creak and sigh, as if they were etched in her bones.

But the house belonged not to them, but to Denis Childs’s sister and her family, and Gemma’s love for it was always tinged with the ache of impending loss. One day they would have to give it up.

“What did Charlotte choose?” asked Melody.

Gemma smiled at the recollection. “From the kitchen, an old egg cup with a chicken-foot base. I imagine her mum picked it up at a street stall. It’s hideous, and Charlotte adores it. From the sitting room, she chose the chaise longue.”

Charlotte had called it the “crazy chase,” and it had taken Gemma a moment to work out that she meant the chintz crazy-quilt chaise longue, but she, too, loved the whimsical piece that had seemed such an expression of Sandra Gilles’s personality.

When they’d begun officially fostering Charlotte, they’d had to meet the requirements imposed by social services, which included moving Toby back in with Kit so that Charlotte could have a room of her own—the room that had been meant as a nursery for the baby they had lost.

They’d brought Charlotte’s bedroom furniture from the house in Fournier Street, and there had been enough space in her new room for the crazy chase as well. When Gemma had told her they could paint her room any color she liked, Charlotte had chosen not a little girl’s pink, or blue, or even lilac, but a deep saffron yellow that picked out the dominant color in the quilted chaise and glowed like distilled sunlight on the walls. The child had without doubt inherited her artist mother’s eye.

“From her parents’ bedroom she wanted her mother’s petticoats,” Gemma continued, “although I brought the colored-glass bud vases that Sandra kept on the chair rail as well.

“And from Sandra’s studio, Charlotte wanted the duck pencils. When I pointed out that she already had them, she asked for the painting of the red horse that hung over her mother’s desk.”

“That’s not one of Sandra’s?”

“No. In fact, it’s signed LR, and Duncan said he saw a painting that was almost identical hanging over Lucas Ritchie’s desk in the club in Artillery Lane.”

“Ah, so you think it was done by the delectable Mr. Ritchie?”

“Maybe. It would be a nice connection for Charlotte to have with her mother’s old friend. Someday we’ll have to ask him.”

“I’ll go with you,” Melody offered, and Gemma laughed.

“I didn’t realize you fancied him,” she said. Lucas Ritchie managed a private club in Whitechapel, but had gone to art college with Charlotte’s mum. He was also tall, blond, wickedly good-looking, and apparently quite well off.

“I’m female. I’m not attached. And I’m not blind.” Melody took a big swallow of wine to punctuate her assertions, coughed, and wiped at her watering eyes.

“I can see that,” Gemma said, still grinning. “What I don’t know is what you were doing with Doug Cullen today.”

“Ah.” Melody was beginning to look slightly owlish. “He invited me to see his new house. In Putney. It needs some DIY. And I’ve offered to help him with the garden.”

Raising her eyebrows in surprise, Gemma asked, “Have you ever done any gardening?” Melody, as far as she knew, had grown up in a town house in Kensington, in a household that lacked for nothing. If it had had a garden, it would have come with gardener attached.

“No. But it should be an adventure.”

Gemma looked at her friend, bemused. She could imagine few things more unlikely than Doug Cullen doing home improvements while Melody mucked about in the garden. “You must be desperate for excitement.”

“I keep telling you, work hasn’t been the same with you gone, boss,” Melody retorted. “And speaking of the job”—she straightened up rather carefully and set her now-empty glass on the table—“there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you. I’ve put in for my sergeant’s course.”

“Oh.” Gemma felt an unexpected prick of loss. Not that she hadn’t nagged Melody to go for promotion. Not that she’d expected Melody to stay at Notting Hill forever. But promotion would undoubtedly mean Melody would transfer to another station, if not another division, and Gemma realized how much she’d looked forward to working with Melody at Notting Hill again.

Seeing the disappointment on Melody’s face, she pulled herself together and summoned a smile. “Oh, congratulations, Melody. I’m so glad for you. You should have done it ages ago. And you know you’ll do just fine on the exam.”

“I’ve liked working with Sapphire,” Melody said, sounding relieved at Gemma’s approval. “I suppose before you went on leave, I’d been riding on your coattails, and the new job gave me a bit of confidence.”

It was always hard for Gemma to imagine that the daughter of one of the biggest newspaper barons in the country could lack confidence. But Melody had gone against her father’s wishes in even joining the force, and Gemma knew that this decision would have been difficult for her.

“This business today, in Henley,” Melody said, “will it interfere with your starting back next week?”

“Oh, I’m sure we can work out something, if it’s not sorted by then,” Gemma told her, but in fact she’d been worrying all evening about alternative child care if Duncan were to get hung up on this case. They couldn’t count on their friend Wesley Howard, who sometimes nannied for them, for full-time child-minding, and if anything, the events of the day had made her more certain than ever that Charlotte wasn’t ready for nursery school.

“What about the girl who used to be her nanny?” Melody suggested. “Have you kept up with her?”

“Alia?” Gemma frowned, considering a possibility that hadn’t occurred to her. “She’s been to visit a couple of times, and Charlotte is always pleased to see her. Maybe I should give her a ring, just in case . . .”

“Maybe they’ll find the death in Henley was accidental, and Duncan will be off the hook.”

Remembering Rashid’s expression when he was examining the body, Gemma thought she wouldn’t hold her breath. Rashid Kaleem was a good pathologist, and she trusted his instincts. And she was still wondering why Denis Childs had been so insistent that Duncan look into the death. There were other detective superintendents—not on holiday—who could certainly have represented the Met. “Maybe,” she said, trying to muster some conviction.

“The officer whose body they found—did you know her?” Melody asked.

Gemma shook her head. “No. At least the name didn’t ring a bell, and I didn’t actually see her face. But Duncan said she worked out of West London.”

“West London?” Looking suddenly sober, Melody straightened in her chair and pushed her wineglass away. “That’s a bit close to home, isn’t it?”

“Tell your constable to keep him there. I’m on my way,” Kincaid told Singla, then rang off and repeated what he’d been told to Milo Jachym. “Did Becca Meredith remarry?”

“No. It must be Freddie. He—they were still very close. I don’t think Freddie ever really came to terms with the divorce. Look, let me go with you. A friend should break the news.”

Kincaid considered, then shook his head. “No. I want to speak to him first.”

“But someone should see he’s all right—he’s got no family nearby—”

“All right. Give me half an hour with him first, then.” He stood, then turned back to Milo with a warning look. “And please, don’t ring him until I’ve had a chance to talk to him.”

Kincaid drove down Remenham Lane, following the directions Milo had given them to Rebecca Meredith’s cottage. The road ran behind Leander, parallel to the river. Although the way was well marked, Kincaid wasn’t used to handling a car as big and heavy as the Astra. The curves in the lane swooped upon them with startling suddenness, and a few times he slowed a bit more drastically than necessary.

“Still breaking it in?” Cullen asked, releasing his grip on the dashboard.

Kincaid cast him an evil glance, then looked back at the road. “And you would do better?”

Cullen had the grace not to reply. In fact, although he didn’t own a car, he was a good driver, and usually drove when they had a pool car from the Yard. But Kincaid was not ready to give up the wheel of his new acquisition.

After a cluster of cottages near the main road, their headlamps caught hedgerows and fields, and to the left, Kincaid glimpsed the occasional dark void that he knew must be the river. When lights began to appear again, he slowed to a crawl and soon saw cottages hard against the road to the left.

Two cars were pulled onto the right-hand verge, one bearing the distinctive blue and yellow livery of the Thames Valley Police, the other a new-model Audi. On the left, a redbrick, gabled cottage stood close behind a fence.

As Kincaid parked and got out of the car, he saw a constable standing inside the gate, and a man sitting on the porch. A faint light shone through the stained glass in the cottage door, but the porch itself was dark.

Kincaid pulled his warrant card from his pocket and raised it to the beam of the constable’s torch. “Scotland Yard. Detective Superintendent Kincaid and Sergeant Cullen.”

“Sir—”

The man on the porch stood as if suddenly animated and charged towards them, his words tumbling out. “Scotland Yard? What are you doing here? Why won’t anyone tell me anything? Have you found Becca?”

The accent was posh, the attire odd. From what Kincaid could see in the light shining from the cottage, he seemed to be wearing an old anorak, and beneath that, a suit and tie. The knot on the tie was pulled loose, as if he had yanked at it, but the shirt was still buttoned at the collar.

“Mr. Atterton?” Kincaid asked.

The man peered at him. “How’d you know my name? What’s happened? Why can’t I go in my wife’s house? I have a bloody key—” He turned for the door, and when the constable reached for him, he swung at the officer, managing to smack his arm.

“Now, sir, let’s calm down, shall we?” said the constable, in the infuriatingly reasonable tone that was the police constable’s first line of defense.

“No, I won’t calm down. I want—” He turned towards Kincaid, his expression suddenly pleading. “I want to see my wife.”

“Mr. Atterton.” Hearing himself echoing the constable, Kincaid made an effort not to sound so patronizing. Nor was this the place to give bad news. “You say you have a key? Why don’t we go inside and have a chat?”

Atterton looked suddenly unsure. “But—”

The constable, a small young man who looked as if he might have had a time subduing the six-foot-plus Atterton, broke in. “Sir, I’ve been told to keep this scene se—”

Kincaid gave a sharp shake of his head, then glanced at Cullen. “Doug, if you could.”

“Right.” Doug led the officer a few yards away, speaking softly, and Kincaid took Atterton by the elbow.

“Where’s that key, then, Mr. Atterton?” The anorak, an old Barbour that must have lost its wax, felt damp and slick beneath Kincaid’s fingers. “You’ve been out in the rain.”

“This morning, when I was looking for Becca. I got soaked and I just never—I never got dry.” Atterton fumbled a key from his pocket. His fingers felt icy as he handed it to Kincaid.

How long had the man been sitting here, wet and in the cold? Kincaid wondered. He turned the key easily in the lock and stepped into the cottage first. A single lamp burned in the tidy sitting room.

“You were in the cottage earlier today?” he asked Atterton, who had come in behind him. The house was cold and smelled of soap—or perhaps perfume—and coffee. He felt the wall for a switch, and two more lamps sprang into life.

“I came in this morning when Becca hadn’t answered her phone or turned up for work and I thought—” Atterton stopped, swallowing. “I was worried.”

“And when you didn’t find her, you rang the police. Did you come back again?”

“To let the search and rescue people in. The blond woman and her dog went through the house. She had a constable with her. I wanted to go with them when they left, but she said I would only slow them down. So I went back to Leander to wait.

“But no one came, and no one told me anything. And when I came back to the cottage that plod wouldn’t let me in.” Atterton’s derogatory reference to the constable was made casually, with the sort of unthinking snobbery that set Kincaid’s teeth on edge.

“This morning—did you turn on the lamp?” he asked.

Atterton looked surprised. “No. It was on when I came in. I never thought—”

“Would your ex-wife have left a lamp turned on deliberately during the day?”

“Becca? No, I doubt it. She’s very green. Always telling me I’m a drain on the planet. She—” Atterton’s smile faded before it reached his eyes.

In the better light, Kincaid could see that Freddie Atterton was a handsome man, fair-skinned, with thick brown hair worn long enough to sweep back from his brow and over the tops of his ears. Now, however, his blue eyes were shadowed, his face creased with worry and fatigue.

“Let’s get you out of that anorak,” Kincaid said. When he took the jacket from Atterton, he could see that the suit beneath it was also damp. It looked like a very expensive cut and fabric, and it smelled faintly of wet sheep. “Why don’t we sit down?”

But Atterton didn’t sit. Instead, he said, “You don’t look like a policeman, much less Scotland Yard.”

“I was on holiday with my family. Mr. Atterton—”

“Who called you? Was it Peter Gaskill?”

“I don’t know Peter Gaskill.”

“He’s Becca’s boss. Superintendent Gaskill. Why didn’t he come himself? Unless—” Atterton stared at him, his blue eyes going darker. “You’re homicide, aren’t you? That’s why they sent you. She’s dead.” He nodded once, as if affirming something he had already known. “Becca’s dead.”

Then he swayed, and when Kincaid guided him to a chair, he sat heavily, gracelessly.

“I’m sorry.” Kincaid pulled over an ottoman and sat as near Atterton as he could. He thought he might have to catch him. Quietly he went on. “The search team found her body this afternoon, below the weir.”

“Becca. But how— Was she— The shell— Becca couldn’t have—” Atterton stopped, shivering. His teeth began to chatter, but he made no move to warm himself.

Satisfied that Atterton wasn’t in immediate danger of fainting, Kincaid moved to the brown leather sofa that matched the armchair. The furniture was a bit worn and reminded him of his parents’ old Chesterfield.

It was a masculine room, he thought, glancing round. Unadorned, a study in whites and browns. The only splash of color came from the spines of the books in the simple bookcases and a few framed photographs. “The boat was snagged just below Temple Island,” he said. “We don’t yet know what caused Rebecca’s death.” He heard the click of the door as Cullen came in. “Doug,” he called, “do you think you could rustle up something hot to drink?”

As Cullen disappeared into the kitchen, Freddie Atterton looked up at Kincaid. “You’re sure? You’re sure it was Becca? There could be some mistake—”

“One of the searchers is a rower. He recognized her. But we will need you to make a formal identification, when you feel up to it. Unless there’s someone else—”

“No, no. Becca’s parents are divorced and she isn’t—she wasn’t—close to either. Her mother’s in South Africa and Becca hadn’t had contact with her dad for years. Oh, God, I’ll have to tell her mum.”

Cullen came back from the kitchen bearing a glass and a bottle of whisky. “I’ve put the kettle on, but in the meantime . . .” As he uncorked the bottle and poured a neat finger for Atterton, Kincaid saw that it was fifteen-year-old Balvenie. Rebecca Meredith had had good taste in scotch, it seemed, but the bottle had hardly been touched.

Atterton bumped the glass against his teeth as he took a swallow. “It’s my scotch,” he said, and started to laugh. “Becca hated scotch. She kept it for me. How appropriate. She’d have thought this was too bloody funny for words.”

Then his face contorted and he gave a gulp of a sob. The glass slipped from his fingers, bouncing soundlessly on the carpet, and the smell of whisky rose in the air like a wave of sorrow.

“Bastard,” said Tavie.

The German shepherd cocked her head and raised a dark inquiring eyebrow.

“Not you, Tosh.” Tavie stopped pacing the confines of her small sitting room and looked down at her dog, smiling in spite of herself. She knelt and rubbed Tosh’s head. “And not your doggie buddy either. He was a good boy.”

Encouraged by her tone, Tosh got up from her spot before the fire and ran to her toy basket. Pushing her nose into the jumble of toys, she came up with a squeaky tennis ball and pranced back to Tavie with the ball in her mouth, looking inordinately pleased with herself.

“Okay, just the once,” said Tavie, making an effort to sound firm. She tossed the ball into the kitchen and Tosh scrambled after it. Shrill squeaks signaled a successful retrieval. But the dog seemed to sense her mistress’s mood because when she returned with the ball, she went back to her place by the fire, squeaking her treasure but not begging for another throw.

But the play session reminded Tavie that she’d had to reward Finn that afternoon, after they’d made the find, taking his ball from Kieran’s pocket and giving the Lab a good romp and much praise. The first and foremost rule of search and rescue was that the handler must reward the dog after a find, and show just as much enthusiasm for a deceased find as a live one. The dogs must feel they had done their jobs well, no matter the outcome.

But Kieran . . . Kieran had stood, white and speechless, as she radioed Control.

Kieran had not looked after his own dog.

And Kieran had lied. Kieran had known the victim, and he hadn’t admitted it to her.

“Bastard,” she said again, but she knew it was just as much her fault as his. She’d thought he was ready for anything a search might bring. She’d thought, in her self-satisfied righteousness, that by training Kieran and bringing him into the team she’d given him purpose, and a cure-all for whatever demons drove him. Worst of all, she’d thought she knew him. And that she could trust him.

But she could see now that he’d lied to her from the call-out, or at least from the briefing at Leander when he’d learned the victim’s name.

Making another circuit round the room, she glanced at the reports stacked and carefully restacked on her small dining table. She’d debriefed the team and written up the log. There was nothing more she could do tonight, and she was on early rota at work tomorrow. She should heat up the single portion of vegetable curry she’d bought from Cook, the shop near the police station, and have an early night.

She had every reason to stay in. It was turning cold, and the sitting room in her higgledy-piggledy house near the fire station was as welcoming as she could make it. She’d bought the little two-up, two-down terraced house after the divorce. It might have been a comedown from the suburban life she’d led with Beatty, but it was what she’d been able to afford, and it had given her a fresh start. Then, when she’d been assigned to the fast-response car out of Henley Fire Station, which meant she only had to walk across the street to work, she’d begun to think that the house was a charm, and that the rest of her life would fall just as neatly into place.

Looking round the cozy room, with its hand-painted furniture and crewel-worked rugs, the windows curtained in cheery red and white, the mantel and picture rail adorned with carefully placed treasures, she thought of the woman whose house she had searched that day. A woman who, like her, had dealt with trauma on a daily basis. But Rebecca Meredith seemed to have felt no need to insulate herself from the stress of her job by making her home a place of solace.

Rebecca Meredith must have found that solace—if she had found it at all—on the river. Or through something else, Tavie thought. Not food, not alcohol, if she’d been a serious rower. Sex, then?

But that thought made Tavie’s face feel hot. The one thing she’d left out of her report was the dogs’ response to the panties she’d chosen as a scent article. And Kieran hadn’t given her a chance to talk to him about it.

It had been fully dark by the time they’d returned to their cars after looking at Rebecca Meredith’s boat. While Tavie had been speaking to the Scotland Yard detective, Kieran had cadged a ride with Scott and disappeared, leaving Tavie to ask Sarah for a lift back to her own car below Remenham. When she got there, Kieran’s old Land Rover had been gone, and he hadn’t appeared for the team debriefing in the Leander Club car park.

Although Tavie hadn’t wanted to field questions from curious club members or from the ex-husband, if he was still around, she’d drawn the meeting out, hoping that Kieran might turn up. While the other team members laughed and chatted, stowed gear, and played with the dogs, she’d waited, until at last she stood alone in the car park, feeling idiotic.

She’d rung him then, and again when she got home. After the third try, she stopped leaving messages.

“Damn him,” she said now, but her anger was becoming steadily more tinged with worry.

The house suddenly felt stuffy rather than comforting. She took one more turn round the room, then bent and switched off the fire. Tosh sat up, the ball still in her mouth, a bit of dribble hanging from her lower lip. As soon as Tavie turned in the direction of the coat hook, the dog was on her feet, dancing in anticipation and making Tavie trip.

“Okay, okay,” Tavie told her as she reached for her jacket. “You can come. We’ll go for a little walk.”

And if that little walk just happened to take them to Mill Meadows, she’d have her chat with Kieran if she had to shout at him across the Thames.