No Mark Upon Her

asked him where he was on Wednesday night. I don’t think he knew what had happened. And, apparently, at the time, he was in London, meeting with very important people , as he put it.”
    “Ah. Would one of those important people happen to have been Peter Gaskill?”
    “Wouldn’t surprise me.”
    “That’s one of the things I was calling to tell you,” Doug said with an air of satisfaction. “I’ve done some checking. Seems they’re very matey, your friend and Gaskill. As in, Gaskill owes Craig his promotion.”
    “You didn’t talk to Gaskill, did you?” Kincaid asked with a jolt of alarm.
    “No. I’d have avoided him in any case, but he was out this afternoon. Golfing.”
    “Is that so?” Kincaid found he wasn’t surprised. “What a coincidence. Our friend was golfing as well. Who did you talk to?”
    “DC Bisik. It seems Sergeant Patterson was right about it not being a good idea to be seen talking to us. She was seconded to another division by the end of the day yesterday.”
    “What?” Kincaid’s hand tightened on the phone. “Where?”
    “Dulwich. I’ve checked with the station there. She reported for duty this morning, although the inspector seemed rather surprised to find that he needed another detective sergeant.”
    Gaskill’s doing, no doubt, Kincaid thought. And probably Craig’s, setting in motion a chain of commands that had resulted in DS Patterson’s quick removal. He wondered how many of the links in the chain were willing participants.
    “She’d gone home by the time I rang the station. Bisik gave me her mobile number,” Doug continued, “but she’s not answering.”
    “No,” Kincaid said. “I doubt that she would.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “I suspect she learned her lesson about talking out of school.”
    “Well, we need to speak to her again, regardless. The thing is, Bisik could only think of one thing that was different about Becca’s day on Friday. Another female officer came in, a DCI from Vice. Apparently she was an old mate of Becca’s. Bisik wasn’t introduced to her, but he had the impression that Kelly Patterson was. He also had the idea that Becca and this copper might have gone out for drinks.
    “Gaskill would know who she was, I’m sure, but I doubt you want me asking him,” Doug added. “Nor the guv’nor.”
    “No.” Kincaid thought about their strategy. “If Patterson doesn’t return your calls tonight, can you be at her station first thing in the morning? Unofficially.”
    He couldn’t quite get his head round the fact that he couldn’t go to his own chief superintendent with this. How much did Childs know? Was he privy to all of Craig’s and Gaskill’s maneuvering, or was he merely following orders he’d been given?
    Kincaid still found it hard to believe that the man he’d thought he knew, and thought of as his friend, as well as his superior, would countenance protecting Craig if he knew the truth about him.
    Should he try to—
    “Hang on,” said Doug. “E-mail just came in on your computer. It’s the lab results from the SOCOs on Freddie Atterton’s car and the things they took from his flat.” There was a moment’s pause as Doug read, and Kincaid could imagine him pushing his glasses up on his nose. Then Doug went on. “You can say I told you so to the guv’nor. There were no traces of grass or mud from the riverbank, either in the car or on the clothing. No fiber match. And the footprint at the site was a size smaller than Atterton’s shoes.
    “And”—there was a spark of excitement in Doug’s voice—“in the debris against the bank, they found a chip of paint that matches the Filippi’s hull.”
    “So she was killed there,” Kincaid said slowly. “And not by Freddie Atterton.” He thought about Freddie and Kieran Connolly, both about the same size and height. “I’d wager the smaller shoe size rules out Kieran as well.”
    “You were thinking Connolly might have made up the whole story about seeing the man on the riverbank, then torched his own boatshed for verisimilitude?”
    “Watch it with the big, university words,” Kincaid told him with a trace of returning humor. “But, yes, I’d considered it, although I didn’t think it likely.”
    But if they ruled out Freddie, and they ruled out Kieran, that brought them back to Angus Craig, and Kincaid back to square one. How the hell could they—
    His phone buzzed with an incoming call. Gemma. “Hold on. Or let me just