No Mark Upon Her

in one spot. “Becca?”
    “Rebecca. Rebecca Meredith. My wife—my ex-wife—kept her maiden name. That’s how she was known as a rower. And now she’s training again. For the Olympics.”
    “Becca,” Kieran said again, through lips suddenly gone numb. A hole had opened in the fabric of the universe, and he felt himself falling through it.
    “K ieran, are you all right?” Tavie had waited until they were on their own, and in position, before she asked.
    She’d deployed two teams on either side of the river, each team consisting of two handlers and two dogs, to cover the area between Henley and Hambleden Lock.
    Once she’d convinced Mr. Atterton that he would be more useful staying behind at the club in case his ex-wife rang or returned, she and Kieran had driven separately down Remenham Lane, then over the farm track that gave the closest access to the river path and their segment.
    They’d stopped at the last fence that lay between them and the Thames meadow. Beyond the meadow she could see the river, bisected by Temple Island, which looked absurdly manicured against the shaggy Buckinghamshire bank on the river’s far side. They would take the dogs through the gate into the meadow, boggy from the morning’s downpour, and start downriver on foot from there.
    Fortunately, the morning’s bad weather seemed to have discouraged the usual contingent of dog walkers, joggers, and pram pushers that used the Thames Path, and once the search had been instituted, the police had cordoned off the path between Henley and Hambleden on both sides of the river. This would reduce the number of confusing scents for the dogs.
    Opening Tosh’s crate, Tavie snapped on her lead. Tosh jumped down lightly and sat, half on Tavie’s foot, looking up at her in quivering anticipation. She was eager to go to work.
    Tavie glanced back at Kieran, who still hadn’t responded. He was pulling his gear out of the back of his old green Land Rover—pack, radio, water bottle, Finn’s lead, the squeaky ball that was Finn’s reward for a find—all automatic motions—and he didn’t look at her.
    “Kieran, are you sure you’re up to this? I can do this on my own if the storm—”
    “I’m fine,” he said, still not meeting her eyes, but something in his voice made Finn stop whining to get out of his crate. The dog gazed at his master, his lip wrinkled in a puzzled expression Tavie would have found comical if she hadn’t been worried.
    She knew that Kieran had bad days, and that he was uncomfortable with storms. He’d never said much about his past, and as for the present, she knew only that he fixed boats in the little shed on the island above Henley Bridge, and that he rowed.
    But in spite of his reticence, they’d become friends. A chance meeting in the park had led her to offer him help in training Finn, then to her suggesting that Kieran join the SAR team. At first he’d resisted the idea, but as Finn grew, Kieran began to admit that the dog needed a job. Tavie never said she thought that it was Kieran who really needed a reason to get up in the morning, but as he began to ask her to recount the details of searches and finds, she saw a spark come back into his eyes.
    Before his first training session with the group, however, she’d stopped, moved by some impulse to protect him. “Kieran, you know a good many of our finds are deceased. Will that be a problem for you?”
    He’d given her a crooked smile. “Not as long as they’re strangers.”
    His answer came back to her now. She touched his arm. “Kieran, I have to ask. You turned white as a ghost when you heard this woman’s name. She’s a rower, you’re a rower, and I think it’s a pretty small world here in Henley. Do you know her?”
    M elody Talbot gazed at the bow-fronted, terraced house, furrowing her brow. “It’s, um—it’s very—suburban.” Then, seeing her companion’s crestfallen expression, she amended. “It’s nice, Doug, really it is. It’s just not exactly single-guy territory, Putney, is it?” She gave him a calculating glance. “Unless you have plans you’re not sharing, mate?”
    Doug Cullen flushed to the roots of his fair hair. “No. It’s just—I wanted something as different as possible from the Euston flat. It’s an easy commute to the Yard. I wanted to be near the river and the rowing clubs. And it was a good deal.” He surveyed the house with obvious pride. “Just needs a bit of fixing up, is all.”
    Gazing at the