No Mark Upon Her

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.
    “B astard,” 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