No Mark Upon Her

Kincaid told him to wait until morning. “Let me talk to this guy, Kieran, and see what happened. I told Singla I wanted the first interview.”
    “Yesterday he seemed a bit off to me, that Kieran bloke.” Doug’s voice crackled as the mobile signal faded in and out. “You’d have thought that boat was the Holy Grail, the way he was fussing over it. Maybe he killed Becca Meredith, then tried to blow himself up.”
    “I can’t see him trying to burn his dog to death,” Kincaid said. He’d dealt with suicides who had shot their dogs, but not something like this. But if the relationship between man and dog was as close as it seemed, he supposed Kieran could have sedated the dog and set the blaze as some sort of ritual funeral pyre.
    He thought it much more likely, however, that someone had thrown a Molotov cocktail through Kieran Connolly’s window. “Nor do we have any idea why Connolly would have murdered Becca Meredith,” he went on.
    “He was a rower,” Doug said. “He’d have known how to capsize her.”
    “True enough.” Kincaid was driving down Remenham Hill, with the lights of Henley ahead. “But that’s means without motive, which doesn’t do us much good. I’m almost there. I’ll ring you when I know more.” He disconnected and was soon across the bridge and through the town center. Checking the address Singla had given him, he pulled the car up in West Street, not far from the fire station.
    Warm light shone through the leaded windows of the little terraced house. As he knocked, the murmur of voices from inside was immediately drowned out by a chorus of barking.
    “Tosh, Finn, easy,” a woman commanded, and Kincaid recognized the team leader’s voice from the previous day. The barking stopped and the door swung open.
    “Superintendent Kincaid, isn’t it?” Tavie Larssen looked surprised. “I thought it would be DI Singla.”
    When Kincaid had met her yesterday, she’d been wearing a dark SAR uniform. Tonight she was in her paramedic’s uniform, which was black as well. The severe, dark clothing suited her, he thought, giving some authority to her small frame and delicate features.
    “He sent me. May I come in?”
    “Oh, of course.” She stepped back and grabbed a black Labrador retriever by the collar. Connolly’s dog—what was his name? “Sorry, Finn’s not used to the house protocol,” said Tavie, answering his unspoken question.
    She opened a tin on the table by the door, looked the Lab in the eyes, and said, “Sit.” The dog plopped his rear onto the floor immediately and was joined by the German shepherd, who sat as well. They snapped up the two dog biscuits Tavie fished from the tin with an alacrity that made Kincaid fear for her fingers. “Good dogs,” she said. “Go lie down.”
    They did.
    No longer distracted by the dogs, Kincaid focused on Kieran Connolly, who sat across the room. Connolly’s forehead was bandaged, his face still smudged with soot and blood, his brown T-shirt and carpenter’s trousers splashed with darker brown splotches. He started to rise, but Kincaid waved him back. “No need to get up.”
    “Here.” Tavie gestured Kincaid towards the sofa. “I’ll just make some tea, shall I?” she said, a little uncertainly.
    “That would be brilliant.”
    “Right.” She smiled at him, then glanced at Connolly with a slight frown before stepping into the adjoining kitchen.
    Through the doorway, Kincaid could see a cream-colored enamel range, and on the room’s two high, wide ledges, an antique mirror and a few pretty china plates. In the center of the kitchen, a vase of bright autumn foliage and berries stood on a plain wooden table.
    Tavie filled an old kettle and set it on the range, then began placing mugs on a tray.
    Turning his attention to the sitting room, Kincaid thought that it was just as simple and appealing as the kitchen. There was a wooden chair painted in light blues and greens, adorned with a red throw, a stack of books on the floor beside it. A small table held a globe, and wide ledges like the ones in the kitchen displayed a few unframed portraits in oil. Sisal carpeting covered the floor, and a gas fire burned in an iron fireplace with a tile surround. Tosh, the German shepherd, had curled up on a floral hooked rug before the fire. Beside her, dog toys spilled from a woven basket.
    It was very much a single woman’s house, Kincaid thought, and it reminded him of the tiny garage flat that Gemma had lived in before