No Mark Upon Her

some sort of a stalker, but it wasn’t like that. When I first met Becca, last summer, I was rowing in the evenings—I told Tavie that. But now I’ve been taking my shell out at first light. Then, in the evenings, I’d run the river path about the time I knew Becca would be rowing. That made it easy for us to . . . to meet up afterwards.”
    Tavie shifted on the edge of her chair. When Kincaid glanced at her, the expression on her delicate face was one of disapproval. And, Kincaid thought, possibly hurt.
    “Sometimes I’d go to the cottage, after she’d taken the shell back to Leander.” Kieran threw that out like a challenge, as if her unspoken response had irritated him. Then, he sighed. “But mostly, I just liked to watch her row. It was—beautiful—you can’t imagine.”
    “I wish I’d seen her,” said Kincaid, and he did.
    Kieran nodded, an acknowledgment. “I was never as good as that, nowhere near, but I could tell when she was doing something wrong, getting into a bad pattern. I suppose I was sort of an unofficial coach. But—this last weekend, she was—different.” He hesitated, looking uncomfortable again.
    “Would you like to speak to me on your own?” Kincaid asked, wondering if the problem lay with Tavie.
    Kieran hesitated, then said, “No. No, I want Tavie to stay. It’s just that—how things were with Becca and me . . . When I try to explain it, it sounds—weird. But it didn’t seem that way. What we did together was something that was just between us.”
    “Okay. I get that,” Kincaid reassured him. “So what was odd about last weekend?”
    “I didn’t see her on the river on Friday evening. Or on Saturday morning, which was usually her biggest training day. So I went to the cottage. Just to make sure she was all right, you know, not ill or anything. The Nissan wasn’t in the drive. I thought she wasn’t home, so I was surprised when she came out.”
    Kieran’s frown drew down the corner of his bandage. “But she was—I don’t know—tense. Preoccupied. Not”—his lips tightened—“pleased to see me. She said she’d taken the train home the night before, and she’d never done that, not once in the time I’d known her.
    “And then, when I offered to run her into London to pick up the car, she was—short with me. She said she had things to do.”
    “Did she say what?”
    “No. I just left. What else could I do?” Kieran shrugged. “I saw her out on Sunday evening, rowing, but she didn’t speak to me. I thought—I thought maybe I’d done something wrong, something to upset her, but I couldn’t imagine what. Then, on Monday, I must have been a bit early for my run, or she was a bit late going out from Leander, because I missed her altogether.”
    His face twisted with grief. “If I’d just been there . . .” He rubbed a hand across his mouth. “I might have stopped him.”
    “Stopped who, Kieran? You said you saw something. Are you saying you saw someone ?”
    Kieran nodded. “I thought he was a fisherman. On the Bucks bank, between Temple Island and the last meadow. The woods are heavy there, but there’s a little green hollow between the path and the bank. He was there on Sunday when Becca was rowing, then again on Monday evening, the same time. When I thought about it afterwards, I realized he wasn’t actually fishing, although he had some gear. It was more like he was—waiting.
    “So, this afternoon, I went to look. There was a footprint in the mud, and the edge of the bank looked churned up, as if there’d been a struggle. Becca would have been rowing close to shore there, going upriver, and as late as she was, it would have been almost completely dark . . . She wouldn’t have seen someone until she was right on top of them.”
    “How deep is the river there?” Kincaid asked.
    “Not very. A few feet, maybe, that close to the bank.”
    “So you think this—fisherman—could have waded in and capsized her?”
    “He’d have to have known how.”
    “Ah.” Kincaid sat back in his chair, feeling the weight of what had happened to Becca Meredith. Kieran’s story made sense, put together with what they had already learned. “I think perhaps he did. You see, we found evidence, both on the body and the shell. It looks as if she was held under the boat with her own oar.”
    “Oh, God.” Kieran’s face grew almost as white as the gauze on his forehead. “I thought—I thought I was just being paranoid.” His eyes filled. “Why?