Free Nocturne with Bonus Material by Deborah Crombie

daring her to contradict him. “I’ve been told I’ve no sense of style.”
    â€œHmm.” Taking in his off-the-rack suit and uninspired tie, Melody thought she might be inclined to agree, but she wasn’t about to say so. There was obviously history here. “Well, what do you like?”
    â€œThat’s the trouble.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. I hate my flat. It’s bare and depressing. And I hate my parents’ house. Dark, stuffy, and full of my mum’s knickknacks. Nothing was ever meant to be touched.”
    â€œThere should be a happy medium somewhere.” Melody turned slowly in a circle as she considered the rooms. She wondered what she would choose for herself if she wiped the slate bare of the hand-medowns from her mum, the things that just “didn’t suit anymore” in her parents’ Kensington town house. “I’d start by finding some things you like and not worrying about whether they go together,” she said. “There’s a great auction room in Chelsea, near the power station in Lot’s Road. You could have a look, see what tickles your fancy.”
    Good God, had she really said tickles your fancy ? What was wrong with her today?
    But Doug seemed oblivious to any innuendo. He nodded and said, as if it were a novel idea, “I suppose I could.”
    â€œIt’ll come right. You’ll see.” Melody felt suddenly claustrophobic, even in the empty rooms. “I think you’ve done brilliantly, Doug. I love the house. But I’d better be getting back to Notting Hill.”
    â€œI promised you lunch,” he said.
    â€œOh. So you did.” She wondered if she could get through lunch without putting her foot farther into her mouth. “What did you have in mind?”
    He grinned. “Something very appropriate, I think. Now that I know your deep, dark secret. It’s called the Jolly Gardeners.”
    Shrugging off Tavie’s hand, Kieran popped the latch on Finn’s crate and hooked the lead to the dog’s collar. “I know who she is,” he said to Tavie, keeping his back turned. He hadn’t trusted his face or his voice, not since he’d heard Tavie say her name, dropping it so casually, like a stone tossed into the river.
    It had taken a moment for the full weight of it to sink into his mind. Rebecca. Rebecca Meredith. He never thought of her as anything but Becca.
    Nor did he automatically connect her with the last name Meredith, although of course he knew it, as any rower would. But Rebecca Meredith was a stranger to him, a woman who wore suits and went off to London on weekday mornings, worked in an office in a police station, left polystyrene coffee cups littered on a desk he’d never seen. A woman who had once been married to this man, Atterton. He knew now why Atterton’s face had seemed familiar. He’d seen a younger version in a few old photos, collecting dust at the back of a bookcase in Becca’s sitting room.
    Rebecca Meredith was not the woman who rowed as easily as most people breathe, who laughed as she pushed damp hair from her eyes and lifted a boat to her hip, or pulled the sheet up over a bare shoulder gilded by lamplight.
    â€œBecca,” he whispered. Please let it not be Becca . But he knew all too well that she took the scull out at dusk, and that the best he could hope was that there was some completely rational explanation for her disappearance. He was letting his mind play games, and that was a dangerous indulgence.
    Finn pushed against him and licked his chin. He knew it was time to go to work, didn’t understand Kieran’s hesitation. “Good boy,” Kieran said, and stepped back so that Finn could jump down.
    The dogs greeted each other with sniffs and wagging tails, but their attention came quickly back to their handlers. Tavie was watching him with an expression of concern that bordered on apprehension, so he forced