That night with the drink in him he’d popped his head round the door, mumbling about going straight to bed. It was so obvious, it was hard for Ellie and Ben not to laugh. They listened smiling as he clumped around upstairs, a wall shuddering as he bumped off it. Then after a few minutes of silence, Ellie crept upstairs to find him curled on the floor next to his desk, snoring away. She got Ben to help get him undressed and into bed. Then once he was stripped and under the covers she stayed sitting on the bed, right where she was sitting now, for a long time, stroking his head and whispering that she loved him. It’d been so long since he needed her, since he had to be put to bed, since he allowed himself to be touched like that. It felt like coming home, being allowed to touch his face, stroke his hair without complaint.

Ellie stood up and went to the window. The bridge still there, the Firth of Forth still there, the whole of the Ferry still out there, twinkling in the twilight, going about its business, carrying on.

The doorbell went.

Ellie looked at the clock on Logan’s bedside table. Half past seven. It was four hours since she pushed Libby and Sam out the door.

She was surprised it had taken this long for the police to come round.

40

‘Hello, Mrs Napier, we’d like to speak to you for a moment. Can we come in?’

PCs Macdonald and Wood. She wasn’t going over to the station, then, not yet anyway.

‘Of course,’ Ellie said, widening the door and pointing them through to the kitchen. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

She busied herself filling the kettle, switching it on, throwing teabags into mugs, getting milk out the fridge. She tried to focus on her hands, keeping them steady.

‘Has something happened with the McKennas?’ she said, turning to face them.

‘That’s what we’re here to talk about,’ Macdonald said.

She gave Ellie a soft, sympathetic look. Behind her, Wood was mooching around, looking at the shelves of cookbooks, fiddling with the bowl of car keys and other rubbish in the middle of the kitchen table. He looked like he thought he was in a television crime drama, waiting for his Columbo moment.

The kettle clicked off and Ellie poured the tea. Squeezed the bags, fished them out and added milk. She realised then that she hadn’t even asked how they liked it.

‘I hope you take milk,’ she said, turning with two mugs in her hands.

Macdonald and Wood took them.

‘Sit down,’ Ellie said.

Ben appeared in the doorway. ‘Everything OK, love?’

Ellie nodded. ‘It’s about the McKennas.’

‘Ah.’

Ellie faced Macdonald. ‘I told him about our last conversation. He didn’t know I’d been to see Mrs McKenna, but I explained about it. He understands. He knows what I’m like at the moment, we don’t have any secrets from each other.’

‘Mrs Napier . . .’

‘Please, call me Ellie.’

Macdonald gave a deferential nod of her head. She had the same notepad in front of her, the one she’d had at the station. Ellie wondered what she’d written in it since then. A list of suspects, maybe, with Ellie’s name at the top.

‘When we spoke before, it was because you’d been to see Mrs McKenna.’

Ellie nodded.

‘You said you’d been in touch with her son.’

‘Yes, but that wasn’t true, I told you about that.’

‘Quite. And is that still the case, that you’ve never been in touch with Samuel McKenna?’

Samuel, his Sunday name, so quaint. It felt like something out of the Old Testament. She couldn’t imagine the gangly teenager crying on the bridge as Samuel.

‘That’s correct,’ Ellie said.

Macdonald shot a glance to Wood. ‘The boy is back home,’ she said.

Ellie smiled. ‘That’s good news. I was worried about him, as I explained when we spoke before. It must’ve been scary, being out there on his own.’

‘Don’t you want to know what he said?’ Wood said. ‘Where he’s been? Why he ran away?’

Ellie shrugged. ‘I’m sure he had good reason. As long as he’s back home and safe, what does it matter?’

Ben stepped further into the room. ‘But he does back up my wife’s statement, yes? That she’s never met him.’

Wood raised his eyebrows at the interruption. Scanned Ben up and down. He was just a kid who thought he had more authority than he really possessed. When your teenage son has committed suicide, when you’ve killed a man and dumped his body in the sea, that gives you a certain authority. That gives you the power to truly not give a fuck, to not be intimidated by jumped up little pricks.

‘He’s not been all that communicative,’ Macdonald said. ‘Although he did say that he’d never heard of your wife, yes.’

Ellie looked at her hands. ‘So where was he all this time?’

Macdonald and Wood both eyed her closely. She was risking it, but she didn’t care. Macdonald referred to her notes, but it was just for show, she knew the details already.

‘In a lock-up garage beneath the rail bridge,’ she said. ‘I believe it belongs to the family of a friend of his sister.’

That was good, a piece of misdirection away from the marina, keep them from looking there. Ellie should’ve thought of that.

Wood spoke. ‘The sister came back too, they were together.’

Ellie looked surprised. Wood was trying to catch her out.

‘His sister was missing?’ she said, voice natural. ‘That wasn’t in the news.’

Macdonald looked at her colleague. ‘Not for long. She didn’t come home last night. Said she spent it with her brother in the garage, then persuaded him to come home today.’

‘I’m so glad,’ Ellie said. ‘The family’s all back together.’

Wood snorted. ‘Not exactly.’

Ben came over and put a hand on Ellie’s shoulder. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Jack McKenna might be missing,’ Macdonald said.

Ellie looked surprised. ‘Isn’t he in hospital?’

Wood shook his head. ‘He checked himself out, against the advice of doctors.’

‘What do you mean, “might be missing”?’ Ben said.

‘It’s unclear at this stage,’ Macdonald said. ‘He left home on foot very early this morning, told his wife he was going to look for Samuel and Libby. She hasn’t heard from him since.’

‘And the children didn’t see him?’ Ellie said.

‘They say they haven’t,’ Macdonald said.

Wood narrowed his eyes. ‘Have you seen him?’

Ellie shook her head. ‘No.’

‘Have you ever seen him?’ Macdonald said. ‘Before today, I mean.’

‘Never, only a picture on the news.’

Wood sat back in his seat, pleased with himself. ‘That’s interesting, Mrs Napier. Because we have a description of someone who sounds very much like you visiting Jack McKenna in hospital the day after he was stabbed.’

Macdonald looked at her notebook. ‘Several nurses in his ward described a woman claiming to be his sister who spent several minutes alone with him.’ She looked up. ‘Jack doesn’t have a sister, Ellie.’

Ellie felt Ben’s grip on her shoulder tighten. She concentrated on her breathing, looked down at her hands and back up.

‘OK,’ she said finally. ‘I did go and see him in hospital.’

Wood smiled. ‘Why?’

‘I can’t explain it,’ Ellie said, her voice shaky. ‘It’s part of the same thing, the reason I went to see the mother and lied about her son. I felt involved somehow. It made me think of everything that happened with Logan. I felt sorry for the police officer, worried about him. I didn’t want those children to lose a father, I didn’t want Mrs McKenna to lose her husband.’

Macdonald frowned. ‘But he was a complete stranger to you, correct?’

Ellie nodded, felt Ben rubbing her arm. ‘I just . . . I haven’t been sleeping. The pills I was taking weren’t working. After Logan jumped, I haven’t been able to cope. When I saw the story on the news, I felt like it was my family. You wouldn’t understand. I don’t understand myself, really. I felt like if I could just make the McKennas’ lives OK, just get them all back together, then that was a second chance for me. Does that make sense?’