They reached the tideline. The sea was very calm, tiny wavelets folding over and over back upon themselves, frilled with cream foam. The sky was silver at the horizon.

“How many don’t we know about?” Chapman said at last. “God Almighty. Who’s interviewing her this time? Me? You? Half the forces in the country?”

“She won’t talk.”

“Happen.” He looked round. “Haven’t had a peep out of you, DS Coates.”

“Sir.”

“Upsetting.”

“Right. We’re having a baby. Me and Em. Brought it home, this has.”

“No good telling you not to let it get to you. Things like this—they get to you. Have to or you’d not stay human.”

“Sleightholme ent bloody human. Not any human I recognise.”

“Ifit is her. Ifthey’re connected. Let’s not run off with t’ball.”

They weren’t fooled. He had to say it, and they had to think it, and it meant nothing.

A woman was coming towards them with a pair of Labradors, all three of them splashing through the water. Simon bent down and picked up a piece of driftwood. When the dogs got nearer he threw it. They raced, plunging into the calm sea, mouths open and barking with excitement. The woman hesitated.

“What’s going on?” She pointed towards the cars and the tape.

Chapman’s ID card was ready. “Best go back from here,” he said, “you’ll get turned round anyway.”

“But what is it, what’s happened? Has there been some sort of accident?”

Serrailler and Nathan left him to it, and began to walk away from the sea, back towards the cars.

“You all right?”

“Guv. Just makes you think. Bloody hell.” He shook his head. “What’d you want to come for, guv?”

“Our case.”

“Only one of them. Only one of them was our case.”

They reached the Land-Rover and stood waiting for Chapman.

“Thought it was, like, a courtesy. Did he expectyou to come up?”

“He did.”

He had. “You’ll want to be here,” Jim Chapman had said. “You’ll want to go in.” The courtesy—if that’s what it was, to the DCI from another investigating force—would always have been extended, but this was more. For Serrailler, from the day David Angus had disappeared, this had been personal. He had needed to be in on the end of it. Was this the end? Ed Sleightholme would be interviewed again, by him, by Jim Chapman. She might even be brought here. Were there other places? Hiding places? Burial sites? He knew he would have to leave most of it to others. All he wanted was to have final identification of David Angus and to see Sleightholme go down for that. It would take a long time and he would be involved in different cases. But until it happened he would not be able to close this particular case, in his own mind.

Later, driving back down the motorway, Nathan said, “There’s a job going.”

“With Chapman?”

“Only he’ll be retired come Christmas. There’ll be a big reshuffle. Vacancy for a DI. Moors area.”

“And?”

“Wondered what you thought, guv.”

“If you want to move up you’ll have to move on. Long way of course.”

“Tell the truth, guv, I’ve had it for now where I am.”

“DC Carmody? Come on, Nathan.”

“Nah, I can sort him before breakfast. Only, Em and me’ve wanted to get into the country more. This’d be a chance.”

“Think you’ve got enough experience as a sergeant under your belt?”

“Dunno. Reckon Chapman wouldn’t have mentioned it though. Does that mean you wouldn’t back me, guv?”

“No. It’s up to you. If you think you’re ready and it’s where you’d like to be, go for it and I’ll back you.”

“Yessss,” Nathan said quietly, thumping his fist into the other open palm. “Thanks.”

“Good luck.”

He meant it. He knew Nathan ought to move. He was going up the ladder and he was going to do well. He deserved to and anybody who turned him down would live to regret it. He told himself all of it as he drove down the last stretch of motorway towards home. But he felt a sudden pang of regret, not only for the young detective he had nursed and promoted and with whom he had gone through some tough days. He regretted something else, something of his younger self that he saw going away together with Nathan Coates.

He felt old. Today had not helped. The small piles of bones lying on the cold rock shelves had not been out of his mind since the morning. Perhaps they never would be.

He felt things begin to slide away from under him, like the tide going out and leaving him on the beach.

Sixty-two

It was years since anyone had delivered newspapers to Hallam House. Instead, the post office in the village a mile away received a consignment every morning and it was then up to people with regular orders to collect their own. Since his retirement Richard Serrailler’s life had been carefully and clearly structured and the walk to the post office in all weathers was a fixed part of his routine. He set off at nine after his bath and breakfast. He had seen too many of his colleagues retire into a cloudy sky of vague, drifting days without point or purpose, the only exercise they took being on the golf course before and after too much lunchtime gin.

He went to the drawing-room windows which were open on to the garden. A branch of the rose New Dawn which climbed up the side wall had bent forwards under its own weight, come away from its supporting wires, and was blocking the path. Meriel was working in the long border, clearing out and dead-heading.

“I’m going for the papers. Don’t try and shift that branch on your own.”

She waved.

“Do you hear me?”

“Perfectly, thank you.”

“I’ll get the axe to it later.”

“Good.”

He watched her long back, as she bent down to pull up some groundsel. She was still wearing her cotton housecoat over the usual green wellington boots. She had never been especially interested in the garden during her years at the hospital and when the children were young—it was there as a background, a place for them to play and her to sit occasionally, the grass mowed and the edges cut by someone from the village. But with retirement had come a sudden passion, first to have the garden redesigned and planted, then to spend what seemed to be every waking moment fiddling with it, no matter what the season. Since Martha’s death she had been out there even more.

They did not speak about Martha nor about the confession Meriel had made about their daughter’s death. There was nothing to say. But the truth, once told, had opened up a fault between them which neither had been able to close.

He watched her working for a moment before going out, taking the walking stick made on the Isle of Skye, which he had inherited from his father and which had accompanied both of them for miles on foot over fifty-odd years.

It was already warm, the sky cloudless, and he did not hurry. He liked to think. The previous night Cat had telephoned to say she wanted to bring the children to tea. There was some news. They had not heard from Simon for over a week. Meriel fretted. Richard did not. But he wished Simon would settle, marry, produce a family, move up his career ladder. He also wondered if he should try once more to get him to allow his name to go forward as a Freemason. The following year Richard would be Worshipful Master of his lodge. It would give him satisfaction to have his son beside him. He would phone later and offer lunch.

If he had planned to go on turning the matter over on his way home, what he saw in both newspapers took his attention away from it.

The discovery of the skeletal bodies of children in caves off the North Yorkshire coast made all the front pages. Richard stood in the village shop scanning the reports, seeing Simon’s name, recalling the disappearance of the Lafferton schoolboy David Angus, son of one of his own former hospital colleagues.