‘Noah? Noah? Noah?’

  ‘He’s fine, love. He’s fine. Just keep still.’

  ‘Bill?’

  ‘You’re fine.’

  Only she wasn’t. She was far from fine. She was almost completely in half. Nothing at all salvageable here, just end-management pain control if the shock-trauma endorphins didn’t last long enough to carry her off.

  Boyd’s mind was mercifully jerked away from that fucking awful memory by the persistent buzzing coming from his jacket pocket. He pulled out his phone and saw Emma’s gap-toothed smile on the screen. A picture taken when she was still at primary school. It always made him smile.

  ‘Hey, Ems.’

  ‘Supper’s nearly ready, Dad. Fifteen minutes or so. I can keep it warm if –’

  ‘I’m on my way back,’ he replied.

  ‘Do you want me to come down and give you a lift?’

  ‘No. The walk’s good for me. Clears my head while I burn those calories.’

  ‘Okay. How long do you reckon?’

  It had taken him forty-five minutes this morning to walk to work. But then most of that journey had been downhill.

  ‘Maybe an hour?’

  ‘An hour! You sure you don’t want a lift?’

  He was emerging onto the promenade now – the pier directly ahead of him. He turned to look left and saw a long straight walk ahead, with the faint line of the East Hill on the horizon and the grey sea churning restlessly.

  Stirring stuff.

  Inspiring stuff.

  It started to rain.

  ‘Oh, sod it – yes please,’ he said.

  Five minutes later she pulled up beside him. He opened the door of the Captur and hopped in. ‘Thanks, love.’

  Emma waited for a gap in the evening traffic, then pulled back into the road. ‘So? How was your first day back?’

  ‘Busy. Very busy. There was a yacht brought in below East Hill. CSI team crawling all over it.’

  ‘A murder?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Murder.’ He said ‘murder’ like ‘moi-duh’. An old joke between them. They used to watch NYPD Blue repeats when she was younger.

  Her eyes widened behind her glasses. ‘Really? Day one?’

  ‘Yup. And it’s dropped straight into my in-tray.’

  ‘What? I thought you said they’d give you a week or so to bed in?’

  ‘Nope. Straight in.’

  She fiddled with the wiper speed. The rain had suddenly got heavier, turning the windscreen into the rippled surface of a pond.

  ‘I suppose they’re like every other force, Ems, short-handed and under-budgeted. Just shitty timing, I suppose.’

  She glanced his way. ‘Or good timing?’

  ‘No, definitely bad timing. I could have done with an easy first week.’

  Emma pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘So is there, like, a body on the boat?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So how do you know it’s a moi-duh?’

  ‘Because I’m a DCI and – I dunno – detecting is what I do for a job.’

  She flashed him a sarcastic smile. ‘Oh, of course.’

  ‘And the blood. That was a big clue. Lots of blood.’

  She drove them along the front, past the seafront parking, a mini crazy golf course and an amusement arcade, then turned inland and up the side of East Hill. She turned right onto Ashburnham Road and parked outside their new – way too large for the pair of them – home.

  The rain was pouring down and they huddled beneath the porch roof as he jiggled through his keys to find the one for the front door. He finally found it and let them both in.

  The house was cold. The house was old and cold. And enormous. The estate agent had told them it had been used as a guest house ‘back in the day’, whenever that was. It was all very Victorian; the ceilings were ridiculously high with cobwebs and dead spiders above the coving. In the lounge they had a large, cracked, oval ceiling rose that either needed to come down or be patched up at some point. It had been very grand, once upon a time.

  He rubbed his hands together. ‘Dinner smells good. What is it?’

  ‘Bolognaise.’

  ‘Nice. Do you want a glass of red, Ems? … Where you going?’

  ‘Getting a jumper… and yes please,’ she said as she disappeared from view up the stairs.

  Boyd headed down the hallway towards the kitchen and dining room at the back of the house. Every room in this place echoed. It was all old-varnished floorboards, no carpets anywhere. They’d unboxed some of their belongings but, the fact was, this house was three or four times the size of the one they’d just moved from and it was going to be a while before they’d accumulate enough stuff to fill their new home and soften the acoustics. For now, every room sounded like an empty village hall as you entered it.

  He made his way across the dimly lit dining room. The walls were dark aubergine, and the white picture rail and ceiling had been so discoloured over the years by pipe smoke they were now a horrible mustard colour.

  There was a chandelier that sported six light sockets and only three dusty bulbs – another thing on a very long DIY to-do list he had in his head. Julia would have been on that the first day they’d moved in. She’d have loved this insanely large house with its high ceilings, grand chandeliers, tall windows, genuine wooden floors. It would have been the kind of project she’d have lapped up…

  From the dining room, Boyd entered the tiniest room in the house: the windowless kitchen. It was about twelve feet by six. There was an ancient built-in gas cooker, a sink and drainer, and about enough counter space to play a game of Scrabble. There’d been room in the corner – thank God – for their fridge freezer, which stood like some large white sentry tower glowering at its inadequate new home.

  He squatted down in front of the oven and peered through its grimy window. There was a crockpot sitting in there. He was about to open the oven door when Emma came in, shrugging on a thick cardigan. ‘Dad! No fiddling!’

  He raised his hands and stood up. ‘Sorry, guv.’

  ‘Go set the table and open some wine,’ she said, shooing him away.

  He did as he was told, leaving Emma to serve up while he pulled a bottle of red from the pantry cupboard in the corner of the dining room. Their Ikea dining table looked tiny in the large dim room; it had been far better suited to the terraced house it had spent the last ten years in, presiding over Emma’s homework, Noah’s Play-Doh creations and Julia’s copy-editing – it had been the hub of their family life.

  Baked into that oak-veneered MDF were a decade of memories. Happy ones. Although the table looked lost at sea in this room, he was damned if it was going to be demoted or, worse, skipped.

  He poured them a glass of wine each and sat down as Emma came in, carrying two steaming plates.

  ‘Hot,’ she cautioned as she set it down in front of him. She placed hers on the table and sat down. ‘God, it’s dark in here.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Hold on.’ She disappeared back into the tiny kitchen. He heard some rummaging around then: ‘Aha!’

  She returned with candles and a lighter. A few moments later, the dining room felt less like a mausoleum.

  ‘Want to know about my day?’ she asked.

  Boyd smiled. ‘Of course.’ Poor Emma… She should be out with kids her own age, he thought, not for the first time. At university getting drunk and skipping early morning lectures – not stuck here in this creaking old house babysitting her father. ‘Did you go exploring?’ he asked.

  ‘Indeed, I did. There’s a decent Indian takeaway down the hill that might be worth trying. I walked along this totally cool old street called George Street. It’s like something out of Charles Dickens; old, tilting-forward buildings, lovely-looking pubs, antique shops. Did you walk down it to get to work?’

  ‘I walked along the front,’ he said. George Street must have been the one that DC Okeke mentioned to him on their way to look at the yacht.

  ‘Oh, and I met the neighbours.’

  ‘Yeah? What are they like?’

  Their house was half of a much grander-looking property. While their side had once been a B&B, sometime before that someone must have owned the entire building – and ‘mansion’ really would not have been too much of an overreach to describe it. Looking at the grand houses on this side of Ashburnham Road, he was hoping for a nice, quiet retired couple. No teenagers slamming doors or pumping irritating bass lines through the partitioning wall – just a pair of sweet, quiet old dears.

  ‘They’re a lady and a parrot.’

  ‘What?’

  Emma chuckled. ‘I crap you not. An old lady with a parrot, or a parakeet, on her shoulder.’

  ‘A real one?’

  Emma raised a brow. ‘Well, if it was a plastic one, I’d probably have called social services to come and have a look at her, Dad. Of course it was real.’ She shook her head and chuckled some more. ‘She’s a character.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘You mean apart from having an exotic bird on her shoulder? Umm… just totally. I don’t know – all ditsy gypsy-ish, scarves, bangles, beads and… who was the Harry Potter teacher with the googly-eyed glasses? The one played by Emma Thompson?’

  He didn’t remember the name, but now he had a good mental image. ‘You’re kidding me?’

  ‘She’s barking mad, Dad!’ said Emma, smiling. ‘In a good mad way.’

  ‘How does that work?’

  ‘She’s eccentric. She said she does seances, tarot reading, crystal therapy…’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake.’

  Emma was grinning. He could see his daughter loved the woman already. ‘You totally have to meet her. She’s absolutely bat-shit crazy.’

  ‘Great. Well, doesn’t that sound something to look forward to,’ he said.

  ‘And Ozzie. Don’t forget Ozzie’s arriving tomorrow.’

  He had a blank moment. The name was pinging something in his head… ‘The rescue dog? Ah, yes.’

  ‘You’d forgotten!’ she said.

  ‘No, it’s just… there’s lot of stuff being shoved into my poor brain at the moment.’

  ‘The Spaniel Aid people are dropping him off about lunchtime. Do you want to come back in your lunch break to meet him?’

  ‘I don’t know. It might be busy tomorrow. I’ll try,’ he promised.

  Getting a rescue dog had been entirely Emma’s idea. She had researched it online and found a good charity that took the adoptive vetting seriously. She’d done all the paperwork, answered the questions, done the phone interview and the home visit. But, although she’d always wanted a dog, he suspected she’d done this with him in mind.

  This was her – less than subtle – way of trying to rescue her dad from spiralling into a black hole of loneliness. A dog would depend on him, would need him to keep his head together. A dog would force him to spend time outdoors, getting at least some exercise every day. Perhaps he’d meet other dog walkers? Perhaps he’d meet someone else? In his daughter’s mind he imagined it was the perfect solution. Carpe Diem therapy for Dad, and a cosy home for a lovely old boy called Ozzie.

  Sorted.

  10

  ‘So how did it go in Eastbourne yesterday?’

  DC Okeke’s eyes were on her computer monitor. She was a million miles away, unaware that Boyd was standing beside her.

  He waved his paper coffee cup in front of her screen. Her eyes flashed with irritation as she dragged them away from whatever she was looking at.

  ‘What?’ Then: ‘Oh, sorry – didn’t know it was you, guv.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ he said, smiling. ‘Glad to see you’re getting stuck in. How’d it go in Eastbourne?’

  ‘Fine,’ she replied. ‘And the traffic wasn’t too bad after all.’

  She tapped her mouse and saved whatever she was doing. ‘I spoke to the day manager at the marina.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Magpie checked out of the marina about three months ago.’

  ‘Three months? Fits in with Sully’s timeline…’ he muttered to himself.

  She nodded. ‘The owner registered an intention to take a long weekend break across the Channel and completed a –’ she flicked through a tray on her desk – ‘a BF1331d form.’

  ‘What the hell’s one of those?’

  ‘You have to get one rubber-stamped if you’re intending to sail outside UK waters into European waters. It’s a new Border Force thing.’

  ‘So, what then?’

  ‘The marina holds a copy on file. The boat owner takes the original with them, which they’re meant to show to EU officials when they arrive wherever they’re going. More lovely bureaucracy.’

  She handed him a photocopy. ‘All part of our brilliant New Normal,’ she said, her voice heavy with sarcasm.

  Boyd bit his tongue. In his experience, politics – particularly of the Brexit variety – was best kept away from work, having the tendency to escalate into a full-blown argument in the blink of an eye.

  He frowned as he tried to decipher the spidery handwriting on the form. ‘So who’s M. E. Heff? Huff? Hoff?’ The handwriting was scrawled so badly it was barely legible. ‘Is he the boat’s registered owner?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ she replied. ‘The monthly fee to berth at the marina is paid by a company called Maguire Mackintosh. It could be a company director’s yacht.’

  ‘How long’s the boat been kept there?’

  ‘Seven months, I think.’ She checked her notepad. ‘Yeah. Seven months.’

  ‘And who’s this Huff-Heff…? Any ideas?’ He looked around. ‘Anyone?’ He turned to Minter. ‘Who’s checking Companies House?’

  ‘O’Neal?’ Minter shouted across the room.

  ‘Huh?’ O’Neal looked up from his computer screen and pulled his earphones out.

  Minter sighed. ‘No fucking headphones! Companies House. You on that? You got details yet?’

  ‘Oh, crap,’ was O’Neal’s answer, his face pinking. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You forgot?’

  ‘No, no… I didn’t. I tried yesterday, but their server was down all afternoon. So –’

  ‘Try it again, then.’ Minter looked back at Boyd. ‘Sorry, boss.’

  Boyd turned to Okeke. ‘Did the duty manager know this M. E. Heff?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. She said she didn’t recall dealing with that specific owner.’

  ‘Well, did you ask if it’s an odd thing now? You know, people taking their boats out for short hops to Europe?’

  ‘Of course. She said it still goes on, maybe less so because of the additional paperwork hassle, but she didn’t specifically recall the Magpie checking out.’

  ‘Can boats sneak out?’

  ‘I also asked that, guv.’

  ‘Good. And?’

  ‘No. They have a camera and sensor at the marina exit. Boats going out or coming in – trigger the sensor and the duty manager has to log the boat’s name.’

  ‘What about at night?’

  ‘Same thing. Night duty manager logs it.’

  ‘Okay. So, in theory, any boat leaving, whether for five minutes or five months is in their records?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He stared back at the photocopied form. ‘Have the names on this form been checked?’

  Okeke shook her head. ‘The manager said that many of the boats are hired or lent to mates. So – although they should verify the name of every passenger – often they don’t.’

  ‘World-beating high-tech border security, eh?’ Boyd muttered to himself.

  She pulled a face. ‘Quite.’

  He studied the scribbled names. M. E. Heff or Huff-something, Z. Kov-something, G. E. Kov-something. The handwriting was shite to read, but at least they had a number of passengers now.

  ‘It looks as though there were three people on board,’ said Boyd. Then he stared at the scrawled dates. ‘So three folks… going for a trip for up to seven days, left on November the twenty-seventh…’

  ‘And never checked back in,’ Okeke added.

  ‘The manager was certain of that? They didn’t come in and leave again?’

  ‘No, guv. She said it was unlikely but possible. I mean… if she’d been on the loo, or dealing with something else, a boat could have wandered in and out. She said there had been the odd occasion when the sensor hasn’t triggered, but it’s very unusual.’

  ‘Great.’ He sighed. ‘And when the boat didn’t come back seven days later, the marina manager didn’t think to flag that up with anyone?’

  Okeke shook her head. ‘They have the form on file. When the boat returns, they dig the same form out of the filing cabinet and sign it back in.’

  Boyd sighed again. British bureaucracy at its best: the forms were simply face-saving bureaucracy. A paper mountain created simply to spare some politician’s blushes.

  He looked again at the scribbled names. Were they even real? At least there were some parts of the form that were legible. He pointed to one of the boxes. ‘Scheduled departure – eleven thirty… Is this form a thing you fill in just before departure?’ he asked, not really expecting an answer.

  ‘I don’t know, guv,’ Okeke replied. ‘I would think it’s something you’d have to do the same day.’

  ‘You said there’s a camera at the marina exit. They should have CCTV cameras all around too then. You’d think so, wouldn’t you? Can you check for me?’

  ‘On it, guv,’ she said, turning back to her computer.

  Later that morning Boyd had the press briefing to deal with. He’d done about half a dozen in his career so far, and each time he’d got a little better. The objective, really, was to say as little as possible, in the dullest manner possible and then, when the questions came at the end, to answer as few of them, with as little information as you could sensibly get away with. He wondered why journalists even bothered turning up for these things.

  This one had pulled in a modest audience of a dozen or so local journalists. So the story had attracted a fair bit of interest, he noted.

  He surveyed the room, looked down at his notes and began.

  ‘On Sunday the sixth of February, at two in the afternoon, a Danish merchant ship sighted the yacht Magpie drifting in the English Channel. It was formally reported some four hours later and the local RNLI launch team was alerted. They located and boarded the yacht to find no sign of any passengers and significant impact damage to the hull, which was causing the boat to slowly sink.