But there isn’t.

  Somehow, Oil Man – she cannot yet think of him as John – has a table at the best fish restaurant in the city, twenty miles away from the hotel where she works. It’s early, so there is barely a soul there. All Layla has to do is follow the young waitress to a snug corner booth, feeling the presence, the weight of him behind her. She marvels at the foreignness of someone attending to her, shaking her napkin free and passing her a crisp menu. She’s rattling with nerves, and she hates that, but here she is at least anonymous, concealed.

  He squints across the table at her. ‘Too much?’

  Layla raises an eyebrow, tries to regain her sense of control. ‘How did you get a table here? You only asked me a few hours ago.’

  ‘I come here a lot. They made room.’ He slides the bread basket to her, apparently dismissing the thought that someone could say no to him.

  ‘Right.’ Layla takes a roll and breaks it absentmindedly, feels it crumble on the tablecloth, soft and yielding. Pleasure at the thought of him making that call drops through her veins, kicks along with the sensation of power. At least she isn’t fazed by the cutlery. She’s laid enough ridiculous settings in her time. A laugh bubbles to her lips and breaks across the distance between them. He sits back and smiles.

  Outside, cold North Sea waves are thrashing the sands, driving their spray into the road. But in here it is cosy and they are cosseted by thick walls and darkness. He chooses the wine and tastes it, while keeping eye contact with her, and when the blood liquid is poured and the waitress is barely two steps away from their table, he leans back and says, ‘So, be honest, what are your dreams? For the rest of your life.’

  ‘What makes you think I have any?’

  He laughs and takes a long draught of wine. ‘Don’t you want more?’

  It irritates her beyond belief that this man with his wealth and his Rolex watch and his shine of confidence is judging her life. It irritates her even more that he has tapped into her restless desires and is now casually tossing them across a restaurant table at her. She doesn’t know how to say this to him without sounding petulant, shrewish.

  ‘Tell me about you,’ she says, realising this date was a mistake, almost wishing she was playing pool at the pub. At least Stephen doesn’t look down at her. Say whatever else you like, but not that.

  * * *

  Two bottles and four courses later, she stands to go to the Ladies and finds she is unsteady on her feet and the nervousness has dissipated. As she concentrates on walking a straight line across the restaurant, she is startled to see the transformation. The whole place is lit by candles and thrumming with chatter. Two women lean conspiratorially across a table, a man scrapes back his chair, forcing her to side step, the richness of smells and the confidence and wealth in the room is staggering. She feels like a moth at a butterfly party, dancing too close to the flame. An older woman eyes her suspiciously as she passes, and she realises the thing that makes her different here isn’t her invisible economic status but her youth. She draws her spine straight, allows her hips to swing as she glides. No one knows, she tells herself. No one knows that I shouldn’t be here.

  * * *

  ‘What would you do,’ he asks over dessert, ‘if money were no object?’ She snorts. ‘You don’t like the question.’

  ‘It’s just such an irrelevant one,’ she says, deciding to be bold, truthful, that there’s no point hiding anything from him. ‘It’s the kind of question you ask if you’re rich but is just… pointless… indulgent if you’re not.’

  ‘Insulting?’

  She meets his gaze over the top of her glass of wine, the world soft, fuzzy and swaying. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Okay.’ He looks around the restaurant. She sees his body language change, as if he’s pulling away from her. This game is more important to him than she realised. She sighs.

  ‘I’d train as a show jumper. Work at a top stable. Make the Olympics.’

  Layla studies the wine glass. She doesn’t want to look at him. Her dreams sound childish spoken aloud. She’s never told anyone this before.

  ‘So, you’re good enough?’

  She thinks about being humble. Wonders why she would start now.

  ‘I could be.’

  ‘I’d love to see you riding.’

  She laughs.

  ‘I bet you would.’

  * * *

  They are too wasted for either to drive, but the restaurant conjures a taxi, so they spend only a moment in the tumult of the beckoning storm before the quiet engulfs them. His hand on her knee, the smell of salt that has followed them in. He leans forward and gives the address of a hotel in the city centre without asking her permission. She idly wonders if he has the false impression that she owes him because he bought her a fancy dinner, but the crackle between them and the soft cloak of alcohol dull the outrage she might feel. She wants to go with him, this strange man with his talk of dreams and his lack of understanding of reality. Regrets are for the morning.

  They sit in silence as the car whips them through the orange-lit streets and she holds his hand as they hurry through the hotel’s reception, anxious, now they are close, to reach the destination, one that she’s thought of since their kiss in the rain against the kitchen garden wall.

  By the time they close the door to his room, she is breathing heavily. When his mouth meets hers, she tastes brandy and her head spins so much she almost loses her bearings, has to hold tight to him to stop herself being swept away. He lifts her onto the huge, soft bed and she is vaguely aware that the lights are bright and the curtains wide open, but they are high above the city and he is more considerate than any of the men she’s slept with before and so she loses herself in him, drinks in his appreciation until sweat slides between them and a flushed, wanton reflection stares back at her from the mirrored wardrobes. As she sits astride him, she catches her own eye in the glass and she is awed by herself, by the tides of feeling and freedom that are rushing through her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CAL

  When she answers the door, Cal can see that Jean has been felled by grief. Red-eyed and drawn, she looks at him hopefully, as if he can make it all better. His heart contracts at the sight. He’s done this to her.

  ‘Come in, Cal, come in.’

  He swallows and steps into the tumbledown cottage with the peeling frames and the unravelling lives within.

  ‘How are you doing?’

  He stands in the kitchen, alarmed at the vagueness he sees in Jean. She seems unable to find the kettle in her own home; her hands flutter from the worktop to her face and back again. He takes her arm, sets her down at the table and navigates his way around the room, though it feels intrusive, making her tea in her own home. A pot of broth is bubbling on the stove, threatening to overflow, and he turns it down slightly, gives it a stir.

  ‘Is Tam here?’

  ‘He was out seeing to the beasts,’ she murmurs, twisting her wedding ring on her finger. ‘He’ll be back in soon.’

  ‘Is there no one else who could sit with you?’

  ‘He’ll be back soon…’ Her words fade away.

  Cal sets down the tea in front of her. He has added a second teaspoon of sugar to the one she usually takes.

  ‘Jean, drink this. You don’t look right.’

  She sips obediently. Her capacity for conversation seems to have vanished, so he sits opposite, quietly drinking his own tea and waiting.

  The door slams open, heralding Tam’s return, and they listen to the sound of him pulling off his boots on the wedge by the mat. Cal calls out to him that they are in the kitchen and he appears in the doorway in his socks, holding the frame as if he cannot stand without it.

  ‘What are you doing in here?’

  He asks the question sharply, looking at Jean, but Cal answers for her, making a joke out of it.

  ‘It’s warm in here with the broth.’

  ‘The police were here this morning. Again.’

  Cal nods. He has guessed as much. ‘Why don’t you have a seat, Tam?’

  ‘I’ll stay where I am, thank you.’ Maybe he intends the words to be as barbed as they sound, maybe not. Cal has the sinking sensation that the anger that has flourished in Tam over the last day or two is about to find a target. ‘Did you know?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s official yet, but I did hear this morning that they’d found something during the examination.’ Both sets of eyes hold him. It occurs to him that he hasn’t expressly asked permission to record today, though he is doing so. ‘They said a bone in Layla’s neck was broken.’ He finds himself touching his own neck.

  Tam nods.

  ‘I still don’t understand.’ Jean’s voice is thready, weak.

  ‘I’ve explained already,’ Tam barks. ‘The bobby explained and all.’

  Cal stretches a hand to her. He can see she is in shock, her mind desperately trying to protect itself against a thought that has already made it through the barrier.

  ‘Jean,’ he says. ‘You know it means there is a possibility that her death wasn’t an accident.’

  The wail that escapes her is so abrupt it hits him between the eyes and sends the cat streaking from the room. Shocked at the sound, Tam steps forward and places one hand on her shoulder. ‘Jesus.’

  ‘That chef,’ Jean shrieks.

  ‘We don’t know that,’ Tam says.

  ‘Who else would it be? The police won’t do it right. You know they won’t.’ Jean’s face is bloodless. ‘It’ll be like last time. All that time she’s been in that wood. They should have found her.’

  ‘No one thought it was possible to get in there,’ Tam reasons.

  ‘Well, they were wrong.’ Jean wrings her hands repeatedly. ‘Who says it will be any different now?’

  ‘He’s here, watching them,’ Tam says. ‘They’ll have to.’

  They both look at Cal.

  ‘I will be able to do that, yes,’ he says. ‘Though I have to go home for a little while.’

  ‘When?’ Tam’s face is clouded with anger that Cal knows, rationally, isn’t really meant for him, but it strikes him anyway. He sees his father standing there, thunderous, uncompromising, and he flinches automatically. It has been decades – the man is dead – and still he reacts.

  ‘Today.’

  ‘You’re leaving?’ He can almost see Jean’s relief segueing to panic, like the sky changing mood. His heart contracts. ‘Why?’

  ‘My mother had a fall,’ he says. ‘She’s in hospital.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Jean reaches for him, rubbing his hand.

  The news seems to take the steam from Tam as well. ‘Aye, well you’ll need to get away.’

  Their attempts to conceal their distress make him feel worse than ever.

  ‘I’ll be contactable at all times, if you need me. I promise I will be back just as soon as…’

  Jean swallows, presses a tissue to her eyes to blot the tears.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ He wants to be the good guy. Leaving them feels like the worst betrayal.

  When he shuts the door and steps into the bitterly cold spring air, there are daffodils bobbing their heads at the corner of the building. He hadn’t realised the extent to which hope and the battle for truth were holding Jean and Tam upright. As complicated as he knows it is, he is still responsible for knocking them down.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Guilt and frustration sit beside Cal on the long drive south, while outside the world transitions from wild hills and twisting cross-country roads to long empty stretches of tarmac. The need to air his fears about Dubois is all encompassing. There is someone he could talk to. Andy. But if he tells his sister’s boyfriend what he suspects, it will make it real.

  He stops for a bacon sandwich and a coffee in a roadside cafe, dawdles in the shop needlessly, palms sweaty. Here he is oddly free, neither in Aberdeenshire nor home, poised between his reality and Layla’s. He wishes he could stay here forever, safe in the anonymity of a service station between the road maps and the boiled sweets.

  Back in the car, Cal takes his phone from his pocket, nurses it in his hand. Andy. A day from the past sidles into his mind. A field of wheat or corn, the stalks tall, sweating under a blue sky. Poppies lining the edges like drops of blood. Andy walking the perimeter, peeling off down tracks left by tractors, wading into the maze, peering through the crop. Cal trailing behind, the back of his neck burning in the sun, the only sound the occasional car passing on the melting tarmac.

  ‘I thought maybe here,’ Andy muttered when they got back to his car, mouths dry and skin dusty. Not talking to Cal, not even really talking to himself. ‘Not here. Keep looking.’

  Cal presses the call button. The moments stretch as he waits for Andy to answer.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Andy,’ he says, his mouth as dry as that day in the fields. ‘It’s Cal.’

  They don’t usually speak this often. A thousand thoughts spin in the silence. Andy is the one to break them, with a creaking whisper.

  ‘Is there news?’

  ‘No, nothing concrete. Just… Oh God, Andy, I don’t know. Through work I spoke to someone who seemed to know too much about me, about who I used to be. He said things that made me think maybe he…’

  Cal can’t say the words. Even starting to articulate his fears aloud makes him doubt himself.

  ‘What did he say? Who?’

  Andy’s voice is different, confused, perched on the edge of something terrible.

  ‘I don’t want it to come as a shock. It’s not definite. Just a theory.’

  Cal feels unaccountably like this is a mistake, but it’s too late. He’s started now.

  ‘Just tell me.’

  ‘Marc Dubois. I interviewed Marc Dubois.’

  Silence.

  Cal waits.

  ‘Andy? Are you still there?’

  His voice, when it comes, is a distant echo of the man. ‘Marc Dubois. The serial killer?’

  ‘I know it sounds crazy, but…’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, it does sound pretty nuts.’

  Cal doesn’t know what he expected. Tears? Sympathy? Some sort of articulation of the maelstrom inside his own head? There is nothing but the exhale of a breath held for decades.

  ‘I don’t know if you should be going down that path, mate.’

  ‘No,’ Cal says, regretting the impulse to share, ‘maybe not, but…’

  ‘I’d better go.’

  When the line goes dead, Cal feels even lonelier than ever.

  * * *

  The small town where he grew up is forever entwined with Margot’s vanishing. When he finished school, he fled its constraints and his history, has rarely returned. Her loss altered the relationship he had with his parents. The pain of not having her there severed them. He has investigated cases where the agony of loss has bound families together, like vines holding up the shells of trees, but his own couldn’t take the pressure.

  He’s been told his mother won’t be discharged before four p.m. so he parks near the river, walks along from a bridge downstream. It is hot and hazy; flies skate across the water and there is no breeze to stir the rushes. The banks are middle-of-the-day quiet – the children still in school. He can hear the sound of the motorway in the far distance. The clothes that were perfect in Aberdeenshire are too much – he feels sticky and nauseous. But that is not the only reason for the sickness in the back of his throat, the slavering-dog saliva that fills his mouth.

  He crouches by the water in the shade of a footbridge, dips a hand in the flow, lets the liquid run over his wrist, cooling him. The scrapyard is waiting for him, according to his app, only a few hundred metres away. He needs to see the place, and yet he doesn’t want to move, is anchored to this peaceful spot. Reluctantly, he stands, makes his way to the hoarding that protects the site.

  The old arched entrance to the yard remains in place but the gates are heavily padlocked. Signs proclaim: Danger, Keep Out! Cal shades his eyes and looks up. He strains to read the faded paintwork, make out the letters. Guthrie Scrap. Cars bought and sold. Could this be where his beloved sister has been all this time? Did Dubois leave her with the scrap? Memory nudges at him, then retreats.

  Only now does he notice the developers’ signs attached to the fence. Land acquired. An artist’s impression of a river quarter, flats with balconies overlooking the water, imaginary people walking arm in arm, a child on a scooter, fountains and landscaping. They’re going to be clearing the land. Cal walks back to the gate, feeling a swooping surge of urgency. He grips the bars with his fists and pushes his face up close, trying to see more, trying to find some answers.

  He can see some bare patches of ground where cars have been removed. Further along, the shells of expired vehicles remain in place, newer, shinier machinery frozen above them. The contrast between Layla’s resting place and this hellish dump strikes him – no cooling waterfall or dripping moss, only rust and hot metal smarting in the sun. He wishes instantly that he could be back in Aberdeenshire, staring down at the frothing pool, trying to make sense for someone else, not for himself.

  Memories of his sister assail him, as if they have been waiting off stage for this moment. He sees her pouring him a glass of milk, tossing her hair back as she handed it to him, lifting him onto a kitchen bar stool and twirling him.

  He imagines grasses growing around her, threading through her skull, weaving themselves in her hair. He remembers her eyes, their piercing blue. There were arguments about her going out for drinks with her friends. Though she was an adult, she lived under our roof. What if she’d never gone? What if she’d stayed?

  Cal sinks, unable to keep himself vertical. He presses his head to the bars separating him from the scrapyard and his cheeks squeeze between the cold metal. And then he is Chris again, crouched on the landing, head pressed between spindles, listening to the voices raised in anger.

  Surprise rushes from him in a groan, takes the power from his legs. He didn’t think he had any memories left to mine. He crouches on the ground and presses his head to his knees, wishing he could blot out the pain. The sun strikes the back of his neck and, finally, mercifully, he cries.