Strover has already called a colleague back at Gablecross, who confirmed that the car had been reported stolen. He then rang through to the Devon and Cornwall Police Control Room, giving them details of the incident.

  ‘Tasty?’ Strover asks, nodding at a half-eaten tart beside his espresso.

  ‘Exceptional.’

  The Portuguese tart is his reward after the earlier exertions on the coast path. It’s not as if he’s unfit – he’s been going to the gym recently. Strover and Kate are simply fitter.

  ‘He was driving straight at us,’ Strover says, more sombre now.

  ‘Trying to scare you? Or kill you?’

  ‘Her, not me, I hope.’ She pauses. ‘I’m not sure. I think he lost his nerve when he saw all the kids.’

  Silas sits back on the metal stool, watching a dad on the beach below dig a speedboat in the sand with his son. He used to do that with Conor, who always squealed with excitement as the incoming tide washed all around him. Will he ever see Conor again? Every force in the country has his details, along with the UK Missing Persons Bureau.

  ‘That’s three times he’s gone for her,’ Silas says. ‘If we believe Kate’s swimming story.’

  ‘You don’t believe her?’ Strover asks.

  He thinks he does. When he was working alongside Kate, he trusted her with his life. It’s annoying that she didn’t tell him sooner about her visits to the Bluebell, but something else is bothering him. Kate said that the man had spiked her coffee in the harbour café. It was a very specific allegation, quite a leap for her to have made. Particularly as it was before they’d explained that her drink in the pub six months ago might have been spiked too.

  Maybe it’s nothing.

  ‘I believe her now,’ he says.

  More than anything, his heart feels heavy, guilt about Kate mixed with anger. He realises he’s been in denial, not quite ready to take Jake’s pub footage seriously. He pushes away his empty plate and stands up. They need to find the driver.

  ‘And we’ve got a problem,’ he adds.

  ‘With the boss?’ Strover asks, standing up too.

  Silas nods.

  ‘He won’t like it, us being down here off duty,’ he says. ‘He didn’t like the super-recogniser unit and won’t want to hear anything about Kate. Facial-recognition software is king.’

  He starts to walk up the slipway towards the car park.

  ‘But if we can prove a connection with last week’s trial?’ Strover says, catching up with him.

  ‘That’s over, as far as he’s concerned. Gang sentenced, job done. Thirty-three years is a result – even made the national press.’

  ‘So what do we do?’

  Silas stops in the middle of the village square to face Strover, glancing around to check that no one is within earshot.

  ‘We prove a connection with the Proactive Team’s ongoing investigation into county lines. The boss is right behind that one. Can’t get enough of it.’

  The targeting of Kate a day after the sentencing makes Silas almost certain that there’s a link between the modern slavery gang that was sent to prison and the new county lines network that’s infiltrating villages around Swindon. He despises drugs, even more so since he’s seen the effects first hand on Conor. And the county lines gangleaders, the ones who groom the kids, some as young as ten, are no better than child molesters.

  ‘But we still don’t know who sent Jake the footage,’ Strover says as Silas walks on again, faster now, more purposeful. She has to trot to keep up with him.

  ‘Maybe someone who wants us to know there’s a connection,’ Silas suggests, opening the car doors with the remote.

  ‘Another gang?’ Strover asks, walking around to the passenger side.

  Before Silas can answer, his phone rings. He holds up his hand towards Strover as he takes the call.

  ‘Thanks,’ he says, after listening for a few moments.

  ‘That was the insurers,’ he says to Strover. ‘Our friend Jake… seems like he took out a new policy on his boat four days ago.’

  36

  Kate

  ‘I need a drink,’ Kate says, frantically opening one kitchen cupboard after another.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Bex asks, standing behind her.

  ‘Why don’t we have any bloody alcohol in this house?’ she says, opening another cupboard. It’s full of identical tins of Illy Italian coffee. At least twenty of them. All Rob’s. She pushes them away to see if there’s a bottle of something lurking at the back. She knows it’s a forlorn hope.

  ‘Because you’ve been disappointingly sensible since the accident?’ Bex offers.

  Bex and Kate used to despair of people whose voice went up at the end of every sentence. Now Bex is doing it.

  ‘Not any more.’ Kate slams the last cupboard door shut and rests her hands on the sideboard, head bowed.

  ‘I’ve got some gin in my room,’ Bex says quietly.

  ‘I thought you drank it all last night?’ Kate says, turning as Bex walks out of the kitchen and down the corridor to her room.

  ‘Emergency rations,’ Bex calls over her shoulder.

  Two minutes later, they’re sitting at the kitchen table, drinking strong gin and tonics at three in the afternoon. Kate used to drink at lunchtimes, when things were getting really bad with Jake. Kid herself that mints would mask the smell of alcohol. Stretch is on his bed, shattered after his long walk with Bex while Kate was out with Hart and Strover.

  ‘I never like to travel without reserve supplies,’ Bex says, turning the small square bottle to look at its artisan label: ‘Lancashire Dry Gin’. ‘Particularly when I’m coming down here to Prohibition Villas.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Kate says, enjoying the glowing sensation as the alcohol starts to permeate her body.

  ‘Hair of the dog,’ Bex says, knocking back hers.

  ‘Speak for yourself.’

  She’d left Bex to it last night. Been a good girl. The doctors all said she should try to avoid anything that might impair her brain’s recovery, including alcohol. Rob often reminds her of their words. It was the same when she was working. Hangovers weren’t compatible with intensive recognition work. It didn’t stop her drinking, though. She was beyond caring.

  ‘So what’s happened now?’ Bex asks.

  Kate starts to fill her in about nearly being run over in the street by the man who sat next to her in the café. As she gets to the bit about Jake and the pub CCTV footage he was sent that shows the same man, there’s a ring on the doorbell.

  ‘I’ll go,’ she says.

  ‘Call if you need me,’ Bex says as she walks off down to her room.

  She hesitates by the door for a moment, suddenly fearful. It must be the adrenaline from earlier. She almost laughs with relief when she clicks on the security monitor screen. It’s Mark, the guy who runs the gallery and looks after Stretch when she goes for a swim. He’s with Trudie, his own dog. She opens the door.

  ‘Just wondering if you wanted me to take Stretch for a walk,’ he asks, his open face all smiles.

  ‘That’s kind of you,’ she says, standing back in case her breath smells of gin. Mark’s a good man, always looking out for others.

  ‘Didn’t know whether you’d be up to walking him yourself,’ he says, ‘after what happened yesterday.’

  ‘Oh that,’ she says, playing down her swimming incident. As she feared, it’s become the talk of the village: the incomer who forgets how to swim and has to be rescued by the lifeboat. At least he hasn’t heard about her being nearly run over by a car today. No doubt news of that incident will soon be percolating through the village. ‘I’m fine now,’ she adds. ‘And Stretch is good. My friend Bex – she took him out earlier. Thanks, though.’

  ‘No problem,’ Mark says, turning to go. He pauses. ‘Did I see Rob just now?’

  Kate’s heart misses a beat.

  ‘Rob? I don’t think so,’ she says, managing a thin smile. ‘He had to go back to London yesterday.’

  ‘That’s what I thought.’

  She’d told Mark as much when she dropped Stretch off at the gallery before her ill-fated swim.

  ‘Where did you see him?’ she asks, failing to sound casual.

  ‘I must have mistaken him for someone else. I just thought I saw him driving past, out the top of the village. Gave him a friendly wave.’

  ‘In a Tesla? Like that one?’ she asks, nodding at the car parked on the drive.

  ‘Yeah, a Model S, just like that one.’

  Mark knows his electric cars. He was one of the first in the village to get one. It wasn’t a Tesla though. There aren’t any other Teslas in the village, even during the holiday period. Kate’s has been sitting on the drive all day – at least she thinks it has. She was out for a few hours with Hart and Strover, but the car is where she left it when she returned from Truro yesterday. What worries her is that Rob said recently that he was planning at some point to buy a second Tesla, identical in every respect, for his use in London. He’s like that. When he finds something that’s right for him, he sticks with it. Cars, trainers, tennis racquets, Italian coffee. If he had a wine cellar, it would be full of identical wines.

  ‘When was this again?’ she asks.

  ‘About an hour ago,’ Mark says. ‘Hey, listen, I must have got it wrong. Rob normally waves back anyway. This guy sped past, so I made a note of the number plate, in case it had been stolen. You know me.’

  Kate tells herself to calm down as she takes the scrap of paper that Mark gives her and closes the door. Rob is in London. She spoke to him earlier. Mark is right. It’s just a mistake. He’s a member of Neighbourhood Watch, inclined to be over-cautious. But then she remembers the woman who approached Rob at Truro station.

  ‘Everything alright?’ Bex says, coming back down the corridor from her room.

  ‘I need another drink.’

  37

  Jake

  Jake leans forward and sticks a plaster over the tiny lens above the screen. He tried to ring Bex as soon as the green light appeared on her computer, but she didn’t pick up and he decided against leaving a message. It’s not his business how she manages her computer settings. And he can’t be sure that the light came on when he started to browse Rob’s new company’s website.

  He’s about to open Google again, see what else he can discover about Rob’s investments, when his phone rings.

  ‘You tried calling me?’

  Bex.

  ‘Pocket call, sorry,’ Jake says.

  ‘Liar.’

  She knows him too well.

  ‘Your camera came on,’ he says. ‘On your computer.’

  ‘The interactive porn cam, you mean?’ Bex says.

  Jake swallows hard. He’d momentarily thought about watching a bit of soft porn – it’s been a while since he’s had any data – but the cat was eyeing him with such disdain that he’d quickly ditched the idea.

  ‘You serious?’ he asks.

  ‘I must have left it on after facetiming my mum,’ she says, letting him down gently.

  He closes his eyes. ‘Have you talked to Kate about Capgras yet?’ he asks.

  ‘Not yet.’ Bex sounds low. ‘I think it might freak her out even more right now. Being told she’s delusional. I need to choose my moment.’

  ‘How is she?’

  Bex pauses before she answers. ‘OK… considering that someone just tried to run her over in the street.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s fine,’ Bex adds quickly. ‘A bit pissed but fine.’

  She explains about Kate’s close shave with the car and then drops a bigger bombshell, telling him that the driver tried to spike her coffee yesterday and that she nearly drowned in the harbour.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?’ Jake asks, struggling to take it all in. And why didn’t Kate mention it last night when he called her? Typically, she’d been more concerned about him and the boat fire than her own brush with death.

  ‘Because you’re out of her life, Jake.’

  Harsh. ‘So why are you telling me now?’ he asks quietly. He knows she’s right. He’s history.

  ‘It gets worse. The same man who spiked her drink yesterday…’ Bex is finding this difficult. She’s usually as hard as nails. ‘He also spiked her drink the night of her car crash. Kate recognised him from that footage you were sent.’

  ‘Really? How do you know all this?’

  But before Bex has a chance to reply, Jake’s phone flags up another caller.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ he says. ‘DI Hart’s calling me.’

  He cuts Bex off and sits up in the chair in front of the computer, trying to process what he’s just heard and wondering why Hart is ringing him. He hopes Hart has news about the arsonist who torched his boat. Maybe something about the pub footage too. That’s obviously why he went down to Cornwall, to talk to Kate, who then talked to Bex about it.

  ‘Any news?’ Jake says.

  ‘You tell me.’

  Jake doesn’t like Hart’s tone. The bloke can be so affable one minute, intimidating the next. ‘How do you mean?’ he asks, shifting awkwardly in his seat.

  ‘Taken out any insurance recently?’

  Jake breathes a sigh of relief. ‘Yeah, finally upgraded to some decent cover,’ he says. ‘Thank God.’

  Until now, he’s just had the basic third-party cover – damage to locks and other boats – that’s required to get a licence from the Canal and River Trust.

  ‘Four days ago,’ Hart says. ‘Three days before your boat was destroyed.’

  He’s so naive. It never occurred to him how it might appear in the light of the fire. For months he’d been meaning to get the insurance upgraded to cover contents. Just like he’s been planning to set up an ISA, buy some premium bonds and do his tax return early for once. All part of his sober, self-improvement plan.

  ‘And that’s a problem?’ Jake asks.

  ‘You can see how it might look,’ Hart says. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’

  The line drops. A moment later, the cat jumps up onto his lap, steps with its front paws onto the keyboard and wakes up the computer screen. A picture of Rob in Brest stares back at him.

  38

  Silas

  ‘We’re off back up to Wiltshire,’ Silas says, finding himself standing in the doorway of Kate’s house in Cornwall for the second time that day. On this occasion they rang the doorbell and smiled at the security camera. No need for carnations. He’d been hoping for a quick cream tea before they went, but they need to beat the Sunday-night traffic.

  ‘Have a safe drive,’ Kate says. ‘And watch out for…’ She hesitates, swaying slightly on her feet in front of Silas.

  Is she drunk? It’s four o’clock in the afternoon.

  ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ Silas asks, glancing at Strover. She’d reassured him earlier that Kate was fine after the run-in with the car, but she doesn’t look herself.

  ‘All good,’ Kate says, unconvincingly.

  Her friend Bex appears at her shoulder, grinning at him and Strover. Dear God, they’re both drunk.

  ‘I was just going to say watch out for the speed camera on the border with Cornwall and Devon,’ Kate says, pointing in the air with her finger. ‘There’s a sneaky police van at the bottom of the hill – Rob is always being caught there. But then I remembered you are the police and…’

  Bex puts a hand to her mouth to suppress a giggle.

  ‘We’ll be careful,’ Silas says. ‘The car was stolen, by the way. The one that tried to run you over. We’ll let you know if we find it – or the driver. The local police have all the details.’

  ‘OK,’ Kate says. Silas catches a whiff of alcohol on her breath.

  ‘And we’ve asked a colleague to run a match for your partner,’ Strover adds.

  Kate seems to sober up immediately. ‘And?’ she asks.

  ‘I’ll call you if we hear something.’

  ‘Me too, if you find a match,’ Bex adds. ‘Then we can have a toyboy each.’

  Kate elbows her friend in the ribs. Silas is beginning to regret stopping by. But he knows there’s another reason why he needed to see Kate.

  ‘There’s something else I wanted to ask,’ he says.

  ‘I’m not coming back,’ Kate fires back.

  ‘I know you’re not.’ Silas pauses. She’s made that quite clear already. ‘It’s actually about my son, Conor. He’s been missing six weeks now. I’ve no idea where he is.’

  This is proving harder than he thought. Kate and Strover both know that Conor had a drugs problem and was homeless, but it’s still not easy.

  ‘We used to come to this part of Cornwall for our holidays, when he was a boy,’ he continues. ‘I don’t know, it’s a long shot, but he might have headed down here – somewhere familiar. Where he was happy.’

  He stops before he makes a fool of himself. Then he pulls out an A4 sheet and hands it to Kate. It’s a missing persons poster, with a photo of Conor taken a couple of years back, when he was still living at home and relatively stable.

  ‘Do you want me to put it up in the village?’ Kate asks. All the giggling of earlier has gone.

  ‘No need,’ Silas says. ‘Just keep an eye out for him. Remember his face. In case he should ever pass through here. You’re good at spotting someone in a crowd. Very good.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ she says, looking at the photo.

  The last time Silas saw Conor, he was living rough in a multi-storey car park in the middle of Swindon.

  The four of them stand in awkward silence for a few moments before Silas turns to walk away.

  ‘Can you check something else for me?’ Kate calls out. ‘About Rob?’

  Silas stops, surprised. He thought they were quits now, her looking out for Conor in return for them searching for Rob’s double on the database.

  ‘I think Rob might have another Tesla, just like that one,’ she says, gesturing at the car on the drive.

  Silas glances at it and then looks back at Kate. ‘Lucky Rob,’ he says, forcing a smile. He’s tried over the years not to feel jealous of others’ wealth. In his experience, money rarely brings happiness. But the sight of a £90,000 electric whip still niggles him.