Jake stares at the screen, shaking his head in disbelief. He needs to talk to Bex, to Kate.

  Thanks for sharing. This is going to help me, help Rob, us. You’re a good friend to him.

  I try. But you might need something a bit lighter for his birthday party! The guy’s doing OK though, isn’t he? Playing by the rules. Got himself a wonderful partner. Doing right by the world. And no sign of Gil – not as far as I know…

  He’s doing great things.

  Jake forces himself to keep writing.

  And I love him for it.

  And then Rob’s name appears in the chat window. He’s back online. Jake types a quick final message to Kirby, his big fingers trembling.

  Thank you so much – please don’t tell Rob we’ve talked. Surprise! Must go. xx

  Before Kirby can reply, Jake deletes the message thread and logs out.

  47

  Kate

  ‘I want to come to London,’ Kate says, standing outside the pub in the centre of the village, just up from the harbour café. Bex and the other beach cleaners are all inside, trying to drown their horror at what happened tonight. News of the body found on Pendower has spread fast and the pub is even busier than usual for a hot summer night. Locals and holidaymakers are sitting at the tables outside, milling around, chatting animatedly, each with their own theory. The community is in shock.

  ‘I understand,’ Rob says.

  She’s told Rob about today’s unexpected visit from Hart and Strover, the CCTV footage from the pub, the near miss with the car and finally the body found by Stretch. She’s also explained that she recognised the dead man as the Bluebell barman, the same person who sat beside her in the harbour café and spiked her coffee. She omitted to mention how the police came into possession of the CCTV footage. There doesn’t seem any point in involving Jake in all this. And she hasn’t told him about Capgras, the syndrome that Bex mentioned, which also seems to have come from Jake.

  ‘I need to see Dr Varma,’ she says.

  It’s the second time they’ve spoken in five minutes. She rang Rob from inside the pub, but it was too noisy. It’s Bex’s idea to be seen by Dr Varma. Bex is starting to think Kate’s losing it. More so than usual.

  ‘He’s gone back to London,’ Rob says. ‘But he’ll be down again at the end—’

  ‘I can’t wait that long,’ Kate interrupts, her voice shaking.

  ‘OK,’ he says quietly, in that caring, unflappable way he spoke to her in the early days, when she really wasn’t very well. ‘I’ll give him a call, see if he can see you sooner.’

  ‘If I come up tomorrow…’

  ‘Leave it with me.’ Rob pauses. ‘It must be tough for all of you down there, after what you found.’

  He’s right. The police arrived quickly, sealing off the far end of the beach, but not before all of them had seen the body, the contorted expression of surprise on the man’s gaping, broken face. She and Bex stayed to give statements, explaining how they found the body. Kate didn’t say that she recognised the man. She just told them to contact DI Hart of Wiltshire Police. Hart rang her shortly afterwards, said he would be in touch. He also said that it wasn’t Rob’s car in Cornwall earlier that morning.

  ‘How is everyone?’ Rob asks. ‘In the pub?’

  ‘I’m outside.’

  ‘I should be with you. Honestly, I can come back down tonight.’

  ‘Back down’ after returning to London yesterday? Or ‘back down’ after a secret flying visit to the village this morning? She leaves it for now, closes her eyes and leans against the outside wall of the pub, trying not to think about the dead man on the beach. The wall is still warm, retaining the heat of the day. She knew at once that he was Herman, the same person who’d been trying to kill her. What looked like a bullet wound – she was exposed to some graphic crime-scene photos when she was working for the force – had left the lower forehead barely recognisable, but she could still make out the prominent brow.

  She knows that she must ask Rob if he was in Cornwall when they spoke earlier. For her own sanity as much as Bex’s. Settle the matter once and for all. It might not have been his car that Mark saw, but the jets are still troubling her.

  ‘Today, when we were talking on FaceTime, some military jets flew low over the house,’ she begins, determined to hold it together.

  ‘Is Bex with you?’ Rob asks. She’s not sure if he’s even listening to her. ‘In the pub?’

  ‘And then, two seconds later, we heard them flying over you,’ she continues, ignoring him. Her lip’s bleeding she’s biting on it so hard. ‘The same sound came through the speakers. Which means you were talking to us from somewhere nearby, Rob. In Cornwall.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Rob says.

  ‘Please – just tell me if you were down here this morning,’ she says, as firmly as she can without raising her voice. Tears are coming now. She looks around, in case anyone is nearby. A man on the far side of the square glances over at her.

  ‘We’ve been through this, Kate. I was up here. In the flat and then over at the office. I’ve been in meetings all day. The IPO is next week. Things are a little crazy right now.’

  She knows the feeling. She wipes away a tear and closes her eyes. As his words wash over her, she decides that Rob isn’t lying. Her relief is immediate, the tension melting away. It’s so much easier – for her, for Bex, for Rob – to believe that he’s telling the truth. And that maybe she is delusional, suffering from this thing called Capgras.

  ‘So why did we hear the jets twice?’ she asks, all conviction gone now. She knows he’ll have some technical explanation, a plausible theory that will allow her to sleep tonight.

  ‘There was a lot of delay on the line today,’ he says. ‘You know what reception’s been like down there. Nightmare.’

  Rob continues to be uncharacteristically flummoxed by the slow broadband at the house. It’s good in the village, but for some reason the speed drops off up on the cliffs. Mobile reception is sketchy at best too. And so far no amount of his money or ideas has been able to sort the problem.

  ‘Maybe you heard the sound again through the speakers,’ he continues. ‘Did you hear your own voices too?’

  Did they? She often hears herself a few seconds after she’s spoken. Has she just been imagining everything?

  ‘You coming in?’

  It’s Bex, standing at the pub door, pint glass in hand. She always drinks pints, has done ever since Kate’s known her. Kate nods, mouthing, ‘One sec.’ Bex notices she’s been crying and hesitates. Kate musters a smile and Bex returns inside.

  ‘I still want to come up,’ she says to Rob. ‘Tomorrow. I feel scared down here. A man tried to kill me and now he’s been shot dead. It’s not exactly reassuring.’

  ‘I know,’ he says. ‘I understand.’

  She could take the train tonight, the sleeper service, or drive up, but she’s happy to wait until the morning. Bex is here, after all. Tomorrow she’ll be in London, where she can see Ajay, ask him about Capgras. And she can sort things out with Rob, enjoy being looked after. Pampered. Cherished. It’s what she needs right now.

  ‘Let me know when your train arrives at Paddington and I’ll meet you,’ he says.

  She breathes in the warm summer air, feeling so much better already.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, grateful for his understanding, ‘for going all funny on you.’

  ‘It’s OK. You can go funny on me any time. Sure you don’t want me to drive down tonight?’

  ‘It’s fine. Bex is here. I love you.’

  ‘I love you too. And, hey, bring your passport.’

  ‘My passport? Why?’

  ‘No promises, but maybe we can finally go to Brittany together.’

  She’s about to reply when Mark comes out.

  ‘Better get in there quick,’ he says. ‘Your nice man Rob is buying another round.’

  Her head starts to spin. For a moment, she thinks he means that Rob is actually in the pub, but then she remembers. After a beach clean, he usually puts enough money behind the bar for one round, but because of the distressing scene tonight, he’s been even more generous than usual.

  ‘That’s good of you,’ she says to Rob, who is still on the phone. ‘Buying everyone more drinks.’

  ‘The least I can do,’ he says. ‘The whole thing’s awful.’

  ‘I better go,’ she says. ‘Brittany sounds wonderful.’

  She hasn’t been to France for years, not since she took Jake to Paris for his thirtieth birthday. And Rob is always talking about Brittany, how she must go there.

  ‘Saw you on Facebook this afternoon, by the way,’ Rob says. ‘Thought you’d—’

  ‘I wasn’t on Facebook,’ she interrupts. He must have made a mistake.

  ‘You were definitely online.’

  ‘When?’ she asks, feeling the tension of earlier returning.

  ‘About an hour ago?’

  ‘It wasn’t me.’

  She goes in phases with social media. Right now, she’s in an Instagram phase. Facebook is too bound up with her old life. She hasn’t been on it for months.

  ‘Maybe change your passwords again,’ he says. ‘You did change them, didn’t you?’

  Rob had despaired when she told him her passwords were simple, easy-to-remember names and urged her to include lots of symbols and numbers. How was she supposed to remember that?

  ‘Of course,’ she lies. ‘You think I might have been hacked?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he says.

  The one other person who knows her password is Jake.

  48

  Silas

  There are only a handful of people in the Parade Room at Gablecross police station when Silas walks in. A couple of uniforms, one or two plainclothes colleagues in the far corner where CID sits. He still hasn’t got used to the new open-plan hot-desking way of working.

  After dropping Strover off at her flat in town, he headed straight here, aware that he now has a homicide case on his hands. He is also aware that he should be at home on a Sunday night, but life has lost its balance in recent months. If he’s not working, he’s looking for Conor, pacing the less salubrious streets of Swindon, checking in with the UK Missing Persons Bureau, trying in vain to find some common ground with Conor’s mother, Mel.

  He’s already spoken to Kate but couldn’t tell her much. The death of the barman who tried to spike her drink and run her over is most likely linked to drug gang rivalry, but Silas has no idea who killed him. At least there is no longer any imminent threat to Kate.

  He plugs in his laptop and waits for it to fire up. His boss won’t be happy that he went down to Cornwall in his own time to investigate a suspect. Even less happy that the suspect is now a murder victim. Silas will liaise closely with Devon and Cornwall, but out-of-area cases are always messy, the sharing of resources never straightforward. Even the much-trumpeted Tri-Force Alliance between Somerset and Avon, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire has crashed and burnt.

  He’s about to check his emails when his phone rings.

  ‘DI Hart,’ he says, sitting back.

  The call is from a detective in Nottingham. Silas has spoken to him once before, a few months back, when the detective was setting up a pilot super-recogniser scheme similar to the Swindon unit. He’d wanted some advice on recruitment and protocols.

  ‘How’s it all going?’ Hart asks, expecting a routine inquiry. A number of other regional forces have established super-recogniser units, disillusioned with the failure rate of facial-recognition software, and most have sought Silas’s advice.

  ‘I wish you’d asked me that three days ago,’ the officer says. ‘Our super-recogniser results have been incredible, on a par with DNA and fingerprints.’

  ‘So what’s happened?’ Silas asks.

  He expects the detective to say that his unit’s been closed down, run out of town by some new facial-recognition software contract, but the answer stuns him.

  ‘Our main recogniser, an extraordinary bloke, has just gone AWOL, dropped off the grid completely.’

  ‘Civilian?’ Silas asks, reaching for a pen and paper.

  ‘Community support officer. Been with us for years, always been a good spotter.’

  ‘Family?’

  ‘They’re distraught. Wife says it’s totally out of character. He’s a man of routine. We’re all worried sick.’

  Silas stands up, walks over to the window and looks out onto the deserted car park. Not many people in tonight. They’re all off on holiday, enjoying the summer, as he should be.

  ‘Has he been involved in any serious-crime cases recently?’ he asks.

  ‘Nothing major. Indecent exposure, a few assaults, shoplifting. Why?’

  Silas thinks back to Kate’s track record. Should he have limited her work to identifying petty criminals? There was a lot of pressure at the time to focus on modern-slavery and organised-crime gangs. ‘It’s just that we’ve had an issue with one of our old super recognisers,’ he says.

  ‘What sort of issue?’

  It’s well known amongst regional police forces that Swindon’s super-recogniser unit was unceremoniously wound up. Just like the Met’s unit was closed, even though the force still uses super recognisers. But no one knows about Kate and the attempts on her life.

  ‘Our best recogniser, a civilian, was injured in a car accident,’ Silas says. ‘The unit was shut down shortly afterwards, as you know. It now seems that it might not have been an accident. She might have been deliberately targeted – by one of the gangs she helped to convict.’

  ‘Is that recent?’ the officer asks, surprised.

  ‘We’ve only found out today. Nothing confirmed, but it looks that way. Did your PCSO do much publicity? Media interviews?’

  ‘We’ve kept him out of the limelight – our secret weapon.’

  Silas wishes he’d done the same with Kate, not exposed her to so much media attention. It was a way of taunting his boss as much as anything. Petty.

  ‘We’ll double-check the list of recent convictions,’ the detective says. ‘Ones that he can claim responsibility for. I can’t see anyone taking it out on him though.’

  That’s what Silas thought about Kate. And look what happened to her. ‘Let me know if he turns up,’ he says. ‘How good is he?’

  ‘How good? He’s a freak. More than a hundred IDs in the past year. Don’t know about you, but I’ve been twenty years in the force and can count the number of people I’ve identified on one hand.’

  Silas’s own record is not much better. Maybe two hands. ‘And he’s never disappeared before?’ he asks.

  ‘Never. Loves his job, his family. Not like him at all.’

  49

  Jake

  It’s been an hour since Jake ended his online chat with Kirby and he is still struggling to process what Rob’s old colleague told him. He’s been down to check on the boat again, harvesting some wild garlic from the towpath on the way back, and he is now in Bex’s kitchen, rustling up something to eat. Cooking has always been his way of relieving stress.

  He finds a wooden chopping board and starts to slice some shallots he found in a cupboard, thinking again about what Kirby said. He had to delete the message thread, which means he’s got nothing to read through again, no evidence that any of their chat actually happened. It all seems too unreal, the beach party in Thailand far away in time and place.

  Should he ring Kate? Confess that he logged into her Facebook account and conducted a conversation with an old friend of her new man? He can’t. She’d murder him. On the other hand, she might welcome the information, given her current obsession with doubles.

  His phone rings before he can decide whether to call her. It’s Kate. Fuck. She must know already about Facebook. Rob saw Kate online and presumably mentioned it to her. He lets it ring out. And then she rings again. She always used to do that, knew when he was ignoring her calls. If he doesn’t answer it now, he knows she’ll keep ringing until he does.

  ‘Kate?’ he says tentatively.

  ‘Have you been logging into my Facebook account?’ She’s angry, fuming, like she was the night of her accident.

  ‘No,’ Jake says, protesting. He should have switched off his phone. ‘What’s happened? Is everything OK?’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  How come Kate and Bex always know?

  ‘OK, so I logged into your account by accident. I thought I was logging into mine.’

  ‘You’re still lying.’

  And she’s still angry.

  There’s silence as she waits for him to come clean.

  ‘Jake?’ she asks, her voice marginally less hostile.

  ‘I’m here.’

  He closes his eyes, knowing there’s worse to come before the storm blows itself out. He picks up a handful of mushrooms and begins to slice them.

  ‘Why did you log into my account?’ she asks.

  There’s no way out. ‘I didn’t read any of your private messages,’ he says.

  ‘Oh, that’s OK, then.’ She’s furious again. ‘What do you expect me to say, Jake? I know you hacked into my Facebook account, but that’s alright because you didn’t read any of my messages? Jesus, and you wonder why I wanted out.’

  Neither of them speaks for a while, all the years of their relationship stewing in the exhausted silence. Maybe it really was best that they split up. He feels empty. There’s nothing left to say or give. He starts to chop the wild garlic.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asks quietly.

  ‘Cooking.’ He pauses. ‘Wild garlic carbonara.’ It was one of her favourite dishes.

  ‘Something awful happened down on the beach tonight,’ she says in a low voice, breaking the silence. He can sense she’s close to tears.

  ‘Tell me. What was it?’

  She explains about the dead barman.

  ‘And he’d been shot in the head?’

  He feels so sorry for Kate. She moved to Cornwall to get away from that world, her police work. It must have been awful for her. It might also explain her anger. She’s clearly still in shock.