Silas is about to turn and walk back towards the canal when his phone rings. The mobile number is not familiar. For a moment he considers letting it go to voicemail, but something makes him answer it.

  ‘DI Hart,’ he says.

  Silence, but Silas knows someone’s there, with something to tell him. He’s had calls like this before, can hear the breathing. Informants, witnesses, whistleblowers. You just have to wait until they’re ready. He gestures at Jake, who has stopped up ahead.

  ‘Can I help?’ Silas asks, turning away.

  More breathing, this time familiar. Silas’s stomach tightens. He looks up at the hills beyond the canal. And then he hears his voice.

  ‘Dad?’

  58

  Kate

  Rob isn’t there when Kate arrives at Paddington. He rang, full of apologies, shortly after her train left the village. More meetings, not enough time. If she’d been on the earlier train, he could have met her, but now that she’s more than an hour late, it’s knocked things back and… She told him not to worry. She didn’t say how relieved she was.

  He’s sent a car with a driver though and wants her to make herself at home in his flat in Shoreditch until he gets back. She’s intrigued finally to see the place for herself. They’ve often talked about her coming to stay in London, but she’s never felt strong enough for city life. Not until today.

  She heads across the concourse at Paddington and finds the car waiting for her on Praed Street. London seems full of people with not enough time, the press of urban life etched on sunless faces. The stress in the air is almost palpable, like a taste at the back of the mouth. Or perhaps it’s just the pollution. She also feels alive here, the heady mix of cultures far removed from her safe little routine in Cornwall. At least it used to be safe, until someone tried to kill her and a dead body washed up on the beach below their house. That all seems so surreal now, a different world.

  Her driver – stocky, faint eastern European accent, gimlet eyes – instantly makes her think of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Except that Putin doesn’t have a scar on the side of his shaven head. He takes her bag and opens the car’s rear door. She doesn’t feel comfortable being looked after like this, but his eyes glint as she moves to get in. And then she remembers the orange dress. She looks around and spots a bin across the street.

  ‘One sec,’ she says to Putin.

  She walks over to the bin with the bag. She knows she should ditch the dress, but she can’t bring herself to do it. Damn Jake. Damn his sentimentality. Her brief stop in the village has affected her more than she expected. It was good to be back. Good to see Jake. For months after the accident, every memory of the place – of the narrowboat, of Jake – was tainted by the image of him kissing another woman on the CCTV. But today has changed things. They talked without sniping at each other. Maybe they can be friends after all.

  As she walks back across the street with the bag, she sees someone familiar. Cara. The woman who got off the train with her in the village. She struggles not to stare. What’s she doing here? It’s definitely her. Big eyebrows. She’s waiting for a bus on Praed Street, glancing briefly in Kate’s direction, but there’s something odd about her manner.

  Kate turns away, trying not to panic, and looks back at her again. Is she a tail? Kate saw it in her old job, when colleagues were pursuing suspects in crowds. The telltale glance. Why would Cara be following her? She must have got back on the same train as her in the village. The late runner. Kate was distracted, chatting with Jake.

  Half an hour later, Putin pulls up outside a converted factory on Nile Street, between Hoxton and Shoreditch. Rob told her about its history once, when he was facetiming from his bedroom. He was shy about showing her the rest of the flat, embarrassed by its size. A former printworks, it was given the Manhattan loft treatment in the late 1990s and transformed into fashionable warehouse apartments. His is the penthouse, of course.

  She takes her bags and reassures Putin that she’s fine as she stands outside the main entrance. She tries the door but it doesn’t open. Putin points to the camera above the patchwork of buzzers.

  ‘Smile and it will recognise your face,’ he says.

  She presses the number for the penthouse and waits. A moment later, the door swings open and she’s in the foyer, waving goodbye to Putin. How does the camera recognise her if she’s never been here before? She takes the lift to the third floor, presses the buzzer and pouts like a movie star in front of another camera. Childish. She does that when she’s nervous. Why was Cara watching her at Paddington? And then she’s standing in an open-plan living area that makes the home in Cornwall seem like a garden shed.

  The space is huge! At least twenty yards long and almost ten yards wide, with a kitchen bar in one corner, dining table in another, all reclaimed-wood floors, industrial-brick walls and loading-bay doors. There’s a pool table, a cinema zone and a bedroom at the far end. She wonders for a moment if she’s come to Rob’s office by mistake and everyone’s out. It’s even bigger than she expected. How does one person live here?

  She wanders around, taking in all the art. Vast canvasses and installations, including one that she recognises, a grotesque ‘data-mask’. It’s a 3D-printed sculpture of a face and was in the house in Cornwall for a while, but she found it too disturbing. Rob explained it to her once: the artist, Sterling Crispin, reverse-engineered facial-recognition algorithms to show how human faces are seen by machines. And then her heart misses a beat as she come across three of her own works. They are the same paintings that Rob exhibited in the hospital show, the sight of which had so lifted her spirits.

  She stands in front of them and stares. Of course she immediately starts to see things that are wrong with them, but they aren’t so bad. Her goal was to paint unflinching, raw portraits, to create a sense of confrontation between artist and sitter, the latter usually wide eyed, as if they’d been caught doing something untoward. She leans in closer to a portrait of an old man who used to sell gas bottles and sacks of coal on the canal; his lined, world-weary face. She remembers layering on the oil paint with a scalpel, impasto style, mixing the lumpy colours to create coarse, textured flesh, chatting quietly with him.

  The sight of these pictures makes her want to cry with happiness – and to paint again. She had a very similar reaction in the hospital. She walks on down the wall and sees another portrait, by the late Sarah Raphael, one of her heroes. It’s jewel-like and intense, an early work and full of empathy. She feels honoured to share a wall with her, but it’s a salutary reminder of her own limits as an artist.

  Upstairs she finds a second bedroom, a wet room, and a spacious roof terrace complete with real grass and a scattering of wicker chairs around an outdoor bar. The views of London, bathed in early evening sunlight, are breathtaking. Can she see Rob’s office from here? They’re close to Old Street roundabout, where he works. She’s suddenly desperate to see him, to pick up where they left off before things started to go wrong in Cornwall. She’s just been imagining things, as Jake says, suffering from Capgras syndrome. Dr Varma will be here shortly. He’ll confirm the diagnosis, she feels certain of that now. The more she thinks about Capgras, the more it sounds like her.

  She looks out across the London skyline again. Is Rob watching her from his desk? She waves, trying to dissipate some of her impish joy. And then she cartwheels across the grass, remembering her pictures on the wall downstairs, and peers over the wall to the street below.

  The car that brought her is parked across from the entrance to the apartment block, partially obscured. She leans further over the wall and can just see Putin on the pavement, talking to someone she recognises. Her mouth dries, all joy gone. It’s Cara, the woman on the train, the same person she saw at Paddington.

  59

  Silas

  Silas follows the track through the woods until it opens out into a grassy area, hazy in the evening light and buzzing with the low drone of summer insects. If it were mown, it would make an idyllic cricket pitch, hidden away amongst the trees. On the far side, there’s a gamekeeper’s hut that could easily double up as a rustic pavilion.

  It’s here that Conor has asked to meet him, which somehow seems fitting. Conor used to play cricket when he was younger. He was good, but bat and ball were alien to Silas and he didn’t show any interest. His own dad brought him up on a strict diet of football. Given the chance again, Silas would watch every one of Conor’s cricket matches, offer to do the scoring, make the teas. Be a father.

  No one else is around as he approaches the hut. There’s an open barn area, for large machinery, presumably, and a shed to one side. Conor didn’t say much on the phone, just that he wanted to meet here. He could see Silas down by the train track, had been watching him for a few minutes from the woods above.

  ‘Conor?’ he calls out. ‘You there?’

  Silence. A red kite enters the far end of the clearing and sweeps over the grass, twisting and turning in search of carrion. Silas moves forward, pushing open the hut door. Inside, some logs, a row of pheasant feeders, neatly stacked, a collection of white plastic scarecrows piled up in the corner. The familiar smell of weed.

  It takes a few seconds for Silas’s eyes to adjust to the darkness. And then he sees Conor on the floor, propped up against the far wall. The relief knocks him sideways. For the past six weeks, Silas has had to consider the possibility that Conor might be dead. And here he is, arms wrapped around his knees, rocking gently like a child.

  Silas has seen him in better shape, but at least he’s alive.

  60

  Kate

  Somewhere below her a phone starts to ring, so Kate returns downstairs from the apartment’s rooftop terrace. She can’t find the receiver at first and then she works out that the ringtone, more of a futuristic pulse, is coming from the bedroom. She pushes open the door and sees the handset by the bed. She hesitates before she answers it.

  ‘You’ve found the bedroom then,’ Rob says.

  ‘I heard the phone and thought I should answer,’ she explains, feeling like an intruder as she glances around Rob’s private world. They’ve never shared this space before – the bed, its white cotton sheets. On one wall there’s a large canvas photo of them together on Porthbean beach, smiling at the camera. She looks tired but happy. In her mind, Rob’s life in London has always felt so separate, but the connections to Cornwall, their life down there, are here, plain to see. Another surge of happiness runs through her.

  ‘It’s OK, I meant you to pick up,’ he says. ‘Make yourself at home. I hope you like it.’

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ she says, lying down on the double bed. ‘And so big. Amazing. I can’t believe you’ve been keeping it from me all this time.’

  ‘I wanted you to be ready, well enough to enjoy it.’

  She can smell his scent on the pillows, clean and fresh as heather. It feels so good to be here – secure, cossetted, safe. Her worries of earlier are falling away with every passing second.

  ‘When are you coming back?’ she asks.

  ‘Late, I’m afraid,’ he says.

  ‘No worries,’ she replies, but she feels a pang of disappointment.

  She turns to look at a photo on his bedside table. It’s of her, walking out of the surf in her bikini, a little chubbier than she’d like. Should she ask him about Cara? Tell him that she thinks she’s being followed? It sounds so paranoid, on a par with thinking that he’s been replaced by a double. Maybe it’s just another symptom of Capgras.

  ‘Dr Varma should be with you shortly,’ he says.

  ‘That’s good.’ She pauses, feeling awkward at the prospect of Ajay’s visit. She hasn’t told Rob the real reason why she wants to see Ajay and she wonders if she’s wasting his time. Once again, Rob sounds like himself on the phone. ‘Will I be asleep when you get back?’ she asks.

  ‘I hope not. We’ve some catching up to do.’

  ‘Shall I get some supper for us?’ she asks, smiling at the thought of what they might do together later.

  ‘I’ve put a few things in the fridge,’ he says. ‘You go ahead. I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s OK. Really.’

  This time she fails to hide her disappointment. She’s genuinely looking forward to seeing him, to being in this bed with him. The two of them here together, in his flat, is exactly what she needs right now. It’s a new stage in their relationship, the first time she’s been in London with him, and she can’t wait to celebrate that. She’s moved on from her old life, the village, Jake, and she’s going to put her fears behind her – no more stressing about the dead man on the beach, about Cara, about Rob’s double.

  ‘What are your plans after seeing Dr Varma?’ he asks.

  ‘I thought I might pop out to visit a gallery,’ she says. ‘It’s been a while.’

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘Then come back, run a deep bath, light a few candles. Get myself ready.’ She pauses. ‘I can’t wait to see you.’

  ‘Me too.’ He hesitates before continuing, his voice less confident. ‘I bought you a few clothes. They’re in the wardrobe. See you later – I’ve got to go.’

  He hangs up.

  She lies there for a few seconds, smiling to herself, and then slips off the bed, pulling open the cupboard door like an excited child on Christmas Day. It’s full of new clothes, all her size and just her look. Bohemian summer dresses from Ghost, Rubina slides from Paul Smith, linen kaftan-neck tops from Toast. There’s some nightwear too – thin cotton pyjamas from the White Company. Rob knows her so well. She should ring him back to thank him, but he sounded busy.

  After going through all the clothes and setting out each item on the bed, she lies down beside them, holding the photo frame, and starts to cry. Happy tears but also sad ones. Jake bought her White Company pyjamas in their last days together, but she gave them back, told him to get a refund and spend the money on fixing the boat’s leaking windows. They were broke, but it was still unkind of her. He knew she loved the pyjamas, couldn’t understand her reaction. She gets the orange dress out of her bag and hangs it in the wardrobe.

  Something catches her eye as she places the frame back on the bedside table. Another photo is hidden behind the first, one corner just visible. Rob with a different woman? Does he change the photos depending on who’s staying in his flat? She tells herself to relax as she slides the photo up. It’s of Rob when he was much younger, on an exotic-looking beach. Could it be Thailand? There are palm trees, small islands on the horizon. He isn’t smiling at the camera.

  She examines it more closely, scrutinising the photo for clues. Is it him? It looks exactly like Rob. He’s wearing a floral shirt, shorts and espadrilles and seems drunk, almost leering at the camera. Then she notices a watch on the left wrist. Rob is left-handed. Maybe the picture was printed incorrectly, as a mirror image. He wears his watch on the right, doesn’t he?

  61

  Jake

  Jake pushes back his chair, staring at the screen as he calls Bex on his mobile. Her computer is behaving strangely. First, the camera came on unprompted yesterday, and then it woke up without any reason when Kate was here today. He’s checked the settings and it hasn’t been programmed to sleep or wake at certain times. And now the screen cursor seems to move occasionally by itself. It might just be a hardware fault, but it’s making him jumpy.

  ‘Technical support here,’ he says. ‘Have you been experiencing any problems with your computer recently?’

  ‘How was Kate?’ Bex says, ignoring his attempt at humour.

  Kate’s obviously told Bex about her flying visit to the village and Bex obviously doesn’t approve.

  ‘Fine,’ he says. ‘I put her back on the train.’

  ‘How did you find her?’ Bex is sounding like she always used to when she talked to him – dismissive, short. It’s as if their recent conversations about Kate never happened.

  ‘It was good to catch up,’ he says, not sure where the conversation is heading. ‘We talked some more about Capgras.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I think she found it reassuring – she’s going to talk to Dr Varma about it.’

  Bex doesn’t reply.

  ‘She also told me about the body on the beach,’ Jake continues. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Nothing personal, but I can’t believe she jumped off the train like that,’ Bex says, choosing not to pick up on his mention of the dead body. ‘She was so focused on getting to London. Being with Rob.’

  ‘She wanted to see the boat,’ Jake says defensively. ‘How are things down there now?’

  ‘The dog’s doing my head in, but otherwise fine, thanks.’ She pauses. ‘Actually, not great. I can’t get the image of the dead man out of my mind. And because I was one of the first to see the body, everyone wants to talk to me about it.’

  ‘Better out than in,’ Jake says, struggling to find the right words. ‘Talking about it, I mean.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ Bex says. ‘I might come back up to the village – I need to get away from here, the beach.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  Jake glances back into Bex’s kitchen. He will need to tidy up, find somewhere else to stay.

  ‘In Rob’s car,’ she continues. ‘He said I can use it. I’ll bring the dog too.’

  ‘Do you want me to move out?’ he asks.

  He’s become quite settled in Bex’s house.

  ‘Don’t be daft.’ She pauses. ‘I’d rather not be on my own right now.’

  Bex doesn’t sound like herself at all. She’s usually so ballsy. Jake pushes open the sitting room door. The sofa isn’t the biggest.

  ‘Kate told me about Facebook,’ she continues, changing tack again. ‘The double on the beach in Thailand called Gil.’

  Jake braces himself for another tirade, but Bex isn’t angry with him for hacking into Kate’s account. Far from it.