My feet were sinking into the soft dunes, and my eyes were watering with a mixture of wind, sand, and sea spray—and for a moment I deeply regretted not getting the taxi to drop me at the cottage itself. But the risk was too great.
The burner phone had said it was only half a mile from the car park to the cottage, but as the dunes wore on, it began to feel much, much further, and I started to wonder whether I had made a mistake. My legs felt jelly-like with the effort of striding through the shifting sand; the rucksack on my back felt like it contained bricks, not clothes, tools, and a sleeping bag; and the wound in my side throbbed like a motherfucker.
I shook my head, blinking salt spray out of my eyes. What was the matter with me? This wasn’t me. I was strong, capable, physically fit. Gabe might be the one in our relationship who got the lids off jars and heaved the washing machine out of its cupboard when the hose blocked, but I was the one who had the stamina and the endurance. Last month I had done a hill-running half marathon in aid of Cancer Research. And now I couldn’t walk along a beach?
But the truth was, of course, Gabe wasn’t that person anymore. Because he was dead. Any stuck lids in my future, any problems at all, in fact, I would be dealing with alone.
The unfairness of it hit me again, like a punch in the gut, and I found myself sinking down in the dunes and putting my face in my hands. Maybe I should simply give up, give in, lie down here on this beach and let the waves come in and take me out to sea. Because what did it matter? Who was I kidding to think I could do this alone, any of it? Least of all track down whoever had done this to Gabe. I might be able to scale walls and pick locks, but figuring out who had killed my husband? That was a job for the police. And they already had their suspect: me.
But I couldn’t give up, and I knew it. I couldn’t just sit there in a puddle of exhausted self-pity. Something steely inside me was already gathering my muscles, preparing me to pull myself up and continue walking. It wasn’t even a conscious part of me—because the conscious part of my mind was the part that was telling me I was an idiot who should give up there and then. This was something else, something very deep, close to the core of me. It was the hard, indomitable part of me that refused to give in to the grief of Gabe’s death—at least for now. It was the part of me that had stood there in the bathroom with the bleach fumes stinging my eyes, scrubbing over and over at my raw scalp until every trace of red was gone. It was the part of me that urged myself on during jobs— not to hand myself in to the security guards but to go that extra mile, get that extra file, even when Gabe was telling me in my earpiece that we had enough, that I could come home.
Well, there was no home left now. And no point in crying about it. I just had to keep going.
Slowly, I pushed myself upright, pressing my hand to my ribs to ease the throb as I got to my feet, and began following the path inland in the gathering darkness.
As I walked, the wind dropped, but in its place a mist began to gather in the hollows of the dunes, a curling sea mist that seemed to be creeping in from the channel behind me. At first it was just wisps, but then the wisps joined into a blanket, and the blanket thickened, until at last I could barely see my hand in front of my face. Putting on my phone’s torch didn’t help much either—it transformed the shifting darkness into a featureless white wall that reflected the torch’s beam back at me with blinding intensity—and after a few minutes’ stumbling, I turned it off and waited for my eyes to adjust.
I had no idea what time it was when I realized that the shapes in the darkness had coalesced into something that wasn’t just a hillock or a tree, but something more concrete, and definitely building-shaped. It was just a few feet later that I crashed my shin painfully into a structure that was most definitely very concrete. At first I thought it was a fence, but then, feeling round with my hands, I realized. It was a railway sleeper, more than one in fact, stacked on top of each other. I had walked into some kind of bench, or maybe a raised flower bed, judging by the earth inside.
Carefully, feeling ahead of myself with outstretched hands, I walked towards the dark shape looming out of the mist. I prayed it was Noemie’s cottage—but if it wasn’t, I was starting to seriously consider just breaking in and bedding down. My phone was no help; the Google Maps marker was jumping about indecisively over about a square kilometer of map, and none of its guesses were particularly close to the marker Cole had shown me on his own phone back in London. Location accuracy: low it informed me helpfully. I remembered my text to Gabe: no shit, sherlock.
But as I got closer to the little building, I could see it fit the description Cole had given me—the corrugated roof, black walls, mustard front door. And then I spotted something that clinched it: a piece of driftwood nailed beside the door with the word Spindrift carved into it in faint, wind-worn writing. Hurriedly, almost shaky with relief, I dug in the front pocket of my rucksack and drew out the key Cole had pressed into my hand that morning.
It turned in the latch—and I was inside. Cold, hungry, and almost faint with exhaustion—but I was inside, and that was enough.
It was well over an hour later that I noticed that my phone had a message. I wasn’t sure how long it had been sitting there. It had taken me that long to get the lamps lit, the fire in the grate going, and a kettle of hot water boiled. Cole had told me that the cottage had no heating. What he hadn’t mentioned was that it also had no electricity. Well, it clearly had had power at some point; I’d found at least two sockets, and there was an electric reading lamp by the little couch. But either there had been a power cut, or it was switched off at the mains. Regardless, no amount of fiddling with the picturesquely ancient fuse box made anything happen, and in the end I had to make do with lighting the oil lamps and candles dotted around the place.
In the low warmth of the candlelight, the cottage turned out to be beautiful, but barely large enough to merit the word. It was a single high-raftered room, with a hand-crafted kitchen that had reclaimed wooden cupboards running along one wall, a china sink with a single cold tap, and a vintage 1950s stove that turned out to run off bottled gas. Opposite was a comfortable couch that folded out into a bed, and between the two were Noemie’s easel, a small round table with bentwood chairs, and a little fireplace. On the walls were Noemie’s paintings—broad, abstract landscapes in marine colors. The whole thing was small but utterly stunning, with a kind of Shaker-like simplicity, and I could see why Noemie had fallen for it. It must be the perfect place for an artist—somewhere totally quiet, off the beaten track. Somewhere she could really create.
There was nothing in the fridge, which was turned off, with the door propped open by a small Japanese urn filled with sea holly, but the cupboard by the back door held pasta and a couple of jars of pesto, and I was just sitting wearily down at the little table with a steaming bowl of fusilli when I saw the notification on my phone. I had a Signal message, from an unknown number. Hastily, I clicked through.
“Jack, it’s me, Hel,” it read. “Are you okay?”
My heart seemed to leap into my chest and I typed out quickly, “Yes! OMG yes, I’m fine. But this isn’t your number?”
There was a pause, then the message flashed up.
“No. C advised me to get a burner phone too, in case the police seized mine. I’ve set the messages to delete but he said it was safer this way. Where are you?”
There was a moment’s pause, then the phone pinged again.
“Or do you think you shouldn’t say?”
I sat, chewing my lip, wondering what I could or should put in writing. If Cole was sure Signal messages were secure, then I trusted him. He was the expert on phone security, after all. And I didn’t for a second think Hel would give me away—but I also didn’t want to put her in the position of having to lie to the police.
“I’m safe,” I typed at last. “And I have somewhere warm and dry to stay. That’s probably all I should tell you.”
“Good. I’ve been worried. But Jack, what are you going to do? Long term I mean?”
It was exactly what Cole had asked, and getting the same question from Hel made me feel even worse.
“I don’t know,” I typed, and then followed up, “I need to find out who did this, but I have no idea where to begin. All I have to go on is a broken fan. It’s not much.”
“A broken fan?” Hel’s reply was puzzled, and I realized that I hadn’t told her about breaking into the house and finding the crack in the bathroom window vent.