Chapter 45

45

Where the fuck is his car key? The tide has turned, the water is receding fast and within the next half-hour he will be able to cross, or would be able to cross, if only he could find his car key. He has searched the kitchen and the living room, now he is checking behind the paintings in Vanessa's room for the third time.

The front door slams. Grace is back.

Didn't he throw it down on to the kitchen table when he came into the house, when they heard that noise? Could she have moved it? He looks around Vanessa's room, his eye falling on the bedside table. He's about to open the drawer when Grace appears in the doorway.

‘It isn't in there,' she says sharply. ‘Is it possible you dropped it on the beach?'

Becker yanks the drawer open, eyeballing her all the while. The drawer is empty. Grace holds his gaze and then turns away; he listens to her footfall as she stomps back to the kitchen. Christ's sake. He sits down heavily on Vanessa's bed, head in hands. Maybe he did drop it on the beach? If so, it's long gone, it'll be halfway to Northern Ireland by now. He'll have to walk across the causeway and call someone when he gets to the other side. Maybe Sebastian can send one of the staff with his other key?

He climbs wearily to his feet, crouches down and checks, again , underneath the bed. No key. Definitely no key, but right underneath the bedside table, pushed back against the skirting board, is the wifi router, and its light is off. It's unplugged.

Someone has unplugged it.

In the pit of his stomach, something flips. On hands and knees he crawls closer and pushes the plug back into the socket, watching as the light flashes orange, orange, orange …

‘Have you found it?'

He scrabbles quickly to stand and hurries from the room, almost colliding with Grace in the hallway. ‘Well?'

‘No,' he says. ‘No, you must be right, I must have dropped it on the beach.'

She nods. ‘I'll make us a cup of tea,' she says, turning back towards the kitchen, ‘and then we can go and look.'

Heart battering his ribs, he waits a moment before following her. ‘I doubt there's much point,' he says, ‘not after that storm.' Grace has her back to him and is filling the kettle. ‘I don't want tea,' he says curtly, and she turns to look at him, expression almost wounded. ‘I'm going to walk across and call Fairburn,' he says, ‘they can send someone with the spare.' Grace nods again. She takes two glasses from the cupboard, filling them from the tap; she takes a sip from one glass and hands him the other. The water is brackish again, brackish and bitter.

Becker's phone, tucked snugly into his inside jacket pocket, vibrates gently and he allows himself a small smile of victory as he moves towards the door. A crease appears between Grace's brows. ‘You're not going right now?' she says. ‘There's still water over the causeway in the middle, you'll get wet.'

He turns his back on her. ‘All right,' he says. ‘I'm going outside to smoke a cigarette.'

He retrieves one of the cigarettes he'd made earlier and lights it while walking over towards the bench he sat on that morning. Checking his phone to see if he still has wifi, he sees that Sebastian has messaged: CALL ME.

The phone rings just once before Sebastian answers. ‘It's not Julian Chapman.'

‘O-kay,' Becker says. His heart is beating oddly fast; he feels light-headed, as dizzy as he did on the rock. He drops his barely smoked cigarette and puts his boot on it.

‘You don't sound very surprised,' Sebastian says.

Becker hesitates, perplexed. She was telling the truth. ‘I … I am surprised.' Grace was telling the truth. ‘I suppose this is good news,' he says.

‘Yes,' Sebastian says, although he sounds disappointed, his hopes of front-page stories about the museum crushed. ‘They've found a familial match on the DNA database, some guy who went missing in the nineties, he'd had mental health issues, drug problems. He was last seen in the Lake District.' There's a pause. ‘Did Vanessa ever spend time in the Lake District?'

‘I … not that I know of,' Becker says. He hears a noise and turns to see Grace coming out of the house, carrying something in her hand. She sees him and stops, raising her other hand to shield her eyes from the sun. He cannot see her expression, but dread courses through him, ice cold. ‘Is Emmeline all right, Seb? Is she going to be OK?'

‘Yeah, I think so. She's stable, in any case. Thank you for asking. I can fill you in on all the details when you get back, but the immediate takeaway from this bone business is that we can no longer display Division II . Not as it is, not until we've spoken to the Rileys, but I can't really see them giving us permission.'

Becker takes a couple of steps towards the bench; he wants to sit down, he is feeling quite unwell. ‘Sorry, who? Who do we need to speak to?'

‘The family,' Sebastian says, ‘the Rileys. The man who went missing, the chap whose rib ended up in this sculpture, his name was Nicholas Riley.'

Becker vomits all over his shoes.