---

Jiggling on the step to keep warm, Sam waits outside Peter and Judith’s. Eventually, Peter answers the door.

‘Oh, it’s you. Thought it was bloody Jehovah’s Witnesses again,’ Peter says. He says it like that would have been preferable. Judith appears behind him, a smell of cooking following her.

‘Come on in, then,’ Judith says over Peter’s shoulder. Inside only the light in the kitchen is on. The rest of the house is in darkness, except for the TV flickering in the front room. A quiz show, on silent.

‘Sorry for interrupting your dinner,’ Sam says.

‘No worries, it’s not ready for a while yet,’ Judith says. ‘You’re welcome any time.’ She gestures into the living room and puts on the light. She and Peter take up their customary positions. Judith is poised on the edge of the seat.

‘We haven’t talked about Victoria’s boyfriend? You didn’t really mention him,’ Sam says.

Judith sits back. She’d been expecting news. She presses her lips together.

A hot pink tide rises up Peter’s neck. ‘Boyfriend?’

‘Ryan?’

‘I wouldn’t say he was her boyfriend,’ Peter says.

‘The police knew all about him,’ Judith says. ‘She hadn’t been seeing him long.’

‘He wasn’t her boyfriend,’ Peter says through his teeth.

Sam pushes on. ‘Mr Preston, I spoke to some of Victoria’s friends and even to Ryan himself. They were seeing each other.’

‘Well, why are you asking, then?’ Peter says, voice even.

Judith’s eyes glitter as they look between him and Sam.

‘I went to see him… Ryan,’ Sam says.

‘Still lives round here, does he?’

‘Yes, he has a family now. Three kids.’

Peter’s lip curls. ‘Has he got a proper job, though?’

‘He works in a bookies. He had an accident.’ Sam floats the idea. ‘Couldn’t work any more as a painter and decorator.’

‘What kind of accident?’ Judith says, her voice strained. But Peter’s face hardens.

‘Someone beat him up, by the sounds of it,’ Sam says. ‘Up on the moors. Damaged his knee permanently.’

Judith’s face twists and she looks at Peter.

‘He was obviously a wrong ‘un, love,’ Peter says. ‘I am sure he got what he deserved from somebody.’ Peter’s voice is lower again now. He gives a small, sneery laugh. ‘I think I heard something about that at the time, actually.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ Sam asks.

‘What do you mean?’ Judith repeats, addressing Sam.

Sam doesn’t answer, keeping his eyes on Peter.

Peter stretches his hands above his head, casual. ‘I heard some lads took him up on the moors and cracked his kneecap. Left him up there. So what?’

Judith lets out a strange, whimpering sound. The colour has drained from her face.

Peter grips her hand. ‘Don’t worry about him, love. People like him, they get what they deserve around here.’

‘You know who did it, Mr Preston?’

‘Me? Honestly? No. Could have been any one of a number of people who don’t like his sort. Would I tell you if I did know? No, I wouldn’t.’

‘He says he was at home all night, the night Victoria went missing.’

Judith blinks, waiting for more.

‘Seems like maybe Victoria was planning to go round and see him later, but she never got there.’

Judith shakes her head. ‘Don’t think so. She wouldn’t have told us anyway, would she? But she’d have told Sylvie.’ She rests her hand on Peter’s knee.

‘We wouldn’t have bloody let her go and she’d have known it,’ Peter cuts in. ‘I told her she wasn’t seeing him any more.’

Judith’s eyes look like those of a frightened animal. She looks as if she’s thinking about saying something, forming silent shapes with her lips, then stopping again.

‘There’s one other quick thing,’ Sam says.

Judith seems to cower, waiting for the next blow.

‘The emails you’ve had through the campaign website. Could I have another quick look through the folder?’

Judith thaws out at this. She is already getting to her feet. ‘I printed them all out for you.’

She retrieves the folder from a drawer and hands it to Sam. ‘What are you looking for?’

‘It’s nothing really. Just a quick detail I want to check.’

Judith hovers while Sam flicks through. The clock ticks round, punctuated by the sound of Peter’s disgruntled breathing. The email from Tracey isn’t there.

‘How often do you check the inbox?’ Sam says.

‘Every day, of course. Morning and evening. Either Peter or I check in every day. We check junk and everything. Why do you want to know?’

‘It’s really nothing. Honestly.’

When Sam catches Peter’s eye, he looks away.

‘Is there any news?’ Judith’s eyes are turned up, willing him to give her something.

‘Nothing at the minute, but I am making progress, Judith. I promise.’

Peter stands up and throws his newspaper onto the sofa. ‘Seems to me you’re achieving nothing more than upsetting my wife. Well, you invited this vulture in, Judith.’

‘You will let me know anything, won’t you, as soon as you know?’ Judith says.

Peter walks out slamming the door behind him.

‘Course. As soon as I can.’ Sam avoids her eye. He chooses his words carefully. He’d initially planned to tell Judith and Peter about what Tracey said, but the missing email is stopping him. One of them has seemingly deleted it. Why? Deep down he knows that isn’t his only reason, though. He doesn’t want to spoil his chances of getting a scoop.

Sam leaves Judith leafing through the folder and lets himself out, closing the door quietly behind him. The smell of the cooking is stronger now. He pictures Judith and Peter eating in silence: determined, joyless chewing. After his visit, maybe they’ll bin it altogether.

As he walks to his car, Sam thinks about Peter’s reaction to Ryan. It’s clear that Peter was either there on the moors when Ryan got attacked, or that he knows who did it, and likely encouraged them to do so. Who else would be that mad at Ryan?

More than that, though, Sam is surprised by the feeling that Judith knows something too. The tiniest shift in her expression gave it away. Maybe she’d known before tonight, maybe she hadn’t. Maybe she’d never admit it anyway, not even to herself. But she knew about what had happened with Ryan. And yet, when they were talking about it, she’d put her hand on Peter’s knee anyway.

---

Sam is fiddling with his phone when he gets into the hotel. Someone clears their throat from behind the desk. Janine. She scratches the end of her nose with the very tip of her nail.

‘Someone waiting to see you,’ she says. ‘Woman.’

Sam thinks it must be Sylvie again, come to explain more, perhaps, tell him something else.

‘Another one,’ Janine says with a tinkle of amusement. ‘She’s round at the carvery.’

‘Oh right, ta. Did she say what it was about? Leave a name?’

Janine shakes her head, paper-clipping a sheaf of papers. As he heads out he hears her muttering about how she isn’t his ‘bloody PA’.

---

In the carvery, there’s one woman sitting in the bar area, sipping a glass of water. She sees Sam and gives him a little nod. He gets flashbacks to some of the excruciating dates he’s been on since his divorce, that initial awkwardness.

As he gets closer, he recognises the face but can’t quite place where from.

She half stands up to greet him, then sits back down. ‘I saw you at the pub,’ Tina says. ‘The other night? With Martin.’

‘Oh… Oh? Right, yeah.’

‘Fancy a drink?’ She gestures towards the bar.

‘Erm, yeah, go on then.’

‘I’ll have a red wine,’ she says and looks out of the window, towards the wooded area beyond the car park, as if there’s anything to see. ‘Large,’ she adds, not turning her head.

Sam orders Tina’s wine and the same for himself, and goes back to join her.

‘How’s your movie going?’ Tina says, taking a long drink of her wine. The lights from a slot machine behind Sam are popping against her glass.

‘Well, it’s not really a movie, it’s more of a…’ Sam pulls himself back. ‘Good, actually; it’s going well. Better than I expected.’

Tina looks at him over the top of the glass, taking another sip. ‘Someone bought it, have they? To put on the telly?’

‘Well, not yet but…’

Tina gives a kind of smirk that Sam can’t quite read.

‘Remembered you said you were stopping next door. I weren’t as pissed as you thought the last time I saw you, eh?’

Sam raises his glass, a mini cheers.

‘Martin helping you a lot, is he?’ Tina says then.

‘Well, yeah, he’s shown me about a bit and…’ Sam snaps out of it. ‘Sorry, I don’t mean to be funny, but can I ask what this is about?’

Tina puts her drink down now, her previous bravado gone. She bites on the sides of her nails. ‘How much do you know about him?’

‘What do you mean?’ Sam says. ‘I just bumped into him. That’s it.’

‘Where? Where did you bump into him?’

Sam thinks for a moment. ‘Just up at the lake. I was filming for the documentary.’

Tina shuffles forwards on her seat. She takes another slug of the wine and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

‘He was married to my mate,’ she says, her voice lowered even though there’s no one around, except the barman. ‘Manda.’

‘Right,’ Sam says. He’s thinking how he doesn’t want to get in the middle of a domestic, but something tells him to hear her out. She looks deadly serious now.

‘So, what do you think that has to do with me, Tina?’

‘They split up,’ Tina says, checking around her again. ‘I never really liked him, to be honest. There’s something funny about him, don’t you think?’

‘I’m not sure that’s really…’

Tina rolls her eyes. ‘She told me something once, Manda. She doesn’t know I’m here.’

‘About Martin?’ Sam says.

She nods, her mouth a hard, straight line. ‘It wasn’t why they split up. That was because he’s a cold fish,’ Tina says. ‘But it wasn’t that long after it happened – the girl Victoria dying – that they broke up. They’d been having a few issues.’

‘OK…’ Sam’s mind whirrs at where this could be going.

‘Anyway, she said that he came in late that night, the night she died, the girl at the lake, and that he had mud round the bottom of his jeans. He’d been out in the rain. And that in the days after he was acting “skittish”.’

‘Skittish?’ Sam says.

‘Her words,’ Tina says, the drawbridge up again. ‘Odd turn of phrase, I thought.’

Sam feels the hairs on the back of his neck prickle up. ‘And did she go to the police?’

‘No. Because they got back together after that. Limped on for another few years. You know how it is. They’ve split up for good now, but when I tried to raise it with her a couple of times, she pretends we never had that conversation. Says everyone suspected the blokes in their lives and I’m just getting muddled. She’s a bit like that. She likes things a certain way.’

Tina knocks back a good half of her glass of wine. ‘I don’t get muddled, me,’ she says. ‘I know what she said.’

‘So why haven’t you gone to the police?’

‘You not glad I’ve brought it to you?’

Sam takes a sip of his own drink. The wine creates a warm track down his throat.

‘OK, then.’ Tina holds a finger up. ‘One: I don’t trust pigs. My boy has been in bother with them and now they’re always looking for ways to arrest him. When they could be spending their time looking for real criminals, like those who dump teenage girls in lakes. Two: I don’t want Manda thinking I’m making trouble for her.’ Tina holds up a third finger. ‘Three: I want to be fair to the bloke, even if he does give me the willies. If I name names with the police, his card’s marked. You come along, you’re in a position to check it out, aren’t you? Without his name being on some database forever if it turns out I’m talking out of my arse.’

Sam looks out at the silhouettes of the trees. In the window he can see the reflection of the bartender at the empty bar, polishing and rearranging glasses.

‘You hear about people, though, don’t you?’ Tina presses on. ‘Who insert themselves into the investigation. They get some sort of kick out of it. You don’t think it’s odd that he just showed up at the lake? Especially after what I’m telling you?’

‘Did he know Victoria?’

‘I don’t bloody well know, do I? I don’t see any decent reason why he should,’ Tina says, slugging off the rest of her drink. ‘He’s hardly likely to tell me, is he?’

Sam is lost in thought, about exactly what Martin had said when he met him at the lake. How much he had given away to him.

‘You’re very welcome,’ Tina says, huffy.

‘Sorry.’ Sam shakes himself out of it. ‘Thanks, Tina. Thanks.’

‘I trust my name’ll not be attached to this when I am watching it on the telly.’

Sam takes a sip of the wine and raises the glass to Tina.

She walks out, looping a thin scarf around her neck.