People keep telling Beth that time heals. But what happens if time has broken? Some hours pass in a blink: some minutes last for ever. Her mind feels like one of those Salvador Dalí paintings where all the clocks have melted. Since Danny was ripped from her, time has lost its shape. Chloe is in charge of her own teenage life. Even in grief she lives out the long lazy unstructured days of the summer holiday. When Mark goes back to work his life will have a different kind of spontaneity, the rapid response of emergency call-outs. But Danny: his life was still hers to shape her own around. The circadian rhythm of school, football, swimming. Breakfast, lunch, tea. These things still defined her day far more than work.
A baby would solve this. A baby would give time shape again, measured out in her own swollen belly and then enslavement to its routines. It would give her a reason to get up in the morning. It would give meaning to the constant waking at night.
Ellie wakes up late to find the house empty and a note from Joe saying he’s taken the boys to the park. Tom, apparently, has been awake since six. This doesn’t feel right. Fred’s normally up with the dawn but Tom used to be someone you had to shake awake, pulling the covers off him. He has refused counselling so far but it remains on offer for all Danny’s classmates and Ellie wonders if they should ask him again. She barely sees Tom from one day to the next at the moment. She checks the clock: half an hour until she’s due in. Five minutes later, she’s showered and dressed. Within ten, she’s at the skate park, coffee in hand.
Joe is impossible to miss in his Dad Coat. ‘Another nine!’ he shouts, as Tom rounds the half-pipe. ‘Dead heat! Goes to another round.’
He sounds enthusiastic but violet shadows cup his eyes. Ellie has been so overwhelmed by her own exhaustion and concern for Tom that she keeps forgetting it’s taking its toll on Joe, too. Since this investigation started, he has had to be both parents at once. She is gratified that, despite this, his face still lights up when he sees her.
‘How’re you doing?’ he asks, pulling her in for a hug. ‘You were a bit… distant, yesterday.’
She buries her face in bright blue nylon. ‘I kept looking round the bar at the wake thinking: It’s someone here. Why can’t I see it? The longer this goes on, the more I start to suspect everyone.’
‘Oi!’ Joe feigns offence. ‘When you say everyone…’
Ellie grins. ‘Nearly everyone.’
‘That’s a shame, because I am available for rigorous questioning in our bedroom every evening.’ He offers her his wrists. ‘And you might want to bring your handcuffs, because I can be quite a troublesome prisoner.’
‘I hope you’ve got a good alibi.’
‘My wife, as it happens, in bed next to me, all night. Snoring, I’m afraid.’
‘I do not snore. I exhale.’ They’ve been having this conversation since the first night they spent together. There’s deep consolation in this old familiar script.
‘I’ll record you one night, then you’ll see.’
Joe leans in for a kiss, much to Tom’s disgust.
‘Dad! Get a room! You’re supposed to be scoring!’
Ellie smiles. She kisses Joe, then Fred, goodbye, spares Tom the ordeal in front of his friends, and heads into work smiling, her mood recalibrated.
Hardy’s at his desk, glowering over herbal tea and toast. ‘Do you know what I did last night, Miller?’
‘Dressed up as Lady Gaga?’ she asks. He ignores her and she feels the slow puncture of pleasure that her boss’s company always evokes.
‘I followed our young vicar. I thought, he likes to walk of an evening. I wonder where he walks. Well, yesterday evening, he didn’t walk, he drove. To Yeovil. Over the border, darkest Somerset. All that way for a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.’
‘Recovering alcoholic, if he’s going to meetings,’ corrects Ellie. ‘If we’re suspecting alcoholics, you’ll have to include half this station.’ Behind the quip, her gut instinct is denial. There’s no way it’s Paul Coates. But she notices what she’s doing and checks herself in time. She’s learning to throw her weight behind every line of enquiry whether it makes her comfortable or not. ‘Is it relevant?’ she asks.
‘Well, he didn’t mention it.’ Hardy clicks his pen to press home his point. ‘Let’s redouble our efforts on him while we’ve still got the resources. I want everything on him. Last parish, old girlfriends, overdue library books and exactly what goes on in that computer class.’ He sifts through the files on his desk before lighting on the one he wants.
‘Forensics from the boat,’ he says. ‘What d’you make of that?’
It’s hard to read properly under Hardy’s eye, and Ellie feels that she’s under suspicion because of her family’s link to the boat. Still, she tries to block Hardy out and manages to digest the meat of the report. They found Danny’s blood, hair and handprints, paint chips that match his skateboard and traces of the cleaning product like the one used on his body. Hardy is still staring at her and she thinks fast.
‘So… while they were transporting Danny’s body down the coast, the killer was trying to clean any traces they may have left on it. The cleaner’s probably from the supplies at the hut, which means none of this was planned. They were panicking.’
Hardy nods his approval: they’re on the same wavelength for once. ‘What were they doing with Danny’s skateboard in the boat?’ He drums his fingers on the desk. ‘Who had access to it again? I think it’s time we asked your little nephew.’
At the Echo, Ellie feels self-conscious and gauche: around Oliver it’s impossible not to be Auntie Ellie, and she’s glad when Hardy takes the reins.
‘Who knew it was moored there and when was it last taken out?’ he asks.
‘Everyone knew,’ says Olly. ‘Everyone who walked down on that part of the beach, anyway. Last time we took it out was that really hot weekend in March; we went paintballing down the coast, with Tom and Danny.’ Ellie does a double take: Tom’s never been paintballing. Olly colours slightly. ‘Um, Mark asked Joe ’cause he knew you’d say no to Tom using weapons. It ended up being me, Tom, Danny, Nige and Mark. Legendary day. Probably the last day I spent any time with Danny.’
Ellie is still reeling from the knowledge that Joe would go behind her back over something like this. She is temporarily lost for words.
‘So all those people knew how the boat was stored, how to unlock it, how to start the motor?’ says Hardy. ‘Who else?’
‘Loads of people. Mum lets people borrow it for cash all the time. Everyone’s had a day on it, one time or another. Umm… Kev the postman. At least three of Tom’s teachers. It’s a great day-boat for fishing.’ He casts about for more names. ‘Oh yeah. And Paul Coates.’
Finally Hardy looks satisfied.