But if so, it suggested not only a prior knowledge of his life, but of his movements and intentions, which was clearly impossible. How could she have known he was coming here? He had told no one—indeed, his decision had been made on a whim—besides which, hadn’t she said that she and her husband had checked into Derry’s Hotel before him?
Of course, she could have been lying—in fact, she may not even have a husband—but why would she? Was she merely a stranger who had fixated on him? Was she mentally unstable? Or was she what she claimed to be—a lonely, perhaps sexually frustrated woman with a sick husband, who was seeking a little freedom from the daily grind by way of companionship, perhaps even intimacy?
Skelton had half-expected her to be waiting by his door when he had followed her up the stairs last night. When she hadn’t been he had felt half-relieved, half-disappointed. He had been unable to help wondering whether he had fallen short of her expectations in some way, whether he had been deemed somehow unsuitable. He had dreamed of her last night. In the dream she had prowled around his bed, enticing but forever out of reach.
It was the sight of the police cars that dragged him from his reverie. There were four of them, in a line beyond the pier entrance, parked alongside the promenade. Uniformed officers were milling about, preventing sightseers—not that there were many at this hour—from descending the steps to the sands. A further deterrent were the flimsy barriers of yellow tape printed with the words POLICE CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS, which had been erected across every potential access point to the beach.
Skelton, who had been walking towards all this activity without initially registering it, came to an abrupt halt. When DI Parr suddenly appeared at the top of the stone steps and ducked beneath the tape barrier he considered turning round and heading in the opposite direction. But then, as if Skelton had given off some sort of signal, Parr looked up and spotted him. Skelton had no choice now but to approach the Detective Inspector; anything else would have looked odd or suspicious. Resisting the urge to raise a hand in greeting, he walked across, trying to keep his movements as casual as possible.
“Good morning, Mr. Skelton,” DI Parr said with a hint of smugness, as if he had caught Skelton out in some way. “This is quite a coincidence.”
“I was out for a stroll and saw the cars,” Skelton tried not to mumble.
“Bit early to be out, isn’t it?”
Skelton gestured at his head. “I needed some fresh air. I had a bit too much wine last night.”
“Celebrating, were we?”
“Not at all. Just…” Skelton couldn’t think what to add. Parr stared at him, as if alert for any sign that might incriminate the other man.
Skelton looked away, nodding towards the police tape stretched across the entrance to the steps and the uniformed officers standing guard. “What’s going on?”
“Developments, Mr. Skelton,” Parr said. “I trust you have no immediate plans to leave our fair town?”
Skelton shook his head. “I’ll be here for a few more days, at least.”
Parr bared his teeth in a grin. “Glad to hear it. Plenty of time to chat then before you go.”
“Will we need to?” Skelton asked, and immediately wondered whether his question made him sound facetious.
“Well, I assume you’ll want to know the results of your DNA test?”
“Oh. Yes. Though I know they’ll confirm I’m me.”
Although Parr smiled with apparent warmth, Skelton found himself repressing a shudder. “I’m sure they will, Mr. Skelton.”
Without knowing why, Skelton had been half-dreading encountering Belinda at breakfast, though when she didn’t appear that morning he was disappointed. He wondered whether she was avoiding him. Perhaps she felt that the wine had made her too indiscreet last night, though he couldn’t specifically recall anything either of them had said that they needed to be embarrassed about. He worked his way with stolid efficiency through his full English, then trudged upstairs. He ought to make plans for the day, though just now his room felt like a refuge.
Once in it, though, he felt nothing but restless. He crossed to the window, then back again to the bed. He perched on its edge, bouncing gently on the springs, and stared up at the ceiling.
All at once he came to a decision. He stood up, crossed the room and stepped out on to the landing.
As he approached the door at the end—as glossy as he remembered, albeit cream now rather than pale blue—he told himself it was perfectly reasonable of him to check up on her. If her husband was there he would simply explain that he and Belinda had been chatting last night over dinner, and that when she hadn’t turned up for breakfast that morning he had become a little concerned, given her husband’s illness. He would ask if the two of them needed anything, if he could help them in any way. Surely Belinda’s husband wouldn’t be suspicious of his motives? He had nothing to be suspicious about. If anything, he would almost certainly be grateful. Perhaps he and Skelton might even become friends.
Even so, he felt nervous as the door to the room once occupied by his parents, and now by Belinda and her husband, came into sight. The twisting staircase and upper landing were just as he remembered them; even the door at the bottom of the stairs had creaked shut behind him, as it had always used to. He raised a hand, hesitated a moment, then knocked on the door. “Yes?” said his father sternly—though only in his imagination.
In reality his knock was answered with silence. Skelton leaned forward and put his ear to the door. He knocked again. Did he hear a shuffling thump from inside the room—or was it from elsewhere in the house?
“Belinda?” he said, and immediately wondered whether he was being too familiar. If he and Janice had been in that room, and an unknown man had knocked on the door and spoken his wife’s name, how might that make him feel?
He tried to remedy the situation—if, indeed, it needed remedying. “It’s Mr. Skelton from downstairs. We met yesterday. I just thought I’d pop up to see if… if you were both all right.”
If there had been a sound from the room, it had faded to silence now. Suddenly an image came to Skelton’s mind: Belinda crouched on the other side of the door, facing a vague figure who was half propped up in bed, a finger pressed fiercely to her lips. It was so vivid a picture that Skelton felt unsettled by it. He waited a moment longer and then tiptoed away, taking the twisting stairs slowly so as not to make them creak.
Although it had started to drizzle again, he decided to go for a walk. Leaving the B&B he turned right, away from the pier and the police activity beyond it. After a quarter of a mile the town’s buildings petered out, as did the beach, the strip of grey sand squeezed increasingly thinner between the incoming tide and a jumble of craggy rock formations until it disappeared altogether. The rocks, black as fire damage, swelled gradually into a curving cliff face that enclosed the bay. A coastal path, edged with spiny marram grass and tangled clumps of tough, springy bracken, formed a deep groove that meandered across the top of the cliffs. The path sloped uphill for at least two miles before levelling out at the top, from where, Skelton supposed, you could turn to see the town spread out below you. Despite the weather, he decided to walk as far as he could, in the hope that the psychological baggage he carried with him would become increasingly lighter the more distance he put between himself and civilization. His eventual hope was that if he walked far enough it would become entirely weightless, leaving him free.
It was a fanciful notion, but it was nice to entertain it nonetheless. It was nice to be surrounded by the drizzle too. Although it was an isolating experience, he felt protected by it, rather than besieged. Perhaps being alone was his natural state; certainly he felt calmer, less anxious, when he had no one to answer to. What was that old saying? Hell is other people. Much as he loved Janice, perhaps the biggest mistake of his life had been to allow himself to become involved. By doing so, he had ruined not only his life, but Janice’s too.