But as he turned back to the hole, he realized there was even more of the bait, on top of the rocks in front of him, about five feet above his eye line. This time he scanned the whole cove. Within a couple of seconds he could see the same bait in three other places: to his right, down towards the shoreline; at a diagonal from him, in a gully; and one more immediately behind him, wedged in a fracture in the rocks about ten feet away.
He placed the line box down – securing it in a crevice it couldn’t escape from – and got to his feet. The surface down to the nearest bait, the one behind him, was slick with seawater. He took a couple of careful steps, then dropped down on to his backside and slid the rest of the way. Up close, he could see that the bait was wrapped in plastic – like the type he kept his bacon in – and the meat inside had been cut into five thin strips. They were much too long and impractical for crabbing – even the boy knew that – which must have been why they’d been left here. Whoever had tried using them hadn’t had much success.
He reached forward to pick them up.
But stopped.
One of the strips of meat had a shell attached to it. He leaned in closer. They all had shells attached to them: in the same place, right at the end. He glanced between his hand – still hovering over the plastic covering – and the strips of meat inside; back and forth, as if his mind had made some sort of a connection but he didn’t realize what it was.
Then a second later it hit him.
A whimper sounded in his throat as he scuffled back on his hands, reversing as far from the bait as he could get himself. He tried to gain purchase on the rocks but his feet kept slipping, the heels of his boots sliding off the surface. ‘Dad!’ he yelled, an automatic reaction, even though his dad was at work, miles away, and the boy was out here on his own where no one would hear him. ‘Dad !’ he screamed again, tears forming in his eyes as he desperately tried to claw his way back up to where he’d left his line.
Thirty seconds later he got there – but he didn’t stop for the line. He didn’t stop for his bait, his bucket, or his backpack either. He just clambered across the rocks, back over the dragon’s tail, and ran as fast as he could along the shingle to his house at the end of the sea wall. His mum was in the kitchen, organizing cakes for his sister’s birthday, and when she looked at the boy, at his tears, at the wide-eyed terror in his eyes, she grabbed him, brought him in close and made him recount what he’d seen. And he told her.
How the shells had been fingernails.
How the strips of meat had been fingers.
And how the bait had been a hand.
3
Half a mile away, as the boy was telling his mother what he’d found, Colm Healy pulled his Vauxhall up alongside a cottage he’d been staying at for the past five months. On the passenger seat were two shopping bags. He grabbed them, got out and headed inside.
After putting the food away and making himself a coffee, he sat at the window and smoked a cigarette. The view, even in the middle of winter, was beautifuclass="underline" the gentle curve of the shingle beach; a long line of pastel-coloured fishermen’s cottages; the high sea wall and the masts rising up from behind it. Sea spray dotted the glass, and wind cut in from the sea, swirling and buffeting the cottage – yet, to Healy, after twenty-six years in the Met, and even longer in the city, this was as close to silence as he had ever known.
A minute later the silence broke.
On the table in front of him, his phone started buzzing, quietly turning circles. He didn’t have a ring tone these days, which he preferred because it meant he missed a lot of calls. His ex-wife. The people he’d worked with. Men and women from his old life he’d happily never see again. But there was always a risk he might miss the one call he cared about: the call from his boys. So he brought the phone towards him and turned it over.
Liz Feeny.
He thought about letting it go to voicemail. Any conversation with Feeny was a conversation without a conclusion. She’d been phoning him constantly for the past three months, looking for any kind of closure, any kind of answer. But there wasn’t one.
There was no happy ending.
He pushed Answer and flicked to speakerphone. ‘Liz.’
‘Healy.’
Her voice was soft. It sounded like she’d already been crying. ‘This isn’t really a good time,’ he said, lying. He looked around the kitchen. Dishes were stacked up in the sink. Cereal boxes were left on the worktops. ‘I’m right in the middle of something here.’
‘Why do you still answer my calls?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘When David described you, he always said you were difficult to break down. Angry. Aloof. When I first started calling you, that was the man I expected to find.’
Healy didn’t say anything.
‘But I’ve never found that man.’ She paused. ‘You’ve never been like that. I know you hate talking to me, but you still answer my calls.’ Another pause, this time for longer. She sniffed, stopped, sniffed again. ‘Why do you answer my calls, Colm?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘Do you feel sorry for me – is that it?’
There was nothing in the question, no malice, but there was no right answer: yes, and she clung on to it and used it as some kind of excuse to call him more often; no, and he was telling her never to call again. So? If you hate her calling so much, just tell her. Except he couldn’t do that. Because, deep down, he wasn’t sure he did hate her calling.
Reaching across the table, he lit another cigarette and opened the window. Smoke drifted out through the gap, vanishing into the rain. For a moment his thoughts turned to David Raker. Everything Raker had told Liz was right: anger, resentment, bitterness, revenge, these were the rules Healy had built his life around. And maybe when the pressure was turned up he would become that man again. But here, in this place, miles away from the life he’d once known, Healy felt like a different man. She may only have been using him, may only have been calling him because he was a vessel for something else – some sort of connection to Raker – but, in her own way, she needed him. And that was the first time anyone had needed Healy – for whatever reason – for a very long time.
‘Colm?’
‘It’s hard to understand,’ he said.
‘What is?’
‘Why what happened, happened.’
‘Is it hard for you to understand?’
He looked out through the window. ‘Yes.’
‘You mean that?’
‘Yes.’
She didn’t sound like she believed him.
‘Listen, Liz, I know this is tough to hear, but –’
‘I know what you’re going to say,’ she cut in, voice quiet. ‘I know what you’re going to tell me to do. Accept it. Try to move on. Try to forget about what happened.’
He didn’t respond. She’d second-guessed him.
‘Right?’
‘Right.’
‘Well, it’s not so easy for me,’ she said. ‘I’m still here in London with all the memories, living next door to his empty house. I haven’t got myself a new life like you; a nice little cottage in south Devon where I can forget about everything that happened.’