Episode Six

A storm rolled in overnight, swallowing Clayham-on-Sea in a blanket of downpour. Thunder, booming and imposing, stampeded overhead. The rain seemed taken aback, momentarily shrinking in the thunder’s presence before swelling back to full strength. Heralded by the crashing drums, lightning followed, illuminating even the darkest of shadows and whoever might be skulking within them. 

Then, as dawn approached, the storm’s fury began to wane. Thick, iron grey clouds continued to loom long after the thunder and lightning passed, smothering the sunrise. Only an orange smudge remained as any evidence that the sun had ever risen. 

By the time the pale morning had fully bloomed, the rain had thinned, becoming a cold drizzle that slicked the pavements and cast a dreary pall across the town and its surroundings.

Beneath the sky, on soaked streets and tarmac that shimmered from passing headlights caught in the rain, an unmarked car wound its way quietly towards the scene on Bishop Close. There was no need for lights or sirens; the ambulance had been and gone, and the news had already started to spread, flames catching between the neighbours.

A forensics van – plain white, save for a small crest and the words Crime Scene Investigations – did its best to obscure the view from the street into the living room. Inside, the team were huddled together around the kitchen island, their bodies and faces hidden by white suits and masks. Anonymous heads bobbed up and down in understanding as they received their briefing. 

At the front door, a young officer, visibly tired from witnessing what little of the sunrise could be seen, stood sentinel in his high-vis jacket. The small porch that jutted out from above the front door did little to keep him untouched by the persistent rain.

When the unmarked car pulled up behind the forensics van, it was with a sigh and the pained creak of the handbrake. From behind the wheel, Timmins stretched and yawned, before taking a swig of coffee from the takeaway cup to his left. Drops of lukewarm foam had escaped onto the plastic lid, rolling around the indent as he brought it to his lips, but he paid it no mind; he was too tired to care.

“You ready for this?” he asked his partner, watching as she took another sip of her own coffee without ever taking her eyes off of an email on her phone. Henson always seemed preoccupied lately.

“As I’ll ever be,” she replied, still half-distracted even as the phone was put away. Whatever she had read was lingering.

Although the coffee wasn’t strong enough to wake Henson, its bitterness was still able to aggravate the hollow of an empty stomach. It was a personal rule to not eat before attending a crime scene; the memory of a breakfast lost at the sight of a traffic accident early in her career had taught Henson to wait. And yet, the ache was already a distraction.

“Once more into the breach,” Timmins quoted, his voice cheerful but his eyes betraying an exhaustion that she understood all too well.

“Bacon sarnie after this?” Henson’s suggestion was met with an enthusiasm muted by a lack of sleep. She could already smell the salt and fat, and it momentarily quelled the unrest in her stomach. 

Timmins was first out of the car, and Henson followed once her umbrella was open. A gust of wind sent rain clawing at her strawberry blonde hair, blinding the detective with strands whipped into a fury.

“Here.” Timmins offered to hold the umbrella while she tied her hair back.

“Thanks.”

At the door, the young officer greeted them, sleepily. He shuffled from one foot to the other, trying to keep his limbs moving.

“Do you need to grab five?” Henson asked, to be kind. Raindrops, thrust upon him by an unruly and occasional breeze, rolled off the officer’s cap and gathered in the creases of his coat. Even so, he shook his head and declined.

“I’m alright, ma’am. I get off in an hour.”

“Back on again at lunch?” Timmins joked. The officer nodded, bashfully. “Mate, you need to stop covering for Maxine. She’s not going to fall in love with you for your ability to take her shift when she wants a long weekend.”

The men laughed, one out of the certainty of experience, the other out of awkward realisation that his senior was right. Henson, however, was too busy wondering how Timmins seemed to know the officer and the details of his infatuation when she didn’t.

“Gentlemen, shall we?” she said, pointedly bringing an end to their banter. The officer apologised and pushed it open, letting the detectives through. Feeling guilty, Henson allowed him a momentary reprieve from the rain, handing over the umbrella to shelter him. It was the least she could do.

Inside, the detectives were greeted by a quiet pandemonium. A storm had passed through, leaving furniture overturned, shrapnel strewn across the floor, and a great crack across the television hanging on the wall. 

Two of the forensics team busied themselves at the foot of the stairs. Over their shoulders and in the gaps where their crouched bodies bent forward, Henson could just about make out blood.

A third member of the team, indistinguishable from the rest, approached.

“Alright, trouble?” he said, addressing Timmins with a voice muffled by his mask.

“Donovan, you scallywag. How’s Karen?” Timmins replied, casually. Again, Henson found herself at odds with the sprawling nature of her partner’s apparent rapport.

“Yeah, she’s good mate. She’s good.” Donovan turned to Henson and nodded. “Morning ma’am.”

Perhaps none of these colleagues knew her either, a thought that brought some comfort to Henson.

“Morning, Donovan,” she said, leveraging the advantage granted to her by Timmins’ greeting. She left a little room for awkward silences as her colleague attempted to place her before continuing, “What do we know so far?” 

“Young female, late teens or early twenties. Found at the bottom of the stairs by a neighbour in the early hours of the morning.”

Donovan turned and led the detectives over to where his colleagues continued to record their findings. The trio maintained some distance to allow the others to work, Timmins and Donovan leaning casually against the kitchen island, while Henson stood straight. She didn’t want to make contact with anything in this place; it vibrated with unease.

“How did the neighbour get in?” she asked, peeling her eyes away from the sight of a shattered picture frame.

“Front door was ajar, which is suspicious. We also found blood upstairs, and as you can see—” Donovan spread his arms, inviting them to take in the scene of destruction, before continuing, “—it’s a bloody mess in here.”

“And the patio doors?” Henson asked, nodding in their direction.

“Also left open, but we closed them because of the rain getting in. We’ve got footsteps near a fence, but if there were others, they were likely washed away when the storm came in.”

“So…she didn’t die from falling?” Timmins asked, still holding tightly to his coffee and being careful not to splash it as he gestured from the bottom of the stairs to the patio.

“That’s one for Pathology to confirm with the autopsy. Nothing’s being ruled out,” Donovan admitted, straightening his posture.

“Do we have a lead time on that?” Henson asked.

“They’re backed up a little, but shouldn’t take more than a couple of days.”

“So, in the meantime…” Henson turned her back to the scene, as if the white-clad investigators were children not meant to hear what she was about to ask. “Best guess. My mind is open.”

“Off the record?”

“Off the record.”

Donovan sighed, his breath fogging up the plastic goggles strapped to his face. He led the detectives back towards the living area, stepping over a fallen table lamp and a collection of magazines, pages spread open against the laminate flooring.

Out of earshot, Donovan took off the mask and lowered his voice.

“Honestly? I think it’s a set-up. It's more common than you think; perp panics, then thinks they can control the narrative by setting the scene up in a certain way. It’s unoriginal and, I'm tired enough to say, a little insulting.”

“Do we have any starting leads? I’ve got interview notes from the attending officers who spoke to the neighbour this morning, but they’re not much and it’s been a long week; we could both do with a starting point,” Henson confessed, glancing at Timmins for silent support.

“We found a mobile phone out in the garden, but it’s dead.”

“Rain damage?” Timmins ventured, but Donovan shook his head.

“No, just out of battery. We’ve already sent it to Digital Forensics, but I’m sure if you ask nicely they’ll tell you if they’ve found anything.”

The detectives, as they were wont to do, exchanged the briefest of glances, to which Timmins nodded and pulled out his mobile.

“He’s a charmer, isn’t he?” Donovan laughed, stretching the strap of his mask and pulling it over his head. It snapped back into place against the hood of his white suit.

“He sure is.”

The air grew sluggish between them, the conversation propped up only by Donovan’s quick change of subject.

“So, how’s the promotion going? Bet you’re loving all the early mornings and late nights,” he laughed. It wasn’t funny.

“I’m getting used to it, yeah. It was a bit of a shock.”

“Tell me about it! I had a tenner on Timmins getting it!” Behind the white mask, his skin reddened with embarrassment. “I didn’t mean…it’s just,” he spluttered.

Henson raised a hand to stop him. In truth, it was a strange comfort to have another person spot the imposter rattling about inside of her; if somebody else saw it, surely it meant she couldn’t be mad after all. Of course, Henson knew better than to admit that. 

To bury both of their indignities, she simply gave Donovan a wry smile and said, “I had twenty on it.”

His laughter – part amusement, part relief – drew the attention of his colleagues by the stairs. At their glance, it faded back into an awkward silence. They stayed in that lull, waiting for Timmins.

When he finally returned inside a few moments later, Timmins’ face seemed brighter, less pallid. Either the coffee had kicked in, or there was good news.

“Spoke to Dave. Good bloke. They haven’t got to it yet, but he was able to switch the phone on and get an emergency contact,” he explained, breathless with excitement. “He’s sending the details now.”

“Great, that’s our first stop,” Henson said, leaving Donovan behind in the space where the L-shaped sofa angled, matching the angles of the thick, wooden coffee table.

“Bacon sarnie first?” Timmins asked, hopefully, as he held the door open for Henson to follow.

“Absolutely,” she smiled. “Thanks, Donovan.”

“Yeah, thanks mate. Pub quiz on Sunday?” Timmins asked.

“I’ll be there. Somebody’s got to get those sports questions for you.”

“Top man,” said Timmins, before disappearing through the front door.

Henson was waiting with her umbrella, though the rain had worn even thinner during their time inside the house.

“Look at this. Things are going our way after all,” he joked.

“We’ll see. Has Dave sent you the name yet?”

Timmins checked his phone. Specks of rain gathered on the scream, making the occasional pixel bulge beneath droplets, lasting only until an impatient hand smeared them across the glass. The email had arrived.

“Got a name and an address, that clever bugger.”

“So who is it?”

He squinted, attempting to read the name correctly.

“Envy? Envy MacAvoy. Is that right? Is that a real name?”

Henson shrugged.

“Let’s find out.”

***

For the first time since his arrival some weeks earlier, Olivier finally felt a sincere joy at being so close to the British coast in the depths of winter. Even the weather couldn’t dampen his spirits; he strode onto the balcony of his hotel room and inhaled deeply the fresh, earthy scent of petrichor left behind in the storm-soaked air.

Havannah had already left, but already he was hoping to somehow preserve her presence. Perhaps he could ask the maids not to change a thing during their daily clean, leaving the sheets exactly as they were. That way, the scent of Havannah’s perfume could linger a little longer on the pillow, and the shape of her body might still be traced by the creases and ruffles left behind on the sheets.

But Olivier was also willing to surrender to inevitability. The maids would arrive, swap the bedding with fresh linens, and he would still be able to lie there and remember the touch of her skin on his.

From the balcony, only the peak of Clayham-on-Sea’s high street was visible in the distance, hidden by hills and trees, and shrinking in the face of the vast stretch of water that it faced. The taxi would have dropped her back at home by now. He could feel a tug in his chest that seemingly confirmed it, wrenching at him in Havannah’s direction.

Maybe he would change hotels, checking out of The Blue Royal and finding a cosy bed and breakfast in Clayham-on-Sea instead. Over a sip of espresso, sweetened by the taste of Havannah's lips on his own, it seemed like an excellent idea.

The wind lashed against the side of the hotel. Higher up – higher than Olivier could make out – it was churning the skies, pulling the clouds inland. The rain would make it here soon, but Olivier would already be on the road to his meeting. Content to keep smiling at the horizon while he finished his coffee, the young Frenchman remained rooted to the balcony in just his boxer shorts, too tall – and far too buoyed in his mood – to be felled by anything so simple as a breeze.

As predicted, the rain reached Olivier as he drove the winding route towards Clayham-on-Sea. Despite the greyness of the day, the hedges and trees that crowded along the road’s edge seemed greener, made lush by the downpour.

Comfortable in his solitude, Olivier cranked the volume up high and let his singing – enthusiastic and sincere, if a little pitchy in places – speak to his excitement for the future. The CD was his own compilation of favourites, and he had insisted on a rental car with the means to play his music by analogue means. 

Wherever he travelled, the CD came with him, a physical comfort that had, in time, become a talisman of good fortune.

When his mind touched upon the memory that inevitably surfaced, Olivier felt the sunshine inside of him cloud over. Although the outside world hadn’t changed, it felt darker, the rain heavier. In response, his voice faded to a pleasant hum and an accompanying tap on the steering wheel, before stopping completely.

The CD was swapped for the radio. A host was making inane patter with their guest, and the poor reception made Olivier’s attempts to understand the garbled English frustrating. Perhaps, he thought, it was best to sit in silence.

Just as he was starting to miss the joy that had brought so much hope that morning, a sign welcomed the visitor back to Clayham-on-Sea. A smile tugged on the corners of his mouth, and the memory of Havannah’s lips passed across his own. The gloom was made more bearable by the idea of Havannah.

Olivier clung to this fact for the rest of the drive, passing through the town centre and following the sweeping road that curved downwards on the approach towards the seafront.

By the time he parked the car around the back of Foxy’s, the sparkling grin was back on Olivier’s face. The wind taunted his hair, sending it lashing out in different directions, before coming to rest across his forehead. With great patience, he swept the hair back into place each time, though there was an unspoken relief when he finally reached the shelter of the nightclub.

Shireen let him in, the quiet girl sparing him very few words before returning to her hiding spot behind the bar. There, she went back to busying herself with stock take, shrinking into the shadows where it was safe.

“Is Damon here? We have a meeting.” Olivier pointed to his watch.

Shireen – now drying a glass – shrugged. It was the gesture of a child who’d rather not answer and be right, rather than an attempt at belligerence. It was also not the first time Olivier had noticed this strange reaction from a member of Damon’s staff - of which there were few.

“D’accord, d’accord,” he said, pulling off his burgundy scarf. From its casual place hanging across Olivier’s shoulders, it did very little to keep him warm.

“You’re brave,” Shireen remarked, surprising her guest by sharing more than a gesture or a grunt.

“How so?”

“It’s bloody freezing out there.” 

She pointed to her own chest to indicate his, tapping her sternum twice. Olivier mirrored her, bringing fingers to the patch of bare skin on display, where three buttons of his immaculate white shirt had been left undone.

“Oh, I see. I don’t mind the cold,” he smiled, taking off his coat and hanging it over a crooked arm.

Shireen didn’t reply, dropping her gaze back to the bar and the assorted activities occupying her mind. After a moment, Olivier spoke up again.

“I think I’ll wait in his office.”

Because it was a statement, rather than a request for permission, Olivier started to make his way towards the far wall before Shireen could protest. When her stressed words were ignored, the club itself attempted to intervene; underfoot, sticky residue tried to slow the interloper down, straining to keep his shoes stuck to the floor. It was unsuccessful.

Despite seemingly having strong feelings about his actions, Shireen didn’t make any attempt to follow him, and Olivier stopped paying her any mind the moment he was through the door to Damon’s office. 

Ahead of him, the narrow staircase stretched forward. But rather than vanishing into gloom, the topmost steps were bathed in a sharp light too harsh to be sunlight, given the weather.

Frowning in confusion, Olivier started to climb. He took two stairs at a time, his long limbs clearing them with ease, while his hand periodically gripped at the pale wooden bannister running up the right-hand wall. 

At the top of the staircase, Olivier leaned closer, one ear hovering near the door. He could hear movement inside, and a single bright light was visible through the frosted glass.

He only knocked once before letting himself in.

At Olivier’s sudden appearance, Damon seemed to both jump and freeze simultaneously. The nightclub owner was standing by his bar, near the door. From the opposite side of the room, a lamp shone in his direction from the desk, spotlighting him like an escaped convict, caught with his fingers wrapped desperately around a cut crystal whisky glass.

“Oh, it’s just you.” 

He seemed relieved, his limbs defrosting enough for him to finish dropping a third ice cube into the glass. It gave a delicate ring as it landed, before swooping and sliding with the rest of the ice.

“Drink?” Damon offered.

Olivier declined, suspecting that Damon hoped he’d say no. After all, the offer wasn’t accompanied by even the briefest of looks in his direction, and Damon had already screwed the lid onto his whisky bottle before an answer had even been spoken.

Damon turned to lean his back on the bar – in reality, nothing more than a shelving unit whose wheels he’d removed – and drained the tumbler in seconds. 

After rattling the melting ice cubes around the empty glass, he returned for another.

“Are you OK, Damon? We have a meeting at nine thirty.”

“What time is it?” the nightclub owner asked, his voice groggy and dry.

Rather than answer, Olivier quietly sniffed the air – two short, sharp inhales through the nose. His nostrils flared slightly as they welcomed the scent of alcohol and – to a much lesser degree – sour body odour. In possession of a fresh drink, Damon skulked back towards his desk, directly in the path of the lamp’s light. A sprawling caricature of his body, woven from shadows with edges twisted by furniture, cast itself across the office.

“Sherrie said you weren’t in yet.”

“Shireen,” Damon corrected, sharply, as he took a seat back behind his desk.

“I can come back,” Olivier offered, though Damon waved him forward, gesturing towards the seat opposite.

Obliging – though hesitant to do so – Olivier approached the desk, while Damon fiddled with the lamp, ultimately turning it upwards. Now, a great halo spread across the ceiling, hanging above them ominously.

“Remind me what this is about,” Damon asked, rubbing his stubble with one hand, while the other stayed firmly connected to the whisky glass.

“The pier,” Olivier replied, struggling to sit comfortably. The halo was too pale to be comforting, and its presence, unaided by the grey sunlight straining through closed blinds, deepened the shadows. “I saw Havannah last night, but she still doesn't want to talk about it. I was hoping you might be able to find out what she’s thinking for me.”

Unexpectedly, Damon let out a small chuckle and leaned back in his chair, whisky still held close. The chuckle stretched his cheeks and revealed small lines on Damon’s face, evidence that he had experienced some small joys in his life. Just below the eyes, deeper bags had been drawn by the pallor of the lamp’s light; as a consequence of the shadows gathering there, it was easier to make out the scratches on Damon’s nose, chin, neck, and cheek.

“Well, well, well. I knew you two would get along,” Damon said, bitterly. He rolled his eyes before knocking back the whisky.

Again, the movement betrayed the existence of the scratches, and Olivier couldn’t keep from exploring the marked landscape of Damon’s face. It was harder to make anything out when Damon grimaced at the whisky burning his throat, but Olivier was patient enough to keep scouring the other man’s features - even if he was caught doing so.

“What?” Damon spat, seemingly using more force than intended when putting the glass down. He still kept it in his grip.

“What happened to your face?” Olivier asked, pointing to the position of the scratches on his own.

“Nothing. Shaving accident.”

“You shave your forehead?”

Again, Olivier raised a finger to the spot on his own forehead where a long red mark was visible on Damon’s.

For a moment, it seemed like Damon might explode, his body becoming rigid, teeth grinding against one another. 

No explosion came, only darkness; he switched the lamp off and drowned them both in shadow. Only the thin strips of daylight from the blinds dared to show themselves, illuminating small patches of the bare wooden floor.

In the pitch black, Olivier could make out various shapes, patterning the office based on the recognisable silhouettes of a lamp and desk and filing cabinets. It was his ears, however, that picked up on Damon turning his chair away from him; the chair itself creaked as it spun, and when Damon spoke, his voice bounced from the wall and back to the squinting Olivier.

“I’ll talk to Havannah.”

There was a temptation to ask again – to make sure that Damon was OK before leaving – but the voluntary enshrouding of them both in darkness had spoken volumes; Damon didn’t want to speak. The temptation died as quickly as it had come, and Olivier decided it was better to take his leave and call Havannah.

“Thanks,” he said, rising from the seat and stumbling over his trailing scarf.

The only reply was a grunt, issued from the dark.

***

The last notable evidence of the rain wasn’t the cover of clouds that had paled to white and started to fade, nor was it the puddles, evaporating from where they nested in the crevices of uneven pavements; it was instead the droplets still pooled and streaked across the windscreen and body of the blue Fiat Punto. Although the drizzle had ceased, the car’s driver watched as the wipers periodically swept away errant raindrops, ushered along by the gusts that had blown inland. When his eyes weren’t trained on the wipers, they were scouring the scene – the empty side street behind a row of shops – for any sign of keen eyes. There had been too many close calls lately; he had to be more careful.

Ten minutes later than agreed upon, his client emerged from the end of an alley, a squat passage squeezed between two buildings built decades apart. The young woman maintained a steady rhythm even as she hurried across the car park, pulling her coat close. Like him, her gaze was also sweeping left to right for any sign of danger. Aside from a white Hyundai and a garishly yellow van, they were all alone. Still, his client moved with speed and caution, seemingly primed for an interruption – either by way of traffic, a sudden return of the rain, or the surprise presence of the man who had earned their mutual dislike. But the sky had been wrung clear of any further rain, nobody had dared to venture into the town centre today, and Damon was nowhere to be seen.

When his client reached the passenger door, the driver pushed the unlock button and listened to the small thunks that surrounded him on all sides as each door opened. Funny, he thought; until this particular assignment, he’d rarely felt the need to lock the doors on a stationary car. Stakeouts usually involved shivering in the dark and listening to podcasts on low volume from his phone until the battery ran empty. Recent events had cured him of any further delusion about this line of work.

The door swung open and Havannah clambered into the car, slamming it shut after her. The gusty weather had done little to mess with her outward appearance, yet she shivered and gasped with relief upon landing on the passenger seat.

“Jesus, it’s cold.”

“I’ll warm it up. Hold on a sec,” he said, turning the ignition on.

Hot air spluttered and rushed out of the vents. Desperate for the warmth, Havannah nudged the dial to bring the closest vent facing her, hands rubbing together as if to trap the heat between them.

“You said it was urgent? Please don’t tell me it could’ve been an email; I’m freezing my tits off.” She paused, a small lump in her throat, which she cleared and continued – though with more solemnity than before – “And I’m having a bad day.”

In general, the young woman’s tone seemed shorter today, and she took a moment longer than usual before allowing her eyes to rest on Keller. From the pink tint in her eyes, he could tell she’d been crying, though whatever feelings had surfaced before their meeting were no longer present; she was, in his eyes, strictly a professional.

“I’m breaking the law telling you this first,” Keller admitted, holding his mobile now. He tapped the device on the palm of his hand and let pursed lips slide across his topmost teeth. With each tap, Keller weighed up what he should do; with each tap, his heart beat a little louder.

“OK. Clearly it's…significant. What’s wrong, Keller? What is it?” Havannah asked, kinder now. She faced him earnestly, and – despite being a decade her senior – he felt comforted by the welcoming depth of Havannah’s eyes.

“The girl they found dead this morning. Did you hear about that? Over on Bishop Close?”

Although Havannah kept her gaze fixed on him, Keller could sense her unease; she bit her lip, her fingers now interlaced on her lap, and her nostrils flared for the briefest of moments.

“I heard,” she replied, delivering the words with a smooth, unshaken tone.

“Did you know her?”

Havannah shook her head and waved the question away, but neither were as great a tell as the way she drew her eyelids shut. They stayed that way, opening only once she was ready to speak again, sure that the question wouldn't be pushed any further.

“Sorry,” he added.

Heat prickled beneath Keller’s face, embarrassment flushing beneath the surface. Should he continue? Havannah prompted him to do so, leaving little choice.

“Damon was there.”

Keller sighed, hoping for some relief from the weight in his chest once the words were out in the open. There was none, only a further quickening from inside his ribcage. He turned away from Havannah. Whether it was shame or fear or guilt, the PI didn’t know. He just didn’t want to look at her; he couldn’t look at her.

Meanwhile, from the corner of the eye, Havannah had visibly stiffened, her attention rounding entirely on Keller. Any sorrow had been pushed aside for shock.

“Are you sure?” 

Keller nodded, letting his hands run lightly around the steering wheel. Each hand started at twelve o’clock before slipping in opposite directions to six o’clock, only to return and repeat the path. Something about the sensation of cool, textured plastic gliding over his palms brought some reassurance. It reminded Keller that he could drive away – escape – if he needed to.

At Havannah’s insistence, he elaborated on the previous evening’s events, never taking his eyes away from the steering wheel.

“His car was parked outside the house. After I lost him, I waited, then followed him again.”

“Wait, what do you mean after you lost him?”

Havannah sounded more urgent now and drew herself taller, a hand gripping the back of the passenger seat. 

Keller’s hands paused at ten and two. He drew his forehead to rest on the top of the steering wheel. If he closed his eyes, he could watch the previous night’s scene afresh in his mind’s eye.

“Keller? Keller?!” Havannah shook him with urgency. “Did he see you? You have to tell me, or we can’t fix this.”

With great effort, Keller turned his head to look at Havannah, the coolness of the steering wheel pressing against his temple instead. He spoke with defeat, suddenly feeling a decade her junior. Even angry, she seemed composed and willing to see where her emotions might take her. In comparison, Keller wanted to let the borders of his body melt away so that he might disappear into thin air.

“He was waiting for me at the gym. He came at me. I think he was going to hurt me.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Havannah exclaimed, unable to hide her frustration now. She squeezed her eyes shut and covered them with an outstretched hand. A thumb and finger massaged exasperated temples. “Please tell me he didn’t make out your face. Can he recognise you?”

“Probably,” Keller said, his voice dripping with an apologetic tone. He sat upright again, still gripping the wheel so tightly that he thought it might snap off in his fingers. To let go was to be cast adrift, to lose the last of his composure. It also kept him inside the car, rather than fleeing like he so desperately wanted to.

“So what happened next?”

“I got in my car, he followed me. Well, he chased me. And then he got distracted and pulled over. I parked up and saw him passing, so I followed at a distance.”

“Jesus…”

“Do you mind?” Keller asked, uncomfortably. For his troubles, he only received a glare in return.

Havannah inhaled deeply through her nose, nostrils flaring with a controlled fury. By now, the windscreen had started to fog up, the cold outside world daring the warm air to meet it on the glass, and Keller momentarily mistook the fog for Havannah’s breath blooming on the glass as she exhaled.

“Right. OK,” she sighed, returning to the professional tone Keller was used to dealing with. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he shrugged. He didn’t feel fine; he felt like Damon was waiting to prey on him at any moment, like the whole job had become too much.

“Good. Next order of business – and this is important – did you see him leave? Think very carefully.”

“No.” Keller winced at his own admission. “Lucy called and it’s not good for her to be worrying this close to the due date. Especially when she's by herself.”

“Fine. That’s…that’s fine. But do you have proof he was there?”

At this, Keller nodded. 

During his fidgeting, the phone had slipped between his legs, nestled between Keller’s body and the driver’s seat. Letting the steering wheel go, he retrieved the phone with reddened fingers and unlocked it. The photo was waiting, dark and grainy for the most part, but salvaged by a nearby streetlamp, whose streaming orange glow introduced enough light to show the rear of Damon’s car. Pinching and parting his fingers on the screen, Keller zoomed in and handed the phone to Havannah.

“That’s something. I can just about make it out.” An attempt to force down her excitement was more than noticeable. “But the police can zoom in more, right?”

“No. They can’t do that. Only on television, sorry.”

“Never mind,” she replied, waving the suggestion away with the threat of a grin.

Keller took the phone from her and slid it back into his pocket, where it burned against his thigh. News had been slow to spread, but gossip was so often close to the truth. In Keller’s mind, he had been made responsible for a small part of these suspicious circumstances. But, if he was being honest, this was much closer to the fire than he was comfortable playing. Damon was dangerous; he’d heard stories before Havannah had ever reached out, and now he knew that for himself. 

Dreading the answer, though feeling obliged to ask, Keller posed a question to Havannah. With each syllable, he felt his teeth clench in an effort to keep the words inside. This, however, was a moral duty.

“What do you want me to do? About what I saw?” His hands returned to the steering wheel, ready to seek comfort with the repetitive motion once again. 

To his surprise, Havannah wasted no time answering. 

“Tell the police, of course. This is too important, Keller.” Any wicked, playful glee at Damon’s downfall had gone from the young woman’s expression; it was back to business. “And besides…I feel like it’s the right thing to do.”

“I agree, it is.” Keller reached for his chest, where a breath was still caught behind his sternum. He let his palm rest flat, feeling for the small, golden crucifix sitting between his skin and shirt. With a little pressure, it pressed more firmly against the bone. In the darkest parts of his mind, Keller whispered for forgiveness before speaking again. He had to be sure, to be tested. “But what do you want me to do?”

The crucifix throbbed in time to Keller’s heartbeat, anticipating the worst. 

There was no hesitation as Havannah reiterated, “Exactly that. If he had anything to do with what happened, then we need to let them know. That’s how we nail the bastard.”

“And if they ask about you? As my client?”

“Tell them whatever you need to tell them, Keller. I trust you to make the right decision.”

“Thank you,” he said, the caught breath finally released from his chest as he removed the palm. The crucifix dangled freely once again, made a little warmer by the contact. It caressed his skin and a few sparse hairs, before coming to a standstill. With it, Keller could relax.

“I don’t suppose you had any progress with the other thing, did you?” Havannah asked.

“As a matter of fact, I’m already done.”

Reaching across to the backseat, Keller retrieved an A4 manila envelope. Catching Havannah’s raised eyebrow, he reminded her, “You didn’t want anything electronic. Nothing traceable, remember?”

She gave a short nod, as if just now recalling that very instruction. 

“I did, you’re right.”

Before Keller could hand her the envelope, Havannah opened her coat. A white, crumpled envelope was protruding from an inside pocket, where its owner had hastily stuffed it in hopes of keeping the wind from snatching at its precious contents.

“What’s this?” Keller asked as they exchanged envelopes. He looked at his with great suspicion, but pulled open the flap before Havannah could answer. At the sight of the money, Keller joked, “I didn’t think your generation still used cash.”

“Untraceable, remember,” she quipped.

As he counted the twenty-pound notes, Keller stole brief glances at the envelope lying flat on Havannah’s lap, her nails – the usually immaculate colour now chipped from being chewed – tapping against its brown paper surface.

“This is more than we agreed to,” he said, straightening the notes and sitting them back in the envelope. It was barely big enough to contain the money, better suited to a birthday card; perhaps it had been a stray, abandoned when its accompanying card was no longer needed.

Again, Havannah shrugged, reaching for the door.

“Consider it a bonus. Or compensation. Or petrol money. Whatever it is, just…take it.”

Keller tucked the envelope’s flap back inside itself and leaned over to open the glove compartment, where the money found a new home, nestled among an AA manual and a bag of mints.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Havannah smiled.

Despite pulling on the door handle, she hesitated, as if knowing there was more to be said and waiting for Keller to say it first. Through the slither of a gap where the door hovered ajar, an icy breeze snuck in. It stretched across the car interior, chilling Keller as it grasped at his face and neck.

“Havannah?”

“Yeah?”

Common sense told him to be honest, to tell her that he was done; the job had become too dangerous. But he looked at Havannah, trying to dress the part and speak the way everybody expected her to, and he saw a young woman in way over her head. Keller could look after himself; he wasn’t so sure about his client.

“Do you know what you’re doing? Damon seems like a dangerous person.”

“He is,” Havannah replied, still holding the door handle. “If I'm going to survive him, I need to be the same.”

Keller gave a pained smile. He wasn’t convinced, though his attempts to hide that fact from his face seemed to fall short.

“I’ll be careful,” Havannah added, gratefully. “And thank you. For everything you’ve done. Thank you. I appreciate it was risky.”

“It’s part of the job. To a degree, anyway. Besides, the French guy was easier – far less scary.” Keller pointed to the envelope in Havannah’s hand. “But I’ll let you be the judge of that.”

The car door closed behind Havannah, cutting off the intruding breeze and trapping the warm air not quick enough to escape. 

Keller watched his client return to the alley, keeping wits about her the whole way. The money would stay in the glove compartment a while longer. Something about it twisted knots in Keller’s stomach, no matter how much he replayed Havannah’s words in his mind. It was a bonus or compensation or a gift. No, he knew what it was: it was the price of his safety – of his family’s safety. 

He’d already forgotten how many twenty-pound notes he’d counted, stuffed inside the too-small birthday card envelope, though Keller was almost certain it would never be enough. 

***

Henson and Timmins found themselves squeezed together on a light green two-seater sofa in the front room of the MacAvoy’w house, both silently hoping the other would speak first. Wedged either side of them were cushions of varying sizes and styles, but all one shade of pink or another. Across the way, an ornate mirror hung over the fireplace at a lurching angle, giving the detectives a sense of being watched by their own guilty-looking reflections. Catching the sight, Henson wondered how she'd found herself back making these kinds of calls; they had always been the least favourite part of her time as an officer. On cue, her stomach gurgled, bile rising to sting at her throat.

Before she could turn to Timmins and ask him to lead the conversation, he stood, desperate to escape the confines of the sofa. After a brief pacing of the living room, the mirror called Timmins to it – or maybe it had always been his intention to end up there – where he inspected his face. A stubbled jaw, sunken eyes, and thinning hairline glared back at him. Hoping to remedy what he saw, the detective smoothed his cheeks with firm fingers, tugging and pulling at his skin. Henson watched and sipped her water, hoping that the cooling trickle down her gullet would ease the growing anxiety in her bones.

Their host, meanwhile, was audible at the top of the stairs, calling on her daughter to join them. She spoke kindly, with a flicker of nerves; the mother, Henson decided, had sensed why they were there. That, or she had imagined the worst pain her child might feel and clung to it as a reality so as to be better prepared for what followed. Henson's mother had been the same.

When she finally joined them, Envy switched her sullen expression with one of surprise, as if she hadn't believed her mother until seeing the detectives with her own eyes.

The girl – young woman, as Henson would later correct Timmins, even though she too saw Envy as still a child of sorts – had been interrupted packing her bags. Devoid of make-up, her eyes looked small, but her lips were still naturally pouted even without the dark lipstick she preferred. Her hair – black curls usually tied or trimmed – bounced from her skull, a little wet from the shower. As she sat, Envy pulled on the sleeves of her hoodie – also black, like her jeans and the band t-shirt she was wearing – so that she could hold the fabric between fingers and palm.

"What's this about?" she asked, a tremble in her voice.

Before rejoining Henson on the sofa, Timmins offered out his hand and introduced himself as DS Jack Timmins. It was funny to Henson; she so often forgot about his first name, as they had become so accustomed to using one another's surnames. It was their private joke, worn and too familiar to part with.

"I'm DCI Gwen Henson."

Timmins must have had the same thought, as she caught him widening his eyes as he took his seat.

Introductions over, Henson found she'd run out of time to implore Timmins to lead the conversation. Pulling rank in front of the mother and daughter – both nervously anticipating bad news – seemed impossible to pull off gracefully, and so she swallowed her discomfort, cleared her throat, and began.

It took a moment for the news to seep into Envy's skin. 

Mrs MacAvoy, however, was quick to break down, hanging off her daughter's shoulder as she wept. At the same time, she attempted to soothe some deeper part of Envy she instinctively knew would be bereft, pawing at Envy's hair and sobbing platitudes and apologies for what had been lost. Envy, however, had seemingly frozen still.

To anybody else watching, the young woman's reaction was strange and slow. Henson, however, recognised herself in Envy. If she stepped back – if she zoomed out of the scene – Henson knew she would be able to see each tiny frame that, when stitched together, would show the minute changes in Envy's posture and expression that gave away how she felt. The young woman was devastated. Henson had been her, once, just a little younger.

As a kindness, the detective took a sip of her water to give them both some time.

The time gave Envy’s emotions time to catch up with the information she was now processing. The difficult questions came quickly. What happened? How did the neighbour find her? Do they think it's suspicious? To the surprise of Timmins and Mrs MacAvoy, all of these enquiries came rattling from Envy's mouth with only the faintest wobble in her voice.

But Henson could hear the subtle rise in pitch, the shaky ground slowly threatening to collapse her words, and she could see the shimmer of tears surging in Envy's eyes, the rapid blinking to remove them before they became a distraction. Henson wanted more than anything to reach out and cradle Envy, to encourage her to let it all out. But when she imagined such a scenario, it wasn't Envy at all; it was Henson, ten years old, shivering as her dad tried to recite what the police had told him, finding safety in going line by line. Unwilling to remain in the memory, Henson turned to her colleague.

The detectives exchanged glances, their unspoken language honed over years of working together, drinking together, being involved in one another's lives since she'd first arrived in Clayham-on-Sea some fifteen years earlier. He was checking on her, ready to step in. Henson declined, feeling duty-bound to both the girl in front of them, and the girl she couldn't comfort before.

The answers were delivered delicately – a neighbour found the door ajar when walking the dog, they're making enquiries – skirting around the information Donovan had given in confidence and uncertainty. Envy's reaction continued to build behind a stoic face. To Henson, it was like watching a car crash in slow motion. Soon, Envy would crumble and the small window they had with her would close. Even now, Henson imagined cracks forming in the wall the young woman had erected. From her own experience, grief so often stared with hungry eyes from the other sides of those cracks, begging for them to be widened so that it might slip through and take over. More than most, Henson knew how much effort it took to keep those cracks from widening and swallowing a person whole.

Ultimately, the detectives needed two things from Envy, both of which came down to information. Henson picked tactfully, factoring in what energy Envy had left to give.

She asked about friends, family, suspicious individuals in Claire’s life. When did Envy last see Claire, and what was her mindset like? Had Envy noticed anything unusual?

The answers were short and delivered quickly, Envy clearly becoming aware of her own imminent collapse. By the time she mentioned seeing Victor and Claire the previous day, her flat tone had started to waver, words becoming more spaced out. That's when her gaze began to drift, and Henson had to hope that Timmins – who had been quietly listening beside her, arms crossed and eyes trained on Envy – had caught every detail.

By this point, Mrs MacAvoy had ceased her own crying, but remained clutching onto Envy's shoulders, red eyes staring the detective down, begging for them to stop hurting her daughter. Timmins shifted in his seat, and Henson knew that meant it was time to go.

"I just have one final question," she said, pulling out a notepad from the handbag at her feet. "We have Claire’s phone, and we were hoping it might give us some insight into the situation. We were able to see yourself as the emergency contact, but we don't have the pass code to fully unlock it. Is that something you could help us with, Envy?"

Tears started to pour, heralding the great gulping sobs that erupted from the young woman. Mrs MacAvoy joined her daughter in crying, holding Envy as she crumpled forward, head in her hands.

“Can’t you lot do that yourselves? You must have some software or something?” Mrs McAvoy didn’t mean for her voice to become shrill, but it was too difficult to prevent; her words wavered and threatened to fly away through the outraged tears.

Henson could sense Timmins' gaze, but she refused to turn and meet it, knowing what it was he wanted to say. Instead, she tried to paint a sympathetic expression – downturned mouth, raised eyebrows, furrowed brow – on her face, only for it to turn out abstract and not comforting in the reflection staring back from above the mantlepiece.

“With cases such as this, time is of the essence,” Henson replied, flatly. 

She held the notepad for what felt like an uncomfortable amount of time, fighting the urge to prompt the girl into an answer. It was all too tempting to fidget with it, or to simply stow it away and excuse herself. 

While glancing down in momentary guilt, Henson’s eye was caught by the sheen of light against the plastic wrapper of an unopened packet of tissues she kept in her handbag. With a shaky hand hovering over the coffee table, Henson offered the packet to the grieving pair, clearing her throat to indicate they were there. Mrs MacAvoy noticed first, smiling gratefully at the detective as her indignation deflated. She pulled out a fresh tissue and handed it to her daughter. Only when Envy had accepted it did her mother finally attend to her own tears.

Henson couldn't explain the ache in her heart that came from this sight, though nor could she recognise Mrs MacAvoy in either of her parents.

"Here," Timmins said, offering Envy his own untouched water. She clutched it, shakily, her mother thanking the detective on her daughter’s behalf.

After a few gulps and a deep breath, Envy wordlessly held out her hands to Henson. Understanding what this meant, the detective handed over the pad and pen. When it was returned, Claire's passcode was scrawled across the page. Envy's grief was drawn into each digit, the lines shaking, the numbers all different sizes and none of them meeting the ruled lines.

"Thank you, Envy. And again, I'm so sorry for your loss," Henson said, rising. "We'll give you some space. If you need anything – anything at all – just give us a call, OK?"

Envy nodded, taking the card Henson passed to her. At the sight of her trembling lip and the deep sniffing undertaken to keep the sadness inside, Henson felt her own wall – made from a familiar, cold stone – harden itself around her. Any comfort she could bring was trapped deep within; any solace the grieving child inside of her might have found in Envy couldn't escape the confines Henson had built to contain herself.

They saw themselves out. 

Henson left the tissues behind. 

It was the least she could do.

The seafront was deserted, even by the standards of winter. The wind persisted, blowing in from the seemingly anonymous horizon, its distant edge blending into the murky colour of the sky. With each gust, the waves rose and tumbled, churning and rushing towards the shoreline.

From where they were leaning against the sandstone wall, Henson and Timmins watched as the sea continued to make its attempts to reach them. All the while, they picked at a greasy bag of chips in each of their hands. Silence enveloped them.

Before long, a lone seagull – either the last to leave or first to return – approached, landing a foot or so away. The bird squawked and screeched pleadingly, its feet slapping against the damp sandstone as it approached.

Out of pity, Timmins acquiesced. He tossed a fat chip down onto the beach below, and the seagull followed, swooping down with its wings extended. With hungry eyes, it surveyed the cold sand, pecking at any obscure shape that might just be vinegar-soaked manna from heaven. 

“What?” Timmins smirked when he caught Henson’s disapproving look.

“Don’t blame me when he comes back for seconds,” she said, staring at her own chips. 

The bottom of the bag was damp where grease had seeped through, but the warmth was a pleasant sensation for her hands. Hopefully, if she held on long enough and ate every last chip, the chill in her bones would thaw before their next stop. Unfortunately, she wasn’t hungry enough to put in any real effort.

“Do you think it got lost?” Henson asked, still watching the seagull intently. “I don’t. I’ve got a theory; I think they leave one or two behind every year on purpose. Y’know, to keep the nest warm. That way we can’t get rid of them. Did you know they’re a protected species?”

“God knows why,” Henson muttered, folding the paper over her chips to hide them from sight.

Below, the seagull started to hunt around for more chips. Timmins threw it another.

“Is everything OK? You’ve been quiet since we visited the MacAvoys.”

The observation stung Henson. Then again, that could just as easily have been the bile bubbling away in her stomach, stoked by lunch. Maybe the chips were a bad idea after all.

“It’s nothing. Just didn’t think I’d have to have those conversations now.”

“After the promotion? I know, it’s grunt work,” Timmins joked, throwing a third morsel to the hungry bird.

Henson sighed.

“It’s not that. I just—”

“Hold that thought.” Timmins turned away to answer his phone. It took several attempts, greasy fingers leaving smudge after smudge on the screen, but eventually the call connected.

Checking Timmins’ back was turned, Henson surreptitiously pulled one of the thinner, crispier chips from the paper bag in her hands, and tossed it to the seagull. The chip spun and bounced off the bird’s head. In response, it jolted, flapped, and landed a pace or two back from where it had been, all the better to identify whether the projectile was food or predator.

If he realised his partner’s hypocrisy, Timmins didn’t comment as he ended the call and returned his attention to the beach.

“Sorry, you were saying?” he asked.

“Never mind. Who was that?”

“Marie, calling to say they’ve had a tip. I’ve got Victor Grainger’s details, but it’s worth making a different enquiry first.”

Although his mischievous nature was no secret to Henson, it was only when Timmins was truly excited that she spotted the slight arching and twitch of his right eyebrow.

“Go on, who is it?” she asked, angling towards him.

The wind threatened to carry the half-empty paper bag away, much to the hopeful delight of the seagull watching them.

“You’re going to love this,” Henson said, his grin widening.

“Go on.”

“Damon Fox. Private investigator said he saw him on Bishop Close last night – later than anything Envy MacAvoy saw. Worth talking to him, right?”

Henson looked at him with puzzlement.

“Why would I love that? Who is he?”

“Oh come on, Henson. Damon Fox. Dickhead who owns that shitty little nightclub. CID’s been circling him for a while; dodgy dealings, drugs – the lot. There’s even word that he had something to do with the pier.”

At the mention of the pier, Timmins nodded in its direction. With great reservation, Henson followed his lead with a glance over her shoulder; that was as long as she felt comfortable looking at the great hulking corpse.

“Well, let’s go talk to him and see what shakes loose.”

“If you’ve never been to Foxy’s, brace yourself. The place is a dump,” Timmins said, scrunching up the empty paper bag.

Henson’s gaze swept from the horizon to the shore. A grey dullness had seeped into the very bones of Clayham-on-Sea. Even the sea looked dirtier – murkier – than usual. The charred shell of the pier glared at them both, but Timmins didn’t seem to notice. Should she ask anybody who passed by the pier or who had retreated altogether from the seafront for fear of being confronted by its haunting shape, Henson was confident everybody would agree that it left them with an unease they couldn’t describe. The shape alone – sharp, contorted, blackened – was clumsy and uncomfortable enough to be threatening.

Henson followed Timmins to a nearby bin and discarded the last of her chips. The lone seagull would have to hunt elsewhere.

She sighed.

“This place isn’t what it used to be.”

When the pale girl with the blonde ponytail let them into the shadowy club, Timmins had to admit that he wasn’t entirely right. Since his last time at Foxy’s, somebody had brought a touch of care to the place. Tears in the worn faux leather booths had been fixed, there was no longer the sweet-sour after-taste scent of last night’s alcohol permeating the air, and the cash register had been replaced with a more upmarket alternative – touchscreen and all.

Regardless of the small cosmetic changes, however, it was still the same recognisable dump under the surface. Of that, Timmins was sure. As soon as they’d stepped through the innermost front door, he could feel the oppressive darkness waiting for them both. Not only was it darker than the grim skies outside, it was also inexplicably colder – a fact he couldn’t help but comment on as Shireen led them across the dancefloor towards Damon’s office door.

“He’s just up there,” she said, opening the door for them, but stepping back before they could assume she would lead them directly to Damon in person.

The detectives exchanged another glance. Timmins watched as Henson’s eyelids went slack, impressing her general disapproval.

At the top of the stairs, Timmins rapped on the door twice. A cheerful but hoarse come in sounded out from the other side, and the detectives followed their host’s directions.

By his own admission, Timmins had expected the office space to be as dingy as the nightclub beneath their feet. In contrast, it was brighter, severe winter light streaming through windows that ran parallel to the sea. None of the wear and tear that had ever been noticeable downstairs was present here; the furniture was immaculate, the clutter was minimal, and not a single speck of dust loitered in the air.

Behind the desk was Damon, standing to greet them with a smile – the only worn thing in the room. He looked as tired as Timmins’ felt, stubble tidied in a hurry, lines drawn across his face as he smiled, and dark circles threatening to swallow his eyes from below.

As they shook hands, Timmins noted the smell of alcohol and fresh mint. Likewise, Damon’s dark chestnut hair was still shiny from where it had been quickly swept back with gel, and his brow glistened with a sheen of sweat.

The detectives took their seats opposite Damon, both watching with great interest as he asked what he could do for them, all the while forcing his smile not to falter.

“What happened here?” Henson asked, waving an index finger at a spot just above her own eyebrow, indicating the small white plaster stuck to Damon’s face.

“An accident. I might have had a little too much fun last night.” The accompanying chuckle was strained and awkward, but still he continued to smile and look from one detective to the next.

“Was that here? Or were you somewhere else last night?”

Damon’s eyes narrowed by an almost imperceptible degree, but Timmins was confident Henson had picked up on it too. He took a mental note. Meanwhile, a slight twitch pulsed from the dark circles beneath Damon’s lower eyelids.

“It was at home. I saw a friend, then went back to mine for a pizza and one whisky too many.”

“Was that friend Claire Hallett, by any chance?” Henson asked.

Damon’s brow furrowed and rose in surprise.

“It was, yes. Is everything OK? Why did you say you were here again?”

“Were you aware that Claire Hallett was found dead this morning?” Henson pressed.

The change in Damon’s countenance was both immediate and confusing. His whole expression eventually dropped into one of shock, but the change came gradually; his brow relaxing, then his eyes widening, and all the while the smile faded.

“Sorry?”

Timmins looked to Henson. He’d take over now.

“Claire Hallett was found in her residence on Bishop Close earlier this morning by a neighbour.”

“H-how?” Damon stammered, pushing his chair back from the desk. “Are you sure it was her?”

“We’re awaiting formal identification, but yes; the neighbour was able to identify Ms Hallett’s body at the scene.”

Damon drew his palms across his face in disbelief, stretching the skin over the bones and hollows, before placing both hands on his hips in a somewhat casual choice.

“What happened?”

This time, Timmins didn’t look to Henson for silent approval; he knew he wouldn’t get it.

“We were hoping you might tell us.”

“Me?” Damon scoffed. His voice grew even more hoarse with outrage, throat as dry as his lips. “You’ve got to be joking.”

Before Timmins could speak again, Henson let her hand rest on his lower arm, just out of sight of Damon. He knew what was waiting for him when they were both back in the car together.

“Damon – can I call you that?” Henson asked. A nod in reply. She continued, “It’s still very early in the investigation, but we need to explore every avenue. At this stage, we’re just making enquiries that might help us to build a clearer picture of what might have happened - accident or not. As such, it’s important for us to speak to the people in Claire’s life. That includes you.”

“Based on what? I hardly knew Claire. Her sister worked for me.”

“Is that Kristi Hallett?”

If Damon was parading nothing more than an artful performance, the biggest clue was then, his mask seemingly slipping into actual remorse at the mention of Kristi Hallett’s name. He swallowed uncomfortably and let his eyes drop before leaning back in his chair.

“Kristi and I were close. It hurt when she died.”

“Did you have an intimate relationship with Kristi Hallett?”

Damon looked thoughtful, a crooked finger pressed against his lips as he leaned back. He answered with a nod, eyes flitting closed momentarily.

“And so what was your relationship with Claire? Was that also of a sexual nature?”

“No. Never. As far as I’m aware, she’s always been attached to that thug.”

Again, the detectives didn’t need to turn to one another; they could both sense what the other was thinking, a thought shared between them.

“Who are you referring to? Who was Claire in a relationship with?”

“Are you sure it’s her?” Damon asked again, turning his head towards the window, where the grey skies were starting to part. The question, though somewhat pointless, was asked with the genuine hope that they might give him the answer he wanted most in the world.

“Yes, we’re sure.”

“Has she been formally identified yet?”

“If you could answer the question, Damon, it’d be really helpful.”

Without looking back at Henson, he shook his head.

“She was like a little sister to me. She used to come in here with her friends. I hated seeing how he spoke to her. He’s an angry young man. Aggressive. Victor something.”

“Victor Grainger,” Henson offered, though it wasn’t a question. Still, Damon answered as such.

“Yes, that’s it.” Damon turned back to Henson, his eyes moist now – either genuine tears or a result of the growing brightness shining through the window. “Have you spoken to him yet?”

“As I said, we’re making enquiries with everybody in Claire’s life.”

“I wish I could help you further. I don’t have a number for her dad, though you can probably get that from her phone, right?”

At this, Damon switched his gaze between the detectives, moving back and forth imploringly.

“We’re looking into it. We appreciate the help you’ve already provided.”

Before Henson and Timmins could excuse themselves, Damon tempted them with the prospect of one more thing. Timmins – who had made the most progress towards the door – hovered in place, then let his foot drop back onto the floor, preparing himself for more of Damon’s performance.

Sure enough, the nightclub owner pulled his chair closer to the desk and hunched forward.

“If I can be honest?”

“Please, do be,” Henson replied, dryly. 

“Claire wasn’t… well. Losing her sister really damaged her. She was a troubled young woman. But I owed it to Kristi to look out for her. If there’s anything I can do to help – anything at all – please let me know. If Victor did something to her…well, I’d never forgive him.”

“We’ll be in touch,” Henson said, with a faint smile. Damon returned it in kind, before standing and insisting on a handshake.

This time, it was Timmins who left a card behind, placing it on the desk’s immaculate glass surface. He slid it in Damon’s direction with two pointed fingers.

“Here. You can reach us on this number.”

As they left, Damon called after them, “Thank you for your hard work, detectives.”

Timmins didn’t need to see Henson to know she shuddered at the words.

In the car, the detectives sat in momentary silence together. To Timmins, this was greatly unexpected; he had already braced himself for a bollocking from Henson. When it didn’t come, he decided it would be better to prostrate himself first, but the chance never came.

“We need to keep an eye on that one. Get a full statement and some prints,” Henson said, drawing the seatbelt across her body. She tugged at her ponytail, freeing her hair to tumble, before sweeping it back up in a tighter bind.

“I was going to say the same. Notice how he went from ‘not knowing’ the victim to her being ‘like a little sister’?”

“I did. And there were scratches on his face and neck he hadn’t patched. We still didn’t get a story on what he was up to last night.”

“What are we thinking?”

Henson chewed her lip, eyes fixed on the windscreen.

“Let’s check in with Marie on those details for Victor Grainger. Let’s keep our word and speak to everybody, but him next.”

“Agreed,” Timmins said, turning the key in the ignition.

“Oh, and Jack? Don’t show your hand like that again. I’ve met men like him before; he’ll use everything you give him. Everything.” Henson didn’t look at her partner as she spoke, and the words were delivered not as a great fiery scolding, but a calm, firm directive. The worst part – the thing that hurt Timmins the most – was the use of ‘Jack’; it lifted them momentarily out of the bubble they occupied together, both role-playing and following rules they’d silently established between them. In the safety of that space, where their dynamic was closer to equals, Henson might possibly be Timmins’ best friend in the world. Admonished, however, the distance between them became far more noticeable, much to his dismay and instant regret.

He swallowed all of these feelings so that he could reply with, “Yes, ma’am,” before pulling away from the curb.

***

By late afternoon, the forensics team had left the house on Bishop Close, and the cordon – torn away by violent gusts – remained absent. Only a lone officer had been left behind to lock up and wait for her replacement to take the next shift.

During this time, the news had caught fire, spreading from neighbour to neighbour as it blazed its way through phone calls and hushed conversations, the pubs and the local newspaper office, breaking news alerts and shared website links. Already, people were drawing lines from the late Mrs Hallett to Kristi, and now to Claire, crafting a narrative that read like the tragic tale of a cursed family.

Not all had heard, however, and Rahim was of that number. That’s not to say he hadn’t heard the faint vibration of Envy’s missed calls coming from his phone while at college, or noticed the cornershop cashier had more whispered gossip than usual for his regular customers; he’d simply not paid it much mind. By the time it reached his ears, the news would be cold embers, blown away by forces bent on distracting him.

For example, there was the message from Victor, sent the night before, that only read Sorted x, or the question of how exactly he’d found himself in this position, caught between the conflicts of strangers.

As such, Rahim drifted through the day in a half-daze, his mind whirring with contemplation and harsh interrogation of the events and the choices that had led him to this point…and what he would do to get out of it. If, that is, he could possibly bear to part with Victor.

At home, Rahim crashed on his bed and closed his eyes, conjuring up memories of the previous summer. Of every second that related to Victor, some he remembered more vividly than others. Like, for example, the August evening preceding the pier burning down.

It was ordinary and uneventful for the most part, until it was time to sit down for dinner. At the behest of his mother, Rahim had left his phone on the bedside table in his room. Amina had grown tired of chastising her son for how often he had been seemingly lost in the device that summer, unaware that it was Victor who held his attention.

As the family ate, the phone made its presence known even from upstairs. The vibration was faint at first, muted by its distance atop the bedside table. Amina Qureshi swallowed a little more firmly, while Sayid did his best to ignore it, asking questions of his loved ones to spur conversation. Rahim’s sister, Soraya, rolled her eyes and made an attempt to take her father’s bait.

Each time the vibrating stopped, Amina seemed relieved, closing her eyes and sighing, before sticking her fork back into dinner. Then, it would start again, and she would be wound even tighter than before.

Eventually, even Sayid couldn’t hide his irritation, growing quiet as his face soured and the grip on his cutlery tightened. Rahim could feel himself reddening, knowing they blamed him for the intruding guest. At least Soraya had grown amused, shooting mischievous glances at her brother, placing a silent wager with herself on which parent would snap first.

When the phone finally vibrated off the bedside table and landed with a thump on the floor, Soraya stifled a laugh. A moment stretched on as they waited to see if the silence would last this time. But just as Amina Qureshi let her shoulders drop and her face softened into a serene smile, it started all over again – this time made louder by the proximity.

“Alright, enough!” Amina declared, slamming her knife and fork onto the table.

Her voice spoke of thunder, but the sharp edges of her features presented an expression closer to lightning – a keen flash; a warning sign. The crackling storm was aimed in Rahim’s direction to her right.

Before the storm could strike, however, Sayid spoke up. Ever the calmer of the two, he reached across the table and gave his wife’s hand a loving squeeze.

“Rahim, you’re excused to silence your phone.”

“Thanks, dad. Sorry, everybody.”

Rahim stood, making sure to kiss his frustrated mother on the forehead as he passed. At the door, he heard his older sister sniggering as she reached for the red wine. Before he could flash a discreet middle finger, Sayid made his disapproval at her antics known.

Upstairs, the phone had been waiting like a patient dog, keen to tell its master all manner of events. Those events were revealed to be a series of missed calls from Victor, all following a video he had received in error.

Although Rahim had only been in Victor’s room a handful of times, snuck in when his nan was asleep or in the hospital, he could recognise the sloping ceiling and the pale oak bed. Victor was also recognisable in the video, even from a distance. Those arms had held Rahim, and those legs had been admired by him. The chest where a woman’s hands were placed to steady herself had been where Rahim had laid his head on the nights when Victor let him stay a little longer, after the sex was done and there was no room for shame between their entangled bodies.

Rahim felt sick, and the nausea rippled through time, waves of it unsettling his stomach as he reminisced on his own bed some months later, under the fading winter light. In the present, Rahim rolled onto his side, hoping to turn his back on that ugly moment for good.

Despite the heartbreak, he still had the video, though it remained unwatched a second time. Its function was to serve as a personal form of torture, reminding Rahim that despite the excuses he had believed and the fondness with which he carried memories of himself and Victor, he had, ultimately, not been Victor’s priority.

A hand reached for the spot on his pink and white gridlined duvet where the phone had been left for the rest of that August night, switched off until he was ready to speak to Victor. Upon rejoining his family, it was only Soraya who seemed to notice the swelling of tears and the falsehood of saying, it was nothing.

Now he wished his sister was there to help him, rather than away at university. Would she pick up if he called? Probably. But what would he say?

Rahim rolled back over onto the opposite side, staring at the window across his bedroom. He remembered watching from that very window as the pinprick of red and orange flames flickered and died like a burst of starlight fading in the sky, the pier burning millions of light years away and centuries ago.

The fire – much like the media and the spectators – came and went, burning brightly through the night before turning to cold ash by morning. Victor seemingly vanished afterwards, and with his departure, Rahim’s summer had come to an abrupt end; he imagined himself feeling the cold sting of autumn earlier than others.

Lying there, watching great woollen clouds being unmoored by sweeping winds, Rahim started to imagine a world where he had accepted the pain and moved on, rather than answering Victor’s call when it came. He might never have known Claire as anything more than a neighbour, and without a hollow friendship built around Victor’s request, there’d be no guilt eating away at him. Perhaps, in this faraway version of life, Rahim would’ve seen Victor at Yannis’ party and traded polite words with him, and that would be the end of it; perhaps, with nobody to help him prove his innocence, Victor would never have returned at all.

If he was even innocent. Rahim shivered at the thought. It hadn’t been something he’d interrogated seriously, but since Yannis’ party, doubt had started to creep in.

He was restless now, tired of rolling back and forth in his bed while his brain explored every nook and cranny of his time with Victor. There was no space for ‘what if’ in the present, even if the lack of Victor’s persistent messaging asked such questions of Rahim. What if he’s changed? What if everything is about to be OK?

Rather than prolong his own torture, Rahim pulled himself from the bed. A walk would do him some good, if only to have the howling wind drown out the noise in his head for a time. 

Without much further thought, Rahim ventured to the front door. There was no way for him to know that he would return home different to how he had left, a realisation that would only become clear in the years that followed. In fact, when looking back on that moment, Rahim would come to acknowledge the blindness that allowed him to be caught up in other people’s chaos, all unfolding just out of sight, but inexplicably able to pull him into its orbit without his noticing.

Until then – until hindsight had made itself available to him and while the world still seemed vaguely hopeful – Rahim was content to exist in his ignorance, zipping up his favourite hoodie and stepping out beneath the blustery sky in the hopes of clearing his mind.

***

“You came,” Olivier smiled, swinging gleefully on the doorframe.

Where the white bath robe parted, the tattoos painting the Frenchman’s chest could be seen, as well as the black boxer briefs clinging tightly to his thighs. It was all by design; even his hair had been playfully styled with a centre parting and then purposely tousled to give the impression he was effortlessly handsome.

Havannah, however, didn’t engage. She wouldn’t look at his chest or the boxers, and his beaming white smile wasn’t reflected by her own.

“We need to talk,” she said, sweeping past Olivier and into the hotel room.

“Is everything OK?”

Olivier closed the door behind her, suddenly feeling foolish. He tightened the robe’s belt, pulling the fluffy cotton closer to his body, and was momentarily comforted by the restrictive sensation against his skin.

Havannah stood beside the bed, backlit by the balcony and the faintest stretches of blue becoming visible in the sky. Olivier took in the sight of her. A burgundy coat was tied closely to her waist, matched to the colour of her eye make-up, while Havannah’s braids were neatly joined and clipped together. A designer handbag was hanging from the crook of her arm, giving her the look of somebody both important and impatient. Truthfully, he wanted nothing more than to reach out and take her by the hips, pull her close, kiss her. Maybe even love her, if she could allow him to.

But Havannah was also wearing the stern expression he had grown to recognise. Previously, it had been little more than an attempt to put up a wall, he was sure. They had made progress, together, swimming in the sea, sleeping together, him holding her as she cried in the car after the house party. All of that was seemingly at an end; Havannah had mastered the expression, and Olivier was acutely aware that there was danger on her lips.

“Juliette Auclair. Sorry if I’m making a mess of that, I don’t mean to. She was your girlfriend, yes?”

Olivier froze at the sound of the name. Knowing what visions awaited him if he should blink, he kept his eyes open and trained on Havannah’s movements. She was breathing heavily, voice shaking as it navigated each word. Perhaps that was why she rummaged through her bag, pulling out the manila envelope; it could do the talking for her.

“I’ve read about what happened, and I can’t help but think this —” she swept the envelope through the space between them, indicating Olivier and herself, before continuing, “—is a bad idea.”

“Havannah, I can explain.”

Olivier started to approach, but Havannah held him at bay with a palm. Pulling the stapled paper from the envelope, she started to recount highlighted sentences aloud.

“Driving under the influence. Causing death by reckless driving. Aggravated assault. Drunk and disorderly. I can’t help but get the feeling that what I’ve seen of you so far is the very tip of the iceberg, Olivier. Having done my due diligence, I’m afraid I can’t sell the pier to you. From what I now know, I anticipate your family will be disappointed, but my hands are tied.”

Havannah dropped the envelope and its contents unceremoniously onto the bed, before making a start to leave.

“Fuck the pier. I don’t care about that,” Olivier pleaded, stepping into Havannah’s path. Taking a chance, he let his hands rest on her biceps, momentarily slowing her exit. Although she wouldn’t look at him, he took the opportunity to make his case. “I made mistakes, it’s true. But I wouldn’t repeat them. Fuck my family, as well. They wanted me to strike out on my own, that’s all. They thought it’d be better for me to be out of the country.”

“Do you know how my mother died?” Havannah asked, quietly. Her words pierced the flow of Olivier’s defence, two separate conversations colliding.

“I…I don’t, no. How did it happen?” he asked, fearing the relevance.

Now Havannah made direct eye contact with Olivier.

“A car crash. It killed her best friend too. And for the longest time, people blamed my mum, saying she was drunk.”

Olivier smiled with relief and joy.

“You care. I understand that. You just care about me. But I wouldn’t…not again…I don’t drink and drive.”

Thunder struck Havannah’s expression. She shrugged off his touch and shoved him away with a forceful palm, the handbag swinging dangerously close to his crotch.

“Are you being serious?” Havannah spat, full of indignation. How had he so easily missed the point she was making? "For someone who can speak at least two languages, you’re really bad at reading the room.”

He looked at her half-perplexed at the reaction, and half trying to find familiarity in her words; trying to give shape and meaning to what she’d said.

She barged past him, her shoulder clashing with his bicep.

“I can't do this right now. I need some space.”

Olivier followed, reaching for the open door. She was slipping through his fingers.

“Is that what you said to Ronan?”

The regret was instantaneous, but brief; Olivier swallowed his guilt and tightened his grip on the door. If he stayed like this, rooted to the spot and firm in his beliefs, how could even Havannah’s stormy fury topple him? He watched as she froze in the corridor. A dozen bedroom doors lined either side, each of them likely to contain a guest. Olivier doubted she would make a scene. 

Havannah turned slowly, the thunderous sound of her own fury threatening to overwhelm them both. Olivier squeezed his toes and let them wiggle inside his impeccably polished shoes – all to remind him that he remained rooted in place.

“How did–?”

“Damon told me. That was his name, wasn’t it? The gypsy boy who was hanging around last summer?”

“Don't fucking use that word, Olivier, don't you fucking dare. And as a matter of fact, yes. It is.”

“Maybe it's a good thing for you to say it twice then, yes? Maybe then you will – how is it? – long for me?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Yes you fucking do! You're always checking your phone. That's why I asked Damon.”

“Well Damon shouldn't have said anything. And don't think he hasn't mentioned you,” Havannah hissed, vaguely aware of a couple locking their hotel room behind them. Witnesses were of no concern to Olivier.

“What?”

“I've seen your police record, Olivier. I can't reconcile that with who I am and what I believe in.”

“Oh give me a fucking break! What you believe in? Saint Havannah, everybody.”

He mocked clapping and the door started to close, kept in place only by the side of Olivier’s foot. “Your problem is that you can't move on, even when there's a good thing right in front of you.”

“My father died,” Havannah spat. “It's been six months, Olivier. Six fucking months. I knew the man for nineteen years – my entire life up until that point. I'm sick of people telling me to move on.”

“And what about Ronan? How long did you know him?” Olivier asked, now purposely holding the door closer to his body as if to protect himself from Havannah’s wrath. In truth, he helped it would shield the vulnerable parts of him that wanted to cry and rage that it wasn’t fair. How could he ever compete with this phantom that occupied Havannah’s every thought? At least with the pier he could simply pull it down; Ronan’s haunting was too intangible for him to fight.

Havannah seemed to compose herself now, talking calmly and quietly. From the first few syllables, Olivier took some hope; it was only as he started to understand the English that he recognised the sadness with which Havannah spoke.

“Not long enough, in all honesty. God, not long enough. And I regret pushing him away every single day.

“So why did you?” This time, there was no outrage in his voice, only sorrow. “And why are you doing it again now?”

“You're not listening to me,” said Havannah, exasperated

“Why is he special? Why do you still wait for him?” The questions were veering dangerously close to becoming the complaints of a child, and Havannah could have easily dismissed them as such. Instead, she seemed to genuinely consider the question before answering gently.

“Because he never expected anything from me. Not a thing. Not once, not ever. Ronan never asked for anything more than my time, and I gave that to him willingly. And I wish I could've given him more of that.”

“And yet…”

“And yet, what?”

“Well,” Olivier shrugged. “It's not like he calls, is it?”

The young Frenchman braced himself for the crashing storm of Havannah’s rage. He winced, readying himself to shut the door quickly.

There was no storm – no rage or shouting or crying – just the slight shaking of a head and eyelids pressed closely together in disappointment. Havannah inhaled, then let the breath go. She turned from the doorway and left, taking the air with her.

Any words Olivier might have shouted to slow her down became tangled in his chest, French and English conspiring to save him from further humiliation by confusing themselves with one another. Helpless and hopeless, he could only close the door, retreating back into the hotel room and himself.

A delayed shame burnt beneath his skin as memories of the interaction caught up with Olivier. There were so many times when he should’ve stopped talking, he knew that now. By the bed, his knees wouldn’t bend to allow him to sit. If he couldn’t sit and cry, then Olivier wanted only to tear the hotel room apart.

And so he did; a hand swatted the nearest lamp from the desk; a chair was hurled at the wall, chewing into the plaster; glasses smashed against the skirting, shards glittering as they scattered.

Olivier was a puppet to his own emotions. Every movement – every lashing of his limbs directed first towards an inanimate object, then at his own skull – was guided by a common thread: he was to blame for everything. He knew that. But so was Damon.

From the window, an animal – panting, red-faced, feral – stared back at Olivier. He had been played for a fool. The realisation threatened to overwhelm him, stoking the fires of his temper. But there was nothing left to destroy or rip or kick, and his cheeks hurt from where he had struck himself. Out of options and exhausted, Olivier brushed his hair back and started to pace back and forth, contemplating all the ways he would kill Damon given the chance.

***

Come evening, there was no sign that there had ever been a storm at all. A glorious sunset played out against an open sky, the golden yolk of the sun stretching across endless pale blue. Spring was surely not far away, given the chirps of a bird’s evensong from its perch on a neighbour’s roof, and there was even hope that the weather would turn a little warmer come the weekend.

For Keller, the twilight held a promise of more hopeful days to come. His daughter would be born in the spring, a lantern that had lit the way through the bleakest winter he could remember.

As he opened the car door, Keller took an indulgent moment to inhale the fresh air. At the turning point between winter and spring, the cold salt air had its sharpness tempered by the first flowers and a breeze that brought word from inland of drier days. He paused there, eyes closed, and imagined the drops of golden sunlight being soaked into the pores of his skin.

“James Keller?”

There was little warning between the words and the first strike, and so Keller only noticed danger in the seconds after the bat collided with his skull. 

Dazed, he clung to the top of the car door, dangling as his feet gave way. A rush of nausea rode through his body, turning the saliva sweet in his mouth. There wasn’t time to vomit, however. 

The next time he struck, Damon aimed lower, hitting Keller’s body, blow after blow as it swung against the car door. The last hit winded him, and the force tore Keller's fingers from the door frame. He crumpled onto the tarmac, legs unable to hold him up. 

Blood drops fell like rubies in his hazy vision. As they hit the road, he focused on the way they held their shape, only to burst and flood the tiny tarmac crevices below.

Damon's foot collided with Keller's stomach. Again. Again. Again. Bile rose more quickly now, burning the back of Keller's throat, his stomach unable to keep hold of its contents under the force of Damon's kicking.

A woman's scream – Lucy's scream – interrupted the attack. He couldn't see her standing in the doorway, couldn’t lift his head to look, but the image of his beautiful wife, pregnant with their beautiful child, was clear in his mind. 

Damon couldn't be allowed to have them. Keller strained to push himself up from the road.

“Get back inside!” Damon roared, pointing the bloodied bat at Lucy. “You didn't see anything!”

It was a threat - and was delivered as one - but Damon didn't want the woman; he wanted her husband, right where he had him. 

Pressing the bat into Keller’s body, Damon pushed the private investigator back down onto the road with little effort.

“I know where you live. Remember that,” he snarled.

Keller braced himself for another blow, a trembling hand rising to shield his face as he whimpered. It didn't come. Instead, Damon's footsteps seemed to pound against his head as they echoed against the tarmac, under the car, and into his bloodied ears.

Free of the threat, Lucy ran outside. Lights flicked on across the street as the last of the golden sunlight dipped out of sight. Neighbours, hearing the wailing, opened their doors and scrambled to help. All the while, Lucy clung to Keller and tried to lift him.

“James! James! I'm calling the police. It’s going to be OK,” she sobbed, ignoring the tightening pain in her swollen belly.

"No", he insisted, voice crackling where blood dried in his throat. 

An attempt to move was met with resistance, and Keller almost passed out with pain. The sudden jolt was enough to tip his stomach over the edge, and bile splattered onto the pavement as he wretched. Some was caught on his sleeve, staining the cotton. Every squeeze of his body brought more pain, crushing his fractured bones – which, in turn, made him vomit more. 

Despite the coughing, the burning, the crying, the vomit – despite all common sense – Keller reiterated his one order: "No police."

And then, darkness followed.

***

In the final moments of twilight – that uncertain, gleaming time marked by skies of either blood or gold – Clayham-on-Sea was left to reflect on the day that had unfolded, unspoken and unnoticed by most.

In his hotel room, Olivier Boutain clutched a bottle to his lips as he sat among the chaos wrought by his own temper. Tears stained his cheeks, a glistening trail marking the path from reddened eyes to reddened cheeks.

The file envelope's contents – half torn-up, half intact but scattered – stared at him accusingly from around the room. The newspaper clippings, snipped and photocopied, kept trying to catch his eye from the shreds where they were still visible. But Olivier didn't need to see the photos or the headlines; he could remember the crash – could smell the burning and the fear, could feel the ache that lingered in his lower back when he let his mind linger there. If he closed his eyes, Juliette was there, covered in blood and unresponsive. His doing. His stupid, foolish doing.

Rather than cry any more tears (if there were any left in him), Olivier brought the bottle to his lips and let his mind roam for answers. The only other person he knew would have any information – the only one to have Havannah's ear in any meaningful way – was Damon.

And so, as the shadows grew longer and deeper in the last glow of evening light, Olivier stared from the door of his hotel room, out to the balcony, glaring into the distance, where Damon must surely now be gloating.

Although Olivier could only imagine jealousy as any kind of motivation, the rational voice he relied on had grown faint and drunk with every swig of rum. And like the rum, his mood grew darker and more welcome with each mouthful, until he no longer winced at the spiced sting of either the alcohol or his own fury. Damon would suffer, he was certain.

Elsewhere, paramedics tended to James Keller, private investigator – though soon to retire, given the evening's events.

Lucy had pulled him inside with the help of neighbours, and she watched as her husband's eyes started to close, eyelids flickering as his consciousness faltered. She stepped back and wept, one hand on her mouth, the other cradling their unborn baby.

When the ambulance arrived, blue lights intruded through the windows. Lucy realised she hadn't turned the lights on in the living room, and switched her attention to fussing over the lights and the curtains before the doorbell could ring.

The paramedics took Keller away with haste, leaving Lucy behind. Their neighbour offered to drive her to the hospital, but first she insisted on tending to the bloodstain left behind on the sofa. Begrudgingly, the neighbour agreed to let her have this time while he returned for his keys. But, he promised, I'll be back in ten minutes. OK?

Alone, Lucy had wept some more as she scrubbed at the stain, soaking and then wringing out the cloth in a washing up bowl of cold water. Like the last of the sunset that was now retreating, the water had also turned a faint, sinister orange-pink; even in such a dark moment, Lucy couldn't help but imagine the evening had been captured so beautifully in the murkying water.

As she scrubbed, she prayed – in her mind, at first, then under her breath. When the tears came, trembling lips continued to struggle through, until the tears came back. They streamed down Lucy's face and she attempted to collect them with her hands pressed over her eyes. Some escaped regardless, leaving ripples in the bloodied washing-up bowl. The stain wouldn't shift. James would know what to do.

The neighbour – this time accompanied by his wife – returned to find Lucy slumped over the sofa, retching with grief. As his wife rushed over to embrace the sobbing woman, he caught glimpses of her confession. I can't do this alone, wept Lucy Keller. You won't have to, his wife consoled in return. And he could do nothing but watch and wonder what would become of the young family who lived over the road and troubled nobody.

The sky was completely black by the time Lucy Keller and her neighbours left in the car to the hospital. As her husband had begged, the police had not been informed – not by his dutiful wife, at least – and so Henson and Timmins finished a long day ignorant of what had transpired.

Timmims dropped his partner off first, yawning as he pulled on the same creaking handbrake he would hear again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.

"I'm so tired," he said, the words escaping at the tail-end of his exhalation.

"I feel you," Henson agreed, too exhausted to leave straight away. "About today..."

"Say no more," Timmins reassured.

But it wasn't a reassurance for Henson. A truth had been sitting uncomfortably behind her breastbone all day. Seeing his dopey, half-awake smile, however, she chose instead to keep it there a little longer. It would either fade by morning or pierce her heart in the night. She figured the latter; whenever there was cause to think of her sister and the night the police came to tell the family she was gone, Henson dreamt of her. They were pleasant dreams, sometimes memories from childhood painted in colours and shapes only the sleeping could comprehend. Other times, it was a visitation, an imagined Lizzie speaking to her as the adults they never got to become together. Either way, Henson would no doubt be reunited with her sister that night, all because she saw herself in Envy MacAvoy.

"Night," Henson smiled, the glassiness in her eyes mistaken for fatigue by her well-meaning partner.

Timmins waited until he saw Henson had got through the front door, waved, and drove off into the night to be alone. He had visions of putting his head onto the pillow and letting sleep embrace him, if only to shorten the time between now and tomorrow, when he would see people again.

At a crossing in the centre of town, Timmins paused to let a pedestrian – a young man – cross, even though the light was green and there was no traffic. In return, they shared a gesture of thanks and an acknowledgement between them, and Timmins felt a little less lonely.

Grateful for the gesture, Rahim hurried across the road so as not to delay the driver any further. On the other side, he was greeted by the doors of Vista nightclub. Rainbow flags rippled in the last faint breeze of the day.

Through the windows, he could see it wasn't busy; there was a chance he would get served without anybody asking for ID – as long as the stern man with the perm wasn't working on the bar. But despite the enticing lights sweeping the small dance floor and occasionally brushing against the windows, and the idea that he might meet somebody less complicated to love him, Rahim found himself unable to enter.

He checked his phone one more time, hoping to see a message from Victor. There were only the missed calls from Envy to attend to.

Deciding to walk home, Rahim called her back, if only to have somebody to talk to along the way, though he already couldn't imagine it being a pleasant conversation. Maybe, he hoped, she would goad him into an argument, and Rahim could finally express how he really felt. It would make a change, he thought.

Envy answered on the first ring, and almost immediately began to scold him through tears. I've been trying to reach you all day. The sound of her voice reminded Rahim of his sister when she was upset and wanted to be asked about it. Unlike his sister, however, Envy could only get a few words out before bursting into tears once again.

At the revelation that followed, Rahim stopped moving – almost stopped breathing – and listened to his own choked voice trying to find some combination of words that might be comforting to either of them.

Too distressed to relive the day, Envy made her apologies and hung up. Rahim was left alone in the street, a ringing in his ears from the silence left behind.

A car raced past, the lads inside laughing and roaring to themselves. A streetlamp flickered overhead. And from the shadows, Rahim could feel monsters staring at him. Those monsters were his guilt, and the choking realisation that he had been cruel and wrong.

Before they could snatch him – drag Rahim into the corners and crevices and convince him of his sins – he ran, never slowing down until he was home. Only then could he call Victor, who would confess that he'd heard. And the warmth that they had held between them earlier that day grew as cold and distant as Victor's faraway voice. They wished each other good night, and then Rahim shed muffled tears for his new friend until his pillow was soaked and his mother came to check on him.

Finally, night came. The storm and all the rain that had followed was now a distant memory; the sky had opened up to reveal a field of stars, while the moon blanketed the town in its glow. Watching the celestial theatre from below was Damon, smoking a cigarette in the graveyard – a small self-congratulation for surviving the first day of his life as a murderer. 

If he looked from his perch with keen enough eyes, Damon might have been able to make out the web splayed out across Clayham-on-Sea, its great tangled threads running from foe-to-foe and ending at his feet. Had he not become blinded by the thrill of losing control, maybe he would have recognised how precarious his position at the centre of that web had become. After all, even the most skilled weaver can become ensnared in their own yarn.

Of course, Damon was too relieved by his short-term survival to be so observant; he was focused on how he could tighten his hold, hide in plain sight, and continue to misdirect those who might be tempted to look at him as the guilty party. In no uncertain terms, Damon was preoccupied by the need to stay firmly in control.

But no matter how tightly he could pull the strings of his complicated web, and no matter how far into the earth he could claw and dig in the name of maintaining control, Damon would never be ready to admit to losing even an inch. Some things never changed. 

And that would be his downfall.