She makes her way through playing families and into deeper, calmer waters, wishing Rob was with her. They had fun last weekend, swimming at the secret cove. Happy days – before she started to have these doubts. She’s just being silly about the coffee, over-analysing everything. It’s good to be out here. The sea is crystal clear, shoals of silver fish passing below her, glistening as they twist and turn through shards of slanting sunshine. Below them, translucent jellyfish pulse hypnotically.
And then her calves begin to tighten up. Shit. Cramp.
She swims on towards the platform, only twenty yards away now, trying not to kick too hard. It’s happened before. Nothing to worry about if she just relaxes and stretches. But it’s not going away. Treading water, she stops to bend down and massage the cramping muscles. A spasm shoots up her left leg and she cries out involuntarily, swallowing seawater. She coughs and gulps for air, panic rising. And then the other leg goes, a bolt of excruciating pain that doubles her up. She’s in trouble here. This is the worst cramp she’s ever had.
She tries to call out to a group of bronzed teenagers who are now pushing each other off the platform, but she’s coughing too much, desperate for air. The teenagers don’t seem to hear her. She shouts again, thrashing about in the water as she tries to get their attention. She can’t breathe. Each time her head goes under, she sinks further down into the deep before somehow coming back to the surface. This time though she’s too far under, losing consciousness. She knows she won’t make it back up. She’s dropping, further and further.
And all she can think of is Jake brewing tea in their tent in the rain.
14
Jake
Jake asks the bus driver to stop at Ogbourne St George on his way back from seeing DI Hart in Swindon. Five minutes later, he’s walking the Ridgeway, a kestrel hovering in the warm currents up ahead of him. His destination is the Bluebell at Rockbourne, a village two miles to the east, where he thinks Kate stopped off that night to have a drink. A photo of the bar on the pub’s website matches the interior on the CCTV footage.
It’s good to be back on the ancient route, which covers some of the most remote parts of the North Wessex Downs. Soon after they met, he and Kate completed all eighty-seven miles of it with old friends of hers, walking a different section each weekend. Vast open skies, rolling chalk downlands, Iron Age forts and lively conversation. It’s the chats he misses most. Kate was a great listener.
Jake sets off at a decent pace, the wind in his long hair, knowing that there’s a drink at the other end. He’s got just enough cash for a pint. He should leave the pub to DI Hart, but he wants to talk to the barman himself, see the place Kate visited on her way home. He’s been over that last night so many times, blaming himself for the accident, for initially arranging the police job. If he earned more as a writer, she could have stayed a portrait painter. And then there was his tryst, caught on camera.
He considers again the footage he was sent. Is it really proof that someone wanted to harm Kate? The police insisted her crash was an accident. She should have kept her head down when she got the job as a super recogniser, not done any media interviews, but hers was a remarkable story: ‘The Woman Who Can’t Forget a Face’. And when she started identifying criminals, lots of them, the force couldn’t resist the good publicity. This week, they’ve been at it again. At least Kate’s name hasn’t been mentioned in the newspaper court reports.
Half an hour later, Jake is at the Bluebell in Rockbourne, propping up the empty bar with a pint in his hands. It’s a traditional no-frills country pub: low-beamed ceilings, beer barrels behind the bar. All floorboards and blackboards and a no-nonsense landlady. And he’s definitely been here before, when he was walking the Ridgeway with Kate and their friends all those years ago. It’s not how he remembers it and, annoyingly, the barman on duty is not the person in the CCTV footage.
‘Don’t suppose you remember seeing a friend of mine in here a while back?’ Jake asks him, pulling out a photo of Kate.
‘No, mate,’ the barman says, shaking his head.
The landlady comes over to look at the photo.
‘Never seen her before,’ she says dismissively.
Jake’s sure the pub wasn’t this unfriendly when they stopped by on their walk.
‘Who’s asking?’ the barman says, watching the landlady disappear out the back.
Jake clocks a further hardening of tone. ‘She’s an old friend, that’s all,’ he says.
‘Left you swinging in the wind?’ The barman grins. His teeth aren’t great.
‘You could say that.’
Jake is overwhelmed with a sudden urge to confront this man, challenge him about Kate’s spiked drink, the terrible consequences. He knows something, even if he’s not the barman in the video.
Picking up his pint, Jake moves over to a corner table in case he does something stupid. Kate must have stopped off here to decompress after work, make the switch before joining him on the boat. She was drinking a lot by the end of their relationship. So was he. Maybe she came here more than once.
He glances around the pub, at the camera above the door, the one next to the optics behind the bar. A lot of security for a quiet country pub. And a strange place for Kate to visit on her own.
He’s about to leave when the barman comes over to clean the adjacent table. He’s then at Jake’s table, unnecessarily wiping down its spotless surface.
‘If you’re a journalist, you need to fuck off,’ the man says under his breath, still wiping.
‘I’m not a journalist,’ Jake says, sipping from his pint. ‘And I’m not fucking off anywhere.’
He feels a sudden surge of adrenaline. When he was a cub crime reporter, his boss told him to always push back at the first opportunity.
‘Who are you, then?’ the barman asks.
‘I write books. Crime thrillers.’
‘Should I have heard of you?’
Jake hesitates before telling him his name. ‘Big in Finland,’ he adds, trying to lighten the mood.
Was it a mistake to reveal his name? He’s carrying a little extra around the middle these days, but he’s more than capable of looking after himself.
The barman wipes the table one final time and looks him in the eye.
‘Then I suggest you fuck off to Finland, Jake.’
15
Kate
When Kate regains consciousness, she’s staring up at the sun, her whole body swaying. Faces peer down at her, kind teenage faces full of fear and worry. Her head hurts. It takes her a few moments to realise that she’s lying on her back on the floating platform in the middle of the harbour.
‘She’s awake,’ one of them announces, as if the kettle’s just boiled. She loves kids, their matter-of-factness.
‘Here’s the lifeboat,’ another says.
The lifeboat? For her? Kate closes her eyes again. Everyone will be watching from the shore, from the café. She likes to observe others, not be the centre of attention herself.
‘I’m alright,’ she says, trying to get up. But her head starts to throb and her legs buckle beneath her so she lies back down again.
‘It’s OK,’ one of the teenage girls says. ‘We’ve called for help.’