THIRTY-THREE

It was hard now for Penny Scott to remember, but she’d been very much in love with her husband when planning the barn conversion. That was why she’d had the east-facing wall of the master bedroom fitted with a single sheet of smoked glass, that they might snuggle together on lazy weekend mornings, to watch the sun rise over the Wash.

Her romantic visions hadn’t lasted long, however. Embarrassingly, she simply hadn’t realised how early it grew light during the summer. Nor had she anticipated the violent electric storms that sometimes bombarded this coast like a fleet of warships, or the high winds that kept triggering their intruder lights, no matter how they adjusted their sensitivity. But she’d been too proud to admit her mistake by having curtains or shutters fitted.

Gregory had finally had enough of it some years before. He’d left for the spare bedroom on a particularly filthy night, never to return. And she’d slept so much better herself, freed from his snoring and clumsy overtures, that she’d left the glass wall as it was, lest he take it as an invitation to return. And it really did offer a magnificent view of the seawall and the Wash beyond, which was why they were standing there now, watching Detective Elias as he scanned the salt marsh through a pair of field glasses.

‘Well?’ she asked. ‘Will he find it?’

‘Find what?’

‘Don’t be an arse, Gregory. Your spade, of course.’

‘How would I know?’ he said. ‘Ask whoever stole it.’

‘Stole it!’ she scoffed. ‘What kind of imbecile do you take me for?’

‘You don’t believe me?’ he said, looking hurt.

‘Of course I don’t fucking believe you. You already lied about going out at all. Why would I believe you this time? Especially now they’ve found coins beneath his body. He was killed by a detectorist. Nothing else makes sense.’ She sighed miserably. ‘Talk to me, Gregory. Tell me how it happened.’

‘I haven’t the first idea, I assure you. I wasn’t there.’

‘But you were!’ she protested. ‘That’s exactly where you were, with your metal detector and your mysteriously vanished spade.’

‘Someone must have stolen—’

‘Stop it!’ she cried. ‘Just stop it, please! I hate being treated like a fool. Be straight with me and I’ll stand by you, I promise I will. You’re my husband, I took a vow. But one more lie and I swear to god I’ll march over there right now and tell that detective everything.’

‘You don’t mean that.’

‘I do mean it,’ she said. ‘I can’t stand this any longer. I want the truth, right now. The full truth. I don’t care how bad it is. I just need to know.’

He sat heavily on the side of the bed, buried his face in his hands. He stayed that way for so long that she began to fear he’d never answer. But finally he looked up again. ‘I didn’t mean to do it,’ he murmured, so softly she barely heard him. ‘You have to believe me.’

‘Oh god,’ she said.

‘He came out of nowhere. He was crazy. He was literally crazy. You should have seen him. Yelling and shouting and threatening me with all sorts. I thought he was going to kill me, I swear I did. He tried to wrest my spade off me. He’d have killed me with it. It was written on his face.’

‘So you hit him?’

‘Only with the flat bit. To stun him. To bring him to his senses. But it must have twisted in my hands. Then suddenly I was looking down at him…’ He shook his head helplessly. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

‘Sorry!’ she scoffed. But the fight went out of her too. She groaned and sat beside him, still staring out at Elias on the seawall. ‘I don’t believe this. My husband a murderer. What will people say?’

‘They won’t say anything,’ he said softly, taking and pressing her hand. ‘Not if they don’t find out.’

She removed her hand from his. ‘But they will find out, won’t they? That bloody detective. He knows, I know he does. He’ll find your spade, won’t he? Because you threw it in the sea, didn’t you, just as he suspects?’

‘What else was I to do with it?’

‘Will he find it?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’

‘You don’t think so?’

‘It was dark. I was in a panic. But I threw it pretty far.’

‘He knows it’s there,’ she said grimly. ‘He’ll keep looking until he finds it.’

‘Then what do we do?’

‘We? We?’

‘You gave me your word.’

‘I gave you my word that I wouldn’t volunteer anything,’ she told him. ‘And I won’t. But if he finds your spade…’

‘Yes? If he finds it, what?’

‘You’re not taking me down with you,’ she told him flatly. ‘I’m sorry, but you’re not.’ She looked out the window to the seawall again, at Elias in his dark clothes framed by the greyness of the Wash, the splash of white towel over his shoulder. ‘So you’d better hope that you threw it further and deeper than he can search.’