Three days earlier . . .
Jenny picked her crumpled jeans and T-shirt off the floor and pulled them on.
‘What time is it?’ Elliot, his voice muffled, his face half covered by the duvet.
‘Six fifteen. I’ve got to go home and get changed before work.’ She put on her watch and picked up her phone.
‘See you at the office?’ He lifted his head, one eye closed against the early sunlight streaming through the thin curtains.
She nodded. He kept looking at her and she felt like he expected something more, that she should bring him a coffee and give him a lingering kiss goodbye, or whatever proper couples did when one of them left the bed in which they had both spent the night. She smiled instead.
‘See you there.’
Elliot’s flat was what an estate agent might call ‘bijou’. A kitchen-cum-living room, a bedroom and a bathroom. But it was neat and cosy, and from the kitchen she could see out over the rooftops of St Peter Port to the sea, glittering in the distance. She turned on the tap. The pipes creaked and shuddered behind the walls, and after a few seconds, tepid water sputtered out. She waited until it flowed smoothly before she rinsed a cup from the sink and filled it. Last night’s wine glasses were drying on the side, a half-drunk bottle of wine next to them; another, she knew, lay empty in the recycling bin under the sink.
They’d fallen into a pattern. A couple of drinks after work, a couple more back at his place. Bed. The first morning-after had been awkward, both acting like nothing had changed, laughing it off, neither of them expressing regret, neither of them suggesting it was anything more than a bit of fun. They had, she thought, crossed a line now. It had become routine. They hadn’t discussed it. She wasn’t seeing anyone else, but he hadn’t asked her not to. He still flirted regularly with other women. She hadn’t asked him not to.
She leaned against the breakfast bar. She should get her own place. Her mum, Margaret, had offered to lend her some money for a deposit. Even then she’d struggle to pay a mortgage on a flat like this on her reporter’s salary. She needed a pay rise. Or a new job.
Elliot’s alarm clock beeped from behind the bedroom door and she heard the bed shift and creak as he rose. She rinsed her cup, stood it on the draining board and left.
The flat was on the top floor of a terraced house halfway down Mount Durand, a steep, hill of a street. Next door, a broken front window and empty beer bottles still told of Saturday’s party, which Elliot said had been broken up by the police in the early hours of yesterday morning. At the bottom of the road, the paved surface gave way to cobbles. Tiny alleyways led to flights of uneven steps and hidden rows of houses, washing lines strung between them, wheelie bins blocking the paths.
A few wisps of cirrus cloud streaked an otherwise clear sky. June had been warm and dry, and there was no sign of a change in store for July. The first week had seen record temperatures, thirty-two degrees yesterday; Channel News had ended on a clip of its weatherman attempting to fry an egg on the pavement outside the studio. The tourists on their summer holidays were loving it. So were the ice-cream vans and the shops selling beach supplies. But for the rest of the population, Jenny thought, a break in the heat would be welcome.
Her car was parked outside the Cove, a notoriously rowdy bar. A group of teenagers had stared at her, swigging from bottles of Breda, as she’d left it there the night before, one of them saying, ‘Nice car,’ and another muttering, ‘Nice tits more like,’ before they’d all sniggered like the schoolboys they probably were. She wouldn’t have put it past them to have keyed her car for a laugh. She checked for damage before she got in. Other than the reek of piss and stale beer, all seemed well.
The inside of the car smelled of her damp swimming gear, left in a rucksack on the back seat. She’d been to the bathing pools last night, right before Elliot had called. She glanced at her watch. Only six thirty. Time for a quick swim before she went home to change.
Her phone pinged. Early for a message. It was from Stephen.
Bones found on Derrible. Poss. human remains. We are going over now. Will keep you updated.
The twist of excitement Jenny felt in her stomach every time she got wind of a new story was tempered with a sense of dread. Human remains. It had been only months since Amanda Guille’s body had been found on the beach at Bordeaux Bay. But that case was closed. The killer was dead. The bullet wound in Jenny’s shoulder had healed.
She read the message again. Derrible Bay was on Sark, a tiny island three miles long by a mile wide. It lay nine miles east of Guernsey, about an hour’s journey on the boat. It had no airport and no cars either. The only way of getting around was on foot or bicycle or an overpriced horse-and-carriage ride. Jenny had spent weeks there every summer as a child, her parents’ love of the peace and quiet combined with their dislike of travelling further than a few miles from home (and nowhere on an aeroplane if they could avoid it) making it the perfect family holiday destination.
The ‘we’ Stephen referred to undoubtedly included his colleague in the Guernsey Police Force DCI Michael Gilbert, the detective Jenny had worked closely with when investigating Amanda Guille’s death. Since then, Michael had become a friend, and a frequent visitor at the house Jenny shared with her mother, first checking in on Jenny’s recovery and afterwards, when she was well, dropping in for a cup of tea or, more often than not these days, for dinner. His visits were still under the auspices of making sure Jenny was all right, but both she and Michael knew he was far more interested in talking to her mother. Michael would help Margaret in the kitchen, the two of them chatting and laughing, the sound of the radio and the whoosh of the kettle coming to the boil muffling their words. Jenny wondered if they talked about their relationship. If once you were in your fifties, you could cut through the bullshit and have an honest conversation about where you were headed.
She glanced back at her swimming gear. It would have to wait. She was not going to miss an opportunity to cover this story, no matter how uncomfortable it made her feel. This time, she reassured herself, she would not make the news. She would just write it.
And besides, Jenny had another reason to want to go to Sark.
Ever since she’d found out that the investigation into her father’s death may have been compromised, she’d wanted to retrace his steps, to talk to the people who saw him last. According to the police report, Charlie Dorey had died after falling overboard on his way back from Sark. That Charlie had been in Sark that day was indisputable. That his boat had been found floating in Sark waters hours after his disappearance was also fact. It was the falling-overboard bit that Jenny took issue with. Charlie would never have done that.
She let herself into the house. Margaret was sitting at the kitchen table, book in one hand, piece of toast and Marmite in the other.
‘Morning, love.’
‘Morning, Mum.’ She kissed her mother on the cheek and helped herself to a cup of tea from the pot.
‘How’s Elliot?’ Margaret’s tone was light, but Jenny knew the question was loaded.
‘He’s fine, thank you. I’m going to grab a quick shower.’
‘Would he not let you leave a few things at his place? Save you some time in the mornings.’ Margaret turned a page nonchalantly.
‘You trying to get rid of me?’ Jenny meant it as a joke, but Margaret looked up, hurt.
‘Of course not! I love having you here. So long as you’re not staying on my account.’
‘I know, Mum. You’re back on your feet. So am I. I’m going to start looking for somewhere. Soon. I don’t want to play gooseberry to you and Michael anymore anyway.’
‘It’s not like that, Jenny.’ Margaret’s cheeks coloured. She closed her book and bustled over to the sink, looking for dishes to wash. Finding none, she began to spray the surfaces with bleach, rubbing at stains invisible to Jenny’s eyes.
‘Mum, relax. I’m just teasing. Wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, though, would it?’ She paused. ‘It’s been more than two years.’
Margaret was still for a moment, then turned, her eyes shining, too brightly. ‘I just meant you’re not a gooseberry.’ She attempted a smile. ‘Now, don’t you have a job to go to?’
Before she left for work, Jenny went into Charlie’s office. He’d spent hours in this room, writing letters to the Guernsey News, or doing his accounts on a bulky calculator that printed out receipts like a till in a shop. She had loved the whirring noise it made as it spat out reams of thin, shiny paper, the sort the chip shops used to wrap the fish and chips, only this was a long, narrow ribbon, wound tightly round a plastic tube. Sometimes he’d let her play with it—he’d ‘buy’ one of her teddies and she’d type in whatever price she’d decided was right, carefully tearing his receipt off against the jagged cutting edge. Margaret had packed it away. Stored it in the loft, one of the many of Charlie’s things they were going to ‘sort out later’.
Elliot had called the office her ‘incident room’ due to the fact that she had covered the walls with pictures and notes during the investigation into Amanda Guille’s death. Margaret had taken them all down while Jenny had been in hospital recovering from her shoulder wound. She had placed everything neatly in a folder, put it in the desk drawer and moved Jenny’s box full of articles and research from her time working as an investigative reporter in London from the bedroom into a corner of the office.
London. It was perverse, she knew, to miss it, after everything that had happened there. She needed to accept that she was an island girl after all, chewed up and spat out by the big city, still trying to wash herself clean, to shed the grit and the grime and the bad memories in the cold, clear water of the English Channel. She wondered if she’d have felt differently if she had managed to finish her last job there, instead of running back to Guernsey, frightened for her life.
She should put the box into storage. But something stopped her. A sense of disquiet that never truly settled, even when all else was well. The constant nagging of unfinished business. But there were issues closer to home that required her attention now. Bones on Derrible Bay. And finding out what had happened to her father.
She looked at the items she had pinned to the study wall. A photograph of Charlie—a close-up Jenny had taken, his face weathered, the lines on it deeper than his years warranted. He’d spent most of his life out on his boat, hauling in the catch, a permanent layer of salt seeming to toughen his skin and his hair, which lay in all directions, thick and wiry, poking out from beneath his hat. The obituary, pinned next to the photograph, had taken up half a page in the Guernsey News on account of Charlie being a local ‘character’. Could be found on his beloved Jenny Wren come rain or shine . . . always a friendly word . . . a great teller of island tales . . . leaves behind a wife and daughter.
Next to this, pages from his sailing log, charting his fishing trips in the months before he died. These, she had colour-coded, looking for a pattern in his movements. The only thing she had noted of interest was the frequency with which he had visited Sark.
On the desk lay an open folder containing notes she’d made—interviews with his friends (or ‘chats’, as she’d called them, not wanting to alarm the people who loved him, or her mother, by hinting that she had her suspicions about his death). Next to the folder, a pile of his diaries.
Charlie had kept a diary ever since Jenny could remember, buying the same type each year, either red or black hardcover with the year printed in gold in the top right corner. Margaret had not wanted to read them, but told Jenny that she should, that Charlie would want her to.
The pages were lined, one per day, but the entries were irregular in length. Some days contained only appointments—Dentist, 2 p.m.—or observations about the weather, all in his strange, overly elaborate hand. Occasionally he wrote longer, more personal pieces. They were often sombre in tone: reflections on a bad mood he’d been in, or questioning a decision he had made, or the way he had spoken to Margaret over some trivial disagreement or other. Jenny had read them with tears in her eyes—the vulnerabilities of a man who had always seemed so sure and steadfast revealed.
The pages she focused on, though, the ones she had copied and highlighted and pored over, were the ones that, so far, revealed nothing. Numbers underlined—possibly times? Letters circled—initials? Brief notes—Same as last time. Check again Friday. All of these entries were made in the months before he died, and all of them coincided with his visits to Sark. Nothing about Charlie’s death looked suspicious, Michael had assured her. But Roger Wilson’s words still echoed in her ears: ‘Fancied himself as a bit of a detective . . . We all thought it was rather funny . . . until somebody stopped laughing . . .’ The words of a psychopath and a killer, Michael had said. They were nonsense, the ramblings of a madman, uttered when Roger was cornered and desperate to confuse and disarm. Except, Jenny thought, something about them had rung true.
She remembered the first time she’d played detective with Charlie. They’d been walking round the reservoir at St Saviour’s, following the shady wooded path that followed the perimeter of the water, long before the States, the island’s government, tidied it all up and made it part of the ‘Millennium Walk’, with handy trail maps and ‘What to Look Out For’ guides, which brought hundreds of people to the area in the summer. Back then, it had just been Jenny and Charlie, maybe the odd twitcher—binoculars in hand, studying the banks of reeds, which sheltered nesting ducks and occasionally a heron or an egret. The path had been narrow and damp, gnarled tree roots twisting just under the surface. On the north shore, large steel gates had blocked the pathway, and walkers were redirected to the right, down a wide, grassy track that looped back to the reservoir a few hundred yards later. A foreboding ‘Keep Out’ was chained to one of the gate’s crossbars. Jenny would stand, fingers pressed against the cold metal, staring through the trees, which seemed thicker beyond the gate than anywhere else in the woods. She’d been convinced there was something untoward hidden behind them: a covert science lab perhaps, conducting strange experiments on the Guernsey water supply, or a secret government facility.
When she’d relayed her suspicions to Charlie, he’d insisted they sneak round the gates to discover the truth. They owed it to the island, he’d said, to ensure there was nothing nefarious going on. She hadn’t known what that meant, but it didn’t sound good. They’d soon found themselves knee-deep in a bog, and Charlie had admitted the ‘Keep Out’ sign was probably there for benign reasons after all. ‘Not a word to Mum,’ he had said as he hauled her out of the swamp, holding on to a fallen tree to ensure he didn’t fall back in. When they’d got home, they blamed their wet things on a misguided duck-rescue attempt. Margaret had been unconvinced and given Charlie her look, the one that begged him not to be reckless—the same one she gave Jenny even now every time she left the house.
The Guernsey News, the island’s only daily newspaper, was housed in a bright, purpose-built space located on an industrial estate on the north coast, a short drive from both Jenny’s house and the main town of St Peter Port. Its many glass walls afforded views over Belle Grève Bay, and beyond, on a clear day, to the islands of Herm and Sark.
The news editor, Graham Le Noury, was talking to Elliot about Rock-Cane, a hedonistic music festival held at Rocquaine Bay every August bank holiday. There was some pressure to cancel from parent and community groups, worried at the increase in drug-related activity on the island. The mother of a teenager who had spent several days in hospital after reacting badly to taking a Black Pearl, a particularly strong strain of ecstasy that had flooded the local club scene, was spearheading the movement.
Jenny attempted to interrupt Graham, as politely as possible, with the news of her lead. He waved her aside, gave her a look that told her to get in line, and she stood, fidgeting, waiting for an opportunity to get a word in without antagonising him.
Graham had worked for the Guernsey News for as long as anyone could remember. This was, in Jenny’s opinion, the only reason he’d been given the news editor position when Mark Martel, a mild-mannered but diligent reporter with a keen sense of what made a good story, had been promoted to editor-in-chief following Brian Ozanne’s unceremonious firing several months previously. Brian had narrowly avoided prison, charged with perverting the course of justice for not revealing what he’d known about key suspects in the biggest murder investigation the island had ever seen.
So the news team was stuck with Graham, a fine but dull reporter, the oldest member of the news team by at least twenty-five years. In fact, looking around the room, Jenny wouldn’t have been surprised if Elliot was the next oldest, closely followed by her. The rest of the team were in their mid-twenties. The job didn’t pay enough, and the hours were unsociable, and eventually most people went on to more lucrative positions doing marketing or PR at one of the banks. Graham finally finished his conversation and Jenny took the opportunity to grab his attention.
‘Graham, just before you start, can I run something by you? It’s time sensitive.’
Graham rolled his eyes: his resentment at her breaking the serial-killer story had nowhere near abated. He was not the only one, she thought. There was a shifting from the reporters, ten in all, who had gathered round Graham’s desk, and an audible sigh from someone. Elliot had told her there had been some bitching behind her back, other reporters saying that she was Mark’s favourite, and she could have sworn there was a palpable change in atmosphere whenever she stepped forward to speak. She carried on regardless.
‘I’ve had a message from my police source.’
‘You mean Cousin Steve, I presume?’ Graham asked.
She laughed along with the others. There was not a hope in hell of keeping a source secret on Guernsey, not when everyone knew you were related to them.
‘Yep, Cousin Steve has come through again. Well, maybe. Suspected human remains have been found on Derrible in Sark.’
‘Not a body?’ A tremor in the voice of the young female reporter who asked the question. Jenny knew why. None of them wanted to deal with the likes of last year again.
‘I don’t think so. At least, not a fresh one. Bones apparently.’
‘How do they know they’re human?’
‘No idea, Graham. I’ve just got a text. If I go now, I can find out.’
‘There was a big hoo-ha about bones found on Sark a couple of years ago, remember? Turned out to belong to a bloody great dog. It’s probably something like that. Sarkees trying to add a bit of drama to a slow summer. Tourist numbers are shocking this season, I hear.’
‘Could be, Graham. We won’t know, though, will we, unless I get over there?’
Graham frowned at her, as though trying to work out if she was being impertinent. She smiled, as sweetly as she could, and he looked down at his notes, weighing up whether or not he could spare her.
‘You’ve got the piece on the beach clean-up to finish,’ he mused. ‘Maybe we should send someone with more capacity.’
Several of the reporters in the room stood up straighter, shuffled forwards. She couldn’t blame them. She’d had more than her fair share of good stories recently. But she’d worked for them.
‘I can finish that on the way over. I’ll have it filed by ten.’
He sighed heavily. ‘OK. Let me know what’s going on as soon as you get there. Right, on to the rest of the news.’
Jenny gathered her things. Elliot got up quietly and stopped her with a hand on her arm on the way out. She wondered how many of her colleagues had guessed that they were sleeping together.
‘Are you OK?’
She nodded. ‘Yes. Why?’
‘You left in a hurry this morning. And you seem a bit agitated.’
‘Everything’s fine.’
‘You want me to come with you?’
‘Graham will throw a fit if I distract you from the Rock-Cane story. He seems to have his knickers in a right twist about it all. Although, I swear, if anyone else had brought him this tip, he’d have had a whole team on the way to Sark.’
‘You sure you’re OK on your own?’
She knew what he was thinking. Could see the concern on his face.
‘Graham’s probably right. I’ll be back later with breaking news about a sheep that fell off a cliff twenty years ago.’
‘And if Graham’s wrong?’
‘Then I’ll be back later with a different story. A big one.’