‘A friend of the family – and yet you haven’t seen Laura Deane or Bryan Deane for that matter, in over sixteen years.’
They paused, staring through the windscreen at the curve of houses, which looked strangely desolate in the rain – as though they’d been suddenly vacated for some catastrophic reason.
‘Was it sudden – your grandfather?’
‘Very.’
Anna wondered if Laura could hear the car engine from inside number two, and if she could, would she want to know what they were doing out here still, parked at the end of her drive? As soon as she had this thought, she realised that the Inspector was doing it on purpose. She didn’t know how she knew this; she just did.
‘D’you want to tell me what you told DS Chambers?’
‘You want me to go over my statement again?’
‘If you don’t mind.’
She didn’t answer immediately then when she did, she said, ‘DS Chambers didn’t like me very much.’
‘DS Chambers doesn’t like anybody very much at the moment. He’s got a newborn baby and he’s sleeping on average two hours out of every twenty-four. I think he’s got postnatal depression.’
‘He liked Laura Deane.’ When the Inspector didn’t comment on this, she added, ‘But you didn’t, did you?’
He smiled. ‘You’re happy for me to correlate what you’re about to say with CCTV footage?’
‘Of course,’ she said, without hesitation. ‘I saw Bryan Deane this afternoon. I was surfing on Tynemouth Longsands.’
‘Were the waves good?’
‘I only go out when they’re good.’
He nodded and carried on staring through the wind screen.
‘We saw each other on the beach first – I was just about to go in.’
‘So you had your surfboard – he had his kayak – who saw who first? Who was at the water’s edge first?’
She thought about this, and the obtuseness of the question. ‘Me – I guess.’ She saw herself toeing the line, the water freezing cold, staring out to sea, waiting. Then Bryan had appeared suddenly to her left. He must have come up behind her, but she didn’t want to tell the Inspector this.
‘So – he saw you on the beach – came up to you. Did he say anything?’
No – he hadn’t. He’d stood beside her, not saying anything. ‘We chatted about the weather, sea conditions and stuff – like I said,’ she finished flatly, repeating what she’d said earlier – in front of Laura and Martha – to DS Chambers.
After a while, sounding almost regretful, Inspector Laviolette said, ‘It was a beautiful day today.’
‘It was.’
‘The last time you saw Bryan – heading north up the shoreline – presumably you saw him from behind?’
‘Yes.’
‘It was definitely him?’
‘Yes.’
‘After sixteen years, you see him from behind in the water as a fret’s coming in, and it was definitely him?’
Through the windscreen, Anna saw a fox appear beneath a street lamp before sliding across the garden onto number four’s drive – momentarily illuminated by the same security lights that the Deanes had at number two; that all the houses on Marine Drive probably had.
The Inspector sighed, looking at her. ‘What happened sixteen years ago?’
‘Nothing happened,’ she said smoothly, almost believing it herself.
‘But you and Laura Deane were close up until then?’
‘We grew up together.’
‘And Bryan Deane?’
‘We all lived next door to each other. Me – Laura – Bryan.’
‘So Laura and Bryan Deane were childhood sweethearts?’
‘Something like that.’ She turned away from him. ‘Then what happened?’
‘We grew apart. They stayed. I left.’
‘You didn’t keep in touch?’
Anna shook her head. ‘Like I said – I l-l-left.’
It took a while to get the word out, but the Inspector didn’t look away. He kept his eyes on her – she felt them.
‘Only nobody ever does, do they? Not completely, I mean. Childhood’s a place you can never go back to, but you never fully escape from it either. Where did you go – when you left?’
‘King’s College, London.’
‘You didn’t have to answer that.’
‘I know.’
It was warm inside the car now, and the clock said 01:22.
‘What did you study? You don’t have to answer that either.’
‘Criminology and French.’
He smiled suddenly at her. ‘What?’
‘Nothing. Have you ever seen Martha Deane before?’
‘Only in photographs.’
‘Only in photographs,’ he repeated, quietly.
They were both thinking about the way Martha had come running through the rain towards her.
‘We had a call earlier from a security guard at the international ferry terminal on the south side of the Tyne – he thought he saw a body in the water.’ Laviolette was watching Anna as he said it. ‘You put a call out and people start taking every bit of driftwood they see for a body. Coastguard got a call earlier from a woman at Cullercoats who claimed she saw a body in the water – turned out to be a log.’
Anna was aware that she was holding her breath.
‘Well, the security guard did see a body – but not our body.’
She exhaled as quietly as she could while the Inspector clicked up the lid of the CD storage unit by the handbrake.
There was only one CD in there.
‘Can I ask you something?’ she said, turning to look at him. ‘This has been assessed medium to high risk, hasn’t it?’
‘After hearing your statement, I’m escalating it to high,’ he concluded heavily. ‘The sea temperature was around eight degrees Celcius today. The fifty percent immersion survival time for a normally clothed person in reasonable health with no underlying medical conditions is two hours.’
‘He wasn’t in the sea, he was in a kayak – and he was wearing a wet suit.’
Laviolette tried to prop his elbow on the window, but there was too much condensation. ‘How would you describe your relationship to Bryan Deane?’
‘Friend of the family,’ she said, automatically.
‘Did suicide ever cross your mind?’
‘No.’
‘Said with conviction.’ He was smiling again now, a light smile that broke up his face into a network of fine lines. ‘Why not? You saw Bryan Deane for the first time today in over sixteen years, and you’d rule out suicide? What makes you so sure?’
‘Martha. I saw them together this morning.’
Anna saw again – the tall girl in