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announced the vehicle entrance, he turned about and set off back the way he’d come.
    As the path made its slow turn past Saltwick Nab, curving with the contours of the land, Elder saw a woman in a green coat standing close against the spot where Susan Blacklock had last been seen; as he watched, she swung her legs over the low wire fence and stepped towards the edge. Elder began to run. Just for an instant her head turned at the sound of his shout. Then she withdrew a small bouquet of flowers from inside her coat, irises and roses intertwined, and laid it carefully on the ground.
    ♦
    Helen Blacklock stood quite still, hands loosely clasped before her, outlined against the grey-blue of the sea. Her hair had darkened and was flecked here and there with grey. The coat she wore was loose and three-quarterlength, grey trousers, boots. Sensibly dressed. The face she presented to Elder was without make-up, lined about the eyes and mouth, thin-lipped, unsmiling. She was forty-five, Elder thought, forty-six, and could have passed for more.
    Now that they stood face to face, he was uncertain what to say. ‘I’m…’
    ‘I know who you are.’ Her voice quick and sharp as flint.
    ‘Shouting like that, I didn’t mean to startle you.’
    ‘You thought I was going to jump.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘If I’d been going to do that, I’d have done it years ago.’
    He looked beyond her to where the flowers were already being buffeted a little by the wind, and she angled her head round, following his gaze.
    ‘I used to try and keep a garden here, a sort of memorial, I suppose. But it was difficult, being so exposed, and when anything did grow the kids from the camp would pull up the blooms and take them home to their mums. So now I just leave a few flowers, if I’m passing.’ She paused. ‘Sometimes the wind’s so strong it almost snatches them from my hands. Here and gone. Suitable, don’t you think?’
    He held the wire down for her while she climbed back across the fence.
    ‘What are you doing here?’ Helen Blacklock asked.
    Elder shook his head. ‘I’m not sure.’
    ‘But not an accident.’
    ‘No.’
    Gulls wheeled above their heads, roistering on the air.
    ‘Are you going back into the town?’ Helen asked, and when he nodded, she set off down the path, Elder alongside.
    ♦
    At the foot of the steps, having walked more or less in silence, Helen asked if Elder would like a coffee. The place she chose was unprepossessing from the outside, one of several along a tourist street cramped with shops selling home-made fudge and Whitby jet, seafood and antiques.
    They sat at a formica-topped table near the window, the waitress, school-aged, slow to take their order, sullen-eyed. The only other customer, an elderly man in a beige windcheater, sat near the side wall with a pot of tea and the Sun .
    Helen brought a packet of cigarettes out from the side pocket of her coat. ‘The guilt, that what it is?’
    ‘Is that what you think?’
    ‘I don’t know, do I?’
    ‘What you think I should be feeling?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ She took a cigarette from the pack and tapped the filter down against the table edge; pushed it back from sight, unlit. ‘Except I doubt you’ve been back here, all this time.’
    Elder shook his head.
    ‘Fourteen years. Thirty, that’s what she’d be now. Susan. Thirty this March just gone.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘You think she died, don’t you? That pair – McKeirnan and the other one – you think they killed her. Like that other poor girl. Lucy.’
    ‘There’s no proof.’
    ‘No.’
    The waitress brought them cups of coffee on a tray, sugar in paper tubes, the teacake Helen had ordered but no longer wanted, Elder’s toast.
    ‘Have you heard something? Is that what it is?’ As she spoke, Helen leaned forward, the tone of her voice changed, anticipation like a bruise behind her eyes.
    ‘Not really.’
    ‘What do you mean? Either you have or you haven’t. Don’t play games.’
    Elder set down