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his cup, even in its saucer. ‘Shane Donald, McKeirnan’s accomplice, he’s about to be released.’
    ‘When?’
    ‘I don’t know. Not for sure.’
    Helen leaned back, pushed the tea cake aside and reached for the ashtray, lighting the cigarette after all. ‘That’s why you’re here then, sniffing round. You want to prove you were right this time, have him put back away.’
    Elder kept his own counsel; with an automatic gesture, he wafted smoke away from his eyes.
    ‘What’ll it be this time? More fields dug up, farm buildings searched? The sewage pit by the caravans, you fancied that last time. The beck out by Hawsker Bottoms. The old railway line. Divers going down in the bay again in case they tossed her out to sea?’ Bitterness and anger in her voice, the sharp curve of her chin. ‘No need of that, she’d have washed up long since.’
    Tears running freely down her face now, she turned away. When Elder reached out for her hand, she pulled it back as if from a sudden spark.
    ‘Don’t tell me. Don’t say anything. I don’t, I just don’t want to know.’
    He stubbed out her smouldering cigarette and waited for the sobbing to subside. Behind them the old man rattled the pages of his paper and poured more warm water into his tea. The waitress continued to gossip on her mobile phone about the ifs and maybes of the previous night.
    After several minutes Helen pulled out some wadded tissues and wiped at her cheeks and eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’
    ‘No. It’s okay.’
    ‘I haven’t done that in a long time.’
    ‘Really, it’s all right.’
    She sipped her coffee, lukewarm.
    ‘You want a fresh cup?’
    ‘No. No, this is fine.’
    ♦
    ‘I never imagined I’d bump into you the way I did,’ Elder said. ‘I’m sorry it’s caused you as much upset as it has.’
    He left money on the table for the bill. Outside, each hesitated while a straggle of small children crocodiled round them on the narrow street.
    ‘When are you heading back?’ Elder asked.
    ‘Back?’
    ‘Yes, I thought…’
    But she was shaking her head. ‘I moved up here a while ago. Trevor and I, we… well, we split up. Years back now. I bought a little place across the other side of the harbour. Susan, you see, I thought at least I could be near her, where she was when I saw her last.’ She stepped a pace away. ‘If you do find out anything…’
    ‘Of course, I’ll let you know.’
    She told him her address and he committed it to memory, then stood there as she walked to the corner and on out of sight, a middle-aged woman, indistinguishable from many another, save for the way she had lost her almost grown-up child, here this minute, gone the next.
    Elder wondered, since she’d been alone, what Helen did with her life; how often she climbed those worn stone steps, all hundred and ninety-nine, flowers held against her chest before relinquishing them to the wind; how she filled the spaces in between.

7
    When Shane Donald had first met Alan McKeirnan – a patch of waste ground outside Newark-on-Trent, rain pitching down, and McKeirnan, dark hair flattened against his head, clothes soaked through, struggling with the wheel of a fairground trailer – McKeirnan had cast one eye on him, quick against the wind. ‘You gonna stand there like a fuckin’ statue or lend a hand?’
    A short while later, inside McKeirnan’s caravan, Donald had stood shivering while McKeirnan pulled off his clothing – denim jacket, T-shirt, trousers – until he stood in nothing but a pair of briefs and then not even those, Donald trying not to stare at the tattoos that snaked here and there across his body, the blue vein that ran up into the hood of his cock.
    ‘Get your things off,’ McKeirnan said, ‘you’ll catch your death.’ And when Donald hesitated, adding with a wink, ‘Don’t worry, I’m not after your arse. At least, not yet.’
    Laughing, he began to towel himself down, as Donald slowly pulled his sodden sweat-shirt over his head and