Passing St Bartholomew’s, he tried the door and found it was open. He’d been brought up to believe in a Methodist God of social justice and respectable hard work. His dad had been a lay preacher and had seen evil as exploitation and poverty and the flamboyant decadence of people in the south. Now, Joe couldn’t contemplate evil as an almost inevitable result of poor housing or family breakdown. There could be no excuse for a man who planned harm to his daughter. He slipped into the back pew and tried to pray.

Bring our Jessie back safely and I’ll do anything you want of me. He tried to think what pact he could make with the Lord, but nothing seemed sufficiently important to set against Jessie’s life. There was a deep silence in the church. He was leaning forward with his forehead on his arms, and it was only when he straightened that he realized he wasn’t alone. Peter Gruskin was standing in front of the altar looking at him. Joe couldn’t face explaining his presence to the man. He stood up and hurried outside.

A shower blew in from the sea. Stinging rain flecked with ice. Further inland there would be snow. The street was almost dark, although it was still early afternoon, but there were no lights in the Harbour Guest House. It seemed like months since he and Vera had first visited there. He remembered walking down the basement stairs, and meeting the woman whose song had been the background music to his romance with Sal. ‘White Moon Summer’ played in his head again. He realized suddenly that his ignorance had made him responsible for a murder. He wondered if a lifetime of guilt was enough to barter against his daughter’s safe return.

Chapter Forty-One

When Joe phoned Vera – ostensibly to ask for news of Malcolm Kerr, but really hoping to be told that his daughter had been found safe and well – the inspector was standing outside the Haven. A flock of black-headed gulls picked over a freshly ploughed field beyond the hawthorn hedge. Vera had ideas of her own about where the investigation might lead.

She knocked at the door of the big house and then went in, too impatient to wait for anyone to answer. Laurie and Susan were in the kitchen as usual and the dog was lolling against the bottom oven of the Aga.