‘No,’ the priest said. ‘She hated the gossip and kept herself rather apart. That’s what I mean when I say she had no close friends. She was always perfectly pleasant and played her part fully in the life of the church, but I don’t think she confided in anyone.’

‘Not even you?’

‘No.’ This time the smile was a little sad. ‘Not even me.’

‘And this hostel. The Haven? Where can we find it?’

‘It’s the former rectory.’ This time Gruskin’s smile was tight-lipped, even resentful. ‘In different times it might have been my home, I suppose. When the status of the clergy was rather different. Even in my father’s day the parish priest lived there. But now it’s hard to justify such a large house for a single man, and the diocese lets it to the charity at a reasonable rent. It’s a little way out of the town. That’s where the main settlement was, before commercial fishing took over from farming.’ He gave a sigh and Vera thought he would have been much happier as a Victorian priest, living in the big rectory, mixing socially with the gentry and delivering sermons to the peasants in the back pews.

‘You won’t get there tonight,’ he said. ‘There’s not much of a road and in this weather . . . The women always grumble about the isolation. I’m not sure it’s the best place for them to be.’

Outside it was quieter. The chip shop had closed and all the curtains in the Harbour Guest House had been drawn. The snow was covered with a hard sheen of frost. Gruskin shivered. For a long while he didn’t move. Vera thought he must be freezing, with only the thin cloak over his shoulders to keep him warm. At last he set off down the pavement away from them. When Vera turned to look at him she saw that he was talking into a mobile phone.

Chapter Eight

Malcolm Kerr stood at the bar in the Coble. Behind him four elderly men were playing dominoes, rowing about the kitty or whose turn it was to go to the bar. It seemed to Malcolm that the same four men had been sitting at the same table, always arguing, since his father had first brought him to the pub. Their squabbling voices and the screaming of gulls had made up the background music of his life.

Nothing in this place has changed for thirty years.