As soon as I was in, I went to her texts, looking for Isaac Mills. His was the fourth name down. When I tapped on the thread, I saw that the last conversation between the two of them had taken place the evening before. I swiped up, trying to get to the beginning of it. For the most part, it had been pretty low-key, the two of them talking about the lunch they’d had at the mill the day before, Melia joking that seeing Mills had saved her from the ritual boredom of another Inset day, which was why the kids hadn’t been at school.

And then I got to the end – and the reason Mills wasn’t there.

I’ve got to go away for a couple

of days with work. Sorry. I

should be back by the w/end.

The old “work trip”, eh? ☺

Ha ha. Yep, that old excuse. If

it’s any consolation, it’ll be

exceptionally boring.

Doesn’t sound boring to me!

Where are you going?

I’ve got to go and see someone

in London. Highgate. It’s a bit

posh there, just like me ☺

I stared at the screen.

He’d made light of it, but it wasn’t a joke.

Highgate was where Robert Zaid lived.

50

By the time I arrived home the next day, London was fading into dusk, my house consumed by the dark. I pulled on to the drive and paused for a moment, looking at the SOLD sign in the front garden, blown to an angle by the wind. After the case I’d had at Christmas, something had changed here: a psychological rot had begun to infect the rooms I’d once shared with my wife, and now it was hard for me to look at it, let alone live in it. This building was no longer a home, it was just a place I’d come back to, a space I slept in and left as soon as I could. I knew that, deep down, the connection I felt to missing people was most of why I’d agreed to go to Yorkshire. I wanted answers to what had happened out at Black Gale. I wanted to help the families. I wanted the truth. But there had been another reason as well.

A more selfish one.

I didn’t want to be inside these walls any more.

I unlocked the house and jumped straight in the shower. I felt the water run off me, turned the temperature up and let the heat scorch my skin, and – afterwards, as I sat on the edge of the bed, surrounded by the gathering darkness – I looked at the inky bruises Isaac Mills had left me with.