‘I think John knew something, or saw something, or heard something, or discovered something. Whatever it was, he must have supressed it for a while, learned to live with it.’

‘For a while?’

‘Your mother’s death was the leaf that dammed the stream,’ Kate whispered dreamily, recalling Holly Cutter’s words. ‘When Annabel died, John turned dark. He didn’t tell me about it. He didn’t tell anyone about it. But he must have come back to Belport to work through that darkness. I think that’s why he came to see you, and I think that’s what got him killed. John had information about your father’s killer.’

Marcus exhaled, long and slow, like a deflating air mattress. ‘If your husband had evidence that would help solve the murder, he was about two decades too late.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘My dad’s murder isn’t unsolved,’ he said. ‘They caught the guy who did it a few days after it happened. He’s serving twenty-five-to-life at South Hallston Correctional Facility.’

Kate’s mind was floundering, but it caught onto a single word. ‘Did you say Hallston? H-A-L-L-S-T-O-N?’

Fisher was standing beneath the awnings outside his room at the Blue Whale Motor Inn, staring into the cold rain.

‘I’ve been trying to call you,’ he said when Kate parked the car and climbed out, hurrying under the awnings to join him. ‘Where were you?’

‘With Marcus Stemple,’ she said.

‘Stemple? As in…’

‘David Stemple’s son.’

As the rain grew heavier, she explained what she had learned from her visit with Marcus. Fisher lit a fresh cigarette, smoked and listened.

‘My God,’ Fisher said when she was finished. He frowned, searching his memory. ‘I remember there was a man who was murdered here, but I never knew the victim’s name. Or, at least, I didn’t know it til now. When was the obituary from? 1995?’

‘August 1996.’

He nodded. ‘1996. It was big news. He was a holiday resident, like us, killed by a local man – God knows what Stemple was doing here in August. Still, people saw it as an attack against tourists, and the day tourists stop coming to Belport is the day it may as well sink into the ocean.’

For the most part, Belportians treated Kate kindly during her stays, but there was a palpable tension below the surface. Smiles and greetings often felt hollow, there were heavy sighs behind her in the long line at the Buy & Bye, and the occasional hand-painted sign hung outside a shop on Bay Street that read, LOCAL PARKING ONLY. The locals needed tourists, but that didn’t mean they had to like them.