Page 58 of The Blue Hour

It’s a steady climb up to the bluff. Beyond a thick bank of gorse is a clearing which looks almost as though it were designed as a painting platform: flat-topped and protected from the wind by the gorse bushes, it gives a near-180-degree view of the sea and the islands to the south of Eris.

Becker reaches the clearing first. Grace is still labouring up the path behind him, so for a couple of minutes he has this hallowed place to himself. He is alone with the screech of the gulls and the waves breaking on the rocks hundreds of feet below, and he feels much as he did when he was surprised by the sight ofTotemin Vanessa’s bedroom the night before: delighted, exhilarated, he is seeing something for the very first time and yet it is so deeply familiar to him it is as though he is returning to a place of childhood. He has never stood here before and yet he has seen the view a hundred times, at sunrise and sunset, in summer and winter, in bright sunshine like today and when the sky lowers over the sea like a threat.

‘Don’t go too close to the edge,’ Grace says sharply, as finally she joins him. She is breathing heavily, her face pink with exertion, sweat gleaming on her upper lip. She watches while he takes photographs, saying nothing, though Becker can feel tension radiating from her, her eyes following his every move.

When he has taken photographs from every conceivable angle, they move on, making their way back down from the bluff and to the left, following a path which leads through a shallow culvert flanked on one side by a steep bank and on the other by the wood. ‘Some of the pines are more than two hundred years old,’ Grace tells him. ‘One or two might be three hundred years old, although the very oldest were lost to storms in the nineties.’

They have been on this steadily ascending path for ten or fifteen minutes when Becker’s phone picks up signal and starts to buzz, over and over and over – he’s missed calls, has messages. He stops and turns, looking back down the hill; Grace has fallen a few hundred yards behind. He takes a deep breath and calls Helena’s number, swearing softly in frustration as he connects immediately with her voicemail. He ends the call and dials in to listen to his messages.

The first was left last night. ‘Beck, darling.’ Helena sounds anxious, her voice a little shaky. ‘I really need to talk to you. Can you call me as soon as you get this?’

Blood thudding in his ears, he tries her again, but once again he gets her voicemail – either she’s on another call or her phone is switched off.

He listens to the next message, which was left in the early hours of this morning. ‘Hi.’ Her voice is small now, and gentle – he’s heard her talk to her sister like this, when she’s trying to soften a blow, or deliver bad news. ‘I’ve been trying to get you on WhatsApp but I can’t get through and it doesn’t look like the message I sent was delivered either, so … Look, something happened.’ Becker’s heart seizes. ‘It’s not me, or the baby, we’re fine. It’s Emmeline.’

Becker’s heart starts beating again.Emmeline?‘She collapsed, they’re not sure what happened, it might have been a stroke or perhaps her heart …’ He almost feels like cheering. ‘Sebastian wasn’t there when it happened, he was … he came over here to talk to me …’ Not so cheerful now. ‘We’re at the hospital, in Berwick. The whole thing seems to have been caused by a visit from the police. Apparently they just turned up tonight, or last night I suppose it is now, wanting to talk to her about Douglas. They said someone has been making allegations, saying it wasn’t Graham Bryant who fired the shot that killed him … Seb doesn’tthink they’re taking it seriously but still. Look, please just call, OK? As soon as you can?’

A handful of people at Fairburn know the truth about the day Douglas died, but to Becker’s mind there is only one person who would have made the call to the police and she is labouring up the path right in front of him.

I could make life difficult for that family.

‘You spoke to the police!’ he calls out as she approaches. Grace comes to a halt; she bends at the waist, hands on thighs, trying to catch her breath. ‘Yesterday,’ he says, ‘you called them, didn’t you? You said something to them about Emmeline Lennox?’

Grace stands up straight. Her face is flushed, but only from exertion; her expression is pure insolence. ‘I told you I didn’t believe his death was accidental.’

‘Christ!’ Becker yells, hands clenching into fists. ‘Do you have any idea what you’ve done?’

Grace squares her shoulders, raises her chin. ‘I’ve done what you should have had the guts to,’ she snaps. ‘So Douglas was a snake. Does that mean he doesn’t deserve justice?’

Becker turns away from her and starts off up the hill, too angry to respond.

‘I did you a favour,’ Grace says, as she follows behind him. ‘You told me that Emmeline was making life difficult for you and your wife.Beck,’ she pleads, plaintive. His flesh crawls. ‘We’re on the same side, you and I. We want the same things.’

He wheels around and with all the self-control he can muster, says, ‘I don’t think we do. If it’s all right with you, I’d really like to carry on alone from here.’

He stomps off up the hill, fuming, furious at himself more than anyone else.Heis the one who let slip that Emmeline took that fatal shot,heis the one who has taken so much time to realizethat Grace’s neediness is pathological, that her loneliness has warped the way she sees him, the way she sees them. As if there were athem, he thinks queasily, as if they have some sort of relationship.

The path climbs gently at first, and then more steeply, and finally becomes a scramble, so that by the time he clambers on hands and knees on to Eris Rock, he is sweating and out of breath. In front of him is a level expanse of granite that extends just a few yards before shearing away in a dead drop to the Irish Sea. He stands, inhaling a lungful of salty air, and takes a few cautious steps towards the cliff edge. The wind is cold and the sky is perfectly clear; in the middle distance he can make out the shapes of small islands, familiar as old friends, and in the distance the horizon is resolutely defined, as though in ink. He feels his face stretch into a smile and his heart lifts in pure elation, everything forgotten but this, this dizzying view, this glorious place, the place that shaped Vanessa’s painting, the place in which she confronted her impossible sea, where she embraced her expressionist self! Stand here and you understand why so many of her sea paintings are so small – a slight woman couldn’t carry a large canvas and easel up here, and even if she could, the wind would have taken them, and her with them. So she painted glimpses, moments, dense and vibrant, filled with love and desire and terror.

Becker edges closer to the precipice. Very carefully, he lowers himself so that he is sitting with his feet dangling over the rock. He slips his phone out of his pocket and dials Helena’s number again. She answers on the second ring.

‘Sorry,’ she mumbles, her voice full of sleep. ‘Sorry, have you been calling?’

‘It’s all right,’ he says gently. He feels calm now, immediately soothed by the sound of her voice. ‘Are you OK?’

‘I’m fine,’ she says, ‘it was just such a shock. I only got back here at four, I’ve been sleeping. Where are you? Are you on your way back?’

‘Not yet,’ he says with a smile. ‘I’m sitting on the edge of a cliff, actually, on Eris Rock. Looking out across the sea.’

‘Oh, wonderful.’ He can hear the smile in her voice, too. ‘Don’t fall in, will you?’

He laughs. There’s a little pause. ‘So … what happened with Emmeline, then? You said she was alone in the house when she was taken ill?’

Another pause. He hears her take a deep breath. ‘I asked Seb to come over.’ And another. ‘I think you know that, don’t you?’ Becker doesn’t reply. ‘I asked him to come round because I thought it was time I talked to him about our situation.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It isn’t working, Beck.’

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