Her ears are pricked for sounds of company, but all is quiet, just the roar and rag of sand on shingle and the moan of wind in the wires of the switched-off fairy lights along the front. Twenty feet along the pier, small and inconspicuous, there’s a gate, let into the metal slats of the fence, which cleaning teams and maintenance workers use to get on and off the structure out of hours. Kirsty jumps on to the shingle, feels a stone slip over another beneath her foot and goes down on her knees. ‘Fuck,’ she mutters; looks over her shoulder with wild fear that she will have been heard. Stupid trainers: not made for any surface less steady than a treadmill. She steps carefully the rest of the way, holding on to the fence as she goes.
It looks locked. Is locked. But closer inspection shows that the lock is a Yale, more there for show than blow. She digs her Oyster card – she learned not to use her debit card for this sort of thing years ago – from her bag, slips her hand through the bars and has it open in seconds.
She looks behind her once more, checks that the coast is clear and steps through, pulling the gate to behind her, then limp-runs up the short flight of stairs to the pier top. Squinting through the gloom at the long walkway in front of her, she sets off to walk to the end.
Once again he feels the tug of an erection. The blood pumps as he watches her fall on the shingle, struggle to her feet and feel her way into the shadows under the pier. He’s really on to something. Whatever the outcome, it’s a win-win. Either Amber Gordon is hidden away somewhere out there in the dark and Kirsty Lindsay is walking up to find her, or she’s not there, and then Lindsay will be up there alone.
He hears the sound of a gate opening and footsteps mounting metal stairs. She’s found the service entrance and is going up to the boardwalk. Martin smiles. Perfect, he thinks. I can’t lose her now. There’s only one way on to the pier, and only one way off.
The little faux-steam train that plods its way up to the pier’s end and back from eight in the morning until the last patrons of the amusement arcade run out of fifty ps has been parked up in its shed, the doors secured with a chain-and-padlock extravaganza. It’s a quarter of a mile to the end. An easy walk under normal circumstances, less so when the boards are slippery with mounting drizzle and you don’t know what you’ll find when you reach your destination. She might not even be there. She might have fled already, found some other hiding place and be waiting for your call.
Come on, Kirsty, she tells herself. Get a grip. It’s a quick inand-out and once you’ve got her somewhere safe you’ll be safe as well. Never have to see her, speak to her, think of her again.
She starts to plod, wraps her scarf tightly round her head. Only August and the air, as she heads out to sea, is as dank as a cellar.
She hears her own footfalls, thick on the night air. Her nose is running. What am I doing? she wonders. This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. Corrects herself. Second most stupid. But in this case, I don’t have a choice. Because it’s not just me, is it? I fucking hate her now. I pitied her before, thought we shared some understanding, but now I hate her. Maybe I should just go back up into town and tell those zombie-people on the corners where she is. She can’t talk if she’s dead, after all. If I let her die, my problems are over…
She shakes her head, dismisses the thought. This is not who I am. I’m not like that, however much I’d like to be.
The railway line is punctuated by tiny, pointless stations, all white-painted iron and panes of greenhouse glass. Like everything here the pier is a relic of more elegant times, when travel abroad was only for the rich and their servants, and lawyers and doctors would come here and take their pleasures among the grocers and butchers. Now, the elegant lines of its railings are hidden by garish advertising hoardings. The moon filters weakly through a gap in the clouds, showing up the fact that half the windows of the station-stops are broken. A gust of wind drives raindrops against her cheek. The weather is getting worse.
She hears a sound behind her: metal hitting metal. The gate?
He waits five minutes – times it by his watch – before he follows her through the gate. No need to stay close. He knows where she’s going, after all. He crouches below the wall and sees her head, silhouetted above the railings at the top of the steps, turn left and walk out to sea. Then she’s gone, all sound buried by the crash of the waves.
He takes a chance and scuttles, crabwise, into the shelter of the pier. Now there’s no way she’ll glimpse him. He’s safe and hidden and she has no idea he is behind her. He has a sudden urge to laugh out loud. Slips and slides to the gate and gives it a push. She’s left it on the latch and slipped a torn-off piece of the cardboard backing of a spiral-bound notebook between latch and frame. He hasn’t expected it to give, and fails to stop the gate from swinging back against the fence behind. Grabs it just as it hits, but not in time to prevent the clank of metal ringing out into the air.
Martin stoops down and waits, statue-still, at the bottom of the steps.
Kirsty ducks in behind the building. Waits, breathing shallow, and watches. Nothing. No one emerges from the staircase. Just the flutter of a poster advertising the magician whose matinées are the council’s contribution to calling the shack at the end of the structure a theatre. You’re jumping at shadows, she tells herself. Because you know what you’re doing is stupid. Because you got yourself scared out of your wits the other night in Tailor’s Lane, and now you’re expecting to be followed.
She crosses over the railway line and carries on along the other side of the tracks, as though doing so will somehow cover her progress.
I hate you, Amber Gordon. When I see you, it will be hard to be civil, however frightened you are, however much you need my help. Because of you, I too am afraid. Because of you, the corrosive, acid terror of discovery is eating away at my mind, eating away at my marriage. I love him. Oh, God, I love him, and you don’t care. It wasn’t me who killed her, Amber, it was you.
A blustery gust snatches at her scarf, leaving her gasping at the sudden bitterness of the sea-wind. How this town ever managed to be somewhere people came for pleasure is beyond her imagination. The boards are slippery, and there are tools and materials lying around where the walkway is being mended. Bloody great hammers and crowbars, lying about for anyone to find.
Over halfway now. She can’t shake the feeling that she is being watched. CCTV? She hasn’t noticed any cameras, but it’s practically compulsory to have them these days. But Amber’s been up here for a couple of hours now, though; if she’s still here, then no one’s turned out to turf her off. Either there aren’t any cameras, they’re not working or not manned.
Of course you think you’re being watched, she thinks. Because being watched would mean the end of the world. Stop it, Kirsty. It’s a situational fear, not a real one.
But she stops and looks behind her again anyway. An empty walkway, the steps to the gate barely visible in the distance. Stupid, she thinks. I’ve never been any good at telling the difference between imagined dangers and real ones. Perhaps if I had, we wouldn’t be in this situation.
He crawls on hands and knees to the top of the steps and looks out on to the boardwalk. She’s not come back. Stupid woman’s walking on, has crossed to the other side of the railway track to make his own progress easier. All he has to do now is duck-run ten feet to the cover of the station, and he can follow her as closely as he likes.
The moon breaks through the cloud for a second and makes a river across the sea. For a brief moment, Whitmouth looks beautiful, bathed in mournful light, the starkness of the Sixties blocks behind the seafront softened by the encroaching haar. Then, as quickly, another gust of wind slaps pinprick raindrops into her face, sends her scuttling for the shelter of the penny arcade’s stingy awning.