Final Cut(11)

I avoid the black ice, using the steps where I can and stopping every now and again to get my breath back and film the view. I scan the horizon, recording the distant trees as they bend in the wind. The air seems thinner up here, easier to breathe. I turn left, past the car park and the village hall. There’s a grocery store on the right, plus a post office with a voluntary community shop attached. Both sell postcards, an almost identical selection, and I check to see whether either stock the one sent to Dan. I’m certain now that it came from Blackwood Bay, and though I have visions of sleuthing my way to an answer, this time I’m not in luck. The photos are views of the village and the surrounding area, pictures of the pub from centuries ago, but none matches. I’ll have to keep looking.

The park is across the road and I push through the sprung gate and go in. It’s tiny, just a playground really, a few swings and a seesaw, a tiny bandstand in the centre, but from here there’s a great view over the village and down into the bay itself. In the distance sits Bluff House, silent and still. I feel drawn to it somehow, connected, even from here. The pull is hypnotic, a black hole at the edge of the water, sucking everything towards it, even light. I feel suddenly certain it’s the place where Daisy jumped.

I tear myself away and look beyond it. Way in the distance, just visible across the water, is the next town along. Malby. A metropolis by comparison. There’re estates there, new homes with neat lawns and expensive cars parked in the driveways. The schools are there, the supermarkets, the fast-food restaurants, plus a tiny cinema and solitary nightclub. But it might as well be a million miles away.

I decide to get a hot drink before returning to Hope Cottage. There’s a café halfway down Slate Road and I head there. The door clatters as I enter. An unreconstructed greasy spoon: plastic tablecloths, bowls of wrapped sugar cubes, egg and chips, tea served in a chipped mug. There are plenty of free tables. A tiny Christmas tree pulses on the counter at the back, the end of each branch lit with tacky fibre optics, and I order coffee from the woman who stands behind the counter in a spotless apron and smudged glasses. She’s in her early forties, I’d guess, and has cut her prematurely grey hair short, in a stylish pixie-cut.

I’ve just sat down with my drink when the door jangles open and a man enters, wearing a waterproof jacket. He’s short – only a little taller than me – and solid. Unshaven; his hair is long and looks artfully disarranged. He orders a bacon roll and we almost make eye contact as he turns to choose a table, but then he skims past me to say hello to a guy sitting in the corner instead. He takes a seat and opens a magazine before settling in to wait for his food. He looks familiar, though only distantly, and I can’t place him. In one of the films, perhaps? In any case, there’s something about him that’s magnetic; though not particularly attractive, he has an aura, a glow that draws the eye. I go back to my drink, but too late. He’s spotted me staring.

‘Nice day,’ he says, and I look back up. He’s grinning, but his eyes are strange; one is darker than the other and has a curious, beady pulse. He lowers his magazine. ‘You visiting?’

I tell him I am. ‘Seems pretty quiet?’

He laughs.

‘It’s always bloody quiet nowadays.’

‘Really?’

‘Yep. You staying here?’

I glance out of the window to where a group of girls is walking past, cackling as they go. I’m not sure why I’m pretending nonchalance; it just seems the right thing to do.

‘I am, yeah. Down in the village.’

He pauses. ‘Anything to do with that film?’

Before I can answer a shadow passes and I look once more out at the street. A lone guy is walking past and for a second I think he’s following the giggling girls I saw a moment ago, but then I tell myself I’m being paranoid, just projecting my own experience from when I was first down in London.

‘Only, I saw the camera, like.’

I’d put it on the table in front of me, next to the bowl of sugar. I smile.

‘You caught me out.’

‘I’m a real Sherlock Holmes, me,’ he says, grinning. ‘I think I’m sorting out your car?’

‘Is that right? You’re a friend of Gavin’s?’

‘Yep.’ He reaches across and holds out his hand for me to shake. ‘Bryan. It’ll be done in a few days. Damaged suspension.’ He gestures towards the chair opposite mine. ‘Mind if I join you?’

‘Not at all. I’m Alex.’

He comes over and settles himself. This close, I catch his aftershave, sweetly spicy, though with something else, too. A hint of leather, perhaps. Something dark and dirty. He puts his magazine on the table – Sea Angler – and I remember where I’ve seen him. One of the news stories I’d skimmed had covered the campaign – ultimately doomed – to save the lifeboat service, and he’d been in one of the photos, wearing a yellow jacket, handing out leaflets.

‘How’s it going?’

‘Sorry?’

He laughs. ‘The film?’

‘Oh, okay,’ I say. ‘Early days.’

‘So what’re folk filming?’

‘All kinds of things.’ I think back to the clips from yesterday. The girl faking a suicide. Teenagers eating a takeaway on one of the benches by the pub. ‘They’re all online. Take a look.’