The pub's sign creaked on a single rusted hinge. A crab, painted in red that had faded to the colour of dried blood, clutched a tankard in one claw. Light spilled from the salt-crusted windows onto the pavement, and the smell of batter and vinegar reached him before he touched the door.
Inside, the ceiling was low and the air was thick enough to chew. A television above the bar showed a snooker match with the sound off. Three men at a corner table nursed pints and said nothing. Leo Bernard stood behind the bar, a man built like a side of beef, wiping a glass with a cloth that had seen cleaner days. His apron might once have been white. His face, when he looked up and saw who had come in, arranged itself into something that was not quite welcome.
“Mr. Watt.”
“Leo.”
James took a stool at the bar. The vinyl had split and been repaired with tape the colour of old mustard. He ordered a whisky. Leo poured it without comment, set the glass down on a cardboard coaster, and went back to wiping the same glass.
“Slow night,” James said.
“Thursday.”
James drank. The whisky was cheap and burned on the way down. He let it settle, then placed the glass on the coaster with more care than the gesture required. “I've been looking into a name.”
Leo's hand stopped moving. Only for a moment. Then the cloth resumed its slow circle. “That so.”
“Bartholomew Vane.”
The television commentator mouthed something silent. One of the men in the corner laughed, a short bark that died as soon as it was born. Leo set the glass down on the back bar and picked up another, holding it to the light.
“Old family,” he said.
“I'm more interested in the old money.”
“Money gets old, same as people.”
“Not two million pounds of it. Not when it vanishes.”
Leo turned and slotted the glass into the overhead rack. His back was broad and gave nothing away. “You'd have to ask an accountant about that.”
“I'm asking you.”
“Why?”
James turned the glass in a quarter-circle on its coaster. “Because you've been here forty years. Because you know which stories get told and which ones don't. And because I think you knew Bartholomew Vane, or knew of him, and I think you know what happened to the money from the Northern Star.”
Leo faced him again. The jovial publican's mask had thinned. Beneath it was something older and less obliging. “The Northern Star went down in a storm. Eighty-seven. Four men lost. Vane's body never found. That's the story.”
“That's the official story.”
“It's the only one I've got.”
James said nothing. He let the silence stretch until it became a third presence at the bar. Leo reached for a rag and began wiping down the counter, working the cloth into the grain of the wood as if he could scrub away the question.
“I'm not police,” James said. “I'm not council. I'm not anyone who matters to the people who matter to you. But someone put a watch in a widow's mailbox three weeks after her husband went off a cliff, and that watch has initials on it, and those initials belong to a dead man whose fortune disappeared the night his ship sank. Someone wants me to find something. Someone else wants me to stop.” He paused. “I had four good tyres when I parked this afternoon. I've got none now.”
Leo's hand slowed. He looked at James, and for the first time something in his expression shifted from guarded to assessing. “You're the one asking about Thomas Vane.”
“I'm the one.”
“I heard.”
“From who?”
“People talk.”
“What do they say?”
Leo folded the rag and set it beside the till. “They say you ought to let it lie.”
“That's what Marcus West told me. On the cliffs. Very politely.”
The name landed. Leo's jaw worked, a small motion, as if he were chewing on something he wanted to spit out. “West came to see you?”
“He was already there. Waiting.”
Leo looked away, towards the television, where a man in a waistcoat was lining up a long red. The three drinkers in the corner had fallen silent. One of them was watching the bar with the careful blankness of a man who was listening to every word.
“You should eat something,” Leo said. “Kitchen's still open.”
“I'm not hungry.”
“Eat anyway. Table by the window. I'll bring it over.”
James understood. He took his glass and moved to a table near the salt-streaked window, where the cold bled through the single glazing and the view was only the darkening promenade and the black sheet of the sea beyond. He sat with his back to the wall. Old habit.
Ten minutes later Leo came over with a plate of cod and chips. The fish was greasy and the batter had the colour of overworked oil. Leo set it down, along with a bottle of vinegar and a folded square of paper tucked beneath the napkin dispenser. He did not meet James's gaze.
“On the house,” he said. And then, quieter: “I don't know anything about Bartholomew Vane's money. You understand? I don't know.”
“I understand.”
“But there's things in this town that got buried a long time ago. And the people who buried them are still here.” He straightened up, his voice returning to its normal register. “Enjoy your meal.”
James waited until Leo was back behind the bar, serving the three men another round, before he slid the paper free. It was a receipt, printed on thin thermal stock, the kind that fades to illegibility in a few months. The printed side recorded a transaction at a storage facility, dated six years earlier. The amount was thirty-five pounds. The handwriting on the reverse was a hasty scrawl, blue biro pressed hard enough to leave grooves in the paper.
Pier.
That was all. A single word. But it had been written with the urgency of someone who did not expect to have another chance.
James folded the receipt and tucked it into the inside pocket of his coat, next to the handkerchief with the Maglite fragment. He ate the fish because it was there, and because Leo had gone to the trouble, and because he needed the fuel. The vinegar was sharp and cut through the grease. Outside, the last light drained from the sky and the sea became a blackness distinguishable from the land only by the white fringe of surf where it met the shingle.
He thought about the pier. Cromer's pier was a Victorian structure, a long finger of iron and wood stretching into the North Sea, with a pavilion at the end that had seen better decades. It was the kind of place where things could be hidden. Where things could be passed from hand to hand in the dark, with only the sound of the waves for witness. If Bartholomew Vane had been running a smuggling operation, the pier was a logical artery. And if someone had kept records, or evidence, or the remnants of a fortune that had never been recovered, the pier was where you would look.
The watch in his pocket had been set to twenty past four. He had wound it in his office and it had been running ever since, a dead man's timepiece measuring out hours that did not belong to it. The initials on the case were B.V. The bloodstain along the seam was brown and old. Someone had put it in Elena Vane's mailbox four days ago, three weeks after her husband's death, and that someone wanted him to follow where it led.
He finished the fish. He left the chips.
At the bar, Leo was pulling a pint for a new arrival, a woman in a waxed jacket who stamped her boots on the mat and complained about the cold. James caught his eye and gave a single nod. Leo returned it, barely perceptible, and then looked away.
James stepped out into the night. The wind had picked up, coming off the sea with a bite that smelled of salt and the coming winter. The promenade was empty. The arcade's broken sign flickered once and went dark. He stood for a moment, letting his eyes adjust, scanning the street for the black Rolls Royce. Nothing moved except a crisp packet tumbling along the gutter.
He began the walk back to the office, the receipt folded small and tight in his pocket, the word Pier repeating in his mind like a tide. Someone had tried to warn him off. Someone else had just handed him a direction. He did not know yet which of them he should be more afraid of.
Behind him, the Crab Shack's sign creaked on its hinge. Ahead, the sea made its endless sound against the shore. And in his pocket, the watch ticked on, counting out the minutes until morning.
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