‘No sign of the driver?’ Silas asks.
‘Nothing.’
‘Can you get forensics to have a look? Take some prints?’
There’s a pause before the man speaks, clearing his throat. ‘This is Cornwall, not Swindon,’ he says. ‘And it’s a Sunday afternoon. Do you know how many forensics we have across the force?’
Silas doesn’t want to get drawn into an argument over a lack of resources. It would be a quick race to the bottom. ‘The car was stolen and the driver tried to run down one of our officers,’ he says.
‘We’ve taken a good look around the area. No sign of anyone.’
He’s not going to win this one. At least they’ve found the car. ‘Thanks for your help,’ he says, hanging up.
‘Funny place to leave a stolen car,’ Strover says, looking up the location on a map on her phone. ‘Remote.’
Silas is thinking the same thing. An abandoned car near coastal cliffs usually means only one thing: suicide. It doesn’t make any sense. An hour earlier, this man had tried to run down Kate. The day before, he’d nearly drowned her.
‘Ask that friend of yours in digital forensics to run a check on Rob,’ he says. ‘See if she can find a facial match.’
Strover turns to him in surprise. ‘Really?’
‘Why not?’ he says defensively. Strover’s friend is good, a digital investigator who’s helped them on previous cases.
‘Isn’t that crossing a line too?’ she asks.
Possibly, but they came barging into Kate’s new life today, reminding her of a past that she clearly wants to forget. Strover’s right. It’s the least they can do for an old colleague.
‘And check the plates she gave you,’ he says, ignoring her surprise. ‘See if he’s been giving her the runaround.’
42
Jake
Kirby replies almost immediately to Jake’s Facebook message. He works in tech too, somewhere in Silicon Valley. No doubt another one of those beanbags-for-chairs start-ups where being on social media 24/7 is all part of the job.
Kate! I’ve heard so much about you. And so far only wonderful things ☺ Great idea. What sort of anecdotes are you after? So many! And when’s the party-party?!
Jake sits back. He can’t introduce doppelgängers too quickly into the conversation, but he also doesn’t want to be on Facebook for long, given he’s using Kate’s account. He’s already been logged in for half an hour and it’s beginning to feel increasingly disloyal. He’s about to start typing a reply when a new message window pings open on the screen.
He freezes. It’s from Rob.
Hey?! Thought you’d given FB up for the summer???? Ring me? Been trying to call you back. What happened with FaceTime? Need to get comms sorted down there. Can’t get through on landline either. You OK? xx
Should he just ignore it? If he replies, he could blow everything. The chances of making a mistake are too high. For whatever reason, it seems like Kate doesn’t want to talk to Rob right now.
He logs out without replying to Rob. Kirby will have to wait.
43
Kate
Kate’s completely forgotten that there’s a beach clean this evening. Not that they need one around here. They all do their bit – runners, dog walkers, even the tourists, who are pretty good at clearing up after themselves. But Kate wants to go along tonight, to take her mind off all that’s happened this weekend.
‘You coming?’ she asks Bex, who is sitting with Stretch on the sofa.
‘Sure,’ Bex says, more subdued than usual. Presumably from their afternoon gin session. Kate’s hungover too. And still in shock.
They’ve talked long and hard about the sound of the military jets. As soon as she looked at his face and heard them on the speakers, she cut off the FaceTime call, snapping shut the laptop. She also turned off her phone again and persuaded Bex to do the same. The landline was still disconnected after Rob’s earlier call.
Neither of them can be certain of what it means. Either Rob is back down here without telling her. Or it wasn’t Rob on the screen, it was his double, who is now in Cornwall. It didn’t look like Rob, but Bex is certain that it was him. Perhaps Kate was imagining the jets, the guilty look in his eyes?
She hopes so. She will ring him later from the beach. No facetiming, just a normal call. She can’t keep contacting him and hanging up. He’s used to the poor communications down here, but he’ll still be worrying what happened, trying to contact her.
*
There’s a good crowd on Pendower beach tonight, about twenty of them, thanks to Rob. Kate’s always urging him to do more for the environment. He’s keen, just needs reminding, like buying an electric car rather than a diesel-guzzling 4x4. For the past few months, his tech company has sponsored the local beach cleans, which means it pays for their T-shirts and for fuel for the community van that brought them over here. She’s trying to persuade Rob to cough up for an electric minibus. Most importantly, the sponsorship includes putting money behind the pub bar afterwards for all the volunteers.
‘They’ve got jets in London too,’ Bex says as they start to work their way down the high-tide mark. She doesn’t sound convinced and Kate doesn’t reply.
Stretch is sniffing about in front of them. It’s a falling tide, the best time for a clean. Behind them, a few families are still enjoying the last of the sun as it sets over St Mawes in the distance. It’s been one of those cloudless Cornish days that no one wants to end, the summer heat still lingering in the sand and on glowing, sunburnt cheeks.
‘You saw the look on his face though,’ Kate says. ‘He’d been found out.’ She has to believe that Rob would never come down to Cornwall without telling her, which means she must confront this man, ask him who he really is, why he’s here. ‘And the time delay,’ she says, picking up a clump of orange fishing line that’s become tangled with seaweed. ‘Two seconds, at most. He wasn’t that far away.’
She drops a crumpled can of Coke into her bucket, which also sports Rob’s company name, and looks up, staring back towards the village and the surrounding countryside. Is his double really down here somewhere? Watching them? And what has he done with her Rob? The Rob who has taken care of her for the past five months, nurtured and loved her with such tenderness.
‘There is another explanation for all this,’ Bex says.
‘I told you, he doesn’t have a twin.’
‘It’s not that.’ Bex pauses, looking around the beach. ‘Have you heard of something called Capgras syndrome?’
‘No, why?’ she asks. It sounds French, like a resort on the Riviera. ‘Should I have done?’
‘Jake was telling me about it yesterday. It’s a…’ Bex hesitates. Unusually for her, she seems to be choosing her words carefully. ‘It’s a state of mind, a condition, where someone thinks that the person they love has been replaced by an impostor, a double.’
‘A state of mind?’ Kate says. Bex is not being straight with her. It sounds more serious than that. She’s also been chatting with Jake about her, which is unsettling.