Dominic's POV
I watch them from the hill above the cove, lying on my stomach in wet bracken, with a pair of binoculars and an earpiece and a very cold nose.
It's six o'clock. The sky is the colour of a pearl. A mist lies on the water in long, slow ribbons, and the old herring weir stands out of it like the ribs of a drowned ship: rotted stakes, twisted netting, a ruined stone causeway slick with weed.
Marcus lies beside me. He's wearing a camouflage jacket from the back of his truck and an expression of profound disgust. A small black dish on a tripod points down the slope.
"If we get caught," he murmurs, "I'm saying it was your idea."
"It was my idea."
"Good."
"Shush."
Two figures come along the shingle.
Vera first, in a borrowed grey fisherman's jumper and her black trousers, her red hair tied back with a piece of string. Her face is pale and set. She walks like a woman going to meet a firing squad.
Augustus beside her, in his waxed coat and a tweed cap, leaning on a walking stick.
They stop at the end of the causeway.
The mic crackles. And I hear, clear as a bell, the voice of the man who held me at my christening.
"Thank you for coming, my dear."
"You said you'd explain about Walter Quinn."
"I did. I shall." A rustle, as of an old man lowering himself onto a stone. "Sit with me. You look worn out."
"I'm fine."
"You've been crying."
"The wind."
"Of course."
Beside me, Marcus shifts.
"She's holding up," he whispers.
"Barely."
"It was a hell of a night."
I don't answer. I'm thinking about the sight of her on the pier, an arm round Tessa's shoulders, her red head bent. I'm thinking about a sound I couldn't hear from the window, but saw in the way her shoulders moved. A sister's lullaby.
Down on the shingle, Augustus begins to speak.
"You know I loved Walter."
"No."
"We were boys together." His voice is soft, reminiscent. "Boston. Public school. We played on the same football team. He was so clever. The cleverest of any of us. And so very kind." A pause. "And so very easy to use."
Her silence is a stone.
"I think you've guessed," he says, "that he didn't take the money."
"I've... suspected."
"He didn't."
"Then who?"
I feel Marcus tense.
"Dearest girl," says Augustus. "Please don't make me say it."
"I need to hear it."
"It will give you no pleasure."
"Say it."
A long, shaky breath.
"Charles Hale," says my godfather.
The world goes quiet.
I don't think I make a sound.
Marcus's hand lands on my forearm, hard, a warning, a vice.
"Dominic's father," says Vera, very slowly.
"Yes."
"You're saying Charles Hale stole two hundred and twelve million dollars from the Ironbridge pension fund."
"I'm saying he lost it. Gambling. Foolish investments, two bad years, a margin call. He used the pension fund to cover it. He meant to pay it back. He always meant to." The voice cracks, softly, beautifully. "Walter found out. He came to me. He said he'd have to go to the authorities."
"And you..."
"I begged him to wait. I went to Charles. And Charles..." He sighs. "Charles said he'd handle it."
"And Walter drove into the harbour."
"Yes."
"Did Charles..."
"I don't know," says Augustus. "God help me, I've never known. Perhaps he took his own life. Perhaps someone helped. Perhaps it was an accident. I only know that three weeks later, a note appeared in Walter's handwriting, and Edmund Vance took care of everything."
"And you let him."
"I let him. I was a coward." The old man's voice breaks. "I've been a coward for twelve years."
"Why tell me?"
"Because you're the one who's looking."
"Why not tell Dominic?"
"Because he'd die, my dear."
In my ear, there's a long, dreadful silence.
"His father was a god to him," says Augustus. "His whole life is built on that man. His marriage. His company. His name. I couldn't. I tried to protect him, and I tried to put it right. I've paid the dockworkers' pensions out of my own pocket for twelve years. Quietly. Through a foundation."
"The Quinn Scholarship."
"Yes."
"You paid..."
"Every month."
I can't breathe.
I'm lying in the wet ferns, and the sky is spinning, and I can hear my own pulse. A bird sings somewhere. The tide sucks at the stones.
My father.
My handsome, laughing, impossible father, with his port and his crossword and his hands like shovels. He taught me to tie a bowline. He taught me a man's word is his bond. He died in his study at Windward, six years ago, with a half-finished letter on the desk.
He stole it.
I think: It's a lie.
I think: Augustus is lying.
And then, as clear as a bell, I think: The envelope.
A brown envelope in my father's desk, the week after he died. I never opened it. I couldn't. I put it back in the drawer and told myself I'd read it when I was stronger.
"Why are you telling me now?" says Vera.
"Because I'm old. Because I'm tired. Because I want it to end." A rustle. "There are papers, in my safe, in the city. The ledger. Charles's signature on the transfers. I've kept it all."
"Show me."
"Of course."
"When?"
"I'll bring it to the Tower on Friday." A pause, thick with meaning. "On one condition."
"What?"
"That you stop."
"Stop what?"
"Lowell Ridge." He says it so gently that it's almost a caress. "The shorts. The leaks. The notes. You've got your answer, my dear. You don't need to break the house to prove the foundation is rotten. You'll destroy fourteen thousand jobs. You'll destroy that poor boy."
"Dominic."
"I think he's rather fond of you."
My heart gives a great thump.
"I think," says Augustus, in a tone of the gentlest sorrow, "that if you take this company, you'll take the last thing he has. And I think, when he finds out what his father did, he'll be a man with nothing at all."
I can't see.
I'm blind.
There's a rushing in my ears like the sea, and I can't hear what she says, only the sound of her voice, low, tight, and too even. Marcus is hissing in my ear.
"Boss. Boss. Breathe."
"I'm fine."
"You're green."
"It's a lie."
"Maybe."
"It's a lie, Marcus."
"Maybe it is."
"He's trying to split us."
"Of course he is." Marcus's voice is very steady. "The question is whether he's lying about everything or only part."
I turn my head.
He's watching me, grave and quiet in the grey light, with a face like a man who has just lifted the lid on a pit.
"The best lies," he says, "have a bone of truth."
I roll over on my back and look up at the pale sky.
A gull wheels.
The mic is still crackling, something about Friday, something about trust. The words don't mean anything. I'm back in my father's study, six years old, on his knee, with his big hand over mine on the wheel of a toy boat.
Whatever the water does, Dom. A Hale doesn't let go.
I think of a brown envelope in a drawer.
I think: I'm going to have to open it.
And I think, with a cold, slow dread: Augustus said "ledger." He said "the ledger" like a man naming something he knows is real.
Someone has lied to me.
Either he's lying now.
Or everyone I've loved has been lying to me for twelve years.