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Elin

Parque Nacional, Portugal, October 2021

‘Okay, so that was interesting,’ Isaac says, walking back into the van. ‘I knocked on the door, but Steed didn’t want me to go in. Had the whole conversation outside.’

When she doesn’t reply, he glances first at her, then her laptop. ‘Is something wrong?’

Elin takes a breath, still struggling to process it herself, let alone articulate it to someone else. ‘I was looking up some stuff about Zeph and saw this.’ Her voice wavers as she beckons him over. ‘That’s Zeph.’ She points to the screen. ‘On his hand, there.’

‘It’s the ring from the fire.’ Isaac’s face pales.

‘Yeah. I’d like to say there’s a possibility of a coincidence, but it’s fairly distinctive.’

‘And that puts him pretty definitively here, tells us he knew the camp.’

‘I’m guessing that doesn’t tally with what Steed told you?’

‘No.’ Running a hand through his hair, Isaac slowly exhales. ‘Where to start. Okay, background first. Steed says the split with Zeph came a little while before Kier came out to Portugal. Zeph then apparently moved back to the US after the breakup.’

‘And didn’t come back?’

‘No. It was done and dusted as far as he knew. Steed said he thought it was a shame, reckoned it might have had legs.’

‘So I take it he and Steed got on?’

‘Actually, no, not at first, anyway. Zeph’s got a bit of an ego – the whole celebrity chef thing. First meeting, Steed said he wasn’t sure, but Zeph grew on him. They became friends from the sound of it, not buddy-buddy but close enough to stay in touch. Steed hadn’t heard from him for a while, but Zeph’s checked in with him a few times since Kier’s gone missing.’

‘Did he go into any more detail on why they split?’

‘Yeah, Steed said that’s the messy bit. Apparently, Kier told him it was a mutual thing, they’d drifted apart, but reading between the lines, he thought there was a different story.’ Isaac hesitates. ‘Turns out, there was. Zeph came to Steed before the wedding, worried about her. Said Kier had lashed out.’

‘Lashed out?’ Elin looks at him, surprised. It’s the first time she’s heard anything even vaguely controversial about Kier.

Why hadn’t Steed mentioned this before?

‘Got physical, according to Zeph. Pushing him, that kind of thing, smashed up some of his stuff. Zeph was pretty shaken, but he put it down to do with Kier being back in Devon. Everything that happened with her parents.’

‘Triggering?’

‘Yeah. It’s one of the reasons she never liked going home.’ Isaac pauses. ‘Steed said Zeph tried to talk to her about it, get her to see a therapist, but Kier wasn’t having any of it. Ghosted him.’

Elin absorbs this new information. ‘And what did he say about the idea of Zeph coming out here?’

‘Steed reckons he mentioned the national park to him, but Zeph never said he was planning on coming to look for Kier. ’

‘And did Steed talk about the camp to him at all? His suspicions?’

‘He can’t remember.’

‘But it’s not implausible to think that Zeph might have found them for himself,’ Elin thinks aloud. ‘The park’s the biggest one in Portugal. He could have asked someone about the camp, followed the same process we have to get here.’

‘I reckon it’s possible.’

‘And Steed says Zeph definitely hasn’t been in contact recently?’

‘No. He tried ringing him a while back, but it went straight to voicemail. Zeph never got back to him.’

‘I don’t like it.’ Elin blinks. ‘Not that Steed hasn’t heard from him, that makes sense, you lose touch with people, but the fact Zeph wouldn’t have told him, about coming out here, finding the camp.’

‘Then there’s the ring and the passport.’

‘What if …’ Elin falters. ‘What if we’re looking at a situation where neither Zeph nor Kier left the park?’

A heavy silence falls, as if neither of them want to articulate what might have happened.

‘I reckon the only easy way we’re going to get to the bottom of this is to find out if anyone’s seen Zeph recently,’ she says eventually.

‘I thought about that. Steed gave me the number for someone called Clio. Lives near Zeph in New York. A friend of Kier’s too, apparently. Steed spoke to her after he thought Kier was missing.’

‘He didn’t get suspicious about why you were asking?’

‘I don’t know. Hard to tell if he bought it, but he seemed happy enough to share the number.’

Elin nods uneasily. Happy enough. That didn’t fit with the Steed she’d seen at the clearing. Didn’t fit at all.