He walked to the point where a thorn tree grew by the Channel. A man had died here thirteen years ago, his neck wrung like an unwanted dog’s in the dark. He’d been little mourned then and was mostly forgotten now, and if any part of his life had done any good to anyone, Luke wasn’t aware of it. All the same, he stood watching the ripples on the water and thinking about the ripples from that long-ago death until he heard the faint bell of the half-hour roll down from St. Mary-the-Virgin in Stone, and echoed by St. Mary’s in Appledore. Time to go.
