‘She’s changed,’ said Bennett. He said it so softly that I might almost have missed it, yet the intensity with which he spoke meant that it couldn’t be ignored. ‘He’s changed too. I can see it when he comes for her. He looks sick, like he’s not sleeping right, even worse than he was before. Lately, I’ve started to see it in her too. She burnt herself a couple of days back: tried to catch a coffeepot that was falling and ended up getting hot coffee on her hand. It was carelessness on her part, but the carelessness that comes from being tired. She’s lost some weight, and she was never carrying much to start off with. And I think he’s raised a hand to her. I saw bruising on her face. She told me that she’d walked into a door, like anyone believes that old story anymore.’

‘You try speaking to her about it?’

‘Tried, but she got real defensive. Like I said before, I don’t think she likes talking to men about personal matters. I didn’t want to pursue it further, not then, for fear that I’d drive her away entirely. But I’m worried for her.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘You still know them Fulci fellas? Maybe you could get them to beat on Tobias some, tell him to find someone else to share his bed.’

He said it with a sad smile, but I could tell that there was a part of him that would really have liked to see the Fulcis, who were essentially weapons of war with appetites, unleashed on a man who could hit a woman.

‘Doesn’t work,’ I said. ‘Either the woman starts to feel sorry for the guy, or the guy figures the woman has been talking to someone, and it gets worse.’

‘Well, it was a nice thought while it lasted,’ he said. ‘If that’s not an option, I’d like you to look into Tobias, see what you can find out about him. I just need something that might convince Karen to put some distance between her and him.’

‘I can do it, but there’s a chance that she won’t thank you for it.’

‘I’ll take that chance.’

‘Do you want to know my rates?’

‘Are you going to screw me over?’

‘No.’

‘Then I figure you’re worth what you ask for.’ He put an envelope on the counter. ‘There’s two thousand dollars down. How much is that good for?’

‘Long enough. If I need more, I’ll get back to you. If I spend less, I’ll refund you.’

‘You’ll tell me what you find out?’

‘I will. But what if I discover that he’s clean?’

‘He’s not,’ said Bennett firmly. ‘No man who hits a woman can call himself clean.’

I touched the envelope with my fingertips. I felt the urge to hand it back to him. Instead, I pointed at the Jandreau story.

‘Old ghosts,’ I said.

‘Old ghosts,’ he agreed. ‘I go out there sometimes, you know? Couldn’t tell you why, unless it’s that I hope I’ll be pulled back in time so I can save her. Mostly, I just say a prayer for her as I pass by. They ought to scour that place from the earth.’

‘Did you know Foster Jandreau?’

‘He came in sometimes. They all do: state troopers, local cops. We look after them. Oh, they pay their check like anyone else, but we make sure that they don’t leave hungry. I knew Foster some, though. His cousin, Bobby Jandreau, served with Damien in Iraq. Bobby lost his legs. Hell of a thing.’

I waited before speaking again. There was something missing here. ‘You said that this meeting was about Damien’s death, in a way. The only connection is Karen Emory?’

Bennett looked troubled. Any mention of his son must have been painful for him, but there was more to it than that.

‘Tobias came back troubled from that war, but my son didn’t. I mean, he’d seen bad things, and there were days when I could tell he was remembering some of them, but he was still the son I knew. He told me over and over that he’d had a good war, if such a thing is possible. He didn’t kill anyone who wasn’t trying to kill him, and he had no hatred for the Iraqi people. He just felt sorry for what they were going through, and he tried to do his best by them. He lost some buddies over there, but he wasn’t haunted by what he’d been through, not at first. That all came later.’

‘I don’t know much about post-traumatic stress,’ I said, ‘but from what I’ve read, it can take some time to kick in.’

‘There is that,’ said Bennett. ‘I’ve read about it too. I was reading about it before Damien died, thinking that I might be able to help him if I understood better what he was going through. But, you see, Damien liked the army. I don’t think he wanted to leave. He served multiple tours, and would have gone back again. As it was, all he talked about when he got back was re-enlisting.’

‘Why didn’t he?’

‘Because Joel Tobias wanted him here.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘From what Damien said. He took a couple of trips up to Canada with Tobias, and I got the sense that they had something going on, some deal that promised good money at the end of it. Damien began to talk about setting up his own business, maybe moving into security if he didn’t return to the army. That was when the trouble started. That was when Damien began to change.’

‘Change how?’

‘He stopped eating. Couldn’t sleep, and when he did manage to fall asleep I’d hear him crying out, and shouting.’

‘Could you hear what he was saying?’

‘Sometimes. He’d be asking someone to leave him alone, to stop talking. No, to stop whispering. He became anxious, and aggressive. He’d snap at me for nothing. When he wasn’t doing stuff for Tobias, he was somewhere by himself, smoking, staring into space. I suggested that he ought to talk to someone about it, but I don’t know if he did. He was back for three months when this all started, and he was dead by his own hand two weeks later.’ He patted my shoulder. ‘Look into that Tobias fella, and we’ll talk again.’

With that, he said his good-byes to Kyle and Tara, and left the diner. I watched him walk slowly to his car, a beat-up Subaru with a Sea Dogs sticker along the rear fender. As he opened the car door, he caught me watching him. He nodded and raised a hand in farewell, and I did likewise.

Kyle came out from the kitchen.

‘I’m going to lock up now,’ he said. ‘You all done?’

‘Thank you,’ I said. I paid the check, and left a good tip, both for the food and for Kyle’s discretion. There weren’t many diners in which two men could meet and discuss what Bennett and I had discussed without fear of eavesdropping.

‘He’s a good man,’ said Kyle, as Bennett’s car turned out of the lot.

‘Yes, he is.’

On the way back to Scarborough, I took a detour to drive by the Blue Moon. Yellow police tape flapped in the breeze from a downpipe, bright against the blackened shell of the bar. The windows remained boarded up, the steel door secured with a heavy bolt, but there was a hole in the roof where the flames had burst through all those years ago, and if you got close enough it smelled of damp and, even now, charred wood. Kyle and Bennett were right: it should have been demolished, but still it remained, like a dark cancer cell against the red clover of the field that stretched behind it.

I pulled away, the ruin of the Blue Moon receding in my rearview until at last I left it behind. Yet it seemed something of it remained on the mirror, like a smudge left by a blackened finger, a reminder from the dead of what the living still owe to them.