Pegsea
What it is
A small town in Pembrokeshire, on the Welsh coast, with a High Street, a pub, a graveyard and an estuary running past it. It is the wrong place for a Service operation and the book knows it: Emma Flyte’s plan is to walk into the town and ask for the police, on the reasoning that “a town this size, this far from London” is beyond Peter Judd’s fixing (C12).
The town is reached by the family connection rather than by tradecraft. Clare Harper’s family took holidays here, and Lucas worked cash-in-hand catering for a local firm, Paul’s Pantry (C02, C05). That is enough for Roderick Ho to trace a Fitbit: C06 puts the coordinates in Pegsea, C07 has Louisa Guy driving west to a pub on the High Street, and C10 has Louisa’s phone “this side of Pegsea” while the snow closes the roads. The climax is fought across the ground around it — the estuary path, a shed, a graveyard, the lane into town — and the town itself is where the aftermath has to be explained away.
Book 6 — Joe Country
- C02 — Named as where the family holidayed and where Lucas did catering work over Christmas; the first hard fact Louisa has.
- C05 — Paul’s Pantry is based here, and Caerwyss Hall is a mile or so out; Lucas’s browsing history points at both.
- C06 — Emma texts Louisa the coordinates: the Fitbit signal is in Pegsea.
- C07 — Louisa arrives, calls Emma from a pub on the High Street, and begins asking about the cottage at Bryn-y-Wharg.
- C08 — Emma names the place to River Cartwright as the destination, and the second trace puts Louisa’s phone and Lucas’s Fitbit in a roadside ditch.
- C10 — Louisa wakes in a shed with Lucas; the town is the nearest thing to help, and the snow has made the roads useless.
- C12 — Emma sets out for the town to find the police and is shot before she gets there; Lucas later steals a car and puts it through a shop window on the High Street.
Related
Caerwyss Hall · Lucas Harper · Louisa Guy · Emma Flyte · Frank Harkness