The Promenade

The Promenade is a pub on the seafront whose importance in the novel comes from its place in the last-known movements of Felicity Wanless. She was drinking there with friends before leaving earlier than they did and disappearing; the pub becomes a point of departure for the investigation, not a confirmed abduction site.

Setting and narrative function

The evidence identifies The Promenade as a pub on the seafront and gives no further description of its interior or surroundings. Its significance is therefore chiefly narrative and investigative: it anchors the last known part of Felicity’s evening, while the circumstances after she left remain unknown. The distinction matters. The novel establishes where she had been, but not where or how she was taken.

Felicity Wanless’s last known movements

Felicity had been drinking at The Promenade with friends. She left the pub before they did and never made it home. By the time the detectives discussed her disappearance, news that another woman was missing had spread quickly, but they had no concrete information about what had happened to her after she left the venue.

Place in the investigation

The detectives considered the timing of Felicity’s disappearance alongside their developing account of the killer’s sequence: he took his next victim shortly before killing and abandoning the current one. On that basis, they suspected that Felicity had been taken to replace Louise Usher. This was an inference about the order of events, not proof that The Promenade itself was where the abduction occurred.

The investigation also set Felicity’s last known outing beside the different routes taken by other women. Becky Allsopp had travelled from Newcastle Central Station through Sunderland by Metro and was last tracked near the Stadium of Light, beyond the CCTV coverage. Cath Caslaw had gone to the cinema and for a drink before a quarrel with her boyfriend prompted her to leave. Louise Usher had been to the gym and might walk home, take a bus, or occasionally use a taxi. These contrasting movements made The Promenade one known point in a wider search for how the women had been approached; the evidence supplied here does not identify a shared pickup place.