Page 100 of The Rising Tide

The line goes dead.

Lucy rips the phone from her ear. The screen is blank, a smooth, blue oblong. She turns back to the bookcase. On the bottom shelf she finds the two titles Fin mentioned. Between them, the dust jacket of a third is no longer wrapping a book. Lucy puts down her knife and eases it out. When she opens the cover she finds, inside, a Samsung tablet computer.

THIRTY-SIX

Abraham reaches the search location south of Smuggler’s Tumble via a steeply descending track. At its terminus lies a gravel car park used by forestry workers and water-sports enthusiasts. A crumbling concrete ramp offers a launching point for boat trailers. Even now, five days since the storm, slow-breaking Atlantic waves are punching hard against it.

He parks beside a BMW with three kayaks strapped to its roof. Already, uniformed officers have set up a cordon. The dinghy lies in tangled woodland twenty metres from the shore. Abraham takes out his phone and pulls up a satellite image of the site.

As the crow flies, they’re only a handful of miles from Skentel, but this far south the coastal road is a bunched string, looping in and out of the bays. Friday lunchtime, a few hours before the storm broke, the shoreline here would have been deserted. No houses stand close by, nor any roadside businesses; Bibi Trixibelle Carter’s home is far to the north, along with all the others his team doorstepped. Nor is there any ANPR.

So – no risk of prying eyes but also no fast route out; not unless a vehicle was left here in preparation.

Abraham scuffs his feet, kicking up blue gravel. His thoughts return to something that’s been bothering him since Saturday; the black hatchback in the lay-by behind Daniel’s Volvo. Bibi claimed it wasn’t Lucy’s Citroën and he’s half inclined to believe her. So whose was it?

Earlier in the week, his team analysed the available CCTV footage and noted which black cars showed up. Back then, he was mainly interested in the Citroën. Little reason to tie any others to the one Bibi spotted on Friday. But Abraham doesn’t like loose ends.

Three of those vehicles were small hatchbacks: a Vauxhall, a Lexus and a Toyota. The Vauxhall, registered to a Redlecker address, was snapped on the quay on Thursday afternoon, a surfboard strapped to its roof. Friday lunchtime, an ANPR camera captured it near Newquay, ruling it out. The Lexus is registered to a London address, but the Toyota is owned by Barbara Guinness, a seventy-two-year-old widow who lives in Skentel with her son. Twice, Abraham’s crossed paths with Matt Guinness, a barman at the Goat Hotel and a highly visible member of the volunteer search team.

Craning his neck, Abraham scans the car park. His gaze returns to the BMW loaded with kayaks.

He frowns, examines it more closely. Something turns over in his gut. He thinks of Beth McKaylin, the lifeboat volunteer who piloted the Lockes’ yacht back to harbour, and the black Lexus from the CCTV. Moments later he’s back in his car, fishtailing up the track to the coastal road.

THIRTY-SEVEN

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Lucy takes the Samsung tablet to one of the sofas, sits.

She wakes the device, sees the home screen, hisses with revulsion. The chosen wallpaper is an image of theLazy Susanfloating in Skentel’s harbour.

The tablet’s proprietary apps have been hidden. In their place is a solitary grey thumbnail. Under it, one word:TRUTH.

Lucy hovers her finger, taps.

The thumbnail expands to fill the screen. The clarity is sharp but not photo-sharp, a single frame of video. She recognizes the view: the bow of theLazy Susanas seen from the cockpit.

The sea is oily dark. The sky is the colour of a bruise. Lucy knows, instinctively, that she’s looking at a shot from Friday morning, just before the storm hit Skentel.

The clip begins to play. The yacht’s bow rises and falls in the swell. Then the camera tilts and Lucy nearly losesher grip on the tablet, nearly slides from the sofa to her knees.

‘No,’ she mutters. ‘That can’t be.’

Because what she’s looking at isn’t possible – a distillation of all the world’s cruelty into a single shocking image.

She recalls the question she asked Daniel at the prison:Billie.Did she know? At the end? Did she know what was about to happen? Did she have a long time to be frightened?Clear, now, the answer to those questions. Lucy canfeelher heart being crushed.

Sunday morning on Penleith Beach, she’d prayed for the first time in her life, had pleaded with a deity she didn’t think existed. But the girl at the water’s edge had still turned out to be Billie. Lucy’s appeals hadn’t worked then and she knows they won’t work now. And yet even though it’s pointless she can’t stop the words coming: ‘Please God, please God, please don’t let it be, please don’t …’

The clip continues to play. Lucy wants to close her eyes, hurl the tablet across the floor.

Instead, she leans closer. Stares at the spectacle unfolding onscreen.

TheLazy Susan’s stern is shaped like a sugar scoop. Three built-in swim steps descend from the cockpit to the water. For Lucy, they were always the boat’s best feature. In summer she could sit on the bottom step and trail her feet in the sea. The kids could use them as a dive platform. They were an easy launch point for their dinghy.

As the camera swings round, the stern is fully revealed. On the bottom step, facing the bow, stand Lucy’s children.

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