Page 111 of The Rising Tide

FORTY-SIX

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Back to where it all began. Back to the sea.

Lucy pointsHuntsman’s Daughterwest. The water is restless but not violent, rising to gentle heights without breaking. She unties Snig from her arm and secures it to the wheel. Then, unzipping the rucksack, she takes out the filleting knife and slides it into her back pocket. Retrieving the flotation belt, Lucy clips it around her waist.

The Nokia vibrates against her leg. She checks the screen. No message this time, just numbers.

50.9407

-4.7734

With her binoculars, she scans the sea for other boats. A few trawlers are moving southwards. North-east, an oil tanker is crawling towards the Bristol Channel; beyond it, just visible, the shivery grey shape of a freighter. She sees no yachts or motor launches. Therecent bad weather has chased all the weekend sailors back to port.

Lucy loops the binoculars around her neck. She switches on her GPS and plugs in the coordinates. While the device connects to available satellites, she glances past the stern to the inferno engulfing Wild Ridge.

Katharsis, she thinks.Purification through tragedy.

Already, she’s a mile offshore. According to the GPS, her destination lies much further west. Lifting the binoculars, she searches the horizon. Nothing out there except ocean and sky.

No surprise. At her current position, the Earth’s curvature limits her view. She’s got at least another two miles before she’ll learn if she’s been deceived. At seven knots, that’s just over fifteen minutes.

Lucy finds, suddenly, that she’s crying. And that strangely, out here, it doesn’t matter. The sea pays no attention to her tears. It doesn’t react to her pain.

If she’s going to die, at least she’s on the water, breathing ocean air. She thinks of Daniel, imprisoned. How much worse to be there, utterly powerless. She closes her eyes, just for a moment, as an even more vivid image forms.

Fin.

Her boy.

Her star-gazing, card-sorting little bookworm. Her weaver of words, her teller of fine tales, her storyteller extraordinaire. How sharp, the pain of her love for him. How immense, the responsibility to bring him home.

Before his birth, she carried an image of what her son would be like. Fin confounded all her expectations – not physically robust, like she’d imagined, but contemplative and inquisitive, funny, insightful and astute. His fragilityenhances rather than diminishes him, makes her love him all the more fiercely.

Less than a mile, now, until that spot in the ocean reveals itself.

Lucy recalls the video she watched: her children standing on theLazy Susan’s swim step; Daniel, cuffed to the winch. Thinking of that image weakens her, so she pushes it away. She needs cunning now, not grief or rage. She needs to empty her head of emotion – bury, particularly, any thoughts of vengeance. She’s not here to end a life but to save one.

A herring gull cries out. Lucy spots it flanking the yacht. She grimaces – wants to hurl her knife and cleave it from the sky. Instead, she lifts the binoculars. And sees, on the horizon, the pale shape of another boat.

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It’s her target.

Nothing else it can be. That’s not the profile of a trawler or any other commercial vessel. It’s the sleek outline of a yacht.

Strange, how much calmer the sea is this far from shore. The wind has dropped to a preternatural calm. Off the stern there’s no sight of land – nothing but dimpled water and granite sky.

For the first time, Lucy realizes how cold she is, how stiff her fingers and muscles. She clenches her fists, stamps her feet, forces the blood to her extremities. Then she retrains her binoculars on the boat.

Closer now. She can make out a little more detail. Furled sails, a single white mast.

Her skin prickles.

Lucy retrieves the duct tape from her rucksack and uses the Stanley knife to cut several strips. She secures the carving knife and two rocket flares to a vertical board beside the wheel. Then she takes out the antiquekukri. With more duct tape, she secures its leather scabbard to the boom and stuffs the Stanley knife into the front pocket of her shirt. Retrieving the Evian bottle, she takes a drink.

Closer, closer.

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