Page 37 of The Rising Tide

‘Lucy, I’m sorry,’ Jake shouts. ‘Lucy, wait—’

But he can’t reach her. She’s at the centre of a tightly packed circle. Light and sound, people and faces, questions, questions, and that voice, deep inside her head.

‘It’s not too late,’ her friend tells her. ‘Oh, my darling, it’s not.’

‘Please,’ Lucy whispers. ‘Please tell me what’s happening.’

Noemie puts her mouth to Lucy’s ear and talks.

ELEVEN

1

An hour before sunset, with rain falling in sheets, Cooper collects Abraham from the quay. The DS doesn’t ask questions as they drive up Skentel’s tiny high street. Abraham’s grateful – he needs a little space to think.

The heaters pump out hot air, but they struggle to thaw Abraham’s bones. For the last hour he’s been on the quay, examining Daniel Locke’s car and the family yacht. He’s talked to Skentel’s harbour master, the coastguard officials and the forensics team from Barnstaple.

It’s clear, from the CCTV footage, that Daniel Locke took his son – and possibly his stepdaughter – and sailed into a maelstrom. Other than what happened next, the only remaining question is why. Abraham’s lucky to have the yacht – since examining it, he has no doubt that a crime’s been committed. He needs to speak to the mother again, and others who know the family well. When Lucy Locke returns, he’ll stick a family liaison officer on her so tightly they’ll have to sleep in the same bed.

Ahead, the TV truck that was blocking the high street has disappeared. Cooper takes them up to the coast road. Overhead, clouds churn like grey rags stirred by a paddle. Wind flings salvos of rain at the windows. At the top of the slope, its ferocity intensifies fivefold. Abraham fears for the boats still at sea; and, indeed, the coastguard helicopter.

He’s skimming through his updated notes when he stumbles across another motif: his initials and now his date of birth, sheltering beneath a dome. It swells large in his vision. He has no memory of inking it.

‘I found out whatvendiblesmeans,’ Cooper says.

Abraham grunts, slamming shut his notebook. His hand closes around the pill bottle in his pocket.

‘Do you want to know?’

‘Not particularly. Did you speak to Beckett about the financial investigation?’

‘It’s being passed up the line. And vendibles,’ Cooper continues, ‘means—’

‘Goods,’ Abraham says. He looks out of the passenger window at the waves exploding against Mortis Point. ‘Items you can sell.’

The DS pouts. ‘You said earlier you had no idea.’ Then he brightens. ‘Did you know it was Middle English?’

‘Probably derived from the Latinvendibilis.’

Abraham’s about to say more when his ears fill with noise. He ducks down in his seat as a helicopter in coastguard livery blasts over them, red light winking.

Cooper blasphemes, nearly swerving off the road. The helicopter banks and heads east. ‘G-CILP,’ the DS says, reading the letters along the side. ‘That’s them. Not hanging around, are they?’

Within moments the craft is a speck. Abraham grimaces as his knees collide with the dash. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Let’s blue-light it.’

2

They reach North Devon District Hospital as the last light is fading. Earlier, Abraham dispatched two officers to meet the helicopter on the pad. He finds one of them in the accident-and-emergency waiting area.

‘Daniel Locke,’ Abraham asks. ‘What can you tell me?’

‘He was wearing an immersion suit when they fished him out,’ the officer replies. ‘Definitely saved his life, but he was still in a bad way. Core temperature down to twenty-eight degrees. They’ve been using a dialysis machine to warm his blood, which seems to have stabilized him. He’s not awake yet, but they don’t seem too concerned.’

‘What are the medical staff saying?’

‘You know what they’re like. Confidentiality and all that. Most of what I just told you we picked up from listening in. Can you believe they prioritized this guy? Over patients who didn’t try to kill their kids?’

Abraham knows why the hospital staff would have done it. But it doesn’t make it any easier for most people to understand. ‘Our healthcare practitioner is en route. If these doctors won’t talk to us, they can talk to her – get an understanding of how long Locke might take to recover and how quickly we can bring him in. Once the press getswind, this place will be a zoo. In the meantime’ – he glances around – ‘is there a place to get coffee?’

---