Page 51 of The Rising Tide

He doesn’t know why that clip of Fin Locke affected him so deeply. Right now, he can’t recall the boy’s exact words as he narrated his story to the camera, but he remembers the gist: a lonely old hunchback who could have found companionship if only he hadn’t driven people away. In a way, the character seemed too well observed to be a seven-year-old’s creation. But Abraham has no experience of children and never will.

He thinks of Lucy’s agony when she realized her daughter was also missing. How she’d flinched from his touch as he tried to comfort her. He hadn’t expected that to hurt quite so much as it did.

You’re not alone in this, he’d told her.I’ll be with you. Every step. Until we find them.

Cheap words. Because he hasn’t been with her. Not when she ventured on to that sea. Nor when she returned, broken, to be ignored by medical staff far more focused on Daniel Locke. ‘How many people do we have searching the coastline?’

‘As many as we could muster,’ Kowalski says. ‘Thirty orso officers, around one hundred civilians. But they’ve done all they can tonight. Conditions are so atrocious there’s a good chance they’d miss any signs. We’ll send them out again at first light. Hopefully, the worst of it will have passed by then. There’s been so much flooding inland we’ve had to divert some of the search-and-rescue effort to deal with it.’

Abraham recalls his conversation with coastguard rescue officers in Skentel. Cold water, they’d told him, lowers body temperature thirty times faster than cold air. At this time of year, the sea off this coast is nudging nine degrees. Daniel Locke was recovered after five hours, half dead despite his immersion suit. Another six hours have ticked by since then. If those kids are still in the water, they’re already dead. His greatest hope is that they’ve washed up somewhere south of Mortis Point. It’s the slimmest of possible chances – and depends on them having left the boat much further south than where the Mayday was broadcast. Otherwise, SARIS plots their likely drift taking them north-east towards the Bristol Channel. Even if theyhavewashed up along this stretch of coast, what chance have two frozen and exhausted kids of surviving the night?

‘What’s the latest forecast?’ he asks.

‘Next couple of hours, these winds should ease off a little. Rain, too. Can’t come soon enough, if you ask me. We’ve got two dead from an RTA outside Redlecker. And a falling tree in Soundsett hit a parked car with a couple of horny teenagers inside. Messy as hell, that one. Punched the driver’s head through his ribcage while he was groping his girlfriend’s tits. I’ll leave you with the image.’

Abraham hangs up. As he approaches the hospital’s entrance doors, a purple shape peels off the wall and beginsto flank him. He doesn’t need to look to know who he’s going to find.

She reeks of perfume and cigarettes. If the devil has a smell, doubtless this is it. ‘Detective Inspector Rose?’

Breezy and assured. No accent he can detect.

Abraham doesn’t break stride. ‘If you block Skentel’s high street with that truck again, you’re going to be unpopular with the locals.’

‘Iamthe locals. One of them, at least. And I told Max not to drive down that street. A blind man could see we’d get stuck. You look like you’ve had the day from hell. Can I buy you a coffee?’

‘Thank you, no.’

‘Is Daniel Locke out of danger?’

‘There’ll be a press conference in the morning.’

‘Did he kill those kids?’

‘You can ask all your questions in the morning.’

The front doors roll open, ejecting him into a maelstrom. Wind is driving rain horizontally across the car park. Black rivers of water are streaming down the tarmac to the entrance. Abraham pauses beneath the overhang. When the doors close behind him, he remembers that Cooper drove off in the pool car.

He hears the click of a piezo lighter. The roar of a tiny gas jet. Cigarette smoke sails past his face, whipped to shreds by wind.

‘You need a lift?’

Abraham turns, sees the same sharp jaw he remembers from Skentel’s high street, the same no-nonsense hair. But her eyes are wiser than he expected, more thoughtful. Suddenly, it’s harder to pin upon her all the stereotypes of her profession.

She holds his stare, sucking so hard on her cigarette that her cheeks invert. ‘Want one?’

When she offers the packet, Abraham shakes his head. As she goes to put it away he reaches out, then snatches back his hand.

She grins. It transforms her face. The packet dances back and forth. ‘Hold your breath, folks. What’s he going to choose?’

It’s a small moment, but it disarms him. He takes a cigarette, lighting it in the blue flame of her burner. The first pull hits his lungs like a wall. The second is softer. He feels a little tension seep from his shoulders.

‘Bad boy,’ she says. ‘Naughty, naughty. Emma Douglas, by the way – in case you didn’t know me from mynumerousPress Gazette awards.’

Her self-effacing style doesn’t fool him, but he still feels himself thawing. He’s had enough misery today. They stand side by side, wind snatching at their clothes. Abraham watches the rain.

‘It’s got a name, you know,’ Emma says.

‘What has?’

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