Page 59 of The Rising Tide

‘Got to find Billie and Fin.’

Noemie screws up her face. ‘Hon, after what you went through yesterday, I—’

Lucy doesn’t hear the rest. She’s already left the room.

2

Downstairs, she shrugs on her parka and hobbles to the living room. Embers glow in the grate from last night’s fire. She goes to the velvet drapes, rips them open.

Cold half-light pours in. Lucy narrows her eyes against it.

That sky. That sea.

The tide has rolled in overnight. Northwards, Penleith Beach has shrunk to a narrow strip of sand. Flotsam tumbles in the surf. Water swells around the rocks dislodged from Mortis Point.

South of the peninsula, Skentel looks like it’s been hit by an aerial bombardment. At least three buildings are roofless. Perhaps a quarter of the trees lining its slope have been flattened. A telephone pole has come down near the church. Debris litters the streets: broken satellite dishes, splintered fence panels, bits of shrubbery, rubble. In the harbour, a yacht is floating keel-up.

With the cloud cover so thick, it could be any time of the morning. Lucy’s internal clock tells her it’s a little before dawn. She grabs her binoculars, training them on the stretches of coastline she can see.

Jake’s words from last night echo in her head:The shoreline search has been stood down till first light. It’s just too difficult to see anything.

Lucy sees no searchers out looking. A few miles offshore, a tiny orange boat is ploughing a white wake. The Tamar-class lifeboat? Or the inshore D-class? Panning south with the binoculars, she seeks out the RNLI boathouse. From here she can’t tell whether its steel cradle is occupied. Lights are blazing inside. At least someone there is busy.

Lucy stuffs the binoculars into her pocket. Back in the hall, she meets Noemie coming down the stairs.

‘You have a plan,’ her friend says. ‘That’s good. I want to help.’

‘Then you’d better keep up,’ Lucy tells her. ‘Because we don’t have much time.’ In the kitchen, she checks the wall clock: quarter to seven. ‘One thing I know without doubt: Daniel will have done everything he can to keep them alive. I know what people think. But he’s not the kind of man to …’

Tightness in her throat. She can’t finish the sentence. From a cupboard she finds a box of paracetamol and swallows two pills. At the sink, she fills a tumbler with water and knocks it back.

Her keys are on the counter.

‘Car,’ Lucy says, drawing up short. She reached the hospital by ambulance. Tommo drove her home.

‘Shit,’ Noemie replies. ‘It’s still down in Skentel.’

‘That’s OK, we’ll ride.’

Back in the cloakroom, she grabs two crash helmets. Outside, she raises the garage door, revealing Daniel’s old Triumph.

The bike wakes on Lucy’s first kick of the starter. Once Noemie’s climbed on, they peel out of the garage.

3

The lane off the peninsula is clogged with snapped branches and fallen saplings. When they reach the coastal road, it’s even worse.

Although Lucy saw Penleith Beach from the house, she still wants to check it out. At the turn-off, she steers the Triumph down the track. Sand coats everything – the trees are rusty with it. Each gust of wind raises a blizzard of tinygrains; they hiss off Lucy’s crash helmet, crackle against her visor.

She climbs the backshore dune, grabbing handfuls of marram grass to pull herself up. The sea is a dirty wash of grey. Violent still, and dark.

Near the rocks of Mortis Point, a trio of seals are watching her. Immediately, she thinks of Billie. Not general recollections but a specific one: the girl in her bedroom two days ago, hunched over her Chromebook. When Lucy walks in with clean laundry, Billie turns away too slowly to hide her tears.

A video is playing onscreen. The scene is a shallow bay. Grinning men stand waist-deep in water, armed with hooks and knives. A huge pod of dolphins is swimming towards them, fleeing a flotilla of small boats. Pretty soon the animals run out of deep water. That’s when they discover death wading among them.

The men select their prizes from whatever comes close. They lunge at the panicking animals, stabbing with knives and hooks. Their killing method, once the first strikes are delivered, is to saw the dolphins open behind their heads. It’s not quick, but it’s messy – bloodgushesinto the water. And yet, strangely, it appears to be fun. The more the men kill, the more they want to kill. They grow competitive with each other, less careful with their knives. Injured dolphins thrash to bloody exhaustion. Others are only partially hacked open before being abandoned. Mothers swim in circles, trying to shield their calves, but the young are easiest to catch and quickest to kill. Afterwards, the mothers go more quietly.

Thegrindadráp, Lucy realizes. She’s heard all the counter-arguments. Now she’s seen the reality.

---