Page 75 of The Rising Tide

TWENTY-FIVE

1

Twenty minutes later Abraham’s at his desk, looking at a long list of people to call back. For a while he reflects on his conversation with Lucy Locke. Surprising, given Daniel’s confession, that she’s so desperate to see him.

Tell her she deserves every fucking thing she gets.

Is Lucy really that clueless about her husband’s animosity towards her? She was in the hospital when he freaked out on the bed. Is there a reason, other than the obvious, for her insistence on a meeting? Is she simply delusional?

Abraham thinks of Billie and Fin. He wonders what it was like, growing up in that house. He knows Billie Locke applied to Sea Shepherd, the marine conservation charity, for a crewing position. Other than her clear environmental passion, was there another reason she wanted to travel?

He recalls his conversation with Sergeant Jesse Arnold, Lucy Locke’s FLO. Regrettable that the weather chaos delayed the pair’s first contact. Scant chance, now, that any bond of trust will form between them.

Arnold had visited Lucy down at the quay. She’d explained that the possibility of finding Billie and Fin alive was now negligible. Angered, Lucy had insisted that her kids were in their immersion suits. Then Arnold revealed that the three remaining suits had been found onboard the yacht.

‘At which point,’ Arnold said, ‘she just lost it. And I don’t mean your regular flash-in-the-pan kind of losing it. This was full-on rage.Sustainedrage, too. She smashed up her computer, took out a shelf with all her files, destroyed plenty of other stuff as well. But the look in her eyes was the thing. For a moment there, I genuinely thought she’d attack me.’

‘It’s understandable, though, don’t you think?’

‘In all honesty, I’m not sure. This felt like something different. I’m no wallflower, but Ireallydidn’t like being alone with her in that room.’

‘What happened then?’

‘She grabbed her crash helmet and bailed. It was all … I don’t know, sir. It’s hard to explain just howintenseit was.’

Abraham recalls Lucy’s behaviour at the hospital. How she’d burst screaming into Daniel’s room on Lundy Ward. He thinks of their earlier conversation: how she’d still wanted to see her husband, despite learning of his double murder charge.

‘He wouldn’t haveconfessed,’ she’d said.

Arnold isn’t the only officer to have felt Lucy’s wrath. PCs Noakes and Lamb – first responders at the harbour – interviewed her at the Drift Net. At the time, no one knew Daniel had taken Fin with him on the boat. Understandable, even so, that Lucy would be upset. She’d just learned her husband was missing. And yet Noakes and Lamb had still found her behaviour odd. Lucy reacted badly to beingcalled Mrs Locke, demanding to be addressed by her first name, screaming it so loudly that half the bar fell silent.

He recalls something she said to him on their journey to Skentel:I went away. For a while. Then I came back.

Abraham checks the logbook, reviewing all the decisions made so far. Then he does something he shouldn’t: he goes fishing. The Police National Computer holds no information on Lucy Locke so he asks Cooper to check ECRIS, the European Criminal Records Information System. Data on there should get ported to the PNC, but the system isn’t infallible. Once that’s done, he phones Patrick Beckett in the Criminal Finance team and asks him to widen his investigation.

Abraham turns back to his laptop. His hands hover over the keys. He tells himself not to do what he knows he’s about to do. It’ll only hurt. It always hurts. But he’s already typing. And then her Facebook page is open on his screen.

No privacy settings, still. He can look at everything she posts without becoming her friend. Sometimes, he’s dared to think it’s deliberate – a window left open, through which she knows he’ll be able to see. But of course that’s ridiculous. So many decades have passed. Doubtful she even remembers his name.

Six months since he last checked in on her. In that time Sarah’s made eight more posts. The latest is a selfie with her husband and two grown-up daughters. They’re on a hill in the Pennines, rain-soaked and wind-blasted:They’ve promised me a roaring fire, shepherd’s pie and red wine later. They’d better be telling the truth!!!!

Abraham scrolls through her other posts: snapshots of a woman enjoying her blessings.What a fool you are, he thinks.What a mess you made of your life.

Ten minutes later, he holds his press conference. He tells the gathered journalists that following a confession, Daniel Locke has been charged with the murders of Billie and Fin. He fields a dozen or so questions, then heads to his car.

2

Bibi Trixibelle Carter is nothing like Abraham imagined on the phone. He expected an old woman in pearls and a dusty evening gown, possibly surrounded by cats. What he gets is wellies, a bramble-torn Barbour and a pack of baying dogs. Bibi herself is white-haired and ribbon-thin. Abraham can’t guess her age. She could just as easily be seventy as one hundred.

Her house stands on the coastal road two miles from Skentel, no other buildings in sight. She’s outside when he arrives, feeding her dogs lumps of carcass that look home-butchered. When Abraham slips through the gate, two spittle-flecked gundogs put their paws on his midriff and commence a busy sniffing of his crotch.

‘Nero! Trajan! Leave the poor man alone,’ Bibi shouts. She tosses a gruesome chunk of flesh at Abraham’s feet. The animals fall on it noisily. ‘Into the house with you,’ she tells him. ‘I’ll make a pot of tea.’

Inside, the rooms look like they haven’t been decorated in fifty years: threadbare rugs, dog-scratched furniture and cracked plaster walls. Bibi makes space for him on a leather sofa piled with newspapers. She serves Earl Grey into the finest bone china. Then she stirs up the fire and retreats to a wingback chair. ‘Remind me of your title.’

‘Detective Inspector Abraham Rose.’

‘Detective Inspector, that’s good. And Abraham’s a fine name.’

---