Page 86 of The Rising Tide

In all the years she’s known him, he’s never sounded so desolate. Jane Watson sags forwards and starts weeping.

Lucy forces herself to look again at the girl they were trying to save. It reallydoesn’tmake any sense. None of this does.

The dead girl’s wearing Billie’s favourite neon-green T-shirt; another strange thing. Under it is the same patterned bra Billie was wearing on Friday morning. On the girl’s legs are the same black gym shorts cut to mid-thigh, bisecting an identical tattoo.

But it isn’t Billie. It isn’t.

Lucy hears her own breathing; like the roar inside a seashell.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Gordon says. And then he starts crying too. Lucy pushes away his arms, breaks free. On hands and knees she crawls forwards. A sound comes from her throat she doesn’t understand.

The sea pushes cold water up the sand and calls it back. Around them the mist pulls close.

Lucy’s hand reaches out. She thinks again of the mother – out there somewhere right now – and the wrecking ball about to swing through her life.

Ligature marks around the dead girl’s ankles have turned the flesh dark grey. Did she drown while her feet were bound? That’s certainly how it looks.

There’s no God in this world, Lucy thinks. No omniscient creator. Only a deity of truly incalculable cruelty could allow suffering on a scale such as this.

Her hand descends. She touches lifeless skin. There’s a soapy feel to it. A coldness so acute it flows up her arm. It isn’t Billie, it isn’t. Because Billie – like the storm of recent days – is a force of nature too powerful to be curtailed.

In death, she wonders, where does all the love go? What happens to dreams and hopes, to memories and joys? Impossible, suddenly, to believe they just end. There might not be a God, but that’s not to say spirits don’t endure.

Lucy crawls closer. As gently as she can, she pulls her daughter’s head into her lap. She touches Billie’s hair, strokes Billie’s face, finds herself – for some strange reason – humming the same lullaby she sang back when she was breastfeeding.

This summer, for the first time in her life, the girl was to sail to the Faroe Islands. Now, and for ever more, she’ll be able to travel wherever she wants.

PART II

THIRTY

1

In a lavatory cubicle inside Barnstaple police station, Abraham Rose shakes two white pills into his fist and crunches them down without water. Tilting his head, he tries to draw clean air into his lungs. He imagines his chest as an empty receptacle filling with life-giving oxygen. But the air inside the cubicle stinks of urine and disinfectant. Abraham can only manage half a breath before he’s coughing up crap, thick and buttery and full of the stuff that’s going to kill him.

For a while he leans against the partition, trying not to choke. The pain is bad, but he can handle it. The important thing is to keep it hidden. Wiping his mouth, he returns the pill box to his jacket.

He returned from the beach an hour ago. He won’t forget the sight of Billie Locke on the sand, wind drying her salt-stiff clothes: captivating, even in death; astonishing in beauty and pathos and grace.

The post-mortem will happen next week. But Abraham saw the ligature marks on the girl’s ankles. He knows, from his limited knowledge of pathology, that they weren’t made after death. Billie was tied up before she was killed.

It’s the ending they all expected but no one wanted. Hundreds of square miles of ocean searched, swathes of coastline too. A well-run volunteer programme, a huge local response. And all of it for nothing. Billie Locke returned to Skentel in the end, but she left her life with the sea.

I drowned them. I drowned them both. I tied them up and put them in the water. And when they were gone I jumped in after.

Those words replay in Abraham’s head. Two minutes later he’s in the interview room, sitting across the table from the man who uttered them.

2

Daniel Locke’s been in custody twenty-four hours, but he looks like he’s endured far longer. Gone is the robotic arrogance from yesterday. His face is a mess of red eyes and chapped lips. The rims of his nostrils are as wet as a dog’s.

Abraham’s seen this kind of transformation before but never quite so dramatic, nor so soon. Locke’s demons, confined with their host in his cell, appear to be consuming him.

The man glances at his solicitor. His mouth stretches wide. Impossible to tell if he’s leering or grimacing. ‘Have you found him yet?’ he asks. ‘Have you found Fin?’

Abraham puts down his pen. He feels the urge to cough,stifles it. ‘We haven’t found your son, but we found your stepdaughter. Billie washed up this morning on Penleith Beach.’ He waits for a reaction, a comment. Across the desk, Locke clasps his hands together, a vile parody of prayer. ‘But you knew that might happen, didn’t you? Tell me why you put her in the water, Daniel.’

For a moment, it seems like Locke’s going to lunge across the table. Instead, he regains his self-control. ‘I want to talk to my wife.’

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