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‘How we doing?’ he whispered.

Bradshaw shrugged.

Even if he hadn’t been to Snab Point before, Poe wouldn’t have needed directions to find it. The air was flashing like a rock concert. Nightingale had called in the cavalry. There were at least twelve police cars, two of which Poe recognised as armed response vehicles. They all had their blue lights on.

He slowed as he approached them. He had to. He could see Nightingale on her phone, her neck craning to see where he was. He flashed his headlights.

‘I see you,’ she said. ‘Park where you can and we’ll get you kitted out. Everyone’s wearing a stab-proof vest.’

Poe said nothing.

He had no intention of wearing a stab-proof vest.

He had no intention of stopping …

Chapter 75

Bradshaw’s solution had been simple.

Simple but reckless, the type of thing he usually came up with.

The tide was coming in too fast to drive across but it wasn’t yet in far enough for the marine unit to get an RIB afloat.

Bradshaw’s answer was to drive out into the Walney Channel as far as the tide would allow, abandon the car on the sand flats and then do the rest on foot. A variation on what they’d done with the quad on their way to Shap Wells not an hour before.

She said the maths worked. If they were in luck, and if it wasn’t an aberrant tide, there was a 60 per cent chance they wouldn’t drown. Unfortunately there was a 100 per cent chance he would lose his car to the Irish Sea and a zero per cent chance he’d be able to make a claim on his insurance.

Poe trusted Bradshaw’s maths and, as he couldn’t see another option, instead of following Nightingale’s directions to park and collect a stab-proof vest, he accelerated past her, ignored the shouted instructions and the warning signs about not driving on a Scene of Special Scientific Interest and drove straight into the sea …

‘Poe!’ Nightingale screamed into her phone. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?! Get back here now, that’s an order!’

‘Sorry, ma’am,’ he said, ‘this is an NCA operation now.’

‘Poe, you listen to—’

He ended the call. He hadn’t enjoyed that. He had a great deal of respect for Nightingale and would have preferred to do as she asked.

He turned to Bradshaw.

‘Just you and me now, Tilly.’

‘We’ll get there in time, Poe,’ she said.

As soon as he was into the Walney Channel proper, when grass ended and the sand started, Poe slowed down and engaged the four-wheel drive function. Speed wasn’t their friend any more. Speed would get them stuck before they’d reached where Bradshaw had calculated they could abandon the car and still have enough time to get to the island without drowning. She told him he had to keep to a steady twenty for as far as he could but he kept it at thirty while he dared. Tried to build a bit of a safety margin.

It was a surprisingly smooth ride.

Poe was scared. Terrified even. He glanced across at Bradshaw, still staring at her laptop screen, and drew strength from her again. If she could face the incoming Irish Sea and whatever lay at the end, then he damn well could. He set his jaw and, fighting every instinct he had to go faster, found the courage to slow down.

Sheep Island was now in his rear-view mirror and Piel Island was coming up straight ahead. Poe bore left. Two minutes later Montague Island came into view. It was already surrounded by water. At least fifty yards.

Poe reckoned they still had half a mile to go and the BMW felt sluggish as the wheels dug into the wet sand.

He slowed to ten miles an hour.

‘We might have to swim the last bit, Poe,’ Bradshaw said.

‘Tilly, you can’t swim,’ h