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e said.

‘It can’t be difficult,’ she said. ‘I’ll just paddle like Edgar does.’

Poe ignored her hopelessly naive remark.

‘Why didn’t you tell me we’d have to swim the last bit?’

She folded her arms and ignored him.

‘Because you knew I’d kick you out before I drove into the sea,’ he said, answering his own question.

He raced through his options. Decided he didn’t have any. Sending her back was a death sentence, as was leaving her with the car. Even if she could swim, the Walney Channel was treacherous when the tide came in.

She would have to come with him.

The BMW juddered, then stopped. Poe selected reverse and tried to ease out of the rut he’d created. Managed to move back a few inches. Selected forwards and tried rocking the car out.

Nothing.

‘You ready to get your feet wet?’ he said to Bradshaw.

She grabbed a plastic bag and wrapped her laptop in it before stuffing it into her rucksack. She removed her Converse trainers and put them in too.

‘It’ll be easier to walk barefoot,’ she said. ‘Simple physics.’

Poe had nothing he needed to take with him. He left his keys with the car in case the unlikely happened and one of Nightingale’s cops was able to salvage it.

By the time they got out of the car the water was already lapping at their feet.

Chapter 76

Poe fixed his eyes on the horizon and forced himself to keep moving forwards. He was exhausted. The cold dead sand shifted with every step. It sucked at his boots and tested his laces to their limits. After a hundred yards his jeans were soaked through and felt like they’d doubled in weight. After two hundred yards it felt like his boots were encased in concrete. He was sucking in air harder than he thought possible, his ribs heaving in and out like bellows, but he couldn’t seem to fill his lungs. His thigh muscles were trembling and he was close to a major cramp.

And it was cold.

The water was stealing the little heat he’d recouped in the car. His feet were numb and he had pain in his fingertips. His teeth were chattering and his whole body was violently shaking.

Bradshaw wasn’t faring much better. Her hair was plastered wetly against her head and her lips had a blue tinge.

She gave him a fierce smile.

He’d worried she’d slow him down but the reverse was true – because he was wearing heavy jeans and she was wearing lightweight cargo pants, he was slowing her down. And she’d been right: it was easier to walk barefoot. Where Poe’s thick hiking boots meant he had to pull his feet out of the wet sand step-by-step using brute force, she was breaking the suction just by wiggling her toes.

Cramp ripped up his hamstrings. It was excruciating and the pain brought him to his knees. He screamed but forced himself to get up and wait for it to pass. Eventually it did.

‘Are you OK, Poe?’

‘I’m fine,’ he said, massaging the back of his legs. ‘Come on, we’re nearly there.’

The tide was laced with sea foam and Poe knew that was because it was moving faster than before. It was surging at knee height and the weight of the water was almost enough to topple him.

In front of him Bradshaw fell, and for a moment disappeared from view. Poe couldn’t move any faster. By the time he reached her she was up and on the move again, not even stopping to cough out a mouthful of seawater.

‘Tilly!’ he yelled. ‘Five more minutes!’

He could see the pier. Could even make out the stone steps to the side.

The current he was bracing himself against changed direction slightly and, because he wasn’t paying attention, it caught him unawares.