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Details begin to emerge.
The other boat’s a racing yacht. Larger thanHuntsman’s Daughter; smaller than theLazy Susan; far more modern than either. She sees its name – theCetus– and wonders if it’s a taunt; Cetus was the monster sent by Poseidon to punish Andromeda’s parents for their arrogance.
Movement, now, near the bow. Two figures, standing there. Lucy’s heart is a boulder in her chest.
She reverses thrust, halting her forward momentum, and flicks the stick into neutral. Between the two boats, the sea rises and falls like the lungs of something sleeping. Ten yards away, theCetusfloats with its bow pointed towardsHuntsman’s Daughter.
A few feet from the pulpit, no grab rail to protect him, stands Fin. Her little storyteller. Her superlative human.
A sound comes out of Lucy, then. Half bellow, half lament. Because her son is alive, he’salive– and yet his survival has never been more in doubt.
The two yachts, like satellites attracted by gravity, begin a gentle orbit. Lucy hears the slap of water againstthe hulls, the rasp of breath in her throat. She feels the back-and-forth twisting of her gut.
Fin starts crying – a low and miserable sound. He bites his lip and frowns and she knows he’s trying to be brave. ‘Please, Mummy, please,’ he moans. ‘I want to go, I want to go home.’
Standing beside him, the only other person on deck, is Bee.
FORTY-SEVEN
Abraham accelerates up the lane leading off Mortis Point, Wild Ridge burning in his rear-view mirror like a solar flare. When he brakes at the junction for the coast road, he hears the wail of sirens. Two pumps, from the sound of it. Some distance away yet.
Turning off the lane, he hurtles down the coastal road towards Skentel. Instinct tells him it’s the most likely place to find Lucy Locke. Below, through the hedgerows lining the route, he sees strobing blue lights heading north.
Abraham takes a left bend too fast, drifts over the centreline. He wrestles the wheel and corrects. The road straightens. Ahead are the two fire engines, racing towards him. Siren blaring, the first pump shoots past, an angry streak of red.
He brakes hard, waiting for the second pump to pass before he takes the Skentel turn-off. To his surprise, it sloughs off speed and swings in ahead of him.
Abraham cuts across the road after it. He hears the hiss of air brakes as the pump negotiates the switchbacks. At last it reaches Skentel’s narrow high street and passes the first shops. Outside the Goat Hotel, its brake lights flarered. Abraham skids to a stop. He remembers what happened five days ago – the TV truck that got stuck in the same position.
Swearing, he flings open his door and climbs out. Blue light strobes off Skentel’s whitewashed buildings. The sound from the siren is nauseating. When Abraham edges around the pump, he’s greeted by a street jammed with people and cars. Just as he feared, smoke is rising from the quay.
‘Out of the way!’ he roars. ‘Get these carsmoved!’
Shocked faces pivot towards him. But the street’s so crowded he can’t fight his way through. Losing patience, he climbs on to the bonnet of a stationary Ford, using it as a springboard to jump to the vehicle in front. He hears angry shouts, ignores them, leaps to the roof of an Audi. From the Audi’s bonnet he vaults on to a Vauxhall Corsa and from there into the flatbed of a Mitsubishi pick-up. In less than a minute, he’s on the quay.
Thick smoke is rising from the Drift Net. Abraham shoulders his way through. He doesn’t get far before someone snatches his arm. Wheeling around, furious, he recognizes the guy who grabbed him: Tyler Roedean, one of the Drift Net’s managers.
‘Got something for ya, man,’ Tyler says, pressing a scrap of paper at him. ‘Compliments of Lucy Locke.’
Abraham scans the handwritten sheet. When he glances at the bar, he sees the blinds have been pulled. ‘She’s gone?’
‘I … uh …’
‘Where?’
Tyler’s eyes slide away. ‘She just, like … vanished.’
Following his gaze to the floating dock, Abraham seesa single empty berth. He looks past it to the sea, but the breakwater wall blocks his view. Turning his head, he seeks out the lifeboat station. Then he runs to the caged switchback steps and climbs.
FORTY-EIGHT
Bee Tavistock is dressed in her signature style: black Doc Martens, black miniskirt, candy-cane tights. Lucy can read the T-shirt beneath her unbuttoned black cardigan:STAY BACK: I’M ALLERGIC TO MORONS.
Five years they’ve known each other – ever since Bee walked into the Drift Net and demanded a job. In anyone else, it would have seemed like arrogance. Bee had the charisma to pull it off.
Her make-up, today, is typically dramatic: false lashes, iridescent eye shadow, bubblegum-pink lipstick to match the bubblegum-pink hair.
A coiled line on deck connects a padlocked metal chain around Bee’s waist to a trio of roped-together gas tanks. A separate line attaches Fin’s ankle to a set of weightlifting plates.