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Ahead, a red Nissan pulls out of a side road, directly into their path. Its driver sees the approaching blue lights and locks his brakes. Cooper flicks the wheel. The car rocks wildly, veering into the opposite lane with no loss of momentum.
Cooper throws a daggered look at the Nissan’s driver as they pass. ‘Sliding under the warmer air hugging thecoast,’ he continues. ‘The warm air rises and its moisture condenses.’
‘Quite a sight,’ Abraham mutters, releasing his grip on the door rest.
The road, now, is flanked by tall hedgerows. Cooper hugs the white line as they round a blind bend. ‘In the most extreme cases,’ he says, ‘you’ll see vortices along the leading edge. Gustnadoes, they’re called.’
‘I didn’t realize you were so interested in weather.’
In truth, Abraham hadn’t realized Cooper was interested in much at all. There’s a wife somewhere, he believes. Has he seen a photo on Cooper’s desk, confirming that? About the only thing he knows for sure is that the man never seems to eat his meals at a table or use a knife and fork.
If he had his time again, he’d make far more effort with those around him. Too late now.
Abraham shifts his weight, hunting for a more comfortable position. The bar beneath the passenger seat is broken. As a result, his six-foot-four-inch frame is squeezed into a space more suited to a dwarf. Seatbelt or not, if Cooper hits another vehicle, Abraham’s face is going through the windscreen.
He distracts himself by recalling what he knows about the situation they’re racing to meet. Just under three hours ago, the coastguard picked up a distress call from Daniel Locke, skipper of theLazy Susan. Locke went off air before relaying his position, but rescuers approximated the signal. A lifeboat located the vessel, but not Daniel.
Along this part of the coast, a sad but unexceptional tragedy. Then, thirty minutes ago, Locke’s wife called 999.Arriving at her son’s school for pick-up, she’d learned that her husband had collected the boy hours earlier.
It’s the kind of case few investigating officers relish and from which there are likely no good outcomes.
The boy, Fin Locke, is seven years old. Hazel eyes, mouse-brown hair, 110 centimetres tall. He wears thick plastic glasses with characters fromThe Avengersalong the side and was dressed in his Headlands Junior School uniform. Abraham hasn’t seen a picture, but he knows when he does it’ll snap his heart in two.
So far, that’s all he has on the boy. Pulling out his notebook, he reviews what he scribbled down about the father.
Daniel Locke. Forty-two years old. Blue eyes, black hair. Five foot ten, average build, a four-inch scar on his right forearm. Last recorded sighting around 8 a.m., when his wife says he left the house. He told her he was heading to Locke-Povey Marine, an outfitting company he co-owns. Right now, no one there is answering the phone. A patrol car has been dispatched to check the place out, but with so few officers assigned to this stretch of coast, even the simplest of tasks takes time. Meanwhile, a uniformed patrol in Skentel is searching for Locke’s car.
Abraham looks up from his notes. Westwards, above the treeline, that wall of black stallions charges closer.
Shelf cloud, he thinks.
The gust front of a major weather system.
Abraham hasn’t yet glimpsed the ocean. The coastguard chatter suggests that conditions are rapidly deteriorating. He wonders how long the search can continue. And he wonders, more than anything, what Daniel Locke did to his son.
There are no more vehicles in front of them. Nothingbut empty road and sky. Cooper switches off the siren. They blast along the carriageway, blue light bouncing off the road signs. Finally, through a break in the trees, Abraham spies the sea.
Anyone dismissing the recent weather warnings as hyperbole can’t dismiss them now. From coast to horizon a destructive force has mustered that’s frightening to behold. The muscles tighten in Abraham’s neck, his chest. If ever there was a sight to confirm God’s power over His creation, this is it. Troubling that he doesn’t find himself more awed. How cruel – that at the point in his life when he needs his faith most, he canfeelit ebbing away.
While the sky has marshalled black stallions, the sea commands white chargers; rank upon rank of them chase towards the land. The rocky stacks beyond the peninsula known as Mortis Point are being smashed. And yet in the instant before trees yet again block his view, he sees something remarkable: a flotilla of yachts and fishing vessels spreading out from Skentel’s harbour.
‘I don’t envy them,’ Cooper mutters. ‘Not one jot.’
Abraham can’t agree. If finding the boy is his ordained task, he has far more chance at sea. Of course, he has to find the father too, but it’s the boy he wants to save.
Glancing back at his notes, he spots something there that disturbs him: his initials, inked in shaky capitals, sheltering beneath a dome. He’s been scrawling this motif everywhere recently. Hurriedly, he scratches it out.
Abraham feels a familiar pain spreading out across his back, sharpening when he breathes. He clenches his teeth against it, taking short sips of air. His pills are in his jacket pocket. He’s already swallowed more than he should. He can’t take more without Cooper seeing.
Flipping down the sun visor, he examines himself in the mirror. Like his overlarge frame, every one of his features is supersized: lumpen nose, thick ears, Neanderthal brow. Beneath it his eyes are a strange combination: fierce and sad and dull. A forty-year smoking habit has wrinkled the skin around them.
Sometimes he thinks he was chiselled at speed from the roughest clay to hand. A priest once suggested something similar: that God, knowing the importance of Abraham’s future works, deployed His servant in haste. Abraham might have taken comfort in that, had he thought it true.
He’s grateful, at least, that his face betrays few signs of his disease. Nothing, so far, to alert anyone he’s terminal.
Abraham coughs, too suddenly to catch it. Mustard-coloured sputum spatters against the mirror, along with a pink mist of blood. He grimaces, glancing at Cooper. Thankfully, the DS hasn’t noticed.
The car slows. Abraham tips forward in his seat. He wipes the mirror with his sleeve, flips up the visor and sees a white sign ahead:HEADLANDS JUNIOR SCHOOL.Beyond it, a low-rise modern building stands beside a sports field. Cooper swings the car through the front gates.