Page 24

Their eyes meet. Lucy knows what he’s thinking.
Victim.
But she isn’t. No way. This doesn’t end with an empty boat.
DI Abraham Rose lowers his phone. ‘We don’t know for certain that Billie went with Daniel, but it’s safer to assume that she did. I’m going to need a full description. Photos, contact details, the works.’
He reaches out, placing a huge hand over her own. Lucy flinches away. She doesn’t want his compassion. Empathy, from this gravel-voiced detective, means somethingtrulyawful has happened. She won’t believe that. Her children are alive. Her husband too. Missing, yes. In terrible danger, possibly. But alive.
In his expression she sees something she doesn’t understand.
‘You’re not alone in this,’ he says. ‘I’ll be with you. Every step.’
Lucy stares, unable to break eye contact.
‘Until we find them,’ he adds.
Her throat clenches. Boa-constrictor tight.
SEVEN
1
Even in the most acute distress, Lucy Locke couldn’t bear his touch. Abraham shouldn’t be surprised by that. He knows he’s a uniquely unattractive man. Whatdoessurprise him is his hurt. It’s a cut he wasn’t expecting; the opening of a wound he thought long healed. Perhaps it stings more because of who dealt it – a woman whose world, until an hour ago, had seemed so obviously steeped in love.
He can’t forget Lucy’s words when asked how long she’d been with Daniel:Nine years. Married after two. I love him – even more now than I did then. He loves me too. Not every couple can say that after nearly a decade, but we can.
Miraculous that she could be so steadfast in light of what’s happened. Or perhaps it isn’t. Perhaps love obscures as much as it reveals. How on earth would he know? Certainly, no woman has made, or ever will make, such proclamations about Abraham Rose.
There’d been a chance, once.
In his head, his mother’s voice from that time:God ordained your path. And that girl wasn’t it.
Beside him, Cooper curses, braking to a stop. Lifting his head, Abraham sees why. Some idiot has tried to drive an outside-broadcast truck down to the harbour. The vehicle, equipped with an enormous satellite dish, is nearly as wide as Skentel’s cobbled high street. Cooper thumps the horn in frustration.
Abraham throws open his passenger door. A gust of wind tries to slam it shut. He glances over his shoulder at Lucy Locke. ‘This isn’t clearing any time soon. Come on. It’ll be faster to walk.’ To Cooper, he adds, ‘Find a place to park. Then meet me on the quay.’
When he extracts himself from the passenger seat, cold rain strikes his face. He smells seaweed and tastes salt. On the roofs of the whitewashed buildings, herring gulls have formed miserable colonies. Lucy casts them a dark look.
Together they hurry down the street. When they get to the TV truck, Abraham sees the problem. Squeezing along the kerb to muscle its way through, the vehicle’s burst a front tyre. Its driver is loosening wheel nuts with a wrench. A woman in a purple cashmere coat stands over him, drawing on a cigarette as if it’s oxygen.
Journo, Abraham thinks. When his nostrils catch her smoke, his lungs tighten with craving. No advantage in berating her or the driver. Already, this has morphed into something far worse than anyone expected. The last thing he needs is a pissed-off hack. Lucy studies the woman as she passes. She must know her personal torment is about to become a news item. And yet Abraham sees something unexpected in her expression. Not just horror but calculation.
Chin tilted, the journalist returns Lucy’s stare. Abrahamwonders if she realizes that this is the wife, the mother. But then he sees what she sees: a young woman in an RNLI jacket hurrying down to the quay. A story, but not the one she thinks.
He slides past the TV truck and there it is below him: the sea. Abraham’s breath catches. The waves – huge, muscled slabs of grey water – look like they’re rising and falling in slow motion. In the harbour, the remaining boats clank and lurch on the swell. One, in particular, takes his interest: a navy forty-footer moored to the breakwater wall. A police officer, pelted by spray, stands guard beside it.
He thinks of that motif he found earlier – his initials inked in shaky capitals beneath a protective dome – and grimaces.
Overhead, the storm’s vanguard has moved in. Abraham feels like he’s witnessing the arrival of an extinction event. No longer does he glimpse shapes flickering inside the clouds. Earlier, he’d assumed they were gulls or guillemots. Now, he could almost imagine they were windborne devils making landfall.
Of everything he sees before him, what robs his breath most is that fleet of tiny boats dispersing across a turbulent sea: Skentel’s residents setting out on the water, hunting for two of their own.
Threeof their own, Abraham thinks. And wonders, should they find Daniel Locke, what they’ll do to him.
2
The Drift Net is a fug of warm air and raised voices. Abraham smells good coffee. His lungs scream for a cigarette.