Page 125 of Slack Tide Kill

The papers. What the papers say.

Was there something there?

He wasn't sure. It was tiny, like the flicker of a spark in a dark night. It needed kindling, and care, and time to grow into something bright. He sat like that for a while, arm bent, the whisky tilted so temptingly against his lips, and realized who he'd really damned with that debrief.

It wasn't just Sally.

An image came to him from the darkness. DCI Stewart, hanging from a rope in his own garage. Defeated by the case, maybe. More likely defeated by something he'd done, or hadn't done.

But it was too late, now. He'd made his own bed. Time to lie in it.

Gloria Mayhew had not meant to come to this place.

She had meant to drive home. She had got as far as the Winchelsea road and then found herself turning, and now she stood in the dark at the edge of St. Thomas's with the rain coming sideways off the marsh and her coat not buttoned.

The stone was small. He hadn't wanted anything else; her mother had been very firm about that, in the years when her mother still spoke about it.

'ROBERT JOHN STEWART'

She had not brought flowers. She never did. She had come here perhaps nine times in 30 years and every single time she had stood exactly here, brimming with emotions she'd never fully understood.

Anger at how he'd left her. Despair, that he'd seen no other way. Sadness, because despite it all, she missed him. He'd been such a good father. All her memories of him, hiding beneath his desk at the station, running between the officers in the bullpen, playing tag with Uncle Jack in the parking lot, at the dinner table, over Lego in their living room, it just didn't add up.

None of it added up.

Why had he done something so permanent? Why had he left her? She'd never understood, and she ached to.

Rain ran down her cheek. Never tears. She hadn't cried for him once. She tried to think of something she could say, some words that might matter, but as ever she found none.

She stayed another few minutes. There were no answers. Then she went back to the car and sat with her hands on the wheel, not starting the engine, until the windows had fogged completely and there was nothing to see out of them at all.

Tania Brown was still at her desk in her rented room at the Albion Hotel, Lydd. That was unusual, because Tania Brown would normally be in a bar somewhere by now, drinking cocktails and putting the smut of the day behind her.

But not tonight. She had two documents open in front of her.

The first was the one everybody else would run tomorrow. THE AMERICAN WHO GOT AN OFFICER KILLED. It was easy. Clean. It would do numbers for four days and then be gone, and she would be the 40th person to file it.

The second document was empty. There had to be another angle. Something that turned the whole thing on its edge, a spin, a way to turn this bread-and-butter teardown into something unique. Special. Career-making.

She'd worked for too long and too hard, seen too many opportunities pass her by, to just let this one go. It was there, it had to be, she could almost taste it.

She looked at the photograph again, taken two days earlier with a telephoto lens. It had come out remarkably, given the rain and the wind. It showed Sally Rogers sprinting across Dungeness beach against a black sky, dressed in her bloody fitness gear, hair torn sideways, covered in mud. She'd sat on it ever since, feeling something in her bones, though she hadn't known what.

The villain story bought half a day of middling coverage. But something fresh? Flip her to a hero, maybe? That could be worth a fortnight, if she could figure it out. Maybe even a book.

All the pieces seemed to be there, but she couldn't stitch them together. Too tired, maybe. She ran a hand down her face and checked the time. Coming on for midnight. She had a dawn filing deadline, and had no intention of sleeping until she'd run every possible idea into the ground.

She went to the tiny kitchenette, really just a tray with a kettle, and prepped an instant coffee, her second since 10 p.m. She settled back into her seat, fingers on keys, straining for inspiration.

Then her phone rang. Not so unusual when she was on a deadline. She checked the display. Now that was unusual. She didn't quite believe it, but the numbers didn't lie.

She answered and raised the phone to her ear.

He washed a cup, standing in his tight but perfectly neat, perfectly ordered kitchen.

He did it properly. Inside first, then the rim, then the handle, then the base, which nobody ever did. He rinsed it and held it up and turned it under the little yellow bulb until he was satisfied, then he dried it and put it on the shelf with the others, handle out, all in a line.

The rain came down on the roof with a hard, metallic patter. Getting louder. That was the storm coming on already. In the background, the weather channel on the radio upgraded its predictions for wind strength, rainfall and high tides across the south of England.