Page 52 of Slack Tide Kill

"Officer Rogers," came the steely voice of Dr. Knight. Her face appeared on the screen, gray hair cinched back tight, mid-50s and wearing every fine wrinkle like a seam through granite. Her blue eyes bored through the screen. "Officer Liam O'Connell. We have been waiting for your call."

"Thank you for your time, Dr. Knight. We'd welcome any assistance you can offer."

Knight's left eyebrow raised slightly. "Of course you would. The crime you face is both heinous and bizarre. Yet there is an underlying logos, or logic, if you have ears to hear it."

"We're ready."

"I doubt that. I have followed both your careers since our last collaboration. Sally Rogers, the wrecking ball of the FBI, the Bulletproof Belle, driven by an animal addiction to 'justice'. Dark Peak may have satisfied your demons for a time, but the beast always calls for more, does it not?"

Sally said nothing. That seemed to annoy Knight, and she shifted her gaze.

"Then there's Liam O'Connell. One-time prodigy of the Met, destined for the youngest-ever DCI rank, but fooled by a ten-penny partner's lies. How is that shame wearing on you, Officer? Are you drowning in it, or have you found a way to cope?"

Sally looked at Liam. His cheeks were pale and his eyes flashed.

"Dr. Knight, it can't be necessary to–"

"Every instrument is blunt, Officer Rogers," Knight interrupted. "Some more than others. But the wise surgeon knows both the strengths and weakness of all their tools, and operates accordingly."

She waved a hand, and the other two members of the Fates appeared on the laptop screen: DeVon Collier on the left, a sallow-faced black man in his early 40s, with darting brown eyes and gray-streaked hair; Dr. Olivia Shaw on the right, almost a younger mirror of Knight, with intense green eyes and a severe expression.

"You face a double murder on Dungeness," Knight went on, "separated by 30 years but linked by the insertion of cockle shells into empty eye sockets. With this simple act, your killer places their victims inside a symbolic register that runs millennia deep. That suggests either a highly educated mind, or someone who has absorbed the landscape so completely that its symbolic vocabulary became their own."

Sally frowned. "What do you mean, millennia deep?"

Knight turned. "Mr. Collier."

DeVon Collier cleared his throat and began to speak, his voice soft but assured. "The use of shells calls to mind the Venus iconography." He offered a faint smile. "As in Botticelli's well-known painting, the goddess of beauty and birth riding a dead, hollow scallop to shore. Make that shell a cockle, by turns a symbol of love, the incoming tide and wild nature itself, and you have a potent combination. Scallops are also a pilgrim symbol dating to at least Shakespeare's era, associated with journeys to the tomb of St. James at the terminus of the Camino de Santiago."

He paused and Sally took a moment to absorb that. "Santiago. That's the famous pilgrim trail in Spain."

Collier nodded. "Legend says St. James' body was being shipped to the Iberian peninsula when a storm hit. The body was lost, then recovered several days later on the beach, miraculously unharmed and coated with scallop shells."

"So they're a religious symbol?"

"Yes, evocative of transformation through suffering. St. James was the first martyr of Jesus' 12 apostles. Any killer who uses a shell like it may be making a statement about love, death, the nature of the soul, and possibly the endless battle between chaos and order."

Sally looked at Liam. He looked furious, and she had to head him off before he erupted.

"Why chaos and order?"

"There is an older reference, also Greek in nature, from the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus. You may know his most famous aphorism, often mistranslated as, 'You can never step in the same river twice.' His philosophy was one of eternal and constant flux. Everything changes. Nothing stays the same."

Sally frowned. "That's Dungeness. Everything about it. The shingle is creeping constantly. The storms come on in seconds then fade just as quickly. Nothing lasts."

"Quite. Dungeness is the quintessential Heraclitean landscape. Romney Marsh around it is the same, or used to be; a place of shifting waters and impermanent routes, ruled by the tide. But by far the more interesting quote is tied to the etching you found on the cockle shells themselves."

Sally's attention sharpened. "The numbers? 8107."

"I have studied the photographs taken in situ, Officer Rogers, and I believe '8107' is a misreading, specifically of the first character."

"I thought it was off, somehow. You think it's not an 8?"

"I believe it is not a number at all. With some certainty, I believe it is the letter 'B', making the entire inscription 'B107'. This determinant precisely matches the naming method for Heraclitus' fragmented writings."

"Wait, what? B107 matches a piece of this Greek philosopher's work?"

"It does indeed. I trust you will find it uniquely relevant to this case." Collier paused a moment, as if bracing himself. "The full fragment runs, 'Eyes and ears are bad witnesses for men who have barbarian souls.'"