Page 92 of Slack Tide Kill

He'd come this far by taking each part in its turn and never once reaching ahead, and the discipline of that had become a kind of body he lived in. But he was permitted, tonight, a small trespass. He allowed himself to think about the marsh as it had once been. Before the 'world of men' had encroached too far, with their sewers and pumps. Back when it had been truly wild. Chaotic. He imagined everything they'd built going under and staying down, the roads and the walls and the drains and the pumps and the hundreds of years of careful order.

He thought about how quiet it would be.

The tap dripped once. He tightened it. Then he sat down in the dark and listened to the wind get up, angry still, but calmer than he had been in years.

37 BAD WITNESSES

Sally lay in the back of the ambulance, her body leaden and senseless. Her clothes were replaced with blankets, the wound in her scalp treated. At some point Logan returned with a hot chocolate. She sat up and looked out as Silas and Jerome Rook were brought up by armed officers and pressed into their wagon. Liam stood nearby, sipping his hot chocolate and shaking.

He hadn't changed from his sodden suit. He wasn't even looking at anything, just facing the side of another ambulance. Mayhew stalked past, looked at Sally once then away, barking orders.

DI Gemmell climbed into the ambulance.

"We're going back to Rye," he said, sitting beside her. "We'll run a proper debrief when you're feeling better."

The rear doors closed. Sally studied him. His nice suit was covered with mud. There was a pin in his lapel, a pink cancer ribbon. He seemed uncomfortable, hovering in his seat. The ambulance began to roll away.

"What's wrong, Stephen?" she asked.

He turned but didn't answer, and it chilled Sally.

"Nancy Cagen. Were her eyes missing?"

Gemmell looked down at her. His expression seemed to war for a moment. "Not her eyes. Her ears."

Sally thought she must have misheard. "What?"

"I haven't seen it. Just heard it on the radio. Ears missing."

That took a moment to absorb. Ears, not eyes? It broke the pattern. "What about shells?"

He shook his head. "Not shells. Bulrushes." The pulse in his throat danced. "Pushed into her auditory canals."

Sally sat with that. Nancy Cagen, mutilated, but in a new way. Collier's words rose from her subconscious, the garbled quote from an ancient fragment of Greek philosophy. Eyes and ears were bad witnesses for men with barbarian souls.

The weight of that settled across her like a thick layer of silt.

Jason Harrow had paid with his eyes. Nancy Cagen with her ears. That was the pattern. It matched perfectly. But what about these victims made them bad witnesses? Or barbarian souls?

What did the pattern mean?

She pictured the killer leaning over Nancy Cagen. Cagen had probably been drugged on the same mixture of ketamine and cardiotoxin, immobile. She must've gazed up as the blade came down, conscious as the cuts began.

A wave of nausea washed over her and she gagged.

"Shit," Gemmell blurted, grabbing for a cardboard tray and holding it up, but she managed to get the urge under control.

"False alarm," she muttered. "I'm OK."

"Feel like I'm on uncle duty again," Gemmell said. "When the kids get sick, the parents get sick too. And this is sickening."

Sally gulped. Eyes and ears. The quote ran through her mind. Was this punishment? Harrow and Cagen, did they have anything in common? What had they seen, or heard, or ignored?

"You're an uncle," Sally blurted, trying to push the nausea back. "Nephews or nieces?"

"Two boys, one girl." Gemmell slightly lowered the tray, but didn't put it down. "None over six, and still getting sicker than I've ever seen every winter."

Sally chuckled. "Lot of time indoors. The bugs spread."