Page 59 of Slack Tide Kill

Liam held her gaze for a moment, then looked back at his plate. His jaw worked and his cheeks flushed slightly. "It's not like that. It's… I'm fine."

Sally left it at that.

The candle between them guttered in some unseen draught and a fresh welter of rain ran in sheets down the windows, warping the street lights into long amber smears.

"Long day," Liam said eventually. "We got a list, though. Maybe we'll have ID tomorrow."

"Here's hoping."

"You did well, out on the marsh. Those girls." He paused, then pressed on. "You didn't have to go back at the Rooks alone, though, Sally. That was reckless. And I was right there. I would've helped."

She sighed. There was a lot to say there. Better left unsaid. "Time was a factor. But you're right. Tomorrow it'll be better."

Another silence. She could feel him wanting to say more, the words pressing up against this same block between them, but she was too tired to figure it out.

"Let's get some sleep," she said.

Something crossed his face. Relief, maybe. Or disappointment. "Yeah. I'm shattered."

They went up. Sally's room was small and slanted, positioned in the building's eaves, the walls veined with ancient wooden beams. A window seat overlooked the glistening street below, built around a metal radiator. Sally emptied the wet bag of running gear and hung it on the radiator, then turned off the lights and sat on the edge of the bed. The weariness sank deep. Past 10 p.m., and she was crashing. She pulled off her boots and uniform then shrugged on the hotel night gown and lay back, bringing up her phone.

The battery was almost dead, but that was a problem for tomorrow. She scrolled through her emails. There was something from a contact in Lincolnshire; one of the fathers of the girls who'd died in the spree killer stabbing.

His name was Anton Mylovich. She'd met him once, on a weekend visit up to Lincoln. He'd been frayed, hair tousled, bags under his eyes. He'd talked too fast, only speeding up as he'd gulped down his coffee. Talking about his daughter, lost in the attack, and his theory that the killings had not been random, as everyone believed.

He thought they were targeted. That the killer had beelined for certain victims, young women who weren't in his direct path, ignoring victims who were nearer. Mylovich believed the spree killing was intended to disguise a pinpointed murder.

Sally had listened, but it had felt like conspiracy theory to her. They'd promised to stay in touch. Afterward, she'd plotted out the whole two minutes and 43 seconds of the attack. She'd laid out walls of the breakfast club with colorful cones in Battersea Park, then walked it through countless times, trying to make sense of the killer's path.

She'd concluded Mylovich had a point about the killer's movements. It was possible they were random, but the pattern defied explanation. She'd looked deeper into the victims to see if there was any reason to target them, but found nothing.

Still, Mylovich kept messaging her. Every few days he sent something; new research, new theories, new patterns. He hadn't lost faith that there was a 'real' target there, some emergent shape in the choices the killer made, more than just random killing.

None of his theories had borne out, and she'd taken to opening his messages later each time. She didn't have the energy to process them. The energy to hope. And right now, her eyes were losing focus and her mind was numb.

She closed her email and opened the podcast app instead, bringing up the Cockle-Eye Killer, episode two. The narrator's low voice mumbled into the dark room. Talking about fishermen and smugglers, the marshes and the beach, the detectives and the families torn apart. She closed her eyes and the boy on the beach was there waiting for her, in the dark behind her eyelids, patient as the tide.

She still didn't know his name.

The podcast played on into the night.

TUESDAY FEBRUARY 6

25 SECRETS IN THE SURF

Sally woke in the dark with the taste of salt in her mouth. Sodium light rinsed in through the open curtain, and the sliver of sky over the nearby rooftops was black and speckled with stars. She checked her phone, but the screen was dead. A bedside alarm clock illuminated at her touch.

03:58.

She slid out of bed and looked out at the rain-slicked cobbled street below. A fox loped out of a nearby alley, nosing at a trash can, before padding further. She felt the pull of the road, despite the deep ache throughout her body.

There'd be no going back to bed now.

She sloughed off the gown. Her running gear hung on the radiator, touch-dry already, so she pulled it on. It smelled of the marsh. She checked her calves; all the cuts were scabbing over well. She brushed her teeth in the small sink, drank a pint of water, then bundled her two uniforms into the plastic bag and headed out.

Nobody was in the small, low-ceilinged lobby below. Out on the silent street, the air was so piercingly fresh it made her lungs ache.

She set off at a steady jog, retracing their footsteps of the night before. The town was dead at this hour. No press, no police, no noise. Just the soft rhythm of her boots on stone.