Page 103 of Slack Tide Kill

With shaking fingers she ran an Internet search. An article on the BBC shut down any last sliver of hope.

'Father of Lincolnshire victim takes his own life.'

Her body shook. From a plastic bag she dragged her filthy, soaking, stinking marsh clothes and yanked them on roughly. Grit scratched down her face.

Then she burst from the room, down the stairs and out onto the streets of Rye. She began at a sprint, in the dark, ignoring every ache in her battered body. She sped east across the rolling Rother, southeast along the bank, past the golf club, past the Camber caravan camps, down to the sea.

She hit the beach and sped up. Sand, shingle, rocks. The vast, deserted expanse of Dungeness. Miles tore by and the pain built in her worn muscles, dashing away tears as they spilled.

But she couldn't outrun how abandoned she'd felt, alone in her hospital bed. She remembered seeing the parents of the other Sisters, watching their pain and not understanding.

"My darling," one of the mothers had said to her, at the mass funeral in St. Louis Cathedral. She'd pulled her close, crying into Sally's hair, squeezing with all her strength. "My poor, poor darling."

Her own parents hadn't been there.

"I'm OK," Sally had said. "I'm fine."

She ran harder. The Gray Lady lapped on her right, at its furthest ebb. Slack tide. Secrets in the shingle. Nancy Cagen should be here now, patrolling this shore, haunted by her own past. Now she was just another ghost.

The miles tore by and Sally kept the pace punishing. Rain lashed her. The wind cut deep. An hour, longer. Stray thoughts flashed through her mind, each flattened in seconds by the memory of Mylovich's letter.

Then back to the deaths. Jason Harrow. Nancy Cagen. Back to Liam, lost, relapsed, hiding in the dark.

She kept running until she passed the lamp post, sprinting the last stretch through driving curtains of rain to the blocky, corpse-like splay of the Dungeness reactors. She stopped in the place where Harrow's body had been found, lungs bursting and pulse crashing, bent double.

There was no sign now of his passage. The shingle was pure and unruffled. The strand line unbroken. None of that changed the truth, though. A young man had died here.

Sally straightened and stared at the reactor, wreathed in scaffold and rain. Figures in hi-vis orange moved within it, barely visible through the drizzle, each a cog in some unknowable machine. Her eyes had finally dried. The pain in her chest had shifted, transmuted by the long run into something so cold it burned.

Rage.

Unstoppable. Unbreakable.

Nothing else mattered now. She'd tear the marsh apart to bring justice to this narrow stretch of Kent coast. To find this killer and make them pay.

Her legs trembled. She checked her phone; nearly 7 a.m. All the Rooks were in custody now. Maybe Mayhew had gotten something on the boats from Jerome Rook. If not, Sally had to get in there with him and get some answers, whatever it took.

43 PULL NO PUNCHES

Sally summoned a taxi by the time she reached the reactors. The rain thickened and the windshield wipers struggled to beat back the deluge. She called NCA Deputy Director McMaster and waited as the line rang endlessly.

After several minutes, he finally answered, voice gruff.

"Officer Rogers, I've barely had one bite of my breakfast black pudding, so this better be good. What do you want?"

"Apologies for the early hour, sir. I just need to know, am I still on the case?"

"Need to know, do you?" He cleared his throat. "Yesterday's infractions were serious, Rogers. There's a procedure for a reason."

"I know that, sir, but we're getting results. Liam and I caught the Rooks yesterday. We uncovered the second murder. We should have the right to run the interrogations. Only we can find this killer, and–"

"Lot of 'we' in that speech," McMaster interrupted. "As far as I can see, it's only 'you' whose conduct's in question. But let me set your fluttering heart at ease." He started chewing. "The provisional ruling came in last night, pending the full statement from O'Connell. You're cleared for immediate duty." He paused a moment, and a rush of relief poured through Sally. "That took out your head of steam, didn't it?"

"Thank you, sir. And about–"

"I'm not done. There will be repercussions, Rogers. A fuller, broader investigation into all conduct in this case. But for right now, you're good. As for finding the killer, yes please, go do that."

Sally took a breath. "Have you got buy in for this from DCI Mayhew? There's a personal issue there, and she's been obstructing our–"