Page 121 of Slack Tide Kill

Liam watched her go.

The statement took 40 minutes. By the end, his mouth felt packed with ash, and Chakrati's family were arriving.

A man in a dark quilted jacket came first, walking too quickly beside a uniformed family liaison officer. Behind him, a woman with a scarf wrapped badly over her hair clutched the arm of another woman who might have been Chakrati's sister. Their faces were blank at first. Practical. Disbelieving. He'd seen it before; people still inside the journey, still protected by movement, still disbelieving.

DCI Mayhew met them down by the cordon.

Liam couldn't hear the words, but he saw the man's shoulders go first. A small inward fold, as if a wire had been cut. The woman made a sound that carried over the lapping of the sea, over the radios, over the polite, ordered machinery of disaster.

A child's cry, almost. Thin, baffled, in pain.

The sister sank to a crouch on the shingle, both hands over her mouth. The father tried to hold his wife. The family liaison officer stood there, trained but helpless, one hand lifted and useless in the gap between grief and protocol.

Liam turned away and walked until he reached the side of a fire engine, then leaned one hand against the cold metal.

He wanted a drink with such a sudden ferocity that his knees weakened. The thirst rose through him like a living thing, moving in his throat, his chest, his palms. It told him one bottle would put a wall between him and this feeling. One bottle would blur the screen, the family, Sally's red eyes, Chakrati turning in the doorway. One bottle would lower the volume of the world enough to survive it.

There was a shop in Lydd. He could be gone before anyone noticed, and who would blame him? With his partner gone, this probably wasn't even his case anymore.

Then there was a buzzing. At first he thought it was Bledd's drone, getting louder. Then he realized.

His phone. He pulled it out, reading the name on the screen.

Wilcot.

Liam stared at the name until the letters blurred, until it rang off then rang again. He'd come this far. He'd done what he'd been asked. Now only this remained.

He answered. "O'Connell."

"Liam," Wilcot said, dry and clipped, the voice of a man far away from tragedy. "I've just had a preliminary account."

Liam closed his eyes. "Sir."

"You did well."

The words landed strangely. Not as praise. More like a condemnation. "An officer is dead."

"A tragedy. I don't minimize that. But from our perspective, you handled an extremely difficult situation in a clearheaded way. Between this and the Rook boat crash, you've given us what we need."

Liam looked back at the beach. "What you need."

"The truth, and there's no shame in that."

Liam's hand tightened around the phone. No shame in betraying his own partner.

He looked again toward the place where Sally had dragged him from the boat.

"She saved my life."

"And nearly got you killed before that. Hold fast, Officer O'Connell. The worst is over. You've exposed a rotten officer and the NCA is grateful to you."

The call ended.

Liam watched the tide, the thirst filling him up from within. Sally's career was over, now. He had no doubts. Wilcot would see to it, then feed any scraps to the paparazzi press, who would tear what was left to bits.

He'd done this. He couldn't stop it. Now he had to live with it.

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