Page 124 of Slack Tide Kill

McMaster's ultimatum ticked over in her mind. There was only one possible answer, with so many careers resting on her decision. Steadily, she felt the trails of the dead boy on Dungeness pulling away from her mind. She couldn't help him anymore, and she would not survive another nine months of nothing.

She had to resign.

She stood.

From a food booth she bought a Korean chicken wrap and ate it rapidly, juices running down her fingers. It was so good she bought another. She bought a coffee from a truck called '15 grams' and circled the old ship.

The Cutty Sark. She'd run all the way to Greenwich, it seemed, seven or eight miles. Home of the prime meridian, zero degrees longitude, the place from which all the world's navigation flowed. She paid for a ticket and wandered the clipper's interior in a daze.

It was beautiful, held aloft on metal poles within a repurposed dry dock, the hull burnished in brass. Once the fastest ship on the world's oceans. She roamed the deck. Everything changed. Nothing stayed the same. At the end she sat in the café beneath the hull, drinking coffee and eating a sweet slice of carrot cake decorated with bright purple petals.

Then she went home. Her legs had frozen up and she couldn't face the run, so she took a taxi. It was getting dark as she hobbled up to her apartment overlooking the Thames. She had a place on the fifth floor, twisted at an angle, so the water was just visible when she stepped out onto her tiny balcony.

When she closed the door behind her, there was only silence.

No lively bustle of a station. No creak and groan of an old building shifting. She dropped her keys on the counter and looked for a moment at her Lincolnshire murder board, filling half of one wall. Maps, photographs, victim IDs, a timeline. Everything she'd gathered, adding up to nothing.

Her jacket hit the back of a chair. Boots by the door. She moved through the space trying not to think, flicking on lights she didn't need. There was a takeaway bag from Sunday night's dinner still sitting in the fridge. She poured a pint of water and took both out onto the balcony.

Cold chicken noodles in black bean sauce. She ate and watched the city's red aviation lights pulse. Her phone buzzed in her pocket but she didn't look at it, just watching the river. Soon party boats plied their trade up and down the water, music thumping and lights twinkling.

She went back into the silent apartment, stripped the paramedic's borrowed gear and took a shower. Her eyes stung as the last specks of PAVA flushed from her scalp and skin. Then she dragged the bed from its hutch on the side wall to rest in front of the window, where she could see the river and the lights of the City.

She did this most nights. Every morning she dragged it back to the wall.

Now she laid down and gazed out at the beating heart of London. White office towers still lit at this hour. The city refusing to sleep. Out there, people were still working. Still moving.

These were sights the victims of Dungeness would never see. At last she closed her eyes and the darkness pulled her down.

54 EVERYTHING WOULD CHANGE

Liam O'Connell sat in the dark of his second room at the Mermaid Inn, a bottle before him, half-drunk already.

Voices carried up through the floor from the bar below. Not officers, not anyone he knew, just ordinary people on a Wednesday night. Laughing, talking, living their lives. But there was an edge.

He'd heard that same edge many times in the station before he left. It always came through different words, always disguised, but impossible to ignore.

The fear. He'd heard it from DS Flaherty, in between tears for Emily Chakrati, asking numbly, 'What's going to happen now?' He'd heard it from Simms and Gemmell, exchanging ideas on Bledd and Mensah, but too loud; as if brashness could make up for a death. He'd heard it from DCI Mayhew's face, as she gave her statement to the press, trying to project strength despite her obvious grief, and revealing more.

Rye was afraid. The killer had claimed a police officer. A blast on the beach itself. Three victims now. Possibly more, if Bledd and Mensah had been framed. Where were their bodies?

Sally had started off that line of thought. He hadn't believed her then. But now?

'Shut your mouth, O'Connell,' DI Gemmell had said. 'She saved your fucking life.'

He'd been right. And what had Liam done for her in return, but sunk the knife in deeper?

He knocked back another shot of the cheap whisky. It burned all the way down, brought on the fog, but still the edge crawled through, boring into him.

Sally was gone, and everything felt colder. He began to feel the shape of what he'd done setting like concrete inside him; a permanent change, forcing him to twist and stretch around it, contorting in ways he didn't think he could survive.

Wilcot had started this, but Liam couldn't lay the blame there. He'd made the choice, and now Sally was finished. 40 minutes in a room with Mayhew and a recorder, answering every question accurately, and he'd watched himself damn her for good.

He raised the bottle.

Down in the bar somebody laughed, somebody else shouted, "No, no, that's not what she said at all, that's just the papers, that's just what the papers said about her."

Liam stopped with the bottle an inch from his mouth. It had to be about Sally. He pressed the bottle the rest of the way to his lips, crushing them hard. But he didn't drink.