Page 134 of Slack Tide Kill

"Roarke Rook, to be specific. And when have the Rooks and Arthur Bledd ever seen eye to eye?"

Sally opened her mouth to answer, then shut it. It was a strong point. A Gordian knot she couldn't cut. "Reg Rook and Bledd hated each other. That goes back 30 years or more. And when we, I mean I, hit them with my car, Bledd was right there in the thick of it. Hauling them up."

"So why would Roarke Rook cut the CCTV for him? It doesn't make sense."

Sally realized their positions had shifted. Now he was defending Bledd and she was prosecuting. It felt good, fluid, covering all angles. "Unless all that was a cover. The whole crash in the sewer was an act?"

Liam inhaled sharply. "He dived back in to get the shotgun, Sally. Like some damn Golden Retriever."

"It was litter."

Liam scoffed. "Right. Or he wanted you to like him, which you do. Who's being subjective now?"

She said nothing. All those were strong points. Trying to untangle them was giving her a headache. Then another thought struck her.

"Oh, crap."

"What is it?"

"The foundation for all this. You remember what it was?"

"Of course I do. His boat on Dungeness that night. But then..."

"And who told us it was Bledd's boat?"

Liam cursed. "That little prick! Jerome Rook."

"Jerome Rook," Sally repeated. "Can we trust him as our sole witness? If the Rooks are behind this murder, of course he'd hand over Bledd. Especially if he knows no one can gainsay it."

"And Bledd's unlikely to have an alibi. Solitary guy, no real friends, lives alone on a boat."

Neither spoke for a moment.

"It's a bloody mess," Liam said. "Why did we go so hard based on what one of the Rooks said?"

Sally sighed. That was a good point. "It was all we had. We fought for it. I guess that made it feel more real. Then Bledd was gone, and all we had was the chase."

"Sunk cost fallacy," Liam muttered. "So where are we here? Nowhere, that's where."

"Not nowhere. Look, this is binary right now, yeah? A lot of he-said, he-said, but there's just two parties. Bledd or the Rooks."

"That's the problem."

"And you said Rye's focused exclusively on Bledd."

"They are. Everything. They have no doubt."

"So we leave Bledd to them, and we focus on the Rook connection."

A few moments passed. Signs for the M25 passed by outside in the rain as the taxi sped out of London.

"Agreed. And there's plenty there."

"Reg Rook was a smuggler," Sally began. "Smuggling something worse than people 30 years ago. Nancy Cagen fingered him as the killer. Said her nephew, Richter, saw something that got him killed. Shells in his eyes always seemed like it could be a witness intimidation thing."

"And the only person who ever had access to the reactor CCTV was Roarke Rook. Repairing the electricals was specifically in the Reactor Logistics domain."

"A domain which he pried forcibly from the silent partner, what was his name again?"