Page 158 of Slack Tide Kill

Sally got in and they drove away, pushing back through the media scrum who were now milling in the street. Tania Brown's team were ready, and broke toward their vans.

"Company," Sally said.

"Let them follow. They can hang around outside Pike's house. He'll happily lecture them on Saxon buckles and his damaged Mesolithic display case."

Sally snorted, but the humor didn't cut deep. A strange mood was coming over her, like the feeling in the air before lightning strikes. A disconnectedness. A calm.

Liam talked as he drove and she surfed the words, barely registering the content. Liam was working it through out loud, everything they knew, the whole of the trail from the reactor's missing CCTV and the Crab Shack's blind eye to Roarke Rook, Heraclitus, Cagen, Meeks, Spate, Bledd and Reg.

Secrets in the surf, washing to shore. She thought again of what Mercer had said. A storm that knew no season. The rags of time. They were poetic sentiments, beautiful even.

"Rags of time," she said, interrupting Liam's low drone as they circled down on the coast road. The sea had calmed somewhat, though the blacktop still ran with thick skins of water. "Is that a British figure of speech?"

"Rags of time? Not really. Not standard."

"Knows no season," she said. "How about that?"

"Haven't got a clue what that means. Why?"

"Something Jack Mercer said. You think it's a poem?"

"Could be. That guy's been living with the death of Richter, and his DCI, for 30 years. I don't doubt that'd make anyone reflective."

"Right." Sally went back to drifting. Liam resumed his recitation of evidence. Sound Mirrors. Lighthouses. Owlers. Nia Mensah.

Something clicked in Sally's head. For a moment she didn't quite know what it was, and remained motionless, waiting for the memory to float in on the slow tide. She was standing at the black wall of Prospect Cottage, reeling from the tiny statuette with cockle shells for eyes, reading the poem nailed there.

She brought up her phone and ran a search.

The Sun Rising by John Donne. Published 1633, nearly 400 years ago. She scanned the lines, some familiar, some less so: the unruly sunne, peeping on lovers, school boys and sour prentices, court huntsmen and country ants. The final lines of the first stanza tripped her, though, and she halted to reread them carefully.

'Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,

Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.'

"They are quotes from a poem," she said, lifting her head. "The Sun Rising by John Donne."

Liam looked her way. "OK. Nice detecting. And?"

"That's the poem written on the wall of Prospect Cottage."

"Huh." He thought for a few moments. "OK. Well, it's a famous poem."

She kept reading. The next stanza was new to her, not something she'd seen on the wall.

'Thy beams, so reverend and strong

Why shouldst thou think?

I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,

But that I would not lose her sight so long;

If her eyes have not blinded thine,'

Sally stopped reading and looked up. "Now it's talking about blinded eyes."

Liam glanced back at her. "What? The poem?"