Page 37 of Slack Tide Kill

Sally's thoughts turned, shifting from Eszter back to the boy on the beach. Mutilated. Murdered. Battered by the storm. She tried to establish a hierarchy of questions in her mind. The most pressing were tied to the missing Rook brothers, but there were others too: the CCTV at Reactor A; the 8107 carved on the shells. Then there were older questions.

What was Reginald Rook's involvement 30 years ago? Why had the DCI in charge committed suicide?

There were too many holes in the case, and she just didn't know enough. She had the Cockle-Eye Killer podcasts, but that was third-hand information. She needed to review the old case notes, or better yet, talk to someone from the original case. Mayhew had said she'd tried to reach DI Mercer; that should help.

She needed to look properly at the parallels. At the rituals. She needed to build a profile and a suspect list, and–

"I didn't get a proper look at the body," Liam said.

Sally turned to him.

"The shells. In situ. I couldn't get a read."

"Right, the storm," Sally said flatly.

"The storm. So, how did he look?"

Sally thought for a moment. That was a useful question. Ground herself again. Get back to the concrete details. She breathed out heavily. "Purposeful. That's the main thing, I think. Staged, even. The shells, the way his hair had been combed, his body positioned, his head craned back at reactor A? It all must mean something."

"Any idea what?"

"Not yet. You listened to the podcast?"

"The first few episodes, coming down. Seems they never had a handle on it. They never had any real suspects. They just sprayed out arrests and prayed, until the DCI hung himself. Then the whole thing collapsed."

Sally nodded. Thinking back to her first moments on the beach.

"DCI Mayhew's still angry about that, I think."

"The DCI? What's she got to do with it?"

"So far, just that she's standing in our way. Like this is personal for her."

"Personal? She must've barely been a kid at the time."

"Maybe it hit hard."

Liam puzzled over that for a moment. "That's why she's slow-walking us?"

"That, and McMaster said she was a ball-ache."

Liam snorted. They drove in silence for a few minutes.

"You think it is a repeat?" he asked. "The same perp?"

"Could be. 30 years is a long time to wait, though. But then we've got Reginald Rook, the Rook boys' father? He died a few years back, but he had contracts with the reactors back then, plus he owned the Crab Shack."

"Yeah. That's all something. We can press the son on it." He looked ahead.

Sally drove on. Liam said nothing. It was the most they'd spoken to each other in months, and it felt strange. She looked over. His left hand was wrapped over his right in his lap, almost defensively. Like he was comforting himself, or maybe stilling the shakes of alcohol withdrawal.

To their left the beach gradually spread and morphed, from gray shingle to golden sand. A sign for ‘Camber Sands' passed by, and they angled northwest toward Rye. A dozen tall white windmills whipped the low clouds on the right, while a great delta of mudflats spread out to the left.

"River Rother," Liam commented. "Outlet for the Royal Military Canal."

Sally looked over at him. A small smile played on his face.

"I used to be really into canals when I was a kid," he went on. "And the Royal Military? It's the ne plus ultra. The best. Massive human engineering project in Georgian times. Construction started 1804, if I remember rightly, or thereabouts."