Page 38 of Slack Tide Kill

"1804? That's about 30 years after the Declaration of Independence. So by Georgian, you mean Mad King George?"

Liam grinned. "That's the one. He wasn't really all that mad, actually. In fact–"

"I've seen Hamilton, Liam. Don't try to polish a turd."

He chuckled. "OK. Well. We were in trouble with Napoleon back then." He took a deep breath. "All around this area, he was looking to invade. Dungeness in particular. So, King George prepared three lines of defense. First, all these massive towers along the coast. Martello towers, they're called. Huge, round, unbreakable." He sighed contentedly. "Plenty are still around, we might see one. Second, there's Romney Marsh itself, boggy as hell and damn hard to cross. Then there's the Royal Military Canal, from here to Folkestone, which they built like a moat. Just a massive engineering work, maybe 30 miles in total, hardly anything else like it, and easy to defend."

Sally said nothing. She figured he was done. Terraced houses appeared either side of the road.

"Millions of tons of dirt, shifted," Liam picked up again. "All by horse and cart. Dumped in the sea. Lots of unforeseen consequences to that. Some great ones. Romney Marsh used to be a cesspit of standing water. Mosquitoes, right? ‘Ague', they called it, but it was basically malaria." Another happy sigh. "The RMC really drained the marshes down. Malaria levels cut right back. Pretty cool."

Sally found herself oddly enjoying his voice. Not just the old Liam that she'd known on Dark Peak; this was a glimpse of Liam as a boy, full of wide-eyed curiosity.

"Where'd you get all that from?"

"I subscribed to a canal magazine. At least my Dad did, for me, for a while, anyway. I thought about becoming an engineer. But, well, he didn't approve. You know?"

Sally turned to him. That was an opening; the first since Dark Peak. She was about to ask why, but Liam abruptly pointed.

"Left here. Don't get caught out by the one-way system, Rye's a tricky bastard."

Sally turned.

Rye was a warren of tight, narrow streets flanked by a mish-mash of architectural styles from a collage of centuries. There were crooked Tudor timber frames cantilevered out over the street; prim Georgian facades jutting in hard lime; medieval flint and slate hovels flowing around the occasional slice of modern glass. All were laid haphazardly one over the other like the shingle on Dungeness.

"Should be just up ahead," said Liam, checking his phone.

Sally pulled past a tea room. Up a cobblestoned alley on the right she glimpsed a grand church atop a hill, then the police station lay before them on the right; a broad, handsome, three-story brick building nestled between a pub and a boutique hotel. There were press vans parked on the sidewalk, and Sally weaved a line through the journalists with their stands and lights.

Tania Brown was amongst them, her pink outfit unmissable. Sally's heart fired hard but she pushed on. There was a parking lot in the back and she pulled into a bay.

"We're a team in there," she said.

"We're a team," Liam agreed. "Couple of swamp beasts from the Marsh."

Sally laughed once. She couldn't argue. She opened the door and stepped out. They circled the building under a steady drizzle and tried to slide around the press gaggle.

"Sally Rogers?" called the piercing, powerful voice of Tania Brown.

Sally didn't turn.

"Look at the state of you!" Brown shouted after her. "Someone buried you again already? You've only been here a few hours!"

Several journalists laughed. Sally kept her head down and pushed through the front doors of Rye Police Station. In the clean, plain vestibule, her mud-caked boots stood out sharply. The smell of salt, peat and sweat rolled in with them like a second weather system. A second set of doors lay ahead, hung with a laminated sign on a corkboard.

PUBLIC COUNTER HOURS: TUESDAY / THURSDAY 10:00-13:00

"Part-time policing," Liam muttered. "It's a bloody farce."

Sally swung the doors inward, into a narrow waiting room papered with community support posters. The duty desk officer sat behind a glass screen at a tall desk, and looked up at the sound of their boots. Sally recognized him from the beach, no more than 24, all fresh shave, pink cheeks and a poorly knotted tie. His name badge read ‘HAWLIN'. His nose wrinkled as the stink of marsh hit him, but he kept his demeanor professional, sliding the visitor's ledger across the counter.

"If you could both sign in, please."

"Rick Hawlin," Sally said, scrawling her name while Liam leaned on the desk, rubbing absently at the red welt on his neck. "Afraid of heights, right?"

He blinked and looked at her. "Ma'am? How did you know that?"

She just waved a hand. "How are things with our detainee?"