Page 7 of Slack Tide Kill

"I wouldn't say that, Officer Rogers. You're here now."

Sally ignored that and turned back to the body.

The young man was Caucasian. Athletic build, maybe 20 years old. His face was placid and pale, his lips barely purpled, his cheeks not bloated. His short dark hair lay in a ruler-straight parting, as if combed into place by the sea.

That detail struck her. As if someone had cared for and comforted him until the last, in spite of the raw cockle shells emerging where his eyes should be.

Bloodless. Pale.

Her stomach knotted and something shifted.

Not a thought exactly. More like a current running through her. She was suddenly aware of the cold coming off him, reaching up toward her. She pictured the dark of the early hours, this same unforgiving expanse but bleaker and lonelier. The reactor looming so close but so far, the icy tide washing his prone body.

She pictured him conscious, or close to it. The crunch of the shingle beneath him. The face of his killer above, the hands coming closer, bringing the first shell down to press into his open, staring eye…

"Officer Rogers," DCI Mayhew said sharply, dragging Sally back to the gulls and the wind. "Are you all right?"

Sally shook herself. "I'm fine." She dropped to one knee and leaned close to the victim's ruined face, pushing through the revulsion to see the details.

The cockle shells were an off-white bone color, finely ridged with rust-red patterning. Perfectly symmetrical, neatly slotted. The work seemed expert, but something interrupted the ridging on the left shell. Not a chip. Not a mark from the sea.

She leaned closer still.

A number?

Four of them. They were tiny, etched into the fluted ridges near the shell's lip. Deliberate as a watchmaker's engraving, so small she'd need a loupe to be certain, but clearly numbers.

"8107," she read out.

"What?" Mayhew asked.

"Here." Sally pointed. "Carved onto the shells. Whoever did this was precise. Had to have been before the death, maybe hours of work to get it this neat."

Mayhew pressed in close, peering at the shells. A long moment passed, then she cursed and looked up at the photographer.

"There's four numbers cut into the ridges on both shells. Same position, same size. We missed them. Get pictures in situ, as much detail as you can."

She stood. Sally stood as well, her thighs burning, as the photographer took their place and began taking pictures, the digital shutter clicking.

"8107," Sally repeated. "Does that mean anything to you?"

"Let's get it through forensics first," Mayhew said frostily. "Confirm that's what it says."

Sally let that go. She'd relay it to expert profilers within the NCA herself. For now, she continued with her visual inspection. There were no other apparent injuries: no blood staining on his clothing, no tears or cuts.

"No signs of restraint," she said. "No defensive wounds either. I'm thinking chemical incapacitation."

"We'll run toxicity screens as standard," Mayhew snipped back. "Is that all?"

Sally let the wind fill the gap between them, easing the heat in Mayhew's voice as she looked across the great gray expanse. She couldn't imagine a lonelier place to die.

"Someone carried the victim here, DCI," she said, pointing. "Either by boat or by land. We need to shut this stretch of beach down, a mile at least, and run fingertip searches for the killer's trail. We need a full witness trawl, too, along with collecting any other CCTV nearby; camera doorbells, dash cams, whatever we can get." She thought a moment. "Are there residences?"

Mayhew took a shuddery breath. "A handful. To the north."

"And to the west?"

"Nothing for miles. A single road dead-ending here or there at the beach. There's nothing to see."