The Rising Tide: the heart-stopping and addictive thriller from the Richard and Judy author(4)

People are coming on to the waterfront, now. Someone points at the Drift Net. Someone else raises a finger towards Mortis Point.

They found the Lazy Susan. Just drifting, I think. Somewhere out to sea.

Lucy lowers the binoculars. If she leaves in the next few minutes, she’ll beat the lifeboat to the quay. Upstairs, she throws on dungarees and boots. Back in the hall, she grabs her keys from the console table. In the black-spotted wall mirror, she catches her reflection. Her face betrays her disquiet, rust-flecked brown eyes showing too much white. The pallid light has bleached her skin. Her hair, hanging in wet blonde ringlets, offers barely any contrast. She looks like something washed up by the tide from a place deep down dark.

By the front door, she taps the barometer’s glass housing. The mercury plummets further. No wonder most of the fishing fleet’s still in harbour. Everyone’s been warned of what’s coming. The rapidly changing pressure suggests something even worse.

Outside, a salt wind hisses among the cypresses. Lucy climbs into her Citro?n and guns the engine. Her mobile phone’s on the passenger seat where she left it. She taps the screen and it wakes: no messages; no calls; no reception. Tyres spitting stones, she reverses off the drive.





6


The lane takes her east. Little chance of meeting traffic on the peninsula. She drives as fast as she dares.

Reaching the coastal road, Lucy heads south. She doesn’t take the Skentel turn-off, which leads down to the harbour via the cobbled main street. Instead she uses Smuggler’s Tumble, a series of unpaved switchbacks dropping through pine forest to the shore. At the bottom she parks on the gravel circle where anglers sometimes leave their cars.

The air reeks of pine sap and seaweed. As Lucy emerges on to the shingle, a chill wind snatches at her clothes. This close, the ocean looks oily and dark. The swell is far higher than it seemed from Mortis Point. Breakers boom as they collapse into foam.

Crunching along the beach, Lucy checks her watch. Quarter past two. Only a few hours until the storm makes landfall. She thinks about trying Daniel again, but her phone is still flatlining. Reaching the breakwater’s shoulder, she climbs the steps cut into its face.

A crowd has gathered on the quay. Even outside tourist season, lifeboat launches attract interest. All eyes are on the Tamar-class as it tows the stricken yacht through the entrance channel.

Lucy hurries along the breakwater, her eyes on the oncoming boats. She presses through the gathered onlookers, catching snatches of conversation.

‘… said they own the Drift Net …’

‘… just in time, if you ask me …’

‘… lucky it’s still pretty calm …’

Water spurts in a thick gush from the Lazy Susan’s bilge outlet. A salvage pump, presumably installed by the lifeboat crew, discharges seawater via a hose slung over the side.

Beth McKaylin stands at the bow rail. As the yacht closes with the breakwater, she tosses a dock line to a harbour official. More lines are thrown. On the lifeboat, a crewman detaches the towline.

‘Lucy! Hey, Luce!’

She turns to see Matt Guinness edging through the crowd. Matt’s an old classmate – an original resident of Skentel. Straggle-haired and balding, he lives with his mother in a fisherman’s cottage overlooking the harbour. Judging from his polo shirt, he’s currently working at the Goat Hotel on the high street.

‘Been looking out for you,’ he says, eyes bright with the prospect of sharing bad news. ‘The Lazy Susan. Ain’t that your latest fella’s boat?’

No point clarifying she’s been with Daniel nine years. ‘Do you know what happened?’

Matt scratches the wisps of beard sprouting from his chin. Unlike his hair, his fingernails – long and curved like the claws of a burrowing mole – are scrupulously clean. When he grins, he reveals a lifetime of bad dentistry. ‘Maybe someone didn’t check their mooring lines.’

Lucy shakes her head. The harbour water churns white as the lifeboat’s engines reverse thrust. ‘You think she floated all the way round the breakwater without anyone noticing? Kind of unlikely, isn’t it?’

‘Maybe, maybe not. Weirder things have happened.’

‘Bee said she was found drifting in open sea.’

Behind her a vehicle horn honks, followed by a brief squawk of siren. Matt’s gaze settles on something over her shoulder. ‘Uh-oh,’ he says, grin widening. ‘Looks like Hubby’s got some explaining to do.’

Lucy turns to see a Land Rover Defender in coastguard livery nudging through the crowd. She’s not going to get anything useful from Matt Guinness. Excusing herself, she pushes through the onlookers. She’s tempted to follow the breakwater to where the Lazy Susan is being tied up, but the quickest way to find out what’s happening is to track down her ex.





7


Skentel’s lifeboat station sits high above the quay, on a coursed limestone base that juts from the cliffs of Mortis Point. Its slipway extends across the water, past the low-tide point. From the quay, a switchback metal staircase climbs sixty feet to the entrance deck. Lucy hurries up it.

She’s halfway to the top when sound explodes overhead. A coastguard helicopter, nosecone and tail boom painted bright red, blasts over Mortis Point. It follows the shoreline south, anti-collision beacon flashing.