The Rising Tide: the heart-stopping and addictive thriller from the Richard and Judy author(5)

Thanks to Fin’s collection of plastic kits, Lucy recognizes the model: a twin-engine AW189. It’s a beast of a machine, eight tons in weight, bristling with search-and-rescue apparatus. The whistle of its turbines competes with the clatter-roar of its rotor blades.

Down in the harbour the Tamar-class lifeboat throttles up, heading back out to sea. On the quay, the crowd continues to build. Lucy sees activity along the breakwater and on the floating dock. Some of the boats are getting ready to cast off.

Her unease grows. She climbs higher. Around her, the protective cage sings and vibrates. When she reaches the next switchback, she notices a police patrol car parked beside the coastguard Land Rover.

At last she arrives at the RNLI boathouse’s decked entranceway. Alec Paul, in T-shirt and salopettes, is standing outside the glass doors. Above his head, the sky has darkened to slate.





8


Alec’s a bear: six foot three, shaggy brown beard, shoulders like oak barrels. He drops a meaty paw around Lucy’s shoulders and guides her to the entrance.

‘Jake said you’d come. Asked me to look out for you. He’s been trying your mobile for the last hour.’

‘I was at home. You recovered the Lazy Susan?’

Alec’s brow clenches, as if he wasn’t expecting the question. He looks over the railing. ‘Those guys are from Appledore. Decided they couldn’t leave her out there – not with what’s coming. Too dangerous for other boats.’

‘Is there much damage?’

His hand slides off her shoulder. He’s full-on frowning now. ‘I couldn’t say.’

Lucy casts a glance at the yacht. ‘She’s sitting pretty low, but at least they’ve got the pumps going. This storm front – we’re lucky the sea’s still as calm as it is.’

‘Yeah.’ Alec takes her arms. ‘Listen. Are you OK?’

Lucy thinks of the paperwork strewn across Daniel’s desk; of everything they’ve built these last nine years; how, until only a few weeks ago, it felt like a fortress.

There’s a sound in her ears like a far-off whistle. ‘The police are here,’ she says. ‘I guess that means she was stolen.’

‘Lucy, I’m not sure what you’ve heard. What have you heard?’

Something’s crawling in her stomach now. Alec’s wearing an expression she can’t place. ‘Bee said she was found drifting. Guy I know reckons she slipped her moorings but that can’t be true. Someone must’ve stolen her. Someone must’ve sneaked—’

‘She wasn’t stolen.’

‘—onboard and managed to hot-wire the engine or some—’

‘Lucy, Daniel took her out.’

She flinches, shakes her head, as if a fly just swooped into her ear. ‘Daniel? But Daniel’s at work. He left before I took Fin to school.’

‘I’m sorry, I really am – but Daniel maydayed from the Lazy Susan.’

Lucy’s throat clenches. It feels like someone’s squeezing it. Her right hand finds her wedding band and twists it round her ring finger. She looks past Alec to the coastguard helicopter banking west, out to sea. Her gaze drops to the harbour, to the flotilla of small boats being readied; to the Tamar-class lifeboat, out beyond the breakwater, its propellers churning a white wake. Despite the gunmetal clouds, the falling pressure, the day still seems preternaturally calm.

The ringing in her ears intensifies. She weaves around Alec to the glass doors.





TWO




1


The entrance to Skentel’s RNLI boathouse is dominated by its hand-painted service boards. They detail a century’s span of notable rescues. Beyond them, a cavernous boat hall is ringed by two railed walkways. Right now, the roller-shutter door is up, exposing the giant steel slipway descending to the sea. In the nine years since Lucy’s relationship with Jake Farrell ended, the place has changed hardly at all.

She finds Jake in the ops room, crouched over the VHF radio. A laptop shows graphics of the rapidly changing conditions. Jake straightens when he sees her. Since the split, he’s never quite learned how to handle their encounters. He rolls his shoulders, rubbing his close-shaved scalp.

‘Just tell me, Jake,’ she asks. ‘What happened? Where’s Daniel?’

He motions Alec to replace him at the desk. ‘Keep an ear out,’ he says. ‘Grab me if there’s news.’ Then he steers Lucy along the corridor to the changing room. ‘Coastguard picked up a distress call from your husband, earlier.’

‘And? Is he OK?’

‘We don’t know. We’re in the—’

‘You don’t know?’

‘Our lifeboat located your yacht, but the crew found no one onboard.’

Her ears roar, air rushing into a vacuum. ‘So where’s Daniel?’

‘That’s what we’re trying—’

‘He’s still missing?’

‘Right now, we’re—’

‘Have you heard from him since?’

Jake holds up his hands to silence her. ‘Lucy, take a breath, OK? Listen to what I’m saying. Daniel put out a Mayday around twelve thirty. Twelve thirty-seven, to be exact. Said he was taking on water and needed assistance. We don’t maintain a headset watch here. First we heard about it was a request from Milford coastguard, asking us to send a boat. Our DLA authorized the Tamar to launch. Crew went out twelve minutes later.