The Rising Tide: the heart-stopping and addictive thriller from the Richard and Judy author(9)

Beth McKaylin grunts. ‘Why would anyone leave a note on a sinking boat?’

‘Unless I’m blind, she hasn’t sunk,’ Lucy snaps. ‘And there’s all kinds of reasons he—’

‘There was no note. The hatch was open when we found her. I went down and had a good nose about. Lot of wood needs drying out down there, but that’s about all you’ll find.’

The thought of Beth McKaylin poking around their private space makes Lucy’s skin prickle. ‘What about our life raft? Did you find that?’

Clear, from Beth’s expression, that she never looked. Frustrated, Lucy turns to Rowland. ‘Daniel keeps a six-berth Seago life raft onboard. Bright yellow, size of a small car when inflated, big flashing SOLAS light on top. We should find out whether it was launched, don’t you think?’

‘She’s right,’ Rowland says. ‘Lifeboat crews need to know. The chopper, too.’

‘Where’s it usually stowed?’ the officer asks.

Lucy points at the Lazy Susan’s cockpit. ‘Either the port or starboard lockers. If you could just let me—’

‘Wait here.’

The woman retreats along the breakwater, talking into her radio. A minute later she’s back. From her utility belt she pulls two latex gloves and snaps them on. Then she steps on to the yacht, clambers into the cockpit and crouches in front of the port locker. ‘It’s padlocked. In fact, they both are.’

Lucy’s stomach flops. No chance, in an emergency, that Daniel would have reattached a padlock, but she still has to check. ‘Here.’ She lobs her keys across the gap. ‘The small silver one.’

Moments later the officer raises the locker’s lid. ‘Describe this thing.’

‘Looks like a large suitcase. Cream-coloured, secured by black webbing. Should be clearly labelled.’

‘Nothing like that in here.’

‘Check the other one.’

The officer opens the starboard locker. ‘OK, I’ve got rope, quite a lot of it. Fire extinguisher, barbecue, petrol can. Ah, hang on. Yep. Big cream suitcase, Seago branding. “Offshore life raft”, it says.’

No air, suddenly, in Lucy’s chest. Beside her, Sean Rowland can’t hide his dismay. The police officer steps back on to the breakwater. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Locke. I’m sure that’s not what you wanted to hear. This all must be very confusing.’

Lucy nods, even though it isn’t. The facts couldn’t be clearer. Daniel took the Lazy Susan out to sea. He radioed in a distress call. And now he’s missing – in the North Atlantic at its coldest, without the Seago life raft that cost them so much money.

She touches her lips, remembering Daniel’s bloodless kiss at breakfast; how she never pulled him into a hug. This morning, he’d been due to announce final redundancies at Locke-Povey Marine. Last night, considering it, he’d made himself physically sick.

‘Does Mr Locke have a car?’

The cry of a herring gull pulls Lucy’s gaze to the quay. Until now, she hadn’t given Daniel’s Volvo a thought. Did he go to his workshop, like he told her? Or did he drive straight to the harbour from the house? All the marked spaces along the quay are taken. The tiny car park at its southern end is obscured by the breakwater’s shoulder. Could the Volvo be there? It wasn’t at the bottom of Smuggler’s Tumble. There are few other places around here to leave a car.

‘Mrs Locke?’

She turns and finds the male police officer staring. ‘A Volvo XC90. Dark grey.’

‘The big SUV?’

Lucy nods.

‘I’m PC Lamb,’ he says. ‘This is PC Noakes. As Mr Locke went missing offshore, the coastguard’s coordinating search and rescue, but we’ll still need some details. Is there somewhere we could go?’

Lucy glances at the Lazy Susan. She’s tempted to leap aboard and scramble through the hatch, just to see the cabin for herself, but how batshit crazy would that look? She needs these people onside. Her role, right now, is Daniel’s trustworthy onshore representative.

Her role is to be his wife.





THREE




1


The Drift Net stands in a prime position on Skentel’s quay. Wide windows either side of its front doors offer a panoramic view. Right now, the glass is hazy with condensation, evidence both of the approaching weather front and the espresso machine running at full tilt inside.

Shopfront businesses open and close with depressing regularity in Skentel. City people, disillusioned with corporate life, arrive armed with romantic ideas masquerading as business plans. They see the town in summer, heaving with tourist wallets, and decide it’s the perfect location for their craft brewery, organic juice bar or boutique record shop. A grand opening follows: trays of Prosecco and faces flushed with delight. And six months later – perhaps a year if a house has been remortgaged or an inheritance spent – the stock disappears, the front door is locked and the windows become advertising hoardings for whichever travelling circus is next to visit.

In general, only two types of business survive. Local staples like the pharmacy and post office, or high-season shops that make enough during the summer months to close up in winter.

From the start, Lucy wanted to appeal to tourists and locals alike. To succeed, her business would have to be a chameleon, changing its skin with the seasons: a hub for natives to patronize and visitors to discover.