Drags himself forward, mud up to his neck, hands and knees and feet scrabbling for rock.

Slithers onto the muddy, moss-slimed shore; caked in earth, slime upon his shoulders, mud and yesterday’s blood upon his hands.

Makes his way towards the house: a sea serpent made flesh.

FOUR

Black, wet September air, hanging thick as cloth.

The scents of decay, of rotting wood; of life becoming death; earth becoming sea.

An arrow-straight road, framed here and there by crooked trees, pointing inland with the wind at their back.

A sensible saloon car, heading east. The clock on the dashboard reads 4.02 a.m.

At the wheel, Detective Sergeant Aector McAvoy. Grey suit, blue shirt, old-school tie. He wears his glasses when he drives, and they give him a teacherly appearance, though the piratical scars upon his face could just as easily imply a gangland enforcer with a court appearance.

In the passenger seat, Detective Superintendent Trish Pharaoh. She’s fifty-two now, but has managed to find a way to confuse the issue by accessorizing herself with leather jacket, biker boots, and a pair of sunglasses that sit on her forehead and hold back her long, black hair. When McAvoy casts her his habitual sidelong glances, he tries not to dwell on the smudges of dark beneath her piercing blue eyes. She’s tired. Run ragged. Wrung out. He feels instantly disloyal for letting his gaze linger on the new wrinkles, the laughter lines and crow’s feet that peek out from beneath the haphazardly-applied make-up. Looks away before he feels compelled to remark upon the red wine stains that colour her lips. She has always been this way. Has always drunk, and smoked, and eaten what she fancies and done what she’s pleased. She raised four daughters and a stepson like this, all while caring for a bedbound husband and rising to the upper echelons of CID. It’s just starting to extort a heavy price.

‘According to the satnav, we’re in the sea.’

‘Close,’ he replies, gesturing out of the window at the vast blackness. ‘Over there, I think.’

‘And you’ll have been here, of course. Read the guidebook. Got chatting with a lovely chap who runs a little museum …’

‘Not here, no. But there’s a gentleman in Patrington. Has some very interesting exhibits.’

‘And the guidebook?’

‘I might have had a wee flick.’

‘Hector, you are three geeks stuffed into a skin-suit.’

‘Thanks.’

Silence, as she plays with her phone. The sizzle of burning paper as she takes a drag, and fills McAvoy’s family car with the flavour of Auntie Trish. She holds her long black cigarette between her mid and index fingers, the glowing tip punctuating her speech and flaring each time she sucks down another half an inch. McAvoy looks across at her. Experiences a flash of vivid memory – that cold, blue day in November when Trish Pharaoh cremated her husband. She had worn a dress of fuchsia and gold and insisted that the mourners wear bright colours. The songs had been happy, the sermon short; the coffin disappearing behind the purple curtain while ‘If You Don’t Know Me By Now’ boomed from the speakers and the vicar tried not to laugh. There were so few mourners that McAvoy had found himself in the front row, six paces from where the shrivelled body of Pharaoh’s husband, Anders, lay awaiting the rush of the flame. None of the dead man’s children cried. Sophia, the eldest, barely looked up from her phone.