At Death's Window Read Online Free Page A

just have a plan. First of all – Lucilla.’ He forced himself to look at her. She was still clutching a see-through plastic bucket full of the murky outlines of muddy crabs. ‘All this water is pouring in – see? It’s flooding down towards the village. You can swim. When the time comes I’ll take your coat and wellies, and you need to just float away. Let the tide take you in, Luce – all right, sweetheart? Don’t fight it – float until you come aground, like a bottle with a message in it.’
    Lucilla’s eyes flooded with tears. ‘What message?’
    ‘Just get yourself safely on dry land and then find someone as quickly as you can.’
    He turned away because she didn’t move a muscle in response. ‘Paulo,’ he said.
    The boy had his head buried in his father’s waterproofs. ‘I can’t swim,’ he said.
    ‘I know,’ said Leo. ‘That doesn’t matter. People float. You can’t stop yourself.’ He forced himself to chuckle. ‘Honestly, once your feet leave the bottom you’ll bob like a cork. Just stick with me and Cornelia.’
    The waves had been breaking just out to sea, beyond the gap, but now one didn’t break, it rolled over the submerged sandbar at the harbour mouth and carried on, so that they all had to step forward, accommodating the sudden swell. Cornelia screamed.
    The wave went on to break in the reeds beyond them.
    ‘What about the man, Dad?’ asked Paulo.
    They all had their back to the floating corpse, but Leo had been stealing glances. Because of the rigor and the tethering rope holding the feet down, the body was upright as it rose in the pit of the channel, and the outstretched hands and arms were now sticking up out of the water, the head appearing then disappearing with each wave. The heavy skull flopped on its shattered neck. It was an unnatural sight, and disturbing, because it looked as if the man was striving to rise out of the flood – like one of those nuclear missiles, bound for the sky, or a God of the deep ascending, like Poseidon.
    A fresh wave broke around them and Leo pulled them all to him, his plan disintegrating. He was too scared to pray, so he just kissed Cornelia’s hair.
    Which is how Peter Shaw first saw the D’Asti family – a circle of silent figures, half submerged, in mid-stream, the man bending down with that strange bird-like pecking motion which signals a kiss. The picture was etched on his retina thanks to a blinding flash of white lightning.

THREE
    F
lyer
was doing twenty-six knots – close to top speed – and had just cleared Scolt Head, so that Overy Creek now opened out to view, a tumult of choppy milky-green water. The emergency call, made thirty-two minutes earlier via the police control room at Lynn, had come from a domestic landline on Burnham Overy Staithe, at the
Hero public house. It reported a family of three, knee-deep, apparently stranded on a sandbar. At a distance of a hundred and fifty yards Shaw could see that the male adult was holding a small child, so that made four. Using the hovercraft joystick he reduced power to the two rear propellers, and dipping the port ailerons brought
Flyer
round in a wide arc to approach the family against the tide.
    The earpiece in his helmet buzzed: ‘Target sited fifteen thirty-one hours. Sea state moderate. Over.’
    With a four-man crew
Flyer
still had room for six passengers. Henderson, the navigator, had charts open in the cabin. His voice was next on air: ‘Targets standing. Water here now four foot to four foot six. Touch down not on. Repeat: not on.’
    Shaw now had the
Flyer
facing north, seawards, edging towards the stranded family. The water surface was exceptionally difficult to navigate. A sharp on-shore wind had blown up as soon as the waves had started clearing the submerged sandbank at the harbour bar. The sea was pitted with troughs and white horses, the spray blowing free in the air. The dashboard gave Shaw a sea temperature reading of ten degrees Celsius – closer to the