Page 33 of Slack Tide Kill

"You're basically wearing the marsh. It's like a Ghillie suit."

She smiled. Her Mustang lay ahead. She reached it, opened the door and looked inside. The seat was damp and muddy already from the Mud Beast. It was about to get a whole lot worse.

"Looks like a bomb hit this place," Liam said, taking in the rubbish-filled passenger footwell. "Are you living in here? I thought you had an apartment on the Thames."

"It's in better shape than your Audi," Sally countered, then slipped into the seat, feeling the mud grind into the fabric.

"This thing's a rental, yeah?" Liam muttered, kicking a big enough gap in the trash to slide himself in.

"The Rooks can pay for the damage," Sally said, then started the engine and pulled back onto the road.

In moments they were skimming through the misting rain, back past the entrance to the reactor and the black lighthouse, south then east on Dungeness Road. They passed several press vans parked on the shingle, reporters out on their boxes with the reactor as backdrop, then reached a police line.

Sally showed her badge and they passed through.

"This place is so weird," Liam murmured, looking out of the window at the expanse of stony beach, studded with the same three houses she'd knocked at earlier. "Like purgatory. And these houses. What kind of person wants to live here?"

"An old guy who killed his family and a girl with a fisherman father," Sally answered.

He turned to her. "What? Killed his family?"

"Accidental, apparently. The Seafoam Strangler."

"What is that, local mythology? How do you know it?"

Sally felt a grin tugging at her lips. They hadn't been like this with each other in months. "Keep up, Liam. I've been at this since dawn, knocking on doors. The old guy heard the dogs, the girl too."

Liam muttered something under his breath, maybe, "Bloody Yanks," and Sally's grin spread wider.

"This Seafoam Strangler, he's not a suspect?"

"He's got cataracts in both eyes, couldn't even see the Crab Shack in front of his own door, so I don't think so. No way he could navigate a boat at night right up to Reactor A. Nor drag a body up the beach in the dark."

Liam grunted. "Just local color, then."

"About that."

She pulled onto the shore road and parked on the cracked sidewalk. The shack lay ahead of them, a low oblong cutting across the horizon line.

"Looks like the wind's settled down some," Liam said, peering up through the windshield. "No more flying tents."

"There's no place like home," Sally murmured, then opened the door and stepped out. The wind had faded and there was a chink of blue sky showing through the black clouds.

"Fickle," he muttered.

Sally started across the shingle. Liam disentangled himself from some torn-open envelopes and followed. The rain had eased, but Sally felt it carrying mud and grit down the back of her neck.

She stopped in front of the shack, metal bar in hand.

"And there's the camera." Liam pointed at the blinking red light. "I guess you're doing the honors?"

"Almost did this a couple of hours ago," Sally said, then slotted the bar into the padlock loop and pulled down.

The padlock was new, the clasp too, and neither buckled, but the door itself did; the thin, rotten clapboard tearing until the bolt hung loose from the padlock loop. The door swung outward and Sally pulled it open then stepped into the gloom.

The wind cut away, reduced to a low whistle through cracks in the walls. Rank smells hit as her eyes adjusted to the gloom; ancient cooking oil, old fish, damp. Black mold bloomed in large patches on the walls and ceiling.

She took it in. The single narrow window facing inland, half-boarded and frosted with salt. Dust lay thick over a pair of warped metal counters. There were plastic tubs containing some dry, blackened matter. A rusted fryer in the corner. Coils of nylon rope hung from nails. A small Labubu doll lay in the center of the floor, covered in silver sequins with rainbow hair and a unicorn horn.