Revenge of the Tide by Elizabeth Haynes Read Free Book Online

a bit of peace and quiet for a while, that’s all.’
    ‘Genevieve?’
    ‘I said leave her alone, Malcolm, alright? Honestly, you should know better.’
    ‘I just wanted to ask her if she wants me to talk to the police for her, you know, kind of like a liaison…’
    ‘What’s she want a liaison for, you big twat? Honestly, she’s perfectly capable of speaking to the police when they need her to. Anyway, she didn’t see anything, she just found the body. Could have happened to any of us.’
    ‘Her boat’s nearest the river. It must have come down the river from Cuxton. Her boat’s the one that would catch it first if it came downstream.’
    ‘Who says it went in at Cuxton?’
    ‘I never said that. I said it must’ve come from the Cuxton side, that’s all. That’s where the last one came from, remember? That bloke that got stuck in the mud. Last Christmas.’
    ‘You’re wrong. The last one was that stupid fool who jumped off Aylesford bridge in the summer.’
    ‘That one ended up in Gillingham, not here.’
    ‘I know that, I was just saying, that was the last body.’
    ‘Why are you all arguing about it?’
    This last voice was Sally’s. She’d been crying, off and on, not noisily but dabbing her eyes with a tissue, mourning someone she didn’t know.
    They were all silent for a while.
    I said, in a voice that sounded somehow different from my own, ‘Aren’t you going shopping?’
    It felt as if they were all staring at me and my face grew hot.
    ‘Oh, don’t you worry yourself about that,’ Josie said. ‘We can go later.’
    ‘Shall I get you a drink, Genny? A cup of tea?’ Sally said.
    She’d made one for me an hour ago. It was still there on the table, cold.
    ‘I don’t know,’ I said again. ‘No. I don’t think so.’
    ‘Wonder who she was,’ said Malcolm.
    ‘Let’s not talk about it any more,’ said Josie, patting me on the knee. ‘Plenty of other things to talk about, after all.’
    But that didn’t work either. A man came down the stairs from the deck, a man in a suit. He had thinning grey hair cut short, dark eyes, a lined face.
    ‘Morning,’ he said. ‘Detective Sergeant Andy Basten. I’m looking for Genevieve Shipley?’
    They all looked at him and then at me, despite themselves, and almost imperceptibly they all seemed to move a fraction closer to me as if to afford me some sort of protection.
    He showed me his warrant card and his badge. The badge had rubbed against the card in the tatty leather wallet and you could hardly see his picture, let alone his name. He looked as though he liked a beer or two.
    The Souvenir was a big boat, but not as big as the Revenge of the Tide ,and it felt crowded in the saloon with all these people.
    ‘We’ll – er – leave you to it, shall we?’ said Malcolm.
    ‘I’m staying here,’ Josie said, ‘unless she wants me to leave.’
    I wanted her to stay. I wanted her to tell him to go away, the policeman; tell them all to go and leave us alone. I wanted to rewind to last night and that terrible, insistent noise and, instead of going to look, turn over and put my hands over my ears and go back to sleep.
    ‘I’m alright, Josie. Honest,’ I said at last.
    They all went up on deck, leaving me there with the policeman.
    ‘This won’t take too long,’ he said. ‘Must have been a terrible shock for you.’
    I nodded, rapidly. My head felt wobbly, as though it wasn’t connected to my body properly. ‘I was half-asleep. It woke me up very quickly when I realised what it was.’
    He sat down on the armchair opposite me and took out a notebook. ‘I know you’ve been through all this with the officer earlier. I just want to check we’ve got things straight. You said you heard a noise?’
    ‘I heard a knocking on the side of the boat. It woke me up. I went to find out what it was.’
    I was repeating myself already, babbling. My mind wasn’t functioning properly; it was working at least three beats behind my mouth. Think.