Revenge of the Tide by Elizabeth Haynes Read Free Book Online Page A

Concentrate. Don’t say anything. Don’t tell him anything.
    ‘That sort of thing happen often?’
    ‘No. Sometimes rubbish gets caught against the boat when the tide goes out. That’s what I thought it was.’
    He nodded. ‘It’s a nice boat,’ he said. ‘Live there alone, do you?’
    ‘Yes. I’m renovating it. I had savings from my job in London. I’m taking a year out to do the boat up. I’ve been here five months already, I’ve done most of it by myself. All the cladding. The plumbing.’
    I was rambling now, but he didn’t stop me. Just watched me with tired-looking eyes.
    ‘I’m sorry it was such a mess in there. We had a party last night. Why did you need to go in my boat, anyway?’
    ‘We’re finished with it now,’ he said. ‘Just needed to check it wasn’t part of the crime scene, that’s all. Birthday party, was it?’
    ‘Kind of a boat-warming, I guess. Some of my friends from London. Lots of people who live here.’ I indicated the marina with a vague sweep of my hand.
    ‘I’ll need to get you to write me a list. Everyone who was here last night. That okay?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘And you all had a good time? At the party?’
    I nodded.
    ‘The woman you found,’ he said, ‘she wasn’t one of your party guests?’
    I stared at him. ‘They all left. All the London lot. They all went early. I saw them leave the car park.’
    His question had reminded me of something and, before he had a chance to ask me anything else, I said, ‘There was a car, last night. I’ve just remembered. In the car park. When I went outside to see what the knocking noise was, I heard a car driving off. I thought it was odd because it didn’t have its lights on and it was still dark. And the light’s supposed to come on in the car park, it’s on a motion sensor, and it didn’t work. The light didn’t come on.’
    The sergeant was noting all this down and when I ran out of words he was still writing. ‘You didn’t see what sort of car it was? Registration number? Colour?’
    ‘It was dark. I mean the colour. That was all I could see.’
    He nodded slowly, made another note.
    ‘Do you know who it is?’ I asked, trying to keep the trembling out of my voice.
    ‘You mean the body? Did you recognise her, Genevieve?’
    ‘No,’ I said, quickly. ‘I couldn’t really see the face, anyway. I just saw that it was a body and I started screaming.’
    He didn’t say anything. He was looking at me curiously, as though he knew something I didn’t. As though I’d said something particularly interesting.
    He’d written everything down, laboriously, on three sheets of lined A4 paper headed with various official titles, and he handed them to me. I looked at them blankly, at the rounded letters on the page, thinking how his handwriting was girlish, not what I’d expected at all.
    ‘I need you to sign it,’ he said.
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘Your statement. You need to read it through carefully and check that you agree with everything I’ve written. Then you need to sign the bottom of each page. There – see? And there.’
    I read through it. He’d written it on my behalf, as though I’d done it myself. It was odd seeing my words summarised in that curiously rounded script. I kept thinking how I would have phrased it differently – ‘it was dark and I didn’t see the face of the person clearly’ – but I couldn’t bring myself to question it. I signed each page with a rough approximation of my signature and handed it back to him.
    ‘Can I go back to my boat now?’
    ‘Not just yet. We’ll come and find you when we’re ready, okay? Are you feeling alright?’
    ‘I think so.’ I unwrapped myself from the blankets slowly, as though I was peeling off bandages. My body ached as though I’d fallen over. I felt a wave of relief: maybe I’d got away with it.
    ‘We’ll come and talk to you again, maybe tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Can I take your phone number?’
    I recited it to him. ‘I don’t think I