74. Chaos
Liam pulled level with the van's rear and dragged the squad car sideways.
The front smashed into the van's side panel, buckling metal and kicking it sideways.
Its rear end swung out across the waterlogged road, and for one hanging second Sally saw Mercer through the side window. Then they were spinning too.
The van struck the shingle bank and slewed up over the peak. The squad car went the other way, dropping off the road nose-first into black water. The airbag burst in her face, she saw black and red, Liam's shoulder, a spray of glass turning slowly in the blue light, then dark.
There was no storm anymore. No rain, no wind, no pain, no loss. Only a ticking sound.
Then a creak.
Then the fast, greedy rushing of water coming in.
Sally opened her eyes to darkness and blue flashes.
The car was tilted sharply, nose-down, half in a drainage ditch or flooded field, she couldn't tell.
Rain hammered through the broken window.
The air smelled of cordite from the airbags, spilled gas and saltwater.
A horn was howling somewhere, not theirs, a long animal scream bleeding into the gale.
She was hanging against the cradle of her seatbelt, chest slashed by the cold floodwater. Everything hurt. She tried to move and a hot bar of pain ran from her shoulder into her teeth, forcing out a cry.
"Liam?" she croaked.
Nothing.
She freed an arm from the belt and wiped her stinging eyes. Liam was slumped over the wheel, airbag deflating against his chest, head tipped sideways. There was blood on his mouth, one arm hanging strangely. The light bar above kept turning, painting him blue, red, blue, red.
Sally fumbled at the belt but her fingers didn't work properly. At last it clicked and she groaned as the pressure on her ribs came away. The whole world went white as lightning smashed down behind them.
"Liam," she croaked again, then got two fingers to his throat. He had a pulse, but ragged. "Wake up."
She shook him. "Come on. Wake up!"
He didn't, but another sound entered the emptiness. A door cracking open.
Not theirs.
She looked out the windshield but couldn't see anything, only the looming reactors. Liam was unconscious. There was no one else now. Only her.
She fought with his belt but couldn't unclasp it. Every second, Mercer was getting closer to setting off a bomb. She made the decision.
"I'm coming back," she muttered, took a deep breath, then kicked the passenger-side door. Agony burst in her hip and shoulder, but it didn't open.
The driver's side window still yawned open. She scrambled over Liam as best she could then slid through the window and sank deep into the flood.
The cold engulfed her body. Her hands pushed against its silty base, eyes burning, then she broke the surface and gasped. The world swirled, bright colors flashing across her vision, but she found her feet.
Mercer.
She pushed along the squad car, sewer mud sucking at her boots, then climbed back to the road.
No sign of him, only tire marks in the shingle.
She staggered up the slope, mounted the low peak and saw Mercer's van below, swallowed by the Gray Lady's waves.
Water rose halfway up the bodywork and smoke poured from under the bonnet.
Sally stumbled down the slope to the passenger window. DCI Gloria Mayhew was inside still, slumped against the dash, blood running down the side of her face.
The driver's door hung open. Sally looked up, tracking the beach, the waves, the sweep of the sea until–
There! Jack Mercer was knee-deep in the waves, bent over with one hand clamped to his side, his coat flapping like a torn wing as he shambled toward the reactors.
"It's over, Jack!" Sally cried.
Mercer turned. His face was pale, his forehead bloody, his face barely discernible through the rain though she could just pick out his mouth, set in a wild grin.
"The river's never over, Sally!" he shouted back. "It flows through us forever." Then he staggered on into the crashing waves.
Sally turned back to Mayhew. The DCI's eyes were closed, her lip split, one cheek swelling already. Sally checked and found a pulse, but it was weak and shallow.
"DCI," she croaked. "Gloria?"
No answer came. A low breath, maybe. The tide was already up to her chest and freezing. If she didn't drown, hypothermia would take her soon. Sally tried to unclip the seatbelt but it was wedged tight. She tried again, pulling to get some slack.
Mayhew gasped and her eyes flicked open. They darted over Sally, the dash, the seatbelt.
"We crashed," Sally said. "I'm trying to get you out, but–"
"Where's Jack?" Mayhew rasped.
Sally looked out through the windshield. She could no longer see Mercer's silhouette through the storm.
"On foot. He's going for the reactor."
"He … killed my father."
Sally flinched. "Detective Stewart?"
Mayhew nodded jerkily. "Drugged … him. Framed the … suicide."
Sally pulled back. Everything Mercer had said about DCI Stewart crashed through her. That he'd been like a father to him. That they were friends. That he'd taken him under his wing, even covered for him.
Then Mercer killed him.
Sally shook it off. "I'm sorry, Gloria. I've got to get you out. Come on. If you … lean back, maybe I can–"
Mayhew's hand grasped Sally's collar with surprising strength. "Stop … him, Sally. Now. That is a … direct order!"
Sally looked into her eyes. Burning, as ever. They weren't in the same chain of command. Mayhew had no right to give her orders. But…
"I can't," she managed. "I have to–"
"Go!" Mayhew shoved and Sally almost fell, the water lashing her thighs. Mayhew still stared at her, and now she was like a mirror. Sally saw herself looking back.
This was the job. The role. The choice made again and again.
She nodded once and ran.
It was barely running, though. Running belonged to her past right now, another era, for someone with lungs that opened all the way and ankles that understood the ground.
This was something rougher and uglier. Every step was pain, a battle against her battered body, her spinning head, the nausea in her belly.
Step after step she staggered through knee-high waves.
She slipped on a silty rise, fell into the water, submerged beneath a crashing wave, then was back up and moving.
Lightning flashed across the beach, bringing a punishing clarity to every detail of Dungeness: the skeletal fire tower standing like some ancient gibbet; the dark silhouette of the old lighthouse; a broken caravan roof spinning slowly in the water; and between her and the reactors, the shadow of Jack Mercer.
She pushed onward, lungs wheezing, one foot dragging, her mind turning too slow for the waves.
Shadows seemed to throng beside her in the driving rain, keeping pace at the edge of her vision, men in long coats with sacks on their backs, faces wrapped in handkerchiefs.
Owlers. Smugglers. Poling marsh boats into secret berths along the old drowned paths by night, carrying wool, brandy, bodies, secrets.
They turned their heads as she passed, ancient secrets watching from the rain.
She blinked and they were gone, the shade of Mercer now staggering past the blasted box of the old Crab Shack. Maybe 15 yards, though he was picking up speed while she was flagging hard.
She stopped running to shout. "Mercer!"
His laugh carried back to her on the wind, deep and wild, but he kept moving. She'd never catch him now. There had to be another way.
"I know why you killed him," she bellowed into the gale. "Why you killed Richter."
His shadow halted, then twisted. She caught shifting glimmers of his white eyes, shining like lighthouse beams through the sea's fury.
"You did it for Reg!" The shouting made everything spin and turn silvery. "You did it for your father!"
Mercer laughed. "So you see me, little girl," he boomed back, his voice controlled as ever, like an actor on his final stage. "Finally! Reg Rook's bastard son. Can you even imagine?"
"My father was a … gambler and a drunk! My mother was lost to God. I know what it's like … to be alone, Jack!"
His laughter grew manic. "You don't know! They sent me away twice, Sally! Twice! Once as a baby. Once as a man. But I kept coming back. Can you explain that to me?"
A wave struck her hip and knocked her onto one knee. She fought her way back up. Mercer was in motion again, hobbling deep into the dark. She needed something more. Something that would make him stop.
"Reg was a bastard," she bellowed. "Your father. But what about your mother?"
Mercer kept laughing. "You don't even know who my mother was."
The beach roared. Water slashed her legs. He was right, Sally knew nothing. Just that his mother was also a child when she gave birth. Someone close to Reg, though. Someone who'd rejected Mercer once, just like Reg.
Then again? As an adult?
Her mind went blank and she forced herself forward into the storm. Names flashed through her head, lists on the whiteboard, stories told across the beach and the marsh, ghosts walking with their eyes and ears removed, ghosts haunting the living to make recompense for the–
She stopped. That was it! A woman haunted by the past, a woman who'd never listened to her long-lost son's pleas. A woman who'd been made to pay.
"Cagen!" she cried out. "Your mother was Nancy Cagen!"
The shape of Mercer stilled again. The only motionless thing on the beach.
"Reg's girlfriend," Sally gasped, striding closer. 10 yards? "Richter's aunt. You killed Richter for Reg. But you killed him for you, too. Because she loved her nephew … more than you!"
The gap between them shrank. Mercer turned. He wasn't laughing anymore.
"She said I wasn't her son," he called back, half a sob, and the pain cut Sally to her core. "That I was a mistake. I didn't even exist."
"She hated Reg, Jack! Not you."
"She was supposed to be my mother!" Mercer's face became savage. "How could a mother do that? To her own son? How could a father?"
"So you took … DCI Mayhew? To show her what family … really means?"
Mercer laughed again. "I know what you're doing, Sally. It's very clever. But you can't stop this now."
"I can't stop the marsh flooding! Scots Float is done. Dymchurch too. But I can stop you blowing the reactor."
Mercer's head tilted. Like he was puzzled. Then he nodded. "Blowing it? Not so clever after all, then. Goodbye, Sally. I've enjoyed our time together."
He ran. Faster now. While Sally had nothing left. Her head pounded black and red, her knees buckling with every slow step forward. There had to be something. Another handhold, something to claw him back with.
'Blowing it?' he'd said. Like he was surprised.
What did that mean?
She thought back. Everything she'd said was true. The bombs he'd already triggered. The bomb yet to come. It was all true. But his van was left behind. There couldn't be a bomb at the reactor, surely, not with their security.
So maybe it wasn't a bomb…
No. Her stream of thought crashed. She was back in the sweaty caravan with Gerald Spate, dismissing Reactor Logistics as a waste of time, just pocket money for electrics and plumbing.
Roarke Rook going back again and again, when he had faster ways of making money. It couldn't just be for the CCTV. It was something else.
The truth crashed home.
It answered everything. Something that might take years, changes made by small degrees so nobody noticed. Something Roarke Rook could build for his 'uncle', with no bomb materials needed to pass through security, nothing but the standard tools of a maintenance man.
The air fled her lungs. Her next step faltered and she sank to both knees, waves smashing into her belly and chest as the truth dawned.
Mercer had planned it meticulously. He'd made a bid for order over chaos in his delivery mechanism, using the land as it laid around them. Something that wasn't haphazard like a bomb; a method that was certain, like a drug needled directly into the bloodstream, impossible to miss.
She forced herself back to her feet and put everything she had into driving air out of her lungs.