Dead Tomorrow

wiry, heavily bearded old sea dog from whom the police had chartered the boat. He had observed him prepare her, filling up her fuel and water tanks, then motoring her eastwards from her moorings at the Sussex Motor Yacht Club to further up the harbour, to the agreed departure point in Aldrington Basin. Towers tied the boat up, then left her, as instructed. The Specialist Search Unit had already been given a spare set of ignition and locker keys the night before.
    It was ironic, Cosmescu thought, considering the number of fishing boats readily available for charter at this time of the year, that the police had chosen the same boat that he had. Always assuming, of course, that it was coincidence. And he was not a man who was comfortable with assumptions. He preferred hard facts and mathematical probabilities.
    He had only discovered when he got talking to Jim Towers, when they were out at sea, that before he had retired to run his fishing trips, Towers had been a private investigator. PIs were themselves often ex-cops–or at least had plenty of friends in the police. Cosmescu had paid Towers big money. More money for that single trip than he would have earned in a year of charters. Yet now, just a few days later, he was letting ten cops go out on that boat!
    Cosmescu didn’t like the way that smelled.
    He had long believed in the old adage: Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer .
    And at this moment Jim Towers could hardly be closer. He was bound up so tightly with duct tape that he lookedlike an Egyptian mummy, lying securely in the rear of Cosmescu’s small white van. The van was registered in the name of a building firm that existed but never traded, and he normally kept it parked out of sight, inside a secure lock-up.
    For the moment, it was parked in a side street, just off the main road behind him. Just a couple of hundred yards away.
    Quite close enough.
    Twenty minutes later, after a slow journey through the lock, the boat headed out of the shelter of the harbour moles into the open sea. Almost instantly the water became rougher, the small boat pitch-poling through the waves in the rising offshore wind.
    Glenn was seated on a hard stool, under the shelter of the open cabin that was little more than an awning, next to Jonah, who was at the helm. The DS held on to the compass binnacle in front of him, checking his phone every few minutes as the harbour and shoreline receded, in case there was a text from Ari. But the screen remained blank. After half an hour he was starting to feel increasingly queasy.
    The crew took the piss out of him relentlessly.
    ‘That what you always wear on a boat, Glenn?’ Chris Dicks, nicknamed Clyde, asked him.
    ‘Yeah. Cos, like, usually I have a private cabin with a balcony.’
    ‘Get well paid in CID, do you?’
    The boat was vibrating and rolling horribly. Glenn was taking deep breaths, each one containing exhaust fumes and varnish and rotted fish, and occasional snatches of Jeyes Fluid–the smell that every police officer associateswith death. He was feeling giddy. The sea was becoming a blur.
    ‘Hope you brought your dinner jacket,’ WAFI said. ‘You’re going to need it if you are planning on dining at the captain’s table tonight.’
    ‘Yeah, course I did,’ Glenn replied. It was becoming an effort to speak. And he was freezing cold.
    ‘Keep looking at the horizon, Glenn,’ Tania said kindly, ‘if you feel queasy.’
    Glenn tried to look at the horizon. But it was almost impossible to tell where the grey sky met the grey roiling sea. His stomach was playing hoopla. His brain was trying to follow it, with limited success.
    Between himself and the skipper, Jonah, who sat on a padded seat, holding the large, round wheel, was the Humminbird sidescan imaging sonar screen.
    ‘These are the anomalies we picked up yesterday, Glenn,’ Tania Whitlock said.
    She ran a replay on the small blue screen. There was a line down the middle, made by the Towfish sonar device which had been trawled behind the boat. She pointed out two small, barely visible black shadows.
    ‘Those could be bodies,’ she said.
    Glenn was not sure exactly what he was meant to be looking at. The shadows looked tiny, the size of ants.
    ‘Those there?’ he asked.
    ‘Yes. We’re about one hour away. Coffee?’
    Glenn Branson shook his head. One hour , he thought. Shit. A whole hour more of this. He wasn’t sure he could swallow anything. He tried staring at the horizon, but that made