The Tide Line Girls

Two women found on the tide line. A third has vanished.

The tide brings them in. Someone lays them out.

A girl beneath Saltburn pier at dawn, facing the sea, inside a perfect ring of sea coal.

Two weeks ago another girl drowned on the same coast. They called it an accident. Nobody looked twice at the coal.

DI Raine Kelly is looking now. Both girls died on a spring tide, and the next one is fourteen days away.

Then seventeen-year-old Ellie Tindall walks home along Redcar seafront and never arrives.

Pinned to a dead girl’s coat is a badge from Redcar Carnival, 1993. That was the summer another girl vanished from the same seafront, in the case that ended Raine’s father’s career.

Frank Kelly can’t remember what day it is. But he remembers the carnival girl.

The tide is coming in. And this time, somebody wants Raine to watch.

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