Bleak Waters

Bleak WatersWhat happened to Claire Baldwin? Gary Kruse Copyright © 2023 by Gary KruseArtwork: ©️L.R.J.Allen/MidJourney 2023All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or darkstroke except for brief quotations used for promotion or in reviews. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are used fictitiously. First Dark Edition, darkstroke. 2023 Discover us online: www.darkstroke.com Find us on instagram:www.instagram.com/darkstrokebooks Include #darkstroke in a photo of yourselfholding this book on Instagram andsomething nice will happen. For Ewan and Alex About the Author Gary Kruse is a writer of thriller and horror fiction about people on the edge of society struggling to find who they are, where they come from and where they’re going. He has won and been shortlisted for several short story competitions and his debut novel, Badlands is an Amazon bestseller. Bleak Waters is his second novel. Acknowledgements So here we are again, another book done and on its way into the world. Thanks to my wife, Nicole and my son’s, Ewan and Alex and my Mum for their support not only in writing Bleak Waters but also for cheerleading Badlands since its release. Thanks to Denise, Glenn, Harriet and Felicity for shouting about my books on the other side of the world and leading to the surreal moment of chatting about Badlands with people I barely knew while overlooking Sydney Harbour on New Year’s Eve 2022. A massive shout out to Jenna Morrison and L. R. J. Allen for beta-reading an early draft of Bleak Waters. Your advice and feedback helped to shape the book into what it is today, and gave me a massive boost of confidence after what was, at times, a fraught writing process. And to L.R.J. Allen, thanks also for the awesome cover design. Thanks again to Laurence and the team at darkstroke for your support during the publication and the awesome Zoom sessions! If you follow me on TikTok, Facebook or Insta, your support is greatly appreciated. And finally, thanks again to you, Dear Reader, for joining me on this ride. Your support means the world to me. If you have the chance, please do leave a review on Amazon or GoodReads. Every review and every rating helps! Bleak WatersWhat happened to Claire Baldwin? PART ONE Chapter One Shrouded in a leather trench coat, Lily West trudged along the Pleasure Boat Inn dyke. Her hair fell in a frizz of black curls around her ruddy cheeks. Head bowed, she carried a wreath of white lilies and carnations in one hand. Her black boots squelched through the waterlogged grass. A bitter wind whipped the dark waters of Hickling Broad into frantic peaks. It was five past three, and dusk was already creeping in from the east. The January day was made darker by the brooding clouds. Warm lights glowed in a houseboat tied up along the moorings opposite. Lily stopped at the water’s edge where the grass became a shingle beach. She glanced down at the wreath, her breath steamed before her. The wreath had been Mel’s idea. A chance for closure , she’d called it. A chance to say the goodbye that Lily had been too angry to say six months earlier . She knew that, in theory, it was a simple task; Lay the wreath in the water, let the current take it and with it, some of the bitterness Lily felt. The trouble was, Lily wasn’t sure she was ready to let go of the bitterness yet. She had too many questions. And one terrible fear. The wind flicked a spring of black frizzy hair into her eyes. She flicked it away and watched the marsh harriers soaring, swooping and diving towards their roosts on the nature reserve across the Broad. Its arrival stirred up a skein of pink-footed geese who took flight, heading for their roosts on the coast in a whirr of wings and chorus of agitated honks and cries. The air had a damp, peaty smell. As the skein vanished over the horizon, peace returned. Lily squeezed the wreath tight and gazed around. Beyond the houseboats, the Pleasure Boat Inn sat in darkness, shut up until next month at least. The Sailing Club behind the skeletal hedge to Lily's right was locked up. The new year was barely a fortnight old. Spring, and the return of the tourists, seemed a distant dream. Lily had the dyke to herself. She slipped a hand into her coat pocket and dug out her phone. A picture flashed up on the lock screen. It had been taken two years earlier and showed her as she had appeared then, bright-eyed and smiling wide, her face pressed cheek-to-cheek with her father. Sam West had sharp blue eyes and a mop of dark hair. She remembered the scratch of his pepper-grey stubble on her cheek and his smell of sun-cream and sweat. The picture had been taken on the morning of her twenty-first birthday, right here on this single beach. Lily and her father had borrowed a canoe from the sailing club. Her mother, Hetty, had waited at home, unwilling to put aside her distaste for the water for her daughter’s birthday. Sam and Lily had paddled around the Broad, dodging the dazzlingly white Broads cruisers and the yachts with hulls of gleaming mahogany. Twice they crashed into the reed beds, and they almost ended up in the Broad when the wash of a passing yacht nearly capsized them. Eventually, they got back to the shingle beach safely. Lily had stumbled out, laughing at some joke her father had made, and then he’d pulled her into a hug. He had his phone in a waterproof case around his neck and he told her to smile. He took a selfie, kissed her on the cheek and wished her a Happy Birthday. It had been a good day. A fun day. A day now lost to the past. A pang