The man looked as if he would protest. She wondered if it was disbelief. You? A doctor? Far too young. But he apparently read her determination. He took off the cap he was wearing. He wiped the arm of his jacket along his forehead, inadvertently streaking mud on his face. His light hair, she saw, was overlong, and his colouring was identical to hers. Both trim, both fair, they might have been siblings, even to the eyes. His were brown. So were hers.
He said, “Very well. Come with me,” and he came across the room and passed her, leaving behind the acrid scent of himself: sweat, unwashed clothing, unbrushed teeth, body oil, and something else, more profound and more disturbing. She backed away from him and kept her distance as they left the cottage and started down the lane.
The wind was fierce. They struggled against it and into the rain as they made their way swiftly towards the beach. They passed the point where the valley stream opened into a pool before tumbling across a natural breakwater and rushing down to the sea. This marked the beginning of Polcare Cove, a narrow strand at low water, just rocks and boulders when the tide was high.
The man called into the wind, “Over here,” and he led her to the north side of the cove. From that point, she needed no further direction. She could see the body on an outcropping of slate: the bright red windcheater, the loose dark trousers for ease of movement, the thin and exceedingly flexible shoes. He wore a harness round his waist and from this dangled numerous metal devices and a lightweight bag from which a white substance spilled across the rock. Chalk for his hands, she thought. She moved to see his face.
She said, “God. It’s…He’s a cliff climber. Look, there’s his rope.”
Part of it lay nearby, an extended umbilical cord to which the body was still attached. The rest of it snaked from the body to the bottom of the cliff, where it formed a rough mound, knotted skillfully with a carabiner protruding from the end.
She felt for a pulse although she knew there would be none. The cliff at this point was two hundred feet high. If he’d fallen from there?as he most certainly had?only a miracle could have preserved him.
There had been no miracle. She said to her companion, “You’re right. He’s dead. And with the tide…Look, we’re going to have to move him or?”
“No!” The stranger’s voice was harsh.
Daidre felt a rush of caution. “What?”
“The police have to see it. We must phone the police. Where’s the nearest phone? Have you a mobile? There was nothing…” He indicated the direction from which they’d come. There was no phone in the cottage.
“I haven’t a mobile,” she said. “I don’t bring one when I come here. What does it matter? He’s dead. We can see how it happened. The tide’s coming in, and if we don’t move him the water will.”
“How long?” he asked.
“What?”
“The tide. How long have we got?”
“I don’t know.” She looked at the water. “Twenty minutes? Half an hour? No more than that.”
“Where’s a phone? You’ve got a car.” And in a variation of her own words, “We’re wasting time. I can stay here with the…with him, if you prefer.”
She didn’t prefer. She had the impression he would depart like a spirit if she left things up to him. He would know she’d gone to make the phone call he so wanted made, but he himself would vanish, leaving her to…what? She had a good idea and it wasn’t a welcome one.
She said, “Come with me.”
SHE TOOK THEM TO the Salthouse Inn. It was the only place within miles she could think of that was guaranteed to have a phone available. The inn sat alone at the junction of three roads: a white, squat, thirteenth-century hostelry that stood inland from Alsperyl, south of Shop, and north of Woodford. She drove there swiftly, but the man didn’t complain or show evidence of worry that they might end up down the side of the hill or headfirst into an earthen hedge. He didn’t use his seat belt, and he didn’t hold on.