Eleven
The Model A bumped along the road to the beach landing, its chassis groaning, the beam from the headlight dancing up ahead.
Conrad pulled the vehicle to a halt. He knew what to expect as he rounded the bend: the sandy lot, fringed with trees and bushes, rising up to the shallow breach in the dune, the ocean out of sight beyond. But he needed to try and see it with fresh eyes. The eyes of a man looking to dispose of a body.
She hadn’t been put in the ocean in front of the Wallaces’ house, of that he was certain. The strength of the longshore set at the time she was supposed to have drowned would have carried her further eastward overnight, beyond the spot where they’d pulled her from the water the next morning. He knew from experience that the ocean could do strange things with a drowned body, taking it on an improbable journey that seemed to defy all natural laws. But that was rare.
It was some distance from the house to the beach, down the bluff and across the dunes, an exposed walk, moonlit on the night in question. Too far to carry a dead weight, and too risky. That was probably the reasoning. Maybe there had been kids on the beach. It was a popular stretch for clambakes at this time of year, the deep sand at the base of the frontal dune pockmarked with the blackened remnants of the nocturnal feasts.
Whatever, he was fairly sure she had been taken elsewhere in a car and then dumped in the ocean. Fortunately, there were a limited number of spots nearby where this might have happened.
Two Mile Hollow landing seemed unlikely. Although closest to the Wallaces’ house, it became a rendezvous for lovers once night fell, a place of furtive exchanges and steamed-up car windows. Likewise, he had dismissed Egypt landing. Right next to the Maidstone Club, there would have been too many other cars coming and going, and there was the added risk that club members often strolled down on to the beach at night.
The small landing at Wiborg’s Beach, on the other hand, a little further along, would have been ideal—remote, squeezed in beside the wasteland of the club’s west course. The village tryworks for rendering whale oil had once stood there, and since much of the big house just back from the dunes had been torn down, local people had started using the track again to gain access to the beach.
Conrad wrenched the Model A into gear and pulled away. He knew that what he was doing served no concrete purpose, nothing could possibly come of anything he found, it was simply that he needed to know: for himself, and for Lillian.
Rounding the bend, the small landing opened up in front of him. He found himself drawn to the gloom beneath the boughs of an oak, the natural spot to park up if you had something to hide. He turned the engine off, reached for the flashlight on the seat beside him and got out.
What would he have done next? Strolled up on to the beach, probably, to check the coast was clear. Returning to the car, he would then have shouldered the body and hurried as best he could towards the breach in the dune. No. This would leave him vulnerable for—what?—thirty or forty seconds, prey to the headlights of an approaching vehicle. Far better to cut through the undergrowth on the right. It offered perfect cover. If he happened to be surprised he could easily drop out of sight and hide there, undetected, until the danger had passed.
Conrad pushed his way through the hawthorn and dogwood, the thin, poor soil underfoot giving way to sand as he neared the back of the dune. He swept the rise with the beam of the flashlight, but the dense carpet of beach grass concealed any tracks there might have been leading up the incline.
The crest of the dune, however, was bald of any vegetation, and he found what he was looking for almost immediately; so quickly, in fact, that at first he doubted what he was seeing.
There was a shallow but distinct patch of flattened sand where the killer had laid her on the ground after the climb—carefully, no doubt, so as not to mark the body. Indistinct footprints disturbed the area around.
If this had been the movies he would have discovered a cigarette butt nearby—some rare Turkish brand that would identify the culprit. But all Conrad could see were two tracks in the crusty, wind-packed sand leading down the face of the dune on to the beach.
The scene presented itself to him: the killer hooking his arms beneath hers and hauling her backwards down the dune, her heels furrowing the sand in neat, straight lines.
The tracks led out across the beach a short distance before dissolving in the swathe of disturbed sand where others had strolled in the intervening days.
He carried on past to the water’s edge.
The waves were breaking low and clean to the east, their curling crests catching the light of the moon—strips of silver traveling gently along the shore.
So this was it, the place. He must have drenched himself in the process, dragging her out there beyond the break.
He had thought in terms of just one killer up until now, finding it easier to focus his confusion, his hatred, on an individual rather than a cast of conspirators. It was now clear he’d been right to do so. The lone set of footprints flanking the furrows confirmed it.
He wandered back to the dune, settled himself down and rolled a cigarette. His Zippo wouldn’t light, out of gas, and he slipped the smoke into his shirt pocket.
He laid his hand on the sand, feeling the contours of the indentations left by her heels.
It caught him like a rogue wave, a big sea surging up from the depths, unexpected, overwhelming. He choked, trying to keep it down, but it swept him before it, engulfing him, deep sobs racking his body, tears coursing down his cheeks.