Текст книги "The Risk of Darkness"
Автор книги: Susan Hill
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Chapman sat, fingers tip to tip in front of his nose, looking down on his desk. The visit to the village where the abducted child lived had been as agonising as they had expected. Serrailler had had David Angus’s parents at the front of his mind, but they had been controlled by comparison with the Suddens. He had never witnessed such raw, open grief, such anger and anguish and storms of tears. The mother had torn at her own face and pulled strands of her hair until they came out, screaming at the police liaison officer with her. People had stood staring, wild-eyed and hostile, at the police, at the same time as they showed their furious need of them.
Both men had come away shaken.
Now, Jim Chapman reached for the phone. His every movement seemed planned, every word measured. Simon watched him.
“I want,” he said, “every silver-coloured Mondeo sighted anywhere on the roads in our area followed and the registration checked. Any details tallying with the first three, repeat, three letters, that car is to be stopped, the driver questioned and the car searched. And I want every silver Mondeo registered in our area and having those initial letters traced and the owner visited. Repeat, every silver Mondeo.”
He put the receiver down and looked at Serrailler. “What?”
Simon shook his head. “Your call.”
“It takes what it takes. Men. Overtime. Whatever.” He got up. “I’d like to nip up to the hospital again, see my daughter. Are you still with us, Simon?”
“Am I still welcome?”
Jim Chapman raised his eyebrows at him as he left the room.
“He’ll go to Real Madrid.”
“Real wouldn’t want him.”
“Crap, of course they’d want him. He’s genius.”
“Well, they can’t all go to Real. I reckon it’ll be AC Milan.”
PC Dave Hennessy drained the can of Coke and scrunched it up to the size of a chicken nugget. It was one of the things he did.
“Here, Karl reckons he’s gonna pop the question come Friday.”
“Wondered what the fat grin was for. That’ll sort him. No more evenings pumping iron.”
“Naw, he’s going for the nationals, he’s gotta keep that up. You can’t afford to miss a day, that level of weightlifting.”
“Read my lips: ‘That’ll sort him.’ You met Linda?”
“Seen her.”
“Yeah, well, I went to school with her. She’s bloody terrifying. It’ll be under the thumb.”
Nick Paterson laughed, thinking about it. They were sitting up on the lay-by in the shade. He shifted his legs and slipped down a bit in the seat. Might be time for ten minutes.
“You see that notice this morning? CID woman pinned it up apparently.”
“Nope.”
“Gay march through York. Wear your uniform with pride.”
Nick snorted in derision. “That’s wrong. It’s in the police rules. You don’t join political marches, you don’t become an activist c They want to go on perv marches they should get a different job.”
“You can’t say that.”
“Pervs is what I said and pervs is what I meant.”
“Here!” Nick sat up. “You see that?”
“I got my eyes shut.”
“Silver Mondeo.”
“Hundreds of them.”
“See the driver? Man, dark jacket, dark hair.” Nick let the clutch in and roared down the slip road on to the dual carriageway. “Find out that number again.”
But Dave was already on to it.
Two miles on and doing eighty, they shot by the service station.
“Fuck it. He’s in there,” Dave shouted.
“Stop at the Conway roundabout, wait for him.”
“There’s four routes he could take. We can’t cover them all.”
“Call for back-up.”
“Be halfway to Scotland by then.”
“Might not have been him anyway.”
They slowed to fifty. Ahead, in the east, the clouds were banking up, storm grey and darkening.
“I don’t know though,” Nick said after a moment. “I had a feeling about that one.”
It was difficult, not having any official role here. Simon couldn’t stay for ever. If today ended in a blank, he would have to return to Lafferton tomorrow morning.
He wandered down the corridor towards the CID room. What did they think of him here? Were they all watching him, speculating? Stations were gossip shops, but it was unusual for the gossip to spread about an outsider. He was irritated.
The atmosphere was quiet but the tension was there, the sense that this time, maybe, perhaps, something would break, there would be a lead, it might be coming to the boil. At the far end of the room, the faces of the children, three of them now, looked out.
“Sir?”
A DC was beckoning him over. Simon took the phone he was holding out. “Serrailler.”
“I’m heading back,” Jim Chapman said. “Pick you up on my way.”
“Where are we going?”
“Main road towards Scarborough. Silver Mondeo speeding. Patrol car intercepted. Driver put his foot down. Registration tallies. Get down to the forecourt, I’ll not be stopping.”
Simon dropped the phone and ran.
In the car, which barely drew up to let him scramble in, Chapman explained.
“They spotted him, then lost him. Picked him up again at a roundabout, flagged him down but he wouldn’t stop.”
Chapman’s driver was picking up speed.
“Description?”
“Tallies—driver has dark hair, wearing a dark jacket, has noticeably pale skin apparently, which the icecream van chap remarked on c no passengers. We’ve got cars coming in to cover routes off.”
They were on the dual carriageway now, and Chapman was in touch with the patrol immediately behind the Mondeo. Simon felt the old clench in the pit of his stomach, as the adrenalin rushed in. He had the sense that this might be it. Their car was doing over a hundred now, scenery flashing by. A face at a vehicle window, a driver alarmed at their speed, then another, gone. A lorry, pulling in to let them pass. A blur of red. A tanker. Blare of a horn. Gone. It was raining, the sky ahead was sulphurous.
A hundred and five, steady.
Then, just in front, the blue light of a patrol car.
“Storm’s coming in from the sea,” Chapman said. “You ever been over this way?”
“I’ve a photograph of myself on a donkey at Scarborough.” Serrailler glanced out of the rear window and spotted a second patrol car.
Chapman was on the phone again. The Mondeo was still moving, still heading east.
They hit a wall of rain and tore a way through it.
Eight
Crap way to earn a living. Crap way to live. Filling vending machines with condoms and tampons, selling illegal fags. What was it about? There ought to be more.
There wasmore.
The car could move when it had to, eating up the shining wet road.
What would he have said? Or she for that matter? We expected better of you. We wanted more for you. The whining pasty faces, his watery blue eyes. Pathetic.
Weak. Never be.
There was the dark space. Hole. No one knew. That was the end of it and didn’t signify. It was the beginning that signified. The moment of waking. The faintest shadow of a shadow.
The needle of excited dread.
The rain was streaming down the window and bouncing off the bonnet. How far from home? Too far. No happy evening with Kyra then. Kyra’s face shone out of the rainstorm, bright-eyed. Kyra. Different. Funny that. Kyra was safe as houses. No harm would ever come to Kyra. It was good to know, good to be confident. Kyra enjoyed coming round, getting away from her own home, the lack of interest or attention, the endless shouting and chivvying and swearing. Kyra deserved more, deserved someone listening, playing, having fun, thinking up things to do. Kyra.
Why was Kyra different?
It puzzled Ed.
They were there. They had been left a long way back but now they were there again, white streaking up, blue flashing. Fuck it. The road was straight and fast but the rain didn’t help. It was good to know exactly what was ahead though, not be driving blindly anywhere, in the desperation to shake them off, get away.
The last time Kyra had been round she had looked at the box of photographs and there were half a dozen of Scarborough. She’d loved it. The donkeys. The castle. Then Ed on a donkey. Ed with a bucket and spade. Then a postcard of the foreshore with the fairy lights on.
“I wish I could go there. One day, will you and me go there? Will you take me to Scarborough, Ed?”
Why not? Natalie would probably jump at it, give her a break. There would be the donkeys and the glass of ice cream with cochineal sauce at the Harbour bar and the game of Whack a Croc at the funfair, the candyfloss-maker to watch, hot sweetness in their mouths, melting into a pool; then the rock stall; the sand, soft as silk in great heaps by the railings, but harder, flat and dark as honey towards the water’s edge. Crazy golf. The maze. The cliff paths winding down and down.
The cliffs. The caves. Rock pools. Crabs and starfish. Kyra would love it all. A child to show the magic to, a child to laugh with. Kyra’s face, curious, interested, hopeful. Kyra would be safe. Kyra was safe. Kyra would never lie bound in the boot of the car, eyes closed, breath still.
Rock pools. Now it was the reflection in them that shone through the windscreen and the rain, the clear water, with the creatures deep down stirring the sand about.
Pools.
Cliffs.
Caves.
Cliff.
Cave.
Pool.
Places to hide.
Nine
“I dreamed your father was back. He was sitting at the piano playing Scott Joplin. How silly.”
“Well, he used to play Scott Joplin.”
“Of course, but why should I dream he was doing it now?”
Magda Fitzroy shifted irritably about on her pillows. She looked bleached, and her eyes had sunk in, the bruises and cut on her forehead standing out crusted and dark as dried meat.
The ward had six beds and Magda was beside a window, but the view was of thin skeins of cloud and the side of another building.
“It was remarkable, you know, he played all that without reading music, just by ear.”
“Have you been thinking about him a lot?”
“No. Why do you ask?”
It was conversations like this, roundabout, argumentative conversations, which tried Jane’s patience, reminding her why she had had to move away from London, breathe different air, psychologically rather than literally. Magda enjoyed argument and bouts of disagreeable confrontation. It had driven her patient husband mad.
Jane’s best way was to snip off the thread of discussion sharply. But when she had done so, she had to unwind another. “You can’t go back home to be on your own after what’s happened. Maybe we should talk about things.”
Her mother turned her head to look away. On the other side of the room, an old woman snored, lying humped sideways under the bedcovers, her head back. Magda drew in her breath in irritation. Jane waited. But her mother was good at ignoring a topic she did not wish to discuss.
A trolley came, trailing the smell of urn tea.
“Here you go, Violet, up you come, darling.”
Jane went to the trolley. “Can I give you a hand?”
The woman had a long grey ponytail and a sour mouth.
“My mother doesn’t have milk or sugar.”
“What, all black? I couldn’t stomach that.”
“Nor could I.” Jane smiled. She got no smile in return.
“So you’ll come back with me then?” she said, setting the cup and saucer on the locker. Dear God, she thought, help me find a way round this. She is old. You have to love her, you have to try. But it was hard to ignore all the years of gritty dislike, and the recent ones of bitter words and derision.
Magda looked at her. “You couldn’t stand it any longer than I could. I want to be in my own home. They won’t come back, they’ve got what they wanted.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“I’d better be.”
“I’ve phoned an alarm company, they’re going to survey the house tomorrow morning. At least that will give you some security.”
“Of course it won’t. There are damned alarms going off every night, people are probably having their throats slit but no one minds, the police certainly don’t come. So don’t waste my money.”
“Mother, I can’t just go back and leave you, I’ll—”
“What? You’ll do whatever you do. Sing and pray.”
“And worry about you.”
“I thought you were supposed to have done with that. Trust the Lord and so forth.”
“At least come to Lafferton for a few days c see the place, it’s beautiful. See where I live.”
“Like the fairies.”
“What?”
“At the bottom of someone’s garden, isn’t it? Seems quite fitting.”
One day, I may hit her. One day, I may kill her. One day c But she had gone past all that, years before, coming in from school at the end of every day, shaking with pent-up anger if her mother was at home, only calm when she was at the clinic, or lecturing, or, wonderfully, on some trip abroad. Sometimes, it had been Jane and her father for weeks at a time. They had looked at one another across the dining table and never said it aloud but caught each other counting off the days of freedom and peace that were left, seeing it all in one another’s eyes.
But Magda was weak now, Jane thought, weak and frightened and confused. And when it happened, she rang me. Didn’t that mean something?
“I’ve got a paper to write for the next Journal, and Elspeth is expecting me to have looked at our last chapter. I need to finish it, Jane. I still have a lot to do before I die.” She spoke matter-of-factly She meant it.
“I know. You’ve plenty more to give.”
“Sentimental.”
“No. Truth.”
“Do you remember Charlie Gold? Maurice Gold’s son?”
“Good Lord c yes, I do c I quite fancied him at one time. Why?”
“There’s an invitation to his wedding in the house somewhere. Sunday week, I think. I’d like to go.”
“Charlie Gold.” She saw him, dark hair, olive skin, thick eyebrows. Goodness.
“Who is he marrying?”
Her mother shrugged. “I hate the synagogue. I haven’t been since your father died. But I wouldn’t mind dying at a Jewish wedding.”
“I bet quite a few people do c all that eating, dancing as if they were still twenty c then pop.”
Jane remembered the arguments she had listened to from her room, the volleys of accusation, the despair in her father’s voice. He had suffered for marrying not only a non-Jew but an unbeliever, a rationalist, a Marxist, a woman who had laughed in his face when he had suggested they go occasionally to the Friday-night meal with his parents.
When Magda was away, Jane had gone with him instead. The memory of the ceremony, the food, the prayers, the closeness of the atmosphere was precious. She had never told her mother, and when her grandparents died within six months of one another, it was as though everything had stopped, the whole of her connection with her Jewishness had been severed. Then her father had died. It had almost gone from her memory, until news like this, of someone she had once known, brought it back like the waft from a censer, swinging its perfume towards her.
“Do you suppose those youths knew me?” her mother asked. Just for a second, her eyes flickered with anxiety.
“No c they just liked the look of the house and thought there’d be rich pickings. They expected it to be empty but you were in, so they lost their heads. How would they know you? You didn’t recognise them.”
“Might they have been watching?”
“Unlikely. There are plenty of swankier houses in Hampstead.”
“That is true. Oh, go on, get back to your cathedral. I’m sure they need you more than I do.”
“Not just at present. Anyway, I have to see the police. They’ve checked the house but they want a statement from me.”
“How can that be of use? You weren’t even there. Tell them to see me. You don’t know anything about it. I am going to discharge myself in the morning and I am then going home. And I don’t want you to be there fussing about.”
Jane got up. Humour, she had decided long ago, humour works. Occasionally. But nothing remotely funny came to her.
It was dusk by the time she left London. The sky was feathered with blackberry cloud as she headed west. Scott Joplin came from the CD player. She had seen the police, sorted out the house as best she could, bought groceries and some sweet-scented stocks to bring fresh life to a house that felt tainted. She turned her mind away from thoughts of her mother alone again there, working as usual in her garden study among a drift of papers and cigar ash. She would be fine. She was a strong woman. It was astonishing that any burglar had got the better of her. Her mother c
But her mother, for the first time in Jane’s life, had become vulnerable and the idea left her confused and anxious, half afraid, half irritated. How dare she? she thought, moving into the centre lane and picking up speed. How dare she do this to me?
The piano plinked out its jazz, faultless, confident. The memory of her father blinded her with unexpected tears.
Ten
“Can she see me?”
The nurse hesitated.
“Can she hear me?”
“She may c hearing is the c yes, she may.”
“Hearing is the what? What?”
Alarm flickered on her face.
Max Jameson had shouted. He was angry. He had spoken as if it was the nurse’s fault and it was not, but he could not apologise. “What? Please don’t pretend to me.”
“Hearing is the last sense to go, that was all I was going to say. So she may hear you c always assume that she can. That’s the best way.”
But when he looked at Lizzie, who might hear him or might not, he could think of nothing to say.
Lizzie. Already this was not Lizzie.
He saw that the nurse was looking at him with such sweetness, such concern, that he wanted to lay his head on her breast, take her comfort. She wiped Lizzie’s forehead with a cloth dipped in cool water.
“Can she feel that?”
“I don’t know.”
“I have to go outside. Can I go into the garden?”
“Of course. It’s lovely there. Peaceful.”
“I don’t want peace.”
He stood in the hot little dying room trying to speak, but only breath came. He stumbled to the door.
It had been three days and three nights and terrible to watch and still his wife would not die. Lizzie.
He sat on a bench. He wished he smoked. That would have been a good excuse. “I need to get out for a cigarette,” not “I need to get away from her dying.”
There was no one else outside. On the right, the new extension building was being finished, the windows still glassless, like eye sockets.
“Can she see?”
It occurred to Max that if he could have known the future, when her illness had begun, he would have killed her then, that it would have been kinder to have killed. His love for her was so great that he could have done it.
The air smelled sweet, of earth and cooling grass, but the next moment, of cigarette smoke. A man had come to sit next to him on the bench. He proffered the packet.
“No, thanks,” Max said.
“No. Well, I didn’t. Gave it up years back. Only you reach for it, you know, first thing you need.”
Don’t talk to me, Max thought, don’t ask and don’t tell.
“Hardest bit, this, isn’t it? Waiting. You feel guilty, like c wishing it was over, dreading it.”
Something flooded through him c Relief? Fear?
“It’s not right. You’ve done everything for them then suddenly you can’t do a bloody thing.”
“Yes.”
“Your mother or what?”
Max stared at the dark ground beneath his feet. His lips felt thick and numb. “Wife,” he heard himself say. “My wife. Lizzie.”
“Fuck it.”
“Right.”
“Daughter, me. Two smashing kids, everything to live for. I’d get into that bed and die for her if I could.”
“Yes,” Max said.
“Cancer?”
“No.”
“Right. Generally is, that’s all.”
“Yes.”
The man put his hand briefly on to Max’s shoulder as he stood up. Said nothing. Went.
It would have been better if he had never met Lizzie, never loved her, never been happy.
Better.
He knew he ought to go back to her.
He sat on alone in the dark garden.
Eleven
Cat Deerbon switched on her torch. The block had a concrete staircase but several of the lights had failed and it was the same along the walkway outside the flats. It was some time since she had been called out here at night. Televisions and sound systems blared through windows, there were raised voices and then patches of silence and blackness, as though people were hunkered down hiding from a storm.
Number 188 was like that. No light from the kitchen window, at the front, or through the glass door panel. A train went by in the distance.
Cat rattled the letter box, waited, and then banged on the glass. A dog began to bark from further along, booming, menacing. She knew the sort of dog it would be.
No one came to the door.
The call had come from an elderly man. He had sounded breathless and distressed, and over the phone she had heard the harsh whistling in his bronchial tubes. She rattled the letter box again, shouted, and then tried the handle, but the door was locked. She moved along the walkway to stand under one of the lights and took out her mobile. As she did so, she heard a slight scuffle, the scrape of a shoe sole, nothing more, and then someone’s arm was round her neck from behind, her wrist was bent backwards and the phone was wrenched out of her hand. Cat swore and kicked out hard, but as she tried to pull away, felt a blow in her lower back which sent her, face down, on to the concrete. Footsteps, soft, sure footsteps, raced away and down the stairs.
The dog’s barking had risen to a fury.
She did not know how long it took her to sit cautiously, checking herself for pain as she moved; but she was no more than bruised and shaken and stood up, reaching out to the ledge for support.
Footsteps up the stairs again, but these were the sharp, confident taps of high heels.
Cat called out.
Ten minutes later, she was sitting on a leather sofa beside a blazing gas fire, her hand shaking as she tried to drink from a mug of tea. Police and ambulance were on their way.
“You shouldn’t be doing calls out here by yourself at night, Doctor, you was lucky it was just your phone. Bloody louts.”
Cat did not know the woman with burgundy fingernails who had been coming home off the late shift at the supermarket, but she was near to tears with gratitude.
“Who was it you was going to see?”
“He lives at 188 c Mr Sumner.”
“Got a hearing aid?”
“I’ve no idea. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him.”
“No, well, I wouldn’t know his name or anything, you don’t here. Well, some of the young ones do, the mothers with little ones, they all seem to get together, but the rest of us just come and go. Like that now, isn’t it? You sure you’re warm enough, you can get cold having a shock, I read that.”
Cat couldn’t have said that she was too hot and the tea was so sweet she could barely drink it. It didn’t matter. How could it?
The police and paramedics arrived together, boots crunching outside, sending the dog and others in the flats around into a frenzy.
The woman followed Cat and waited as the door of 188 was forced open. The flat was in darkness and smelled acrid. One of the paramedics almost slipped on a patch of vomit. They found Cat’s patient, Arthur Sumner, lying dead in the lavatory.
“Give you a lift home, Doc?”
“I’m fine.”
Fine, she thought, thanking the woman with the burgundy nails, thanking the crews, walking down the concrete staircase and across to her car. Fine. She sat for a moment, head down on the wheel. She would ring Chris, tell him what had happened. Then she remembered that her mobile had been taken, that she had to go into the station tomorrow and make a report, get a new phone, do the paperwork on Arthur Sumner. “Got a hearing aid?”
She had not even known.
Home. Now. She started the engine and reversed the car. As she turned, she saw a couple of youths peering at her, laughing, fingers raised obscenely. Just don’t ever get ill when I’m around, she thought, don’t call me, don’t have an accident, don’t c
Let it go. She was driving too fast.
The road away from the Dulcie estate took her on to the bypass, after which she skirted a grid of avenues leading to the Hill. Revulsion she had not felt for months, and fear too, rose up in her and seemed to fill her mouth with a bitter taste. She did not want to go near the Hill, where women had been attacked and so swiftly, expertly murdered. There was a stain over the place that would never be erased from Lafferton’s consciousness. Someone had written a book about the case, someone else was making a television documentary, keeping it all alive, keeping the wounds open.
She took a detour round Tenbury Walk. The hospice was at the bottom of here. The lights shone softly behind drawn blinds; a couple of cars were parked at the front. Cat turned into the entrance and pulled up beside them.
Twelve
“Chapman.”
“Call just came in, guv. Natalie Coombs, aged twenty-six, lives in Fimmingham. Reports her next-door neighbour has a silver Mondeo registration XT c something. She suddenly panicked because her six-year-old daughter spends quite a bit of time round there apparently.”
“Has the child said anything?”
“Not as far as I know.”
“Neighbour’s name?”
“Ed Sleightholme.”
“Get someone round there. Now.”
“Guv.”
The driver murmured urgently, and Chapman glanced up. “Bugger.”
“They’re turning off, sir.”
The patrol car in front had veered left, leaving the dual carriageway, and was following the Mondeo on to a B-road.
“He’s not going to Scarborough.”
“Where then?”
“Not sure c” The rain had lessened slightly but the clouds were still dark, banking up as they ran towards the sea, and the narrower road was treacherous.
“OK, Katie, let’s not cause a pile-up.”
“Sir.” The driver eased off but ahead of them, the patrol car streaked after the Mondeo, sending up sheets of spray behind it.
“Funny, isn’t it,” Chapman said, leaning back in his seat, relaxed and calm. “Give them a rope and they’ll often hang themselves c If he hadn’t panicked when the boys stepped after him, he’d not have roused any more interest. Now look at him.”
“Have you got enough to arrest him?” asked Simon.
“Just about enough to bring him in for questioning.”
“Jesus.” Simon closed his eyes. He opened them on an empty road ahead. The cars had peeled off on to yet another B-road. Lightning cracked across the sky, out to sea. The Mondeo drove towards it.
It took them twenty minutes to reach the coast, and a stretch of open, scrubby ground off the road.
They jumped out. The patrol car had stopped. The Mondeo was slewed round a few yards away from them and the driver was out and running fast towards the cliff edge.
“Bloody hell.”
“He’s going to kill himself,” Chapman muttered.
“Not if I have anything to do with it he’s bloody not.”
Something made Serrailler run, something that had been building up inside him like the storm and now hit him in the stomach as a burst of fury. The uniformed officers were making across the grass but they were slow, one of them a heavy man, the other seemingly in trouble with his boot. Simon passed them, confident, running easily. What gave him speed was his certainty, cast iron and unwavering, that he was following the murderer of David Angus, Scott Merriman, Amy Sudden c He had to catch the man before he reached the cliff edge and hurtled himself through the air on to the rocks far below.
But as he drew nearer, Serrailler realised that there was a path. He did not look back to see if the others were following. He was on his own now, this was his chase and his arrest.
The man vanished.
Simon reached the cliff edge and hesitated, looking down. The path was narrow and precipitous, cut into the cliff, without any handrail or holding place, but clearly the man knew exactly where to go and what to do after he plunged over the edge.
Simon did not hesitate.
It was the wind which shocked him and almost threw him off balance; rain was driven hard into his face. The sky was livid, lightning forking across it, though still a way off. He calculated that they had some time before the storm posed any threat and by then he intended them to be back up the path and into the cars.
He slithered, caught his breath and tried to grab an outcrop of rock, but the stones slipped out of his hand and rumbled down the cliff, gaining speed. Ahead of him, the man was like a monkey, agile, sure-footed, clambering and scrabbling down. Below them, far below, a narrow ribbon of dark sand, strewn with rocks. Ahead of that, the sea, roaring up, swollen and gathering height. Simon looked back. He had come further than he’d realised. The figures peering down at him from the clifftop seemed miles away. But heights had never bothered him and he was sure-footed now, though the rain was washing debris down the path behind him, and his hand slipped on the rock as he tried to gain a hold. The lower part of the cliff was the hardest to negotiate—the rocks here were jagged, full of crevices and slippery with lime green seaweed. Several times he almost fell and once, in saving himself, gashed his palm on a piece of outcrop. Then they were down and he was in pursuit, the flat sand sucking at his feet. The man was trying to run but they were both slowed now. The wind was full in their faces and the storm was being swept inshore; the lightning streaked down the sky followed within seconds by thunder. But it was not the storm which troubled Simon. It was the tide which was gathering speed and boiling in fast towards them.
They were in a small curved bay, separated from the others by long breakwaters of rocks that stretched out into the sea like the narrowing tails of prehistoric monsters; as he raced and leapt his way along the narrow belt of sand, the bones of the tails were being submerged one by one.
Ahead of him, the man leapt on to a high rock and clambered towards the cliff.
Simon was close now.
Then he saw the cave mouth, a toothless maw in the base of the cliff and guarded by a Cerberus of rocks. Seconds later, he was on to them. The cave smelled of long-dead fish and salt water.
For a moment, he wondered if it might be the entrance to some place of safety out of the tide, set deep in the cliff, but as he bent to get inside, he saw that it did not go far back and that the rock above was so low he would scarcely be able to stand upright. There was no light. He had no torch. Behind, the sea was roaring at one with the thunder.
“Get out of here, you idiot, come back out, the tide’s going to pour in at any minute.”
Nothing. Then a voice that shocked him into complete stillness.
“God. Oh God, it’s the wrong cave. You’ve got to get out. You’re blocking me. Move.”
The voice rose to a hysterical pitch.
“Get out!” the woman screamed.
Serrailler began to back away slowly, holding on to the rocks, the sides of the cave c As he emerged into the greenish light of the storm, he saw that there was one way of escape, a ledge perhaps a dozen feet up against the cliff face, just reachable in three or four carefully placed strides. The tide was swirling a yard away.
