by Gwen Moffat
The Pritchards were suddenly embarrassed and avoided each other’s eyes. A curlew wailed in the next pasture. Miss Pink studied the slopes of Cam Goch thoughtfully.
‘Perhaps she’s on the mountain. Are there holes on the mountain?’
‘Foxes’ holes,’ Pritchard said.
‘She couldn’t hide in a fox’s hole.’
Mrs Pritchard was lighting a fresh cigarette. ‘She don’t need to—’
Avril made a movement. ‘No one’ll find her; not till she’s ready.’
Her father turned to the tractor. Miss Pink said urgently: ‘We could help; we’re her friends. . . .’
Samuel looked at Avril imploringly. ‘She trusts me. Is she at Pentref? It was closed when we came past.’
‘She’s not there. Leave her be.’
‘So you know where she is.’ He was desperate. ‘Is she at Corn?’
‘We ain’t seen her today.’
The tractor fired. Miss Pink said: ‘Will you tell her I want to see her: anywhere she likes? Tell her we’re on her side.’
‘We got to get on with the hay.’ Mrs Pritchard moved after the tractor. Avril went to follow then looked back. ‘After dark. She won’t come in the daylight.’
‘Why ever not?’ Samuel shouted.
‘It’s safer in the dark.’
‘Is it to do with Jakey?’ Miss Pink called, but she was speaking to their backs.
Samuel said quietly: ‘They know where she is. Who’s she hiding from?’
‘Pryce? But he’s looking for Jakey, not for Rachel.’
They started to walk towards Corn where they’d left the car in the farmyard. Samuel glanced behind. ‘What is it? Is there some link between that little monster and Rachel? Could she be protecting him?’
Miss Pink said: ‘I wonder whether she’ll come down to the village tonight. We’ve got a long time to wait until dark. . . . Samuel! Can you get hold of a boat—not in the village, Pryce might be there. Can you get one from this side of the peninsula, so that we can approach the headland without the whole village knowing?’
‘There’s Parry Lobsters at Cae Coch; he’d lend me his boat. Why?’
‘I think I know where Rachel is.’
‘That’s what you said about the mines. A boat? You think she’s in a cave? Could be. I must go back and feed Caithness first; it won’t take ten minutes from the road-end.’
It took longer than he’d anticipated. Miss Pink parked on the green and went to her own cottage for her swimsuit. In her bedroom she glanced out of the window and her attention was caught by the sight of a man, fully-dressed, wading in the shallows. A uniformed policeman watched him from the water’s edge.
She went out on the terrace and parted the fuchsia twigs. Pryce and Williams were talking to a group of visitors on the shore. Others were clustered at a discreet distance with the selfconscious but eager air of eavesdroppers. She took the key of her bottom gate and went down the flight of steps in the corner of the terrace.
‘. . . don’t usually,’ Pryce was saying, ‘but it was a warm night. Ah, Miss Pink. Good afternoon, ma’am.’ He drew her aside. ‘You’ve heard?’
‘No; I’ve been out. I’ve just come back.’
‘Let’s walk down to the sea; some of these have ears like bats. We found his clothes.’ She stared at him. ‘Jakey Jones,’ he elaborated. ‘There were jeans and a pair of track shoes down here, no shirt or shorts; we’re looking for those—but he could have been wearing swimming trunks. A family back there found them. They came down at eleven this morning and the things were there then, just below high-water mark. There were people swimming so they didn’t take any notice until the tide came in and then they got worried because no one had claimed the things in two hours. So they took them up to the Post Office and the boy there identified them. He’s Jakey’s pal.’
‘Ossie!’
‘That’s right: Ossie Hughes. Gave him a nasty shock. I’ve been talking to him. The clothes have frightened him.’
She was bewildered. ‘You think Jakey drowned?’
He shrugged. ‘It happened just below your cottage, ma’am. He didn’t come home last night. Did you hear anyone on the beach after dark? Or see anything?’
‘No; I’d had a hard day and went straight to bed when I came in.’
He looked interested. ‘Visiting, were you?’
‘I have my dinner at the hotel. How do you know that Jakey wasn’t home last night?’
‘Ossie Hughes told me. The Joneses aren’t saying anything, but I’ve not seen them since the clothes were found. I’ll have to go and talk to them again now. Unpleasant job. Ossie said Jakey was with you at tea time yesterday. Honey too. When would that be?’
‘About five o’clock. I met him in the churchyard.’
‘What was he doing there?’
‘Having a quiet smoke. I shouldn’t be surprised if he were also waiting to see if Mr Honey would leave his windows open and go away; he was looking for his kitten.’
‘Like that, was it? What did you talk about?’
‘He told me something of himself. He used to do odd jobs at the mill cottage and had inflated ideas concerning his future. He talked about going to London.’
‘So Ossie said. Did he say anything else?’
She thought about this. ‘He said Sandra Maitland paid him well.’
‘Indeed. The reporters say that he was there the evening that she was killed.’
‘She was killed then? Rupert Bowen said that she died in the fire.’
‘Who set the fire? And there’s nothing to say she wasn’t hit first. The brandy bottle found near the bedspring was Martell Cognac; that comes with a long neck, not flask-shaped. Handy weapon. A bruise wouldn’t show—now.’ They had halted on the damp sand. The man in plain clothes was still wading in the shallows, and the uniformed man paced the water-line, a surrealistic figure in the flat bright bay. Pryce turned and looked back at the shore.
‘What are his clothes doing here?’ he asked quietly. ‘Would a young lad go swimming alone at night? There were people about all evening; he couldn’t have got into difficulties without someone seeing in the daylight.’ He shook his head at the sea. ‘I don’t think he’s out there.’ Miss Pink said nothing. ‘Ossie,’ Pryce went on, ‘is convinced he’s gone to London but that could be a defence mechanism because the clothes still frighten him. He’s not a very bright lad. Well, what about this Jakey: has he followed Thorne?’ He cocked an eye at her. ‘Did he see something on the night of the fire?’
‘You’re suggesting he left the clothes on the beach as a blind?’
‘Been done before, hasn’t it? Plenty of times. So far, ma’am, you appear to be the last person to have seen him before he—disappeared. The dreaded punch-line!’ He chuckled. ‘Any advance on five o’clock?’
‘I’ve no idea where he went after he left me—’
He wasn’t listening. Following his gaze she saw Caradoc and Thirza Jones coming across the sand, the woman in a bright pink overall. They walked side by side without touching or talking and they stared stonily ahead as they tramped over the wet sand.
They stopped. Thirza’s eyes were empty but in Caradoc’s there was a dull black panic. Thirza addressed Pryce.
‘Who did it?’
‘Why wasn’t it an accident, Mrs Jones?’
‘It was an accident,’ Caradoc intoned.
Miss Pink was anguished and she ignored Pryce. ‘Mrs Jones,’ she said sensibly, ‘it might not be what it looks like; it could be—’
Thirza said, her voice riding over the other’s: ‘Who took him in the water?’ She stepped up to Pryce, her face twisted with hatred: ‘You know.’
He said firmly: ‘I know no more than you do; less perhaps.’
‘We don’t know nothing,’ Caradoc said in that terrible monotone.
His wife turned and stared beyond the village. ‘He was there that night.’ Her voice was hollow. ‘He saw it.’
‘What did he see, Mrs Jones?’ Pryc
e was gentle.
She plucked at the loose skin of her throat as if she were trying to get rid of it. ‘She had to die,’ she said with sudden helplessness. ‘If it wasn’t then, it had to be sometime soon. But it had nothing to do with my boy. He hadn’t done nothing.’ She looked at her husband piteously. ‘He shouldn’t have been out so late. We never liked him being out late, did we?’
Pryce took her elbow, motioning Caradoc to take the other. ‘We’ll go home now, Mrs Jones—’
She snatched her arm away. ‘I’m going to look for my boy!’
‘Leave it to the police,’ Caradoc said wildly, trying to get hold of her wrist. She threw him a glance of agony.
‘But can they find him in time?’ She turned to Pryce. ‘What have they done to him?’
Miss Pink recalled Samuel’s anguish as he searched for his kitten. ‘I’ll help, Mrs Jones; everyone will help. . . .’ Help look for a monster? She felt tired; even monsters have mothers. Thirza ignored her anyway; limp as a drugged doll, she was being led away by the two men.
Chapter Thirteen
‘Let’s get this clear,’ Samuel said, ‘Thirza and Caradoc think he’s in danger—right?’
‘Perhaps worse,’ Miss Pink said absently, slowing at the junction with the main road.
‘But why? I can understand you and Pryce assuming that Jakey’d got himself into trouble he couldn’t get out of this time, but the parents—at least, most parents—would go on hoping till the last. Why does Thirza assume the worst?’
‘Subconscious?’ she mused. ‘All her life she’s fought for him, blocked out his anti-social behaviour. . . . I don’t expect they ever discussed him between themselves: Thirza and Caradoc. Now she’s exhausted; for years she’s known it would come eventually: something too big for him to wriggle out of. Retribution, she’d call it, if she’s Chapel, and blame herself. She’s doing that already.’
‘So you think he’s dead too.’
‘I was trying to interpret Thirza’s thought processes.’
She helped herself to a sandwich from the box on his knee. They were eating as they travelled, having given less attention to their stomachs today than to the kitten’s, and now she had been forced to telephone the hotel to say she wouldn’t be in to dinner. She had spoken to the receptionist which was just as well; the Bowens would have asked questions.
‘Do you think he’s dead?’ Samuel repeated.
When she answered, her mind had jumped a few stages. ‘Almost as if we’ve reversed their roles,’ she murmured, ‘as we learn more. First, I thought of Jakey as a spectator: someone who saw too much and tried to cash in on what he’d seen. But the Spitfire business suggests he’s a participant. But since Rachel is hiding something—and appears to be hiding herself—one wonders if she was the spectator. That’s why we have to find her, and why I’d like to know what’s happened to Jakey. If he dumped his own clothing as a blind, he could be anywhere now—’ she glanced towards the sea on their left, ‘—one thing: he can’t get to her without a boat.’
‘You think he’s dangerous—to her?’
‘That depends on his part in the murder, and on what she knows—but I feel sure those two are connected in some way.’
‘And always remembering there were two killers, because the fire started so soon after the telephone call—the one that was supposed to come from the police.’
Miss Pink, who’d been pulling out to pass a bus, swerved back and threw him a startled glance. She drove on in silence, not noticing the smoke belching from the bus’s exhaust.
‘Cae Coch coming up,’ Samuel said. ‘Turn left here.’
It was low tide. The bay on this side of the peninsula was immense and the few people left at the end of the day were lost on vast stretches of opalescent sand.
Parry Lobsters lived close to the sea: a small man like an ineffectual ferret, with a squint and a cloth cap. Miss Pink had forgotten the state of the tide but by means of a trailer and a number of male tourists who emerged surprisingly from Parry’s cottage, they manhandled it to the sea. The owner seemed to be enjoying a private joke, one eye on Samuel trying to start the outboard, the other on the horizon, but when they’d got going, chugging towards the headland, Samuel pointed and she saw that, westward, the horizon ran straight into a belt of fog.
‘Can you manage?’ she shouted.
He pursed his lips. ‘It may not be travelling fast. How long do you want to spend with her—if we find her?’
‘If she’ll answer my questions, ten minutes would be enough. We could do it in less if she’d come back with us but there I think we may have trouble.’
‘We’ll manage. I can crawl along under the cliffs—and we can swim.’ He grinned.
For the first half mile the coast was rock at an easy angle: the chunky pearly rock that extended to the cove below the hut circles. The cove was less romantic this evening: flat and green in the late sunlight, with the square stack indistinguishable from the land. At the top of the ravine the cottage faced blindly out to sea, the sun reflected in its windows. The hut circles looked like nothing more than scree in the lush bracken.
After Pentref the cliffs increased in height and angle very quickly. The tilt was diagonal and from the foot of every buttress long reefs slanted into the sea. The rock was jet black below but dusted with golden lichen above the reach of the spray and streaked with emerald where freshwater springs came down. There were caves under stupendous overhangs and the water inside them, even near the ebb, appeared fathomless in the gloom. Nothing showed in the backs of the caves, only now and again a cormorant crossed their wake and rose to a hidden ledge.
There was a scattering of razorbills in pockets but no guillemots because they like horizontal ledges and there was none. Despite that Miss Pink could trace lines on the rock by means of which a hard climber might explore this wild waste of virgin rock, but he would have to be good.
She became aware that Samuel was asking no questions. True, it would be difficult to communicate above the noise of the engine, and impossible without shouting, but he showed no interest in the cliffs. Then she realised that he was watching the fog bank.
He swung out to clear a reef of gaunt triangles. Glancing over the side as they heeled, she saw a long thick shape slip through the oar weed. ‘Conger!’ she shouted. Samuel grimaced.
They rounded the end of the reef and the funnel presented itself dramatically, appearing vertical but with the zig-zags of the miners’ track marked by its turfy parapet. The cavern gaped below, light reflected on the walls and dipping roof. Now she could see that there were jutting corners inside and on the left piled boulders gleamed wetly, indicating a rockfall. The shag were swimming under the roof and when Samuel closed the throttle, the clamour of the gulls rose above the soft chuckle of the engine.
‘There’s wire here,’ he said.
‘It’ll be close to the cavern, where it fell. Take me in to that shelf at the foot of the slab.’
He peered at the cavern. ‘She’s here?’ he asked incredulously.
‘She could be; I’ve seen her come down this slab.’
‘Good God! Does anyone else know?’
‘I hope not. Put me ashore; we haven’t long before dark.’
‘What about me?’
‘You drop anchor and wait.’
He looked stubborn. ‘If she’s here I want to talk to her.’
‘That’s sentiment; I need to talk to her: to ask some questions, but I’ll try to get her to come back with us.’
‘But surely I’m—’
‘No.’ She was firm. ‘You’re not objective. Let me start the ball rolling.’
They’d drifted to the foot of the slab and she stepped out on the rock shelf.
‘Hand me those plimsolls.’
He passed her a pair of track shoes and watched morosely as she stripped, revealing powerful thighs and still more powerful shoulders, and a thick tanned torso clad in a regulation swimsuit. She took off her boots and put on the track shoes.
‘You’ve still got your specs on.’
‘I need those.’
‘But—the wire.’
‘If she does it, then I can.’
She walked along the shelf until the rock came down and barred further progress. Across the water the young shag collected like ducks and paddled along the foot of the cliff. She lowered herself into the sea, wincing not so much at the temperature but the ambiance. It was not the kind of place one would choose for a swim.
Keeping as close to the rock as possible, cringing from the weed that slyly stroked her skin, she dog-paddled towards the great portal. Hundreds of eyes watched her from the roof and on the shadowy walls the shags’ necks swayed like serpents. Cold with apprehension, her eyes wide behind her spectacles, she drifted into the cavern and something moaned.
It rose and fell and echoed, resonant in the rock, and it was absolutely ghastly. It stopped. So had she, her feet dropping to tread water, feeling sick from the embrace of the weed.
The sound came again: swelling, dying, inhuman but only a shade off human; it was the similarity that made it so dreadful. She looked back and saw Samuel staring towards her. She was aware of the water lapping her neck like fingers that in another moment would close on her larynx. With a feeling of ineffable sadness—the feeling that verges on the ultimate fear—she lifted her eyes reluctantly from the surface of the water in time to see forms dropping from the roof. She ducked, choked on salt, whirled with a great splashing, pawed her eyes, and saw the rock pigeons, silhouetted against the light, veering to avoid the boat.
Now the kittiwakes discussed her presence among themselves but without panic and she knew that she was on the right track. They were accustomed to swimmers in the cavern.
‘Where are you?’ she called loudly. ‘Don’t keep me waiting; I’ve cut myself on the wire.’
There was a movement in a recess, too extensive for a bird. ‘Oh no! I’m here: where you’re looking.’
A corner protruded, seaward of the rockfall. Miss Pink gave a couple of broad strokes and touched submerged rock.