by John Harvey
To Cordon it didn't seem so bad a life: in some respects, just a more extreme version of his own. The way the job got under your skin, leaving an aversion to humankind.
A preliminary trawl through local records had thrown up nothing and neither could Cordon pinpoint how and why he had known Gibbens' name.
Later that day, the pink and blue rucksack was found, caught up in an overhang of bracken, only a little further along the cliff from Gibbens' shack. Both pairs of swimming costumes were still inside, towels, two pairs of goggles.
Still no sign of the second girl: with each hour, Cordon knew, it was less and less likely she would be found alive.
***
Heather's parents had found accommodation in St Just, the nearest town and a few miles inland, a room in one of several pubs that overlooked the war memorial and the small central square. Striped wallpaper and heavy curtains, tea bags and sachets of instant coffee, biscuits wrapped in cellophane, a plastic kettle which leaked steam and was dangerous to touch, a small television with near zero reception. On the walls were photographs of helmeted miners clustered in groups, waiting to go underground, along with the text of one of John Wesley's speeches, delivered in the local Methodist chapel, promising fire and brimstone, hell and damnation.
Ruth sat, closed in on herself, repeating Heather's name over and over beneath her breath; staring at the phone and waiting for it to ring.
Simon had asked if he could join one of the official search parties, but had been rebuffed: let us get on with our job, sir, it's best. In some kind of placatory gesture, one of the officers had taken them along the coast path in the direction the girls had been walking and they had stared down at the small curve of beach towards which they'd been heading, Ruth's tears impossible to control.
Now Simon paced, made cups of tea he never drank, kicked the bedposts, punched the walls, went out for a bottle of Scotch and brought it back, snapped off the cap and splashed some liberally in a glass, swallowed a mouthful down too fast then spat it back into the sink.
Recriminations were rife.
'How many times did I tell you this would happen? Something like this. Hmm? How many times? Bloody disaster. Disaster waiting to happen. I knew it. Just knew it.'
'Simon, Simon. You're not making any sense.'
'Aren't I?'
'We didn't know, we couldn't know anything.'
'No?'
Ruth shivered. 'Not anything like this. And anyway, you were the one who jumped at the idea. Great, you said. Heather off our hands for a change. Let's go off and enjoy ourselves. You could hardly wait.'
'That's not true.'
'Isn't it?'
'I jumped at the idea, as you put it, because you'd been agonising about it, week after bloody week—maybe we should let her go, what harm can it do? What harm? What fucking harm!'
'Simon ...'
'They're nice people, that's what you said. Nice! Never mind they haven't got a book in the house and their idea of intellectual stimulation is watching EastEnders and reading the bloody Sun.'
'God, just listen to yourself. You really think it would have made any difference if they'd been down here working their way through the Booker shortlist or reading the Telegraph from cover to cover? You think that would have made them more careful, more aware?'
'It might.'
Ruth laughed and shook her head and when her mobile rang she half-tripped on the rug in her scramble to pick it up.
'Yes,' she said. Then, 'Yes,' again, and 'Well, all right, I suppose,' and 'Oh, good. Good. I'm glad.' After listening a few moments longer, she said, 'Thanks. Thank you,' and 'Wish her well,' and set the phone back down.
'That was Pauline, wondering how we were. Kelly's a lot better, it seems, sitting up and talking ...'
'Heather. Did she say what happened?'
'She doesn't know. They got separated in the fog, that's all she can tell them. The police have talked to her and they're going to talk to her again.'
Simon turned towards the window and looked out. A couple were sitting inside their parked car, doors open, eating fish and chips. Three men in shirtsleeves and a young woman in a skimpy top and shorts were standing outside the pub opposite, enjoying the sunshine, laughing, beer glasses in their hands. Kids on skateboards were practising their moves around the memorial.
'I'm going out,' he said.
'Where to?'
Simon shrugged and reached for his coat.
'You want me to come with you?'
'You want to?'
She hesitated. 'One of us better stay here.'
'They'll contact us if there's anything.'
'I'll stay here just the same.'
'Suit yourself.'
When he had gone, Ruth sank back on the bed and closed her eyes. Minutes later, or so it seemed, there is Heather, running towards her, crying, holding out her hand. They are in the garden, the small shared garden in Muswell Hill. Playing. Except that it isn't playing, not for Heather, not really. She's being a gardener, helping Mummy repot the geraniums; both hands held carefully round the handle of the trowel until the trowel slipped and the pot spun and fell against the path and cracked along the edge and there was blood and, of course, tears. Mummy kiss it better. Plaster, of course you can have a plaster, but let's first run it under the tap. Nice cold water. There. Now pat it dry. No, it's all right, it won't hurt. I'll be careful. Mummy won't hurt you. The plaster passing round the stick-like finger twice. No more gardening today. Heather's head leaning against her as they settle back indoors on the settee, her bony elbow pressing against Ruth's thigh. There, that better? Ruth lowers her head until she can feel her daughter's hair soft against her face and inhale her smell, her scent. Something twists deep inside and pulls, like a small fist tugging at her guts.
Alan and Pauline Efford are taking it in turns to be at the hospital, alternating that with looking after Tina and the baby: Tina morose and difficult to amuse, prey, still, to sudden bouts of tears; Alice, as if sensing the general mood, grizzly and complaining, refusing the bottle, refusing her food.
Alan takes them down to the beach, but this is worse: the shrill and shriek of gulls, the laughter of other children as they run in and out of the waves, build sandcastles, play catch.
Your kid was found and not theirs.
The reproach in Ruth's eyes; the hatred in Simon's.
Back up at the campsite, Lee sits, cross-legged, in the tent. He has been to see his sister once, early on, not since. He sits with his hands over his headphones to amplify the sound, the same track on his Walkman, again and again. Portishead. 'Glory Box'. The singer's voice, small and clear, almost childlike, pitched against the distortions of synthesiser and guitar, pleading for a reason.
Heather has been missing now for two nights and two days and already dusk is closing in.
Wandering around St Just, Simon has found himself in some kind of grassed-over amphitheatre where he sits amongst signs of picnicking, struggling to control the images that flicker through his mind. Crossing the square earlier, the area outside the pub more crowded than before, he had caught himself staring at a girl in a short, sheer dress, following her movements as she threw back her head and laughed and performed an odd little three-step dance, the light seeming to reflect from the bare skin of her legs as she moved, the curve and swell of her calves and thighs, the hem of the dress barely covering her behind. As he drew closer and she turned again, sweeping the hair from her eyes, he saw that she was little more than a child, twelve or perhaps thirteen, and he swerved away, ashamed at what he had been feeling, what, remembering, he still felt.
Upstairs in their room, Ruth sank to her knees and, for the first time since she was herself a girl, not knowing if she believed or not, she prayed. If there is a hell, she thought, remembering Wesley's words, it's now and here.
16
They found her almost by accident, early the following morning. A volunteer with one of the official search parties—a student spending his summer vacation
working as a lifeguard on the beach at Sennen—lost his footing at the entrance to one of the old engine houses a short distance from the coast path; the stonework gave way beneath his feet and sent him tumbling down, clawing at air, until he landed, badly winded, on a jagged shelf some twenty feet below. When he opened his eyes and they had become adjusted to the low levels of light, there she was, outlined along the crumbling shelf opposite, the girl they were looking for—who else could it be?—her head lolling back against the rusted wheel of some old winding gear that had fallen years before.
Unable to climb back up, no handholds to speak of and his ankle badly swollen from the fall, he shouted himself hoarse until someone heard—not one of the search party but a middle-aged woman striding out purposefully towards Land's End and beyond—compass, map case, binoculars, rucksack on her back.
Help soon arrived; a rope ladder was secured and lowered down and, still shaken, the student climbed slowly out. Within fifteen minutes, a helicopter was hovering over the scene: then Land Rovers, four-by-fours, Cordon pacing.
Only two walls of the engine house were still standing, together with the chimney alongside, all in a state of serious disrepair. Along with the others that dotted the coast it had been searched before, torches shone around, lamps lowered down, without the body being noticed.
How?
Two men in climbing gear, helmeted, photographed the body as it lay, before strapping it securely on to a stretcher and steadying it on its way to the surface.
Cordon held his breath as the stretcher was lowered to the ground. The skin, where it was visible, had already taken on a greenish hue, patches of marbling on the calves and upper arms. A gash across the forehead had scabbed thickly over and there were scratch marks to both sides of the face, where the blood had dried in spidery lines. There were scratches also on the legs and arms, and signs of bruising, too—such as you might expect, Cordon thought, from a fall. The long-sleeved cotton top, once pale blue, she'd worn over her T-shirt, was torn and darkened here and there by what could have been oil, but was, in all probability, more blood.
Her feet were bare.
There was no doubt it was the missing girl.
An end, Cordon thought, and for him a beginning.
Ruth and Simon had had breakfast downstairs in the rear bar that doubled as a dining room, and then gone back upstairs. Since his previous outburst, Simon had been unusually quiet, squirrelling his thoughts away to himself. Ruth had walked to the newsagent's shop on the next corner, bought a Guardian for herself and a Telegraph for Simon and brought them back to where they now lay on the chest of drawers, largely unread.
The small radio in the corner of the room was tuned to Radio 3 and, through a whisper of interference, mimicking the pianist's own mutterings, Glenn Gould was playing his way through the Goldberg Variations.
Ruth had spoken to Ann Dyer, the liaison officer, earlier, phoning her first thing, and been told that, as yet, there were no new developments. So when there was a knock on the door and she opened it, half expecting the landlord, or someone wanting to clean the room, she was taken aback to see Dyer standing there, serious faced.
'Mrs Pierce...'
'Has something happened? Heather, you ...'
'I think I'd better come inside.'
Ruth stepped back unsteadily, hand towards her throat, as Dyer stepped past her, closing the door at her back.
Simon stood, marooned, between window and bed.
'A little over an hour ago,' Dyer began, 'the body of a young girl was found ...'
Ruth vomited through her fingers and Dyer, moving quickly, caught her before she fell.
With Simon's help, she manoeuvred Ruth towards the bed and sat her down, head towards her knees. Leaving Simon to hold her steady, she ran a flannel under the tap.
'It is Heather,' Simon said. 'There isn't any doubt?'
'I'm sorry,' Dyer said, with a shake of the head.
Without warning, Ruth's body arched sharply forward and she vomited again.
Cordon reached the headland and turned back into the wind. A pair of sparrow-like birds, olive-brown stripes, rose up, one following the other, from the heather, their high-pitched, trilling sound turning in the air. Warblers, is that what they were? Pippets? Plovers? Time was, he would have known. His father, patient, then patience fading—look, just look, will you?—size, shape, plumage, colour; patterns of behaviour, movement, song.
Size, shape, patterns of behaviour—being a policeman was not so different.
The old mine workings had been the first focus of the search, the shaft openings into which the girl might have fallen, the walls behind which she might have sought shelter. Lives enough had been lost there down the years, what was one more?
Her body broken at the wheel.
They had searched, but not well enough. It happened.
He knew of an incident some few years before when a body had been dumped in a small area of woodland close to two adjoining farms. Specialist search teams—not volunteers—had gone over the area twice before the body was discovered at a third attempt. The police psychiatrist had told Cordon it was a known phenomenon: individual officers not wanting to be the ones to discover the body and their fear of so doing so causing them to look without really seeing.
Cordon wasn't sure if he believed that or not.
He walked on and then stopped. From where he stood, the engine house was framed against the sky, blue showing clear through the empty, arched windows on its surviving walls, the mortar and stone of the tall chimney patterned like the neck of a giraffe.
What if, when the initial search had been carried out, the body had not been there? Suppose she had died somewhere else? The body hidden and then moved? A different picture altogether. And one which the autopsy would, to a large extent, prove or disprove. Even then, depending on the circumstances and the pathologist's tenacity and skill, there might still be a sliver of doubt.
Never make up your mind too soon, his father had always drummed into him: identification usually involves a process of exclusion; few birds are identified on positive evidence alone.
Time was, Cordon had known things for sure. Not often, not now.
Simon Pierce had volunteered to identify the body on his own—no need for Ruth to be put through this—but she had refused. Fearing the worst, he had held tight to her hand, but, a small cry, a gasp of air aside, Ruth had managed to keep herself in check.
Her daughter's face as she gazed down—scabs and scars freshly cleaned, blood wiped carefully away—was close to perfect in her eyes.
'She's so young,' she said quietly. 'She looks so young.'
Only when she was outside, in the white-walled, soulless corridor, did the tears come; long, wracking sobs that tore at the inside of her throat.
Simon bent over her awkwardly, embarrassed, concerned. 'Ruth. Ruthie. Come on, it's all right. Let's go outside.'
Cordon stood at the far end of the corridor, close by the door, watching, not wanting to interfere or be drawn in, yet taking on at a distance—is that what he was doing?—some small share of her pain.
'Ruthie, come on ...' Simon said, leading her as he would a child.
Outside, the air hit her like a fist.
'It'll be all right, you see.'
She lifted her head towards him, as if seeing him for the first time, her face shrunken by tears, head shaking from side to side. It would never be all right again.
'As far as we can determine,' Cordon said, 'Heather must have taken shelter after she and her friend, Kelly, had become separated in the fog. Whether she fell on to the lower ledge immediately, or later, when perhaps she tried to move, we don't yet know. Perhaps we never will. Not exactly.'
They were sitting on a bench outside the hospital on St Clare Street, a few hopeful seagulls loitering on the low stone wall close by. Simon, who rarely smoked, lit a second immediately after the first. Ruth sat with her fingers intertwined, the skin between the knuckles all but white.
'As f
ar as you can determine,' Simon said. 'Does that mean it might be something else? Some other explanation?'
Cordon shook his head. 'I'm probably being overcautious. This side of the inquest ... well, you learn to bite your tongue.' He allowed himself a quick, self-deprecating smile. 'I shouldn't worry, Mr Pierce. I'm sure everything is as it seems.' Cordon was on his feet. 'Once again, please accept my sympathies for your loss.'
'Her clothes ...' Ruth said suddenly. 'Heather's clothes.'
'They'll be returned to you in due course.'
'But surely, if you know what happened, there's no need...?'
'It's all right, Mrs Pierce, simply a matter of routine.'
17
Cordon drove out to Cape Cornwall, parked to the side of the narrowing road before it tipped down the hill, and walked on past the car park staffed by NationalTrust volunteers waiting eagerly to take his money—something sanctimonious, almost evangelical, about some of them that set his teeth on edge. Once, one of them had even come running after him, angered by his all too evident penny-pinching, waving a cluster of brochures outlining the Trust's good works in his wake.
They did a fair lemon and orange marmalade, Cordon knew that, thick cut and at a price.
He took the steeper path, a quick scramble up to the chimney at the summit, a listed relic of the old Cape Cornwall mine. The day he had to follow the easier route that wound cautiously round was the day he would pension himself off, start looking more seriously at those stair lift ads that littered afternoon TV.
A family of four had colonised the single bench at the top, binoculars passed from hand to hand in search of seals, their blue-grey bullet heads sleek above the waves, or sea birds on the Brison Rocks, just offshore to the south, razorbills and guillemots.
Cordon found a smooth ledge with leg room sufficient to his needs and sat, gazing out. Here the Atlantic divided, south past Land's End towards the English Channel, north into the Bristol Channel and the Irish Sea. Over his shoulder, the family were delving into their pack-up, a late lunch, sandwiches and fruit, bottled water and a Thermos of tea. Somehow, Cordon had neglected to eat since the urgent call that morning had scuppered his plans for breakfast: thick rashers of bacon already on the grill, mushrooms waiting, sliced, beside the buttered pan, coffee on the stove. He hadn't felt hungry since and now he did.