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A smaller wave covered the body, and when the water receded Lucy was close enough to see that it was a man, and that it had been in the sea long enough for the water to swell and distort the features. Which meant he was dead. She could do nothing for him, and she was not going to risk her life and her son's to preserve a corpse. She was about to turn back when something about the bloated face struck her as familiar. She stared at it, uncomprehending, trying to fit the features to something in her memory; and then, quite abruptly, she saw the face for what it was, and sheer, paralysing terror took hold of her, and it seemed that her heart stopped, and she whispered, "No, David, no!"
Oblivious now to the danger she walked forward.
Another lesser wave broke around her knees, filling her Wellington boots with foamy saltwater but she didn't notice. Jo twisted in her arms to face forward. She screamed, "Don't look!" in his ear and pushed his face into her shoulder. He began to cry.
She knelt beside the body and touched the horrible face with her hand. David. There was no doubt. He was dead, and had been for some time. Moved by some terrible need to make absolutely certain, she lifted the skirt of the oilskin and looked at the stumps of his legs.
It was impossible to take in the fact of the death. She had, in a way, been wishing him dead, but her feelings about him were confused by guilt and the fear of being found out in her infidelity. Grief, horror, relief: they fluttered in her mind like birds, none of them willing to settle. She would have stayed there, motionless, but the next wave was a big one.
Its force knocked her flying, and she took a great gulp of sea water. Somehow she managed to keep Jo in her grasp and stay on the ramp; and when the surf settled she got to her feet and ran up out of the greedy reach of the ocean. She walked all the way to the clifftop without looking back. When she came within sight of the cottage, she saw the jeep standing outside. Henry was back.
Still carrying Jo, she broke into a stumbling run, desperate to share her hurt with Henry, to feel his arms around her and have him comfort her. Her breath came in ragged sobs and tears mixed invisibly with the rain on her face. She went to the back of the cottage, burst into the kitchen and dumped Jo ungently on the floor.
Henry casually said, "David decided to stay over at Tom's another day."
She stared at him, her mind a disbelieving blank; and then, still disbelieving, she understood. Henry had killed David.
The conclusion came first, like a punch in the stomach, winding her; the reasons followed a split-second later. The shipwreck, the odd-shaped knife he was so attached to, the crashed jeep, the news bulletin about the London stiletto murderer: suddenly everything fitted together, a box of jigsaw pieces thrown in the air and landing, improbably, fully assembled. "Don't look so surprised," Henry said with a smile. "They've got a lot of work to do over there, although I admit I didn't encourage him to come back."
Tom. She had to go to Tom. He would know what to do; he would protect her and Jo until the police came; he had a dog and a gun.
Her fear was interrupted by a dart of sadness, of sorrow for the Henry she had believed in, had almost loved; clearly he did not exist-she had imagined him. Instead of a warm, strong, affectionate man, she saw in front of her a monster who sat and smiled and calmly gave her invented messages from the husband he had murdered.
She forced herself not to shudder. Taking Jo's hand, she walked out of the kitchen, along the hall and out of the front door. She got into the jeep, sat Jo beside her, and started the engine.
But Henry was there, resting his foot casually on the ru
If she drove away now he might shoot- hat instinct had warned him to take the gun into the house this time?-and while she herself might chance it, she couldn't endanger Jo. She said, "Just putting the jeep away."
"You need Jo's help for that?"
"He likes the ride. Don't cross-examine me!"
He shrugged and stepped back.
She looked at him for a moment, wearing David's hacking jacket and holding David's gun so casually, and wondered whether he really would shoot her if she simply drove away. And then she recalled the vein of ice she had sensed in him right from the start, and knew that that ultimate commitment, that ruthlessness, would allow him to do anything.
With an awful feeling of weariness, she threw the jeep into reverse and backed into the barn. She switched off, got out, and walked with Jo back into the cottage. She had no idea what she would say to Henry, what she would do in his presence, how she would hide her knowledge if, indeed, she had not already betrayed it. She had no plans. But she had left the barn door open.
"That's the place, Number One," the captain said, and lowered his telescope. The first mate peered out through the rain and the spray. "Not quite the ideal holiday resort, what, sir? Jolly stark, I should say."
"Indeed." The captain was an old-fashioned naval officer with a grizzled beard who had been at sea during the first war with Germany. However, he had learned to overlook his first mate's foppish conversational style, for the boy had turned out against all expectations to be a perfectly good sailor.
The "boy" who was past thirty and an old salt by this war's standards, had no idea of the magnanimity he benefitted from. He held on to a rail and braced himself as the corvette mounted the steep side of a wave, righted itself at the crest and dived into the trough. "Now that we're here, sir, what do we do?"
"Circle the island."
"Very good, sir."
"And keep our eyes open for a U-boat."
"We're not likely to get one anywhere near the surface in this weather and if we did, we couldn't see it unless it came within spitting distance."
"The storm will blow itself out tonight-tomorrow at the latest." The captain began stuffing tobacco into a pipe.
"Do you think so?"
"I'm sure."
"Nautical instinct, I suppose?"
"The weather forecast."
The corvette rounded a headland, and they saw a small bay with a jetty.
Above it, on the cliff top, was a little cottage standing small and square, hunched against the wind.
The captain pointed. "We'll land a party there as soon as we can."
The first mate nodded. "All the same…"
"Well?"
"Each circuit of the island will take us about an hour, I should say."
"So?"
"So, unless we're jolly lucky and happen to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time…"
"The U-boat will surface, take on its passenger, and submerge again without us even seeing the ripples," the captain finished. "
Yes."
The captain lit his pipe with an expertise that spoke of long experience in lighting pipes in heavy seas. He puffed a few times, then inhaled a lungful of smoke "Ours not to reason why," he said, and blew smoke through his nostrils.
"A rather unfortunate quotation, sir."
"Why?"
"It refers to the notorious charge of the Light Brigade."
"I never knew that." The captain puffed away. "One advantage of being uneducated, I suppose."
There was another small cottage at the eastern end of the island. The captain scrutinised it through his telescope and observed that it had a large, professional-looking radio aerial. "Sparks!" he called. "See if you can raise that cottage. Try the Royal Observer Corps frequency."
When the cottage had passed out of sight, the radio operator called: "No response, sir."
"All right, Sparks," the captain said. "It wasn't important."
The crew of the coastguard cutter sat below decks in Aberdeen Harbour playing blackjack for halfpe