And what a chase he was giving Gently under the biting, sucking sun! On the beach, over the tops and through the spiteful, heartbreaking marrams. There was no settled line of country. Esau went just where his fancy took him. Now they were up, now they were down, now they were battling through furze and scrub. One thing, however, was clear. They were drawing further and further away from the village. The last scatter of visitors was quickly left behind them; for the rest, they were alone with the sea and the marrams.
At one point Esau stopped and seemed to stamp with the heel of his sea boot. The pause was only momentary and he was away before Gently could get there. The spot was a shallow depression, like many others, in the top of a sandhill; the mark of the sea boot showed quite plainly, but there were also some other marks.
So Esau knew about that too — he knew the spot where the painting had been done. Gently had only to glance at the place to know why his attention had been drawn to it. Undisturbed, for there had been no wind, was the impression of a reclining body; at a distance of six feet from it were impressed the marks of easel and stool. Rachel, apparently, had been a little bored. She had played with the sand and burrowed her feet in it. Near Simmonds’s easel there were dark-coloured stains — where, one imagined, he had emptied his dipper.
And Esau knew… because he had watched them? Gently’s glance switched curiously after the evasive fisherman. He was waiting there at his customary distance, his face, inevitably, towards the sea. And at the first suspicion of movement from Gently, he was off again on his singular travels.
The man from the Central Office scrambled after him cursing. If Esau wanted to tell him something, why these roundabout methods? They must have put in miles on those everlasting marrams, and a cheap pair of sandals weren’t the equal of good sea boots. But Esau was the boss, and there was nothing to be done about it. If Gently wanted to maintain contact then he was obliged to tag along. His lonely consolation was that Esau had a method — they were on their way towards something, though what it was he couldn’t guess.
In the end, did Esau take a little pity on him? Their advance, at last, became more direct; he was straying less off the path as they approached the sandhill that marked the Ness. It loomed before them, a veritable giant, a miniature mountain among sandhills. Lying athwart the line of the others, it reduced the best of them to insignificance. Its sides were as steep as house roofs, it bettered a hundred feet at least. Gently, dashing the sweat from his eyes, was praying that Esau didn’t mean to climb over it.
But Esau did, that was soon apparent. Gently could tell it from the way he marched up to the obstacle. The sea boots, never pausing, thrashed on up the pitiless slope, dislodging puffs of dusty sand as the toes stabbed out their holds. Really, that hill was a little too much! One ought to be content to go round by the beach. Arriving at the bottom just as Esau got to the top, Gently planted his feet like an obstinate horse. His whole attitude was eloquent of his intention to stay there.
And Esau? For once he’d got his eyes off the sea, he was sitting down calmly and lighting his pipe. He, too, had expression written large in every line of him: We’re here, it said, now what do you make of it?
Exactly!
Gently shook his head and seated himself, likewise. He could think of one reason only why Esau should bring him here. It was because, being here, he couldn’t be also in the village, though why Esau should want that was a deep-sea mystery. Anyway, he’d got it… and where did they go from there?
They didn’t go anywhere was what Esau seemed to say. From the fact that he’d lit his pipe you could assume that this was the spot. And he wasn’t looking at the sea, if that was any help. He was sitting there smoking and looking… straight below him.
The significance of this didn’t strike Gently for a moment, then, because it was continued, he followed the line of the fisherman’s gaze. It was fixed on a certain hollow lying close to the foot of the sandhill, a hollow in which was growing a clump of the omnipresent marram grass.
Gently rose to his feet again and wandered over to the hollow. It was about thirty feet in diameter and as symmetrical as a basin. The sides and floor were of smooth sand and bore little vegetation; at one point the edges were broken as though there somebody had been in the habit of descending. The clump of marram grass was growing exactly in the centre. It was a handsome, clean-growing colony and occupied a small mound. The effect of the whole was that of a rather neat bomb crater — which, very likely, was just what it was.
But why did Esau want to draw his attention to a bomb crater? He looked up at the brooding figure in the hope of receiving a sign from him. But there was nothing to be had there: Esau sat silent and monumental: his solitary gesture was his meditation on the hollow.
Gently moved a little closer and began a more careful scrutiny. From the surface of the sand he could tell that nothing recent had occurred there. Everywhere it had a hard crust and bore the marks of pelted rain — rain which, he remembered, had happened three weeks ago; it was the storm which had precursed the onset of the dry spell. Apart from that there seemed little to see, except the antics of a pair of lizards. The crater was empty of everything but heat.
After all was it a joke that the fisherman was playing on him? Gently frowned through his sweat as he stumbled round the circumference. Nothing had happened here, at least while Rachel was in Hiverton, and the indications were slender of anything having happened before that. Then what was he looking for — what was the point of it? Didn’t it rather bear the stamp of Esau’s unusual sense of humour?
Just about to give it up, he came to a sudden, alerted halt. That grass! Surely there was something out of the ordinary about that? It didn’t have the rough look of the tangles round about; it was tall and clean and straight — one would almost have said it was cultivated.
And more… it had shape. Gently shifted the better to see it. Once you tumbled to the idea, it was easy enough to trace a design. The clump of grass was shaped like a cross: it was crude, but it was definite. One of its arms was longer than the others… it was, in fact, the cross of the Church!
Certain now that he’d grasped the meaning, Gently glanced up for confirmation, but the fisherman was no longer staring down at the hollow. He was still perched above, but his head was turned seaward. His vacant blue eyes were once more on the horizon.
And Gently found himself shivering in the midst of the pounding heat: shivering as though cold water had been trickled down his spine. For a moment he stood uncertain, his eyes fascinated by the cross of grass; then he turned his back with an effort and began to hurry towards the village.
Mears was sitting in his shirtsleeves when Gently re-entered the Police House. He got up immediately and did his best to look official.
‘Where’s your record of missing persons?’
‘Missing persons? We haven’t got any.’
‘Don’t you lose a fisherman sometimes?’
‘W’yes, they get drowned now and then.’
Mears departed into his office and returned carrying a manilla folder. Gently, drumming his fingers with impatience, could hardly wait to have it undone.
‘Two years ago… that was the last one. The Rose Marie got run down by a drifter. Then there was the Girl Sue in the March of 1954. She struck a mine off Hamby. I heard the bang myself.’
‘But individual fishermen?’
‘Gone missing, do you mean, sir? There’s only one, Sid Gorbold — and that wasn’t any mystery. He was paying a maintenance order and skipped a drifter at Peterhead.’
‘And there’s nobody else missing?’
Mears was positive that there wasn’t. He’d been constable at Hiverton since August 1935, and could remember no authentic case of a person going missing. Gently listened to him moodily: he’d been toying with a theory. But there was no reason to doubt the information of Mears.
‘Have you got a couple of spades?’
Mears fetched a pair from his tool shed. He was doing his best to conceal a natural curiosity.
‘I’d like another man, and I don’t want to go through the village. Is there a way round the back here which will take us on to the marrams?’
Nockolds was impressed for the party — he didn’t like to refuse them — and Mears led the way over some meadows and rough pasture. Gently plodded along silently, without offering an explanation. At the back of his mind there was still a feeling that the fisherman might have been fooling.
When they came to the giant sandhill Esau was sitting there no longer. The hollow, undisturbed, lay shadowless under a vertical sun. A noonday peace entranced the place and it had an air of enormous distance. The
