beach would be cut off at high tide. You’d just have to find a spot to sit it out. Of course, the upper cave stays pretty dry.”
Evan didn’t add that there had been at least a couple of low tides since Randy went missing when anyone could have reached safety again.
Betsy and Emmy scrambled up to join Evan and Michael.
“Come on, Betsy.” Emmy held out her hand. “I’ll go in with you, so that you’re not too spooked.” She went to drag Betsy to the upper cave.
Betsy froze. “No, not that one. The other.”
“Surely not.” Emmy gave a nervous laugh. “Why would anyone want to go into that cave? If he was hiding out with a broken ankle, he’d go up to the dry one, wouldn’t he? Come up to the entrance and see what vibes you’re feeling.”
“It’s this one.” Betsy stood before the entrance to the sea cave. It was a narrow, diagonal slit in the rock, not quite as high as a person, and the opening was piled with seaweed-covered rocks. Betsy started clambering over them, slithering and sliding as she tried to make her way inside.
“I’m sure you’ve got it wrong, Betsy,” Emmy called after her. “Do wait a minute. Wait for the light.”
“He’s in here, I know it,” Betsy said. “Look. There.” Evan had climbed down to her and shone the torch into the cave. Inside, the cave widened out, but the debris-strewn floor rose upward to meet the roof at the rear of the cave. The light cast grotesque shadows from rocky outcrops. The back of the cave was strewn with boulders and behind one of these they could make out a pale hand and blond hair.
Betsy was shivering again. “It’s him, isn’t it? Is he trapped? Is he okay?”
Evan had pushed past her to where Randy lay. He didn’t need to feel for a pulse to know that the man was dead. He looked up at the horrified faces, all of them like white death masks in the torchlight.
“I’m afraid we’re too late … .”
Annabel let out a wail and Emmy hurled herself forward. “No, that can’t be right. He’s not dead. He can’t be dead!”
The first streaks of cold dawn were silhouetting the mountains across the estuary when reinforcements arrived in the persons of a paramedic team, Sergeant Watkins, and D.C. Glynis Davies. Evan had sent the others back to the center, Ben and Michael supporting the hysterical Annabel, Betsy and Emmy clutching each other sobbing. Evan had decided to stay with the body until help arrived.
“Just when I thought I could sleep in for once,” Watkins muttered as Evan scrambled over the rocks to meet him. “Do you know I had to be at those training sessions in Colwyn Bay at eight in the morning? Today I thought I wouldn’t have to show up until nine and what happens? I get called out at bloody four-thirty.”
“You got an hour’s more sleep than I did,” Evan said, returning Glynis’s friendly smile.
“I bet you didn’t expect we’d be back here again so soon, and on a completely different matter too, did you?” Glynis accepted his hand to help her up onto a large, seaweed-draped boulder. “How very bizarre. Did you say you found him?”
“I was in the party that found him,” Evan said. “We came to this cave because young Betsy from our village dreamed he was here.”
“Wow, and it turned out to be true.” Glynis looked impressed.
“Looks that way,” Evan said. He switched on the torch he had kept with him. “The body’s in this cave, Sarge.”
Sergeant Watkins ducked as he followed Evan into the cave. “Been dead long, do you think?”
“I can’t say. I’d imagine the body has been covered with water more than once.”
“So it might have been washed in from the outside?”
“I wouldn’t think so. The opening’s too narrow for one thing and I don’t see how the waves would have been strong enough.”
“Then what the devil was he doing in a place like this? Not exactly where you’d come for comfort, is it?” Watkins shivered.
“His wife says he liked to meditate in these caves, but there’s a perfectly good large dry cave a little higher up. I can’t imagine anyone choosing to meditate in here.”
The torch shone down on Randy Wunderlich’s body. The golden hair was plastered around his face and encrusted with sand. Evan shivered. He still wasn’t able to handle death casually. Neither, it appeared, was Sergeant Watkins.
“Poor bugger,” he said. “What a stupid thing to happen. Here—hold on a mo—” This to the paramedics who were now also trying to get to the body. “I don’t want him touched until we’ve got the police doctor and photographer here. There’s nothing you boys can do anyway. He’s long gone.” He took out his mobile phone. “I’ll just go outside and report to HQ. You boys can come with me and put your own call in.”
“It’s very odd, isn’t it?” Glynis asked when she and Evan were alone in the cave. Of the three she seemed the least affected, climbing over the body to view it from behind. “An odd way to die, I mean.”
“Just a minute, Constable.” Sergeant Watkins reappeared. “Don’t go trampling on any potential evidence.”
“You don’t suspect foul play, do you?” Glynis looked surprised.
“Always suspect foul play until it’s ruled out, and then you don’t get into trouble with your chief,” Watkins said, giving Evan a knowing grin. “Not that it matters much here. The tide’s been over all this at least once.”
“He must have drowned, obviously,” Glynis said, peering down at the body. “But the question is why?”
“Trapped by the tide while he was meditating?” Watkins suggested.
