‘It shouldn’t be here yet, not till May. But then everything’s early this year, the shad bushes, dogwoods, birchwood violets, even the oaks. Now the fish.’
For the past few days he had seen gannets circling off the ocean beach, gulls doing the same in the bay: unseasonable indicators that the fish had already started their annual run up the coast and would soon be hitting the beach.
‘What will you do with it?’
‘Fry it in beer batter.’
‘Is it good?’
‘You’ve never had weakfish?’
‘Not to my knowledge.’
‘You should try it some time.’
‘I’ll be sure to,’ she said a little curtly.
He took a filleting knife from the drawer in the table and began sharpening the blade on a stone. ‘You can share it with me if you like.’
‘I wouldn’t want to put you to any more trouble.’
There was a hint of annoyance in her voice that the offer hadn’t been immediately forthcoming.
‘As you like,’ he said, enjoying the game. ‘I have to do this now or the flesh will spoil.’
He sliced open the fish’s belly and pulled out the guts. He cut down to the backbone just behind the head, turned the blade and worked it towards the tail. The first fillet came free. Flipping the fish over, he repeated the process, aware that she was watching him with a look that hovered somewhere between intrigue and revulsion.
‘Beer batter, you say?’
‘Deep-fried cubes. We call them frigates.’
‘And they’re good?’
‘The best.’
‘That’s quite a claim.’
‘I tell you what,’ he said, turning to look her in the eye, ‘if you don’t agree, you’re allowed to say so.’
‘Deal.’
He sliced the skin from the fillets.
‘If I’m going to stay for supper, shouldn’t I know your name?’
‘Conrad.’
‘Lillian,’ she said. ‘Lillian Wallace.’
Eleven
The Model A bumped along the road to the beach landing, its chassis groaning, the beam from the headlight dancing up ahead.
Conrad pulled the vehicle to a halt. He knew what to expect as he rounded the bend: the sandy lot, fringed with trees and bushes, rising up to the shallow breach in the dune, the ocean out of sight beyond. But he needed to try and see it with fresh eyes. The eyes of a man looking to dispose of a body.
She hadn’t been put in the ocean in front of the Wallaces’ house, of that he was certain. The strength of the longshore set at the time she was supposed to have drowned would have carried her further eastward overnight, beyond the spot where they’d pulled her from the water the next morning. He knew from experience that the ocean could do strange things with a drowned body, taking it on an improbable journey that seemed to defy all natural laws. But that was rare.
It was some distance from the house to the beach, down the bluff and across the dunes, an exposed walk, moonlit on the night in question. Too far to carry a dead weight, and too risky. That was probably the reasoning. Maybe there had been kids on the beach. It was a popular stretch for clambakes at this time of year, the deep sand at the base of the frontal dune pockmarked with the blackened remnants of the nocturnal feasts.
Whatever, he was fairly sure she had been taken elsewhere in a car and then dumped in the ocean. Fortunately, there were a limited number of spots nearby where this might have happened.
Two Mile Hollow landing seemed unlikely. Although closest to the Wallaces’ house, it became a rendezvous for lovers once night fell, a place of furtive exchanges and steamed-up car windows. Likewise, he had dismissed Egypt landing. Right next to the Maidstone Club, there would have been too many other cars coming and going, and there was the added risk that club members often strolled down on to the beach at night.
The small landing at Wiborg’s Beach, on the other hand, a little further along, would have been ideal—remote, squeezed in beside the wasteland of the club’s west course. The village tryworks for rendering whale oil had once stood there, and since much of the big house just back from the dunes had been torn down, local people had started using the track again to gain access to the beach.
Conrad wrenched the Model A into gear and pulled away. He knew that what he was doing served no concrete purpose, nothing could possibly come of anything he found, it was simply that he needed to know: for himself, and for Lillian.
Rounding the bend, the small landing opened up in front of him. He found himself drawn to the gloom beneath the boughs of an oak, the natural spot to park up if you had something to hide. He turned the engine off, reached for the flashlight on the seat beside him and got out.
