scrub or in a sandy hollow? Maybe it is peering out right now from one of the squat clumps of weed that grow like cacti from the sand dunes – peering out and laughing at him. 'I'll have you,' he swears. 'Cut you in half with a hacksaw and bury you in a dustbin. You shan't take me down.'
To summon the concentration required to conduct a thorough search, Colin shuffles forward through the first set of dunes and glances at the sea. The tide is out and the surface of the distant water is flat. That is how calm he wants to feel. But with the ball at large it will be impossible.
As he turns to inspect a hillock his foot slips a few inches forward. Regaining his balance, Colin peers down at his feet. Anger smoulders again. Dog shit – all he needs on a pair of new calfskin shoes. Reluctantly, as if scared of what he might find hanging from his sole, he turns his foot sideways to inspect the mess. Something glistens. A dark brown smear between his cleats and in the grass where he stands. After taking a step back, he bends further over to glare at the stain. Whatever it is sticking the grass together, it doesn't look like excrement. It looks like oil. Heavy sump oil, only it is reddish and brown in turn at the edges – the colour of hard fried bacon. Colin steps away, one hand windmilling for balance, not liking the texture or shine to the stuff he realises is blood.
He stamps his foot on the ground and then scrapes it backward to remove the blood and whatever it is that has collected to thicken the spill. After rechecking his sole to satisfy himself that the sticky fluid has been wiped free from his shoe, Colin ventures forward to inspect the wet and matted area of sand and verdure.
Immediately, he notices something odd about the grass: it has been flattened down around the dark smears to form a trail, the width of a man's shoulders, that leads over a small ridge and down into a crevice between two sandy hillocks. He's developed an aversion to blood after the last war, and any visit to a hospital still tightens him up inside: too many mates gone in and not come out. Perhaps a dog has caught a rabbit here. He hopes it won't be too messy.
Carefully, he moves up the side of the trail where the grass is long, and then peers down into the little sandy valley that slopes away to join the beach. But it is not the sight of a dead rabbit that greets his eyes.
After the initial double take, he twists away and falls onto all fours. Clarity of thought and vision disperse as he scrabbles back across the dune. Murmurs in his heart turn to rapid palpitations and then to quakes of crippling pain. Urgent breaths die in his parchment mouth. He crawls back through the trail of blood, soiling his trousers with bright streaks. It is blood from that wretched thing on the beach, propped up beside his golf ball.
Forced to stop crawling by the lightning in his ribcage, he rolls onto his back and releases his grip on the golf club. Staring at the sky, with his useless legs splayed in the mire of clotted sand, he moves his head from side to side and mouths the word 'No'.
There are no flies: it is a fresh kill.
Is he in danger? Is the killer still nearby? He must get up and find a phone box. Stay calm, he tells himself, don't push your ticker, let it settle down and then find someone.
But his attempts to remain calm fail. Back into his mind bursts the horror of what he tried to crawl away from. He's never seen such a tortured statement of a human body, not even on a beach in Normandy. The thing in the sand was once a woman, of that he is sure. Scattered items of clothing didn't give the gender away, but what was left of the breasts did.
There was no sign of hair on her head, or even skin on the silhouette of her thin body. Peeled wet, she looked like a sculpture made from red clay, still moist from the touch of an artist's watery hands. And perhaps it was the curious animation about the thing down there in the sand that brought the fresh attack of searing cramps to