must phone the police. Where's the nearest phone? Have you a mobile? There was nothing..." He indicated the direction from which they'd come. There was no phone in the cottage.
―I haven't a mobile," she said. ―I don't bring one when I come here. What does it matter? He's dead. We can see how it happened. The tide's coming in, and if we don't move him the water will."
―How long?" he asked.
―What?"
―The tide. How long have we got?"
―I don't know." She looked at the water. ―Twenty minutes? Half an hour? No more than that."
―Where's a phone? You've got a car." And in a variation of her own words, ―We're wasting time. I can stay here with the...with him, if you prefer."
She didn't prefer. She had the impression he would depart like a spirit if she left things up to him. He would know she'd gone to make the phone call he so wanted made, but he himself would vanish, leaving her to...what? She had a good idea and it wasn't a welcome one.
She said, ―Come with me."
SHE TOOK THEM TO the Salthouse Inn. It was the only place within miles she could think of that was guaranteed to have a phone available. The inn sat alone at the junction of three roads: a white, squat, thirteenth-century hostelry that stood inland from Alsperyl, south of Shop, and north of Woodford. She drove there swiftly, but the man didn't complain or show evidence of worry that they might end up down the side of the hill or headfirst into an earthen hedge. He didn't use his seat belt, and he didn't hold on.
He said nothing. Nor did she. They rode with the tension of strangers between them and with the tension of much unspoken as well. She was relieved when they finally reached the inn. To be out in the air, away from his stench, was a form of blessing. To have something in front of her -
immediate occupation - was a gift from God.
He followed her across the patch of rocky earth that went for a car park, to the low-hung door.
Both of them ducked to get inside the inn. They were at once in a vestibule cluttered with jackets, rainwear, and sodden umbrellas. They removed nothing of their own as they entered the bar.
Afternoon drinkers - the inn's regulars - were still at their normal places: round the scarred tables nearest the fire. Coal, it put out a welcome blaze. It shot light into the faces bent to it and streamed a soft illumination against soot-stained walls.
Daidre nodded to the drinkers. She came here herself, so they were not unfamiliar to her nor she to them. They murmured, ―Dr. Trahair," and one of them said to her, ―You come down for the tournament, then?" but the question fell off when her companion was observed. Eyes to him, eyes to her. Speculation and wonder. Strangers were hardly unknown in the district. Good weather brought them to Cornwall in droves. But they came and went as they were - strangers -
and they did not generally show up in the company of someone known.
She went to the bar. She said, ―Brian, I need to use your phone. There's been a terrible accident.
This man..." She turned from the publican. ―I don't know your name."
―Thomas," he told her.
―Thomas. Thomas what?"
―Thomas," he said.
She frowned but said to the publican, ―This man Thomas has found a body in Polcare Cove. We need to phone the police. Brian," and this she said more quietly, ―it's...I think it's Santo Kerne."
CONSTABLE MICK MCNULTY WAS performing patrol duty when his radio squawked, jarring him awake. He considered himself lucky to have been in the panda car at all when the call came through. He'd recently completed a lunchtime quickie with his wife, followed by a sated snooze with both of them naked beneath the counterpane they'd ripped from the bed (―We can't stain it, Mick. It's the only one we've got!"), and only fifty minutes earlier he'd resumed cruising along the A39 on the lookout for potential malefactors. But the warmth of the car in combination with the rhythm of the windscreen wipers and the fact that his two-year-old son had kept him up most of the previous night weighed down his eyelids and encouraged him to look for a lay-by into which he could pull the car for a kip. He was doing just that - napping - when the radio burst into his dreams.