the Morris forward until he was idling at the Nissan's side. tie said cneerny out of ms open window,
"Good morning? I say, do you need any help in there?" in case someone was dossing in the car's back seat. Then he noted that the glove compartment was hanging open and that its contents appeared to be strewn upon the floor.
Ian made a quick deduction from this sight:
Someone had been searching for something. He got out of the Morris and leaned into the Nissan for a better look.
The search had been nothing if not thorough.
The front seats were slashed, and the back seat was not only cut open but pulled forward as if with the expectation that something had been hidden behind it. The side panels of the doors appeared to have been roughly removed and then just as roughly returned to place; the console between the seats gaped open; the lining of the roof sagged down.
Ian adjusted his previous deduction with alacrity.
Drugs, he thought. The harbours of Parkeston and Harwich were no great distance from this spot. Lorries, cars, and vast shipping containers arrived there by the dozens on ferries every day. They came from Sweden, Holland, and Germany, and the wise smuggler who managed to get past customs would be sensible to drive to a remote location - just like the Nez - before retrieving his contraband. This car was abandoned, Ian concluded, having served its purpose.
He would have his walk and then phone the police to have it towed away.
He was childishly pleased with his insight.
Amused at his first reaction to the sight of the car, he pulled his Wellingtons From the ooot 01 the Morris and as he squirmed his feet into them, he chuckled at the thought of a desperate soul attempting to end his troubles at this particular site. Everyone knew that the edge of the Nez's clifftop was perilously friable. A potential suicide wishing to fling himself into oblivion at this spot was far likelier to end up sliding with the brickearth, the gravel, and the silt onto the beach below as the cliffside collapsed beneath his weight in a dirty heap. He might break his leg, certainly.
But end his life? Hardly. No one was going to die on the Nez.
Ian smacked the boot of the Morris shut. He locked the door and patted the vehicle's roof.
"Good old thing," he said in an affable fashion.
"Thank you very much indeed." The fact that the engine continued to turn over in the morning was a miracle that lan's natural superstitions told him he ought to encourage.
He picked up five papers that lay on the ground next to the Nissan and deposited them within the car's glove compartment from which they'd no doubt originally come. He swung the hatchback's door closed, thinking, No need to be untidy about things. Then he approached the steep old concrete steps that led down to the beach.
At the top of these steps, Ian paused. Even at this hour, the sky above him was a bright blue dome, unmarked by the presence of clouds, and the North Sea was tranquil with the calm of summer.
A fog bank lay like a roll of cotton wool far out on the horizon, serving as distant background for a fishing boat - perhaps half a mile off shore Liiai ciiuggcu 111 luc iaiici_Liun vji v-iiacujii. t\ flock of gulls surrounded this like gnats round fruit. More gulls, Ian saw, were buzzing along the waterline at clifftop height. They flew in his direction from the north, from Harwich, whose cranes Ian could glimpse even from this distance across Pennyhole Bay.
Ian thought of the birds as a welcoming committee, so intent did they seem upon him as a target. Indeed, they approached with such mindless determination that he found himself giving more than idle consideration to du Maurier's story, Hitchcock's film, and Tippi Hedren's avian torment. He was thinking about beating a hasty retreat - or at least doing something to shield his head - when as a single unit the birds arced and dived at a structure on the beach. This was a pillbox, a concrete fortification from World War II from which English troops had watched and waited to defend the country from Nazi invasion.
The structure had once stood on the top of the Nez, but as time and the sea had washed away the cliffside, it now sat on the sand below.
Ian saw that other gulls were already doing their web-footed tap dance on the