Walking Into the Ocean

by David Whellams

  It is retrospection that makes it seem that time slows at a moment like this but it did for Peter. He fell backwards, the yellow raincoat flaring out but not really retarding his fall. He waited for his back to slam into the sea and it took an eternity. Colours — the sea foam, the cliff side, the evocative clump of pink wool — gained sharp relief as the foam engulfed him, and he smacked backwards onto the surface.

  He was asked later if his life passed before his eyes (these were barroom conversations; Joan would never ask such a question). It was not so much his life but rather the truth about the life and death of Anna Lasker that came out in three involuntary words as he tumbled back. He might have been speaking in tongues. He splashed into the water, the raincoat preventing him from immediately sinking. An incoming swell raised him up and he cried:

  “Anna! The boys!”

  In the cave, Ron Hamm might have peeked over the edge to find his partner or he could have braced himself waiting for his colleague to grab the lifeline, but he couldn’t do both. Confident that the line would reach the sea, he chose to hold back for at least a minute, waiting for the tug. There was precious little footing and nowhere to affix the rope but he tied it around his waist and dug his heels as best he could into depressions in the rock floor. After a full minute of terrible waiting, he crept forward to the edge.

  Below, Peter floated on his back in a relatively calm eddy, a false vortex created by the cross-running waves. The rain slicker would soon drag him under and he worked to shed it. It was easy enough in the calm pool. The heavy boots were more difficult and he gave up after a feeble attempt. He looked up but the spray obscured any view of the ledge. Dangers encircled him. The tidal flow would soon press him back against the canyon walls, where there was no place to hold on, let alone climb out. The currents shifted erratically. Sea spray plumed and blanked out his view of the cliff. In the temporary tranquillity of the pool he looked down for a second and saw forests of kelp. He took this as a positive sign: perhaps the sea along here covered an accessible beach where he could find his footing.

  Peter saw the rucksack fall. It landed in a surge ten feet from his pool and was soon followed by Hamm himself. The detective slapped leadenly into the swell. He rose to the surface just as the wave carried him towards the stone walls. Peter could see that he would be battered to a pulp. The rescued became the rescuer. Hamm was still attached to the rope. Peter took it and pulled hand over hand until he grasped his partner. He held him like a buoy at the end of a line. He pulled hard on the rope. Hamm’s raincoat, billowing out like a flotation device, was both a help and a hindrance. He was awake but not struggling and Peter turned to retrieve the pack, which was sodden but still floating despite the walkie-talkies inside. He hoped that it would provide some buoyancy; when he felt its unnatural weight, he reached inside and pulled out the walkie-talkies. For a moment he thought of trying to call Plaskow and he pressed all the buttons on one of the devices, but then comprehended they were useless, and he regretfully let them sink.

  Within a few minutes the light began to fade, much faster than Peter thought possible. What had been a sparkling mist turned to an oppressive fog as contradictory waves funnelled into the gorge at high tide, sending up blades of water that became a permanent rain. They moved back to the rock face, problematic as that strategy was. Hamm remained semi-conscious. The rucksack, freed of the radios, allowed them, one at a time, to float and rest; but it wouldn’t last long. The second man had to tread water, and Hamm’s strength was fading. The sea was surprisingly warm but temperature wasn’t the biggest problem. The canyon walls provided only crevices and finger holds, and Peter couldn’t see any ledges or inlets to either his left or right. Hamm was bleeding from both nostrils but claimed that he was all right. An errant wave twisted Peter’s hand where it was lodged in a niche in the rock face and he heard his little finger snap. The sea water washed away any immediate pain and he reached for a purchase with his other hand.

  It appeared as the eye of Moby Dick. And it was an eye, a monster’s orb. The iris of bright yellow came up from the depths and the glassy lens diffused its beam. It moved as a confident sea creature should, floating up, waiting out the wavering current, bound straight for the surface. Peter stared at the eye. It was everything Melville or Verne or the Old Testament had forecast, he thought. The creature was somehow knotted to Hamm’s nylon rope. Except that Hamm’s line was blue and white, while this one bore red stripes. Peter reached out and pulled the electric eye towards him.

  The bulbous torch was a clever contraption; it floated like a top and put out a bright, piercing light that might have been seen in France. Peter had the torch now. He had no idea where it came from. He couldn’t trace the other end of the line in the churning water; he pulled as hard as he could, simultaneously wrapping his end, torch and all, around Ron Hamm. The young man was losing consciousness. In his effort to shelter him, Peter was slammed into the rock face by a wave.

  The far end of the rope, still obscured to Peter, went taut, and Hamm’s body went flying away from him, like a surfer’s body on the crest of the pulsating waves. Peter was growing delirious. Pushed to the rock wall, he bobbed, alone, abandoned. If his life was to end, he prayed for one last sight of the eye. He would swear to his grave — not far now — that it truly was a Leviathan’s eye.

  The rescue arrived by boat. A dinghy, perhaps the one that had landed them on the shore, careened out of the fog and bumped right into Peter. Steering the arm of a small motor at the back was one of the sailors from the ship. But in the front, leaning out with hand extended, was the sinewy man in black. If the helmsman seemed unconcerned, the SAS man — Peter in his reverie thought of him as his personal SAS guardian — was positively blank-faced. Just at the point of fingertip contact, God reaching to Adam, a swell caught them; his rescuer’s arm sawed high into the air, sending Peter under the water.

  He heard a shout. “For Christ’s sake, Walterman.”

  Peter sank farther than he expected, and moved sideways under the water, too. He was tangled in ropes and clothing and his boots dragged at his tired legs. He panicked, thrashing at his bonds. He reached blindly forward and gripped the swimmer. As he surfaced, in the arms of the figure, the waves came into play and drove them against the cliff wall. Peter clasped the body and cringed for the impact of the rocks. He felt the nakedness of the form. He opened his eyes and saw the battered face of the naked girl, and the pink wool scarf that still choked her.

  A long gaff with a blunted hook came over his shoulder and grappled onto the girl’s scarf. He felt, rather than saw, a second gaff find his collar and he was quickly drawn back from the cliff.

  Peter, broken and waterlogged, lay in the bottom of the dinghy. He was on the brink of hypothermia. The commando looking down at him was costumed in a black sweater, black trousers and a black watch cap, and amazingly had dabbed lamp black (Peter supposed) under his eyes. He held a gaff in each hand. Imagine that, Peter thought, and passed out.

  Later when Peter told the story he left out the part about praying.

  CHAPTER 18

  Sometimes the chief inspector irritated himself. As he lounged in the bed in his private room in Whittlesun General Hospital, Peter wondered how he always managed to alienate everybody.

  He was fully dressed, except for his tweed jacket, which hung in what passed for a cupboard, and he lay on top of the covers. Having patched his wounds, they were holding him “for observation.” It was 6:30 a.m., and despite the hospital’s efforts at climate control, zephyrs of fresh October air seeped into the room, beckoning to him to walk out of the place. He detected no movement out in the corridor, and this was another inducement to flee. They were holding him in a prison without bars. If they thought the drugs would pacify him — they were painkillers, but not sedatives — they had outsmarted themselves; the dregs of the medication served only to mask his residual aches and pains, and he was ready to go.

  But he had to get the train of events clear in his mind; then
he would leave. He plumped up his pillows, crossed his hands on his chest, sank back and began to work his way back in time. Jerry had driven him to the hospital in the Land Rover, while Hamm was transported in the ambulance that was waiting at the Whittlesun jetty. Peter’s concussion was mild and he displayed no signs of shock or fevers. The presiding doctor at Whittlesun General had examined him all over, cleaned and patched his various abrasions and splinted his broken baby finger. The doctor, not a day over thirty, a Whittlesunite, annoyed Peter with repeated expressions of amazement at his survival in the sea. He blathered on about how his parents had warned him of the perils of the cliffs. Peter recalled hearing the words “heroic” and “admirable.” What he had clearly understood through his haze was their condescension towards his sixty-seven years. His every word of resistance had confirmed his frailty.

  He had made matters worse by batting at the nurse who tried to inject him with some fluid, unidentified but certainly a knock-out sedative. He knew perfectly well that he had the right to discharge himself. Two orderlies, two nurses and his doctor had surrounded him, all speaking in soothing terms. The matron, part of that no-nonsense breed, broke the standoff by pointing out that Peter had no clothes (and perhaps metaphorically too), and he should eat something. His stomach gurgled at the mention of food; he hadn’t eaten since the picnic of cheese and crackers on the promontory overlooking the Channel. He had agreed to wait for the hospital meal cart but then had fallen asleep without the sedative.

  He had awakened before sunrise, hungry, wrapped in a bleached-out blue hospital gown and wearing paper shoes. Since there were no staff about, he had decided to look in on Hamm; for some reason, he had known that Hamm was lodged in the room next door. He moved slowly into the hall. Swamped with grogginess, he paused against the corridor wall for a moment. Circumstances considered, he felt not too bad, he had told himself. He shuffled into the adjacent room and found Ron Hamm asleep on his side. Peter went around to the window side of the room and peered at the young man. Bruises coated his face like stains from a thrown plum, purply and deep. But there was none of the swelling typical of a facial fracture. A day-old dinner tray lay on the swing-out bedside tray and Peter stole a stale scone from it.

  But this sequence, he now understood, was a fragmented memory. He now recalled a series of telephone conversations — he had had to fight them for phone access too. He had reached London, instructing Bartleben to call Joan and tell her not to come down to Whittlesun, since “it was only a scratch or two,” although evidently he had a concussion and a broken finger. He had cut the conversation short, only informing Stephen that Molly Jonas had been found, that she was certainly a victim of the Rover, and that he would provide a fuller briefing as soon as possible. Then he had rung off. In one quick step, he had offended both Bartleben and his wife.

  He had slept again, getting up with the dawn light to find his clean clothes in the cupboard. He had dressed and sat back on the bed, plotting his escape from the eerily empty hospital. The quiet would end soon, he told himself, just as his bruised body dragged him back into sleep.

  It was either the smell of coffee or the creaking hinges on the room door that woke him the second time. He opened his eyes to the hulking form of Constable Willet, who stood in the doorway with a huge coffee cup in his fist.

  “Chief Inspector,” Willet said. “You’re up. How do you feel, sir?”

  Without waiting for a reply, Willet came over to the bed and levered Peter to a sitting position. Willet caught him eying the coffee and poured half of it into a plastic cup. Though eager to talk, he had the sense to let Peter savour a few sips. By now the hospital was coming to life and Peter smelled food; a moment later, an orderly brought in a tray and set him up for his breakfast.

  “Was it you who brought my clothes, Constable?” Peter said.

  “Mr. Bartleben asked me to. I retrieved them from your hotel. Trust they’re all right for present purposes.”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  “But I forgot the shoes,” Willet said.

  “No matter,” Peter said, and bit into the limp toast. “What are you doing here, Constable?”

  “Keeping out the undesirables. The media have gotten wind that you and Mr. Hamm were instrumental in finding the Rover’s latest, poor lass. They’ve shaped the story like you and the Detective are heroes.”

  “They’ve used that term?”

  “Oh, yes, and a lot of people agree. It was quite the effort, sir.”

  The adoration of the media would be short-lived, as they refocused on the failure of the authorities to make an arrest.

  “Do the press have my name?”

  “Don’t know that, but they do know that our second man was from Scotland Yard. Don’t worry, sir, the chatterers won’t get past me. I’ll be watching over you and Mr. Hamm.”

  “How is he?” Peter said.

  “They say he’ll be all right. The concussion is receding, but he won’t be getting out today. You neither, I expect. But they’ve put the press conference over until tomorrow.”

  “Lord,” Peter said. He imagined the circus in the Whittlesun Police boardroom.

  Bland as it was, the toast and coffee invigorated him. His impatience rose. His mind grew feverish and his thoughts jumped to the Lasker case. It was dragging on too long. For all the predictions of serendipitous breakthroughs, there had been no sighting of André Lasker and the trail was cold. Anna deserved better. Willet swung the tray table away from the bed. At that moment, Peter recalled the three words that had come into his mind as he fell from the cliff: “Anna. The boys.”

  His thoughts buzzed around a schedule for the day; it was his automatic way of moving beyond this confinement. He wanted to touch base with Stan about the bloodstained car, now lodged at the Regional Lab, and then contact Jerry Plaskow to fill in the end of the melodrama. His hire car must be sitting overdue on the Ports pier. He flashed again on the slow-motion fall backwards into the bay. Anna. The boys.

  “Constable,” Peter said, “before you get back to Detective Hamm, he told me that you’re related to one of the boys who found the pile of clothes on Lower Whittlesun Beach.”

  “Oh, yes. Young Percy Callahan. Father’s Fred Callahan. Good people.”

  “Could I pay them a quick visit?”

  “Don’t see why not. When you recover, of course. I’ll ring up and alert them. Maybe tomorrow or the next, you’ll be out?”

  “I’d be grateful. Leave me the address. Tell them there’s no problem. The boy isn’t in any trouble.”

  Willet turned serious and leaned over Peter. “Inspector?”

  “Yes?”

  “Percy is a special boy. Very special, and everyone knows it in my family. He likes to collect shells. Knows the tidewaters like the back of his hand. That’s why he was on the beach that day.”

  Peter understood that the boy’s love of shells wasn’t what made him exceptional.

  “Thank you, Constable. Do you mind if I make a quick call?”

  “Certainly, Chief Inspector. I’ll check on Hamm next door.” Willet wrote down the Callahans’ address and went out.

  Peter was lured by the telephone on the bedside table. It surprised him that the hospital had risked someone in the tabloids finding out the number.

  He woke Stan up at the hotel. “Peter, why are you calling so early? Aren’t you in pain?”

  “Sounds like you’re the one suffering,” Peter said. “Are you finished at the house?”

  “Finished at the house,” Stan echoed. “Yes, I’m done except for a bit more spectrographic work on the blood. It tells the true story.”

  “Suicide.”

  “Peter, you know I can’t officially go that far, since she died outside the confines of the house. But the wounds, the cuts were self-inflicted. I also took a look at the vehicle she drove up to the parking lot.”

  “Car park,” Peter corrected.

  “Right. No doubt she drove the car and he didn’t. Stains on the driver’s side.
That must have been the ride from hell, with her bleeding out and not being much of a driver. I went up there. Jumping wouldn’t be for me.”

  Peter was amazed that Stan had bothered to go up to the cliffs, but he said nothing. “Are you going to the press conference, Stan?”

  “Sure, wouldn’t miss it. I bet they’ll give you an award. The keys to the city or something. But it won’t be until tomorrow afternoon, I hear. How is Detective Hamm, anyway?”

  “Good. He’s next door. Has a concussion but he’s sleeping it off. They wouldn’t let him sleep if it were still serious.”

  “Shall we announce Anna’s suicide?” Stan said.

  “No, and Maris doesn’t know yet. But it’s overdue that I tell Hamm. As soon as he wakes up. He’s earned our trust, Stan.”

  “Don’t do it, Peter.” Stan’s lighthearted voice had levelled.

  “Do what?”

  “Keep vital information to yourself. You’re always doing this, hiding in some corner of the world with all the evidence spread around you, concealing the key facts until the last second, then making your wrapped-with-a-bow announcement.”

  “I don’t make announcements,” Peter said, in feeble defence.

  “No, you hate the limelight. But it amounts to the same thing. You keep too much to yourself, for too long, then it bursts out. You have to learn to play nice with others, namely, your colleagues.”

  But the lecture seemed beside the point to both of them and, after agreeing to touch base later in the day, they rang off.

  Peter tottered from the bed and walked around the room. It was going to be difficult to escape in paper shoes, he thought. He lay down again and dozed off. Two minutes later, he opened his eyes to the sight of Sarah’s smiling face, inches above him.