The Dig (16 page)

Morgan shrugged. “We don't know yet. We're not sure.” He looked very pale and sick.

The sand beach was long and slightly curved and the water hissed where the edge of the tide petered out. They were putting up a screen now around the body and the owlish man was looking, trying to see whatever he could.

“When did you find him?” asked the owlish man.

“Right early. Someone walking a dog.”

The old guy had been walking his dog and described how the dog had run up to the corpse and scattered the birds and the idea of the birds pecking at the face made Morgan sick inside again.

“You look paler than when I picked you up the other night,” said the owlish taxi driver, trying to be light.

The owlish man could just see the legs of the body now. The legs looked distraught and wet like the tide had been over them and he noticed the kind of shapeless deadness to them as if they weren't real.

“Any explanation? Nothing on him?” asked the man.

“No.” The policeman had swallowed down his sickness once more. “No. Unless the tide took it. He could have been washed up. We're not sure yet.”

“Didn't happen here then?”

“We don't know,” said the policeman. He thought about the fingers missing and about the big wound to the face. He wanted to go back to the body. It was easier actually being by it and looking at it like a big fact. There was
something unreal and factual and more dead about the body that way and it was easier to deal with.

The sergeant called up to the young policeman.

“I shouldn't be talking to you,” Morgan said to the owlish man. He got more formal. “I can't give you any information at the present time. I'll have to ask you to leave the scene.”

Other men had parked up and were coming down the slipway in white forensics suits onto the beach. There was something weird about the beach that looked like it had been busier at one time, some time in the distant past. But then it had been abandoned, fallen out of favor.

“You don't know who it is then?” asked the owlish man.

The young policeman had turned to go back.

“No.” He had the thought of the gulls pulling at the dead face. “We've got no idea who it is yet.”

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CYNAN JONES was born near Aberaeron, Wales, in 1975. He is the author of three novels,
The Long Dry
(winner of a Betty Trask Award, 2007),
Everything I Found on the Beach
(2011), and
The Dig
(2014), winner of the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize. He is also the author of
Bird, Blood, Snow
(2012), the retelling of a medieval Welsh myth.
The Dig
is his first novel published in the U.S.