The Valley of the Shadow (2 page)

“At least I didn’t leave them in the ignition. But can you honestly imagine anyone going to the trouble of stealing the Incorruptible, dear? And the only things in it are a couple of dirty old wooden wheels.”

“Are those for the shop? If they’re worth something to LonStar, they’re worth something to a thief.”

“Only if an inquisitive and dishonest antique dealer happened to pass. They’re not worth the trouble anyway. If you’d seen the struggle the farmer had getting them in … I just hope we can get them out again.”

By then, Megan had rolled up the windows, locked the doors, and returned the keys. They crossed to the drive leading down to the house that had been the old Trevillet watermill, built of irregular slabs of local slate mortared together.

On their right, amid trees and bushes still summer green, the Trevillet River rushed and tumbled over a series of low waterfalls, flinging droplets that sparkled in the sun. Then, clear as glass, it rippled down its stony bed, each pebble visible, from pale grey and yellowish through every shade of brown. A narrow, rickety wooden footbridge took them over the stream, almost hidden here in the lush growth of water-loving plants. Heedless of protruding tree roots, the rough path plunged into the cool dimness of greenery, winding along the chuckling brook. They came to the roofless ruins of Trethevy Mill.

The moss-draped walls were succumbing to the slow, inexorable assault of small trees, whose branches intruded brazenly through the empty rectangles of windows. In an odd sort of parody of spring blossom, ribbons bedecked the lower branches, pink, blue, red, white, purple, orange.

“What on earth…?” exclaimed Megan.

At the sound of her voice, a small white ball of fur erupted from the interior. Teazle greeted Eleanor with delight and Megan with rapture, as she hadn’t seen her for a couple of weeks.

Nick’s tall, lean figure followed the dog, stooping beneath the low lintel of a still-standing doorway. He had his camera and Teazle’s lead looped around his neck. “I thought I heard footsteps. Hello, Megan. How are the arrest statistics?”

“Fine.” Megan’s cheeks were tinged with pink, possibly from stooping to pet Teazle. “How’s the artistic licence? Is this lot your doing?” She waved at the multitude of ribbons.

“Good Lord, no! Though I confess to having wondered whether to paint it. I decided it’s really not my cup of tea.”

“What on earth is it all in aid of?”

“I gather it’s some sort of neopagan business. They find an esoteric significance in the labyrinth patterns in here.” He led the way inside and gestured at a smoothed rock face, which appeared to have formed one wall of the mill. On it was inscribed a primitive mazelike pattern. “The experts say it was probably carved a couple of hundred years ago, not in the time of the Druids, as the nuts like to believe.”

Megan was equally sceptical. “Surely it would have worn away, anyway. It’s exposed to the elements—the lichen and that green stuff are evidence that the rock is usually damp. It would cover the designs if someone hadn’t cleared them. Probably eat into them, too.”

Nick grinned. “The detective at work. Some interesting mosses there, and that’s navelwort or pennywort growing straight out of the rock.”

“You dabble in botany as well?”

“I like to know what I’m painting. I’ve been photographing and sketching them, and the old mill wheel in the next room. Picturesque ruins always sell well. But I’m finished here and time’s passing. Let’s move on.”

Bringing up the rear, Eleanor glanced into the room with the mill wheel. It lay flat on the ground, half buried under luxuriant stinging nettles and ferns. She found the sight rather depressing—something about the futility of human endeavour. A man had shaped that stone by the sweat of his brow. Others had carted it down from the moors, set it up, built a millhouse over the stream, run the mill to produce … what? She had no idea what the mill’s purpose had been. It had provided a living for who knew how many people, then its day had passed and now it was nothing but a tumbledown ruin, half-roofed with scarlet-berried honeysuckle.

Sighing, Eleanor followed the others.

They crossed another wooden bridge. The path now ran sometimes along the bank of the stream, sometimes rising high above it as it delved into narrow, invisible chasms between sheer walls of bare rock. Rocky outcrops broke through the grassy hillsides, bare of trees, where little else but bracken, gorse, and blackthorn thickets braved the thin soil.

In places the horizontal strata of slate were weathered so as to look like artificial walls. Down by the water, flat platforms and shelves invited sitting.

Nick stopped to snap a few photos, so Eleanor and Megan accepted the invitation. The rock felt deliciously warm. Megan closed her eyes and turned her face up to the sun. Teazle went paddling in a limpid pool where the stream bubbled down a series of steps. To her surprise and alarm, Nick joined her—involuntarily, in an attempt to leap to a good viewpoint.

“Damn! Lucky I’m wearing sandals.”

Teazle scrambled out and shook herself vigorously.

“Damn!” Megan echoed, jumping up as dark patches of damp appeared on her Indian cotton wrap-around skirt and pale green sleeveless blouse. “Clumsy idiot,” she muttered under her breath, casting an unfriendly glance at Nick. “And how can one small dog absorb so much water?”

“You’ll dry off in no time.” Eleanor, out of range of the shower, was unsympathetic. “And the water is about as clean as water can be. Nick, are you watching the time? You said something about the sun.”

Nick glanced up at the sky. “Yes, it’ll be at just the right angle. I need to get there before it dips below the headland. Let’s go.”

The stony path climbed the hillside. Here and there bedrock protruded, making natural steps, awkward however because of their odd sizes and shapes. Twice Eleanor stumbled and nearly fell, but her Aikido training helped her regain her balance.

Ahead, the valley widened, and soon the inlet came into view. The air was so still that there were no whitecaps, just an edging of creamy froth along the base of the cliff. The dark green swells rolled in with soothing regularity.

“
The Isle of the Dead,
” said Nick.

“What?” exclaimed Megan, startled.

“Rachmaninoff. The opening describes the sea’s present motion perfectly, restless yet monotonous. But he was writing music about a painting, so I don’t see quite how I can reverse the process…” He was momentarily silent, occupied with an inner vision. “Damn! I was hoping for waves crashing against the sheer headland over there in sheets of spray. I should have checked the tide. Or maybe it’s just that we haven’t had much wind recently. Oh well, it’ll have to do.”

They walked on until the path petered out into terraces and steps of slate. The abrupt edge was two or three feet above the smooth tops of the swells that surged onward to meet the stream in swirls of foam. Clumps of thrift, the flowerheads brown now, clung in crevices here and there. A grey-and-white herring gull launched itself into the air and joined its fellows circling overhead, their raucous screams cutting through the constant yet ever-changing sounds of moving water. High above floated a buzzard.

“Gorgeous,” said Megan.

“Good enough.” Nick fiddled with his camera’s settings, peered through, and fiddled some more.

Megan jumped down a slate step. Eleanor sat on it, the sun warm on her back.

“What’s that?” Nick lowered the camera and pointed.

Eleanor peered, wishing she had brought binoculars. Something dark bobbed in the water. “A seal?”

“No.” Megan’s voice rang harsh. “It’s a man. And if he’s not already dead, he soon will be.”

TWO

How the hell was she to get the poor bugger out? Megan took a rapid inventory of her resources.

“Hang on, we’re coming!” Nick bellowed through cupped hands.

A good start. “Aunt Nell, go for help.” As she spoke, she untied the bow of her skirt. “Doctor, ambulance, rope, rugs, hot drinks, anything else you can think of.”

Her aunt hurried away up the path, white curls bobbing, Teazle at her heels. Megan turned to find that Nick had already stripped off his shirt.

“Good job I’m in long trousers.” He knotted Teazle’s lead together with one sleeve of the shirt.

Megan tossed her skirt to him. “On the diagonal.”

As he tied the other sleeve of his shirt to one corner of the skirt, she slipped out of her shoes and ripped off her blouse, buttons flying, glad she was wearing a black bra and knickers. Just like a bikini, she assured herself.

“No need for that,” Nick protested, tightening the knots. “I’m going in.”

Megan shook her head firmly. “I’m a certified lifeguard. I’ll need your weight and your reach to pull us out, if I manage to get him.” Without further words, she leapt down the shelves of slate and, mindful of hidden rocks underwater, did a shallow racing dive towards the floating figure.

With a shock of cold, the sea enveloped her.

Surfacing in a trough, she swam to meet the next swell. From the crest she couldn’t see the body. Had it been a seal after all? She glanced back at Nick, who waved and pointed.

Thank heaven he had his wits about him. She corrected her course slightly and ploughed on.

Down and up, and down and up … Was she actually moving forward, or was a current stalling her in one place while the swells passed beneath her, lifting, dropping, lifting? But the current was moving her target, too. Towards the rocks? She
must
be getting closer.

There he was! A brown-skinned man, limp, floating on his back. Dead men float facedown after first sinking. The dark patch she had taken for hair was his face, unshaven, eyes closed. He was alive!

“I’m coming!”

Opening black eyes, he turned his head to look at her. As though the effort exhausted his last reserve of strength, he started to sink.

Megan would have said she was swimming as fast as she was able, but she put on a spurt. She caught him under the arms and raised his head above the surface. He neither struggled nor made any attempt to help. He hadn’t choked on emerging. A bad sign?

She decided hopefully that his buoyancy meant his lungs must be full of air, not water. With one arm under his and across his chest, she swam backstroke, straining to hear Nick’s shouted directions as single-armed swimming made her veer from her course.

“You’re getting close!”

Megan changed tactics. One hand holding up the victim’s chin, she twisted sideways and started a scissors kick. At the top of each swell she glanced backwards. As she neared the sheer rock face, she slowed, unsure what to do next.

Nick knelt down. “I’m throwing a loop of rope,” he called. “Try to hook it under his arms.”

Teazle’s lead flew towards her. The weight of the leather and the metal clip carried the makeshift rope within reach, and the leather floated. Megan grabbed it with her free hand.

Hooking it under the arms of the flaccid body, while staying afloat and keeping his face out of the water, was easier said than done. She was growing tired by the time she accomplished it, but now Nick took the strain. He drew them slowly nearer. Megan was able to put out a hand to fend them off from the rock.

Unlike the smooth concrete edge of the swimming bath she’d trained in, this edge was sharp. The sea’s action flaked the slate rather than smoothing it. Getting out—and especially getting the helpless man out—without nasty grazes was not going to be easy.

Nick was lying full length now, awkwardly, on the shelving rock, his shoulders and arms over the edge. “Can you lift him at all?”

“Don’t think so. Can’t feel anything to stand on.”

“Never mind.” He reached down. “I’ll hold him. Can you get yourself up?”

“I’ll manage.” She moved over a couple of feet and waited for a swell to lift her, then grabbed the edge above her head. There were plenty of toe-holds. Somehow, with the loss of some skin, she hauled herself over. For a brief moment she let herself flop, all muscles relaxed.

“Let’s get him out. Is he breathing? I don’t like the look of him.”

“Hypothermic.” She pulled herself together and shuffled crabwise to Nick’s side.

He had draped his shorts over the edge as some protection against scrapes. What a pair, she thought, her in sodden black bra and knickers, him in white Y-fronts and string vest!

Turning his head, he caught her eye and gave her a crooked grin. “Needs must when the devil drives. Come on, we can do it. On three.”

She leant down. He shifted his grip and she hooked her hands beneath the brown man’s armpit. As another swell raised him towards them, Nick counted, “One. Two—”

“Hey, hang on!”

Heavy footsteps hurried across the rock. Megan glanced back to see a young couple in hiking boots and shorts, shrugging off rucksacks as they came.

“We saw from the cliff path,” the girl explained breathlessly. “Sorry it took us so long to get here. We were way up at the top.”

“I’ll take over,” the shaggy-haired youth said to Megan, kneeling down. “Super job, but you must be done in.”

She was happy to relinquish her place. Her arms were beginning to feel like jelly.

As she sat up, Nick said, “Megan, be ready to support his head. All right, mate, at the top of the swell … One, two, heave!”

Megan managed to field his head before it struck the rock. She laid it down gently and brushed the straggling black hair from his face.

“A wog, eh?” said the stranger. “Indian, looks like. Stupid git, swimming in there. Starkers, too.”

“Don’t talk like that, Chaz,” his companion remonstrated. “You don’t know what happened. Is he breathing?”

Her hand on his chest, Megan put her ear to his mouth, which had fallen slightly open. “Can’t feel any movement, but there’s a faint wheeze. We’d better get him into rescue position so any water drains. Here, where it’s flat. On his stomach—Careful, for heaven’s sake! That’s it. Head to one side. Arms stretched out and bent. Leg bent, like this.”

A little water dribbled from his mouth. Nick leant over him. “Still breathing.”

“Unless it stops, I think the most urgent thing is to warm him up.”