The Wave at Hanging Rock: A Psychological Mystery and Suspense Thriller (14 page)

The confused look climbed back on Darren’s face, and then replaced itself with one of disappointment. But he was the first to speak.

“You broke up with Cara?”

“Yeah.”

“Why d’you do that?”

John shrugged. “I dunno.” He stopped then carried on as if he hadn’t been going to tell us, but then decided
what the hell
. “I mean she’s pretty good looking and everything, and she’s got a good body, a really good body actually… But she doesn’t have anything that interesting to say.”

“Not like us you mean?” Darren said with absolutely no trace of irony.
 

“Yeah, I guess.”

“It’s cos she’s not into surfing or anything.”

“Yeah.” John sounded surer this time.

I opened my mouth to say something but the words stuck in my throat. What the fuck did he mean? Nothing interesting to say. She wanted to travel. She’d said so. But what really hurt was the confirmation that John had slept with her. That he knew what her body was like. That felt like having red hot pokers pushed into both of my ears at once. It fucking hurt my head just to sit there listening to it.
 

“So you’re back then?” Darren said, finishing his second beer. He tried a belch of his own but nothing came out so he just sat there opening and closing his mouth like a fish.

“Yeah. Guess so.”

“Then I got an idea how we can sort out the crowds in the town bay.” Darren was grinning now. He’d gone from fish to cat in one leap.

“What?” said John.

 
“We could surf Hanging Rock.”

nineteen

 
TIME DRAGGED BY. Later, and still with no news, Natalie pulled open the sliding door to their little garden and placed a cigarette between her lips. She hadn’t smoked for over two years, but there was a packet in the kitchen drawer that she’d never managed to throw away. At first the wind was too strong but she remembered how to cup her hands against it and soon she breathed in the stale smoke, the acidic taste was stale and unpleasant, but any sensation was better than how she felt.
 

She shivered and looked at the sky, streaked with anxious clouds. She blew out small clouds of her own and tried to let her mind empty of all thought, just watching the tip of the cigarette as it glowed red when she sucked, then receded to grey. When it was gone she stubbed it out and came back inside. She drank more coffee and sat. She noticed the weather at last. The policewoman had talked to her about it, but she hadn’t listened. Whatever was coming she’d convinced herself that Jim would be back before it happened. Now, as she watched, a black-edged weather front slowly slid over the house, like a lid being closed on the world. And somehow her body could sense the low pressure that was sucking in the weather. Then the rain came, first hitting the windows with drops so heavy she could hear each one, then coating them in streaks like floods of tears. With the rain came the wind.
 

The storm hit the whole country, but the South West took the brunt. At first the wind came in lumpy gusts which rattled branches against windows and whistled through the wet streets, but soon it was stronger and fiercer. It sent dustbin lids clattering and set off car alarms. People hurried home from work and needed both hands to push their front doors closed. Tendrils of the storm leaked inside and ruffled pictures on walls, sent gates banging in the gaps between houses. By midnight the storm was at full strength, ripping out roof tiles and sending them spinning and twisting through the blackness like crisp new playing cards. An old oak tree in a street near where Natalie lived, a benevolent monster of a tree that had weathered a thousand storms, felt its feet slipping out of the earth and knew its time had come. A mighty gust pushed against its sail of leaves and it eased over. It let go of the earth with a disappointed sigh, then, just when it seemed it might lay down gracefully it felt the full pull of gravity and crashed down onto a car, splintering its limbs and tearing open the car roof like it was made of tin foil. It was during this storm that the body of Natalie’s husband was washed ashore.
 

There was something in the way that DS Venables waited on the doorstep, the next morning, that told Natalie it was over.
 

“You’ve found him haven’t you?” Natalie said at once.

Sue spoke in a soft voice.
 

“Can I come in?”

Natalie stood back and the policewoman brushed her as she walked past.
 

“We think so.” She said when they were in the kitchen. There was no tea this time.

“A man’s body was found this morning near Bude in Devon. The storm pushed it in. From the description we think it’s Jim.”

Natalie nodded and wiped at her eye.
 

 
“You need me to identify the body,” she said, but the other woman shook her head. “If you’d rather not there are other people we can ask…”

“No. I want to. I need to see him.”

The policewoman glanced down for a moment before replying.
 

“I understand Natalie. But I have to warn you, the body has been in the sea for some time… And the weather… You should know he won’t look how you knew him. It might be better for you not to remember him like this.”

Natalie felt herself floating away and bit her lip to keep her in the present. She wondered why she wasn’t crying. She realised the policewoman was still talking to her.
 

 
“I’m so sorry for you that this is happening. I’m just so sorry.” The policewoman reached out and touched Natalie’s hand and for some reason this horrified her. She felt the woman had no right and wanted to snatch her hand away, but with a spike of panic she realised this wasn’t a normal response. This was bad enough without having to work out how she was supposed to react.
 

“I want to see him. I need to see him. To say goodbye.” Natalie squeezed her eyes to make them fill with tears and through watery vision she saw the policewoman nodding.

“I understand.”

She had perhaps assumed that they would make an appointment, go another day, but they went at once, travelling in DS Venables police car. She’d come out of uniform that day, and the car she was now driving had no police markings, but inside its radio crackled and burped until the policewoman turned it down low. She made a couple of small attempts at starting a conversation, but Natalie couldn’t bring herself to respond. She stared dead ahead at the road as the miles ticked by, thinking about Jim. Trying not to think about the week before. Soon they rolled to a halt in the car park at North Devon District Hospital in Barnstaple, the entrance to the morgue was round the back, out of sight from where the living went in.
 

Natalie stood alongside DS Venables while she signed them in, then they sat together in a waiting area, the only people present. A low table had a small stack of magazines,
Horse and Hounds
and
Hello
mostly. They looked well read. Natalie wondered at that, how could people sit here and do something so ordinary as read a magazine? She didn’t touch them herself, but there wasn’t time anyway. The receptionist came into the room and asked if she was ready. The policewoman offered her an arm to lean on but she didn’t take it.
 

They walked through double doors into a room she’d seen a thousand times before, in films and TV dramas. But this time she was right there in the room, able to notice the stains on the ceiling, the plug sockets in the wall. For what? Vacuum cleaners? Electric saws to cut heads open? She was trying to fill her mind, to distract it from what she was going to see, but it was impossible, she could already see him.

Instead of a long row of bodies there was just the one, her husband Jim, a year younger than her, lying on a steel gurney, his cold stiff body covered by a green sheet. Natalie found herself led to his head where a small man in spectacles and green surgical scrubs waited for Sue’s instruction to uncover it. Natalie noticed the alarming amount of hair on the man’s arms, the white strip where a watch had been removed. DS Venables was watching her face and Natalie gave the smallest of nods. Go ahead, she thought. Destroy my life. I agree to an eternity of nightmares.
 

The man drew the sheet back with almost a theatrical flourish and the head and torso of the cadaver was revealed in a horrible instant. He was naked, the skin was bloated and mottled in purples, yellows and browns. There was a smear of blood leaking from the nose and the cheeks were swollen. The mouth was open and you could see sand, bedded in around the teeth which were cracked and broken. The man had stubble around his chin and neck, and Natalie remembered hearing that hair continued to grow after death, so that sometimes dead people had to be shaved before they were buried. His eyes were the worst. They too were open but unfocused, a hint of cloudiness like a fish going bad.
 

It wasn’t Jim, she could see that at once, but some impulse forced Natalie to continue looking at the horrible face before her. To study it almost. The hair was wrong, dark like Jim’s but this man was receding at the temples. Not like Jim. He was fatter too, you could see the extra weight carried on the face. She felt only confusion. And then in a powerful wave the urge to leave at once overcame her. She didn’t want to be here.
 

“It’s not Jim.” Natalie said, and took a step back, then she turned to the door as if to leave.

DS Venables looked surprised, almost cheated.
 

“Natalie dear, are you sure? Faces can look different…”

“It’s not him.
It’s not him. It’s not him. It’s not him.
” Natalie realised she was crying and felt a stab of frustration that her body was sabotaging her efforts to remain calm, to navigate this process with dignity.
 

“OK. OK.” DS Venables put her arm around Natalie and led her away from the body. She glared at the mortuary assistant and he flicked the sheet back over the man’s dead face, shrugging slightly as if it made no difference to him whether this was the right body or not.
 

“We’ve got the clothes, if that helps?” he said to the policewoman.

“The clothes?”

“Yeah, he came in fully dressed, we’ve got the clothes. She might be able to confirm from the clothes.”

DS Venables lowered her voice to a whisper, although there was no chance that Natalie wouldn’t hear.

“I was told he was wearing a wetsuit?”

“Yeah that’s right, a full suit, bow tie and everything. Soaking wet it was.”

“Not a
wet suit
, a wetsuit. The man we’re looking for was lost surfing. He was wearing a wetsuit.”

“Oh right. Not gonna be him then. Not unless he got changed in the water.” You could hear in his voice he thought this a funny idea.
 

The policewoman’s face had gone white with anger. She went to reply, but looked instead at Natalie and ushered her out of the room as fast as she could.

“I’m so sorry, that should never have happened,” she said at last when they’d rejoined the road east.
 

“It’s OK.” Natalie said, she felt calmer now, watching the trees slip by the window.

“It seems that man was washed up exactly where the coastguard was expecting Jim’s body to reappear. The ages matched, no one else had been reported missing. I don’t think it occurred to anyone that it wasn’t your husband. I’m so sorry.” She fell into silence, lost at what she might be able to do to improve the situation.

“If you want to file a complaint, I’ll make a statement. I think you should consider it.”

Natalie pulled her head up at this and looked across at the other woman. She sensed for a moment that this was somehow important to the police officer, but it wasn’t something that interested her. She felt relief, not anger.
 

“It’s alright. It can’t be easy, your job. For any of you. I appreciate how much you’ve done. How much you’re all doing. The pilots out there searching, the people on the boats, but you as well.”

“Thank you,” DS Venables said, glancing across at her.

“And I’m sorry for whoever that is, and whoever is missing him, but at least it means there’s still a chance. For Jim, I mean.”

Now Natalie took her eyes from the road and met the policewoman’s gaze, like she was looking for confirmation that all hope was not lost. But all she saw was how she gripped the steering wheel harder.

“There’s something else I need to tell you,” the policewoman said in the end.
 

“What?”

“Just before we left the hospital I reported in that you weren’t able to confirm the identity… That it wasn’t Jim. So the Coastguard could restart the search. But I’ve been informed that the search won’t be restarted.”

“What? Why? If he’s still out there… Why would they stop?”

“Natalie I know this is going to be very hard to take. But a search like this will only ever be continued while there is a chance of finding someone alive. If Jim went into the water on Monday it’s almost impossible…” she hesitated. “And I’m afraid we’ve had some new information that makes that seem unlikely anyway.”
 

Natalie felt a stab of concern at the phrase ‘new information’ but forced herself to ignore it.

“What’s happened? What have you found out?”
 

“I told you that your car was found with a penalty notice issued on the fourth November. We assumed that meant the car must have been left there on the fourth, and if that was the case it would mean Jim had been in the water for just a few hours when the search began,” she paused. “And forty eight hours now. That’s right at the limit of what can be survived with a wetsuit on…”

“So we need to keep searching.” Natalie interrupted her, surprising herself as she did so. “Jim’s incredibly strong. If anyone can survive it’s him. Can you get them on that thing?” Natalie pointed at the radio.

“Natalie, you have to let me finish. The officers in South Wales have now spoken to the council which issued that ticket. They were working on the assumption that operatives would visit the car park several times each day. But it turns out that wasn’t correct. Actually the operative who ticketed Jim’s car was the first to visit that car park for four days.” She glanced away from the road and over to Natalie to see if she was following her.