Before she knew what she was doing, she was groping forward along the left-hand wall. The water was shallowest at the edges, but even so it soaked her sandals at once. Reflections doubled the doorways, which looked drowned and wavering. Each cell was darker, each step toward the snuffling took her further into the dark.
She flinched and almost cried out when she glimpsed movement in the next cell opposite, a dark shape creeping away from the entrance. It was only ripples in the water that had spread into the cell. The water made her feet drag – as if her fear wasn't enough to slow her down. There was a dim shape in the next cell across the corridor, but that was just a stain on the concrete floor. So was the dark huddle on the floor of the cell beyond that.
She was sloshing onward now, pressing on because she'd almost lost her footing. No, it couldn't be a stain. It was an object, a glistening object lying on the dank floor. Surely it must be dim reflections of the ripples that had made it seem to stir. There was no need for her fists and her stomach to clench like this.
But it had eyes, and they were watching her.
She stumbled backward, fighting to keep her balance on the slippery floor. It was only some tramp sleeping rough, she told herself desperately: a tramp – that was why he was so thin. So he was naked – why not, on a day like this? But even then she didn't believe herself, not when she could see how his entire body was glistening. The liquid that covered him from head to foot was too dark for water. She had smelled it all the way along the corridor. His bared teeth were glistening with blood too.
He was rising slowly on all fours, exactly like an animal in its lair. Around him she thought she glimpsed scattered bones, ragged with flesh. His eyes gleamed yellow, his teeth bared further in a grin or a snarl – and then she was running wildly down the corridor, almost falling at the water's edge, one outstretched hand scraped raw by the rough concrete wall. She might have screamed for Alan, but her throat was choked by fear and the smell of blood. She was sure that any moment the thin bloody figure would leap on her back, drag her down on the floor of the dark corridor.
When she reached the steps she stared back, trembling. The corridor was deserted. She fled up the steps, so clumsily that she fell, bruising her knees. She stumbled into the daylight, away from the pillbox, toward the house.
Alan was striding toward her, half-dragging Anna. 'She was waiting for the lemonade to chill,' he said angrily. 'I had to go searching for her. She was waiting by the road – she wouldn't wait in the house.'
He saw Liz's expression and came quickly over to her. 'My God, what's wrong?'
It would take too long to describe what she'd seen. 'There's someone down there,' she said, pointing to the steps, though her hand was shaking almost as much as her mouth. 'I think he's the one who killed the goat.'
'Is he, by Christ? Well, we'll soon find out.' Before she realized what he meant to do, he disappeared into the pillbox.
She hadn't wanted him to go down. There was only one way in or out, and he could have guarded that while she called the police. He'd strode into the pillbox as if he was eager for violence, and now she was afraid of what might happen, down there in the dark. Suppose he couldn't see the creature until it was too late? Suppose it was ready for him – waiting for him? Wind tugged at the grass, sand hissed at the edge of the cliff, the cries of children drifted along from the Britannia Hotel. It was only half a mile away, and so was Jane's house in the other direction, but somehow that only made her feel all the more alone.
She told Anna to wait where she was, a hundred yards away, then she hurried alongside the pillbox, trying to see through the gunports. But she could see nothing, and worse still, she couldn't hear Alan; her ears were full of the ominous roar of the sea. She wavered between the gun- ports, afraid to cry out a warning in case it distracted him. What had she sent him down there to confront? She couldn't even reach the gunport of the cell where she had seen the figure crouching in the dark, for the bushes were too thick.
She was still wavering outside the pillbox and straining her ears when she heard movement on the steps. She glanced nervously at Anna to make sure the child was far enough away to be in no danger. But it was Alan on the steps. He stood shaking his feet dry, and gazed oddly at Liz. 'Come on, let's go down and finish the wine if it hasn't been pinched,' he said. 'There's nobody in there. Nobody at all.'
Eleven
Coming home from the hotel on Tuesday, Liz stayed on the road, away from the beach, and made Anna hold her hand round the succession of blind corners. Grasshoppers buzzed like static in the untrimmed verges, cows plodded after one another through the fields; a procession of clouds passed along the horizon, so slowly that they looked pasted on the blue sky. It was the kind of day when Liz normally liked to go exploring with her family, to villages that only the locals seemed to know, or to drive through the Broads, to cruise through the changing landscape, woodland and marshes, herons and windmills and lone houses among the trees; she often wished she could bear to travel by water. But she didn't want to see Alan, nor to go home.
After leaving the pillbox, he'd spent hours trying to persuade her that she'd imagined what she'd seen. She would have been only too glad to believe that herself. She had been on edge, admittedly; after seeing the dead goat under the hedge, it was no wonder she'd been expecting something even worse. Could she really have distinguished so much in the dark? Alan had found nothing, and that was enough to make her agree not to call the police yet again. The trouble was that everything he said only succeeded in making her feel more alarmed – because he seemed to blame Anna.
She couldn't understand him. Did he blame the child for what Liz had seen in the pillbox? For the bloody face she'd seen on the window? For her nervousness? Perhaps he didn't know himself; perhaps he was trying to conceal what he felt. But that didn't make it any less unpleasant. Just now Liz felt she didn't want to know him.
At least he was likely to stay out of her way while she made cakes for tomorrow's afternoon tea. Jane was coming, Rebecca, Gail, if she could get away from the hotel – and Alex, heaven help them all. Every second Wednesday they met in a different house. Rebecca's was untidy and welcoming, no doubt just as it would have been if it were full of the children she could never have; Alex's was spotless as a show house, and as cold – no wonder her photographer husband went away so often, and for so long. Gail's cottage was like an annexe to the hotel, the phone always calling her back to the desk. And Jane's was even untidier than Rebecca's, strewn with bits of food and Georgie's nappies, a house out of control. The last tea had been at Jane's, and Jane had invited Alex, which was the only reason Liz had invited her now.
They were home now. In the sunlight, the hedge and the pillbox looked as innocent as everything else – which meant that nothing seemed innocent at all. Alan was in the long room, replaying his cassette of the Nigerian documentary. At least Anna wouldn't go pestering him, not while the claw was there – when was he going to take it to London? – and no doubt he would leave them alone, as he was busy. 'We're home,' Liz called, and ushered Anna through to the kitchen. 'Would you like to play in the back garden?' she said to the child.
'No, I don't want to. I don't like it.'
'Don't you, darling?' Liz did her best to sound casual. 'Why not?'
'There's a man out there.'
'Oh, I don't think there is.' The garden was as it should be – paths, flower borders, grass – and she could see nobody beyond the hedge. She opened the back door. 'There isn't, look. There's nobody.'
'He's lying down where you can't see him.'
Liz hoped that the child hadn't seen her clench her fists. She stared along the side of the house, then strolled carelessly to a point on the lawn from which she could see through the hedge. She could see nobody, but that was no longer reassuring. 'I can't see anyone,' she said, 'but you can stay in and help me, if you'd rather.'