Doctor Who_ Rip Tide - Louise Cooper [7]
Steve paused and looked at her. He had not seen her since their argument over the weekend, and he wasn't overly pleased to see her now. 'Someone's dead,' he said curtly. 'We've got to go and pick up whatever the rocks haven't battered and the crabs haven't eaten.'
Nina's expression changed. 'Oh ... I didn't realise.'
'No. Well, you wouldn't, would you? I'd go home, if I were you. If there's anything to see later, it won't be a barrel of laughs.'
He left her standing there and walked on.
The operation took an hour, and was as unpleasant as the lifeboat crew had feared. It was no false alarm; they found the body rising and falling on the swell among a cluster of rocks, face down in the water and with arms and legs trailing like strands of uprooted wrack.
Retrieving the corpse from a sea like a roller-coaster and with rocks too close for comfort took a heavy toll on the crew's nerve. One of them, for all his experience, was sick when he saw the bloated face, and when the worst was over and the sea's victim zipped away and out of sight in the bag, they turned the boat around and headed back to the beach with sombre faces and hearts.
A police car and an ambulance were waiting on the slipway, and so were a good number of curious spectators. The crew and the ambulance paramedics evaded their questions, and the lifeboat station press officer – who, fortunately, had been at home when the call came – told everyone that a statement would be made later, but for now it would be most helpful if they could stand well clear and let the teams do their work. Steve saw Nina among the gathering; her face looked small and pinched, and despite his earlier annoyance he wanted to say something reassuring to her. Before he could, Paul called him in to the boathouse.
'You OK, mate?' he asked.
Steve nodded. 'I'll do.'
'Yeah ... You said over the radio that from what you could make out it's probably a male, and young. Any clue who he might be?'
'No.' Steve grimaced. 'I shouldn't think his own mother would recognise him, the state he's in. He must have been in the sea a pretty long time.'
'The police want a word with all of you when you've changed. Just the routine stuff.'
'Right.' Steve started to unzip his drysuit, then stopped and shut his eyes briefly, pinching the bridge of his nose. Paul clapped him on the back.
'I'll go and put the kettle on,' he said.
The ambulance drove away, the crew gave their report to the police, and in what seemed a pitifully short time the whole thing was over, at least for the present. Identification and enquiries were still to come, of course, but now there was nothing more to do except hose down and refuel the lifeboat, and go home.
Nina came up to Steve as he emerged from the boathouse with a cup of tea inside him and easing the queasiness in his stomach. She looked up at him, her eyes huge and dark, and said, 'I'm sorry I've been a rat bag.'
'Doesn't matter.' He put an arm round her shoulders and she hugged him.
'Was it very awful?' she asked.
He shrugged. 'Could have been worse.'
'Poor guy. I wonder who he is? A visitor, maybe, and he didn't listen to the high wind warnings. Do you think he fell off the cliff?'
Steve, though, wasn't listening. Instead he was staring over her head and past her, to where a footpath led away from the road and followed the line of the cliffs. A solitary figure was standing there, and though the distance was too great for him to be absolutely sure, Steve thought he recognised the black-haired girl who had spoken to him at the weekend. He had not seen her since, and had assumed that she had finished her holiday and gone home. Clearly she hadn't. But it struck him as odd that she should turn up now ... and odder that she should stay over there on her own, rather than coming down to see what was going on.
'Nina,' he said, 'you know that girl I was talking to the other day?'
'What?' Nina was thrown by the change of subject, then remembered. 'Oh, yes. The one I was rude about.' Her eyebrows