Doctor Who_ Rip Tide - Louise Cooper [8]
'You said she was with someone. What did he look like?'
'Umm ... can't remember, really. I don't think I'd know him again; anyway, he was wearing shades, like her. Oh, but I did notice one thing — his hair was as black as hers: She glanced curiously at him. 'Why?'
'Oh, nothing. Just an idle thought. Come on — I'll give you a lift up to the village.'
The girl was no longer on the path when he looked again. But Steve was beginning to wonder if he ought to have another word with the police.
Because, unless its colour changed when it dried out, the hair of the dead man they had pulled from the sea had been very, very black.
NEXT WEEKEND
By Saturday evening the body in the sea had not been identified and no one had
been reported missing. Steve had told the police officer in charge of the inquiry about the black-haired girl's companion, but the girl herself had not been seen again. That in itself could be a cause for suspicion, the officer said, and efforts would be made to find her. In the meantime, they would see what they could do with dental records, and so on, before the inquest took place.
The lifeboat crew were subdued by the incident, and thankful that there were no further call-outs that week. The wind dropped and the rain squalls moved on, though it was still cloudy, and by Friday the sea was calm enough for the fishing boats to go out. Steve finished work at four, and at four-thirty he drove to the beach with his scuba equipment, for an appointment with Charlie Johns.
Charlie was already there when Steve arrived, and so were Tim and Martin, two of the lifeguards, also with full scuba kit. Within half an hour they were launching Fair Go into the surf. Charlie, at the tiller of the outboard engine, looked his usual weathered-old-salt self, but the three younger men looked more like something out of a science fiction movie. Tight neoprene suits, fins and masks – 'Hello, the Martians have landed!' Charlie said as they strapped on their air tanks. 'Houston, we have a problem!'
'You'll have a problem if there are any more bad jokes like that,' Tim warned him, grabbing at the gunwale as a wave broke under the boat's keel and she pitched like a fairground ride. Martin looked ahead at the sea and said, 'That water's going to be cold when we get down. This had
better be worth a dose of pneumonia!'
Martin was a born pessimist, never happy unless he had something to grumble about. The others ignored him, and Charlie steered the boat towards the marker buoy bobbing on the swell.
'Keep her hove-to, and we'll try hauling the line,' Steve told him.
A few yards of rope came in, then the whole line tautened and jammed.
'Still stuck,' said Charlie. 'Thought as much. Going down, then?'
'OK.' Steve sat on the gunwale and adjusted his demand valve and mask. 'All ready? Right — go!'
The three of them dropped backwards into the water, upended and plunged beneath the surface. Familiar noises winked out — breaking waves at the tideline, the slap of water under the Fair Go's keel, voices from the beach like gulls heard in the distance — and abruptly there was only the muffled and more intimate sound of deep water moving, and the bubbling sighs of expelled air as they breathed steadily, regularly through their valves. Steve could feel the strength of the current carrying him sideways as he moved downwards, and he kicked out more firmly, compensating. There had been some tricky tides in the past week or two, and the fishermen said that an underwater sandbank had built up a little way down the coast, which could give rise to some hazardous rip currents. But the three knew the waters, and knew their skill.
His eyes behind the mask scanned the strange, quiet world around him. The sea was normally pretty clear hereabouts, but the recent storms had churned the bed, and detail was harder to make out. The weather had also brought rafts of seaweed in from the deeper regions; a mass of wrack drifted silently past, for a few moments obscuring Steve's view