Even as the possibilities crossed his mind, a muffled exclamation from behind him made him start around. Julia had come down off her perch to join him, and was staring at the corpse with an expression of mingled pity and horror. His own squeamishness momentarily forgotten, Peregrine went to take her in his arms, at the same time trying to block her view with his own body.
"Julia, I'm sorry," he said lamely. "I didn't mean for you to see this. Let me take you back to the car."
He made a gentle attempt to steer her away, but somewhat to his surprise, she resisted his efforts. Her gaze partly averted, she murmured, "Poor soul! I wonder if he's the man who went missing off the Irish coast at the weekend."
Her observation put Peregrine in mind of a news bulletin he had picked up in the car on his way to the church on their wedding day. Dimly he recalled something having been said about a vessel from the Irish Department of the Marine being found adrift off Malin Head, with a dead man aboard.
He glanced uneasily down at Julia. She was looking rather white about the lips, but he saw with some relief that her face was otherwise composed. After a moment's pause, she drew herself up and asked, "Shouldn't we be thinking about telephoning an ambulance or something?"
"Not an ambulance," Peregrine said with a shake of his head. "We'll want the police back in Campbeltown. They should have the facilities to deal with this. How would you feel about driving Algy all on your own?"
Julia registered a blink. "More confident than I would have felt a week ago. Why?"
"I want you to go find a phone box and report what we've found," Peregrine said. "Southend is the nearest place where you'd be likely to locate one. Failing that, however, you may find yourself obliged to drive back to Campbeltown. I realize the road's none too good. Do you think you're up to it?"
"I suppose I'd better be, hadn't I?" Julia said with a small grimace. "What will you be doing in the meantime?"
"Keeping an eye on the body," Peregrine said. "I don't want to handle it, if I can help it, because if this turns out to be more than a simple case of death by misadventure, the procurator fiscal won't thank me for doing anything that might compromise the evidence. At the same time, the tide is going to be turning soon, and we don't want our unfortunate friend to be carried back out to sea again before the police can retrieve him."
"Certainly not if we're going to call them out on a round trip drive of thirty miles," Julia agreed with feeling. She glanced over at the body on the shore and hurriedly looked away again with a shiver. "Thanks for giving me the easy job."
"Don't mention it," Peregrine said wryly. Gathering his bride into his arms, he added, "I really am sorry about this. I hope it hasn't ruined your honeymoon."
Julia nestled into his embrace and smiled. "Darling, it's our honeymoon - and do you really think anything could do that?"
This declaration earned her a lingering kiss. Resisting an impulse to repeat it, Peregrine fished in his trouser pocket for the car keys.
"Here you are," he told her as he handed them over. "Take as much time as you have to, for your own safety. I'm certainly not planning to go anywhere else between now and when you get back - and neither is he."
He followed her with his eyes as she made her way up through the rocks toward the road, where the Alvis stood waiting. Before climbing into the driver's seat, she vouchsafed him a wave and a kiss blown from her hand. He heard the smooth growl of a well-tuned engine as she turned the key in the ignition. A moment later, the Alvis swung around in a compact U-turn and headed back up the road in the direction of Campbeltown.
Left alone, Peregrine spent the next few minutes pacing uneasily up and down at the water's edge. He found himself wondering if he would ever achieve the degree of fortitude he had seen Adam and McLeod display when confronted with a corpse. As he reflected back over the experience he had gained in their company as a forensic artist, it occurred to him that it might not be a bad idea on this occasion to take some photographs for the record. Satisfied that the body on the shore was in no immediate danger of floating away, he went to retrieve his camera from amongst the rest of his artist's paraphernalia.
He removed the lens cap from his Pentax as he returned to the water's edge, casually framing up a cover-shot as he walked. But when he paused to take it, adjusting the zoom lens, he had trouble getting it to focus.
"That's odd."
He shook his head, blinked, and tried again. His efforts brought no improvement to the imaging. A quick inspection of his glasses showed nothing to account for the fuzziness. Clucking his tongue impatiently, he unscrewed the lens and held it to the light from both directions - perfectly clean - then replaced it and looked again. The results were still no better. Though his vision by itself seemed clear enough, the picture seen through the lens remained curiously blurred.
Perplexed, Peregrine went ahead and shot several different angles of the body, focused as best he could, then sat back on his heels and scowled as he contemplated this peculiar development. The absence of anything like a logical explanation aroused hitherto dormant suspicions, and made him begin to wonder what would happen if he were to try his luck with a sketch.
He decided to test his perceptions before going to the bother of fetching his sketchbook. For Peregrine, the act of drawing was the means by which he could both activate and direct his own distinctive powers of psychic perception. Laying the camera on a nest of sea grass behind him, he settled gingerly on a rock beside the body and composed himself, momentarily closing his eyes. Calling now upon the training given him by Adam, he drew several deep, measured breaths. The centrifugal whirl of his thoughts and emotions fell away, leaving him centered in an island of calm. Grounded in that calm, he opened his eyes again, simultaneously willing himself to See.
For a moment, he could envision nothing but the piebald shape of the corpse itself. As he continued to watch, however, another, hazier image began to form, hovering over the body like a ghost. Insubstantial as mist, it assumed a vaguely human shape. But as soon as Peregrine attempted to bring that shape into sharper focus, it abruptly dissolved.
With a hard-won patience born of self-discipline, he set himself to try again. Before he could reestablish any degree of perception, however, a sudden surge in the tide lifted the dead man's body from its grounding on the beach. The wave's backwash started to pull the corpse with it, tumbling it back in the direction of the open sea.
Peregrine roused himself with a jerk and made a hasty lunge to recapture it. A splash of cold brine left him wet to the knees, but he managed to get a hand around one orange-clad wrist. While he was struggling to maintain his grip, his eyes lighted for the first time on an irregular three-cornered tear in the back of the man's wet suit.
A wound?
His curiosity piqued, Peregrine towed the body back to its resting place at the waterline, then bent down for a closer look. He could see no immediate evidence of any wound beneath the tear, but he refrained from poking and prodding. Even if his work with McLeod had not taught him a healthy respect for proper forensic procedure, he was strongly disinclined to have anything more to do with the dead man's remains than he absolutely had to". He took the minimal measures necessary to get the body beached, retrieved the camera and put it away, then sat back on a nearby rock to guard the body and await reinforcements.
A full hour passed before the distinctive purr of a familiar engine brought him to his feet. When the Alvis swung into view, Peregrine was relieved to see that it was accompanied by a white Range Rover bearing the fluorescent yellow side stripe and door insignia of the Strathclyde Police.