Lloyd Jones followed them with his eyes, and when the door was shut he seemed suddenly ill-at-ease, as though unhappy at being left alone with me. 'I'll get you something more suitable to wear,' I said and went into the back premises, where I found him a spare sweater of mine and an old pair of working pants.
We made a quick change right there in the chandlery. 'You knew I was a Naval officer.' He was staring at me. 'The moment I arrived here, you knew. Do you have a rank? you asked.' I didn't say anything, an awkward silence growing between us. Then he went on, 'When I arrived here this morning — yesterday morning now — there was a man here, a short man in overalls and sweater. He was coming out of the door there.'
'Carp,' I said. 'His name's Carpenter.'
'An employee of yours? English, isn't he?'
'Yes.'
Where from?'
'A little place on the East Coast. Felixstowe Ferry.'
He nodded. Thought I recognised him.' He was standing quite still, staring at me. 'So you know the whole stupid story?'
'About your being found clinging to a buoy off the Deben entrance? Yes.' And I asked him why he had ducked his head inside his car to avoid speaking to Carp. 'He was one of the men who rescued you, wasn't he? In fact, he says it was he who cut you down.'
'Yes.' There was a long pause, and then he said, 'It sounds silly, you know, but it's not something I'm very proud of Navy officer found half frozen to death and roped to a buoy off a North Sea estuary. The media had a lot of fun at my expense, and seeing the man coming out of your door — it was a hell of a shock. I just didn't want to be reminded of the episode.'
Soo's voice called to ask if we were ready. 'Well, take Benjie out for a pee, will you, and Petra says to remind you about torches.'
I slipped a sweater over my head. 'I see your point,' I told him, 'but it's no excuse for not even saying hullo. He was very hurt.'
He shrugged. 'I'm sorry.'
The little dog had been shut in the store where he had a box to sleep in when we were out, and after I had taken him down the road to do his stuff, I went into the store with him and searched out the spare torches I kept with our boat gear. By the time I had found them, and some spare batteries, Soo and the other two were waiting for me out on the road. 'You take Petra,' she said as I locked the door. 'I'll show Gareth the way. We'll meet you on the track down into the cove. Okay?' And she took hold of Lloyd Jones's arm, steering him across to his Fiat, as though afraid I might object.
'Well, she seems quite happy about it, now we're all going,' Petra said as we got into the car. 'But you'd better tell Gareth to stay with her while we're in the cave. It's one of those entrances that are halfway up the side of the ravine and the last part is a bit of a climb.'
It was just past twelve-thirty by the dashboard clock as I took the old Jag through San Clemente and out on the four-kilometre straight to the Binicalaf turn-off, the moon so bright we could see the talayot to the left of the road very clearly, a huge cairn of interlocking stone blocks. Shortly after that I turned left, past the Biniadris development and another talayot, Petra talking all the time about the cave drawings she had seen when studying in France. The one we were going to see now reminded her of Font-de-Gaume in the Dordogne, the entrance to it similarly placed, halfway up a cliff.
'When they'd opened up Font-de-Gaume they found a series of chambers with pictures of animals on the walls, chiefly reindeer and mammoth. And there was another cave, Rouffignac, much longer, and older I think. The drawings there were of rhinoceros and bison as well as mammoths, and the floor was pock-marked with the pits of hibernating bears, like small craters.' She laughed at the recollection, and then, suddenly urgent again: 'Most of those drawings were from way back in time, Mike, at least 17,000 years ago, and if the little bit of a drawing I'm going to show you is really that of a woolly rhinoceros, then it'll be at least as old as those Dordogne paintings.'
I remember the way she said that, the intensity, the excitement in her voice. She really did believe she had found something important. And then we were at the start of the track that wound down the cliff-edged ravine to the first cove.
'You turn left in about a hundred yards,' Petra said. 'After that we walk.'
I stopped at the turn-off, waiting for the others, and after that we were on sand and gravel — not a road, nor even a track, just a piece of cliff-top country, a sort of maquis. Judging by the litter and the worn patches of thyme people came here to picnic, fornicate, or simply park their cars and sleep in the sun. It was tired, worn-looking country, but as I pushed on, driving carefully round the worst of the potholes, I realised that we had moved on to some sort of a track. A sharp turning to the right, a cave entrance marked by a sprinkling of tattered rags, then we were dropping down very steeply. 'You'll be able to park at the bottom,' Petra assured me. There's just room to turn there. Do you know this place?'
'Once or twice I've stopped at the top,' I said. 'But only for a bite to eat or to relieve myself before going down to the cove.'
She nodded. 'If you'd got out and walked around you'd have found quite a few cave entrances. There's one that looks almost like a house. It's got a painted front door, a couple of windows, a stove pipe stuck out of the side and a vine trained over an arbour of wooden posts. I'm told the man it belongs to visits it regularly right through the winter.'
We reached the bottom, the narrow gravel track petering out into what looked like a watercourse. There was only just room to turn the two cars and park them with their back ends in the shrubbery. I thought we had reached the bottom of the ravine then, but Petra said no, we still had a hundred yards or so to go, then there was a soft patch, almost a stretch of bog to cross before climbing up to the cave entrance. 'It will take us about ten minutes.'
By then we were out of the cars, all four of us standing in a patch of moonlight. The bushes were higher here, their shadows very black, and no sign of the cliffs that edged the ravine. 'How did you find it?' Soo asked her.
'I don't know really — some sixth sense, I think. The first time I came to Cales Coves was about six months ago. I've always been fascinated by natural caves. Most of them are in limestone and water-worn like these. And after I had explored several of them, I made enquiries and managed to locate a fisherman who uses a cave down by the water, just by the rock ledge that leads round into the other cove. He keeps his nets and gear there and it was he who told me there were several caves above here on the far side of the ravine. He thought it probable that very few people knew about them. The cave openings are mostly hidden by vegetation. At any rate, he hadn't heard of anybody visiting them, and though he thought I was mad, he very kindly came with me that first time. There are about half a dozen of them up there at the base of the cliffs. I came here several times after that, and then yesterday I found somebody had been digging in one of them. That's where the wall drawing is.' She started to move off. 'Come on. I'll lead the way.'
But Soo wasn't at all happy at being left on her own, and it was only when Lloyd Jones agreed to stay with her that she accepted the situation. I hesitated, suddenly uneasy at leaving her there. But Petra had already bounded off into the bushes. 'I'll tell you about it on the way home,' I said and followed her along what seemed to be the ghost of a path. The ground became damper, the light of my torch showing the imprint of soft-soled shoes.