The jellyfish shifted uneasily over the dead man’s face, as if disturbed by the flashes; then it began to glow with a speckled red and pink luminescence. Finally, as the head lolled to one side, it puckered up into a bell shape, withdrawing its tentacles, and slipped into the water. Within a few seconds it had gone.
Of the face, there was very little left. No cheeks, no flesh of any kind; only the teeth set firmly in the jaw, and the pale, naked skull, and the eyes still loosely located in their sockets.
By now most of the crew had dashed over to join Tim. Someone screamed — the make-up girl, he guessed — and he heard her being led away, sobbing uncontrollably. The cameraman, his face drawn, mumbled something about going for the police. The sound assistant ran off across the sands, heading for the cars.
‘Yes, get the police! That’s the next thing, get the police!’ Jane said, clutching her camera. ‘The tide’ll be coming in, don’t you realise?’
Feeling sick in his stomach, Tim turned on her. ‘Did you have to take pictures? Couldn’t you leave off being a journalist just for once?’
Instead of answering, Jane split away from him to be violently sick on the far side of the boat.
The thug had taken good care not to go anywhere near the body. He stood a few yards off, attempting to light a cigarette. Tim glanced at him for a moment, then shrugged. He no longer cared about the punch. Let it rest, he thought.
It was only then that he noticed the director had come over to stand next to him. She stared at the mauled body with a dazed, intense expression in her eyes.
‘Never finish now,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Hopeless. Not a chance of it working out. Not a chance.’
‘Come on, Jacqui.’ He placed an arm around her shoulders, and looked over her head towards Jane, appealing for help. She was in shock, that was obvious. ‘Come on, we’ll let the police sort this mess out.’
4
It rained next morning, which ruled out any chance of filming. Tim was not sorry. It couldn’t possibly have gone well, not with everyone’s nerves on edge after the experience of seeing that ghastly, mangled body on the sands. Seventeen years old, he’d been, according to Jane who’d been busy ferreting out the details to phone them through to Fleet Street. Unemployed, of course. Here for a holiday, staying with his sister who was married to a local solicitor. Some holiday, poor kid.
Most of the crew had gathered in the residents’ lounge of the Grand Hotel where they sat morosely gazing at the rain through large, wet window panes. Jacqui was not with them. She had come down for breakfast, taken one look at the weather, and then disappeared again, stating briskly that she was going back to her room to write letters. No sign left of the previous afternoon’s hysteria; in fact last evening she’d come up to Tim in the bar and actually apologised. Insisted on buying him a large scotch, too — much to his surprise.
As for Jane, she’d rushed out somewhere first thing — trying to get an interview with the dead boy’s sister, he suspected — and said she might be back later.
The camera assistant broke the silence. ‘No jellyfish could have done that to his face!’ he declared out of the blue. ‘Must have been something else.’
‘A shark,’ someone grunted from behind the South Wales Argus.
‘Eels,’ the camera assistant said. ‘Most likely eels.’
James, his name was; or Jamie; or Jim: he answered cheerfully to any variant. He’d put his finger on the key question, Tim thought. Jellyfish didn’t normally go around eating human flesh, did they? Sting, yes — but eat?
‘Yes, eels would do it.’ James, Jamie or Jim warmed to his theme. ‘I read in a book by Günter Grass how they used a dead horse’s head as bait for catching eels. They tied it to a rope, dropped it in the sea, and when the eels came they fished them out and sold them to local housewives as a delicacy!’
‘Oh, for Chrissake!’ said the voice behind the South Wales Argus. ‘Go and get some more coffee, will you? Make yourself useful.’
‘Anyone not want coffee? No? OK, I’ll go and order it. Coffee all round.’
Tim said nothing. He turned over the page of the paperback he’d picked up, but his eyes no longer took in the words. It was one of those old-style detective stories which are still found in the bookcases of seaside hotel lounges. The body of Sir Angus had been discovered in the window seat; there were suspects, questionings, and no doubt in the end the murderer would be unmasked. Nobody really gave a damn about the dead man, and that was where the book was so wrong. It treated death as no more than a puzzle for some clever dick to solve.
Yet death wasn’t like that.
Death was a seventeen-year-old boy washed up by the sea and then abandoned face downwards in the water, his flesh already destroyed, putrefying, breaking down to be recycled in other life forms, all his individuality gone, everything that went into his make-up as a person in his own right, as someone who once existed. Only seventeen years he’d had, that boy. Tim himself had lived almost twice as long, yet what was he doing with his life?
Bloody Gulliver, that’s what. Bloody Gulliver.
Sue — his wife — was right when she’d said he was getting stale; but then, Sue was always right, which was why it was so intolerable being married to her. These days they couldn’t even meet without quarrelling. Not that they saw much of each other, with her working in rep. down in Totnes and him mostly in London, but often away on location, which might mean anywhere. This time it was Wales; it could just as easily be Scotland, Spain, Italy…
Yet at one time, he remembered, Sue had been the girl he couldn’t live without. They had been so close to each other, it was unbelievable. Perhaps Gulliver had killed that, too. Something had.
He put his book aside and glanced out of the window. It was still wet. Heavy raindrops glistened along the railings in front of the hotel. He had to get out. He couldn’t face staying in that lounge a moment longer, not with those bodies slumped inertly in the chintz-covered armchairs, the air sour with cigarette smoke. He felt stifled.
Stepping over the sprawling legs, he reached the door and emerged into the hall to discover with relief that Jane had come back. She was in the box, busy telephoning, her slim fingers brushing the hair back from her ears as she talked. Finding that body must have been a stroke of luck for her, he mused. She’d been freelance for a few months only, after having been made redundant when her local paper started cutting down on staff; a story like this could put her on the map if she played it right.
Attractive too, he thought, leaning against the reception desk to wait for her. No one else in the hall, nor even in the office at the back; it was the dead season. She turned and saw him; then waved, with a quick smile, before beginning to dial another number.
It was a couple of weeks already since he’d been introduced to her at that noisy party. Impossible to talk then, of course, not with that row going on in the name of music, but she had rung up the following day to ask if she might write a feature about him. On spec, she’d added — though she was sure she could place it with the right magazine. So he’d arranged to meet her in the pub, bought her a drink, then lunch. Now she was here on location with him, although what progress she was making on the feature he’d no idea.
She came out of the phone box, tucking her notebook away in her bag. ‘You look fed up, Tim! I’ve been trying to ring my sister, but she’s not answering.’
‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said. ‘God, there’s nothing worse than the Welsh seaside in the rain.’