CHAPTER 4
Pat knew that Instagram likes mattered to some people.
Perhaps now more than ever. After the pandemic, when isolation had shrunk people’s lives to screens and silence, the need to be noticed had sharpened into something urgent.
What struck her most wasn’t the posing itself, but the uniformity of it.
The same angles, the same colours, the same places, repeated endlessly.
A kind of aesthetic convergence that suggested not vanity but anxiety.
Not Look at me, but Do I belong here too?
The impulse seemed less about originality and more about reassurance.
Proof that they were part of something, even if it was just the backdrop.
She understood that in uncertain times, predictability could feel like control.
And sometimes following the crowd wasn’t thoughtlessness at all.
It was a way of coping. A gesture of hope.
A way of saying, quietly, I exist. I was here. Just like everyone else.
She strode along the tarmacked track, over the cattle grid, straight to the lay-by at the bottom of the hill, where she stopped, sighed, and used her litter picker to grab a Mars bar wrapper and drop it into the black bin bag she always kept folded in her pocket.
Every day. Every bloody day. Someone pulled in, unwrapped a Mars bar, ate it, and tossed the evidence out of the window before driving off.
Not once considering the possibility of the nearby bin.
Not wondering what became of the wrapper.
Not even curious. What sort of person did that?
A tosser. That was her professional opinion.
This particular tosser, she was pretty sure, ate a Mars bar for breakfast on his way to work every morning and considered that the beginning and end of his responsibilities.
The wrapper vanished, the world reset and he drove on.
He must think that the earth had a self-cleaning surface.
She had resolved more than once to find out who he was.
Camp out overnight if necessary. She’d bring a flask and a head torch.
This was a long game now. And yes, she was convinced it was a man.
Of course it was. Tossing was, she guessed, male behaviour.
Women were usually brought up to be more accountable.
She turned to begin her march up the hill, keeping one eye out for dogs devoid of leads.
Fortunately, the inclement weather and the early hour meant that there were no other walkers on the Downs.
The field was empty, save for sheep. Pat inhaled deeply, filling her lungs, feeling her shoulders retreat from her ears and ignoring the occasional twinge from her hip.
She liked it when the place was deserted.
Walking over the hill and coming down the other side, she noticed a large rectangular sign hammered into the fence post next to the old red-roofed barn.
That was new, she thought, wandering over.
And then her heart stopped. Her mouth opened slowly.
Her body went as stiff as the board she was staring at.
What on earth? Braddon Designs it didn’t open until 9 a.m., and they had yet to put out the board instructing tourists how to stay safe on their visit.
The new metal barriers were there, covered in their red signs advising caution, the risk of cliff falls and that people should stay five metres away from the base of the cliff.
As if the erosion weren’t self-evident enough, thought Pat, glancing to the left at a row of Georgian cottages.
Exhibit A: one duck-egg-blue-painted house, half of which had already tumbled down the cliff, the other half being propped up by a flying buttress.
She couldn’t remember exactly when they’d installed the metal barriers.
They were introduced after a tourist had fallen off the cliff to her death.
Her boyfriend, his face to his phone trying to photograph her, hadn’t noticed how near the edge she was.
She took a step, lost her footing and fell over backwards.
So now there were barriers just around the top of the stairs.
‘Yoo-hoo!’
Pat turned around to see Prichard waving heartily as he strode towards her. Dressed in a long dark coat and another lengthy home-knit scarf, this time in multiple stripes, he was also wearing a Russian fur hat with ear flaps that stuck out at right angles like the handles on a saucepan.
‘Am I late?’ he queried.
‘I’m early.’
‘Of course you are!’ he exclaimed, going in for a kiss on the cheek.
‘Bon jonno, bon jonno,’ he said, pecking each side of her face.
‘Oh, one second.’ He pulled out a small book from his coat pocket and, opening it, stuck his finger on a page and pronounced, ‘Jal jasseo.’ Pat stared at him.
‘Korean,’ he announced. ‘I’m learning it, teaching myself obviously.
That means “good morning”, or, more precisely, “Did you sleep well?” Isn’t that sweet? That’s how they greet each other.’
‘Endearing,’ agreed Pat, sounding a little distracted.
‘Are you all right?’ Prichard arched his eyebrows at her.
‘No. I’ve just seen the wretched Dorna Braddon’s development sign next to the red barn.’
‘The bat barn?’ Prichard threw his multicoloured scarf over his shoulder with astonishment. ‘How is that possible? Isn’t it illegal to build with bats in situ?’
‘Precisely. That woman is something else.’
‘Never trust anyone with a hennaed pixie cut,’ declared Prichard. ‘And a ring on her index finger.’
‘I’m beginning to come round to your way of analysing people.’ Pat sighed and looked up and down the coastal path. ‘Shall we?’
‘I’ve come prepared.’ Prichard smiled enthusiastically and pulled a large magnifying glass out of his other pocket, accompanying it with his loud staccato laugh.
‘Excellent.’ Pat smiled. ‘If I go down to the beach for a swim, I can have a look around on the shoreline for any clues the police might have missed above the high-tide line. And you should see if you can find anything up here.’
‘Joh-ayo, which means “okey-dokey” in Korean.’ Prichard paused. ‘What exactly am I looking for?’
‘Anything odd, I suppose,’ answered Pat. ‘Anything out of place. Henry was found right below these cliffs, so whatever happened would probably have happened right here. This is the crime scene.’
‘Got it.’ Prichard nodded vigorously.
‘Are you sure you won’t come for a swim?’ asked Pat with a knowing smile.
‘The only water I ever get into is bathwater, as you’re well aware, Patricia Phillips.’
‘I’m sure I’ll tempt you one day.’
‘When hell freezes over, and looking at that sea, it seems to be happening already, hahaha.’
Pat left Prichard on the clifftop and walked down the wooden steps to the beach.
The sea looked cold as it swirled below.
A milky-grey shot with patches of the palest blue.
The water was never the same colour, which was one of the reasons she loved it so much.
Standing on one of the last few steps down to the shore, she could hear the waves as they hissed and sighed over the pebbles, as if the sea was breathing.
She looked up and down the empty beach. There was no one about.
She must have just missed the sweaty, puffing joggers from the Westlinke Running Club who’d found Henry’s body.
There was no yellow tape, no cordoned-off area where he’d lain.
Nothing. It was as if it had never happened.
She looked up to the top of the cliffs over three hundred feet above.
That was a long drop. A heavy fall. How terrified he must have been. The thought made her shiver.
She took off her dryrobe and left it in a discarded heap on the beach, then swapped her woolly socks for neoprene ones and strode across the pebbles, hardly limping at all, into the sea.
This was always the worst bit, where her mind played tricks with her, suggesting it would be better not to bother, to give it a miss, that the water looked far too cold, why didn’t she back out now and save herself the misery?
Some cold-water swimmers used wetsuits, but Pat couldn’t be bothered with the faff, the snapping-on and snapping-off, the struggle, the zip, carrying the sodding sodden thing back over the hill.
It was easier to brave the full force of the cold, or not bother at all.