Mark Mills - Amagansett

The fish was making a play for freedom, running at the shore. She hadn’t slipped the hook, there was still life in the line, he could feel the tremor in it. He reeled in as fast as he could, just fast enough as the fish broke to the westward. Any more slack and the ploy would have worked. But he had her now, she was tiring, resigned to the inevitable. No. She broke again, running eastward this time, stripping twenty yards of line from the reel. A fighter.

Experienced.

‘Excuse me.’

Not the first time she’s felt the sharp taste of steel in her mouth. He felt bad that it wasn’t going to work this time, that her bag of tricks wouldn’t save her.

‘Excuse me.’

Did the fish have as strong a sense of who he was, connected as they were by the line?

‘Excuse me.’ The indignation of the delivery struck home this time. He couldn’t afford to turn away, but answered nevertheless.

‘Yes?’

‘I’ve cut myself. I’m bleeding.’

He was drawing the fish into the surf now. It leaped briefly and he smiled. ‘Ha!’

‘Is that all you can say? Ha!?’

‘Give me a minute.’

‘A minute?’

‘Less.’

He hauled the fish up on to the sand beyond the wash, pinned it there then struck it behind the head with the handle of his knife. Hard. Only then did he turn.

‘Let’s take a look,’ he said.

Beneath the blood he could see that the cut was long but not deep, running from the ball to the heel of her foot. It would mend itself without assistance, no need for stitches.

The offending spear of metal was poking from the packed sand just nearby.

‘Flotsam,’ said Conrad.

‘Oh really? Not jetsam?’

‘Wreckage from a boat, probably a merchant ship. We still get a lot of stuff cast up. From the war, you know, the U-boats.’

‘That’s very interesting. And what about my foot?’

Conrad prized the object from the sand. It was a small lump of wood pierced by a jagged shard of metal—shrapnel embedded there by some mighty explosion, a fossilized moment of devastation.

‘You’ll live,’ he said.

She used him as support until they reached the steepest part of the frontal dune, where she grew too weak to hop further. Conrad abandoned the rod by a clump of beach grass and took her up in his arms.

She carried the fish.

‘You live here?’

‘Yes.’

‘By yourself?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Don’t you get lonely?’

‘No.’

She looked around the room. ‘I didn’t know there was a place here.’

‘Not many people do. You can’t see it from the beach.’

‘Are those your books?’

‘No.’

‘You stole them?’

‘They’re my stepmother’s. She was a teacher.’

‘Was? She’s dead?’

‘Moved away. California.’

Her eyes scanned the shelves. ‘Have you read them?’

‘No.’ He opened the tin and removed a bottle of iodine. ‘This is going to sting.’

He was right. It did. He held her ankle tightly as he dabbed at the wound, carefully removing the sand, dropping the bloodied swabs into a bowl.

‘You have long toes.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘But then you’re tall.’

‘Do you mind not talking about my feet? I don’t think I’ve ever discussed my feet with anyone, and I can’t see that I should start now.’

‘Not another word.’

He placed a sterile pad over the cut and began binding it in place with gauze.

‘I hate them,’ she said.

‘Huh?’

‘My feet. They’re too big.’

‘You think?’

‘How many women you know take a size nine?’

‘Not a whole load.’

‘Exactly.’

‘They don’t look big, maybe because they’re narrow. Any wider and they could look big.’

‘You’re doing it again.’

‘I’m sorry.’

He secured the gauze with a safety pin.

‘Where are your shoes?’

‘At home.’

‘Where’s home?’

‘East Hampton.’

‘I’ll run you back.’

‘Could I possibly have a drink of water? You do have water, don’t you?’

‘Sure.’

He poured a glass from the pitcher on the table and handed it to her.

‘You seemed very intent on catching that fish.’

The fish lay on the table, slick and metallic, its armored rainbow sides speckled with black dots, its fins and tail yellow, almost as if they belonged to another species altogether.

‘It’s a special fish—a weakfish.’

‘Really? It looked like it was putting up quite a fight.’

He smiled politely at her joke.

‘What makes it so special?’ she asked.

‘It shouldn’t be here yet, not till May. But then everything’s early this year, the shad bushes, dogwoods, birchwood violets, even the oaks. Now the fish.’

For the past few days he had seen gannets circling off the ocean beach, gulls doing the same in the bay: unseasonable indicators that the fish had already started their annual run up the coast and would soon be hitting the beach.

‘What will you do with it?’

‘Fry it in beer batter.’

‘Is it good?’

‘You’ve never had weakfish?’

‘Not to my knowledge.’

‘You should try it some time.’

‘I’ll be sure to,’ she said a little curtly.

He took a filleting knife from the drawer in the table and began sharpening the blade on a stone. ‘You can share it with me if you like.’

‘I wouldn’t want to put you to any more trouble.’

There was a hint of annoyance in her voice that the offer hadn’t been immediately forthcoming.

‘As you like,’ he said, enjoying the game. ‘I have to do this now or the flesh will spoil.’

He sliced open the fish’s belly and pulled out the guts. He cut down to the backbone just behind the head, turned the blade and worked it towards the tail. The first fillet came free. Flipping the fish over, he repeated the process, aware that she was watching him with a look that hovered somewhere between intrigue and revulsion.

‘Beer batter, you say?’

‘Deep-fried cubes. We call them frigates.’

‘And they’re good?’

‘The best.’

‘That’s quite a claim.’

‘I tell you what,’ he said, turning to look her in the eye, ‘if you don’t agree, you’re allowed to say so.’

‘Deal.’

He sliced the skin from the fillets.

‘If I’m going to stay for supper, shouldn’t I know your name?’

‘Conrad.’

‘Lillian,’ she said. ‘Lillian Wallace.’

Eleven

The Model A bumped along the road to the beach landing, its chassis groaning, the beam from the headlight dancing up ahead.

Conrad pulled the vehicle to a halt. He knew what to expect as he rounded the bend: the sandy lot, fringed with trees and bushes, rising up to the shallow breach in the dune, the ocean out of sight beyond. But he needed to try and see it with fresh eyes. The eyes of a man looking to dispose of a body.

She hadn’t been put in the ocean in front of the Wallaces’ house, of that he was certain. The strength of the longshore set at the time she was supposed to have drowned would have carried her further eastward overnight, beyond the spot where they’d pulled her from the water the next morning. He knew from experience that the ocean could do strange things with a drowned body, taking it on an improbable journey that seemed to defy all natural laws. But that was rare.

It was some distance from the house to the beach, down the bluff and across the dunes, an exposed walk, moonlit on the night in question. Too far to carry a dead weight, and too risky. That was probably the reasoning. Maybe there had been kids on the beach. It was a popular stretch for clambakes at this time of year, the deep sand at the base of the frontal dune pockmarked with the blackened remnants of the nocturnal feasts.

Whatever, he was fairly sure she had been taken elsewhere in a car and then dumped in the ocean. Fortunately, there were a limited number of spots nearby where this might have happened.

Two Mile Hollow landing seemed unlikely. Although closest to the Wallaces’ house, it became a rendezvous for lovers once night fell, a place of furtive exchanges and steamed-up car windows. Likewise, he had dismissed Egypt landing. Right next to the Maidstone Club, there would have been too many other cars coming and going, and there was the added risk that club members often strolled down on to the beach at night.

The small landing at Wiborg’s Beach, on the other hand, a little further along, would have been ideal—remote, squeezed in beside the wasteland of the club’s west course. The village tryworks for rendering whale oil had once stood there, and since much of the big house just back from the dunes had been torn down, local people had started using the track again to gain access to the beach.

Conrad wrenched the Model A into gear and pulled away. He knew that what he was doing served no concrete purpose, nothing could possibly come of anything he found, it was simply that he needed to know: for himself, and for Lillian.

Rounding the bend, the small landing opened up in front of him. He found himself drawn to the gloom beneath the boughs of an oak, the natural spot to park up if you had something to hide. He turned the engine off, reached for the flashlight on the seat beside him and got out.

What would he have done next? Strolled up on to the beach, probably, to check the coast was clear. Returning to the car, he would then have shouldered the body and hurried as best he could towards the breach in the dune. No. This would leave him vulnerable for—what?—thirty or forty seconds, prey to the headlights of an approaching vehicle. Far better to cut through the undergrowth on the right. It offered perfect cover. If he happened to be surprised he could easily drop out of sight and hide there, undetected, until the danger had passed.

Conrad pushed his way through the hawthorn and dogwood, the thin, poor soil underfoot giving way to sand as he neared the back of the dune. He swept the rise with the beam of the flashlight, but the dense carpet of beach grass concealed any tracks there might have been leading up the incline.

The crest of the dune, however, was bald of any vegetation, and he found what he was looking for almost immediately; so quickly, in fact, that at first he doubted what he was seeing.

There was a shallow but distinct patch of flattened sand where the killer had laid her on the ground after the climb—carefully, no doubt, so as not to mark the body. Indistinct footprints disturbed the area around.

If this had been the movies he would have discovered a cigarette butt nearby—some rare Turkish brand that would identify the culprit. But all Conrad could see were two tracks in the crusty, wind-packed sand leading down the face of the dune on to the beach.

The scene presented itself to him: the killer hooking his arms beneath hers and hauling her backwards down the dune, her heels furrowing the sand in neat, straight lines.

The tracks led out across the beach a short distance before dissolving in the swathe of disturbed sand where others had strolled in the intervening days.

He carried on past to the water’s edge.

The waves were breaking low and clean to the east, their curling crests catching the light of the moon—strips of silver traveling gently along the shore.

So this was it, the place. He must have drenched himself in the process, dragging her out there beyond the break.

He had thought in terms of just one killer up until now, finding it easier to focus his confusion, his hatred, on an individual rather than a cast of conspirators. It was now clear he’d been right to do so. The lone set of footprints flanking the furrows confirmed it.