Walkers (9 page)

‘Well,’ frowned Henry, ‘it struck me
that the eels were unusually aggressive. I mean, although that eel that
attacked your officer was only trying to defend itself, it was particularly
fierce, and it was unusual that when its head was cut off, instead of its jaw
muscles
relaxing,
as they would have
done under normal circumstances, they actually
tightened.
So here we have a creature that attacks, and goes on
attacking, even after it has been mortally injured. You don’t find that very
often in nature – that kind of, well, ferocity.’

‘Go on,’ said Salvador, watching him
with steady dark-brown eyes.

‘If you try to work out what must
have happened to the dead girl,’ said Henry, ‘you end up with pretty much the
same pattern of blind aggression.’

‘What do you mean?’ Salvador asked
him.

‘Well – she couldn’t have been in
the water all that long, could she? She wasn’t swollen up, or anything like
that. I’m not an expert, by any means, but I can remember the body of a
fisherman they dragged out of the harbour at San Diego two or three years ago,
and he was bloated up like a blimp. Maybe your medical examiner will prove me
wrong, but I wouldn’t have thought she was floating around for more than a few
hours.’

Salvador said, ‘You’re right. Mr
Belli’s first opinion was that she hadn’t been immersed for longer than two or
three hours, possibly less.’

‘Fine – then that bears my theory
out. It says in this book on eels that they have been known to devour the flesh
of drowned bodies, when those bodies are trapped on the seabed, and well
decayed. But apart from an occasional attack by moray eels, they hardly ever go
for living people who are swimming around in the water, or even for bodies that
are floating on the surface. What these eels did to that girl was completely
outside the normal feeding pattern of marine teleosts. They attacked her either
when she was alive, or when she was freshly dead and still floating around. It
wasn’t as if her body was down on the sea-bed for a while, where the eels could
have gotten at her, and then bobbed up and floated into shore later.’

The last of the water dribbled
through the filter into the coffee jug. Henry found two clean blue pottery
mugs, and filled them up to the brim. Then he led the way back into the
living-room, and sat down on the couch. Salvador sat facing him, clasping his
mug in both hands.

‘I have to say that I subscribe to
the idea that she didn’t float into shore, but was dragged,’ Salvador said.
‘You remember what Mr Belli pointed out – that her body was lying higher on the
beach than the rest of the flotsam?’

Henry thought about that. ‘There
were no footprints, though, were there?’ he said. ‘If somebody had dragged her
up beyond the tideline, there would have been footprints. But the sand was
completely smooth.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said Salvador.’ But the
sea
did
reach up that far, at the
very turn of the tide, and so any footsteps would have been washed away. I
personally believe that she was dragged, footsteps or not, because the water
that far up the slope of the beach would have been far too shallow for her body
to float in.’

Henry sipped a little coffee, then
stood up and went over to the drinks cabinet, and took out the bottle of vodka
again. He poured a large dose into his mug, without offering any to Salvador.
Salvador said nothing. He was used to drunks, both civilian and police. Who was
he to criticise those people who couldn’t manage to get through the day without
being half blinded?

Henry said, ‘What does that leave
you with? A naked girl, her stomach eaten by eels, lying in a place where
somebody must have dragged her?’

‘That’s right,’ said Salvador. ‘And
a million questions, such as who dragged her, if anybody? Her murderer, if she
was murdered, or a would-be rescuer, who then decided she was beyond saving,
and left her where she was? Also, was she killed or knocked unconscious or
drugged perhaps before she went into the water – Mr Belli will be able to tell
us this. What’s more, did the eels attack her before or after she was dead?
Were the eels themselves responsible for her death, or were they simply
predators on a body that had already expired? Then, we still don’t know who she
is, or where she came from, or why nobody has reported her missing.’

Henry was silent for a very long
time. He finished his coffee in three large gulps although it was still
scalding hot.’ Best cure for a hangover I know,’ he said, at length.

Salvador said, ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t
trouble you with this matter. Perhaps it would be better if I went.’

‘I don’t have any answers, of any
kind,’ said Henry. ‘My questions are the same as yours.’ He paused for a
moment, and then he said, ‘What are you going to do if you can’t find out any
more?’

‘All cases of homicide have some
kind of handle on them, somewhere,’ said Salvador. ‘It is simply a question of
groping for it, and recognising it when you have found it.’

Henry nodded. Then he looked away,
and stared out of the window at the beach and the ceaselessly grumbling ocean.

‘I must go,’ said Salvador. ‘But it
has been interesting to talk to you. I was fairly sure that, as an educated
man, you would apply your mind to what had happened. I would very much
appreciate it if you would continue to think this tragedy through, and call me
if you happen to think of anything. Every problem is more susceptible to
solution by two minds, rather than one.’

‘I’m afraid I’m a philosopher not a
detective,’ said Henry.

‘This tragedy may have something to
do with philosophy,’ Salvador replied. ‘To a greater or lesser extent, most
man-made tragedies do. At least the ones which I have to deal with.’

‘What kind of detective talks like
that?’ Henry asked him, with a sharp look in his eyes.

Salvador buttoned up his coat, and
smiled. ‘The kind of detective who is tired enough to search not just for
causes but for reasons.’

‘Well,’ said Henry, ‘I’m not sure
that there
are
any reasons. You know
what Kierkegaard said, that there are only two ways: one is to suffer, and the
other is to become a professor of the fact that somebody else has suffered.
Believe me, be a professor.’

Salvador Ortega left. Henry stood by
the window, holding the slats of the Venetian blind apart, and watched him
drive away in his bright green Datsun sports car. He wasn’t sure why, but the
Mexican detective had disturbed him deeply. Perhaps it was because he had been
unable to do what Henry expected the police to do – and that was to come up
with a rational explanation for a very irrational event. He expected his police
to be factual to the point of pig-headedness. He wanted them to insist that
everything was normal. Violent, yes. Frightening, yes. But
normal.

Whatever Salvador had said about
every homicide having a handle, it was obvious to Henry that he didn’t have
very much faith in being able to find one, not in this case. There was too much
weirdness, too little evidence. And then there were the eels.

He went back to the book. He poured
himself a large vodka, and leafed through the book again. Page after page of
staring, shining eels. Then he came across a reference to hagfish, any of the
marine fishes of the family Myxinidae, order Cyclostamata, class Agnatha.
Hagfish
look
like eels, he read, with
no lateral fins and a slight median fin at the end; but unlike eels they attack
other fish, like haddock or cod, and cling on to them, rasping away their flesh
with their tooth-studded tongues.

All they leave of their prey is the
skeleton. When they are not hunting for food they bury themselves in the mud on
the ocean floor. He read the paragraph twice. Then he swallowed some more
vodka, reached for his telephone, and punched out the number of the Scripps
Institute of Oceanography at La Jolla.

‘Doctor Andrea Steinway,’ he
requested.

‘May I ask who’s calling her?’

‘Jacques Cousteau.’

‘Could you hold on a moment, please,
Mr Cousteau?’

After a long wait, Andrea’s
extension was picked up and her brusque, mannish voice said, ‘Yes, Henry, what
do you want now?’

‘Andrea, how are you doing?’

‘Don’t ask, Henry. You don’t really
want to know, and I don’t really want to tell you.

What do you want?’

‘Andrea, it’s to do with fish,’
Henry explained, trying to sound both apologetic and desperately in need of
expert advice.

‘What kind of fish?’ Andrea
demanded. ‘The only kind of fish that you were ever interested in was baked
flounder.’

‘No, no, Andrea – this is different.
This is eels.’

‘Eels?’ she repeated, suspiciously.

‘Well, I came across an eel on the
beach this morning. It must have been washed up by the tide. I tried to pick it
up but it bit me. I mean, I washed the bite out with antiseptic and everything,
but I was wondering what kind of an eel it was, that might do that. I mean, if
it’s dangerous, maybe I ought to warn the coastguard about it.’

Andrea said, ‘You’re lying, Henry.’

‘What are you talking about? All I
want to know is, what kind of an eel could this be?’

‘You and the county police
department and just about every newspaper and television reporter for two
hundred miles around. Come on, Henry, I know all about it.

Three of my colleagues are down at
the beach now, trying to dig the eels out of the sand. The remains of one of
the eels is being sent up here this morning, so that we can examine it.’

‘And?’ asked Henry, because it
didn’t sound to him as if Andrea had finished.

‘And I’m expressly forbidden to
discuss any of this with anybody, including my ex-husband, until the police
give me permission.’

‘Come on, Andrea, the police
themselves have been round here this morning, talking about it. They want every
scrap of assistance they can get.’

‘They won’t get much from you, will
they? Maybe the regurgitated thoughts of Bertrand Russell, God help them.’

‘Andrea,’ said Henry, trying very
hard now to be patient, ‘I looked up eels in that Kaiser & Cohen book you
left behind, and it mentioned hagfish. It occurred to me that since these eels
were so vicious, they might not be eels at all, but hagfish.’

‘Yes?’ asked Andrea. ‘And what
else?’

‘Well, that’s it. It just occurred
to me, that’s all.’

‘I see. All right then, thank you.’

‘But what do you think?’ Henry
persisted.

‘I think you’d better stick to what
you’re good at, which is drinking and thinking in that order. Hagfish, for your
information, have four sets of tentacles around their head, which they use to
grip on to their prey. Although I haven’t yet had the opportunity to see it for
myself, I know for a fact that the eel which the police are asking us to
examine has no such tentacles.’

‘All the same, it could be some kind
of mutation.’

‘Henry, for God’s sake! You don’t
know anything about it. Now, put the phone down, there’s a good boy, and pour
yourself another Vodka Collins, and philosophise.’

‘Philosophy isn’t a theory, it’s an
activity,’ Henry retaliated.

‘Ludwig Wittgenstein,’ Andrea
countered. ‘You used to quote that every time you cut classes to go play golf.’

‘I’ve given up golf.’

‘Well, that’s a pity,’ said Andrea.
‘You were always a great deal better at golf than you were at philosophy.’

‘Andrea,’ said Henry, ‘will you do
me a favour? Will you call me, if you and your colleagues find out what kind of
a creature that eel happens to be, and let me know?

You know you can trust me.’

Andrea drew in a long, impatient
breath. Then she said, ‘I’ll consider it. I do owe you for letting me have the
Volkswagen, I suppose.’

‘Is that what our relationship has
come down to?’ Henry asked her. ‘A trade-off?’

‘All relationships are trade-offs,’
said Andrea. ‘If you’d understood that from the start, maybe our marriage would
have worked better.’

Henry was about to reply, but
managed to keep his sudden surge of hostility to himself. Just repeat after me:
we weren’t suited. That’s all. There was no animosity between us. We never
threw crockery, we never blasphemed. She was into oceans and I was into vodka,
and that was all there was to it.

‘Andrea’ he said, ‘Maybe we should
have dinner together sometime.’

‘Sure,’ she replied. ‘And maybe we
shouldn’t.’

He put down the phone, and sat back
in his leather-upholstered captain’s chair, and swung from side to side. He
pictured that girl on the beach, with her hair fanned out, and her hand
clutching the sand. Somebody’s daughter, somebody’s friend, somebody’s lover.
But what events had led her to Del Mar and death? And
why!

He was just reaching over to pick up
his drink when he caught sight of a man standing smoking a pipe outside his
cottage, just beside the wooden railings that separated the promenade from the
beach below. There was something about the man that attracted Henry’s
attention. He was elderly: there were white curls protruding from under his
yachting-cap, and he sported a busy white moustache. He seemed at peace with
himself; his hands were thrust into the pockets of his mid-length coat, and he
was puffing at his pipe and staring out to sea. But there was more than that.
He had some indescribably reliable look about him, as if he were a man of
considerable certainty and confidence.