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Authors: Frances Fyfield

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Looking Down

BOOK: Looking Down
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Looking Down

Sarah Fortune [4]

Frances Fyfield

UK (2004)

Sarah Fortune, lawyer and professional mistress,
returns in an intriguing mystery which is as much about the identity of
the human spirit as it is about the unexplained death of an unknown
girl.

Richard Beaumont hoped to see the elusive chough on the Dover
cliffs. Instead he sees a young woman falling to her death. No-one
recognises her, no-one has reported her missing, and Richard returns,
shaken, to his new young wife, but instead of finding solace in Lilian's
company, he locks himself away and obsessively paints the scene of the
woman's broken body on the rocks. His cool behaviour towards her takes
Lilian to the flat below and the wordly-wise company of Sarah Fortune.
But Sarah, once Richard's lover, is awkward with her and is also
preoccupied with her brother's unbreakable habit of cat-burglary, and
the suspicious traffic to the penthouse at the top of the mansion block.
Unable to forget what he witnessed, Richard returns to the coast and
is befriended by the local police surgeon. Recently widowed, John is
depressed, not so much by his wife's death but by the realisation that
his marriage had been a loveless void. Recognising the symptoms,
Richard introduces him to Sarah, so that she can no longer ignore the
Beaumonts' troubles and is drawn into helping to trace where the dead
girl came from and in so doing reveals a trade which is both
breath-takingly lucrative and chillingly cruel.

Frances Fyfield
has spent much of her professional life practising as a criminal lawyer, work which has informed her realistic and highly acclaimed crime novels. She is also a regular broadcaster on Radio 4, most recently as the presenter of the series ‘Tales from the Stave’. She lives in London and in Deal, overlooking the sea which is her passion.

Also by Frances Fyfield

A Q
UESTION OF
G
UILT

S
HADOWS ON THE
M
IRROR

T
RIAL BY
F
IRE

S
HADOW
P
LAY

P
ERFECTLY
P
URE AND
G
OOD

A C
LEAR
C
ONSCIENCE

W
ITHOUT
C
ONSENT

B
LIND
D
ATE

S
TARING AT THE
L
IGHT

U
NDERCURRENTS

T
HE
N
ATURE OF THE
B
EAST

S
EEKING
S
ANCTUARY

L
OOKING
D
OWN

T
HE
P
LAYROOM

H
ALF
L
IGHT

S
AFER
T
HAN
H
OUSES

L
ET’S
D
ANCE

T
HE
A
RT OF
D
ROWNING

B
LOOD
F
ROM
S
TONE

Copyright

Published by Hachette Digital

ISBN: 978-1-4055-2061-4

All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2004 Frances Fyfield

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

Hachette Digital

Little, Brown Book Group

100 Victoria Embankment

London, EC4Y 0DY

www.hachette.co.uk

Contents

About the Author

Also by Frances Fyfield

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

For Jennifer Davies, nee Curtis,
with love and admiration
.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To Dr Richard Meyer, artist first, and zoologist second, who introduced me to the chough and the raven, and informed me throughout, as well as commenting on Tiepolo and the subject of
zing.

He is entirely the wrong shape for the Richard in this book, whom he is not supposed to resemble. And, as he would be the first to point out, all ornithological/art-appreciation/spelling/semantic/factual mistakes are entirely mine.

With many thanks.

P
ROLOGUE

It was, in its own way, a beautiful day. By which he meant that the light was fine, and the sky provided a background, and if all else failed he could sketch the sky, because it was always there. Light permitting, he could put an angel on clouds if there was nothing else to do, although, perversely, he always preferred to look down rather than up, into and over the ground rather than turning his eyes towards the sky. There was a notice to his left:
Do not walk
, which had drawn him to the edge and from there to here, via the slippery path he had seen used by the botanists, to be where he sat now on a white clay shelf, twenty feet below the overhang, looking to his left at a bunch of pinks and wishing he was remotely interested in wild flowers. He had been panting
running
towards the edge, panting before he reached it, but now he could not remember why. The anxiety was gone, the view breathtaking and the loneliness blissful.

There was a strong breeze, typical of the days he had spent up here sitting to the side of the scant supply of scrubby bushes in the hope of other people who might sit long enough to be watched and sketched, only they never sat, they plodded past
without pausing or seeing, hell bent on reaching the other end of the trek, too tired to stop. For some it was the beginning, for others the end. The breeze caught his hair, making the still unfamiliar length of it whip across his face. He was short, broad yeoman stock, not easily mistaken for the artist he hoped he was and more easily defined as the amateur and out-of-date birdwatcher he also was. He did not care what he looked like: it was enough that he did not look like a man who ever wore a suit. Two days’ growth of beard itched, pleasantly.
The middle of nowhere
, he wrote on his pad, ignoring the fact that his ears were suddenly filled with the dull, resonant drone of a hovercraft coming from across the English channel into port. On a rare, still afternoon the sound of it filled the whole horizon, and on a gusty day like this the hummm of it was interrupted, with the effect of a broken signal, always surprising when it resumed.

He was not a brave man, or immune from vertigo. It amazed him to have found this vantage point where he could see how the chalk cliff sprawled outwards and downwards, spilling its guts below in a tumbling process full of interesting forms, until the last of the tilting land reached the angry sea which gnawed and growled. He could discern crevices, and landings with more of those pink flowers. He was wondering if the hovercraft sound was actually musical or irritating, because when it became silent he found himself holding his breath. The cliff path had been almost deserted today: he had definitely not wanted people for sketching or anything else, thought he would look out for the birds. It was the birds that were the second love of his life. He was no longer a boy, but when he had been he had lived near cliffs like these, two hundred miles away, and adored the birds. He had once played with a chough. He was sentimental about birds, revered them for their grace and dignity.

And then the girl appeared, sailing over his head. Not a girl, but the body of a girl so near to death she may already have
greeted it, appearing from over the top of his skull without a sound at the moment he expelled his breath as the hovercraft noise came back and he was looking skywards and thinking, I am doing nothing here, except looking for the birds, probably at the wrong time of day; I shall go in a minute. A body with arms out-flung, spreadeagled against the sky, reminding him of a parachutist before the cord was pulled.

She seemed to have been projected from a point above the cliff, hung there, level with his face, for a fraction of a second, and then moved into an awkward, flapping freefall, as if her body could not decide which direction to take, whether to pirouette, somersault, glide, or go back from where she came. Then It (it was already It) bent into a V and fell, quietly and certainly, an item of clothing detaching itself and floating alongside like a ghostly companion. She landed suddenly, before she had even begun, far below, on the penultimate outcrop before the cliff splintered into the rounded rubble which met the churning white of the sea. Lay there, peacefully, so near and yet so far, as if it was exactly as she had intended, turned in her sleep, to avoid the sudden, impertinent shaft of sunshine.

He could see the outline of her, graceful and abandoned, arm outflung, face turned to the view, the breasts and hips which had weighted the fall, one leg bent beneath her, the other straight, the shape of her defined by triangles of black knickers and bra, and the gauzy material of whatever else she had worn drifting down to the water, which captured it, wrestled it and began to bear it away. There was the mass of hair he had noticed as she flew past, paler than the pale, sharp rock which had broken her back. Somewhere near her extended hand there was a flush of pink and green from those same flowers. He sat transfixed by the sight, terrified and enchanted, the sketchbook gripped tightly in one hand, the pen clutched in the other fist, shook his head slowly, then adjusted his hands and began to draw. Live models were hard to find.

Woman at one with nature/Woman returns to nature.
Everything had a title. She was exquisitely beautiful. He was fascinated by the lines of black created by the bra, drew slowly, wished he could sketch with the insouciant speed he imagined of a master, but his own way was always painfully slow and deliberate. As he drew, the light began to change, altering the contours of her body, so that he etched the shadows she made, was tempted to start again. It seemed to take a long time, and after a while, as he grew colder and colder, as he wrestled with the form of her with increasing frustration, he saw that she had company. Black company, curious, lascivious, hungry, winged ghosts, swooping in to land and hover around her. He grabbed his forgotten binoculars, looked closely and blinked back tears. He had so wanted to see these creatures, but not like this. He wanted to love them. They strutted and hopped, flapped, busily,
Quork, quork.
They moved in.

Oh, you bastards.

His fingers were numb. He watched and watched.

Then one rose, level to his height, glossy and black, with bright red beak and red feet. He held his breath. A chough: oh Lord, how he had longed to see the chough. He had dreamt of seeing the chough; it made him hold his breath again. Quick, quick, before the light went, and before the sounds intervened. It was becoming dark. His hands were paralysed; he pushed his finger and thumb to draw what he had seen. The hovercraft noise came back in a rough symphony with other sounds; a rope skimmed by his face over the cliff, engine noises intervened, and still he could not tear his gaze away to look towards evening clouds, went on staring, down, watching her, imprinting her and the solid ghosts on his memory, watching his pen on the paper, until the shadows were way too long and she was surrounded. Someone appeared beside him. Bigger, stronger, younger.

‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’

He had no response. Tried to stand and found it difficult.
Suddenly afraid of scrambling back up that dangerous path, wondering why he had ever come down, what he had been hiding from. The other man, peculiarly dressed, his belt loaded with accoutrements, and big, raw fists, was unaccountably furious.

‘I said what do you think you’re doing, you sick bastard?’

He found himself hauled up by the neck, his sturdy body easily moved, and because his limbs had become numb, he was grateful. At the top of the steep path, near the notice which said
Do not walk
and nothing else, after a muttered conversation, he was punched in the head, and found he did not mind. He had seen and drawn the beautiful body and watched the chough fly. A man could only be so lucky in a single day. There was a crowd at the roadside where the path started and ended; some of them seemed to be baying for his blood.

Blood. He would close his eyes to whatever else he had seen.

BOOK: Looking Down
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