He pulled off his hat to keep it from blowing away, and felt the rain driven against his face.

The men didn’t turn as Rutledge came to join the group. He saw that Walker stopped a little to one side, trying to speak to the constable who had come to the funicular to fetch them. He had to shout in the man’s ear to be heard.

Everyone looked thoroughly miserable, but they were intent on the drama unfolding at their very feet. Rutledge heard a shout of pain as the wind slammed the climber into the wall he was trying to ascend, and one of the men on the ropes cried, “Are you all right, Ben?”

If he answered, Rutledge couldn’t hear him. Others, aware now that someone else had come out here, looked up to stare briefly at Rutledge, but Norman waited without turning as more and more rope was hauled up. And still the climber hadn’t crested the top.

Looking out to sea, Rutledge was hard-pressed to tell where the horizon ended and the water began, and he could see heavier clouds forming a line that darkened the sea and sky as it headed his way. He knew without being told that the men here were racing that line.

All at once the men stretched out on the ground scrambled back, and the teams heaved on the ropes with all the strength they could muster. Then, like a jack-in-the-box, a man’s head and shoulders popped up, followed by his torso and legs, and he made it to the bruised grass at the edge.

The climber flopped down where he was, flat out, exhausted. His hair was dripping rainwater, his clothes wet through. Someone came forward and draped a tarpaulin over him, but he was sweating from exertion and asked them to pull it away again.

Only then did Inspector Norman turn, as if he’d known Rutledge was there all along. His hair was also plastered to his skull, his face red and raw from the rain and the wind. He shouted to Rutledge, pointing down the cliff face, “One of yours?”

Rutledge made his way to the brink, gripping the shoulder of one of the men who had been pulling in the climber, to keep himself from being blown over.

Below, crumpled on the rocks that were being lashed by the sea, was a body.

The climber had been down there, attaching a sling of sorts to it, with ropes he brought back to the top tied to his belt.

It had been one hell of a climb down there, and even worse conditions trying to work with the body on such a narrow ledge, barely big enough for one man. And then the climb back had been even more hazardous.

Norman, somewhere behind Rutledge, called, “Look out,” and he turned to see four men pulling hard on ropes.

He stepped back from the edge and watched as the men—he learned later that they were from the lifeboat station below—began to haul the dead man to the top.