At the bottom of the hill Donny pulled into the lay-by near the bread van, and we got out to wait beside its driver. The climber emerged from the rocks, stumbling in exhaustion as he came up the beach. I revised my estimate of his age, and his condition, downward. His hair was thick and its grey premature—he wasn't much older than Donny. But as the mechanic had said, this was not a well man, in no condition, I'd have said, to go clambering around dangerous rocks for a lost article. When he'd dropped heavily onto the floor of the van and put together a cigarette with shaking fingers, Donny reached around me to light it for him—less a gesture of good manners perhaps than for fear the man would set his coat alight if he tried to manipulate a match. The man accepted it, and after a moment's silent appreciation, raised his eyes to give me a look that was oddly appraising, as if we'd met sometime before. I was sure we hadn't, however—I'd have remembered that face.

“That looked a rather dangerous climb,” I said mildly, by way of breaking the ice.

“Not something I'd do for fun,” he said dismissively.

So the gentleman did not care for amusing repartee; very well, I too would be blunt. “So why were you doing it? If you don't mind my asking.”

He was not interested in giving out any information, but I had often found that by handing over a revelation of my own it served to, as it were, prime the pump.

So I told him that someone I knew had died there, and with that his words began to flow.

It seemed that he was an insurance investigator looking into a death claim that might have been faked. It also seemed that this corner was infamous as a killer of motorcars.

Indeed.

He finished his cigarette, and by the looks of it the driver's flask, then with a tip of the grey fedora he climbed into the back of the van. The other man slammed the door behind him and hurried around to the driver's side; in moments he had the van turned around and headed back north.

Flo held out a packet of something in my direction. “You want a piece of chewing gum, Mary?”

“Thanks, no,” I said, and she helped herself, folding the stick into her pretty mouth. “Well, can we go now? It's too windy to smoke and I'm freezing to death standing here.”

“I was thinking we might go back to Serra Beach and have a drink or something.”

“Back? Mary, we're running late as it is. And it's a pig to drive a strange road in the dark. Wouldn't you say, Donny?”

“Oh, it's not so bad,” he said, but we could both hear the doubt in his voice. “If it's a jolt you want, I've got my flask.”