LITMIR.BIZ

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scrambled onto the lower ledge. “And Krebs? Get Oates out here and tell him to bring some ropes with him.” Molly started down the last section just as he added, “You two, stay there.”

      Seconds later when she knelt beside him, he shook a scolding finger at her. “I thought I ordered you to keep back.”

      “Sorry.”

      “Jack Hawkins’s nose, eh?”

      She nodded to a long, bulbous rocky outcropping that shadowed the body.

      “The actor from Middlesex,” Michael explained. He stayed on the rocks above them, recognizing there was not enough space for all of them. “He was in Lawrence of Arabia, Ben-Hur, Zulu, The Bridge on the River Kwai…”

      Molly was shoulder-to-shoulder with Paddington, and now could see the body clearly. The dead man had looked elderly to her, but she hadn’t been that close when she’d first spotted him. Now she realized that he was quite young, and she’d been confused by the rock dust on his skin and all the bruises. His clothes were rumpled and torn from the fall, his legs and arms twisted, and already the hungry, curious sea birds had inflicted damage on his body. She wrinkled her nose at the foul stench and sucked in a breath when she spotted a small crab crawl out of his mouth and scurry away.

      “I’d say late twenties,” Paddington said. “Maybe thirty, but no older than that.” If the odor bothered Paddington, he didn’t let it show. “Tennis shoes.”

      New-looking ones, Molly noted, but a cheap brand. Molly knew shoes. “Not what I’d wear to hike this cliff,” she remarked. Actually, not what she’d ever wear.

      “Been dead two, three days, I’d wager.”

      “That recent?” Molly was surprised by Paddington’s assessment. The body looked so decomposed she would have thought it had been here weeks or months.

      “But how—”

      “The sea air,” Paddington explained as he pulled a pen out and used it to open the flap of the dead man’s shirt pocket and fish around inside. “Bodies decay fast in the open. The salt, the water spraying up here, the birds and crabs, other scavengers. Two days, maybe three at the outside, but the coroner will tell us for sure. Poor bloke.” He searched the other pocket. “Empty. Figures.”

      Molly stared at the top of the corpse’s head. That way she could avoid looking into its empty eye sockets. She’d read somewhere that birds went for the eyes first. “All this blood…” she said. “I figured he had been hiking and fell, hit his head.” The rock beneath the body was stained dark. She suspected there’d been more blood, but the sea spray had no doubt washed some of it away.

      After pulling on gloves, Paddington gently examined the corpse’s skull. “Oh, he hit his head all right, and broke a few other bones in the process. But he was dead before that.” He pointed to the man’s neck, moving the shirt collar open and exposing the jagged line across the man’s throat.

      Molly felt bile rising in her mouth when she tried looking away and her gaze passed over the eye sockets again. Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea, climbing down here with the D.C.I. Maybe she should have just given him directions.

      “Slit all the way across,” Paddington pronounced. “That’s what killed him. This young fellow was murdered.” He angled around to the other side of the body and shifted it to check the pants’ pockets.

      “No wallet, no ID, a couple of folded euros and a green tin of chewing tobacco.” He straightened and regarded Molly. “Maybe he wasn’t carrying a wallet. Or maybe the killer took it.”

      “So you don’t know who he was.”

      “No.” Paddington turned to stare out to sea. “But I’ll make short work of it, no doubt. It’ll give me something to do…not that I need anything else with that big marina to-do of yours tomorrow. It’s going to be quite the show, I’m sure….”

      CHAPTER TWO

      MOLLY COULDN’T SMELL the fish, though she normally smelled nothing but when she came to the marina.

      Today, the perfumes and aftershaves of the crowd overpowered any hint of fish, though Molly could still detect the scent of sizzling bacon from a dockside café still serving breakfast and a sudden belch of diesel fumes from a tourist bus that had pulled up.

      The sounds were almost as overwhelming as the smells. The radio on the bus blared Topley-Bird’s vocals on Massive Attack’s “Psyche.” The chatter of people moving past her sounded like swarms of insects, their monotone buzzing interspersed with the bass bleat of a tugboat out in the harbor. In the distance came the wail of an ambulance siren.

      Molly raised her eyes to appreciate the fine weather, the bright sky full of beggar gulls. It was a perfect day for the official groundbreaking—the few clouds thin and high with no hint of rain. The pleasant temperature had helped to lure much of the town to this spot for the ceremony that would officially announce a major overhaul of the harbor. Molly had written the grant proposals to secure the funds, and was excited to see the work begin.

      Beside her, Michael was clearly not as enrapt. Her husband was talking into his mobile about the computer game he was designing, something called “Dead Space.”

      “Michael, can’t you put work aside for just a little while?” Molly tugged on his arm and steered him through a group of red-hatted ladies who were all on the far side of middle age.

      “Hold a moment, please,” he said into the phone. He winked at her. “I shouldn’t work? You’re working.” A boyish expression spread across his handsome face. He waved his free arm to encompass the gathering on the dock. “You’ll be working most of the day.”

      “Well…yes…sort of,” she reluctantly admitted. “Though I’d rather be looking into the murder.”

      “Grisly pastime that. I think I’d rather you be here, appreciating the results of all your efforts. Admit it, you’re chuffed to bits by all of this.”

      Molly had to agree that she was pleased. But she also wished this event was next week, not today. While she was happy about these festivities, her curiosity about the dead man was eating at her. She wanted to be talking to people who lived in the area about the murdered man’s identity, maybe fishermen who might have seen him on the cliff…and who might also have spotted his killer.

      But she did have a right to be proud today. The buzzing crowds were turning Blackpool’s docks into a carnival atmosphere and it was largely because of her. She didn’t object to standing in the spotlight, and actually relished being the center of attention from time to time. It made her feel necessary, and she liked to think she was leaving her mark on the world, something to indicate she’d made a difference.

      Michael ended his phone conversation, promising to call back someone named Alvin to discuss the effects of faster-than-light travel on zombie astronauts. He stuffed the iPhone in his front pocket. “You’re practically glowing,” he said. “You put Lily Donaldson to shame today, Molly.”

      Molly struggled to avoid smiling. Inwardly she beamed at being compared to a young British super-model. “I’ll never be that skinny,” she protested.

      “Lord, I wouldn’t want you to. You’re perfect the way you are.”

      Molly had put extra effort into her appearance this morning. She’d had her hair and makeup done at seven, the stylist opening an hour early to accommodate her, and she wore a new ivory-colored blouse over dark green pants that Iris had pressed, so a faultless crease ran down the front. She carried a light tweed jacket and a new leather handbag was looped over her shoulder. It matched the shoes that she’d been wearing around the house for a few days to break them in.

      She’d kept the jewelry simple: a black onyx set in a pendant hung from a fine silver chain around her neck; small hoop earrings, difficult to see beneath her hair; her wedding ring, of course, and on the other hand a pearl set in a bronze twist that fit her index finger.

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