This Thing of Darkness by Harry Bingham Read Free Book Online

costliness.
    ‘You could climb that?’ I ask.
    ‘ You could probably climb it. I mean, not straight away, but spend a few sessions in here first, and . . .’ He shrugs. ‘It’s mostly just body shape.’
    ‘But that wouldn’t get me to the window.’
    ‘No, but then you’ve got this thing.’ His finger traces the line of a cornice, or sill, that runs the width of the wall, meeting the very top of the window opening along the way. He tries to get the picture in super-close-up, but it just dissolves into pixels. ‘You don’t have any idea of the actual profile, do you? I mean, in the end, it depends on whether there’s a real hold there or not.’
    I don’t know. I haven’t thought to look. Nor any of my police colleagues, I’m betting.
    I say, ‘Mike, you know what would be incredibly helpful . . .?’
    He’s torn. Casts a longing look at the bit of overhanging wall, which his uni-earringed buddy has finally mastered.
    ‘This house, whereabouts is it?’
    I give the name of the village, adding, ‘Just outside Llantwit.’
    Mike hesitates, looks at his watch. It’s still the right side of six o’clock. Mike calls his friend. ‘Hey, Ginger Boy, what say we go and do some real climbing?’
    Ginger Boy – Rhod, is how he introduces himself – assents reluctantly to Mike’s plan, which is, I think, to take a look at Plas Du, then go on to a nearby sea cliff.
    We’re there by half-six. Daylight the colour of old washcloths, boiled and grey.
    No one present, though I do knock first, the way we’re meant to.
    Rhod stands around by the corner of the house, looking grumpy. He’s wearing baggy trousers and an oversized fleece, which makes him look underweight somehow, like those New Army recruits who were sent to the trenches in 1916. Sent to the trenches, then comprehensively slaughtered.
    Rhod probably doesn’t know he looks like cannon-fodder, though, and just spreads an old beach towel under the corner. Shoes and socks off. Slips on some stinky-looking rock shoes. Something about the stonework displeases him and he rubs at the lichen with an old toothbrush taken from a loop on his chalk bag.
    Mike gets some luridly coloured foam mats from his car. Arranges them against a possible fall.
    When Mike is ready, Rhod stops picking at the lichen and swings onto the corner. Toes on the horizontal chamfers, fingers round the vertical edge of the block on the wall proper. He hangs his body away from his fingers, as though hinged.
    Then – I don’t know – he simply pads up the wall. He doesn’t move particularly fast. Checks holds before using them. He still doesn’t like the bits of lichen and carries his toothbrush in his mouth, scraping away at the horizontals wherever they’re more weathered. But the stone gets cleaner as it gets higher and his progress becomes more fluent.
    It wouldn’t even be true to say that he moves as though weightless. The opposite really: this whole game is a balance of weights and forces. But there’s something sprung in the way he ascends, as though there’s always a surplus of power, should he need it. Even the way he scrubs discontentedly at the chamfers is an advertisement of his confidence. The strength he keeps in reserve.
    Two thirds of the way up, he asks Mike to adjust the matting, then climbs the last eight or ten feet to the cornice.
    He examines it, in the sad light of a rainy spring. Makes no comment. Just adjusts his weight again, down-climbs a dozen feet or so, then jumps the short remaining distance to the mat.
    ‘Nothing there. Not really. Like the stone has this little matchstick edge along the top, kind of Llanberis slate style, but . . .’ He shrugs in a way which I interpret as meaning, ‘Not enough to tempt me to out on it, and not enough to tempt anyone sane.’
    From below, I can see the cornice has a kind of rounded bit, a bulge, that runs the full width of the wall. I ask about that, but Rhod just shakes his head, and says, ‘No, it’s