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Once I killed a man.  At least, I think I did.  I was certainly responsible for hastening someone’s death by some thirty or forty years, maybe more.  But whether the guy was actually dead before he fell and hit his head on the rock and rolled into the pool was unclear even at the time.  The panic and horror of that and preceding events temporarily shattered rationality and it was only well after we had returned to our hotel room that we were able to piece together a consensus of what had actually happened.

The passage of time distorts memory.  Perhaps selectively.  Even today, I can remember exactly where we were.  And the date, if not the precise time.   I can remember the man’s face, his expression of fury.  Fury which turned to pain.  Then fright.  And then there was no expression. 

Bizarre little details like the way tiny fish and shrimps darted about in a frenzy as the blood oozed into the rock pool will remain with me for ever.  I remember the jarring pain in my elbow as I hit him.  But I can’t remember how many blows I landed, or how I got the gash on my foot, or how long it was before we realised he was dead.  I remember too the way my legs would not stop shaking, and the dry metallic taste of fear in my mouth.  Fear that persisted long after I’d hidden the body.

I remember also how our day started. 

oooOOOooo

We were ten days into a two week break in the sun.  We’d written and posted the obligatory postcards – ‘Having a wonderful time, weather fine, hotel great’ – the usual sort of bland nonsense.  None of which was entirely true.  We were bored.  Not so much with each other, it was more the place.  The carefully manicured beach with its precisely laid out sun beds, seemed out of character with the nearby town and villages.  The weather was unsettled, unpredictable.  And the hotel was as impersonal as any global brand could be, wherever it was sited.  And even when we tried to break out of the routine something seemed to go wrong.  Like the day we hired a small car, to explore the more remote areas down the coast.  One beach, in particular had caught our eye, on one of our stops to take in the view.  The sun had just cleared the pine-clad slope, which fringed the beach and one end was bathed in golden light.  Large rocks, which had probably been attached to the cliff in the distant past, rose out of the water and hinted at good snorkelling; something we had found decidedly lacking off the sandy hotel beach.  We looked at each other, and grinned.

‘That’s more like it,’ said Mel.

We went back to gather our bags and then cursed loud and long as we realised we had failed to pack our gear.  As we piled disconsolately back into the car, one of the buses from the town drew up and stopped.  Nobody got off and there was nobody waiting.  The bus moved on.  I looked at Mel and shrugged.

‘Another day?’

oooOOOooo

We breakfasted early that fateful day and caught the little bus at the stop outside out hotel.  It was hot and crowded and smelly and we were extremely glad when some thirty minutes later we reached our destination.  We were the only passengers to leave.  I stood watching as it pulled away, feeling like an idiot that I had not checked return times.
Mel in the meantime had begun to make her way down the narrow track to the beach.  She stopped at the foot of the track and looked back at me, lips pouting, eyes wide in feigned innocence.

‘Oh, dear.  There’s nobody else here.  Do you think we’ll be lonely?’
With that she began to run towards the far end of the beach where the cliff rose more steeply, and the beach glowed invitingly in the warm autumn sunshine.

oooOOOooo

‘We need to agree our story and stick to it.’

I remember saying that after the initial horror had worn off and I began to think rationally.  Uncharacteristically pale beneath her tan, her eyes still betraying the trauma she had been through, she nodded.

By mutual agreement we did not discuss the matter of who might have taken what initiative following my return to the beach, and my entry into the living nightmare she was already occupying.  Memories of those first few shared seconds and minutes when instinct drove our battle for supremacy are confused, and our agreement reduced the tendency to indulge in  ‘If onlys’ or ‘What ifs?’

On the other hand we recognised that, although the memory would never die, by sharing our dreams and our fears we could perhaps exorcise the worst features, and push them deep into the subconscious.  That was our shared hope.

But however hard we tried not to provoke those memories they would suddenly resurface.  Innocent things like friends talking about their holiday experiences nearly always had us stealing awkward glances at the other.  Our nightmares too - though less frequent - grew ever more grotesque.  And every reminder of that day would release the corks from our bottled up psyches, and at the first opportunity we would draw a less metaphorical cork to help us, as once more we lived the horrors frame by frame.

Of course, her memory and dreams contained moments that only she experienced.  I can only imagine her terror, dream her part of the story second-hand.  Her lone hell may have lasted three, four, five minutes?  That is my guess.  She had no idea.  It began so suddenly, without warning, that all awareness of duration was suspended as survival became her sole priority.  Even after I formulated my plan and we engaged in our efforts to pervert the truth of what had, or what might have, happened we both had difficulty in keeping track.  Only the gradual movement of the dappled shadows across the pebbles confirmed that time was indeed passing, and swiftly.

She too - mercifully  - did not share all my recollections.  She was spared the more hideous details of the subterfuge.

oooOOOooo

My memories probably start from the instant I removed my facemask and peered myopically in the direction of our beach towels.  Multi-coloured blurs indicated where they were.  But Mel was not with them.  In all probability had she still been lying there I might have crept up and dripped seawater over her unsuspecting naked body, delighting in her enraged squeals of protest.  That would have been true to my character.  Then.  Not now.  Such juvenile pranks no longer amuse even me.

Instead of the anticipated scene, disconcerting and unexpected images greeted my squinting eyes.  Two bodies, one naked, the other wearing an T-shirt and grubby shorts, halfway down to the knees, writhed together on the sand some distance from the towels.  Mel was punching and slapping at the male figure, trying to tear herself away from his grasp.  Only after did I recall how curiously quiet she was.  He was fending off her blows with one arm while forcing her thighs apart with his free hand.  I caught a glimpse of his erect penis as he wrestled her.

I stood up and tried to rush out of the water to help her.  I fell back into the waves.  In my panic I had forgotten that I was still wearing my flippers.  By the time I was upright and had removed my flippers Mel had seen me and was staring, wide-eyed, straight at me.  Her assailant had his back to me and was too intent on penetrating Mel to notice me at first.

I looked about frantically for a weapon, and nearly tripped over the pile of stones we had gathered when we had earlier cleared a patch of beach to occupy.  I picked one up, the size and shape – I guess - of a baking potato, and tried to cover the twenty metres or so to the grappling figures without being seen.  But the man must have caught some flicker in Mel’s eyes, which alerted him to my attack, and before I was within striking distance he had turned his head to follow her gaze.  He let out a bellow of rage and attempted to stand up and rush me.  But his shorts dropped lower, around his ankles, and effectively hobbled him.  I hit him with the stone with as much strength as I could muster.  Slightly mistimed and off target I hit him on the cheek.  Blood sprayed out.  And he bellowed again, although this time the rage was tempered by pain.  He crouched low, panting, and glaring, his upper body weaving like a prize fighter.  With one hand he reached down and hitched his shorts back up, almost to his waist.  My elbow felt numb from the jarring impact of the first blow, but I knew I had to hit him again.  I hefted the stone and drew my arm back even as he was reaching forward with both his hands towards my throat.  I have little doubt he would have seized me, and probably throttled the life out of me, had Mel not at that moment made a grab for the man’s crotch.  Her face contorted with rage and revulsion as she squeezed and twisted his testicles.  He tried to reach her hand but stumbled, gasping and screwing his eyes up with pain.  Somehow he managed to break free from Mel’s grasp and he managed almost to stand, but before he could regain his balance I swung the rock at him again.  This time I caught him squarely on the temple.  He grunted and sank to his knees, flinging up an arm to ward off my next blow, which crushed his fingers between the stone and his skull.  I struck again and again and again, until my chest screamed at me to stop, as I tried to draw more oxygen to fuel the adrenaline rush.  As I paused for breath, the man began to drag himself away towards the rock pool.  He stood, unsteadily, blood pouring from his head wounds and his shattered fingers.  Then his eyes rolled and he toppled headfirst against the overhang and slid with a splash into the pool.

I collapsed to my knees still clasping the blood spattered weapon.

I looked at Mel.

‘Put your shirt on,’ I said.

I walked across to our clothes and picked up her bikini bottom.

‘And these.’

She put them on, still sobbing and shivering.

oooOOOooo

I rummaged in the beach bag for my spectacles and forced myself to look down at the body.  The water in the pool was stained red.  He may still have been alive.  To this day, I honestly do not know.  But I let him lie there, face down in the pool.  I tried to bring some order to the chaotic thoughts competing for attention in my head.

My blows may have killed him.  If so, it surely would be considered to have been in self-defence.

Without any knowledge of the machinations of their legal system it nevertheless seemed a safe bet.  Self-defence.  And defensible.

Alternatively, already badly injured from my blows he struck his head on one of the rocks in the pool and it was that final impact rather than the ones I had inflicted which killed him.

Surely again, I -  we - would have been exonerated of all blame.

If he is still alive though?  What then?  Do we save him from drowning, seek medical attention, perhaps his skull is fractured?  What then?  How would our explanation be viewed?  Naturally, our word should suffice!  After all, he tried to rape her.  She hit him in self-defence.  We are civilised beings, he is a pervert.  Ah!  What of her state of undress?  What if he had watched us?   Could our behaviour be considered as a provocation?  Might I - we - not end up being charged with assault ourselves?

oooOOOooo

I must have stared at the body for several minutes and there seemed to be little movement.  If none of the blows to his head had killed him, it seemed possible he had drowned or was drowning, in a few centimetres of water.  The red coloration of the pool began to reduce as the bleeding stopped and clear water lapped in.  I pushed at the body with my foot but in my enervated state I could barely move him.  I realised I was still shaking violently and my foot was bleeding.  I took deep breaths to try to regain some composure.  After a while it seemed to work.  Fighting against my revulsion I grabbed hold of the body by the hip and shoulder and rolled it over.  The head flopped heavily to one side.  Open, unseeing eyes stared at me.  There was the slightest trickle of blood from the ugly gashes to the side of the forehead and his cheek.  Bubbles of mucous and saliva surrounded his nose and mouth.  His no longer threatening penis lay shrunken and small in its thick dark nest of hair.

There was a retching sound beside me.  Vomit splattered on to the shingle.  I led Mel, still retching, away from the body and set about executing the plan, which was already forming in my mind.

‘Where did he come from?’ I asked.  I glanced along the beach to where the cliffs gave way to the gentler slope we had descended earlier.  The path ran from the beach to the dirt road above, which separated the forest from the cliff top.

Seeing where I was looking she shook her head.  Taking great care to avoid looking towards the body, she turned and pointed to the top of the small cliff behind us.

‘From up there, I think.’

I followed her gaze and could see the crude track, which picked its way from toehold to toehold.  The occasional imprint of a heavily ridged sole could be seen in the meagre soil clinging to the rock.

I moved our beach towels further away from the rock pool and made her sit down on them facing up the beach.  I positioned the beach-bag beside her.  I wanted to screen the body from anyone who might wander down to the beach along the main path.  We had to take the chance that although someone might appear, it was unlikely that they would venture in our direction as the cliffs appeared to present a dead end.  Ironically, that - plus the fact that it was the only part of the beach to catch the sun - was what had attracted us to the spot in the first place.  Now that the sun had dipped behind the trees the attraction was gone.

I made my way to the foot of the cliff and clambered up using the crudely formed steps.  A pair of battered trainers lay near the path.  Further on, a small area of flattened long dry grass revealed where the man had been lying, watching.  An opened packet of cigarettes, a disposable lighter and a creased and much read glossy magazine lay on the grass.  I flicked open the magazine.  It contained rather tame - by western standards - photos of scantily dressed women.  Beyond the flattened area it was just possible to make out a faint trail through the bruised undergrowth, which presumably led back up to the forest path.  I decided that his voyeuristic pursuits had been solitary.

I looked over the edge of the cliff to the spot where we had been lying earlier.  He would have had a clear view of everything.  Everything.  He would then have watched my preparations for snorkelling, and waited until I was safely out of sight.  He had picked his moment to scramble down to the beach and carry out the assault. 

I moved around until I was overlooking the sea.  Thick briars with vicious thorns grew near the edge.  Suddenly, dry soil and stones broke away under my foot and cascaded on to the rocks below.  I was within a whisker of falling with them and into the sea as it surged and crashed against them.  Deterred by the swell I had not ventured there while snorkelling.   Now I might have to.  My plan had begun to crystallise.

I scrambled back down to the beach and fished in the bag for my Swiss Army knife.

‘Don’t ask,’ I said, as she turned towards me, her frightened expression momentarily giving way to a questioning frown.

Back at the top I crawled as close as I could to the crumbling edge and peered down at the lie of the rocks below.  I tried to imagine why he might have approached this edge when what he was watching was visible from the other.  His cigarette packet caught my eye.

Yes, that’s how it could have happened, I thought.

I removed a cigarette and broke off most of its length.  I lit the remaining stub with his lighter and drew a few long pulls on it.  The grass and undergrowth were tinder dry.  The only safe way to dispose of the finished cigarette was to flick it away from the cliff top, beyond the bushes, into the sea.

I flicked.  The wind caught the smouldering nub and it fluttered out of sight over the cliff edge.

How tragic that that edge had given away and he had lost his footing.

My imagination moved into a higher gear.

He would have grasped desperately at the brambles, screeching with pain as the thorns dug into his hands and gouged his body as he slid past them on the way to his death below.

With my knife I cut a short, thick length of briar lined with the most vicious thorns I could see.  I cleared them from one end so that I could grasp it comfortably.  Armed with this implement I descended once more to the beach.

I approached the body and with some difficulty prised open the already stiffening hand.  I forced the fingers around the thorns and, grimacing at the thought, pulled the briar back out of the hand and continued with the action so that the thorns tore deeply into the inner wrist and forearm and upper body and face.  Without doubt, any pathologist worth his salt would spot that the lesions had been caused after death.  But it was a risk I was prepared to take.

I manhandled the body into the waves, cursing at its lifeless inertia.  Much as I would like to have hauled it back up to the cliff top to enact the deception still further, it was impossible.  Instead, I put my mask and flippers on again and waded in with the corpse, grasping it by the upper arm.  It was a painfully slow business dragging it along, even aided by the buoyancy of the salt water.  I had to keep stopping to check where I had reached in relation to the cliff top grandstand.  But eventually I steered the body around to point which I estimated to be directly below where I - no, he - would have fallen.  I peered below the surface looking for a suitable anchor point. At last I spotted what I needed.  With some difficulty, and not before I had ingested several mouthfuls of salt water, I managed to wedge one of the feet in a crack in one of the rocks just below water level. Crude?  But plausible.  Surely?

Man slips from cliff edge.  Man hits head on rocks and plunges into sea.  Concussed and disoriented man thrashes around but gets stuck and drowns.

oooOOOooo

‘Let’s go,’ I said, as I returned to her side.

We dressed and packed the bag in silence.

Once, she started to ask ‘Where?’ but I found I was again shaking so much that I could not speak.  But at least my brain was still functioning.  I noticed, as if for the first time, how far our brightly coloured flippers protruded from the opening of our beach bag.  Very distinctive, very conspicuous, which was not what I was after.  So, with some regret and not without a struggle I hacked each into two pieces and concealed them fully in the bag.
I made a final inspection of the area, scattering the sand and pebbles over the vomit and blood and obliterating the scuff marks made when I moved the body.

We picked up our belongings and made for the main path, which led up and away from the beach.  I cast a final look back to the area beneath the cliff where we had only hours earlier basked and - in blissful ignorance of our audience - had made love on the warm sand.  The soft October sunlight had long ceased to illuminate any of the beach and our patch seemed in deepest, gloomiest shade.

‘When we get to the bus say as little as possible,’ I ordered, ‘But whatever you say, say it in German.  And just do as I do.  Keep your shades on.  Don’t question anything.  It will be all right.’

If the bus drivers were to be asked whom they had carried back to town that day they might, just might, recall a quiet, unremarkable German-speaking couple who travelled as far as the terminus, and who melted away into the bustle of the town.  They certainly would not recall English people carrying a bag of brightly coloured snorkelling kit, who had boarded the bus that morning, at the large hotel way out of town.  No, they did not exist that afternoon.

And when the English couple eventually did return to the hotel it would be by taxi, from the opposite direction to the beach, having had a wonderful day browsing in the market.  ‘A change from lying in the sun,’ they might comment if anyone took the slightest bit of interest.  (Imagine the interest if they were to reply ‘Yes, we had quite a hectic day. We killed someone and disposed of the body.  How about you?’)

To the extent that the remaining days passed uneventfully and we returned home without any indication that our secret was about to be exposed, my ‘all right’ assurance proved - all right.  To the extent it is unlikely that we would ever be found out, my plan worked.  We avoided a precarious confrontation with the authorities.  But did we do the right thing?

Perhaps we should just have checked that he was still alive, and to have banked on the assumption that, if he had been, he would not have pursued us.  Instead - dead, without a shadow of doubt - he continued to pursue us.  He pursued us in our dreams and haunted our memories.  He taunted us from his watery grave.  He forced us endlessly to go over our actions, tantalising us with the minute possibility that we had left some clue, which could yet result in our being arraigned on some charge of unlawful killing.

Each time, we would confront these torments with well-rehearsed logic.  The time, the distance - another continent, another culture; our conviction that our outward emotions and actions in the days following the incident gave nothing away; the probable reluctance of the police to investigate the disappearance of a vagrant or, in the event the body were found, to question a drowning which would appear most likely to have been accidental;  all these insisted that we were immune from all save our consciences.  But our action-replays usually ended in the same way.  In spite of the chance of any comeback being genuinely remote, we of course knew what we should have done at the time.

‘Do you speak English?  There has been an accident.  A man is dead.  He attacked my girlfriend and she tried to stop him.  He fell and hit his head on the rocks.  We tried to help him but he did not regain consciousness.  And here we are.’

That did not happen.

oooOOOooo

We kept quiet and as time passed felt that we surely must have got away with it.  Yet niggling doubts and ill ease remained.

What if?

What if one of us could no longer keep that dark secret, the strain of bottling up that awful act impossible to bear any longer?  What if the urge to confess to what could be construed as unlawful killing or even manslaughter became too powerful?  What if anyone were to read this account?

Well, yes, there are risks of course, but I can always deny everything and claim that this is pure fiction, that it is after all a figment of a rather prurient and febrile imagination.
But there is a witness, you might say.

And, of course, you would have been right.  That was a real risk.

oooOOOooo

Sadly, Mel drowned off a remote island in the Far East some years back.

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