300 Days of Sun Read Online Free Page A

papers.”
    I hadn’t realised this was where it was.
    W e smelled the dead whale before we saw it. Newspaper reports couldn’t convey the rank, cloying nature of rotting fish and sweet putrefaction that reached up the beach and pulled crowds of the curious towards its source. Sightseers were held back by a rope circle staked in the sand. The jawbone was the size of a tree trunk. One side of the whale was cruelly exposed, like the open engine of a broken-­down bus, trailing viscous organs in the wet sand.
    â€œWas that what killed it, or did that happen after it died?” asked Nathan, holding his nose as he leaned closer.
    â€œHard to say.”
    â€œPoor thing.”
    It was high tide and waves nudged gently at the body. The skin of the great mammal was being cured to leather with every new day it was exposed to sun and wind and salt water. I wondered whether it was shrinking, whether it would eventually shrivel to a gigantic black sac. What with the dying storks and now this, it was hard not to feel that nature was struggling.
    Nathan interrupted my thoughts.
    â€œWhen you said, earlier, about finding out things. How do you start?”
    â€œSorry?”
    â€œHow do you find out about something that happened years and years ago. How do you prove it’s true?”
    I turned to look at him. He was staring out to sea, eyes unreadable.
    â€œThat’s a ‘how long is a piece of string?’ question.”
    â€œSeriously.”
    â€œWell . . . you’d start with what you know is fact, and work from there. There are records that can be checked, and ­people who can provide answers, and one fact leads to the next until you start to build up a picture that can be verified.”
    â€œEven if it was quite a long time ago?”
    â€œIt can be done. How easy it is depends on how long ago it happened. Whether ­people are still alive to tell what they know. Whether there exists any evidence that can be traced. Anything is possible, though that doesn’t mean you can get a story to stand up every time. Are you interested in journalism?”
    â€œMight be.”
    I assumed that was why he was asking, and it struck me that he had many of the qualities that made a good reporter, even if they were currently undeveloped. We wandered back along the shore, musing about the whale and the story it had brought to the town. It had to do with a human need for answers and a desire for the world to make sense. Some of the more lurid representations—­there was a national colour magazine that had run a six-­page spread complete with photoshopped blood—­pointed to a less attractive need to be entertained by misfortune.
    It was only as we were boarding the ferry that Nathan got to the point and I realised how badly I had misunderstood him.
    â€œJo?”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œIf I asked you to help me with something, would you?”
    â€œProbably—­depends what it is. I draw the line at drug running and bank robberies.”
    He gave a thin laugh that betrayed a nervousness he hadn’t allowed himself to show before. “Well that’s that, then.”
    â€œGo on. What’s on your mind?”
    We shuffled forward and had no choice but to climb the stairs to the upper deck. We took seats in the rear corner where we could see each other’s faces and didn’t have to talk too loudly.
    Nathan was serious. “I need to find out some stuff.”
    â€œRi—­ight. What kind of stuff?”
    â€œI need to know about the big tourist developments down here—­and the criminal connections the developers had in the 1980s and ’90s.”
    That took me aback.
    â€œI mean, how can I get started? You can’t just walk into one of these places and book a lesson on the golf driving range—­though, believe me, I’ve thought about it—­and start firing off questions, can you? They’d march you straight