Murder on the Commons (A Davies & West Mystery Book 4)

by Will North

  “Are you the range warden?” Penwarren asked as stepped into the low shed.

  “Oh no, that would be Calvin. He’s down at the warden’s hut raising the targets; I’m just taking a break from the wet and watching the shoot.” Like many of the men out on the range, he wore an olive green waxed Barbour jacket, a thick polo-necked sweater against the chill, jeans damp and grass-stained at the knees and thighs, and a farmer’s mucky black Wellies. He glanced at Penwarren’s jacket and tie.

  “You a new member?”

  “Not yet. Just looking it over.”

  The Cornish are men of few words; Penwarren’s companion did not inquire further. He stood beside a high-powered telescope into which he peered after each shot.

  “Not a good day for the distance shooters. A bit too much breeze.”

  Penwarren smiled. Breeze! A stiff west wind off the moor thrashed the blades of grass and stumpy heather clumps that cloaked the ground. He’d never been to the Millpool Range before and was not dressed for its exposed position. Beyond the shelter he could see a series of terraced firing ridges climbing down the slope with marked intervals from one hundred to six hundred yards. Down range to the west, there was a high earthen bank in front of which bullseye targets popped up at irregular intervals. Penwarren recognized Randall Cuthbertson lying on his well-padded belly and shooting from the four-hundred yard embankment. There were five other hardy souls on the grass near him staring intently into their sights, waiting for the next target to appear.

  “What are they shooting?”

  The man looked at him briefly as if his visitor were daft, then caught on: “Oh! Caliber? Target shooting’s .22 rimfire. All except Mrs. Cuthbertson there; she’s practicing with a bolt action .243 Winchester, a Tikka T3.”

  Penwarren looked out over the range and saw his former sister-in-law high up at the six-hundred yard bank waiting for the closer and lower shooters to finish. When they did, she placed a small green plastic tarp on the wet grass and lay prone upon it at a slight angle from the direct line of sight. She bent her right leg at the knee for balance and her right elbow out to the side for stability. Her left hand cradled the forestock. Her left arm was nearly perpendicular to the ground. Randall and others used gun rests to steady their rifles. Beverly did not. She peered through her sights, became very still, shot from the shoulder, and immediately reloaded.

  “That lady’s amazing,” the man at the telescope mumbled. “Dead on. Just as always.”

  “She comes often?”

  “Oh, aye, her and her husband; old family from the other side of the moor, they are. Fine shooters both, although, if I’m honest, that wife of his has a brilliant eye no matter the distance. Doesn’t even use sights some days. Puts most of the gents to shame, she does, including her husband!” The fellow chuckled and pointed a forefinger to his temple: “He’s not as sharp as he once was, mind.”

  Penwarren had long known that his ex-in-laws hosted shooting parties on their estate but he’d no idea target shooting was one of their hobbies…if that was even the right term. Certainly, his ex-wife had never said, if she even knew.

  He decided not to talk to his ex-brother-in-law after all. Not here. Strategically, the situation was wrong. He asked his companion in the shelter not to mention he’d come by to watch. As he drove the Healey south, he heard his forensic pathologist’s voice the day before: It was a particularly accomplished or very lucky shot.

  On the way back, he detoured a couple of miles to The Crown in the tiny hamlet of Lanlivery. The inn—thick granite walls and lichen-crusted slate roof with a tiny garden out front—squatted in a shallow swale as if huddling against the weather. Dating from the twelfth century, the low-beamed pub was one of the oldest in Cornwall.

  He ducked through the old door and was still letting his eyes adjust to the soft interior lighting when a voice called out, “Artie! Where the hell have you been? Been pinin’ for you for years, I have!”

  He stepped up to the tiny bar. “Hello, Mary Ellen. How’re you keeping?”

  Mary Ellen Hendra, a shapely, nearly voluptuous dyed redhead of a certain age, had in fact been a school chum of Penwarren’s. They’d both grown up in families that had struggled to get by. After his grades earned him a bursary to attend Harrow, the private school near London, she’d given up on the gangly boy and married the son of the owner of the Crown. His alcoholic father promptly died in an auto accident leaving the inn to them. She’d been there ever since, upgrading their six bed and breakfast rooms to a high standard and insisting on having an accomplished chef to bring customers to their remote village. Mary Ellen had vision and ambition. She was only myopic when she’d chosen her husband, the titular landlord and, like his father, a drunk of epic proportions. Her husband, too, had been dead for some years now, and she’d never forgotten “Artie.”

  “We hear you’re divorced from that fancy girl of yours…”

  “Get away now, Mary Ellen: fancy?”

  “Well, mighty decorative is what I heard.”

  “That was some years ago.”

  “Alone ever since?” She planted her hands on her hips. “And here’s me, still waitin’ for my prince to come. You’ve never known what you’ve missed.”

  Penwarren shook his head and grinned. “You’re probably right, Mary Ellen.”

  She looked for a signal in his eyes but saw none. “Well then, what’ll you be ‘avin, me ‘ansome?’”

  He looked at the menu: braised pork belly on a bed of wholegrain mustard mashed potato with buttered leeks and an apple fritter; breast of chicken served on a chorizo risotto with a chili, lime and coriander dressing and a parmesan crisp; baked breast of Guinea fowl served on crushed herb potatoes, with a mushroom and onion sauce and fresh local root vegetables. He shook his head and made a note to return soon for dinner.

  “How about a cheese and chutney sandwich on granary bread and a half pint of Doom Bar, my dear lady?”

  “That’s it? Look at the height of you! How do you survive on so little? Have a pint. On me.”

  He smiled. “I’m on duty, Mary Ellen…”

  “Might loosen you up,” she leered.

  He paid, collected his half, and went to a small table beside a glowing and sparking coal fire. It was early afternoon and most of the lunch guests were finishing up. He realized he was late and that Mary Ellen, who still kept the old opening hours, was staying open just for him; she’d soon be prepping for her dinner crowd. But he’d needed a quiet place to think and this was perfect. He pulled a thin leather-covered notebook from his jacket pocket and began making notes. He remembered a snatch of something an American author—Faulkner, he thought—had written long ago: I never know what I think until I read what I have written. Penwarren didn’t either and he still did it in longhand. Painting the words on a line made them real.

  HE WAS STANDING at his desk later that afternoon when Morgan Davies waltzed into his office, slapped some papers on the desk before him, crossed her arms beneath her not inconsiderable breasts as if in triumph, and waited for praise.

  “Harold Lugg!” she announced.

  “Correct.”

  Davies wheeled on him: “Correct?!”

  Penwarren nodded, trying to keep a straight face: “Oleg’s NHS dental report got here first.”

  Davies took a breath and leaned in.

  “So, he had teeth? Brilliant! Is that all our Oleg had to say?”

  “Some of the teeth were replacements.”

  “Oh! And I wonder why? Could it be that they were knocked out during the course of his illustrious professional career?

  Penwarren turned and gestured to his small conference table.

  “Morgan. Have a seat.”

  Davies dropped into a blue upholstered chair and scowled. Morgan Davies was a fit woman, but also substantial: a bit under six feet, broad-shouldered and big-boned, her head topped with short, no-maintenance spiky platinum-dyed hair. She had the kind of presence lesser men would call intimidating. Penwarren loved t
his about her. He’d never known a better, more intuitive…or more difficult detective. She was barely manageable, forever breaching protocols. He’d insulated her repeatedly from the complaints and threats from his superiors in Exeter for the simple reason that she solved murders that seemed unsolvable and, he knew, had a soft and generous soul despite the apparently bulletproof carapace.

  One of the things he respected about Morgan was that she didn’t talk just to hear her own voice. It was an almost husky voice, although it could be silky in an interview with a difficult suspect. Her normal low rasp was like someone who’d smoked too much, which she hadn’t. Penwarren, in their earlier years working together, had thought it sexy. Morgan asked thoughtful questions; she ran ideas by her boss to test them. In MCIT meetings she would often think out loud and wait for questions from the team that could lead her to a fresh line of inquiry. He particularly liked the way she and Calum parried verbally, each one pushing the other, taking apart theories, their debates almost electric.

  His confidence in her was why he’d given her leave to look after Calum West after his surgery; they might fight like cats and dogs, those two, but there was real affection there. Possibly more. He was almost jealous.

  He folded his lanky frame into a chair opposite her. She stared daggers at him.

  “Talk to me.”

  Davies tried to calm down. She hated coming in second…especially to a dentist.

  “Your ‘mire man,’ Harold ‘The Hammer’ Lugg… that’s his professional moniker if you can stand it,” she began, “is a disgraced Liverpool-based cage wrestler, aka mixed martial arts fighter.”

  “Disgraced?”

  “Quite a reputation, has our boy—or rather, had.”

  Penwarren waited.

  Davies smiled. She was in charge again.

  “Heavyweight class: real champion contender and great showman, apparently, but lost more fights than he won.”

  “Because?”

  “Cheater. Lost on fouls.”

  “There are actual rules? What ruled him out?”

  “Oh, the usual: head butts, eye gouging, groin kicks, stomping on the throat of someone already down, that sort of thing.”

  Penwarren shook his head. “That sort of thing…”

  “And more. Apparently, he went crazy in the cage. Out of control.”

  “And that got him thrown out?”

  “Actually, no. The fans loved the spectacle. So did the organizers, of course; he brought in a lot of money—in ticket sales, yes, but especially in online betting because one never knew if he’d be disqualified in the end or not. No, it was drugs that got him sacked in the end: failed BAMMA’s drug tests too often. Then again, maybe that’s what made him crazy in the cage.”

  Now she had his attention.

  “And you learned all this…?”

  “From BAMMA’s office in London, which comes complete with a ‘communications director’ only too eager to distance himself from our Mr. Lugg.”

  “Performance enhancers?”

  “Our friend at BAMMA wouldn’t say. No surprise there. Liability issues, I’d guess. But he did let slip one small thing: said Lugg had ‘unsavory’ backers.”

  “I should think anyone involved in this sport would be unsavory, which raises a question.”

  “You mean did he have form? Aren’t you mister smarty-pants! He did. Multiple arrests. But minor: ‘anti-social behavior’ charges.”

  “Meaning what, pub brawls?”

  “Exactly: pubs, clubs, the lot. Did not play well with others.”

  “This was…”

  “In Liverpool. Apparently his home base.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Not until now. Shall I get on to Merseyside police?”

  Penwarren shook his head. “No, this one’s Terry’s. I’m pushing to see what she’s got.”

  Morgan smiled. “She’s got plenty, boss.”

  Penwarren nodded. “She’s had a fine teacher. I’ve already spoken to Liverpool; I’m sending her north tomorrow. But right now I want you doing domestic duties: get West up and running. We need him. I need both of you, and as soon as—understood?”

  To his surprise, Davies didn’t bristle. “Understood. I’m rather fond of that idiot, too. I’ll slap him into shape.”

  She rose to leave, then hesitated: “But I keep turning a question around in my head…”

  “I know: what the hell is a Liverpool cage wrestler doing dead in a mire in Cornwall?”

  Day Four

  Nine

  “KNOCK AND IT shall be opened!” Penwarren called. “But it’s already open, Adam, so no need to knock. Besides, everyone else just barges in.”

  Penwarren was at his conference table hunched over a laptop screen Thursday morning watching videos of cage wrestling fights, struggling to comprehend their viciousness, and failing. He was glad for the interruption.

  “You asked me to follow up on the vehicle registrations for the Cuthbertsons, sir.”

  “I did and you can drop the ‘sir.’ You’re part of this team, Adam. Have a seat.”

  “Thank you…boss.”

  “That’s better. So?”

  “So, they’ve got the usual working farmer’s Land Rover Defender, ten years old; a late model Audi Estate, the family car I reckon; and a Peugeot diesel hatchback. Terrific mileage, that one gets. Probably for local errands.”

  Penwarren remembered Adam Novak had worked at his father’s garage in St. Ives and knew his cars.

  “And that girl, Jan, she’s got a two-door BMW M3-Series registered in her name. Sporty ride.”

  “But…”

  “But no silver Range Rover. She said it was probably her parents’ car leaving when Terry and I turned into their drive but the timing was wrong, as I’ve said before; they already had to have been at that landowners’ meeting in St. Breward. It started at 8:00 pm.”

  Penwarren nodded, leaned back on the rear legs of his chair, and looked at the ceiling, as if seeking the explanation there. “So, she has a visitor, a visitor who left shortly after I called to say I was sending a team to interview her about the body. Why prevaricate about it?”

  “I wondered, too.”

  Penwarren looked at him. “Think it’s worth digging deeper?”

  “If I may. Maybe the car at least?”

  “All yours, Adam.”

  TERRY BATES PULLED off the M5 at Gloucester Services, topped up the petrol in her standard-duty Corsa Estate, and drove to the food pavilion to get something to eat. She’d left Cornwall just before dawn and on a good day it should have taken roughly five and a half hours from Bodmin to Liverpool, even less given the speed at which she typically drove, but there had been tailbacks around Bristol and she was behind schedule. She was also ravenous. She’d been on the lookout for the usual motorway “Little Chef” greasy café, but discovered here instead a vast modern food and gift emporium tucked beneath a long stone and earthen mound built to look as if it were a structure from the Iron Age, repurposed. Inside, there was a farm shop bursting with local meats, fish, produce, cheese, and baked goods and a large kitchen and café featuring cooked food of all kinds. Delighted by the surprise, she bought a bowl of steaming lamb stew, a crusty brown granary roll, and a pot of tea, and took a table by a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a pond and waterfall. She smiled: even though it was chilly, there were children dancing around the edges of the pond outside and pitching in small pebbles from the path. She wasn’t sure, personally, how she felt about children. Or motherhood.

  She was pleased Penwarren had given her the task of researching Harold Lugg’s Liverpool background, but she felt ill-prepared. All she had was Lugg’s fighting history, the whispers about his backers, and the name of a senior Merseyside detective chief finspector, Ralph Waggoner, who’d agreed to help. There had been no missing person report on Lugg and she’d yet to find the victim’s legal address in Liverpool, if that was even where he had lived.

  It was already midafternoo
n when she finally checked into the ibis Hotel overlooking the Albert Dock on Liverpool’s harbor. Waggoner had recommended it. She left her car in the hotel’s below ground car park and walked one long block north along The Strand to the Merseyside Police headquarters, an eight-story behemoth of a building built of red brick to fit in with all the nineteenth century maritime buildings and warehouses along the river. She badged her way through security and found DCI Waggoner waiting for her on the other side of the electric doors. He was stout chap, well under six feet, with a jovial smile and a shaved head. He had a habit of resting his folded hands atop his slightly protruding belly like a vicar.

  He shook her hand and bowed slightly. “Ach, but no one warned me I’d be visited by such a fine lass!”

  She smiled and slapped his shoulder lightly. “Oh, go on now, detective, we’ve work to do.” Petite, handsome, with a lush head of wavy ginger hair, Bates was used to admiring and other remarks, but took no notice. She’d learned that early, from Morgan.

  They stepped into a lift and Waggoner pressed the button for the sixth floor.

  The lift opened to a long corridor at the end of which, overlooking the harbor, was the large, open-plan office housing the district’s Special Branch, the criminal investigation division. Heads lifted from computer screens as Waggoner announced, “Please welcome Detective Sergeant Terry Bates from the Devon and Cornwall constabulary.”

  Someone wolf-whistled and a woman’s voice called out, “Shut it, Dave, ya’ pervy bastard!” The woman rose from her cubicle and marched up to Terry grinning, hand extended. “Detective Sergeant Gloria Stephens. Welcome.” She waved an arm behind her: “Ignore these brutes.”

  Stephens was short and thick-waisted with chin length silver hair. Thinking of Morgan, Terry wondered whether seniority and girth were inevitable partners. She hoped not.

  “What brings you way up here, then, love?”

  Waggoner interrupted, waving a pudgy hand for attention: “Gentlemen—such as you are—and ladies. Detective Bates is working on a particularly unpleasant murder investigation in Cornwall. The victim may be from our patch, name of Harold Lugg. Ring a bell, anyone?”