by Will North
“Let’s say you’re right, Terry. But if Liverpool suspected that was going on and that Lugg was a part of it, why did they stonewall us?”
Terry smiled, looked at Penwarren, and waited for the penny to drop.
“Good Lord. You think they’re involved… Waggoner?”
She shrugged. “It would explain a lot, boss.”
Penwarren walked to his windows. He said nothing for nearly a minute, staring at the soft landscape beyond, once so green and now turning sere.
“Yes, it might, Terry. Thank you. I have someone looking into Liverpool, but this has helped a lot. I will keep you posted.”
Penwarren didn’t turn. She stood and slipped out the door.
“I HAVE A proposition for you, lass,” O’Dare said as he rolled away from the naked woman splayed across his rumpled bed.
“What, marriage Ronnie?! Keep pleasing me like this and the answer is Yes!” Jan was still trying to catch her breath.
O’Dare chuckled. “How very old fashioned. Besides, your parents would have coronaries. But it may be that I have use for you.”
“Beyond this bed?”
He smiled. He had a fire burning in the master bedroom hearth and the big room was nearly tropical, with a scent of something earthier. She was vamping amongst the pillows. He was kneeling between her long legs.
He shook his head; the silvering black curls danced across his damp forehead. “No, it’s a business proposition. How would you like to make a tidy income, but very privately?”
“What, as your whore?” She tried to pull him down on her, but he resisted.
“Stop it. I’m serious.”
“What then?”
“It could be a titch dangerous…”
“Oooh!” She was wiggling. He’d got her aroused again.
“I have a little business here, part of a somewhat larger enterprise. I need an assistant. I think you’d be perfect.”
She cocked an eyebrow and crossed her arms over her still-flushed breasts. “And what would this assistant do?”
“Deliver products to clients here and there around Cornwall.”
“What kind of products?”
“Illegal ones. But very profitable.”
Jan laughed. “Don’t tell me you’re smuggling brandy from France into Cornish coves, like in the old days!”
“No. Something much more valuable.”
“Drugs?”
He nodded.
“Is that how you came to buy this estate?”
He nodded again but said nothing more.
“Drugs from where?”
“I can’t say. Not yet, anyway. Here’s my proposal. You are a classy lady. No one would ever suspect you of being involved in such an enterprise. The work would involve only a few short drives and deliveries around the county, at least twice every month. That’s all. Interested?”
She dropped back onto the pillows and licked her lips. “What’s my reward?”
He slid his pelvis toward her face. He was still hard. She smiled and opened her mouth, but he pulled away.
“Much more than that, my love. Much more.”
She grinned. “When do I start?”
“Are you available immediately?”
“For you, I am always available.”
“Good. I will be away tomorrow. Meet me here early Tuesday morning.”
Day Fifteen
Thirty-Two
CALUM WAS PADDING around the kitchen in his robe and slippers getting breakfast ready for his girls, when he heard the phone ring. He reached into the robe’s pocket, pulled out his mobile, punched the button to answer, but the ringing continued and he realized it was his new disposable one. He jogged into the sitting room, found it vibrating on the table by the couch as if it were dancing, and grabbed it.
“Hallo?!”
“Wake you up, did I old man?”
It was Brian Mathison, in London.
“A bit early for you to be in the office this morning, Brian! I am honored.”
“Don’t be. I’m having a double tall latte and a fat rascal at Caffe Nero on Bridge Street. Think of it, Calum, an Italian latte and a sugar crusted, fruit studded scone from Yorkshire. Bless the European Union and to hell with Brexit! Plus, I have a nice view of Westminster and it is a good, relatively noisy spot to place a private call…or to spy.”
Calum couldn’t help laughing. This was vintage Mathison. He’d always dreamt of being in MI6. He was a brilliant investigator, but apparently not spy fodder, and he never made the cut. The Met was the beneficiary.
Calum walked back to the kitchen. The girls were not down yet, but Morgan was there, wrapped in a partly askew and revealing white terry cloth robe, making tea. She looked up, saw he was on the mobile, and said nothing, gesturing to two mugs. He nodded and mouthed yes, thank you, then turned back to the sitting room thinking, happily, about how domestic they seemed to have become so quickly. Their one night together notwithstanding, they still slept separately. And though the girls seemed to adore her, Morgan didn’t think they were ready for a “new mum.”
Calum slumped into his accustomed chair. He was still not as strong as he longed to be.
“I am grateful to you, Brian. Do you and your secret co-conspirators have anything for me on Liverpool?”
“That would be a maybe.”
Morgan brought his tea, looked at him, and returned to the kitchen. Calum lifted his cup. It burnt his lips.
“Would you care to elucidate, Brian?” he said finally.
“You buying my next latte?”
“If you have something useful, I’ll buy the whole bloody café.”
“Your fortune is probably safe. I don’t know if what we have found is useful, though it is somewhat intriguing.”
“I’m listening.”
“Liverpool has long been a hotbed for drugs traffic, right? It’s a major port after all. But my colleagues tell me that drugs arrests there are down, though I doubt traffic is. It’s almost as if the force there either don’t much care or have given up. Oh, sure, there are some arrests to keep the numbers at least nominally acceptable, but my people have begun to wonder if they aren’t just for show.”
West thought for a moment. “Have there been any formal inquiries?”
“None. At least not yet.”
“You’re right, this isn’t very useful, Brian.”
“Ah, but we’re not done yet. Our lads have intercepted some ambiguous, but nonetheless troubling transmissions involving someone on the staff at Liverpool HQ, coded communications between these people and suspected leaders of the New IRA in Cork. The code is sophisticated and we haven’t broken it yet, but the question is, why any communication at all?”
West sipped more tea, carefully. The girls had come down and were chatting with Morgan while they ate, Morgan telling them to whisper. Beyond the sitting room window, he could see fog creeping landwards from the Atlantic cliffs. Fog in the morning meant sun by noon. Usually.
“And the names of these Liverpool staff members?”
Mathison laughed. “You know I couldn’t reveal that, Calum, even if they’d told me…which they didn’t.”
“No, I didn’t think so.”
“But if you have your DCI call me, perhaps I can push the request upstairs.”
“Outranked again.”
“Calum, no one outranks you—at least not in the field. You’re the best SOCO manager I’ve ever known or heard of. Brilliant. Relentless.”
“But I can’t sort out this one, Brian.”
“Yeah. You explained it to me on our last call. Diabolical that scene is. But I have faith in you.”
“Well, that’s one of us. Brian, I’m grateful for your help. I’ll have DCI Penwarren get in touch.”
“Penwarren is it? Isn’t he ex-Met? Up and coming, he was, if memory serves, but then he left London for that god-forsaken county of yours. They still luring ships onto the rocks and looting them down there in Cornwall?”
“Not recently
. Look, old friend, I need to see my daughters before they leave for school. I hope we can push this a few steps further. We have a murder to solve down here in this ‘god-forsaken county.’”
“I’ll do what I can, Calum. Count on it.”
They rang off and Calum joined Morgan in the kitchen. The girls had finished and were upstairs dressing.
“We need to talk to the boss this morning, luv,” he said to her.
She nodded and turned back to the cooker. “Eggs, bacon, and toast?”
Calum gave her round butt a love pat. “I love it when you talk dirty,” he said.
THE FOG DIDN’T burn off as Calum had expected. Instead, it had lowered and thickened and now covered much of southwestern Cornwall in a damp duvet of gray. Standing at his desk, Penwarren couldn’t even see the valley below. He knew the sheep would be there grazing somewhere in the miasma and he thought what a relief it might be to worry only about the little tuft of grass immediately beneath your nose. He hadn’t slept well.
He walked down the hall to the incident room. His MCIT stalwarts were there: Morgan and Calum, Terry and Adam.
“Calum,” he said, taking his seat at the table, “you have the lead on this one. Fill us in.”
West cleared his throat. “First, I just want to say that I am grateful to one of my colleagues at SO15 for doing a bit of unapproved digging. He didn’t find a lot—not yet, anyway—but what he found is at least suggestive.”
“Have we put him, if it is a him, in danger?” Penwarren asked.
“I don’t think so, boss. As you suggested, I used a disposable mobile that can’t be traced.”
“Unless someone is smart enough to use cell phone towers to triangulate your location,” Penwarren said.
“Bugger, I hadn’t thought of that.”
“I doubt that will happen. Carry on.”
Calum reported.
Penwarren looked at the ceiling for a few moments when he was done.
“Right. Give me your friend’s contact information. I’ll make the request and we’ll see if we can get that Liverpool name. I have my doubts.
“Meanwhile, Terry, reconnect with Roger Dunleavy at the Special Detective Unit in Cork. Tell him that our security forces may have information on communication between the New IRA there in his southern district and someone at Liverpool. Turn on the charm.”
He rose and paced. “Terry’s done some digging and discovered that this so-called New IRA support themselves through drugs trafficking, among other things. For the sake of argument,” he said as if to the room, or perhaps to himself, “let’s say drugs are indeed being imported from southern Ireland to the UK. How? Where? And why has it remained undiscovered? Ports of entry are pretty rigorously monitored. Between airport security and the Coast Guard—they each brief us every month up in Exeter—I haven’t heard anything about regular, or even irregular, drugs traffic as a major concern lately.”
“But no shortage of drugs arrests—St. Austell, Redruth, Penzance, Newquay…” Adam said.
“Users and street dealers,” Penwarren snapped. “Bit players.”
He walked back to the white board, picked up the marker, and stared at his chart. “So where do we put the New IRA up here?”
Morgan got up and stood beside him. After a few moments, she took the marker from him and wrote IRA on the line between “Lugg” and “Liverpool.”
From the table, Calum said, “Wait. I think it should be along that dotted line between ‘Liverpool’ and ‘Bodmin.’”
Morgan turned and made a face. “Ever since you’ve got better, you’ve been argumentative.”
West grinned. “Nothing new there, then, eh? Look, Bodmin’s where we found the poor sod and we heard his fights had some kind of connection with the IRA and Liverpool knew about it.”
“Or so they claim. Any other suggestions?” Penwarren asked.
Terry shook her head. “Don’t know enough yet.”
“Why not both places?” Adam said. “My dad fixed cars, yeah? The cars were local, mostly. Parts came from all over the country and the world. It’s called a supply chain. Maybe Lugg was part of one, a local part.”
“Lugg wasn’t local,” Terry said.
“Perhaps, though, he was? That old lady you talked to in Liverpool, Mrs. Thompson was it? She said he’d moved away one day maybe a year ago. No forwarding address. Maybe he needed to go to ground.”
“Why here?” she asked.
Penwarren laughed. “Long way from anywhere. He doesn’t seem to have had a car. This is the end of the rail line. That’s why we have so many runaways and addicts sleeping rough.”
“Hah!” Morgan said. “That’s our boy Lugg: runaway and druggie. But was he sleeping rough, or bunking with a friend? I’ve got a fight photo of him coming from BAMMA so we can circulate it to the media for leads. Let’s face it, the guy was hard to miss. Someone will have seen him if he ever got out and about. We also can give it to the uniforms and have them doorstep all the pubs around the moor.”
Penwarren sighed. “Probably should have done that days ago. I just didn’t want the publicity, given what little we have. But yes, Morgan, do it. No doubt I shall hear from the ever-odious Lance Macleod as soon as you do. I’ll have to give his newspaper something to appease him.”
Morgan laughed. “Just make sure it’s wrong. I despise that ferret.”
Penwarren was about to adjourn the meeting but Adam piped up. “If we’re going wider now, boss, what about having the traffic lads keep an eye out for a silver Range Rover and have them pull over any of them on a supposed traffic violation—over the limit, however little, turn signal out. That sort of thing. Maybe we can find the driver finally?”
“I’ll see if that can be arranged. Of course, this will bring Crawley down on us, but I can give him enough on the possible drugs connection without mentioning Liverpool. Liverpool must be unmentioned as yet—by any of us. Understood?”
Nods all around.
“Right, then. Let’s go. Thank you, all.”
PENWARREN HAD JUST reached his office down the hall when the mobile in his jacket pocket vibrated. He recognized the number.
“Bev?”
“He’s done a runner again, Artie. I was bathing and he took his favorite horse.”
Penwarren quashed the image of long, lithe Beverly bathing.
“I didn’t hear anything. I don’t know where he is. And Jan’s gone off somewhere in her car.”
Penwarren’s mind raced. He couldn’t call out a search team for something so apparently minor. Missing persons had low priority, especially since the latest round of budget cuts and a hiring freeze.
“You have an ATV, as I recall. Can you drive it?”
“Of course I can!”
“I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to suggest otherwise.”
“Apology accepted.”
“Go for a ride. I know you don’t know which direction, but you can see forever on that barren moor and you’ll be faster than any horse. Go high on the Rough Tor slope and look for him and the horse. How long has he been gone?”
“I don’t know Artie.” He could hear the panic in her voice. “A half hour? Maybe more? He’s become sneaky.”
“Even if he knows where he’s going, which is questionable given his condition, he won’t have got far on horseback. You can do this. If you find nothing, call me and I’ll come myself, for whatever use that would be.”
There was a pause. Then, “Thank you, my darling man. I’m on my way.” She rang off.
“My darling man” was what Penwarren heard.
An hour later his mobile buzzed again. Outside, the late autumn sunset was fading to peach out over the Atlantic.
“I have him,” Beverly said quietly. “He was on the high ridge to our north, overlooking Davidstow Manor. I don’t know why and he only mumbled nonsense when I asked. But he came back, docile as a child. I didn’t even need to lead his horse; the beast knew its way home and seemed eager to get there. Randall’s resting now.
”
He rang off. Davidstow Manor.
Day Sixteen
Thirty-Three
TUESDAY AFTERNOON, JAN Cuthbertson walked into the Sportsman’s Arms on the corner of Bolitho and Madron roads, just over the A30 from the crime plagued Treneer Council Housing Estate on the western edge of central Penzance. She’d parked her BMW two blocks away. And she hadn’t adopted O’Dare’s “classy lady” look. Instead, she was dressed in full Goth regalia: stained black jeans torn at the knees, heavy dominatrix black leather boots with steel trim, pilled and saggy black wool jumper too big for her, one shoulder strap of a black mesh tee shirt showing, no apparent bra, hair in disarray, purple-black lipstick, matching nails, blackened eyebrows and eye shadow, fake lashes, big hoop earrings, most of it from charity shops in Bodmin—British Heart Federation, Hospice Care Foundation—bought the afternoon before.
It had just gone 1:00. The pub, an odd merger of an old granite four-square house from the 1800s, had a newer, almost art deco addition facing Madron Road with rounded whitewashed walls and red window and door trim. Inside, as her eyes adjusted, there were a handful of patrons finishing somewhat dismal-looking lunches—bacon and cheddar baps, hamburgers with chips, pizza. She glanced at the dinner menu while waiting at the bar to order, and it was far more tempting. New and ambitious owners, she guessed. She wished them well. Mostly, this afternoon, there were drinkers, middle aged and older, regulars who looked, now pub hours had been extended, like they were settling in for the afternoon, like they were a part of the interior decor. Penzance was her last delivery and pickup.
After a short but thorough early morning briefing from O’Dare and a list of GPS locations, she’d already made deliveries and pick-ups in this part of western Cornwall’s largely industrial and working-class urban garden spots: Newquay, St. Austell, Camborne, Redruth. She had a Tesco’s supermarket carrier bag over her left shoulder, her tell-tale to her contacts. The supermarket chain had replaced its white single-use plastic bags after the ban and the new fabric one was emblazoned with the chain’s name and the logo “Celebrating 100 Years.” She’d had one full bag for every stop on her route, the opening of each covered by a roll of Tesco’s brand paper kitchen towels. There was a red ink slash on the handles. Another signal.