by Will North
Penwarren was by nature a “distance thinker,” always anticipating, always looking, reaching ahead. He’d been a Scout as a boy and had taken to heart the Scout’s Rule, laid down by Baden-Powell more than a century earlier: Be Prepared. But for what in this case, especially as he was the force behind this professionally and perhaps personally dangerous probe? He needed someone to talk to…or at. No one in the force. He picked up his mobile and punched a saved number. Beverly answered.
“Are you free?” he asked.
“Hah! I charge. And I’m expensive.”
“And I’m serious.”
“He’s having his afternoon lie-down. Tranquilizers. Why? Are you okay?”
“Yes, yes. This is a little embarrassing. I need the advice of someone I trust, but who doesn’t work for me. It’ll probably bore you.”
“You’ve never been able to bore me, much as you may have tried. Come. He’ll be down for a couple of hours.”
HE CUT THE Healey’s engine at the end of the drive and coasted into the forecourt at Poldue, so as not to waken Randall. Beverly was waiting at the door beneath the pillared portico. It was surmounted by a triangular pediment he recognized as influenced, like so many Georgian manor houses in England, by the Italian Renaissance architect, Andrea Palladio.
Elevated as she was four wide granite steps above the drive, he was nonetheless struck again by how tall she really was. She was wearing trainers and a close-fitting Lycra exercise outfit. When he reached her, she kissed him on both cheeks.
“I was doing yoga. I didn’t have time to change.”
“So that’s how you do it, then.”
“Do what?”
“Look so…um…fit.” He’d had another word in mind but refrained.
She made a face and turned to enter the house. “You mean, ‘for my age.’”
Reflexively, without thinking first, he gave her tight bum a friendly slap. “For any age, Bev.”
“Ooh,” she said. “You might have to do that again!”
He did not and they turned into the library, across the entry hall from the sitting room. There was a fire going in a deep hearth made of thick granite slabs that looked like mini-megaliths. They sat on antique armchairs padded with cushions embroidered with, he guessed, the ancient Cuthbertson Scottish crest: two lions with raised swords facing the prickly head of a thistle. At a small table between them, were two glasses and an open bottle of white wine in an ice bucket. She poured. They touched glasses.
“Now then, talk to me. The doctor is in.”
He sniffed and sipped the chilled wine. It was pale yellow with a touch of green to it, a bone-dry French Sancerre, he reckoned.
“The faceless victim Jan discovered was a cage wrestler in Liverpool—Mixed Martial Arts is the fancy term. Brutal ‘sport.’ We met with the CID up there at Merseyside and they hinted they thought he was throwing matches for the financial benefit of alleged members of the IRA. Beyond that, they had nothing. I came away suspicious. By means I can’t discuss, I have learned there is someone in their shop who has conducted coded communications with what’s called the ‘New IRA.’ We don’t yet know the substance of these communications, but they appear to be regular and may involve coordinating drugs trafficking to the UK. Lugg himself was expelled from the British Association of Mixed Martial Arts a couple of years ago for repeatedly failing the drugs tests. Cocaine, mostly. It hyped him up. We don’t know how or why he ended up way down here and in that mire.”
Beverly closed her eyes. He noticed a light sweep of pale blue shadow on her lids. It brought out the sapphire in her bright eyes. “Poor devil,” she whispered.
“Yes, well. But there may be another not-so-poor devil involved, the DCI in charge of Merseyside CID. He appears to be living way above his pay level.”
She smiled: “Married into money, like me?”
“Possibly. We’re trying to get access to his bank records.”
“Wait, can you do that? Do you have the authority to be snooping around up there?”
Penwarren shook his head.
“So, that’s the problem?”
“I have a murder to solve, Bev. I’ve even got the Irish Garda involved now. But I’m putting my entire team at risk.”
“And if this all goes pear-shaped?”
“At best, I’d get pushed into early retirement.”
“I like where this is heading!”
He blinked.
“And the rest of my team demoted, maybe even dismissed.”
Beverly leaned back into her chair and finished her glass of wine. She refilled. Penwarren had barely touched his.
“That’s quite a pickle you’ve got yourself in. You don’t know which way to jump.” She smiled. “It’s so unlike the decisive man I so admire.”
“I feel like a fisherman with lots of lines out, but no hooks.”
She thought for a moment. “I think you’re wrong…or maybe you’re going about it wrong. You’re running this investigation with the same precision and control you always do, with your team primed to act. But I think your way out of this dangerous spot may be to delegate.”
He frowned. “To whom, even if I wanted to?”
“Now you’re being stubborn. You’ve already started. You obviously have some intelligence people somewhere taking interest. And you’ve informed the Garda. Why not let them both carry on from here?”
“Terry’s already been to Cork to plant that seed.”
“Good. I suggest you sit back and let it germinate and grow.”
Penwarren finally took a long swallow of the wine. A little warmer now, it had the fragrance of ripe gooseberries. “Sitting back” had never been his forte, although his arthritic spine argued for a change. Maybe Bev was right, but it felt like capitulation. And yet, he had a team to protect.
She rose from her chair and kissed his forehead. “Be like the brilliant border collies herding our sheep. Guide, don’t lead.”
He rose and hugged her briefly, pulled away, and said, “Thank you, luv. I needed that. I’ve probably needed that for years. Slow learner, I guess.”
“The only thing slow about you, dear one, is your chronic inability to see respect and affection when it is right in front of you.”
Day Eighteen
Thirty-Six
“DAMMIT, I FEEL bloody redundant.”
Morgan was slumped in her chair in the incident room, stirring sugar into her morning coffee and staring at her computer screen. Which was blank.
“Me too,” Calum said. “Nineteen days and we have nothing solid. It’s driving me crazy.”
Morgan laughed. “That’s a short trip, luv.”
“So here we are, sitting on our arses, while Terry goes to Ireland and God only knows where young Adam is,” Morgan groused.
“They’re being trained.”
“Yeah, to replace us when we get the boot for this caper of Penwarren’s.”
Calum, of course, knew more about what the boss was up to than she did. “It’s risky. Delicate. I think he’s got it right.”
“I’ll take your word, though I don’t know why.”
Adam Novak burst through the open door. “Where’s Penwarren? He’s not in his office.”
“Having it off with some floozy, I hope,” Morgan answered with a wink. “Man spends too much time alone. What’s the rush?”
“We got the Range Rover. Or at least traffic did. Up on that minor east-west road that crosses the moor by the old aerodrome. Failure to signal a turn.”
“Damn few places to turn up there.”
“A few. She got lucky. She was just coming over a rise, when he turned south onto a single lane road.”
“She?”
“We do have them in the force, Morgan. But none, of course, as senior as you.”
“I think that was an insult. What’s the story?”
“Name’s O’Dare. Ronald. She reckons he’d been shopping in Wadebridge. Tescos shopping bags in the boot. She told him to be more careful.”
“Not even a caution? He must have been cute.”
“What he is, is Irish. Irish driver’s license.”
Calum turned from studying the diagram Penwarren had drawn on the white board.
“Registration?”
Novak looked at his notes.
“No, let me guess, Celtic Property Development.”
“Right the first time.”
“You don’t get many points for that one, Calum,” Morgan said. “What else, Adam?”
“Owns the Davidstow estate.”
Calum returned to his desk. “I remember. A year or so ago. There was some grumbling about him being an outsider. The manor is near Poldue.”
Morgan stood abruptly. “Foreigner….”
Calum shrugged. “Pardon?”
“Adam, you were with me when we talked to Bishop at the Old Inn at St. Breward. What was the last thing he said as he left…about who that Cuthbertson girl may have been seeing?”
“Furriner.”
“Exactly.”
She walked across the room and pulled her coat off a hook. It was sheepskin with a hood, not that she needed the bulk. But lately she’d been feeling the cold.
“Where are you going?” Calum said.
“We. Get off your buttocks. You got something else to do?”
He looked at his desk. It was barren as the moor but for the keyboard and the flat screen monitor, which was blank. He shrugged. “Guess not. Where are we going?”
“Time to have a little chat with that Mick. Bring your notebook.”
“But I’m ‘scene’.”
“I’ll try to make one.”
THE MAN WHO opened the massive and paint-chipped black oak door was so not her type: too pretty, too curly-headed, too fit, too young. She held out her warrant card.
“Detective Inspector Davies, sir. And this is Detective Sergeant West. Might we come in and have a word?”
O’ Dare stepped back, eyes widening. “All this for not signaling? Don’t you people have more important matters to attend to?” His lilt was charming but his eyes were cold. She barged through the gap he’d left in the broad entry. Calum followed. O’Dare stood at the open door for a moment and finally closed it.
She looked around and was surprised by the condition of the hall. Dirty. Linear tears in the quaint floral wallpaper, as if a careless removals company had banged through.
“This place could use some spiffing.”
O’ Dare raised both hands in a gesture of helplessness. “No money left after buying the place.”
“Why’d you take it on?”
He grinned. “Always wanted to be landed gentry, too costly back home. Cheaper here. And anyway, I’m a developer. I’ll put it to rights in time.”
“Oh, that’s right, Celtic Property Development.”
For a moment, his eyes darkened, but he recovered quickly.
She smiled. “Records.” She gestured to the doors off the empty hall, all closed. “May we sit somewhere?”
He nodded, opened a door to the right of the hall, and with nearly a bow, swept them into a large, and largely empty, sitting room so frigid it seemed colder than the air outside. And musty with damp. A few odd pieces of wood furniture, a dresser with sagging shelves, a worn settee, covered in something vaguely blue but faded, a ladder backed pine chair. No fire in the granite hearth. He took the chair. Dust rose as they sank into the ancient settee. Calum, as if his arse were in a hole, found his knees were at the level of his chin. Morgan resettled, perching on the edge, where she could feel the underlying wood frame.
She watched O’Dare’s handsome, placid face. I wouldn’t trust you with my dog, she thought.
“As you may know,” she said, “a man was found dead not far from here, in Rough Tor Mire.”
He nodded. “So I heard. A couple of weeks ago, was it? Any progress, Detective?”
“Working on it.”
“Good, good. But what’s this have to do with me?”
“Oh, just routine enquiries you know. We’re canvassing the neighborhood.”
“Not many people in this neighborhood.”
“True. The body was on Bodmin Commons land held by the Poldue Estate. Do you know the Cuthbertsons?”
“They’re my neighbors.”
“Is that a yes?”
“I have not had the pleasure of meeting them. I have heard that the old man resents the fact that I bought Davidstow, instead of inheriting from a long line. And that I am Irish, not old Cornwall.”
“I can see that might be awkward…but you do know their daughter, Jan, yes?”
“I have met her.”
“So have I. Lovely girl. Perhaps a bit headstrong.”
O’Dare shrugged. “I wouldn’t know.”
“But you visited her recently, yes?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She turned to Calum. He flipped open his black police notebook and pretended to peer at notes that were not there. He got it—he was to be the dumb cop, Morgan’s functionary. He cleared his throat.
“On the evening that she discovered the body in the mire below Rough Tor, Ms. Cuthbertson called 999. Dispatch forwarded her message to local headquarters at the Bodmin Hub. As is the practice, two officers were sent to interview the young lady.” He paused and squinted at the blank page. “A Detective Sergeant Terry Bates.” Another squint. “And a Detective Constable called…um…Novak. Adam.” He looked up. O’Dare was impassive.
“It was too late, apparently, to visit the site,” Calum continued. “Dark by then. But as they were about to turn into the drive to Poldue, a car exited the drive and sped north. They report it was a late model silver Range Rover.” He closed his notebook.
“Just like the Rover parked outside in—what is that, an old tractor shed?” Morgan said.
O’Dare leaned back waved a careless hand. “No shortage of Rovers here in Cornwall.”
“So, you’re saying that, given her grisly discovery, your closest neighbor did not call or text you for support?”
“She has parents.”
Calum looked at his notebook again. “They were at a moorland Landowners’ Association meeting in St. Breward.”
“You’re a landowner,” Morgan said. “Did you attend?
He laughed and shook his head. The black curls danced and she noticed he was graying. Not as young as he looked after all.
“Old man Cuthbertson is the association’s chairman. Do you think I’d be invited?”
Morgan nodded and smiled. “I take your point.”
She rose. Calum struggled out of his hole.
“Thank you for your help, Mr. O’Dare. Sorry for the imposition.”
In the barren hall, as the great front door creaked open, she turned. “She never called you?”
“How could she? She doesn’t know my number.”
“Right. Got it.” She gave a sort of salute. He watched them cross the forecourt.
She fished the keys for the Corsa Estate from her coat pocket, tossed them to Calum, and flung herself into the passenger seat on the left.
“I don’t believe a word of it. Phone records. Cell tower triangulation. Stop at the end of the drive and call it in.”
He did so, and when he’d rung off he put a warm hand on her thigh and squeezed gently. “You were just right in there. Was I dumb enough?”
She smiled. “You were perfect.”
MOMENTS AFTER THEY returned to the incident room, Morgan heard her mobile ring. She’d left it in her coat, which she’d already hung. She fished it out and the buzzing intensified. It was Penwarren.
“Hi,” she answered.
“My office. Now. Both of you.” The line went dead.
She frowned at the phone. “Calum. The boss wants us.”
They found him already seated at his conference table. His face was dark and the fingers of his right hand drummed the table top.
“Sit.”
They looked at each other and did as ord
ered. He looked back and forth at the two of them.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” he said through nearly clenched teeth. It was shocking. They’d seldom seen him so obviously angry. “Have you both taken leave of your senses?!”
Again, they looked at each other, blinking. Then back to Penwarren.
“Sir?” Morgan ventured.
“The Comms people texted me. Who gave you leave to interview O’Dare? Or to order a cell tower analysis? Jesus, all the man did was turn without signaling! And you clods pay him a surprise visit? Have you both gone soft in the head?”
“But—” Morgan began.
He held up his hand to stop her and glared, almost daring her to continue. She did not. She looked again at Calum. He seemed paralyzed.
“All we know about this O’Dare fellow is that he is a neighbor of the Cuthbertsons. He doesn’t even qualify yet as a person of interest. And the fact that Davidstow’s owner of record is apparently that Irish development company means nothing at this point. I did not give you orders to see him—hell, I didn’t even know you were doing it! Any defense lawyer with half a brain will use that unauthorized interview to thwart the Crown Prosecution Service, should this man ever be charged with a crime. I cannot believe the stupidity.”
Penwarren stood abruptly and paced in circles around the small table. “I have half a mind to suspend both of you and leave this investigation to our younger team members. They, at least, seem to have some knowledge of procedure and, given your performance today, more sense. Get a report into the system.”
He stopped and turned to the windows. “I have nothing more to say. Go.”
His office phone chirped. He looked at it but did not answer. After a few moments the yellow message light blinked. He lifted the receiver, hit the message button, and listened.
Again the disguised, slow, low voice. He couldn’t tell if it belonged to his previous anonymous lady caller.
“The Garda have been in touch.”