Too Clever by Half

by Will North

  He had been brooding about Dicky Townsend since their meeting at The Old Ship. He punched a number into his mobile.

  “Let’s put a watch on Townsend, eh?” he said when the call connected. “Lad’s up to something. I can smell it. Some farmer down Cornwall way’s found some ancient relics he doesn’t want the Crown to see. Looking for a quick bob, he is, apparently.

  “No, not Townsend, Max, the bloody farmer! Then again who knows, eh? Maybe our Dicky’s looking for a quick killing, too. Came up here for a chin wag, he did, then buggered off quick. Maybe he’s thinking of branching out on his own. We want to disabuse him of that notion, understand? Yeah, I knew you would. Loyal soldier you are, my friend. There are rewards for loyalty…”

  IT WAS LATE that same Friday afternoon, as she was just brewing a cuppa, when the phone chirped in Patricia Boden’s cramped cubicle in the bowels of the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro, Cornwall's county seat.

  “Miss Boden, is it?” a voice said when she answered.

  “Ms.”

  “My mistake. Bonnie Egerton, here: Metropolitan Police Art and Antiquities Unit.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “You are the British Museum’s Finds Liaison Officer for Cornwall, am I correct?”

  “I am, though there’s not much call for it down here.”

  “Well, I might have a job for you now.”

  “Oh yes?” Patricia said again.

  A few moments after she’d rung off with Scotland Yard, Boden called the Cornwall Coroner’s office in Barrack Lane across town. She’d considered first ringing her museum director, Hilary Gracefield, but decided to take this inquiry upon herself. Patricia Boden was a slender woman, a little taller than average, and she had her shoulder length hair streaked in brown and blond to disguise the emerging grey. Though divorced and edging into middle age, her crystal blue eyes flashed with intelligence and enthusiasm. Her professional skills were underutilized at the museum, but the job was what was available for a single woman in Truro with an archaeology degree, and she was grateful for the post. She also curated their Bronze and Iron Age collection. A treasure finds case was a rare excitement, the first, in fact, during her entire tenure.

  “This is Patricia Boden, the Finds Liaison Officer for the British Museum at the RCM,” she said to the Coroner’s receptionist. “I need to speak to the coroner’s officer who investigates claims under the Treasure Act.”

  The woman at the other end of the line laughed. “We haven’t had a coroner’s officer for at least two years, luv. Budget cuts.”

  “Then, whom?”

  “Have to talk to the police, you will, I reckon, dearie.”

  “Where?”

  “Haven’t a clue; not much call for such things, you see. Not so long as I’ve been here and that’s been donkey’s ears.”

  Boden looked at the phone in her hand. She hadn’t heard Cockney rhyming slang in, well, donkey’s ears…

  When they learned that the finder lived on the Lizard, Truro police bounced her to Falmouth. A young receptionist put her on hold and, after a wait long enough for Boden to rewrite her will, finally returned.

  “I’m told we can assign a constable to assist you, Ms.…”

  “Boden.”

  “Yes, of course. Ms. Boden. He’s new. Name’s Adam Novak.” She lowered her voice. “And a handsome devil he is, I might add, Miss.”

  “That’s Ms.”

  “Whatever, girl.”

  “When?”

  “This Sunday, the fifteenth. No rest for the wicked, eh? He’ll meet you here at the Falmouth nick. Technically, the station’s not open at the weekend. But just press the intercom button at the front door. Eleven?”

  “Yes, I can make that. We’ll be going to the Lizard.”

  “Ah, lovely it is down there. Nice outing. Lucky you, twice!”

  Boden made a face and ended the call. The station was closed on Sunday; did crime take the weekend off?

  Thirteen

  “HE HAD FORM, our floater did,” Terry Bates said to Morgan Davies. It was Monday morning, twenty-first May, and they were at the Bodmin Operational Hub, a south-facing steel and glass, three-story building so light-filled it made Davies wish she carried sunglasses. Compared to her cramped old nick in Penzance, Bodmin was like working in a tanning salon.

  “Did he, now?” They were in the CID offices on the second level, Davies hunched before a computer screen. Normally, with a murder, the office would be abuzz. But they still had little to go on in the Hansen case, and it was driving the chronically impatient Davies quietly mad. DCI Penwarren wasn’t pleased, either.

  “How is it that I end up in front of a computer screen and you get to do all the investigating?” Davies sniped. “What’s right about that?! But do go on, constable…”

  “Detective constable, ma’am.”

  Davies rolled her eyes.

  Bates grinned. “There’s not much, to be honest: Suspicion of trafficking in pornographic videos, is what we have, mostly.”

  “Not kiddie porn, again!” Davies snapped. It was an echo of her last big case before she left Penzance, a case in which Bates had nearly been killed.

  “Nah, just the usual garbage, near as I can tell, and a few years back, as well.”

  “Enlighten me: what exactly is the ‘usual garbage’?”

  “Oh, naughty videos, some professional, some amateur. Amateur sells best, is what I hear. Go figure. But, you know, the mail order porn video business collapsed because of the Internet.”

  “And I would know all this because…?”

  Bates ignored the question. “Reading between the lines, I reckon he was ratted out during a nasty divorce. Lost his two kids, he did. Wife used his porn business to get sole custody.”

  Davies looked at the computer printout Bates had handed her. “Possible minor drug dealing, too, this says. What’s that supposed to mean: possible? Was there or wasn’t there? And what’s minor? Who filed this bloody report?”

  “DC name of Barton. Falmouth nick. Retired.”

  “Never heard of him. No wonder he didn’t rise in the force.”

  “She, actually: a Shirley Barton.”

  Davies was even more disgusted. She was about to begin ranting about female detectives needing to be sharper than their much more numerous male counterparts, but Bates interrupted her thoughts.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Will you please stop that ‘ma’am’ crap?”

  “Morgan, then.”

  “What’s your take on Charlotte Johns, Terry?”

  Bates considered a moment. “Stiff. Almost brittle. What was her reaction at the mortuary? You were alone with her at the unveiling.”

  “Same. Of course when the police haul you up to a mortuary you certainly have a hunch what’s coming next. Maybe she just prepared herself.”

  “Maybe. But there’s the other thing I was about to mention...”

  Davies lifted an eyebrow.

  “She’s still not said a word about not actually living at the farm. She has her own place. Little bungalow a couple of miles away. I checked the county tax records.”

  Davies nodded, once again impressed. Then, thinking aloud, she said, “Look, maybe he was everything to her. Maybe pretending to have been his life partner is all she has left, you know? Maybe she’s clinging to that.”

  “Yeah, I could understand that,” Bates said.

  Davies wondered why. Instead, she said, “All right: first thing is track down this Shirley, our retired DC. What kind of antique name is that, anyway? Shirley? Sounds pre-War, for God’s sake. Find out what she knew. Next, see if there’s a HOLMES II file on Hansen, though given this form is old I doubt it.

  HOLMES was the acronym for the national Home Office Large Major Evidence System—a name idiotically cobbled together, as far as Morgan was concerned, to match the name of the fictional detective, like this was something on the telly. It was the system by which all cases were now tracked and all evidence cross-referenced. HOLMES II wa
s its latest iteration. Much as the name annoyed her, the system was invaluable.

  Twenty minutes later, Bates was back. Davies looked up from the computer screen and stretched her back.

  “So?”

  “So, Shirley Barton didn’t just retire, she died. Breast cancer. Died six months after she left the force. She was only forty-two.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  Bates wasn’t entirely sure whether Davies’s reaction was about the dead woman or the dead end.

  “Also,” Bates continued, “there’s no HOLMES II file on Hansen.”

  Davies sighed. “Right then, start interviewing the people Johns listed as members of her Druid…what did she call it?”

  “Grove.”

  “Grove.” She ran a hand through her spiky hair. “Jesus wept,” she mumbled, shaking her head.

  “Actually, Morgan, one meaning of the word Druid, is ‘oak knower.’”

  “Of course it is! How silly I didn’t know!” Davies said, raising her hands in disbelief.

  Bates turned to go.

  “One other thing,” Davies barked: “Get some professional-looking suits.” Bates was wearing an ankle-length linen skirt, sandals, and a floral blouse. “You’re a plainclothes detective now, yes, but this ain’t a holiday at the beach.”

  Bates looked down at her outfit and then squared her shoulders. “On it, ma’am…uh, Morgan. And thank you.”

  Fourteen

  PATRICIA BODEN GRIPPED the sides of her seat as PC Adam Novak wrestled his police car, a white Ford Escort plastered with the iridescent yellow and blue checkerboard side panels emblematic of the force, through the twisting single lane roads on the Lizard Peninsula. He was, she realized, the kind of confident driver who seldom needed to use his brakes. He anticipated every twist and turn and downshifted and upshifted constantly, letting the transmission do the work as they shot along the stone wall-lined lanes and edged around utterly blind, ninety-degree turns at field corners.

  Patricia wished she were younger. The receptionist had been right: Novak was dishy: eyes dark as molasses; curly, nearly black hair cut close to his sculptured scull; skin already beginning to tan in the gradually intensifying spring sun. Late twenties, maybe; eastern European heritage, probably, with that name and those cheek bones. Trim in his constable’s uniform, too. But he was all business—almost as if he could not permit himself to chat with his passenger. Or was he just shy? She watched and wondered.

  They had rocketed down the A394, past fields mostly given over to grazing sheep, turned south just before Helston, and now were weaving their way through the Helford River valley toward Manaccan and the farm she’d identified as belonging to Robert Tregareth.

  Tregareth. That was all she’d got from Scotland Yard, that and the probability he lived in the Southwest. But to her great surprise, her data search revealed there was only one active farmer with that name in the region and he was on the Lizard.

  They came upon a tractor pulling a furrow cutter in the lane and swung wide at a passing place to overtake it. A few hundred yards later, the tractor followed them right into a concrete yard between a lovely old cottage and a barn.

  The tractor driver pulled in behind them, leaped from his seat, and stalked toward them as they stepped out of the Ford.

  “What the hell are you doing on my farm and where in bloody hell did you learn how to drive?” Bobby Tregareth demanded.

  Novak dipped his head and touched the brim of his chequer-brimmed peaked PC’s cap.

  “You have my apologies, sir; I am not accustomed to your country lanes. You are in the right; I was in the wrong.” He looked up and grinned. “Perhaps we should issue me a citation for reckless driving. You could sign it.”

  Bobby stared for a moment and then laughed. He nodded to Patricia. “Pardon my outburst, ma’am. Just startled, I was, that’s all. Tractor’s so loud I can’t hear anyone overtaking.”

  Patricia said, “You are Robert Tregareth?”

  Bobby looked around as if someone else were being addressed.

  “I am, yes. What’s this about?” he said turning to the uniformed constable.

  “I have information,” Boden said, redirecting Bobby’s attention, “that you recently reported to an auction house that you’d unearthed some ancient relics while working on your farm, items which likely would be covered by the Treasure Act of 1996. This information comes to me from the British Museum. Such a find must be reported to the county coroner’s office and cannot be sold privately. I am the county’s Finds Liaison Officer.”

  Bobby stood splay-legged, pulled off his cap, and scratched his head.

  “Haven’t a clue what you’re on about,” he said.

  “Are you saying you did not unearth a trove of Roman era relics last month and contact the London auction house, Bonham’s, in an effort to sell them?”

  Bobby tilted his head to one side as if by this action his comprehension might increase.

  “Who’s Bonham’s? Look, would you like tea? I’m parched.”

  Without waiting for a response, Bobby plodded to the back door of his cottage and the two followed.

  “Jo? Joey?”

  There was no response, and when he peered out the kitchen window Tregareth saw that their car was gone. Off to the Sainsbury’s in Helston, babe in tow, to shop for supper he reckoned. He filled the electric teapot on the kitchen counter, snapped it on, and gestured to the chairs around the kitchen table: “Wife’s away, it seems. Make yourselves comfortable.”

  It was after he’d poured the hot water into a teapot that it came to him.

  “Hang on, hang on,” he said holding up the sugar spoon upright like a tiny scepter. “My neighbor, Archie: Archie Hansen. He found a fogou beneath yon field beside mine. Weeks back, that was. I was to say nothing, he said.”

  Bates was taking notes. “Fogou, sir?”

  “Underground chamber from before the Romans. They’re scattered across this part of Cornwall, they are. There’s another one right here on the Lizard. D’you reckon he found something in there, didn’t say, and used my name, ‘stead of his? Bloody hell: my landlord, he is! I lease most of my fields from him. Hard man he can be sometimes, sure, but he’s been like an uncle since my wife birthed our son, and fact is we depend upon his good will to keep farming. I wouldn’t want to rile him. Why’d he ever use my name? That’s beyond me, that is.”

  Patricia Boden decided she wasn’t buying it. “Beyond me, too, Mr. Tregareth. Makes no sense at all. Your neighbor pretending to be you?”

  Like a light had suddenly come on, Tregareth looked at each of them in turn and said, “Wait, am I in trouble or something?”

  “Only if you’re lying, Mr. Tregareth,” Boden said.

  Novak looked up and closed his notebook. “Mr. Tregareth, do you suppose you could take us to that field?”

  “’Course I can,” Bobby said, rising immediately.

  Patricia colored. It was something she should have thought of. They left the tea untouched.

  BOBBY TREGARETH’S LAND Rover Defender thudded along the rutted edge of a field he’d recently planted in barley. The ground was well-tilled and tiny green shoots were just emerging. Patricia Boden was in the passenger seat, PC Novak in the jump seat behind trying to keep his head from hitting the roll bar. Bobby halted beside a beautifully crafted stone hedge, yanked on the handbrake, and pointed to the field opposite.

  “That’d be Archie’s field, where he found that fogou. But I never told you, see? Can’t afford to lose my land now I’ve got a family to support. You understand?”

  Patricia looked at the farmer beside her and saw his fear. She nodded. “I understand, Mr. Tregareth. I’ll respect that.”

  Bobby’s face relaxed, and when it did, Patricia thought it looked like a boy’s: open, honest, naïve.

  “You see that bright new grass over yonder,” Bobby said, pointing. “That’s fresh seeded earth, that is, with a bit of corrugated metal roofing beneath, protecting the hole. Or at least that�
��s what Archie said he’d do. Reckon he did. But if he found what you’re lookin’ for, that I can’t say.”

  “Can’t or won’t, Mr. Tregareth?” Patricia pressed.

  Bobby turned to look at her. “Listen, lady: I’ve told you the God’s honest truth here. If you’re lookin’ for someone whose got summat’ to hide, I suggest you climb over that stone hedge and have a look for yourself, because I’m done with this. You want a ride back, I’ll wait. You want to walk, that’s fine with me, too. You got that clear?”

  PC Novak said nothing. Patricia stared out through the windscreen for a moment, and then turned to the driver.

  “Forgive me, Mr. Tregareth. I am new to this sort of investigation and no doubt clumsy. I—we—would be honored if you would wait. And I appreciate your honesty. It’s an increasingly rare commodity and you appear to have it aplenty. Thank you, sir. We’ll be right back.”

  Fifteen

  AS IF HIS shoes had springs, Calum West bounced into Morgan's office at Bodmin on Monday morning, twenty-first May, and stood, grinning, in front of her desk.

  “Oh, what is it now?” she said, barely looking up.

  “I think you meant, ‘Hello, handsome!’”

  She made a face. Consummate professional that West was, there was also something helplessly boyish about him. She wasn’t sure whether it charmed or annoyed her. But given the family tragedy he’d recently endured, she humored him:

  “Hello, handsome…Now, what the hell is it?”

  “Got a crime scene, we do. The Saga’s been found. Hansen’s boat. Any interest in a bit of walking in the English countryside, admiring the wildflowers, down Helford River way?”

  “This your idea of a date?”

  “Is it yours?”

  “Definitely not.” But Davies had already grabbed her jacket. “Your car or mine?”

  “Oh, I think we’ll take the Rocket.”

  “That Volvo estate of yours? Let me check my life insurance first.”

  “And bring your Wellies.”

  “In my car. Meet you out back.”