by Will North
Ever since their last case, Davies and West had sparred like this—bumping shoulders and trading barbs like adolescents who hadn’t a clue what to do about their mutual, if somewhat mystifying, attraction. Davies had been married but was long since divorced. She was still friends with her ex, another detective, but she’d been single for years, and had come to believe that it was her natural condition. West’s wife had succumbed to cancer more than a year before their last case. He had two young daughters, Meagan and Kaitlin, who were devoted to him. Davies had met the girls, and their grandmother, Ruth, at a Christmas party at the Bodmin headquarters. Morgan had no family. She adored his. And yet their wholeness terrified her.
THOUGH THE ROUTE through St. Austell and Truro would have been more direct, Calum West took the western A30 instead, much of which was a dual carriageway. He seldom left the fast lane, the Volvo growling and clocking well over ninety most of the way. Then, at Camborne, he turned south onto a minor road, switched on the flashers hidden in the grille beneath the bonnet, and sped through several sleepy hamlets, reaching Helston in just under an hour. It took another nearly fifteen minutes of careening down single lane roads on the Lizard for them to reach the clustered whitewashed riverside village of Helford. One of West’s Scene of Crimes vans was already in the car park just above the village. Davies stepped out of the car and nearly kissed the ground in thanks for being delivered safely. But the truth was West drove as if he and the turbo-drive Volvo were one entity. She’d never felt in danger…except that they’d get a speeding ticket. The man was a brilliant driver.
“Bugger: the lads got here first,” West groused. Morgan knew that it wasn’t that he needed to be in charge of his team. Indeed, he was admired by his staff for the freedom he gave them in investigations. It was simply that he liked to be the first on a scene so he could do absolutely nothing but quietly take it all in. She’d learned that about him in the Chynoweth case the year before. Reconnoitering was, for him, almost a form of meditation. It cleared his head and it was as if his vision became suddenly more acute. Crime scenes would speak volumes to Calum in these moments, even as they mystified others. It was one of a growing list of things about him that she’d lately begun appreciating.
West shouldered a small rucksack which, unlike those carried by other coast path walkers, included not water and energy bars but a Tyvek jumpsuit and rubber gloves, among the other tools of his somewhat macabre trade. He pulled an Ordnance Survey Explorer map from the pack’s side pocket, and struck off down a lane that twisted among the thatch-roofed cottages huddling like mushrooms near the water in the tiny riverside hamlet. Davies followed him in her black rubber Wellies, clomping along like an animal noisily stalking prey. Soon they were following a well-marked footpath through the woods above the river. Because spring was late, the ground beneath the twisted branches of the sessile oaks was carpeted with early wildflowers.
“That’s lesser celandine,” West said pointing to tiny yellow flowers alongside the footpath as he led on. “And that’s stitchwort,” he added, waving a hand at a patch of plants with delicate five-petal white blossoms.
The path turned away from the main course of the tidal river and followed a tributary arm upland and westward. The SOCO chief continued his commentary, pointing to a cluster of glossy green leaves with dimples in the center.
“That’s navelwort, that is, for obvious reasons.”
A few hundred yards farther, Morgan’s nostrils were attacked by the smell of crushed onions in a section of woodland blanketed in starburst white blossoms.
“What the hell is that smell?” she barked. She was struggling to keep up.
West laughed. “Ramsons! Wild leeks! A culinary delicacy, I’ll have you know.”
Davies stopped to catch her breath. “How do you know all this stuff?”
West turned, the boyish enthusiasm gone from his face.
“Catherine. She taught me.”
Davies looked at her feet.
West reached out and gave her shoulder a squeeze. When she looked up he was smiling again.
“Long ago and far away, Morgan,” he said. “Almost.”
And off he strode again.
How do you recover when your spouse dies young and leaves you children to raise alone? Where do you find the strength? How do you even keep going? Divorce was one thing, common enough as she knew only too well. But sudden, unfair, early death? Davies marveled at West’s quiet strength. He must have dark moments. He must hurt. He was known as a passionately dedicated investigator. She wondered if that was the salve that soothed his pain. She wondered how he got through the night.
“Where the hell are we, Calum?” she called after him.
He stopped and waited for her again. “Frenchman’s Creek is where we are. Tidal arm of the Helford. Daphne du Maurier country, this is. Wrote a book of the same name back in the 1940s, she did: tale of a pirate and a lovelorn aristocratic lady. Very romantic, I’m told.”
“Are you the pirate? I sure as hell feel press-ganged into this operation.”
Calum remembered a saying: women don’t sweat, they glow. Morgan glowed like the lighthouse off Lizard Point. He let her rest a moment.
“Are you my lovelorn aristocratic lady?”
“In your dreams, you idiot,” she panted.
“Yeah. I’ve had those dreams.”
Morgan was momentarily speechless, then recovered. “Where’s this bloody crime scene, dammit?”
West crouched in a drift of bluebells so they could see beneath the hanging branches of the Sessile oaks and pointed. It was low tide and the creek was empty. She saw boot prints leading across the flats and then spied West’s SOCO team swarming around an open skiff tucked under overhanging shrubbery. Except for the boots, his people were dressed in their usual white Tyvek coveralls so as not to contaminate the site.
West and Davies climbed down to the shore and set off toward the four men investigating the boat. The mud pulled at Morgan’s Wellies like quicksand.
“Romantic creek?” she called to West. “It’s a bloody quagmire! That du Maurier lady ever even come down here?”
Morgan Davies was not a nature lover, she was an avid indoors-woman. Her idea of a perfect weekend was old movies on the video and several vodka tonics, not a walkabout.
If anything, the mud was worse where the SOCO boys had churned it into a greyish pudding as they moved around the boat. As Davies waited, West circled the open skiff, the mud making sucking sounds each time he lifted his boots. The vessel’s hull was made of white fiberglass with a molded lap strake finish. It had a high, pointed bow, a stand-up wheelhouse amidships, and a big Honda outboard. Solid, powerful, and seaworthy. West reckoned it at about fourteen feet.
“What do we have, gentlemen?” West asked his team.
Rafe Barnes, his senior investigator, answered.
“Let’s start with the obvious, Guv. The skiff’s not been here long. Also, it’s been thoroughly washed and rinsed. There is also the slightest tang of bleach. We’ve taken samples, of course. In fact, we’re nearly done here. Nothing else to see, I’m afraid.”
West ignored him and picked his way around the open boat, squinting here, sniffing there like a hound, but touching nothing as he hadn’t donned his Tyveks.
Finally, he turned to his senior investigator, eyes twinkling. “Don’t have a boat, do you Rafe?”
“Right the first time, boss, landlubber is what I am. I like my terra firma. The more firma the less terror.”
Davies and the rest of the team laughed.
But West pointed to the line that ran from Saga’s bow to where it was tied to an overhanging branch.
“See that painter?”
“Painter?
“The line from the bow. It’s called a painter. You see that knot on the branch?”
“Yeah. So?”
“Know what it is?”
Rafe smiled. “No, boss, I don’t, but I reckon you’re about to enlighten me…”
Davies
watched all this and marveled at the easy way Calum had with his men. He wasn’t correcting Rafe, he was guiding. And she didn’t know the answer either.
“That’s a granny knot, that is,” Calum said, pointing to the branch. “No boat owner would ever use it. Too easy to slip. A reef knot would have been right. A couple of half-hitches would be better for a mooring like this. Or a clove hitch. Those knots, they get tighter the more they’re stressed. But not a granny. Jiggle or tug on it the right way, like in a rising and falling tide, and it can unravel. Boat lost.”
Davies was impatient: “What’s the point here, professor?”
“The point is that no boat person tied this skiff here. The whole scene is amateurish.”
“Maybe someone found it and tied it here for safe-keeping?”
“And didn’t report it?”
“Who did report it?” Davies asked.
“Girl from Treveador Farm just uphill, Joyce Wilcox,” Rafe answered. “Twelve, she is. Out walking her dog. Knows the creek well. Found the boat tied here as it is.”
“Not a likely suspect, then,” Davies said.
“The girl or the dog?” West asked.
The group laughed, and the tension evaporated like morning sea fret.
West stared across the flats. The tide was beginning to slip back up the channel. “So, what happened to Saga’s owner? Well, okay, we know what happened to him. But how? Where?” And how’d his boat get here? Who tucked it under these branches? Who tied that incompetent knot?”
“You turning detective, Calum?” Davies asked.
He raised his hands in mock surrender. “Sorry. Your patch, Morgan. Just thinking, I was.”
“You do scene, I’ll do investigation. You okay with that?”
“Yes, dear.”
More laughter from his men.
“So what were you thinking?” Davies asked anyway.
“Pardon?”
Morgan smiled. “Out with it: I’m listening.”
“Right, but how about we do this at the Shipwright’s Arms back at Helford? Tide’s coming in fast and I could use a pint. Lads?”
“Guv?” Rafe answered.
“Won’t be long before the tide lifts the skiff. One of you fine gents get back to Helford and have someone with a boat tow it out and then let’s have it impounded and carried overland to Falmouth nick. But no further contamination, yeah? Gloves all around, including whomever tows it.
“And Rafe, when you get it to impound, treat the entire interior with Luminol. Also the surface of the gunwales around the edge of the hull. And let’s do Superglue fuming for prints along the underside of the gunwale. Whoever it was pulled this skiff in close to shore may have forgotten they’d leave prints there underneath. Superglue fuming’s the only thing that will work on a nonporous surface like this fiberglass hull. Off you go, then, lads and let me know what the lab results are as soon as you can. Or sooner.”
“On it, Guv,” Rafe said.
As they plodded back across the mucky flats of Frenchman’s Creek, Davies asked, “You a boating person, Calum?”
“Too smart for that, I am, I assure you. Hole in the water, boats are, into which you pour money.”
She stopped in mid-channel as the tide slipped in gently, almost invisibly, around her boots: “So all that knot nonsense…?”
Ahead of her, she heard him laugh. “Scouts!”
A Boy Scout. I should have guessed, she thought: Mr. ‘Be Prepared.’
At the Shipwright’s, they left their muddy boots at the door.
“A couple of pints of Doom Bar,” West called to the hefty dimple-cheeked young woman behind the bar in the low-roofed pub.
“And a bag of ready-salted crisps,” Davies added.
“You don’t want to eat?”
“I’ll stick with the crisps.”
West shook his head. Morgan’s routine to make herself seem plain and common was transparent to him. “Hold the crisps,” he said to the girl behind the bar. “We’ll both have your famous crab salad.”
“Who the hell are you to—” Davies began to protest.
“Hold your water, Morgan. Crab’s brain food. And we need to feed that splendid brain of yours.”
“Vodka tonic’s what feeds it,” she snapped.
He spun around to the bar again: “That’ll be just the one pint of Doom, after all, and a double vodka tonic for the lady.”
“You two finished now?” the girl asked, hands on heavy hips. She didn’t know what these two were on about, but they certainly were entertaining.
“We’ll just step outside on the terrace, shall we?” West said, taking their drinks.
“I’ll start a tab,” the girl called after them.
MORGAN TOOK A long slug from her double vodka tonic. The mud flats in the narrow tidal creek below the pub were filling with the incoming tide. On the opposite shore, whitewashed cottages, some with thatched roofs, rose above the rocks. She was beginning to enjoy this rustic outing.
“Your man Rafe said he detected bleach in that boat,” she said, her eyes closed as she basked in the sun. “But Luminol lights up bleach just like it does blood. How will you tell the difference?”
She opened her eyes and slid them in his direction like the pivoting cannon on a tank. “Luminol would be pointless.”
West laughed. “Who does ‘scene’?”
Davies stared daggers.
“Plus. You’re forgetting about human nature,” Calum continued. “Whoever tried to clean that skiff would have been in a hurry; they’ll likely have missed a few spots. We’ll look for the areas that don’t completely light up and then look for the spots within those blank areas that do. That’ll be the blood.”
Davies looked out at the rapidly filling creek and shook her head. West was way ahead of her, again. She was trying not to hate him for it.
Sixteen
JUST BEFORE TEN on Monday morning, sixteenth April, Charlotte walked into the lobby of the Helston Library.
“Morning, Glynnis,” she said to the reedy old librarian at the front desk.
“Charlotte Johns! Long time; how have you been keeping, then, dear?”
“Someone told me that anyone who says, ‘I can’t complain’ has no imagination, but I’m fine, Glynnis. Your mother is well?”
“If you can say someone who has no idea who she is, where she is, or who I am is well, then yes. They look after her fine at the care home.”
Charlotte patted Glynnis Martin’s arm. “I understand.”
“I know you do; I hear about your work at the hospital. Patients love you.”
Charlotte smiled. “Just my job.”
“But you’re so much more than an orderly there. You take time to visit with the sickest patients. And after you’ve visited them, they’re peaceful, is what I hear.”
“I just comfort them, Glynnis. They’re often left alone.”
The librarian nodded. “Here for a computer, are you? Still don’t have one of your own? I thought almost everyone did these days.”
“Too pricy for my budget, plus I seldom need one. But I do need to look something up, if I may.”
“Of course, my dear.” She pointed to the bank of computers on a long table in the middle of the reference section. “Take any available seat; usual password.”
Charlotte signed in and began researching ancient treasure in Britain. It turned out that there had been just a few discoveries in recent years, some by metal detectorists, some by farmers like her Archie. Many discoveries were Roman, but the rarest and most valuable were pre-Roman: Iron Age or earlier. She researched torcs in particular and sat, gobsmacked, looking at the screen before her: torcs like the one in Archie’s burlap bag fetched hundreds of thousands of pounds Sterling, even millions! There was a reference to the Treasure Act of 1996, and when she searched for that and read the Wikipedia entry, she smiled. That’s why the dosh is in a bag: Archie would never put up with this sort of red tape. Never.
IT WAS JUST after one that same aft
ernoon when Charlotte heard the crunch of wheels in the gravel forecourt of Archie’s house. As if she were the lady of the manor, she opened the house's massive old oak front door and waited on the steps to greet her visitor. She had no idea when it was that anyone had used this door last; she and Archie always came through the farmyard to the kitchen door. To greet her visitor, she’d chosen a vintage wrap dress by Diane von Furstenberg in a black and white diagonal stripe pattern she’d found at the Oxfam charity shop in Helston, smoky grey holdup stockings, and black inch-high kitten heels.
Dicky Townsend stepped out of a silver Mercedes S-Class sedan he’d hired from Avis in Bristol. Cost the earth, but a good impression was everything, he figured. He threw a black suit jacket, also hired, over his open-necked white shirt, grabbed his black leather briefcase from the passenger seat, and approached the house.
“Mrs. Hansen! Lovely to meet you at last!”
“Mr. Townsend. Welcome.”
Townsend, who was roughly Charlotte’s age and nearly as short, admired her trim figure and bowed slightly as they shook hands.
“A pleasure, Mrs. Hansen.”
Charlotte regarded Townsend for a moment before ushering him into the house. The man looked fit beneath that lovely suit. An oddly attractive man, despite a head a bit too large and round for the rest of him. Losing his hair, too, like Archie, but doing so more elegantly, the hair receding at the temples and touched with silver there. A gentleman, she reckoned.
She settled them on the divan in the front lounge she and Archie never used but which she’d cleaned for the occasion. Beyond the deep-set windows, there were early flowers in the borders around the forecourt’s edges: deep purple wallflower, white and lavender crocuses that should have been long gone by this time of year, and lemon yellow primroses. A stone hedge edged the forecourt, and beyond it was a field with the wilting blossoms of the last of the season’s commercial daffodils. Bracketing the ends of the hedge, old rhododendrons as big as garden sheds were massed, their buds about to burst into magenta flower.
Earlier, to take the chill off the room, she’d set a coal fire burning in the grate of the lounge’s ancient granite hearth. The room was now nearly tropical.