by Will North
Bobby Tregareth stood up abruptly and was motionless for a moment. Then he went to the basket and picked up the boy, as if to protect him from the news.
“How?” he said, finally.
“Veered off the lane not far from here, on the way to Newtown-in-St-Martin. Plunged into a ravine. We don’t yet know how or why. But we will find out, Mr. Tregareth, I promise you.”
The boy began to fuss. Tregareth placed a bottle into a warming saucepan.
“First her coldness, and then her and Hansen together, then Hansen’s death, and then she abandoned us, the boy and me. And now this…” Tregareth was rigid as a statue with shock.
“Would you like us to arrange to have someone stay with you tonight, Mr. Tregareth? Someone to talk to? A friend or neighbor, perhaps?”
“Friends, like at the New Inn, they’ve steered clear since she left. I hear she’s been saying I’m violent and abusive. Reckon they don’t know what to think, so they keep a distance, you know? But I’ve got my boy,” he said, cradling the child in his thick arms. “We’ll be fine. Just like we have been these past weeks. Him and me; we’re a team.”
Davies watched the farmer as he slowly paced the kitchen, waiting for the bottle to warm.
“I am sorry to have been the messenger with this news, Mr. Tregareth. We may want to talk with you again tomorrow. Will you be here?”
“That’s Thursday, yes?” he said as if trying to get his bearings. “Reckon I’ll be in my fields, as usual. Seeding clover behind the potatoes. Just ring my mobile. Robbie, he’ll be with me.”
“You’ll be okay tonight?”
Tregareth looked at her.
“I have my boy.”
Forty
MORGAN SPENT WEDNESDAY night at the St. Michaels Hotel. It was too much to drive all the way up to Bodmin only to come back for a meeting in the same hotel in the morning. She awoke early and spent a half hour alone in the spa’s sauna, emerging energized. Just as the MCIT meeting began Thursday morning, Terry Bates passed her a faxed message. It was from Rothenberg at Borland and Company.
She glanced at it. “Bloody hell,” she said under her breath.
DCI Penwarren didn’t hear her. “I suggest we start with the accident yesterday and work backward. Jennifer,” he said to the forensic pathologist, “your conclusion?”
“Cause of death: massive skull trauma,” Duncan said. “Also multiple internal injuries. All signs that she was crushed. Death almost certainly instantaneous. I’ll leave it to Calum’s people to fit that to the scene.”
Davies was still trying to digest the information in the fax as West spoke: “Jennifer’s findings are consistent with the scene, Guv. The ravine is steep and there are trees which were damaged by the woman’s tumbling car. Her body was found outside the vehicle. We have determined that impact with the first tree shattered her windscreen and the sudden jolt flung her out through that gap. But the vehicle kept rolling. It looks like it rolled right over her and kept going until it reached the streambed below.
“Good Lord,” the DCI said shaking his head. Penwarren had never been able to harden himself about deaths. He stood and went to the window overlooking the Channel.
“If I may continue?” West said, after a moment.
“Yes. Of course.”
“DI Davies and I studied the surface of the lane and the rest of the scene at the top. And I think Morgan will agree that we believe Ms. Masters did not drift or skid off the road. We believe the victim was startled by something or someone and she made to avoid a collision and that this reflex pitched her over the edge. In addition we noted fresh tyre tracks at the edge of a farm gate directly opposite the point at which the victim veered. As of this morning, I have the brand: General Tyre ‘Grabber ATZ,’ commonly used on farm vehicles.”
“Tractors?” Penwarren asked, still staring out the window as if for enlightenment.
“No, sir, working, multi-purpose farm vehicles, off-road and on: Land Rovers, Toyota Land Cruisers and such. According to our on-site searches of their properties, both Hansen and Tregareth have old Land Rover Defenders.”
“As do most farmers in the county,” Penwarren said. “Rugged and indispensable is what I understand. Workhorses. So what?”
“The question, Guv, is what tyres are on their wheels?”
“Okay, stop,” Penwarren said. “Before you check these vehicles, find out who sells those tyres locally. Let’s not give anything away just yet.”
“Of course,” West agreed.
Penwarren returned to his seat and looked at Davies, who’d been staring blankly throughout West’s report.
“Morgan? Are you with us?”
Davies blinked. “Of course, Guv.”
“You confirm West’s findings?”
“I’m sorry. I’m afraid I was preoccupied.”
“Morgan?”
She pushed the faxed letter across to Penwarren: “This is from Hansen’s lawyers. His beneficiary is not his partner, Charlotte Johns. It’s Archibald Robert Tregareth, Bobby and Joellyn’s son. In the event of Hansen’s demise, everything goes to the boy, in trust first to Joellyn Masters and then, should she die, to Mr. Tregareth himself.”
No one spoke.
“Which is to say,” Davies continued, “Tregareth has at least two motives for killing Hansen and Joellyn as well: his wife’s adultery and the boy’s inheritance.”
“Hang on, Morgan,” Terry Bates said. “When I read that fax, I thought, how would Tregareth even know he benefitted? You had to practically get a court order to obtain the will from Hansen’s lawyer.”
“I know. I was getting to that. And you’re right, Terry, he almost certainly couldn’t, though we don't know for sure. But the real question is, why the boy in the first place?”
“That, I think I may know,” Terry said.
Davies lifted an eyebrow. The rest of the team looked at Bates.
“You know that book Tregareth gave us to take into evidence, Joellyn’s so-called ‘Grimoire?’ And those odd codes in the back? I’ve been thinking about them. I think they’re maybe, among other things, dates when she was fertile and the ‘A’ stands for Archie. They’re times they had intercourse, I think, and one of them is almost exactly nine months before the child was born. I hadn’t twigged it before I passed the book on to Calum’s people for the evidence file, but driving here this morning the codes just clicked in my head.”
Penwarren stood again, as if he could not contain his energy in a chair. “So you’re proposing that this boy, ‘Archibald,’ is Archie Hansen’s son, not Tregareth’s?”
“The dates could be coincidence, Guv, is all I’ll say at this point. But the boy’s given name certainly gives me pause. Only a paternity test would answer this question. I’m a Family Liaison Officer and I know a bit about this sort of thing. And what I’d like to suggest is that Dr. Duncan here,” she said nodding to the forensic pathologist, “should test Joellyn’s DNA.”
“I’ve got the samples,” Jennifer said.
West stepped in. “And then we’ll need a swab from Tregareth, as well, to complete the match.”
“No we won’t,” Davies countered. “Jennifer, are there still samples of Hansen’s DNA?”
“Of course, we always keep specimens.”
“If you’ve got Ms. Masters and Hansen, you don’t need Tregareth. Their DNA should be definitive. If the tests match the boy’s, then Hansen’s the father. The question is how do we get the boy’s DNA without forewarning Tregareth?”
“Isn’t that obvious?” Penwarren asked.
Penwarren’s strength as a detective had always been his ability to leap forward in an investigation, ahead of the evidence-gathering. What Penwarren saw that others often did not were stories. Where others patched together bits and pieces of data, like jigsaw puzzle pieces, Penwarren saw whole pictures. They were almost like movies in his head, movies about how something might have happened and who might have been involved. Others tried to do the same thing, but Penwarren’
s scenarios often turned out backed by the evidence in the end. There was nothing clairvoyant about the DCI. In his mind he had characters, he had settings, and he had potential scenes driven by possible motives. It was just a matter of pulling together the final narrative and for that, for that glue, he depended upon his detectives.
“Put Tregareth in the interview suite at Pool, Morgan,” Penwarren said. “We’ll have a Family Liaison Officer adept with infants look after the boy there during your interview. She’ll get a cheek swab. Lean on adultery as his possible motive. We have no evidence he knew about the inheritance anyway and I cannot imagine Hansen, given his plans with Tregareth’s partner, ever having told him. Don’t bring it up. The boy’s mother abandoned Tregareth and their son the moment Hansen was found dead. Fill in the blanks.”
“But can we take a swab from the child and use that, Guv?”
“Of course not. Not without permission. But you’ll also get a sample from Tregareth as part of the Pool interview, Morgan. That’s triangulation. And anyway, the child’s DNA will be on his nursing bottle, which we’ll take into evidence. The swab will be known only to us and, unless I miss my guess, we’ll never need it.”
“Not exactly normal procedure, Guv,” Davies said.
“I’ve been taking lessons from you.”
Davies smiled. Most of the time, Penwarren was their nearly avuncular leader, letting them forge ahead and giving them his official sanction, and sometimes his protection, as they pursued an investigation—like the Chynoweth case in Penzance the previous year, which had little to do with official procedure. But every once in a while a case kicked him into overdrive and he became the laser-focused detective once again, as if there were lightning flashing around his greying skull. “Pull him in now, while he is vulnerable. And Calum: study the tyre castings. See if there are any unusual markings. Start with Tregareth’s vehicle, then follow up with Hansen’s.”
“Done.”
“Mr. Novak. Find out where those tyres are sold locally and see if they have customer records.”
The young police constable smiled. “Sir.”
“Good. Now, where the hell are we on the alleged treasure?”
“Nowhere, Guv,” Davies answered. “Figuratively and literally, we haven’t a clue. Maybe Tregareth has had it all along, stashed somewhere. Maybe Hansen had it and hid it and we’ll never know. Maybe Johns knows. I’m sorry. We’ve all been busy with these deaths. Treasure seems such an abstract matter when people are dying left and right.”
“No. It’s not. This treasure is at the root of these events. Hansen’s death, Ms. Masters’s, were specifically designed to steer us away from the obvious motive: the treasure. Thoughts, anyone?”
To everyone’s surprise it was DC Novak who spoke first. “For what it is worth, sir, I believe that museum woman, Patricia Boden, was following up on a genuine lead. And when Tregareth showed us the field where the chamber was—which the SOCO team subsequently confirmed—he was telling the truth about Hansen’s discovering it. What I don’t know is whether he, and not Hansen, removed the contents and subsequently flogged them to London using his real name, out of naiveté or possibly by intent, or whether it was Hansen all along. But I am convinced the treasure exists. Somewhere.”
“Thank you, constable.” Penwarren said.
Davies sat up. “No, wait: the timing’s all wrong. Hansen found the chamber weeks ago and enlisted Tregareth’s help for him to enter it. But if Tregareth was the one who looted it, it would be he, not Hansen, who’d be dead now, I should think. At the time, he was the only one who knew about the chamber besides Hansen. Hansen would have seen the stone had been moved and gone straight after Tregareth.”
“What about Charlotte Johns? Maybe he told her,” Penwarren suggested.
“She hasn’t the strength to have moved that massive granite slab; she’s tiny, practically a bird. Plus, if Hansen told anyone, and I doubt it, given his character, I reckon it would have been Joellyn Masters, what with their apparent long-term plans.”
“Plans?” Penwarren asked.
“Sorry, Guv, I haven’t had time to enter this information in the HOLMES II system yet: According to Joellyn, interviewed just before her death, he’d bought a house on the Costa del Sol for the two of them.”
“A new life in the sun,” Penwarren mumbled.
“And then he was dead.”
“Wouldn’t that make Johns a suspect?”
“Of course, but so far we have nothing on her. Not a bloody thing. If she’s involved then she is one extremely clever woman. Nothing attaches.”
“I wonder if I might raise something else?” Terry Bates asked.
Penwarren nodded to her.
“Besides Joellyn Masters’s claim, is there really any evidence that Hansen had actually bought a place for them in Spain? Was this some fantasy of hers? I’m thinking that if we interview the estate agents—Savills, Joellyn claimed—we might find an answer.”
“Good. Go after that, Terry,” Penwarren said. “Report to Morgan.”
“Right.”
“But I keep coming back to the treasure, people,” he continued. “Morgan, you say Johns wouldn’t have had the strength to uncover the alleged hoard within the chamber. But what if she pulled Tregareth in? What if they’re in this together? Hansen’s death would have benefitted them both, or at least that’s what they might have thought, not knowing about the will. She’d shown Tregareth the adulterous video, yes? Why else but to recruit him? And then she offers to split the fortune with him. Yes, it’s time to lean on Tregareth.”
“DON’T KNOW WHAT you’d want me for, but this isn’t what I expected for a police interrogation,” Bobby Tregareth said, settling into the settee at the Pool interrogation suite, late Thursday morning. “Right comfortable, this is.”
“Maybe you’ve seen too many detective shows, Mr. Tregareth,” Davies said. “We try to care for the people we question these days, especially those who’ve suffered a loss, and this isn’t an interrogation, just a chat.” She’d already read him his rights, but the farmer seemed unintimidated, almost bemused. She wondered whether he was still in shock. He looked at her. “What are we supposed to talk about, then?”
“To begin, your partner’s death yesterday. Are you up to that, Mr. Tregareth?”
The big man took a long, deep breath but looked straight at Davies. “Reckon I am.”
“Let me just say, for the record, Mr. Tregareth, that we had Ms. Masters’s sister, Beatrice, identify Joellyn’s body at the hospital in Truro earlier today. She was your partner’s legal next of kin, as your ‘handfasting’ is not recognized legally as a marriage, and Joellyn’s parents were in Italy. I am sorry. Then again, I suspect that by doing so Beatrice shielded you from even more pain.”
Tregareth nodded. “Good person is Beatrice. Kind. Caring.”
“Yes, that is my impression as well.”
“Joey was never very nice to her. Couldn’t understand that.”
“Sometimes that happens between sisters.”
“Yeah, I reckon.”
Abruptly switching subjects, Davies asked: “Where were you late yesterday afternoon, Mr. Tregareth?”
“Me? Out by Nare Point. Field I lease there, one of Archie’s. Seeding red clover. It’ll be fallow awhile, then I’ll plow the clover under and plant potatoes next. Perfect conditions.” Tregareth did not connect with the reason for Davies’s question.
“Anyone see you there?”
“Nah, Nare Head’s not near anything except the Channel; field’s right up against the cliffs and the Southwest Coast Path. Love working that field for the views over the water.”
“How far is that from Treworgle Mill?”
Tregareth looked at the ceiling for a moment, as if a map was printed there. “As the crow flies? Only a few miles, but no direct lanes, see. You have to go up and around through Manaccan. I’ve a field up that hill I rent from Archie…rented, I guess I should say.”
“We know. It’
s just opposite the spot where your Joellyn went off the road. There’s a farm gate to that field, am I right?”
“Sure.” Tregareth was suddenly wary.
“It was open yesterday afternoon. We wondered about that.”
“Often is. Arable it is, not a field with livestock, you see. Easier to get the tractor in and out without holding up traffic if the gate’s already open. But what’s this leading to? I wasn’t working that field yesterday.”
“It’s leading to tyre tracks, Mr. Tregareth. Tracks at that gate that match the brand on your Land Rover Defender. When were you there last?”
Tregareth shot from his seat. “What the hell?”
“Sit down, sir. Please. And just answer the question.”
“More than a week ago, nearly two. Sowing maize for fall, I was. But what are you saying?”
“I’m saying only that your partner died on that road. We are trying to discover how.”
“Look, all I know is that I got the boy to care for now, all alone. Why would I want Joey dead?”
“How about adultery, Mr. Tregareth? How about her having sex with the late Archie Hansen? How about that video? That didn’t affect you?”
Tregareth waved a hand before his face, as if shooing flies. “That was all that Druidry stuff. Had her in some sort of spell, I reckon Hansen did. I’d have never held it against her had she come back to us.”
“But she didn’t, did she? She left you, and the boy, without so much as a ‘by your leave.’ How’d you feel about that?”
Tregareth stiffened. “The boy and me are fine. Companions, we are. Happy.”
“If you reckon this is all Hansen’s doing, did you kill him? Did you kill Archie Hansen and dump his body in the Channel?”
“That’s bloody nonsense. How’d I do that anyway? Got no boat, have I? Besides. I told you people before: we depended upon him to lease us our land. Kill him? Why?”
“Because you loved Joellyn?”
“No. Yes, but no.”
“How about getting your hands on that treasure Hansen found, maybe you and Charlotte Johns working as partners? Why else would she have shown you that video if not to obtain your help? Just think, you’d never have had to worry about those lease payments again.”