by Will North
Tregareth blinked and shook his head. “That’s bloody daft, that is,” was all he could manage to say.
“On the other hand, she says you fancied her, says you visited her every chance you could when Archie was off working, especially after your partner turned cold on you. Sniffing around, she says you were.”
Tregareth snorted. “That skinny old slag? Other way around is more like. Slinking around me like a cat if I came for a neighborly tea midday while working a nearby field to Hansen’s. It was, ‘More tea, Bobby?’ And anything else I can do for you? Lots of, what do you call it…cleavage. Reckon Hansen wasn’t enough for her and she wanted more. But I had my Joey.”
“But you didn’t, Bobby. She’d left. No shame in wanting the comfort of another.”
Tregareth 's head shot up. "Another? Never. Thought Joey’d come back, I did. If only for the boy. But she didn’t. And now she’s gone. We’re on our own now, I guess, him and me.”
He lifted his head. “House feels hollow without her, but I reckon we’ll get by.”
Davies relented. Without definitive marks from the tyre castings she had no other lines of interrogation. “I hope so for both your sakes, Mr. Tregareth.”
“Where’s my boy? Where’s Robbie?”
“Just outside in the next room and well cared for, I promise you. The family liaison officer will take both of you back home straightaway. I just need to take a swab from inside your cheek. It’s standard procedure and nothing to do with you being a suspect. Just part of the process. We test everyone.”
“What for?”
“DNA.”
Forty-One
JUST AFTER NOON, Thursday, Dicky Townsend parked by the stone-girt harbor at Porthleven, roughly six miles through twisting lanes west of Helston, and walked up to the end of Mount Pleasant Street where the whitewashed Ship Inn was built into the cliff face like a watchtower high above the port’s mouth. Within the harbor’s sea wall, brightly painted coastal fishing boats rested at anchor in their protected pool, as if mustering strength to fight for fish out in the Channel again the next day. The inn’s ground floor was devoted to storage and the keg cellar. Townsend climbed up a steep flight of granite steps set into the cliffside to the pub’s door on the second level. There was a hearth, cold on this summer day, set into one stone wall. The windows were open to the soft air. The low ceiling was plastered with faded old bar mats from long-forgotten beer brands. Charlotte Johns was seated on the red cushion of a high-backed pine settle by a window overlooking the water. She wore a scooped neck blouse that invited inspection. It was lunchtime and the pub was bustling.
He ordered his usual, a double whisky, paid, and then went to the niche where she sat nursing a glass of white wine. “Crowded today; may I share this table with you, ma’am?” She nodded. “I can recommend the fish pie here.” And by this, Townsend knew it was safe to talk.
“Darling, this silence has been hard,” he whispered.
“It is necessary.”
“Because?”
“Because much else has happened and I am at risk. We are at risk. You cannot phone or text me; I've buried my mobile. That’s why I called you from a public phone box. Our friend was found soon after he went swimming. Very soon, apparently. The police have questioned me. They also know about the video of Archie and Tregareth’s partner. I believe I am being watched. That’s why I chose Porthleven; they won’t follow me here. Just out shopping, I am. Bought some lovely fresh bream from Quayside Fish.”
“Will we share it tonight? Shall I find a paired white wine?”
Johns wanted to squeeze his hand but refrained. “No, not yet. There are other developments: Tregareth’s partner, Joellyn, was in an auto accident. She died.”
“Jesus.”
“Given that video, I’ll be a suspect, which means more interviews.”
“But…?”
“No, of course not. Nothing to do with me. Shall we order lunch?”
“What about the artifacts? Have you protected them for us?”
“Yes. I promise you.”
They never ordered lunch, and when she finished her wine Charlotte said, “I can only phone your mobile from a public phone box just now. I will try to keep you appraised and, when it is time, I’ll send you instructions about our items. Be patient. All this soon will pass. Then we will be free.”
She walked back to her car alone. After a short interval, Dicky followed. He found Max Marchenko leaning against Townsend’s aging Ford Fiesta in the lot by the harbor.
“You should have a better motor than this old wreck, my friend,” Max said. “My recommendation? German car. Audi or Volkswagen are best bet. Reliable. Fast. In case you need to escape…”
“From what, Max? From you?” Townsend was unafraid. He was unafraid because he still knew nothing about the treasure. He had nothing to hide.
“If you want, Max, go tell your boss that although I am in this case up to my neck, I know nothing yet about the artifacts. Okay? That’s the truth. He doesn’t like that? You don’t like it? Shoot me. I’m doing the best I can, going softly, softly, so as to leave no trace. There have been two deaths so far, murders apparently. The police are all over this. Doesn’t Connor follow the news?”
Marchenko patted the gun in his pocket and smiled. “I know when someone is lying, Dicky. We had training. You are not lying. Mr. Connor, he is making my life very difficult: full of demands and threats. I am thinking I do not need him anymore. We don’t need him anymore. I am thinking his health will take a turn for the worse. His heart, of course. It is weak. I will arrange this because we are partners, Dicky, you and me. Yes?”
“Yes. We are partners. It’s just that this may take a bit more time.”
“Life is long.”
“I certainly hope so….”
“WHAT WAS IT made you vote to retire Philip St. Martin as the leader of your Druid grove?” Terry Bates asked Brad Winters. Davies was with her. They’d arranged to interview Winters at his Helston florist shop Thursday afternoon. His wife was out making deliveries.
“The old boy was losing it. Mind getting soft. Kept missing meetings.”
“And so you voted in favor of Hansen, a relative newcomer? Terry Bates asked. “That’s what the other members of your grove say, according to their statements.”
Winters twisted in his high chair behind the flower arranging table: “I wasn’t alone in voting, was I? And anyway, who else would they choose?”
“What about Charlotte herself? Or you, as one of the long-standing members?”
“They thought I wasn’t up to it.” Winters mumbled. “I didn’t know enough of the history yet.”
“Who told you that, Brad?”
“Charlotte. She did.”
“Were you lovers, you and Charlotte, Mr. Winters?”
Winters’s head snapped toward her.
“Where’d you hear that?”
Davies, sitting in a chair by the refrigerated flower case, smiled: bingo. Bates had run on intuition and scored.
“And did that relationship, sir, influence your decision against Mr. St. Martin and in favor of Mr. Hansen? I’m just wondering, because we’re all only human, any of us, yes?”
Davies wondered whether this sweet-talk form of questioning was something Bates had learned when she was in training or something that came to her naturally. Whichever, it certainly worked on Winters. Davies herself by now would have been bullying the man into a confession. Bates was waiting.
Winters said nothing for a moment, then seemed to collapse into himself: “She can be very persuasive, Charlotte can. And seductive. I weakened. Just the once. A few years ago it was. After a Beltane celebration. It was supposed to be so innocent and natural, but she held it over me, said she’d tell my wife about our goings on unless I helped her. After pressing me to vote for Archie, that was the end of it. She wasn’t the least bit interested in me, really.”
“And she’s made no demands of you since? Never asked for a favor again? Did yo
u feel rejected? Did you want her back?”
“No, and I felt well shot of her.”
“If the experience was so painful for you, why did you remain in the grove?”
Winters smiled and shook his head: “The wife. She loves all that stuff, especially that fertility celebration, first of May.” He stared off toward the shop window. “Not that it ever made a difference for us and now we’re too old for a child…”
Bates said nothing, letting Winters sit with that thought. Then she said, “May I just ask you where you were Thursday, seventeenth May? Sometime after noon?”
“Dunno. A while back, that is. In the shop here, I reckon. Thursday’s a big delivery day for new flowers, what with weddings and funerals coming at the weekend and all. Lots of arrangements to make.”
“Can you prove you were here, Mr. Winters?”
Winters blinked. “Sure! I can check the books. We keep a record of our hours, you see, for accounting purposes. What’s this about then?”
“It’s about murder, actually. It’s about your rather rare blood type being found on the boat that was used to kill Archie Hansen.”
“What? Wait, I never…!”
“Calm down, Mr. Winters. We want to believe you, we do, but it’s our job to collect evidence. So let’s have a squint at those records, shall we?”
Winters bolted from his chair: “We’ve got both computer records and paper receipts that one or the other of us has signed,” he said over his shoulder. “I do most of the designing and arranging; Cheryl’s the bookkeeper, mostly. Very orderly, she is. I’ll get it all…”
“SO, THAT’S THAT, done and dusted. Well done, by the way, Terry.”
“Yes, he’s in the clear, assuming the records are accurate, and the handwriting on the receipts looks genuine. But where does that leave us?”
Davies smiled. “It leaves us with a new, as yet unidentified suspect or accomplice. Time to press West for prints or any other evidence that doesn’t fit with who we already have in our sights. Someone else is out there, hiding, Terry. Maybe in plain sight.”
Davies leaned back in her seat while Bates drove back to Falmouth. “So much of this business is about intangibles: perception and intuition. We like to think it’s all about the accumulation of evidence, but that’s really only for public consumption—and the Crown Court’s. The rest of it is something just below the level of thinking. Something almost primitive. Something about sensing danger and untruth. Something we’re meant to sort out.”
She looked at her driver. “Did you think for a minute Winters was involved?”
Bates’s eyes stayed on the windscreen; it had started to rain. The clouds rested atop the hills to the west as if burdened. “No,” she said. “Never once. Waste of time, that was.”
“No, no, not at all. Terry. That’s one down. But how many more to go?”
Bates’s mobile rang, a tinny version of a Dave Brubeck Quartet tune, Paul Desmond on the sax: Take Five. Davies loved American jazz. Was Bates another fan? Bates passed the phone. Davies didn’t recognize the number.
“Detective Inspector Morgan Davies here.”
“Oh dear, I thought I was returning a call from a Constable Teresa Bates…”
“You are. She’s engaged. How may I help?”
“This is Barbara Hunnicutt with Savills in Truro. Constable Bates had enquired about a sale we arranged in Spain for a Mr. Hansen.”
“Yes. I know. What is its status?”
“Well, I’m sure I don’t know, honestly. He sent a cheque the day after our meeting as security against his purchase.”
“Were you also handling the sale of his farm?”
“Not me personally; one of our agricultural specialists was. But neither of us has been able to reach him to follow up.”
“That’s because he’s dead, Ms. Hunnicutt.”
“Oh no! Oh, I am so sorry; it must have been very sudden!”
“It was. Murder. So, I’m afraid that sale is null and void.”
“Good Lord, his young partner must be devastated!”
“Hard to say; she’s dead too. Separate incidents.”
“Oh! Oh no! This has never happened before…”
“I’m afraid it happens all too frequently, madam.”
DICKY TOWNSEND CHECKED his phone messages. There was only one, an unidentified source. He heard Charlotte’s voice: “Harvest the radishes, send them to market, and deposit the proceeds in our joint account.”
Forty-Two
WEST WAS WAITING for them when Davies and Bates returned to the incident room at the St. Michaels Hotel late Thursday afternoon. He was grinning.
“Oh, what the hell is it now, Calum?” Davies snapped. “It’s been a long day.”
“The long and winding road…” he sang, badly.
“You can be so tiresome,” she said.
“Ah, but that’s the whole point, isn’t it?”
“What is, before I find something sharp and jagged?”
“Tyre-some!”
Davies sank into her chair. She knew he wanted to play but she wasn’t in the mood. She just stared at him. Bates stood to one side, watching.
“All right, have it your way, Killjoy,” West said. “There’s a match between the casting and a tyre. A superficial nick, from a sharp field shard, perhaps, on the inside wall of the tread. Little more than a blemish, really. Lucky we found it at all, actually.”
“So it was Tregareth, after all!”
“Actually, no. The scar matches Hansen’s Land Rover. Right rear tyre.”
“But…”
“…Hansen is long dead, yes.”
Davies stood. “Someone else was driving. Steering wheel?”
“Wiped clean.”
“Gearshift?”
“The same.”
“Door handle?”
“Also.”
“Anything?”
“No.”
“Bugger!”
“Find out who had access to the Land Rover’s keys and you’d probably have…”
“Opportunity, motive, and means. I know. I don’t need a tutorial, Calum. And I can think of only one possibility….”
The conference room door opened and DCI Arthur Penwarren entered. “Late notice MCIT meeting, people. Sorry for the surprise but happy to catch you all here. Where’s Novak?
“Falmouth nick, I’d guess, Guv,” Bates said.
“Get him over here. He’s part of our team now.”
Her smile could have lit a stadium. Davies noticed and shook her head.
“We got a tyre match, Guv,” Calum said. “It’s Hansen’s Land Rover, not Tregareth’s.”
“Could it be an old print?”
“Too much rain.”
“Could Tregareth have had access to Hansen’s vehicle?”
“Possibly. With Johns’ help.”
Penwarren said nothing for a moment. “It becomes increasingly clear that Johns, if she is our suspect, and the facts do keep revolving around her, could not have pulled off Hansen’s death alone. But who helped her? Who else but Tregareth? He had plenty of motive…”
“I’ve tried to put him in the picture, Guv,” Davies said, “but he never fits. Hansen cuckolded him, yes, but Tregareth was too fearful of losing his livelihood to have gone after his landlord. I can understand that. His wife was an adulteress, sure, but it is perfectly clear he wanted her back, wanted to have an intact family for the boy. I don’t see him running her off the road, and he claims he was far away, on the coast, anyway.”
“Any corroboration?”
“No. But when I questioned him he had no idea I was trying to place him at the scene of Joellyn’s accident; the details flew right by him. He was just full of enthusiasm about how he was managing that field on the coast. And I don’t think it was an act. The man’s a passionate farmer. That, and his boy, come first. He actually keeps the baby with him in the tractor, wrapped and nestled in a basket on the floor.”
“I’ll have to believe you,
Morgan, given we have so little else. But on the subject of Johns, I’ve got the report from the telephony experts. They acquired her mobile transmission records from British Telecom. Most helpful BT were, especially when leaned upon.” Penwarren tossed a sheaf of papers on the desk. “Johns was honest when she said her mobile was new and she barely used it. Not many calls.”
Davies pinned the printout on the cork board near her desk and the four them stared at it. “Do we know whose numbers these are?” Davies asked.
“That one’s Johns’ and this one’s Hansen’s. They’re calling or texting back and forth, though not that often. Short, businesslike,” Penwarren said. “There are a few outliers, but I doubt they are important. We’re dealing with older people with Hansen and Johns; I don’t think they had yet fully embraced this technology.”
Davies smiled. She knew Penwarren counted himself in that group.
As they studied the numbers, Novak, who’d just been a few blocks away, arrived and joined them.
After a few moments of study he pointed to one entry: “That last call from Hansen’s mobile to Johns. Is that the one Ms. Johns reported? Hansen texting her to say he was off fishing with Charlie?”
“Must be; it’s dated seventeenth May,” Davies answered.
Novak chuckled and shook his head.
Davies looked at him. “What’s so funny?”
“Someone’s careless…”
Calum peered at the printout more closely, then nodded to Novak: “Nicely done, constable. Sharp eyes.”
Davies studied the printout then wheeled and punched Novak in the shoulder. “You bastard, you’ve twigged it!”
“Someone want to put me in the picture?” Penwarren said, clearly annoyed.
“Go ahead, constable…it’s all yours,” Davies said.
“Look at the time of Hansen’s last text message. It was sent from Hansen’s phone to Ms. Johns' phone. But look at the time date: it was sent after Hansen’s body had already been found and reported to the Coastguard. Explanation? Someone else sent it, not Hansen.”