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Too Clever by Half

Page 27

by Will North


  “Someone very clever,” Davies said, her normally stentorian voice almost a whisper.

  “But perhaps too clever by half,” Penwarren added. “Johns herself?”

  “Or someone helping her.”

  “Guv,” Calum said, “our telephony people in Exeter can determine the exact source of a mobile phone transmission by targeting the mast from which that message was sent. If they know enough about this text message, they can locate the source geographically. Transmission masts transmit and receive data from three thirds of a three hundred and sixty degree circumference around each tower. The masts divide that circle like a pie. But if other transmitting masts are nearby, they, too, can be analyzed to pinpoint a specific source for a given call or text message. They can triangulate, is what I’m saying. They can put the call on the ground.”

  Davies went to her own desk, pounded the keyboard of her laptop, and finally looked up. “There are masts at St. Keverne, on the Lizard, as well as in Helston proper and at the southern edge of Falmouth. There’s your triangle, Calum.”

  Penwarren picked up a phone and gave Exeter the mast locations.

  “They’ll be on site here tomorrow,” he said after ringing off. “All it takes, apparently, is a couple of murders to get their attention….”

  Almost immediately, his mobile rang. “Yes? Who? She does? Is she reliable? Right then, have her interviewed and we’ll take it into evidence.”

  “Guv?” Davies asked.

  “That was Comms. There’s a possible witness, a Dorothy Trugwell from St. Anthony-in-Meneage. Older lady, apparently. Says she knows Charlotte Johns from her own stays at the hospital at Helston, and saw Johns while walking along the Gillan Creek lane near her village the same morning Hansen went missing. Never thought of it until she read our request for information in The Cornishman this past week.”

  “That lane’s part of the Southwest Coast Path,” Bates said. “Is Johns a walker? We’ll need to know.” Davies went to the Admiralty coastal chart on the big cork board by her desk. “Guv, that creek’s just around a low headland from the little harbor at Flushing where Hansen’s boat was anchored.”

  “So if she was not out for a walk early on the very morning Hansen went missing, what was she doing there?” Penwarren said. “Bring her in again; Morgan, she’s yours. Meanwhile, if they have a room, I’m staying here tonight.”

  “Me too, Guv. No sense in going upcounty….”

  “Well, I hope you two will be nice and cozy; I’ve got kids to attend to,” Calum said.

  “Calum,” Penwarren said, “you look after them brilliantly. Don’t think we haven’t noticed.”

  Morgan grinned. She wasn’t sure why.

  Forty-Three

  “THIS IS BEGINNING to feel like harassment,” Charlotte Johns complained. She was perched at the edge of the settee in the interview room at Pool once again. It was just coming up on eleven, Friday morning. “The love of my life has drowned. Why must you persecute me?”

  “Relax, Ms. Johns. No one is harassing or persecuting you. This is simply another interview. And, for your information, Archie Hansen did not drown. No water in his lungs, you see. He suffocated face down in the water.”

  “Oh my God, how horrible…”

  “Yes. I should think so. But we doubt he was even aware. The pathologist’s report says he was heavily drugged at the time: Lorazepam: a powerful sedative. Drugged unconscious, in fact. Curiously, a quantity of that same drug went missing from the hospital where you work just before Mr. Hansen disappeared. Were you aware of that?”

  Johns laughed. “Look, I’m an orderly. That’s a fancy word for a charwoman, okay? I clean rooms, clean toilets, make beds, swab floors. I need the money. At the hospital I have access to nothing but cleaning materials and linens. There are very strict rules, as there should be, of course.”

  “So you know nothing about this particular drug?”

  “Sorry. Nothing.”

  “Never heard of it before?”

  “I am not a pharmacist, detective.”

  Davies consulted a sheaf of papers before her, one of her favorite ways of distracting suspects, and then looked up: “Have you ever driven Mr. Hansen’s Land Rover, Ms. Johns?”

  The question gave Johns only momentary pause. “Of course not. He never lets me near his farm equipment.”

  “But Mr. Hansen is dead. Have you never had need for his four wheel drive vehicle, perhaps since his death?”

  “I have my own motor, detective. I do not drive farm vehicles. What’s more, I wouldn’t have the first idea where to even find the keys to his vehicles.”

  “Really? Because our scene of crimes people noted in their report that the keys for the Land Rover, as well as Mr. Hansen’s two tractors, hang in his barn on a marked rack just above his neatly labeled spare parts. Very orderly chap, Archie was.”

  “As I’ve said before, I was not permitted in there.”

  “In all your years together, never?”

  “Correct. He was very particular about that.”

  “Why do you suppose that was?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “Couldn’t or won’t? You and Hansen were together for some five years, yet you lived separately. Why?”

  “You asked that before. As I said then, he preferred it that way. The arrangement suited us both.”

  “Did it really? Or was it, Ms. Johns, that he didn’t love you, that you were simply one of his playthings?”

  “That’s nonsense! He was my priest. I was his priestess. Our intimate life was rich and full of love!”

  “Full of love, Ms. Johns, or just sex? There is that video of Hansen and his neighbor’s partner, Joellyn, you see, having it on in Hansen’s attic. Looks like he had a more varied sexual life than you knew, so I can’t help but wonder, as any woman might, about the sincerity of his love for you?”

  Charlotte shook her head. “That would be that slut Joellyn’s doing, that would. What they did in that video? That wasn’t even a technique he enjoyed. Trust me, I know. And that Bobby Tregareth? I don’t think he satisfied his Joey. So she came looking for more from Archie, is what I think.”

  “Perhaps you’re right. Or perhaps she was more…ah…accomplished than you in that particular technique, as you put it. But never mind; let’s say you’re right, that Joellyn didn’t satisfy Mr. Tregareth. Do you reckon that was why Bobby lingered with you of an afternoon, over tea, as you’ve previously stated?”

  Charlotte shook off the jibe and smiled: “Sure. Needy, he was, that’s why he hung about gawking, always looking down my blouse.”

  “And yet he says that’s not true. Never happened.”

  “Well, he would do, wouldn’t he? Makes him look weak, poor devil.”

  “I’m sure I can’t say, Ms. Johns. I’ve no previous experience with lechery, you see.”

  Johns looked at her: “Doesn’t surprise me.”

  Davies marveled at the woman’s poise: she was formidably unflappable. So, as was her practice, she decided to go straight for the woman's throat: “I wonder if you are aware, Ms. Johns, that your partner, Archie Hansen, signed a contract to purchase a small villa on the coast of Spain for himself and Joellyn?”

  Johns’ head snapped up: “What? That’s impossible!”

  “Yes, well, that’s true enough, now, as they are both dead, an interesting coincidence when you think about it. But we actually have the sale documents, you see. Archie had put Higher Pennare up for sale for quite a tidy sum. Hadn’t he said? Both transactions were being handled by Savills in Truro: sell the farm, buy the villa. Savills was kind enough to email us a link to the property in Spain. Quite charming it is: tropical plants and a pool as well. The estate agent confided that Archie and Joellyn planned to take Joellyn’s boy with them.”

  “Tregareth’s child? Don’t be daft. Archie was through with children after he lost his own in the divorce several years ago.”

  “And, of course, you were too old, am I right, to have a child
with him? But maybe he wanted a second chance with someone younger?”

  “Bobby would never have let that boy go…never.”

  “What makes you so certain? Because according to our DNA analysis, the boy isn’t Tregareth’s son. He’s Archie’s.”

  Johns looked like she’d suddenly been flash-frozen. Davies’s mobile vibrated silently in her suit jacket pocket. She’d kept it on purposely.

  “Would you excuse me for a moment, Ms. Johns? I’m sorry for this brief interruption.”

  Davies stepped into the hallway.

  “Morgan?” It was Calum.

  “You were expecting someone else?”

  “Oh, be still. I have news about that text message from Hansen to Johns.”

  “And that would be…?”

  “The telephony analysts from Exeter are here on the Lizard. And they’ve zeroed in on that signal allegedly sent from Hansen’s phone. They’ve triangulated from the three masts in the area. The primary transmission came off the mast at St. Keverne. It stands on high ground about three miles south of Hansen’s farm…but closer to Johns’s place at the edge of Goonhilly Downs.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “We’re here at Johns’ place now. The crew here says the transmission to the St. Keverne mast could only have come from her bungalow, there being no other houses anywhere nearby out in this barren heathland. Bleak it is out here, I’m telling you, just acres of gorse and bracken, not a tree to be seen.”

  “Spare me the nature lesson, Calum…”

  “Okay, what the Exeter boys say is the message could only have been sent from the upper story of Charlotte Johns' house. There’s no reliable signal on the ground floor.”

  “Which is to say?”

  “Either she sent it or someone else did, but from her own house...and, of course, after Hansen’s body had already been found. Will you take Johns into custody?”

  Davies hesitated…“No. Not yet. There’s still a big piece missing.”

  “I know. She couldn’t have pulled off the dumping at sea on her own. What about Tregareth?”

  “No. He doesn’t fit. Not at all.”

  “Why? He had plenty of motive.”

  “I can’t explain. It just doesn’t add up. I trust him. There’s someone else. I can smell it.”

  “Okay, Morgan. And I trust you. But you’ll need an explanation for the Guv.”

  “I’m still working on Johns; an arrest would only silence her.”

  “You’re the boss. I’m with you, Morgan.”

  “Thank you, Calum, thank you very much; I’m learning I can count on you.”

  “You’re not in this alone.”

  “Always have been.”

  “Maybe time for a change…?”

  Morgan rang off and returned to the interview suite. She wondered what it would be like not to be alone.

  “ARE YOU A walker, Ms. Johns?” Morgan asked when she’d taken her seat again. “I am. When I lived in Newlyn, I often hiked along the Southwest Coast Path to get some air and clear my head. Gorgeous coastline hereabouts in Cornwall.”

  “No. Walking alone frightens me.”

  “Even in broad daylight? Like, for example, early in the morning of seventeenth May, at St. Anthony-in-Meneage? Lovely spot for a walk, that is, hard by Gillan Creek and on the way to the viewpoint at Dennis Head, just around the headland from Flushing where Archie moored his skiff. Know the spot, do you?”

  Johns shook her head. “Can’t recall being anywhere near there.”

  “And yet someone else can. Someone who recognized you, apparently.”

  “She must certainly be mistaken.”

  “She?”

  Morgan thought she’d caught Johns, but the woman’s comeback was slick: “The only person I know in St. Anthony-in-Meneage is Dorothy Trugwell. She is very old and a frequent patient at the hospital in Helston. Comes to us when her visions get the best of her. Completely unreliable, she is. Has to be on her medications, but often forgets to take them.”

  Forty-Four

  IT WAS WHILE the telephony experts were gathering up their gear that West saw it. He’d been gazing out the sliding glass door of Charlotte's sitting room toward the raised bed vegetable garden beyond when it came to him. It was all about his late wife and her passion for gardening and their work together each spring to grow fresh vegetables for their kitchen. At this stage, late spring, he saw that the vegetables in John’s gardens were thriving: lettuce, spinach, cabbage, cauliflower, carrot tops, and young peas climbing on trellises. But it was the earliest of the garden vegetables, the radishes, which seemed to be struggling, almost stunted. They should have been way ahead of the rest of the garden by now, their green leaves flourishing, their red orbs fattening, ready for harvest. Instead, they looked like they were only just beginning to set true leaves, the first round cotyledons withering, like they’d been poisoned. It was all wrong.

  West found a garden fork in the shed behind the house and began digging in the radish bed. He dug furiously until the fork hit metal. His chest heaving and his heart thumping from the effort, he pried out a heavy biscuit tin. It was wide and deep, the images on the big tin commemorating the 1981 marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Diana. He reached down to pull it out of the soil, opened the lid, called Morgan’s mobile, and got her voicemail. “I’ve found the treasure. In Johns’ garden.”

  Then he collapsed.

  DICKY TOWNSEND AND Max Marchenko had cased Charlotte’s bungalow for police activity and now stood before her garden.

  “What is radish?” Max said.

  Townsend ran his hand through his thinning hair. “An early vegetable.”

  “Many vegetables here.”

  “Yes. All but one. Look at that bed: the radishes were there. Now they’re gone.”

  “And the treasure, too?”

  “Yes. The police, I reckon. We have lost this one, Max.”

  “Mr. Connor will not be pleased. He has been in touch, repeatedly, ever since the news of Hansen’s death.”

  “I thought you were through with him, Max.”

  Marchenko smiled. “I keep my options open, Mr. Dicky. I will not betray you, but I think a plane ticket to, say, Canada is in your future. Yes? That or my gun to your head.”

  “I COULD KILL you, you idiot!”

  “Morgan,” Calum West said. He had been sedated and was just coming back to the present at the hospital in Helston. The fibrillation was under control and his condition had stabilized.

  “I’m sorry…”

  “You’re sorry all right! Give me no clue your heart was dickey? I should have twigged it when you were climbing out of that ravine after Joellyn’s car went over. I don’t know whether to hug you or slap you! And what about your girls and their gran, Ruby? What would they think if you’d suddenly checked out? That’s just irresponsible, that is!”

  Calum managed a grin. “That’s where you’re wrong.”

  Davies ran her hands through her cropped hair and shook her head. “All right, how am I wrong because, you know, I almost never am…”

  “You’ve been in the force almost twenty-five years, right? Me, almost as long. Plenty of young vultures sniffing around our aging carcasses, waiting to pounce.”

  “Aging? Excuse me?”

  “Shut up for once, will you? I let on I’ve got a dicky heart and guess what, I’m retired. The force couldn’t care less. Disposable, I am. Piece of meat to them. How’s that good for my girls or for their gran, eh? So we keep this quiet. Private.”

  He looked at Davies hard. “Got that, do you?”

  Davies rested her head in her hands. “You are so impossible.”

  “Why does this matter so much to you?”

  Davies looked around the hospital room as if for an answer.

  “I suppose, you imbecile, because I may care for you. A lot.”

  “God help me…”

  Morgan smiled and placed her hand against Calum’s cheek. “You may need the combined help not just
of God but of the Druids and all the other pagans hereabouts to survive me.”

  Calum took her hand and kissed her palm. Morgan had never known a kiss so tender or more heartfelt.

  Epilogue

  “A BLOODY TRAVESTY, this is!” Morgan Davies shouted, pounding her fist on the table at Bodmin around which the Major Crimes Investigative Team had gathered after the verdict in the months-long trial of Charlotte Johns. Fall was nearly upon them, and the leaves on the trees on the Channel side of Cornwall were already yellowing. Calum West watched his partner’s fury. The woman was incendiary. In more ways than one, he’d learned recently.

  “Conspiracy to murder? That’s the best the Crown Prosecution Service could come up with, the best the damned judge could do? Conspiracy? Twenty years? The woman’s a pathological liar, a torturer, and a murderer!”

  DCI Penwarren let Morgan burn out. He was used to her fury against injustice.

  “The judge, Morgan, had little choice. Because we knew Johns could not have acted alone, he had no alternative but to instruct the jury to back down to conspiracy. But recall the judge’s words,” Penwarren said, picking up the transcript:

  I have had extensive opportunity to see you give evidence and have heard you testify over a period of many weeks. I believe you are a consummate actress and your performance demonstrates your ability to lie with apparent conviction and yet, clearly, you experience no remorse for what you did. I have no doubt at all that the arrangements for Hansen’s torture, abduction, and disposal were of your making. What you orchestrated was a horrific and slow death.

  “That’s pretty damning, Morgan.”

  “But it doesn’t put her away for good! And where’s the prosecution of Joellyn Masters’ death? The Crown dropped that one entirely.”

  “And for good reason: we had nothing but an ambiguous tyre print. Nothing. They were wise to pursue the stronger case.”

  Penwarren sighed. “Look, Morgan, you and I know only too well how little true justice there is in this world, much less in our legal system. And I know you also know that I understand the true source of your anger. But the jury did convict her and they wouldn’t—they couldn’t—have done so unless the judge had reduced the charge. So no, it’s not the verdict we sought but let’s remember, the woman will be nearly seventy when she gets out.”

 

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