by Carola Dunn
“Women drivers!”
“But it shouldn’t, if it was full when I took it out.” As all cars were supposed to be, because of the size of the rural district. So he had to fill it whatever the gauge said. Megan wasn’t sure who had won that round.
She no longer took his jibes personally, but it was still a running battle every time she encountered him.
Walking round the church, she marvelled, as always, at the intricate carving that covered almost the entire exterior. People had been admiring it for half a millennium, and there was something very soothing about the fact. Cops and criminals came and went, but Cornish granite endured.
Unfortunately, the coast near Rocky Valley was not granite. Megan wasn’t exactly sure what it was; doubtless Julia or Chaz could tell her. Slate, probably, like the valley itself—comparatively soft, holed and hollowed and split by pounding waves, always changing as arches collapsed, huge boulders tumbled before the force of winter storms, windblown rain ate away at sheer cliff faces. Did anyone really know where all the caves were?
They were hunting for only one particular cave, though, and someone knew where it was, or the family could not have been taken there. Perhaps Aunt Nell had the right idea, searching out someone familiar with the secret caves used by smugglers, past or present.
When Megan entered the station, the desk sergeant told her DI Scumble had been called in to see Superintendent Bentinck. She went up to the office and started typing up her report of the interviews in Camelford and Bodmin. Though she wasn’t an expert typist by any means, at least she’d learnt to touch-type, unlike the poor sods who used two-fingered hunt-and-peck for their reports. She had finished one and started on the second by the time the inspector came in.
He was not happy, that much was obvious at a glance. Megan, having already been bawled out for going to Bodmin, expected to be bawled out for getting caught going to Bodmin. She wondered who on earth had seen and recognised her.
But Scumble stalked across to his desk without a word and slumped exhaustedly into his chair.
“What’s up, sir?”
“While I was gone, the super reported to the chief constable, who talked to London—damned if I know which department! The Home Office or Immigration, I suppose. He says the powers that be think it’s all a load of codswallop. They won’t act on the vague word of a half-conscious concussion patient.”
“Chudasama wasn’t half conscious,” Megan said indignantly, thumping the desk. “Not when he spoke.”
“But he was vague, incoherent, and you were the only witness.”
“I’m a police officer!”
“I don’t think they’re doubting your word, Pencarrow, just your interpretation. Anyway, if there’s any policing aspect to this business, it’s in our lap.”
“What about the Coast Guard? Don’t they have immigration responsibilities?”
“Not really, these days. Pretty much search and rescue. I told you their watch officer in Falmouth notified the RNLI. They can send out a helicopter if necessary, but there’s not another bloody thing they can do until those people are found.”
“The fog might not lift for hours. Or days. The Padstow boat can’t stay out there indefinitely.”
“As long as there are lives in danger … If only we had any sort of proof that lives are in danger! The lifeboats are manned by volunteers, remember. They have livings to earn.”
“But the old woman’s dying! The whole family will die!”
“Kalith Chudasama’s mother is not necessarily an old woman,” Scumble pointed out harshly. “He’s not much more than a boy, you said. She could be in her thirties. There may well be young children in that cave.” Megan was startled by his vehemence. “So use your brains, Pencarrow! We can’t just sit and wait.”
“Don’t you think it might be worth following up my aunt’s idea?” she said hesitantly.
“Chasing smugglers!” he scoffed. “Needle in a haystack in this part of the world.”
“Well, someone must know, and if we could suggest to the lifeboat people the best places to start looking—” The phone rang, and Scumble gestured to her to pick it up.
“Pencarrow.”
“Mrs. Trewynn’s here,” announced the duty sergeant, “to see DI Scumble.” She could hear the grin in his voice. Everyone knew about Aunt Nell, and Megan came in for a certain amount of teasing, but at least her aunt had never before invaded her workplace. “And the little dog.”
“You’re having me on.”
“What is it?” Scumble asked impatiently.
Megan covered the receiver. “He says my aunt’s here, sir, asking for you.”
“What the devil…?”
“I’m sorry, I can only suppose she—”
“Send her up. Maybe she’s found her smuggler.”
“Sir, I—”
“I’m not going to bite her head off.”
“No, sir. Send her up, please,” she said into the phone.
* * *
On the way from Boscastle to Launceston police headquarters, Eleanor had carefully marshalled her arguments for having to see Mr. Scumble at once, busy as he must be with a complicated case. Determined to pass on her news directly to him, she announced her name and errand with uncharacteristic belligerence.
“Mrs. Trewynn from Port Mabyn?” The stout, avuncular desk sergeant beamed at her. “Half a tick, madam.” He pressed a couple of buttons on his telephone and spoke into it. After listening for a moment, he said, “Right away, Sergeant,” and hung up. “The inspector says to go right up, madam.”
He seemed surprised that she didn’t know the way to Scumble’s room. Obviously, she was notorious for her previous forays into the DI’s investigations, and he assumed she had been here before.
However, their clashes had always taken place elsewhere, on neutral ground or on her own territory. Now Scumble was in his own element. He ought to be glad to receive her information, but Eleanor considered it inevitable that he’d dig up a reason to be irritated with her.
The sergeant called a constable to escort her. He looked very young without his helmet. “Can you manage the stairs, madam?” he asked solicitously.
Eleanor, still feeling slightly belligerent, almost gave him a frosty look. She caught herself in time. It wasn’t his fault she always came to blows with Scumble. “Yes, thank you,” she said, and just to show him she practically ran up, Teazle bouncing up a step behind.
He ushered her into a dingy room. Two desks faced each other across the scratched beige lino. Behind one, Scumble was rising to his feet. From the second, Megan came towards her.
“Good morning, Inspector. Unless it’s afternoon. I must have left my watch at Jocelyn’s.” She remembered just in time not to greet Megan with a hug when she was on duty, though she couldn’t resist a peck on the cheek. “Hello, dear. I’ve brought you some useful information, I hope.”
Reaching into her bag, she went over to Scumble’s desk and placed on it her 2½-inch Ordnance Survey map (the secret of her ability to find secluded farmhouses and cottages).
“Well, well, well, what have we here?” He unfolded it and turned it so that he had the southern edge.
Eleanor leant across the desk, her finger hovering indecisively as she tried to decipher the map upside down. “Here. That’s Lye Rock, so this is Bossiney Cove, and here’s Rocky Valley. My informant told me how to find three hidden caves once used for smuggling.”
“Three! Who’s your informant?”
She shook her head. “I can’t tell you that. I promised.”
“Come on, he’s probably leading us on a wild-goose chase. I’ll have to judge for myself how reliable he is before I go making a fool of myself sending a lifeboat to investigate nonexistent caves.”
“I’m not going to break my promise, Mr. Scumble. I believe he was telling the truth. He wasn’t keen to, but his wife and I, between us, persuaded him. You’ll just have to trust my judgment.”
“Sir.” Megan came to join them afte
r having a word with the constable at the door. “Twitchell says the weather forecast reports breezy conditions on the way as a front moves in. The fog’s expected to begin breaking up.”
“When?”
“This afternoon. They’re never more precise than that.”
“True. All right, Mrs. Trewynn, for the moment I haven’t got time to run over to Boscastle to interview your smuggler. Where are these caves?”
“And how are they hidden?” Megan asked. “I mean—”
“Good question, Pencarrow. What exactly does ‘hidden’ mean?”
“They’re all different. You see where I’ve drawn arrows on the map? This one, in the…” She paused to work out the upside-down map. “At the north end of the cove. These offshore rocks, the Saddle Rocks, make the water between them and the cliff turbulent, so no one goes there. There’s a channel, though, deep enough for a rowboat, which can be found with sounding poles, but it’s feasible only at slack tide.”
“Slack tide?” Scumble said blankly.
“It’s a period on either side of high or low tide, sir. Currents are less dangerous, or even die away altogether, I think.”
“Dammit, I forgot the tide might be a factor. Do we know what it’s doing?”
“Yesterday afternoon,” said Megan, “midafternoon, when we were in Rocky Valley, it was low tide. So today it’ll be about three quarters of an hour later.”
“That’s good news, isn’t it? If the fog dissipates in time. Go on, Mrs. Trewynn.”
“Once you’re in close, behind the Saddle Rocks, you can see that they have another member, so to speak. From a distance it looks like part of the cliff, but there’s water between, and tucked in behind it is a cave.”
“So it’s invisible from offshore,” said Scumble. “No revenuers spotting the cave and looking for loot. And no standing in the cave mouth, waving at passing fishing boats.”
“Then this one…” She pointed to the middle arrow.
“I’ll believe it’s similar. Don’t waste time explaining it to me. You need to talk to the RNLI skippers. Pencarrow, you’ve got their phone numbers?”
“Yes, sir.” Megan returned to her desk.
“But it isn’t really similar. I don’t think I can describe the location well enough over the phone,” Eleanor protested. “Not this one, especially. I need to show exactly where it is on the map.”
Scumble stared at the map for a moment. “All right, I can see that. We’ll have to send you and your map to Port Isaac. Give me those phone numbers, Pencarrow. I’ll ring and explain, and tell them you’re on your way. Take a panda and use the siren if you need to. Enough time’s been wasted already. You and Auntie get going!”
SIXTEEN
Reluctantly, Eleanor left the Incorruptible in Launceston. With great aplomb, Teazle hopped into the backseat of a police car. Eleanor sat in the front beside Megan.
She didn’t speak until they were clear of the town traffic. Then she said, “I was sure he’d pooh-pooh my caves. He seemed angry, but not with me.”
“No, not with you, Aunt Nell. With the situation. In taking Chudasama’s words seriously, he’s put his credibility on the line, and he’s furious with the top brass who don’t see the urgency as he does.”
“Which top brass? Your superintendent?”
“Higher than that, sounds like. He didn’t tell me exactly what Mr. Bentinck said to him, but he—the super—had been on the phone with the CC—”
“CC?”
“Chief Constable. CaRaDoC’s top copper. I don’t think he was the difficulty. The CC talked to London—someone in the government, don’t ask me exactly who—but they just don’t really believe what Kalith Chudasama told me.”
“The RNLI is nothing to do with the government, though.”
“No, thank God. They’re all volunteers, supported by donations, though they do work with the Coast Guard. The thing is, if the situation is the way we’ve worked it out, whoever left these people committed more than one crime, first in smuggling them into the country and then in abandoning them. The second part may amount to murder.”
“If Kalith or his mother dies…”
“Well, murder’s our business, but the immigration stuff isn’t really. I think, with all the ramifications, the boss would like to have a bit of support from officialdom.”
“Considering how keen the Home Office is to keep Britain white,” Eleanor said bitterly, “I’d have thought they’d be eager to find out what’s going on.”
“You’d think so. Who knows what the politicians are up to? I suppose it’s within reason that they won’t act on a few words from a half-conscious man. If only there weren’t lives at stake! What’s really upsetting Scumble, though, is the idea that there are very likely children in danger.”
“Children! I didn’t know he had any particular interest in children.”
“Nor did I. In fact I assumed he didn’t, because he doesn’t have any. Aunt Nell, are you sorry you never had kids?”
Eleanor thought carefully before answering. Megan was thirty—or thirty-one, she never could keep track—and unmarried, with no regular boyfriend. The question was fraught with implications. Her response had to be honest yet noncommittal.
“I won’t pretend I’ve never had regrets. I certainly didn’t set out in life intending not to have children. As you know, Peter and I were constantly on the move, often in different directions.”
“I’ve still got every postcard you ever sent me.”
“Have you really? You see, starting a family would have meant choosing between settling down, leaving important work we were good at, or abandoning them to nannies and boarding schools. Or, to be honest, giving up the job myself and hardly ever seeing Peter. I suppose, in fact, we were always too busy to actually make that decision, always looking ahead to the next disaster.”
“There’s always a disaster going on somewhere, isn’t there.”
“So it seems, both natural and man-made. As it is, there are children all over the world who might perhaps not have survived if we’d not been there to help.”
“Have you been happy? Apart from what happened to Uncle Peter, I mean.”
Peter had been killed in Indonesia, not long before they would have been able to retire together. “Of course I’ve had sad times. No life always runs smoothly. But I’ve come to the conclusion that happiness is more a matter of attitude than anything else. I’ve known people in mansions who were miserable and people in huts who were happy. It’s certainly not a matter of whether you have children or not. Children bring both joy and sorrow.”
Unexpectedly, Megan laughed. “Too true. According to Mum, I’m ruining her life, both by being a copper and by not marrying and having kids. So far. But if her child’s making her miserable, why is she so desperate for me to follow her bad example? I wish you’d talk to her, Aunt Nell.”
“I would if I thought it might help, dear, but love and logic don’t mix. If the subject arises, I’ll do what I can.”
“Oh well.” After a moment’s silence, she reverted to their present task. “Well, here we are running to salvage a corner of another man-made disaster. The Africans throw the Indians out. The English refuse to let them in. People with attitudes like Chaz make me sick.”
“He’s repeating what he’s been told. Unfortunately, prejudice and logic don’t mix well, either. At least the lifeboat people are willing to rush to the rescue regardless.”
“I don’t know whether anyone’s actually told them they’re looking for Indians, but I don’t think it’d make any difference. They turn out for shipwrecks, and quite a few British cargo ships have dark-skinned seamen. I remember seeing them coming ashore in Falmouth when I was a child.”
“Lascars. True.”
“So the idea of rescuing Indians won’t come as a shock. And we have a much better chance of finding the Chudasamas in time with your map.”
“I hope so. I do hope they really are in Bossiney Cove.”
“The boss se
ems to think so, and he’s the one who talked to the Coast Guard and the RNLI. The lifeboat crewmen would have the best knowledge of currents within the cove, wouldn’t they? Them and your smuggler friend. Aunt Nell, he didn’t have anything to do with stranding them, did he? Because if so, you can’t go on protecting him!”
“Of course not, dear. I’m sure all he’s involved in is an occasional foray across the Channel to Brittany to bring back duty-free cigarettes and brandy. He may well have relatives there. There’s a long history, after all.”
“Yes, I read about it. Wrecking, too.”
“Another of the men I talked to went on about the ‘Old Squire,’ who sounds like a dreadful character.”
“In Boscastle? A century or so ago? That’s what the villagers called the villain I read about. Did he own a prosperous shop, general merchandise, where he sold the proceeds of the smuggling and wrecking? Something like that.”
“So I was told. One of the men I talked to said his grandfather—or great-grandfather—worked for the Old Squire as a carpenter. He was a shipbuilder, too.”
“A dangerous man to cross, and he scattered bastards all over the countryside.”
“That was mentioned, or at least that he was a ladies’ man.”
Megan frowned. “I wish I could remember his name. I have a feeling … No, I’ve lost it. Did your chap say anything else useful?”
“I don’t know about useful, but he and a couple of the other fishermen I talked to mentioned a stranger hanging about the harbour yesterday asking questions about smuggling. A foreigner, but you know how they use that word.”
“Not from this part of Cornwall,” Megan said with a grin. “May come from as far away as Bodmin, or even Truro. I’d have thought tourists often ask about smuggling.”
“Yes, but about the old days. Apparently yesterday’s man wanted to know about present-day smuggling, though I don’t think he came out and asked directly.”
“I expect they misunderstood him.”
“Could be. They didn’t think he was a copper’s nark, which I presume covers Customs and Excise men, as well. One said he was oddly dressed, but when I asked how, he could only say he looked like a businessman trying to disguise himself as a seaman! Come to think of it, he could have been the man in the suit and reefer jacket who so rudely refused to let me use the phone box, even when I told him it was an emergency.”