by Carola Dunn
But Pal was looking at her pleadingly.
“If I go and get the dog and carry her in, and she stays in the hall with all the doors closed, just for a few minutes, would that be all right, Mrs. Nayak?”
Her husband answered. “The boy has had little play for a long time. It will do no harm.”
“While you’re playing, Aunt Nell,” Megan said with a grin, “I’ll talk to the ladies.”
Teazle was delighted to be released from the car. Before Eleanor could stop her, she made a dash for a clump of grass the builders hadn’t yet ground into mud. Better there than inside, Eleanor thought philosophically, picking up the damp dog. There wasn’t much she could do about it except blot her with a handkerchief. The Indians certainly wouldn’t have a towel to spare. Perhaps Megan had an extra hankie.
When she returned to the house, Pal eagerly opened the door. He had been joined by his younger cousins, Jay’s children.
The little ones were a bit nervous until they saw how small Teazle was. Then all three were down on the floor with the dog, disregarding her dampness in the joy of petting her. She rolled over to let them have a go at her tummy.
The older boy, the one who had turfed Pal in among the women, came into the hall. He watched for a minute, then disappeared through another door, only to return with a bag of Quavers, a bright orange snack Eleanor had seen on the newsagent’s shelves but never encountered at closer quarters. Doubtless some kindly Red Cross soul considered them a nice treat for the children.
Eleanor wasn’t so sure they were actually edible, in either human or canine terms.
“May your dog have some?” the boy asked.
They probably wouldn’t do Teazle much good. She might be sick in the police car on the way back. But on the other hand, as Pal’s father had said, the children had had so little fun for so long.
They had plenty now, and so did Teazle, catching, chasing, hunting the cheesy-smelling bits of nothing much. In the small space, chaos reigned for several minutes. Eleanor stood out of the way, in a corner, and enjoyed the sight.
The teenager was teasing Teazle with the last scrap, held just beyond her reach as she danced on her back feet, when the doorbell rang. Pal opened the door. There on the step stood David Skan, his bush of blond hair unflattened by the rain.
“Good afternoon. Ah, there you are, Mrs. Trewynn. I’ve run you to earth.”
“Now what makes me think it wasn’t me you were looking for, Mr. Skan? It’s not my house, and I can’t invite you in.” A brainwave struck Eleanor. What was the power of the Commonwealth Relations Office compared to the power of the press? “But let me just see whether the residents are interested in talking to you.”
“You’re not going to make me stand here dripping while you…”
“Please come in, sir,” said Pal.
Eleanor looked to the teenager.
“Mr. Skan is a friend of yours, Mrs. Trewynn?” he asked.
“Mostly.” She remembered the wonderful article he had written boosting the LonStar shop.
As if reading her mind, Skan said, “Persuade them, and I’ll play it any way you want it, Mrs. T.”
“Well, yes, you could say he’s a friend.”
“Please, sir, step inside while I ask my uncle.”
Skan was already scribbling in his notebook as he stepped over the threshold. Eleanor hoped he was noting how polite the young refugees were. Pal closed the door behind him.
Abandoning the reporter to Teazle, Pal, and the little girl and boy, Eleanor followed the older boy. She had to explain to the elder Mr. Nayak—Jay’s father—that Skan, though her friend, was a reporter in search of a story.
Jay, his father and uncle, and his sister’s husband listened to Eleanor with doubt on each face. She explained that Skan had promised to write a sympathetic article, and she trusted him—within limits—but had no control over him.
“I’ll leave you to talk about it,” she said. “I’d better get back to the children and the dog.”
As she entered the hall from one side, Megan erupted from the other.
“I thought I heard— What the h … heck do you think you’re doing here, Skan?”
He gave her an insouciant smile. “My job, Sergeant. You’re lucky there aren’t hordes on the doorstep. That storm last night cut the dramatic potential for the telly crowd.”
“I can’t let you talk to—”
“You can’t stop me.”
“If you compromise our investigation—”
“Aha, so this is a criminal investigation?”
Megan glared at him.
“Look here,” he said in a more conciliatory tone, “I have no desire to mess up a police case nor to get into trouble with my editor. Nor to get you into trouble with DI Scumble, come to that. I’ve already got a nice piece with you as heroine.”
“Bribery?” said Megan dryly.
He grinned. “You could call it that, except there’s no way my editor’s not going to run with that one. I’m willing to let … no, not Scumble … Superintendent Bentinck look at what I write and I’ll pass on his remarks to my editor. If there’s anything that really would compromise your investigation, between them they’ll cut it out.”
“I suppose…”
“Besides, Mrs. T’s going to sit in on my interviews. She’ll keep me in line.”
“Aunt Nell!”
“I just said I’d ask the Nayaks whether they’re willing to talk to Mr. Skan. It’s a wonderful opportunity for the world to hear their side of the story—”
“For North Cornwall…”
“I’m thinking of the nationals,” said Skan. “The Guardian will pick it up like a shot if it’s drawn to their attention, and after that, well, you never know.”
Megan groaned. “Just what we need!”
“I’m thinking of what the Nayaks need, dear. A nice loud public outcry could make the difference between their being allowed to stay and their being shipped off to nowhere again.”
“Well … all right. I can’t stop them talking if they want to. But I’m finished here. I’ve got to get back to the nick and report, so you can’t stay, Aunt Nell.”
“I expect Mr. Skan will take me home.”
“Of course. Be happy to.”
“Not home. Your car is in Launceston, remember?”
“Oh, yes! How lucky you reminded me.”
“Even easier,” said Skan. “That’s where I’ll be heading anyway.”
“And don’t forget Teazle.”
“Oh dear, I did for a moment.” Teazle was sitting on the floor amid the three cross-legged children, all of them petting her at once. “Do you mind a dog in your car? She should be completely dry by then.”
Skan laughed. “You’ve obviously never seen my car. It’s more a matter of will she deign to honour it?”
Megan sighed. “I hope it holds together till you get back. Give me a minute before you barge in, would you.” She went to take her leave of the men.
“Barge in!” Skan said indignantly. “They haven’t even said yet that they’re willing to talk to me.”
“Reporters aren’t known for their retiring natures,” Eleanor retorted.
Pal stood up. “I will talk to you, sir,” he said eagerly.
“Sorry, mate. I’m not supposed to talk to kids without their parents’ permission.”
The dog also stood up. She retched, her stomach heaving. The children drew back in alarm. As Teazle stumbled stiff-legged towards the front door, Eleanor sprang to open it. Teazle made a staggering dash for the patch of green and was thoroughly sick.
Skan looked aghast.
“Don’t worry,” said Eleanor, “just something she ate. Be glad she didn’t wait to get rid of it till we’d set off in your car.”
The rain had slackened and in the southwestern sky was a patch of blue big enough to make a sailor a pair of trousers. Did sailors wear blue trousers these days?
The lifeboat crew hadn’t. Their black tights would have made a t
raditional blue bell-bottomed sailor blush. The man in the telephone box hadn’t, in spite of his nautical cap and pea-jacket. His grey trousers had looked more like the lower half of a business suit, and he’d been wearing a white shirt and tie to go with them.
A sunbeam broke through and gilded the puddle from which Teazle was thirstily lapping.
Gold, like the gold braid Pal had described on the freighter captain’s cap. Had the man in the telephone box been gold-braided? Eleanor couldn’t remember, nor the colour of his hair when he strode into the hotel, surely removing his headgear in gentlemanly fashion. It was odd that his image had otherwise remained so clear in her mind, and odder that it kept recurring to her.
Surely the two men couldn’t be one and the same? But suppose they were, what would it mean?
Eleanor frowned.
TWENTY-FIVE
“She did what?” Scumble howled. “And you let her?”
“How could I stop her, sir? It was the boy who asked him in, not my aunt. And she’d already persuaded them to talk to him before I realised he was there. I really don’t see that there was much I could do about it.”
“There must have been something!”
“I did get him to promise the super could see his article before it’s published.”
“That’s better than nothing, I suppose, though we can’t hold him to it. We’ll have to get cracking, though, and work out what we want Mr. Bentinck to ask them to hold back.”
“Shall I type my report?”
“No, it can wait. I don’t want the whole story at this point. We’ll do that when the team gets back from Boscastle. Tell me the bits that are going to help us collar the villain of the piece.”
Megan had thought about nothing else on her drive back from Bodmin. “Well, first of all, one of them saw the captain of the freighter. He swears he would recognise him, and he identified the same man as captain of the yacht. The trouble is, he’s a ten-year-old.”
“You believe him?”
“Oh yes, sir. He’s bright and observant. His account was very credible, confident and precise, with no contradictions and nothing impossible for an active and ingenious boy. In excellent English, too. I took down exactly what he said, so I can write up a verbatim statement. His father was present and is willing to sign it, as well as the boy, of course.”
“But the courts are funny about children as witnesses,” Scumble said flatly. “Let’s hope he won’t have to be called. Not to mention that we have to find this captain first. No name, I assume.”
“No, sir. Not his, nor either ship’s.”
“What else, then?”
“The freighter picked them up in Mombasa, and I have the date. The harbourmaster there should be able to tell us what ships called on that date.”
“And the names of their masters, I shouldn’t wonder. But it may take a while. Better get on to it right away.” He picked up the phone. “Overseas cable,” he said. “To the harbourmaster at Mombasa…” He looked at Megan.
“Kenya, sir.”
“Mombasa, Kenya.” He dictated the telegram, including the date Megan supplied, and adding the word “urgent” to his request. “Sign Superintendent Bentinck’s name and rank, and Constabulary of the Royal Duchy of Cornwall, in full. Read it back to me … Right … Thank you.” He hung up.
“Taking the super’s name in vain, sir?”
“He had to go to a meeting in Truro. He told me to do whatever was necessary. And with luck the Royal bit will impress someone at the other end.”
“But can we do that—request information from other countries, I mean—without going through channels? Protocol,” Megan added vaguely.
“I don’t give an effing tinker’s curse for protocol. They can’t hang me. Go on.”
“The boy again: When they transferred from the freighter to the yacht, he slipped away from the group and went exploring round the other side of the ship. He saw what must have been the beam of a lighthouse. He couldn’t time it precisely, but he counted and he thinks it flashed four times in a minute. Every fifteen seconds, that is. Judging by how long it took the yacht to get to Bossiney Cove, it may have been St. Anthony’s light, at Falmouth.”
“In which case, Falmouth was very likely the freighter’s destination, and possibly its home port.”
“That’s my feeling, sir.”
Scumble picked up the phone again. This time he had to hold for a minute before it was answered. He drummed his fingers on the desk, saying to Megan, “What the hell is Polmenna doing in Boscastle? He ought to be back by now. We need— Hello? Get me a list of the flashing period—whatever it’s called, you know what I mean—of all the lighthouses in Cornwall. Better make it Devon, too … Then ring the local library! It shouldn’t be beyond their powers.”
“Coast Guard,” Megan suggested.
“And if it is beyond their powers, ring the Coast Guard.” Hanging up, he turned back to Megan. “Any more?”
“The Nayaks—I’ll call them that for convenience, though there’s a sprinkling of other surnames. They seem pretty sure the cargo was wool, in the hold they were in, at least. It smelled, apparently. They were able to walk about in narrow aisles between stacks of bales wrapped in hessian tied with twine.”
“Wool. Australia or New Zealand.”
“Almost certainly. Jay, the ex-copper, noticed the bales were marked. He remembers a couple of the marks, two or three capital letters. We may be able to trace the cargo and pinpoint the ship that way, if the other stuff doesn’t pan out.”
“Unless you have some idea of how to start on that, we’ll hold it in reserve. Go on.”
“I can’t think of anything else that would help with the investigation. It’s more stuff that will be needed in court. But let me look through my notes.” She skimmed through. “Something else the boy said—”
“What’s his name, this infant prodigy who has the makings of a detective?”
“Gopal Nayak. Known as Pal. He’s the son of Jay’s uncle. I tend to see them all in relation to Jay.”
“So what else did your Pal say?”
“He heard the captain address the yacht’s crewman as Lenny. Presumably Leonard, though it could be something else, I suppose.”
“That’s not much use till we find the yacht.”
“I agree, sir. He also heard Lenny address the captain as ‘cap’n,’ but he couldn’t understand anything else the man said. It sounds to me as if Lenny is a Cornishman, or possibly a native of Devon, who speaks with a pronounced local accent. I find some of them pretty hard to understand, even though I grew up in Cornwall. So if the captain could understand him—”
“He’s likely a Cornishman. Or must at least have spent a lot of time in Cornwall, consorting with the natives. Good. Anything else about the yacht itself?”
“There’s this: It’s pretty luxurious. Fancy fittings, I mean, besides the cabin being big enough to cram them all in.”
“So we have the captain of a freighter who had the use of a fancy motor yacht. One that can be handled by two men. At least, they didn’t mention any other crew?”
“No, sir. I didn’t ask.”
“You should have, Pencarrow, you should have.”
“Yes, sir. Though I do think they’d have said if they’d seen or heard more than the two.”
Scumble grunted. “You finished?”
“I think so.” She flipped through the last few pages. “Yes, that’s it. I didn’t get anything new from the women, except that Kalith’s sister confirmed the marks on the wool bales that Jay reported. Oh, and she’d noticed one he hadn’t.”
“With any luck at all, we won’t have to try to trace them. Right, I have a few questions arising from what ex–Sergeant Nayak told you yesterday. If you can’t give me the answers, write down the questions for next time. For a start, this … what is it?… lascar who set up the trip in the first place, the go-between, what do we know about him?”
“Nothing, sir. I did ask. The old man, the one who died,
is the only person he dealt with. The others never caught more than a glimpse of him.”
“Not even your Pal?”
“Not even Pal. They don’t know whether he was a member of the crew of the ship they were on, or the freighter, or possibly someone hanging about in the port waiting for a berth. The old man seems to have been decidedly secretive about it.”
“Hmm. Doubtless he handled the payment, too. I wonder how he managed that, unless they had a suitcase full of large-denomination notes.”
“They say not. There’s an account at a London bank. Mr. Nayak, the present head of the family, says they transferred money by wire to the branch in Mombasa, but he doesn’t know how, as the old man couldn’t go ashore.”
“Well, I can’t see that it matters much, at least for the present. What’s more important is how they paid the sudden last-minute demand. Didn’t they tell you?”
“Gold jewellery. Apparently, it’s traditional for Indian women to buy it as a form of savings. The captain took the lot. Jay suspects he suddenly noticed it when he went into the cave. It was the first time he’d seen them in a decent light.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere! I assume you got a description of what was taken?”
“I gave them some paper and a biro—they have nothing. When I left, the women were writing out a list. My aunt said she’d bring it here.”
“That’s good of her,” Scumble said grudgingly. “Wait a minute, her car’s here in Launceston and you drove her to Bodmin, so how is she getting back? No, don’t tell me.” He groaned. “Skan’s bringing her.”
“I’m afraid so, sir. She didn’t want to leave, and I thought you’d want me to report as quickly as—”
“All right, all right. There can’t be much she hasn’t already told him. When she gets here, we’ll circulate the description of the stuff—if she hasn’t mislaid it—to jewellers and pawnbrokers. Cornwall and Devon to start with. Let’s pray that we don’t have to go as far afield as London to find it. Which reminds me, the Boy Wonder’s arriving on the next train. What the hell are we going to do with him?”