I follow Joan across the car park which, surprisingly, is almost full. In the corner is the entrance to a coastal path which follows the slope of the sand dunes.
‘At low tides,’ she explains, ‘it‘s easier and quicker to get onto the beach.’
‘Okay.’ We stop for a few moments to watch the ferry head back to Padstow, passengers clicking with cameras and pointing to something dark that drifts just under the surface. I can almost feel the disappointment as the object turns out to be a bundle of seaweed.
‘My father is … confused sometimes.’ Joan Walters offers me a sad smile and I’m instantly reminded of Mr Grose, half slumped in his chair, the muscles on one side of his body useless, no longer able to be controlled by his brain. I nearly ask her what’s wrong with her father, but I’ve heard too many sad stories this week already and I don’t feel like hearing any more.
‘Today is not one of his better days,’ she continues with a tiny smile, not reading my thoughts. ‘I’d rather not want him to see you. Nothing personal. Any visitor will upset him, make him feel paranoid.’
‘Is he old?’
‘No.’ Sensing my discomfort about implying that she is old enough to have a long retired father, she smiles widely. ‘Not really. But he’s been diabetic almost all of his life. He’s recently lost his leg. It has made him … moody. In denial, I guess.’
‘Sorry. I just assumed … I saw an old acquaintance of my mother in hospital this morning. I guess that sparked the idea of …’
‘It’s all right, inspector, I am forty-two.’
She chuckles, waiting for me to walk next to her as the path widens out.
‘How did you find me?’ she asks.
‘Clem Trebilcock suggested I talk to you.’
A faint smile flits over her lips. ‘So you said.’ She shrugs as if she doesn’t understand why he would have mentioned her.
‘He says you are an oceanographer.’
‘I wish. I’m only an amateur.’
‘I’m sure you know much more than most,’ I reply, trying not to be patronising. She’s the type of woman who takes everything seriously.
Burying her hands in the pockets of her padded jacket, she explains. ‘Oceanography is a scientific study of oceans, the life that inhabits them, as well as their physical characteristics including their depth, their movement and chemical makeup. But also the topography and composition of the ocean floors.’
‘A wide range to study.’
‘Indeed. I’m part of a local amateur group based in Falmouth. Nowadays it’s an even wider subject than it was a few decades ago, as it now involves things like how to harness the power of the ocean to generate renewable energy, but things like that are too technical for me.’ She grins with self-mockery. ‘My main interest is in the movement of the water. Tides and currents. Why and how, for example, rip tides occur and in which circumstances. Which is how I know Clem Trebilcock. Sometimes I go out with him to do my research while he’s busy with his nets and lobsterpots and stuff. It’s interesting to see how he uses his GPS system, how it traces shoals so that he can follow and catch the fish. How this relates to currents, mostly.’
‘I can see why he recommended you to me.’
‘I hope so.’ Her eyes narrow as she cast me a quick sideways glance. ‘Is this a professional matter? Police?’
‘Not officially.’ I don’t really want to explain my situation, but she waits, as if our meeting is meant to be an exchange of information and not just one way for my benefit.
‘You’ve probably heard that we found human body parts,’ I say, gesturing towards the river with a tilt of my head. ‘About six weeks ago someone found a hand. This week we discovered a foot and a torso.’
She nods. She’s read about it in the papers or heard from her oceanographer friends. ‘Horrible things to find.’
‘Yes. The latest find was yesterday. A group of four young men walking along the coastal path made the discovery when they came down from Stepper Point to have lunch in the tearoom at Hawkers Cove.’
‘Unbelievable. Almost on my doorstep.’
‘Not exactly. One foot was found at Pendennis Point.’
I show her a map of the county with four red dots on it. She studies it, following the coastline from Falmouth right round to Padstow as though she is considering walking it herself and estimating how long it will take her.
‘Falmouth?’
‘That’s why I’m here.’
She hasn’t taken her eyes off the map. ‘How long between the findings?’
‘The hand in the Camel was found six weeks ago. The other parts were all found this week.’
‘All of them? Even the one in Falmouth?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you are certain that it’s the same body?’
‘Yes. Although it can’t have been easy to retrieve enough material to run DNA-tests, once we have the results it’s pretty accurate.’
She shakes her head, frowning. ‘Impossible, inspector. Of course, I can’t give you the exact timing, but it would take at least a few months for those parts to travel as far apart as that. Where did they enter the water?’
‘I was hoping you could tell me that.’
Her frown deepens. ‘That would be an interesting project to study, but I think it would be very unlikely that I could give you an area small enough to work on.’
‘I was afraid you’d say that.’
'Hm. Say the poor soul fell from the cliffs near Land’s End, and his body was so damaged that it … fell apart … it is possible that those parts got separated and drifted along both sides of Cornwall's coastline.’
It hasn’t occurred to me before but the suggestion that Lands’ End was a possible place where the body parts were dumped, seems to be quite logical.
‘The body parts were cut of,’ I tell her, after a hesitation.
‘It wasn’t an accident?’
‘No.’
She stops where the path splits. Points. ‘Shall we walk on the beach? I’m sure we can find a sheltered spot to sit. Or would you rather stay on the path?’
‘The beach is fine.’
She nods, relieved, and almost runs down in front of me, like a horse, sniffing the fresh air of spring after being held in stables during the winter.
I catch up with her on the beach. We are both slightly out of breath. Smiling like excited children. ‘If I tell you where these body parts were found and when, and how long forensics believe they have been in the water, is it possible for you to tell me where they come from?’
‘I would need more details. Was it a man or a woman? What height? Weight?’
‘A man. The foot was still in the shoe.’
She nods, her face serious and business-like. ‘That is useful information. I would need the brand of the shoe. Whether it was leather, or a plastic sandal. I will need as much detail as you can get.’
‘It was a trainer.’
‘I'll need the brand. The make. The model.' She opens her mouth, closes it. Pauses. 'I can’t promise anything.’
'I don't expect miracles.'
‘Was there any clothing left? Apart from the shoe?’
‘No.’ I’m intrigued by her questions,, which seem professional to me. 'Why do you ask?’
‘It can make a difference, to keeping afloat, I mean. Do you remember your swimming lessons? At one point I remember, I had to jump in the swimming pool with my clothes on. If you close your jacket high up and cross your arms in front of your chest before you jump, you create a pocket of air and you would float for a while. The same can be the case with other clothing. Depending on the fabric, the air can remain in place for a shorter or longer period.’
‘I thought it would be a matter of currents helped by the tide.’
She smiles. Amused by my ignorance. ‘Sports shoes have air chambers in the soles. It makes them float. In general, they are light. Leather shoes are heavier, usually with solid soles and heels. If there is a leg attached, or a part of a leg, i
t’s possible that it will help it to float as well. And whether a body part has been floating or not, can make a lot of difference to where it ends up. ‘
‘I don't follow you.'
She shakes her head, finding a sheltered corner with half a dozen rocks, their tops smoothed by wind and water. Perfect to sit on, but we stand. I’m not all comfortable on hard surfaces these days, and her explanation seems to stop her from relaxing. On the contrary. Her face is flushed as she picks up pebbles, throwing them in the water as though she is forcing away her darkest thoughts.
‘I’m saying that I can give you some indication of the direction the parts would have drifted, but not the exact point where, say, the torso was thrown into the sea. Besides, I suppose it will not be very useful to you anyway, because it will be hard for you to prove. Tracking currents is like tracking ghosts, inspector - you can't see them and they leave no evidence. You can only observe where flotsam started and where it ended up. Afterwards we can. We learn from that, but we can’t predict exactly what will happen.’
She’s on a roll now.
‘We can release 100 table tennis balls into the water at one side of a headland and we will find most of them back, but there will be a certain percentage that will drift off and we’ll find them sometimes miles away along the coast. A small percentage may even never turn up. We have some statistics on this, but basically we don’t know for certain why one ball ends up miles from another.’ She smiles to soften the blow. 'It's like a duck race.'
‘This may be useful that it might tell us not to not proceed with this line on investigation,’ I say to reassure her.
‘Not so fast, inspector. I will discuss this with our group and perhaps we’ll come up with something useful for you after all. But don’t hold your breath.’
‘Okay.’
She isn't finished. ‘I’m sure you heard about the Lego bricks.’
‘Clem Trebilcock told me about it. I’ve looked it up on the internet.’
Oceanographers and amateurs have been investigating what happened to the Lego bricks after they were spilled from the container, trying to solve the mystery of where the pieces ended up. And how and why. So far, the ocean hasn’t revealed its secrets. Instead of sinking and remaining on the bottom of the ocean, as was expected, the bricks have not provided any insights to the mysterious world of currents and tides.
‘Yes. The container fell of the ship years ago off the coast at Land’s End. Why did a considerable percentage of bricks wash up at Perranporth on the north coast and not so many on the south coast? When you study the map, beaches like St Ives and Hayle are much more likely places for them to wash up. But that didn't happen.’
She shakes her head, following her own train of thought and subsequent worries. It makes me wonder whether scientists worry more when they learn about the threats to the environment, or whether they start learning more because they have their concerns already. She continues. 'The most important lesson we've learned from the Lego bricks is that things which sink to the bottom of the sea don't always stay there, as you would expect. They can be carried around the world, seemingly at random, but more or less subject to the oceans' currents and tides. Children may think it’s fun to comb the beaches to find the Lego pieces but when you think about it, it’s a threat from an environmental point of view. Forget the one container with the Lego pieces in it. Occasionally you hear about it in the media, because people think it’s fun. But what happened to the other containers? What was in them? Have their contents damaged our waters and our coastline?’
She stops to catch her breath.
‘All sorts of items wash up our beaches. If possible, we get in touch with companies whose products end up on the shoreline. Plastic in the sea is not going to just decompose and go away. Plastics are deadly in the sea, poisonous for birds, a catastrophe for wildlife.’
When we walk back later, she urges that I should not set my hopes too high.
‘We have to look at every possibility to find what happened to this man,’ I reply gently. ‘So far, we haven’t even established his identity. His age is between twenty-five and forty, so it’s quite likely that his parents are still alive. Perhaps he had a wife or girlfriend. Children. They have a right to know that he’s dead. And what happened to him.’
Once more, she shakes my hand in a firm grip when we are back at the slipway waiting for the ferry. ‘Well, inspector, I’m glad that Clem gave you my name. Although the circumstances are sad, I have enjoyed talking to you and I will certainly look into this case.’ She chuckles. ‘Otherwise I would have been stuck in the house with my father, listening to him grumbling when he knows perfectly well that he can only blame himself for not sticking to his diet and not being more careful with his medication, blaming me and my sister.’
I offer a smile. ‘He doesn’t blame you. He blames himself.’
17
Mr Harradine Curtis lives in the flat next to mine. He is a fifty-odd years old sod who works for Newquay town council. He deals with claimants who are living on the poverty line, sometimes as poor as those in some third worlds countries, or claimants who are trying to get benefits when they have undeclared income from undisclosed sources. That’s what he told me in a half-defeated tone when I came to live in the building and I very much doubt that he’s changed his job since. Although he seemed to despise his work, he is simply not the type to part from a good job and try something else. Creature of habit, any new, fresh start would involve too much effort and uncertainty for comfort.
We had brief conversations in the beginning but other than the fact that we were both living alone, we didn’t seem to have much else in common. He had outspoken, rather out-dated opinions which I rarely shared with him. As a result of a rather pointless issue about parking spaces, there is now a cold war coming between us.
It started when I parked my car in the parking area for residents. Admittedly I had noticed a wooden sign, perched in the surrounding wall and covered in ivy. It had numbers and letters on it, but I never asked myself what it was meant for. It emerged that it was there since he owned a car and he’d more or less claimed that specific space to park. I didn’t realise this before he pointed it out to me, as he had recently bought another car, second hand, and couldn’t be bothered to change what turned out to be his car licence number on the sign because everyone else knew it was his.
‘You wouldn’t mind parking somewhere else, Mr Tregunna?’ His voice was polite, but with an obsessive undertone.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Curtis, I wasn’t aware we have designated parking spaces.’
‘Well, we haven’t, officially, but this dates from years ago, before your time. The rule is still in place.’
I was sure the estate agency dealing with the residents on behalf of a landlord who seemed to have moved to Spain, would have told me if it was. Clearly, Mr Curtis abided by his own rules.
‘I didn’t know,’ I offered. ‘I will move my car now. It won’t happen again.’ Even though I thought he was trying it on, I couldn’t be bothered to argue with him.
‘Everyone knows,’ he said, frowning accusingly.
I soon found out his reasons for his childish, self-made rule: the space he claimed for himself turned out to be about the only place that wasn’t under the trees, and therefore not under attack by birds’ droppings. My irregular hours in the police force, however, meant that on one particular day I had arrived before Mr Curtis came home, and as it was the only free space at that moment, I parked on it. He was one of those people with a constant fear of police and, as by then, he was well aware of my job, he daren’t argue this time and although I rarely park on that acclaimed space, he hasn’t spoken to me since, nor does he return my greetings. Not even the slightest nod to acknowledge me.
Now, he is sitting on a bench near the lake, staring at a young mother and a little girl feeding breadcrumbs to the ducks. He looks up when he hears my footsteps and I wonder briefly if the young woman might be his daughter. I’ve never seen her be
fore. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if they’d previously been estranged.
Much to my surprise he looks up and offers a shy half-smile. ‘Good day Mr Tregunna.’
‘Good day Mr Curtis,’ I say, slowing my pace for an exchange of polite chit-chat about nothing in particular. But he has other plans in mind.
‘You are a police officer, am I right?’ he says rather timidly.
‘I am.’
He looks at the young woman, shifting uncomfortably. ‘Would you mind having a word?’
By the looks of him, this must be an act of desperation rather than a peace offering.
‘About a police matter?’
‘You could say that.’
‘In that case, it may be better if you go to the police station. Best to do it the official way.’
I am not really judging him for his previous behaviour. I’m just tired and I need to change my stoma bag. Besides, I don’t believe he has anything more serious in mind than silly things like leaves or bird droppings on his second-hand car.
‘Will they believe me?' he asks rhetorically.
The little girl runs away, nearly tripping over his feet, being mock-chased by her mother. Both giggle. Mr Curtis lifts his lips disdainfully. I’m almost relieved that he isn’t the young woman’s father.
‘They might think I am crazy. A nutter.’
Suppressing a smile, I briefly consider telling him that he won’t be taken seriously by anyone when all he does is complain about nothing at all really.
‘I’m sure they will listen to you, Mr Curtis.’
‘Maybe so.’ He shrugs, unconvinced. ‘But … I thought … if I could put the case to you first? Before I make a formal complaint?’
With an inward sigh I watch the little girl run away, giggling and chuckling, and I wish I could be so innocent again. And run away like that. I can only hope that Mr Curtis isn’t planning to involve me in some silly complaint about one of our other neighbours. Or that he wants me to sign a petition to the council to get them to remove the trees.
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