by Carola Dunn
“Should you?”
“ ‘One and all,’ it means.”
“Let’s hope Bristol feels that way about lending us a hand.”
“What we need is lots of hands,” Megan pointed out.
Ken sighed. “Which probably means bringing out the big guns, otherwise known as the Assistant Commissioner. Who will not be happy.”
“How about offering a reward?”
He brightened. “Now that’s an idea. Having a concrete proposal to suggest will look a whole lot better than admitting we can’t do our job without calling out the entire Bristol force. Nothing we can do about it tonight, anyway.”
And by the morning, Megan suspected, it would have metamorphosed into his own idea. Never mind; that was just the way he was.
Her move from London to Cornwall had been dictated as much by the desire to escape her helpless attraction to Ken as by the promotion to sergeant and her preference for rural over urban life. She was grateful to Scumble for sending him to Bristol with her. Seeing him again had exorcised a ghost. Now, she hoped, they could be friends.
In the morning, they fortified themselves with eggs, bacon, sausages, fried tomatoes, and fried bread, not to mention toast and marmalade, before walking over to the Bristol police HQ. To their dismay, they were directed to the office of the superintendent of the local CID.
The presence in his office of a uniformed inspector and a shorthand writer didn’t make them feel any better. Megan wondered whether, in spite of having their plans okayed by the Bristol force, they had transgressed against some local shibboleth. She came to attention beside Ken—and a little to the rear. Cowardly, perhaps, but he was the man from Scotland Yard and she was merely from Cornwall.
“DS Faraday and DS Pencarrow reporting, sir.”
Superintendent Oakhurst looked them over without any sign of either approval or disapproval. “I’ve been talking to your respective superiors,” he said, in the clipped accent of South African English. “I gather you’ve found a link between Bristol and the charity shop murder. Inspector Everett here is very familiar with the area you expressed an interest in.”
“I can mebbe give you a hint whether your informants are reliable.” In contrast to the superintendent, the inspector had the slow, soft voice of a West Country native. “Give us a report, Sergeant, with a bit more detail than you phoned in last night, please.”
Ken did so, including the group of young people who had skedaddled from the pub when they weren’t looking. “I didn’t actually spot them,” he admitted. “DS Pencarrow drew their departure to my attention.”
The superintendent’s and inspector’s attention thus drawn to Megan, she explained that the youths had vanished through an unnoticed back door while she was waiting for a suitable moment to interrupt DS Faraday’s questioning of the informant.
Oakhurst looked as if he was about to utter a reprimand, but Inspector Everett said placidly, “Silent as shadows and slippery as eels, those squatters, when they want to be. They’d have disappeared into their holes before you got outside to go after them.”
“That’s what I reckoned, sir,” said Ken, “having had some experience of the type in London. It seems to me it will take considerable manpower to find the ones we’re looking for.”
“You won’t be one of them,” the superintendent informed him. “You’re to take the first train back to London. I understand you’re needed at Scotland Yard. The presumed owner of the stolen goods the Cornish force recovered”—he nodded at Megan—“was released from the hospital yesterday morning and he seems to have disappeared.”
“What!”
“An officer went to his home to take him to the Yard to identify the jewelry. He wasn’t there. Nor was his car garaged. The next-door neighbour’s out of town and no one they’ve contacted has seen him or has any idea where he might have gone. They seem to think you might be able to find him, Sergeant. Or perhaps it’s just that they can’t spare anyone else to look.” Everett glanced at the electric clock on the wall. “You’d better get going. Temple Meads station is just a few minutes walk.”
“I need to discuss the case with M—my Cornish colleague, sir. The parts that aren’t relevant to your force.”
“DS Pencarrow’s superior is expecting her to ring him, and we need her cooperation with regard to these squatters.”
Superintendent Oakhurst intervened. “A few minutes is neither here nor there, except when it comes to catching trains. We won’t have men to spare till Sunday.”
“Both Bristol teams have home games,” Everett put in gloomily.
“Or even Monday, if your lot don’t want a huge bill for over time. You may go with Faraday to the station, Miss Pencarrow, but make your discussion quick and come straight back.” He nodded dismissal.
“Sir.”
Ken held his tongue till the door was safely shut behind them, then he burst out, “What the hell does it mean? Disappeared! Did the robbers snatch him and do him in for fear he might be able to identify them? Or has he scarpered for fear they might? Oakhurst didn’t give me much info to build theories on.”
Megan stopped to ask the desk sergeant for directions to Temple Meads station.
“The disappearing jeweller is really none of Oakhurst’s business,” she pointed out as they went out to the street. “His only part is to help to identify our victim. I doubt he bothered to find out more than he told you.”
Ken mimicked the South African accent: “ ‘An officer went to his home to take him to the Yard to identify the jewelry. He wasn’t there. They seem to think you might be able to find him, Sergeant. Or perhaps it’s just that they can’t spare anyone else to look.’ ”
Megan laughed. “That final dig was uncalled-for. I expect he’s just fed up at being asked to lend his men for at least several hours for a case that’s not his problem. It’s a nuisance they can’t get onto it till Monday. Too bad both Bristol City and Rovers have home fixtures this weekend.”
“Yes. I hope the kids who knew him won’t have taken fright by then to the point of leaving town.”
“Like Donaldson. Are you going to try for a warrant to search his house?”
“I suppose so. At least I might be able to tell whether he left voluntarily. Though I doubt they’ll grant a warrant till he’s been missing a bit longer.”
“I take it he’s not married, since no mention’s been made of a wife. He probably has a daily. She might know something useful.”
“Good point. But with any luck he’ll have turned up by the time I get back.” They entered the station and studied the departure board. “Damn, I’ve just missed a train.”
“That was a slow one, look. The next is an express. You’d better buck up and get your ticket.”
“Yes.” Ken checked his watch against the station clock. “Meggie—Megan—do you ever think of transferring back to the Met?”
“Never. I love Cornwall.”
“Pity. We’d make a good team.”
On the job or off it? she wondered. “We didn’t do too well at the pub, letting the people we wanted get away.”
“True,” he said ruefully. “But you have the makings of a good detective. Don’t let your guv’nor get you down. Well, if you ever come up to town for a weekend, give me a ring.”
“I’ll think about it.” But not for very long.
In a most unprofessional manner, he dropped a kiss on her cheek. “See you later, alligator.”
“In a while, crocodile.”
Watching as he joined the queue at the ticket window, she gave a little wave as he turned his head to glance back. Good-looking, charming, intelligent, competent—and doubtless dating some gorgeous leggy blond model, his preferred type of female. Megan left the station and headed back towards police headquarters.
She was less than a hundred yards from the building, walking briskly, when a girl darted out of an alley and caught her sleeve.
“Oh, please,” she gasped, “are you a policeman? A policewoman, I mean? A poli
ce officer?”
“I am.”
“That’s what Jake said.”
“Is there something—?”
“I’ve got to talk to you!” A slight figure, nervous but determined, she peered at Megan through National Health glasses and a long fringe—raggedly cut but neatly combed—of lank, mousy hair. She wore faded plimsolls and grey bell-bottom trousers two or three sizes too large, cut off at ankle height and badly hemmed, cinched at the waist with a worn leather belt over a tight top in a psychedelic design of pink and orange. “I don’t care what the others say, it’s not right!”
TWENTY-ONE
Megan guessed the girl was sixteen or seventeen, certainly not much older. Skinny and pallid, she looked badly in need of good food and fresh air. “I’ll be happy to hear what you have to say,” Megan affirmed, and gestured towards the police station. “Let’s go in.”
“Oh no, not in there. All those old men . . . I’m not talking to them.”
“All right. I just passed a café, let’s go in there.”
“I haven’t got any money.”
“I’ll treat you, okay?” She turned back, and the girl trailed after her. “I’m Megan. What’s your name?”
“Cam. Camilla, really. Isn’t it awful? I like Megan.”
“It’s not bad, but I hate being called Meggie.”
That surprised a laugh out of her. “I wouldn’t think anyone’d dare. I mean, what with you being in the police and all. You’re a detective, aren’t you? Not wearing the uniform. Do you like it? Being a detective?”
“Mostly. Except when another officer calls me Meggie! It’s like any job—there are things I have to do that aren’t much fun, but most of the time I like it, or I wouldn’t do it.”
“You’re a grown-up. You can do whatever you want.”
Megan waited to respond until they were seated in the café. It was a pleasant, old-fashioned place with rubber plants in the windows, real tablecloths, and waitresses in frilly aprons. The service was correspondingly slow.
While they waited for menus, Megan asked, “What would you like to do?” Pop star, film star, model? she wondered.
“Work on a farm. My dad’s a farm-worker and I help . . . I used to help him in the holidays. I love working with animals. But he says it’s a dead-end job, like my mum’s, charring. He never had a chance for a proper education so he wants me to get my A levels, even go to university. I tried, honestly. I got ten O levels. I stuck it through the autumn term in the sixth form, but I spent all my time swotting. I just can’t face another two years, let alone five, reading boring books. I’ll puke if I ever have to read another book by Dickens or Balzac, I swear it.”
“How about science?”
“My best marks were in science, ‘specially biology. It’s interesting.”
“Have you considered working towards being a vet?”
“A vet! Girls can’t be vets.”
“Girls can be anything they want to be, if they want it badly enough and are prepared to work for it. I’m not saying it’s not harder than for boys. But plenty of people told me girls can’t be detectives.”
“Really?”
The waitress arrived at that moment and handed them menus.
“Are you still serving breakfast?” Megan asked.
The waitress glanced at the clock. “No, madam.”
“All right, we’ll call it an early lunch. Do you like omelettes, Cam?”
Cam nodded, eyes gleaming through specs and hair.
“It’s only morning coffee at this time, madam.”
“I’ll have coffee. This young lady will have an omelette and toast and a glass of milk.”
“The luncheon chef hasn’t come in yet,” the waitress told her haughtily.
“In that case, make it scrambled eggs. We don’t want to be difficult.”
“Luncheon isn’t served till—”
“You don’t know how to scramble eggs?”
“Of course—”
“That’s all right then.” Megan beamed at her. “Thank you, you’re most accommodating.”
The waitress’s mouth opened and closed, and she flounced off.
Cam giggled. “Do you think she’ll bring it?”
“I expect so. She’ll decide it’s easier than arguing. Not that I was arguing.”
“You weren’t?”
“Not at all, I was presenting alternatives, in a polite and reasonable manner. There are ways and ways of getting your way, and some ways are better than others. Now, while she’s trying to work out how to make toast, why don’t you tell me what you wanted to talk to me about?”
“It’s that boy . . .” Cam said hesitantly. “The one who was found dead in Cornwall? I think . . . But it’s awfully hard to be sure from a newspaper photo. It was wrapped round the fish and chips and got a bit greasy, too.”
Megan took out a print of the photo and placed it on the table.
Cam drew in a sharp breath. “It is! That’s him. He . . . Was it taken after . . . ?”
“Yes. Whatever they do, it’s always obvious.” She picked up the picture as Cam, with a shudder, shoved it back across the table at her. “Who was he?”
“His name was Norm. Norman Wilmot. Mostly we just go by christian names but he—It was weird. He never called his dad Father, or Dad, or Pa, or anything, always ‘Doctor Wilmot,’ in a horrible sarcastic voice. Not a medical doctor, a PhD. His parents are entomologists, bug-people he calls—called them. They went away for years and years, to Borneo or New Guinea or somewhere like that, and left him in boarding schools he hated. You know, fagging and caning and stuff, and what-ho for the jolly old cricket team. He hated all the team games. Boxing was the only thing he liked. He failed his A levels.”
“He must be at least eighteen, then?”
“Eighteen or nineteen, I s’pose.”
“Did he mention the name of the last school he attended?”
“Not that I remember. He called it ‘that place.’ ”
“Was it a public school, do you know?”
“Like Eton, you mean? He never said, but he did talk kind of la-di-da. We don’t talk about stuff like that much, though. I mean, where we come from and that. We’re sort of squatters, that is, we are squatters. I know it’s illegal. You aren’t going to . . . ?”
“Arrest you? No. You’re being extremely helpful. What’s more, your friends won’t have such a hard time of it now that you’ve given me this—Ah, here’s your scrambled eggs, if I’m not mistaken.”
The eggs looked done to a crisp, and the toast was burnt around the edges, but Cam set to ravenously, so Megan let it be.
Drinking her coffee, surprisingly good, she looked back over the notes she’d been taking. She hadn’t written down any of Camilla’s personal details. She’d have to try to get an address from her, though, preferably somewhere she could be found when needed as a witness. That meant her parents’, which meant persuading her to go home. Megan had already made a start on that, she hoped.
She remembered kidding Ken when he talked about the squatters, saying he ought to be a social worker. Now here she was trying to sort out Camilla’s life. Perhaps it went with the job; she just hadn’t realised it before. On the other hand, perhaps it was a weakness that would prevent either of them rising to the top of their profession.
She shrugged. She would just have to wait and see.
Cam finished her meal and looked anxiously at Megan. “Thank you,” she said. “That was . . . good.”
Megan grinned. “Come now! Filling perhaps, edible I assume since you ate it all, but good?”
“We-ell . . . I was hungry. We had some bread back there, but I was too upset to eat.”
“Upset about talking to me?”
“I didn’t know how to find you, not without asking the . . . the police. The others kept saying we shouldn’t get mixed up in it at all. They all said we couldn’t be sure it was him and it was none of our business anyway, and nobody liked Norm much, either.”
&n
bsp; “Why was that?”
“He was a bully. We’re supposed to be all about peace and love and that sort of thing, but he was a creep. But I thought, even if his parents were bug people and deserted him for years and years, they ought to know what happened to him. Don’t you think?”
“I do,” Megan said gravely. “When did you last see him?”
“Monday. I worked it out when we read about him in the chip paper. He was killed Tuesday night, wasn’t he?”
“Yes. Did he spend much time with your . . . group?”
“On and off. People come and go. But as I said, no one was mad keen on him. He was Trev’s mate, mostly.”
“Trev—Trevor?” A second name, Megan thought with satisfaction. Trevor and Jake. It ought to be possible to track down the group. “Do you know his surname?”
Cam shook her head. “He’s nice, really nice. He gets an allowance from some relative or other. Not much, but he always shares. If you ask me, that’s why Norm was matey with him. Or wasn’t nasty to him, at least.”
“I need to get in touch with him. I realise you don’t want to tell me where you and your friends are staying at the moment, but could you ask him to meet me here, or wherever—”
“I would, honestly, but I haven’t seen him since . . .” She broke off, looking horrified.
“Since Tuesday?” Megan demanded urgently. Camilla gave a reluctant nod. “He left with Norman?”
“He couldn’t have anything to do with the murder! You mustn’t say that. He wouldn’t!”
“I’m not saying he did. But Cam, listen to me, if he was with Norman, and Norman was murdered, he may be in danger.”
“D’you really think so?”
“I do. We need to find him, quickly. What does he look like?”
The girl made a helpless gesture. “Just ordinary.”
“Have you ever heard of IdentiKit?”
“No.” She hesitated. “I don’t think so.”
“It’s a way of making a picture of a face when you have someone who knows a person but can’t describe him very well. You just keep changing the shape of the eyes and nose and so on, until your witness recognises it as the person you’re trying to find. Do you think you could do that for Trevor?”