by John Harvey
The father said something that made the children laugh, girl and boy, both under twelve; the mother laughing, too, all happy in each other's company.
Though his own father had not been much of a one for jokes, Cordon had been happy to be in his company nonetheless; treks along the coast or inland across the moors, each path surveyed, planned out in advance; notebooks in which his father encouraged him to log the details of the trip—geological features, weather patterns, animals, birds. In a fit of late teenage rebellion, he had thrown them out, torn at the spine and tossed on to some skip: he would have done almost anything to have had them still. His father, too, dead these eleven years at seventy-three, no age, these days, at all.
Cordon missed him a little each and every day.
There was movement behind him as the family began packing away their things, readying themselves for the off. His own son was somewhere across that ocean, uncontactable, living a life of his own.
The pathologist's initial examination of Heather Pierce's body revealed only injuries that were consistent with a heavy fall; no evidence of sexual or other assault. There was nothing conclusive to suggest that the body had been moved after death nor that any of the injuries had been caused post-mortem. So much for Cordon's theories.
And now his superior was happily poised to tick the box beside Accidental Death.
Jimmy Lambert had tiptoed past Cordon on his way to promotion with the silent finesse of a Siamese with velvet paws. Now he was DS Lambert, Detective Superintendent, an oak desk with walnut inlay that he'd liberated from an auction house about to go down the tubes, and a view down towards the Penlee House Museum and the Wherry Rocks off the Promenade. Seagull shit on his window ledge a couple of fingers deep.
The end of another day and he'd had a taste of Scotch, maybe two, Cordon could smell it on his breath.
'So, Trev, open and shut, yes?'
'You think?'
'Does that mean you don't?'
Cordon shifted his weight from one buttock to another, the granite out at Cape Cornwall softer than the chairs Lambert kept on the wrong side of his desk. 'Too many questions not answered.'
'Such as?'
'How she got there, more than eighteen foot down, that for openers.'
'She fell.'
'Maybe.'
'You think what? She was pushed?'
Cordon gave a slow shrug of his bony shoulders.
'What else?' Lambert asked without conviction.
'The time. How long she'd lain there.'
'Since the night she disappeared ...' Lambert began ferreting amongst the papers on his desk. 'Here, the estimated time of death ...'
Cordon had no special reason for faulting Wilding, the local pathologist, aside from a tendency to view the shortest path between two points as correct. That and the fact that if Lambert swung a bit of weight, bar perjury, he could be talked into almost anything. Cordon heard Wilding liked his whisky with a leavening of water, whereas Lambert, he knew, preferred his straight, the two of them at the bar at the Ship's Apostle often enough after closing, exchanging pleasantries with the owner and his lady wife.
'That engine house had been searched and given the all-clear—you don't think that strange?'
'Careless, that's what I call it. Careless and casual, too casual by half.' Lambert shook his head. 'Use volunteers, sometimes that's what you get. A shame, but there it is. And besides, Wilding seems pretty clear she died where she was found.'
Cordon took a breath. 'I'd like to send the clothes off to Forensics, nevertheless.'
'What in God's name for?'
'They do these tests, I thought you might have heard. Blood, semen, saliva.'
Face reddening, Lambert was halfway out of his chair, pointing. 'Don't play clever buggers with me, you sarky piece of shit.'
Nice, Cordon thought. 'Nothing shows up,' he said, 'all tests negative, so much the better. Nothing lost.'
'Save a chunk of my budget I can ill afford to lose.'
Cordon fixed him with a look. 'That's what it is then, the money? Accidental death cheaper all round.'
'Fuck you, Cordon. There's not one scrap of evidence leads to an offence, nothing suggesting any fucking third-party involvement at all.'
'Not yet.'
'Jesus. Jesus Christ. You don't fucking give up.'
'It's my job.'
Lambert held his head in his hands and looked like a man for whom the next drink was just too far out of reach.
'All right,' he said eventually, 'send them off. Waste of time and bloody money though it is.'
'Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.' Cordon not entirely successful in hiding the smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
'And Cordon ... Trevor ...'
'Jimmy?'
'Next time you talk back to me like that you'll be back in fucking uniform.'
18
As ever, Forensic Science Services were backed up. Time seemed to go on hold. The temperature rose: twenty-five Celsius, twenty-seven, twenty-eight. The wind was averaging a mere six miles per hour out of the east. Even at night it was fourteen, fifteen: nigh on impossible to sleep.
Simon Pierce shifted position for the umpteenth time, pillow damp, the sheet sticking to him like a second skin. When, finally, he gave up, it was twenty to five and the light was already filtering through from outside. He drank water from the tap, swilled it round his mouth and spat it out.
Having drifted off at last, Ruth lay on her back, head to one side, a small whistle of breath accompanying each rise and fall of her chest.
The previous night, after an indifferent dinner and too much wine, they had argued fiercely about their daughter's funeral, almost come to blows. Simon held strongly that cremation was the only reasonable course. Reasonable and best. 'We'll take her ashes, Ruthie. Bury them in the garden, maybe, plant a tree. Or scatter them somewhere if you think that's better, somewhere she loved.'
But to Ruth cremation was anathema: Heather's body, already torn and bruised, going into the fire while they stood in some soulless chapel and watched as the coffin slowly disappeared from sight. She wanted their daughter to be buried, not in a churchyard, but in a meadow or woodland, surrounded by flowers and trees. A green burial. Somewhere beautiful, full of life.
'And what?' Simon had said. 'You think somehow that's better? You think that'll make a difference?'
'Yes.'
'She'll rot, Ruthie, that's all that'll happen. Decay and rot. Down into the earth till you don't know where the fuck she is.'
'No,' Ruth had almost screamed. 'No, she won't. She won't.' She believed that with all her heart and soul.
As Simon stood looking at her now, she rolled on to her side, stirred, and blinked open her eyes.
'What are you doing?'
'Nothing. I thought I might go for a walk.'
'What time is it?'
'Getting on for five.'
Ruth eased herself into a sitting position, pillows behind her, the sheet across her breasts. Simon was splashing water into his face at the sink, pulling a comb through his hair, preparing to brush his teeth.
'Why don't you go back to London?' she said. 'There's no reason for us both to stay. Not now.'
'Come with me then.'
'I can't. There's the inquest.'
'That might be ages away. You can't wait here till then. You'll go crazy.'
'Maybe.' For a moment, she smiled. 'I just don't think I can leave, not this soon. Not after ... I feel I'd be leaving her, leaving her behind. Heather. It doesn't make any sense, I know, but ...' She shook her head and sighed.
Simon sat on the edge of the bed. 'I don't know,' he said.
'Go on,' Ruth said. 'Go home.'
'If you're sure.'
'I'm sure.' He wanted to leave, she knew he did, she read it in his eyes if not his voice.
'Why not let your mum and dad come down? They've offered, after all. At least then you'll have some company.'
Ruth shook her head. 'I'm better on my own.'
Simon got to his feet. 'Okay, if that's what you want. But come with me now, come for a walk.'
Reaching up, she squeezed his hand. 'You go. I might just try and doze for a while if I can.'
Ten minutes later, less, he was ready and dressed and bent to kiss her on the forehead as he left. Instead of lying back down, Ruth remained where she was, staring at the wall opposite, the space between the windows, seeing nothing, only what wasn't there, the loss kicking deep inside her, deep, deep inside, tying itself into a knot until all she could do to release it was spread her arms wide, her arms and legs, throw back her head and howl like someone possessed.
The girl knocked at Cordon's door a little after ten that morning, spiked-up hair, pale skin, silver ring through her upper lip—new since Cordon had last seen her—and enough studs and rings elsewhere to start a shop of her own. Black T-shirt, black canvas jeans; white lipstick, blood-red fingernails. Her mother had christened her Rose, but she preferred Letitia—joy and happiness—irony didn't come into it.
Cordon had first seen her when she was just thirteen, cross-legged on the bed in her druggy boyfriend's squalid flat, injecting heroin straight into the vein. Now she was all of sixteen, older than she might otherwise have been, and helped out by walking Cordon's springer spaniel most weekends and on the occasional summer evening. Pocket money, cash in hand. Cordon didn't ask questions as to where it ended up.
'Take the dog for a walk,' she said.
'She's got a name.'
'I know.'
Under the table, the springer had jumped at the sound of her voice, tail beginning to wag.
'I was thinking I might take her myself,' Cordon said.
'Whatever.' She turned back towards the door.
'How did you know I'd be here anyway?' Cordon asked.
'I didn't.'
'Then...'
'Took a chance.'
'Trouble at home?'
'What makes you say that?'
'No reason. Just asked.'
The dog was nuzzling into her now, head pressed against her leg.
'You take her,' Cordon said. 'She prefers you to me.'
The girl shrugged and ran her fingers through the hair on the animal's head and down on to her neck.
'How come you're here anyway?' she asked.
'Pulled a sickie.'
She looked at him warily, uncertain whether or not he was taking the piss. What Cordon was doing was biding his time, waiting for FSS to come through, reinterviewing material witnesses, everything by the book—the book as he knew it: Lambert keen to shunt him on to other things and Cordon digging in his heels as hard as he could. Showing his face around the office more than necessary was not a good idea.
'We'll be off then,' the girl said.
'Letitia...'
'What?'
'You had any breakfast?'
'What's it to you?'
'I was going to do some toast, that's all. Join me if you want.'
Almost grudgingly she agreed. 'But no questions, right? No, how's your mum, how's college, none of that crap.'
'You still going to college?'
'Okay, Kia, come on, we're out of here.'
'Stop, stop. It was a joke.'
'Some joke.'
'I won't say a thing. Don't want to know, don't care.'
'Yeah, right.'
While Cordon cut bread and placed four slices beneath the grill, then took jam and peanut butter from the cupboard and Flora from the fridge, Letitia wandered around, looking cursorily at this and that.
A former sail loft, basically a long single room with a kitchen at one end and a bed at the other, lavatory and bathroom partitioned off, Cordon had bought it before rumours of a new marina had started to be taken seriously and already stupid prices had become stupider still. Broad windows gave him unimpeded views out across the bay, from Newlyn out beyond Penzance to Marazion and St Michael's Mount.
'What's this?' Letitia asked, holding up a CD that had got separated from its cover. 'Worth listening to or what?'
'Depends,' Cordon said.
'What on?'
'Try it and see.'
It had been one of those relationships that had been going nowhere even before it had started; a woman Cordon had met on an ill-advised visit to the Arts Club in Penzance, psychologically short-sighted enough to believe she could turn him around, bring him out of himself, whatever that might mean.
One of the few things she had left behind, the odd illusion aside, was an album of quiet chamber jazz, clarinet or saxophone, bass and guitar. Jimmy Giuffre, 1956. She had used it to meditate, relax. Later, Cordon, intrigued, had tried to follow it up; a list on the back of an envelope somewhere: Giuffre leads to Brookmeyer, Brookmeyer to Gerry Mulligan, Mulligan to Chet Baker and Chico Hamilton, Hamilton to Eric Dolphy. All those connections neatly linked by arrows. His father would have been proud.
The CD Letitia was handling—Out to Lunch—he had played the other night, the night after Heather Pierce's body had been found, the aggravated squawk of Dolphy's saxophone approximate to his mood, but enough to send the dog deep under the bed with paws over her ears.
Letitia set it to play and after half a chorus switched it off.
'What the fuck d'you call that?'
'Music?'
She ate hungrily, piling on the damson jam, shooting a look at Cordon every once in a while, as if daring him to tell her off for not eating all her crusts.
'I'll be going then.'
'Here,' reaching into one of the drawers. 'Best take a key, I'll most likely be out. In fact, hang on to it, it's a spare.'
'Trust me, do you?'
'Shouldn't I?'
She looked around. 'Not much here worth nicking.'
When she and the dog were out of earshot, he got the music going again, volume down. She was a nice enough kid, Letitia, he liked her: a mum who was a registered drug user herself, a father she rarely if ever saw, two brothers in foster care, several members of her extended family on probation or in jail, it was a small miracle she hadn't been in any more trouble than she had. But, up to yet, her head was back above water, she had survived.
Heather Pierce had died.
Good parents, solid middle-class home, good school; broadsheet newspapers, books, not too much TV, piano lessons most likely, art classes, organic food; all the proper values instilled. Every advantage: every hope.
And then this.
An accident.
Unforeseen.
An accident, is that what it was? What it had been?
... not one scrap of evidence leads to an offence, nothing suggesting any fucking third-party involvement at all.
Lambert was eager to sign it off as such, the last thing he wanted at this point of his career, an undetected murder on his books, yet somehow Cordon was unable, unwilling to let it go. He had interviewed the principal witnesses, such as they were: Francis Gibbens, first and foremost; Kelly Efford's parents, her brother, Lee; Kelly herself, this carefully, her mother present. When Kelly had been told of Heather's death she had sobbed and sobbed and then closed in on herself, refused to speak, refused food. The doctor attending had thought it best to keep her in hospital longer, for her own safety if nothing else.
Cordon spoke to the student who had discovered Heather's body, the members of the search team who had gone down into the engine house previously and seen nothing—sworn blind that after careful looking there had been no sign. But then, Cordon reasoned, they would, wouldn't they? Anything less—a quick, hurried flashing of torches hastily lowered into the dark—would have amounted to a dereliction of duty they would not have wanted to admit.
Hour upon hour of questioning and nothing germane: just some feeling that wouldn't shake free. And Lambert, not so many steps away from getting Cordon relieved of his duties where this investigation was concerned, shunted permanently aside.
Christ, Cordon thought, a battle of wills between them, is that what it had become? Needing to prove, against all the
odds, that he was right all along and Lambert was wrong?
How pathetic was that, if so? If that's all it was.
19
At first Ruth had found it hard, almost impossible, to venture on to the coast path close to where Heather and Kelly had got lost, where Heather had been found. But now, especially with Simon gone, she found it difficult to stay away.
Wearing sandals, a loose wrap-around skirt over bare legs and a sleeveless cotton top, sun hat on her head and sun screen jostling against a bottle of water in her bag, she took the Cot Valley path down from St Just towards Porth Nanven and sat with her back against a boulder, high above the shore, looking out.
A container ship, outlined, like a child's drawing, against the horizon, moved slowly left to right towards the Bristol Channel; closer in, a small boat with an ochre sail tacked and tacked again, searching for a wind. She had promised Heather they would go sailing, some friends of Simon's who kept a yacht down on the south coast and kept inviting them—something else they would now never do.
Tears ran soundlessly down her face and, dipping her head, she used the loose flap of her skirt to wipe them away.
Time to move on.
A steep climb—a scramble—up on to the southerly path left her temporarily short of breath, sweat in her eyes and running down her back. Hands on hips, she stood, purple flowers open-mouthed amongst the spiny gorse, the ground hard and baked beneath her feet. The first time Heather had seen the sea—no, stop, stop!—had been in Dorset, a weekend away, Heather—what?—six months old and in a sling; Simon had held her above the waves, the water splashing cold up against her kicking legs and feet and making her shriek with fear and delight.