by Will North
“I am most grateful, Mr. Nelson.” She wanted to hug the poor man. He sounded young. It might be nice.
“I’m glad you are, Inspector, because you may have to come to my defense if this confidence is ever revealed.”
“You’ll have the full faith and support of Devon and Cornwall Police. I guarantee it. But may I say, sir: banking is one thing, murder quite another.”
“Yes. Yes, I agree.”
Morgan rang off and smiled. At least there were still some bankers you could count on. She would send him a thank you note on official stationery.
Twenty-Two
JUST AFTER ELEVEN, DCI Penwarren paused at the door of the Bodmin incident room. Morgan was at her desk, having just rung off with Lloyds. West was hunched before his computer screen reading reports. Terry Bates, looking fresh despite a long day on Saturday, was at the back of the room, pouring a coffee. He shook his head and thanked his lucky stars he had such talented and devoted people on his team. Time and time again they made him look good, not that looking good much mattered to him, but it kept Superintendent Crawley at bay. That in itself was a daily blessing.
“Hello people.”
Heads turned.
“Sir!” It was like a chorus.
“Might we have a chat? I should like to get up to date. In my office?”
Penwarren’s voice, as usual, was solicitous, as if apologizing for interrupting. The three leading MCIT members followed him down the hall and gathered at the DCI’s round birchwood laminate conference table. Sunlight poured in though the wide windows. As was his habit, Penwarren stood for a while, his back to them, gazing out to the verdant stone-walled meadows on the hills beyond and thanking the powers that be they hadn’t built the Hub in crowded and often dreary central Bodmin.
His team had learned to wait until Penwarren was ready.
“As you may imagine,” Penwarren began, “Superintendent Crawley is all over me, thanks to that vague Cornishman article. Maybe that’s because of his name…so like ‘crawling’…”
They laughed.
Penwarren turned and sat. “He’s been here this morning and has already gone.”
“Early riser, coming down here from Exeter…”
“Fearful riser, I suspect, Morgan. And under pressure, I would guess. Nonetheless, he is our superior, and I need to keep him posted. What do we have at this point?”
Morgan spoke first. “As I’m sure you know, we have some DNA. We also have some new prints. They’re not available yet.”
“Yes. I told him.”
“Terry and I have interviewed Mary Trevean’s closest friends: neighbors and pals at the pub, the Tinners, yet with little positive result. None of them can say why anyone might have wanted to harm the woman.”
“Did any of these interviews suggest anything that might be relevant, the slightest jealousy? A grudge? Romance?”
Terry answered first: “I talked to Alice Biggins and Billie Kerrow, the duck farmer. Morgan interviewed Eldridge Biggins at the Camborne station. Alice told me about how close friends her husband and Mary were. Alice felt the same and also had a close friendship with Mary’s late husband.”
Penwarren raised an eyebrow. “Sounds rather cozy to me.”
“I didn’t get the sense that it was anything but friendship. But she did hint that she thought Mrs. Trevean lately seemed excited, like she had someone new in her life. Reckon that might just have been envy; not much exciting in Alice’s life near as I could tell.”
“And ‘the duck man?’ Single, according to the case reports. Might he have had something going with Mrs. Trevean?”
Terry laughed. “Billie? I can’t imagine it. Desperately shy he is, but comfortable with his ducks—which are stunning, I might add. More than a hundred, I reckon. Snowy white. ‘Pekins,’ he told me. That’s the breed. They love him. He loves them back. Talks to them. Sits among them. It’s charming, really. Don’t know how he could ever butcher any of them in the end, but it’s his living, like any farmer I suppose.”
“Terry?”
“Oh, sorry! I honestly can’t see Billie being involved with Mary Trevean or any woman, much less committing a murder…Sir.”
“Did you take prints?”
“It would have frightened him off. Too timid. So no, I did not. Not yet, anyway. Just had a bit of a chin wag with him. A lovely man he is, actually.”
“Morgan?”
“Eldridge Biggins seemed edgy at Camborne, but then he’d never been in a police station before and I reckon he didn’t like the tight quarters. It figures: he’s out in pastures most of the day or in his big milking barn.”
Penwarren waited.
“He admitted that he was very close to Mary Trevean. Bosom friends, as it were. It’s just like Alice told Terry.”
“Been that way for some years, apparently,” Terry added. “Alice says Mary’s late husband Bert and she admired the bond. They’d always—the four of them—been close, doing things together. But after Bert died, Alice and Eldridge looked after Mary. That’s what Alice said, anyway.”
“Did you believe her, Terry?” Penwarren asked.
Terry took a breath and tilted her head to one side, as if trying to see something hidden. She considered and spoke.
“I have no reason not to, Sir. But if I’m honest, Alice troubled me. Mind you, she welcomed me in, was happy to chat, and was glad for the company, I think. Withdrawn at first, but later she seemed almost needy, like she didn’t want me to leave. Physically, she’s gaunt. She’s not old, barely fifty I reckon. But she looks worn. And there’s something else.”
“Yes?”
“Their house itself: I only got a look at the kitchen, mind you, but it looked preserved in aspic from maybe some time in the nineteen fifties. Clean as could be, yes, but nothing ever modernized. It’s like they live in another decade, these Biggins’s.”
Penwarren had been watching Morgan. He could sense the storm coming.
“What’s your take on all this, Morgan?”
“We’ve got bloody nothing, is my take!” she said, her face coloring. ”We’ve interviewed Mary Trevean’s closest associates and have learned nothing. We’ll spread those interviews wider in the area, of course, at the Tinners Arms, for example, and other neighbors. But I think we are wasting our time. I don’t think Mary Trevean’s death has anything to do with these locals. I may be wrong, but I just don’t think so.”
Penwarren smiled and gave her a nod. “Detective Inspector, I am inclined to agree with you.”
Morgan blinked. The other two were speechless.
“May I direct your attention, once again, to Trevega House?”
“Good Lord, boss: how many times do we have to go around this subject?”
“Until the mystery at Trevega House is solved which, if I might remind you all, is one reason why we are here in the employ of the government and the Crown.”
“We don’t need the sermon…”
Penwarren did not take offense. Instead, he smiled: “Actually, I believe you do. Each of you. I have some information, privileged of course, which I believe may bear on this case. But you must swear it will not be shared with Exeter or entered into the database. We are a team. Am I clear?”
No one moved. This was personal to Penwarren; that was obvious.
“Right then, let us begin: Sir Michael Rhys-Jones who, as you know, owns Trevega, has a grown son called Jeremy. He apparently has his father’s gift for finance, but also a violent streak. He beat his wife almost senseless, apparently, in repeated rages, until the physical evidence was discovered by her friend, the wife of the farm manager at Trevega. Sir Michael arranged for a speedy divorce. Jeremy’s abused ex-wife is Nicola Rhys-Jones. Sir Michael’s son was banished and forbidden any contact with his former wife. He’s had a stipend from his father and has been working at a Credit Suisse trading bank in Milan. Sir Michael’s friends at MI5, through the Italian Polizia, have kept quiet watch on Jeremy. But sometime last month he disappeared. He is
wanted for raping and attempting to strangle a female colleague at the bank.
“Bloody hell,” Morgan mumbled. She stared at her hands gripped in fists atop the table and could not look up.
“For reasons Sir Michael has shared with me, but which are very private, he believes Jeremy wants nothing more than to return to Trevega. He’s obsessed by it. Sir Michael suspects he is already here in the UK.”
“And you believe this Jeremy is responsible for these bizarre events at Trevega?” Morgan asked. “On what evidence?”
“None, Morgan. Not yet. But I don’t think we have begun to uncover the links in these events. And absent anyone else with a grudge against the Rhys-Jones’s—Michael, Nicola, and Andrew, not to mention the girl, Lee—I see no other suspects.”
“What’s this to do with Mary Trevean?” West asked. He’d been silent throughout, watching things play out.
“We don’t know, other than proximity. Despite the lack of persons of interest thus far, I believe her death is unlikely to be the work of a complete stranger. That leaves someone she knew, possibly a renter who had been with her awhile: possibly the renter who virtually sterilized the Chicken Coop cottage before fleeing. Possibly Jeremy Rhys-Jones. Or some other person she knew whom we have yet to discover.”
His team waited.
“I should like to suggest some old-fashioned footwork. For example, a canvass of people currently registered in accommodations—hotels, guest houses, bed and breakfasts—anywhere between St. Ives and St. Just. Anyone who seems suspicious. Failing that, we’ll try Penzance.”
“Where do we get the manpower?” Morgan asked. “We three can’t do this alone.”
“I have already contacted the Neighborhood Policing Area people in both towns. They are ready to help. When I say ‘they,’ in the case of St. Just, I mean just one Community Support Officer. The St. Just police branch has been closed. Budget cuts. I have made PC Novak in St. Ives the coordinator of this search. He has three CSOs. They’ll concentrate on St. Ives, a big task, given it’s a tourist town. After all, there are precious few accommodations between there and St. Just anyway…except Mary Trevean’s. I understand you people respect Novak?”
Morgan nodded. Terry grinned as if she’d just been given an award.
“Fine, then. Let’s get on with it. If we need more help, I’ll recruit Ralph Pendennis in Penzance, and ask him to arrange for uniformed constables to man phones or do house-to-house. But let’s stay in the immediate neighborhood first. If Jeremy Rhys-Jones needs to be near Trevega he can’t be far. Nor can he be invisible.”
Penwarren rose, stretched his long spine, and returned to his window.
Morgan remained after Bates and West had left the room.
“With respect, sir,” she began, “I confess I am worried that your connection with the Rhys-Jones family may be…affecting your analysis of this case—or these cases, if you will…”
Penwarren did not face her, but his voice was warm: “I hear you and appreciate your concern, Morgan. More than you might imagine. But you have often relied upon instinct, not just evidence. I am taking a page from your book. It’s something I feel in my bones.”
“My book, as you call it, was written by you. You’re just more careful of the rules than I am, more’s the pity. But you have my complete support…our complete support.”
“Thank you. You are a fine team. The finest.”
And still he stared out the window.
Twenty-Three
ST. JUST-IN-PENWITH, the last town before Land’s End, Britain’s southwesterly tip, had long been a sad reminder of the halcyon days of Cornwall’s tin and copper mining industry in the nineteenth century. Crumbling stone winding towers rose like skeletal fingers all along the barren coast and abandoned mine shafts pocked the bracken and gorse-coated hills around the town itself. Squat and neglected, storm gray granite shops and homes huddled, cheek by jowl, around a vaguely triangular “square” as if sheltering from the Atlantic gales. Nearly treeless, and almost as barren as the cliffs beyond, St. Just, like many old mining towns in Britain, had limped along, slowly deteriorating, for more than a century after the mining boom went bust.
Morgan had seldom visited St. Just during her days as detective sergeant in Penzance. There was little need. St. Just was only a few miles south of Penzance, but nothing ever happened there, apart from an occasional break-in—she always wondered what could even be worth stealing, the town was so poor.
But in the last few years St. Just had begun to revive as an artists’ colony, thanks to cheap housing. It was also a nascent tourist venue, thanks to the wild cliffs, broad beaches, and its proximity to Land’s End. It was gradually being reborn.
It had just gone noon on Tuesday and she stood next to the tall clock tower, a World War I memorial at the western edge of the square, trying to get her bearings. She had an appointment with David Sennen, the Police Community Support Officer, a uniformed civilian posted in the town. He’d emailed her that he had keys and access to the Town Council’s chamber, but no office of his own. At the appointed time she found him, a young man, late-twenties, with a military haircut, in the Council’s lobby, which was simply the front room of a former miner’s cottage.
She reached out her hand: “Culdrose?” she asked, referring to the naval air base nearby.
He smiled. “Reckon you must be a detective. I only work here when I’m off duty which, thanks to an Afghanistan injury, is a lot of the time. But I was born here in St. Just. It’s home.”
“Fair enough, and thank you for seeing me.” She looked around the spare space. “What say we move on to the King’s Arms for lunch and a pint? My shout.”
MORGAN HAD TO duck to enter the fourteenth century inn’s low front door. Sennen followed suit. The beamed ceilinged lounge bar had raw granite walls warmed by the soft light of electric sconces and the floor was carpeted in a deep red and blue pattern reminiscent of a Persian rug, a pattern that easily hid beer stains. It was early yet and the bar was empty but for a petite, dark-haired young woman behind it whose dimpled cheeks deepened when she saw Sennen.
“Officer David! Don’t usually see you here at lunchtime.” She looked at the handsome older woman with the spiked platinum hair beside him and winked: “New girlfriend, David?”
“This is Detective Inspector Morgan Davies, Jess.”
“What sort of trouble have you got into now, you devil?”
Morgan smiled. She liked the saucy girl’s attitude. She remembered, vaguely, when she was much the same, before her years on the force had hardened her. She shook off the thought and looked at the range of draft ales on tap. It was a St. Austell’s Brewery pub, not a Free House.
“I’ll have a pint of Tribute, Jess, if you will.” She would have preferred St. Austell’s stronger amber HSD, but it wasn’t on. “David? And don’t say you’re on police business or I’ll report you…”
The girl laughed. Sennen colored.
“Same for me, then, I reckon.”
“And let’s have a look at your bar menu as well, please Jess,” Morgan added.
The young woman passed her a somewhat battered red leather-covered menu.
It took Morgan only a moment. “I’ll have the local crab salad. Small sized one, though. Must watch my weight,” she said winking and taking a long pull from her pint. “David?”
“Bowl of steamed mussels, please, Jess.”
“That’s just a starter! How you going to maintain that hunky soldier’s body eating so little?”
This time David laughed. “That’s exactly how I maintain it, girl.”
Jess dipped her head and took their order through to the kitchen, and Morgan slid onto a cushioned old wood settle beneath a window deep set in what she guessed were foot and a half thick granite walls. David sat across in a new Windsor chair stained dark to look old. He was glad Morgan had chosen the King’s Arms, facing the square. There were two others, once local pubs, but they’d gone upscale recently, catering to tourists with lu
xury rooms and fancy menus. The King’s was still a local.
After their lunch arrived, courtesy of blushing Jess, Morgan asked, her voice low, for the pub had begun to fill, “Right then, what have you got?”
Sennen passed her a handwritten note on lined paper. No computers or printers in St. Just, apparently.
She studied it. “That’s not much.”
“We don’t actually have much hereabouts in the way of accommodations, Morgan. Not anymore. Things are changing. We’ve got the Commercial Hotel just across the way, not that it’s big. Used to be dreadful but it’s gone all posh. I checked there. No one stayed recently with anything anywhere near your Rhys-Jones’s name. Meanwhile, most all of what used to be bed and breakfast places have either closed because of strict new government safety standards people couldn’t afford to meet, like installing fire doors and such, or they’ve upgraded and now rent out only as self-catering units or cottages. Minimum stay a week. More money, see, and less work: no daily laundry, cleaning, and turnover. More stable. There just are no more affordable spare bedrooms with full English breakfast in some old Gran’s house anymore. A lot of our older folks here once depended on that extra income.”
Morgan nodded. It was becoming the same all over Cornwall. Devon, too, for that matter. Progress. The kind that made poor people, especially older folks, even poorer.
“Have you checked out these places? Only eight of them hereabouts it seems from this list.”
“Yes, mostly farms and spread out around the precinct. I’ve found nothing yet, but I have a couple more to check. Some folks here, well, they’re a bit reluctant when police arrive. But so far, I’ve got them to cooperate. Many of them, they know me. Reckon that’s the reason.”
Morgan finished her salad. She’d have liked another pint but had miles yet to drive.
“I have one more request. There is a Co-Op Supermarket here. I’d like to talk to the manager. Will you make the introductions?”