Will North

Copyright © 2017 by Will North

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or to businesses, locales or institutions is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

For permission requests, contact the author at www.willnorthnovelist.com.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Fogarty's Cove Music for permission to reprint an excerpt from "The Mary Ellen Carter" by Stan Rogers, copyright 1978 by Fogarty's Cover Music.

Published in the United States by Northstar Editions.

Trevega House: A Davies & West Mystery / Will North — 1st ed.

Cover Design by Laura Hidalgo

ISBN-10:  0-9989649-0-5

ISBN-13:  978-0-9989649-0-4

Epub ISBN:  978-0-9989649-5-9

:

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Author’s Note

The Major Crime Investigation Team

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Epilogue

Murder On The Commons

Garret Hardin Quote

The Major Crime Investigation Team

One

Two

Three

Acknowledgments

Also by Will North

For former Devon and Cornwall crime scene manager Detective Sergeant Martin South and Criminal Investigation Division Detective Sergeant Tessa Adams (Retired), to whom I owe so much.

Author’s Note

This third volume in the Davies & West mystery series, set as they all are in far southwest Cornwall, England, brings back a few characters from one of my earlier, more romantic novels, Water, Stone, Heart, set in the coastal village of Boscastle which was devastated by a (real) flash flood in 2004.

Countless readers have demanded to know what happened to those characters and, in particular, to the nine-year-old girl, “Lee.”

Well, she’s back, older, and even more preternaturally wise. Also returning are several of the people who loved and cared for her.

But now they all are in danger.

Will North

The Major Crime Investigation Team

Detective Chief Inspector Arthur Penwarren

Detective Inspector Morgan Davies

Detective Sergeant Calum West

Detective Constable Terry Bates

Police Constable Adam Novak

Prologue

IT WAS, ALMOST everyone in Boscastle later agreed, a great mercy that death was so quick.

That late spring morning, the sky sapphire blue and the grazing meadows emerald with new growth, Roger and Anne Trelissick, on their way to the shops up in Camelford, had just reached the top of the long gravel drive from their home, Bottreaux Farm, when an empty dump truck going far too fast failed to negotiate the B3266’s steep ninety-degree left turn toward the village. The truck lifted and tipped over to the right, became almost airborne, gave in to gravity, crushed the Trelissick’s Land Rover where it waited to enter the main road, and rolled once more before resting finally upside down in one of their fields, scattering the cattle that had been grazing there.

Incredibly, the driver survived. Roger and Anne Trelissick did not. Roger died instantly, Anne before the emergency aides could cut her free from their mangled farm vehicle.

The Cornish village of Boscastle was nearly a year into a reconstruction project following an epic and massively destructive flash flood, one of the worst in British recorded history. In a single afternoon, thanks to a bizarre meteorological convergence, nearly half a billion gallons of rain fell in a few hours and funneled from the hilltops into the Valency River Valley uprooting trees, rolling boulders like so many marbles, carrying dozens of cars out into the Atlantic, and ultimately destroying many buildings that had stood firm beside the harbor mouth for as long as five centuries. The task of rebuilding, of clearing the rubble, re-channeling the river, dredging the tiny harbor, and reconstructing underground utilities, had involved removing tons of mud, rock, crushed cars, and other debris. The heavy lorry and dump truck traffic roaring up and down the steep valley had thundered daily for months, right through the winter and spring. To residents trying to rebuild their lives and businesses, it was the thunder of hope. As spring advanced, apple and ornamental plum trees were blooming and the emerging new leaves were the freshest bright green. Life returned.

To everyone’s amazement, the flood had killed no one.

Until the Trelissicks.

While the police picked their way around the accident scene, one of the emergency service officers, Jimmy Poundstock, a Boscastle native, pulled out his mobile and called Janet Stevenson, the young vicar at Boscastle’s Forrabury Church where he worshipped. Stevenson listened, said a silent prayer, and went out to her car to fetch the Trelissick’s only child, Lilly, a strong-minded girl who demanded to be called “Lee,” from the primary school she attended on Fore Street, just below the church. But she stopped beside her car first and placed a call to Nicola Rhys-Jones and Andrew Stratton. She knew that the couple, she a painter and he an architect, both ex-patriot Americans and dear friends of the Trelissicks, would come immediately to care for the girl. Lee had spent part of her Christmas holiday with them at their new home near St. Ives taking painting lessons from Nicola. They were practically family to Lee and they, too, were flood survivors.

WHEN IT BECAME clear, a week later, that the little parish church would never be able to accommodate what turned out to be almost the entire village for the memorial service, the event was moved to the newly restored Wellington Hotel. This did not trouble the vicar; she knew her parishioners and she knew Roger and Anne. They’d have wanted a joyful remembrance with lively, heart-soaring music and plenty of refreshments, both in ample supply at the Welly. She offered a simple celebratory prayer to the assembled crowd and reminded those gathered that another Trelissick, young Lee, remained and needed their love.

It was Jack Vaughan, the bearded singer and musician locally called the “Boscastle Busker,” who finally cried Amen and ordered the gathered musicians to play.  He sat Lee beside him in the family room of the hotel’s bar and the celebrants first sang Amazing Grace in full throat. Then they launched into their weekly singing of the seafaring songs, a tradition so old no one could recall its beginnings.

Jack, who raised money from his music for a cancer treatment center, wanted life and normalcy to prevail over tragedy and he knew and loved Lee and her parents: what better vehicle than their regular Wednesday night sing? As if to a lifeline, Lee clung to the tradition as well. She slapped her palm against Jack’s knee to the tunes, brightening with each familiar song, and at the bar the drinks flowed. Jack had organized a similar community gathering a few days after the flood the previous year. That time they’d held it in the middle of the street by the hotel because the bar had been destroyed by a tributary stream called the River Jordan, which tore through the lower floor of the hotel. They’d built a bonfire from the wood remnants of the bar and a local brewery donated kegs of ale to the stricken village.

But now, toward the end of the sing, as was their custom, the villagers began, slowly and then with more heart, for it seemed more appropriate than ever before, their traditional closing number: “The Shipwreck of the Mary Carter.” The guitars thrummed, a flute and a fiddle sang, and the voices rose until they reached the final stanza:

Rise again, rise again,

Though your heart, it be broken,

And your life about to end;

No matter what you’ve lost,

A home, a love, a friend,

Like the Mary Ellen Carter,

Rise again…

Jack scooped Lee into his lanky arms and held her as she finally cried. Everyone else applauded, their eyes brimming, too. The whole village was Lee’s family this night. Jack handed the girl to Nicola and Andrew and, once again, everyone cheered. With them, they knew, she’d be safe.

One

IT HAD TAKEN almost an hour of climbing for him to reach the moor top. The pale granite tors along the summit ridge were so weathered that their edges were rounded and their strata so eroded that they looked like stacks of petrified flapjacks. They rose from the heather, gorse, and bracken-cloaked slopes like the bones of some ancient beast stripped bare by eons of relentless storms. The ancients had revered these tors, given them magical names, built settlements nearby and fortresses atop, and buried their chieftains beneath cairns and quoits on the high ground facing west to the Atlantic.

He leaned against a rock face and took in the view far below: the lush meadows of the farm, the stone mansion house, and the assortment of outbuildings that dotted the Trevega Estate north and south along the coast. As he watched, he beat his right fist against the stone like a pulse until the knuckles were nearly worn raw. He barely noticed. Anger rose like a fever:

They don’t belong.

“YOU ALL RIGHT, Lee?” Nicola asked. The now eleven-year-old at the table was staring out the kitchen window as if into another plane of existence.

It had been many months since Lee’s parents had been killed, but the girl had surprised everyone by being as resilient as a willow whipping in a high wind. She missed them, of course, but she also accepted her loss with a strange equanimity unlike any other child her age might have done. Something of an old soul, Lee reckoned that her loss was a bit like the turn of the seasons: there was death in winter and rebirth in spring. The loss of her parents, she reasoned—because she was a thoughtful girl—was like the natural cycle of things: the world turns; things change. Sometimes change hurt. That was also to be expected. But she had Andrew and Nicola now and that was everything. Their love was warm as a thick down duvet on a stormy Cornish night. And she had this new home by the Atlantic cliffs.

It was a chilly Friday evening despite being early summer, and Nicola was spooning out beef stew from a heavy Dutch oven. The updated but cavernous old kitchen on the ground floor of nineteenth century Trevega House was redolent tonight with the comforting aromas of their own farm beef, onion, garlic, rosemary and thyme, carrots, parsnips, potatoes, and new peas. Atop the stew were eight fluffy dumplings.

“No, I’m fine, really,” Lee said, finally.

Nicola had got used to this sort of delayed response; it was as if the girl chewed for a while on the gristle of every question, giving it thought before composing an answer. At her new school, she stood back from the chatter of her classmates. Her teacher was concerned that she did not blend in. The truth was that Lee could sense what her classmates really felt or cared about and for the most part it bored her silly. What she cared about were the lessons and there she excelled.

“It’s just something I saw out on the coast path this afternoon,” she continued.

The Southwest Coast Path, one of Britain’s many National Trails, edged the cliffs and hollows along the whole length of Cornwall and Devon’s Atlantic and English Channel coasts for some six hundred thirty miles. The Trevega Estate bordered the cliffside path above the Atlantic and ranged for nearly half a mile north and south along a gently sloping grassy plateau a few miles south of St. Ives. The plateau itself was the remnant of a shelf of beach from eons before, when a prehistoric ocean lapped at its shore. Now it stood high above the Atlantic and was crisscrossed by stone field walls, some of which dated to the Iron Age and possibly before. The verdant meadows, sequined by drifts of tiny white English daisies no higher than the grass blades, supported Trevega’s large herd of Black Angus cattle, a hardy breed and a major source of income for the estate.

Having finished serving, Nicola sat and sipped from her own wine glass. A shapely woman a bit taller and more broad-shouldered than most, she had thick brown hair so dark it seemed almost black. It fell in gentle waves to between her shoulder blades. Raised in a poor Italian enclave in North Boston, her maiden name had been DeLucca. During an arts fellowship in Florence, Italy, she had met and later married Jeremy Rhys-Jones, the son of Sir Michael Rhys-Jones, an investment banker. The marriage had not gone well. She lived now at Trevega, the family’s “country house.”

“So what did you see?” she asked.

“Someone walking north. I’d just come ‘round Mussel Point on the way to Zennor when Randi noticed this walker far away to the south above that gully at Tregarthen Cliff. I was watching the pink thrift dancing in the wind at the cliff edge—they’re beautiful right now. The wind came at us from the south and maybe Randi caught a scent. He barked once, then twice, his warning bark, you know, and when I looked up,the figure had turned and was hurrying back the way it had come.”

“It’s a public footpath,” Andrew said, looking up from his plate.

“Plus, our big Siberian husky can be pretty intimidating,” Nicola added.

“But from a tenth of a mile off?” It was like the girl thought them both idiots. She shook her head and continued eating.

“What did you see of this walker? Male or female? Tall or short?” Andrew asked.

“No idea, Drew. Dark trousers, olive green anorak I think, hood up because it was sprinkling.”

“Probably just a tourist at the end of a walk, avoiding the rain and heading back to the Tinners Arms for a pint,” Andrew said.

“Yeah. Probably. Yeah, that makes complete sense.” Lately, Lee liked things to make complete sense. So much of her life recently hadn’t.

“Did you continue on to Zennor?” Nicola asked.

“Me?” she said, laughing and shaking her head. Lee had let her previously close-cropped sandy hair grow to a bob after her parents’ death and now it danced along the line of her fine-cut jaw. As she matured, her features were becoming chiseled and angular, as if cut from the granite cliffs all around her.

“No, me and Randi, we turned inland around Treveal Farm and came straight up our valley to home. When Randi speaks, I listen. He’s very wise, Randi is.”

“Randi and I,” Andrew corrected.

Lee made a face. “Like I didn’t know?” Lee had gained a good three inches in the past year and a half and had loose, gangly limbs that suggested she hadn’t quite got used to her new body. She’d also begun to develop a certain resistance to what she thought was expected by the adults in her life, no matter how much she loved and needed them.

But Nicola heard Lee say “home” and it warmed her heart. She’d never had a child, nor had Andrew. In their mid-forties now, they never would. But they had Lee, and they could not imagine a finer daughter. Not that they had a clue how to raise one, especially a rare one like Lee.

Nicola and Andrew had lived together ever since the flood. Nicola’s former father-in-law, who was among other things a financial advisor to Charles, Prince of Wales and Duke of Cornwall, had arrived in Boscastle with the Prince’s entourage a few days after the catastrophic flood to survey the damage. While the Prince moved through the shattered village talking with residents, Sir Michael stepped away to check on his beloved ex-daughter-in-law, Nicola, who had lived alone in a cottage near the harbor’s mouth ever since he had arranged for her divorce from his abusive son, Jeremy. But the flood had torn her house apart and there was no sign of her.

When he found Nicola at last, battered, in shock, but alive, and met the man who’d rescued her, the visiting American architect Andrew Stratton, he begged the two of them to move to his family’s country estate, Trevega House, just south of the historic artists’ colony of St. Ives. The estate had been neglected, and he directed Andrew to begin its restoration. Andrew recruited his stone wall-building mentor, Jamie Boden, to join him, along with his partner, Flora Penwellan. They all now lived on the estate.

This particular evening, Drew, as Lee always called Andrew, clutched a glass of red wine in his right fist but did not lift it. Nicola noticed his hands were raw and gave his arm a squeeze. She could tell he was exhausted. He hadn’t had time to bathe and his thick mass of curly salt and pepper hair was tinged with grit. He and Jamie had been heaving stone all day to rebuild a collapsing wall in the estate’s old gardener’s cottage so it could be converted to a rental unit. Lee, too, school now being out, had helped them most of the day. The girl had loved stone work ever since she’d watched Drew and Jamie working on that new wall behind the tourist car park in Boscastle, the unfinished wall that was washed away as if it were made of nothing of substance in the flood that had nearly destroyed her home village and so much else of what Lee once believed was rock-solid and permanent in her short life.

NICOLA PUT HER fork down and turned her attention to her partner: “How’d you and Jamie get on with that wall at the gardener’s cottage?”

Andrew shook his head; grit fell from his hair. “That Jamie is a genius. I was sure we’d have to tear down the whole west-facing wall and remove the roof, it was all so weathered, but old Jamie just said, ‘trust the stone.’ He rammed a vertical supporting timber beneath the roof’s end-rafter and we’ve rebuilt the upper half of the exterior stone wall beneath it, as if the roof were floating above us. It’s taken a few days but when we’re done he’ll ease out that support and the old timber and slate roof will settle down onto the new wall right as rain, completely stuck and sturdy. That’s what he says, anyway.”

“And you, Mr. Architect,” Nicola teased, “Did you serve as his structural engineer?”

“No way; I’ll never stop learning from that wily old man. And this young lady,” he said, nodding at Lee, “she was with us all the way. Her spatial sense is amazing.”

“What’s that mean?”

“This girl of ours can see in three dimensions. She can turn space around in her head and tell you where a particular stone will fit as if it were meant to be sewn there. It’s a rare talent, Jamie says.”

“Wow!”

“Whatever,” Lee said to her plate.

“She could be an architect,” Andrew added.

The girl smiled but did not look up.

“Where’s Jamie’s Flora tonight?” Nicola asked.

“Off to one of those pagan meetings she goes to once a month,” he said. “’Moots’ they’re called. I don’t know if Jamie’s a believer or not; he doesn’t say. But tonight he’s off to the Tinners for supper and a pint or three with the neighbors while she’s out. Bit of a reprieve from the witchcraft for him, I suppose.”

Nicola locked her ebony eyes on him: “Listen, you: I believe in her and in her faith and skills. She lifted a great burden from my soul after the flood…and made it possible for me to trust and love you. If that’s witchcraft, I’ll take it.”

“It wasn’t my inherent charm?”

She relaxed: “Yes, well, maybe a bit of that too….”

Andrew marveled at the woman beside him: her feisty Italian edge was never far beneath her smooth, slightly olive skin. Andrew’s ex-wife had been tall, slender, and cold, but his Nicola was a comforting warm armful when they curled up together at night. He especially loved waking up early in the morning to see her long dark brown hair, burnished with tints of copper in the sun, splayed out across her pillow. That’s when he wanted her most, but he let her sleep and slipped off to brew tea for them. It was little ritual of theirs, having tea in bed to begin each day, a still point of catching up, looking forward, and being together before their worlds started turning again.

Lee watched the two of them banter and considered how lucky she was that these quirky grownups had adopted her. The formal process was not yet complete, she knew, but what seemed like half the population of Boscastle had turned up for the hearing at the Family Proceedings Court at Bodmin to support Nicola and Andrew’s petition. Lee’s own grandparents said they were too old to look after the precocious girl and endorsed Andrew and Nicola wholeheartedly. It was only a matter of time now before the order would be final. It hardly mattered to Lee, though; Andrew and Nicky were her anchors now.

What she did not know, and what they had not told her yet, was that the settlement from the accident that killed her parents, when it finally wound its way through the courts, would likely protect her financially for the rest of her life. Others of the company’s drivers were on record reporting that the truck that had lost control had continually leaked brake fluid. In response to their warnings, the owners had simply topped up the reservoir as needed and ignored them. A corporate manslaughter charge would be heard in Truro Crown Court. Psychiatrists for the injured and emotionally shattered driver had already been deposed and they doubted the young man would ever be the same.

As for Bottreaux Farm, Lee’s home, the rich land above Boscastle had been rented quickly by a neighboring farmer, and the farmhouse itself had been purchased and turned into a posh bed and breakfast venue…where no one spoke of the tragedy. The proceeds of the sale, and the rental income, went to a trust fund for Lee established by Sir Michael.

AS SHE ATE, Lee could not stop thinking about Flora’s pagan moots. She just knew somehow, like an itch beneath her skin, that she was meant to attend those meetings, too. There were things she knew, things she sensed, but she did not yet have the words or the courage to talk about them. Only Flora understood.

Flora Penwellan had worked behind the bar at the Cobweb Inn at Boscastle dispensing drinks, food, and sage advice in roughly equal measure for as long as anyone could remember…until the flood nearly destroyed the pub and swept her finally into Jamie Boden’s arms. The two had flirted with each other for years but had both been too shy, and thought themselves too old, to act on their attraction. In the end, all it took to bring them together was a disaster that could have killed them both.

Jamie Boden was as wiry and tough as a goat, lean but strong from years of stone work. His weather-beaten, freckled face possessed an almost perpetual look of mischief and his unruly thinning red hair, touched now with threads of white, was like a storm swirling around his head. Just encountering Jamie Boden made you smile.

Full-figured Flora—“strapping,” some might describe her—was what locals called, privately, a “village wise woman,” one of several in this part of Cornwall… someone you could count on to lift an ache from your soul or a curse from a neighbor, among other maladies: in short, a witch. And, although she was almost sixty, she had also been Lee’s closest adult friend both before and after the flood. It was simple: they loved and respected each other. Plus, Flora had already sensed that Lee was unusual. She kept an eye on the child as if the girl were her own, and now that they all lived on the Trevega estate that was easier to do. She loved that Andrew and Nicola had wrapped their arms around the orphaned girl and given her their hearts, but she did not believe they understood, at least not yet, how different the girl really was. And it was Flora’s job, she believed, to protect and nurture that difference. It was, she felt, the last big task of her life.

That, and maybe Jamie.

HE CLIMBED BACK over the ancient stone hedge and stood at the edge of the coast path, admiring his handiwork. It had been harder than he’d expected and he was winded, even a bit frightened by what he’d done. But he smiled nonetheless:

It’s a first step. There will be more.

And then he strode south, careful not to be seen.

Two

NIGEL LAWRENCE, THE thick-set young farm manager for the Trevega estate, knocked at the kitchen door of the big house early on Monday morning. He and his wife Annabelle and their toddler Jesse lived above the valley in the estate’s farmhouse. Low-slung under its lichen-encrusted slate roof and looking like it had grown out of the rocky landscape rather than having been built upon it, the stone house was more than a century older than Trevega House, almost a museum piece. Nigel managed the estate’s cattle for Sir Michael.

“Nigel!” Nicola said, opening the door. “Come in! Tea?”

“That would be fine, Nicola, thank you. Andrew about?”

“Of course. Just changing into his work clothes. Be down any minute.”

She poured him a mug. “Something more than tea, Nigel? Toast?”

“Nah. My Annabelle fixed me a breakfast to last all day.”

“A fine and lovely woman she is, Nigel.”

She paused and added, “Plus Annabelle saved me from Jeremy. I’m forever in her debt. And yours.”

“I’m so sorry we didn’t know sooner that he was beating you…I’d have throttled the bastard. So unlike his dad, Sir Michael, who’s such a good and noble soul.”

“All in the past now and long gone, Nigel. Anyway, I should have said something back then, but I was too afraid. Annabelle helped me to find my voice. Then again, look at all the good that’s happened since…Yes?”

“Mighty glad we are about you and Andrew. And Lee, too, despite her terrible loss. Landed safely with you two, me and Annabelle think. Reckon we’d like her as babysitter for our little Jesse sometimes, if she’s interested. Loves her, that little boy does. How’s she faring, then, our Lee?”

“Hides a lot inside, I think, Nigel. But she soldiers on. She’s a strong girl.”

“And smart, too, I reckon. Comes up to the farm and wants to learn all about the herd. Lovely company she is as well, and the animals they take to her. You should see it: they gather around her, their big  heads bobbing, and they lick her boots. She has a way with them.”

Andrew came down the back stairs to the kitchen. “Nigel! How are you, my friend?” He thrust out his hand.

Nigel had not yet quite got used to this overt American custom. Diffident nods were more a Cornishman’s habit of greeting. Given its smuggling history, wariness was culturally ingrained. At some point in the distant past maybe you had to worry if someone who extended one hand might have a knife in the other.

“Reckon I’d like a word, Andrew,” he said, taking the proffered hand. “On a farm matter.” He looked at Nicola. “Outside, maybe?”

“Of course!” Andrew said.

“So much for tea,” Nicola groused. “Go on, you two…”

A crushed gravel terrace separated the back of Trevega House from the overgrown formal garden a few steps below. Renovating the garden was Nicola’s next task. The rear terrace was where they parked their vehicles, near to the kitchen door. Nigel stopped in the middle of the yard, as if there were a mark there where he should stand and speak.

Andrew joined him. “What’s up, Nigel? What is it?”

The farm manager looked across the yard and then turned to Andrew.

“Reckon it’s murder, Andrew.”

“What?”

“One of our bullocks dead this morning in a field down by the coast. Throat slit. Couldn’t even have bawled out for help, the poor devil,” Nigel said, his voice catching, as if his own child had been slain. “It was Lee who told me. She’d been out walking early with Randi. Came right up to the farm, she did, told me, then left. I moved the rest of the cattle from that field. They were gathered around the dead one nudging it, wanting it to live.”

Andrew put his arm around the man’s shoulders and led them farther away from the house. “Good Lord, Nigel, why? What’s the point? Do we have enemies?”

“None what I know of, truly, Andrew. Folks hereabouts are proud of how you’re restoring Trevega. The old place is full of life again. That’s good for everyone in the district. They’re always talking at the Tinners about all that you and Jamie are doing. Admiring, everyone is.”

“But this?”

The farm manager raised his hands. “No idea, honestly. Such a beautiful, harmless beast.”

Nigel was a stocky Cornishman in his mid-thirties, ruddy-faced from the weather and so heavily muscled it was as if he didn’t just raise cattle but wrestled them as well. He ran a hand through his thick black hair and looked off across the overgrown garden.

“This could be just someone’s filthy prank,” he said without conviction.

“Maybe, but I think we’d best report it to Sir Michael anyway,” Andrew said.

“We’ve plenty more cattle, Andrew.”

“Still, he’ll want the police in. Don’t move the beast, okay? And let’s get your veterinarian to have a look as well. We’ll need something official.”

“Already called the vet.”

“Why am I not surprised…?”

“Has Lee been back yet?”

“I didn’t know she’d been out, honestly.”

“You’ll go look for that girl, won’t you? She were powerful upset finding that bullock. Troubles me more than that beast, to be honest. Find her.”

LEE WAS RIGHT where Flora had “seen” her.

Flora Penwellan was unaccustomed to overland hiking. Nonetheless, she’d plodded, heavy-footed and wheezing, down through the valley to the coast, stopping now and then to curse the girl and catch her breath, until she’d found the cliffside spot she’d seen in her “mind’s eye.” Her “mind’s eye” was a phenomenon she mostly found annoying but for which today, at least, she was grateful.

And there Lee sat, clutching her skinny legs on a grassy shelf a few feet below the clifftop at River Cove and high above the Atlantic breakers. Sea thrift edged the shelf and the heather burst with magenta florets. Just south of the ledge a stream slender as a finger flung itself off the cliff edge and lost itself in mist on the rocky beach more than a hundred feet below. There was a scarred bit of path leading to the shelf. Randi sat beside the girl, panting, as if troubled by the height.

As Flora looked down, a hand touched her shoulder and she jumped.

But it was only Nicola. The noise of the wind and surf below had drowned out her approach.

“What are you doing here?” Flora hissed.

“I followed you. I’m sorry. I heard about Lee and saw you. You seemed on a mission…”

Nicola peered over the cliff edge. “What is she doing down there?” she whispered.

“Calming herself, I reckon, Nicola. This is her special place. Most kids have one: where they go to be alone with their thoughts. It had to have been quite a shock, finding that poor dead beast…”

Nicola leaned over the edge and tried not to panic from the height.

“Lee, sweetie?” she called, “it’s time to come home now, love. We know what happened. It must have been awful for you.”

“That poor animal…” Lee shouted above the surf. “Death out of nowhere, for no reason!” Her anger vibrated in the air.

And Nicola heard the echo from Lee’s own loss—random, inexplicable, grossly unfair deaths. Her family gone in an instant.

“I can’t imagine, Lee.”

The girl looked up toward the cliff edge, her face pinched and angry: “We must imagine,” she yelled. “We must imagine who wanted to do this. I’ve been thinking about this and I don’t think it’s about the animal; nothing to do with it at all. Something to do with us. Someone who wants to do us harm. Someone evil.”

Nicola looked at Flora.

Flora shook her head and leaned over the edge: “That’s enough, now, girl,” she called, “you get your sorry arse up here and let those who love you look after you! The cow’s gone but we’re all still here breathing, right? You okay getting back up here on your own, because, let me tell you, I’m too old to climb down to fetch you!”

The girl stood and climbed, followed by Randi, and, to Nicola’s surprise, she came to her and hugged her.

“Thank you for coming for me,” Lee whispered.

Nicola’s eyes filled.

“Can we all go home now?” Flora barked as if exasperated but controlling her own emotions. “Is there a bus or something due along here soon? It was downhill to get here but it’s nothing but uphill to return.” She cuffed Lee’s bony shoulder. “You need to respect your elders, girl!”

“THIS WAS JUST plain malicious,” the large animal vet, Dr. Bethany Richards, said later that morning as she stood after examining the dead bullock. She was a sturdy woman of perhaps forty, a tight cap of close-cut brown hair, dressed in dark green coveralls and a tan t-shirt, manure-splattered Wellies on her feet. Her hands, Andrew noticed, were strong and rough-skinned but the fingers were tapered, almost delicate. Still, not the sort of vet you’d call if your Siamese cat were ailing.

“No one was trying to butcher this handsome fellow. The steps are all wrong.”

“What steps?” Andrew asked.

The vet looked at Nigel. Nigel shook his head.

“More than you want to know, Mr. Stratton.”

“No, please…”

She shrugged. “All right, you don’t cut a live animal’s throat, okay? You render it senseless first, a bullet center of the forehead above the eyes, usually. Then you plunge a strong, very sharp knife into the throat and cut away from yourself and outward severing the carotid. You don’t come at it the way this happened, just sawing across the neck from behind. Some bastard just killed the beast and let it bleed out. Brutal. Cruel. It sickens me.” She drew a heavy green tarp over the carcass like a priest covering the body of someone who’d just passed on.

Andrew watched and noted how gentle she was. “Police next?” he asked.

“Without question,” Richards said, gathering her kit. “This is criminal, this is. Make sure the police find him before I do…”

“Him?”

“Someone strong.”

Three

“YOU’RE JOKING, RIGHT?” Detective Inspector Morgan Davies barked as she stormed around Detective Chief Inspector Arthur Penwarren’s office at the Devon and Cornwall Police Operational Hub at Bodmin later that morning. Davies didn’t walk: she stalked, leading with her head, the rest of her following as if trying to catch up.

“Some toff has a problem—a problem with a dead cow for Christ’s sakes!—and suddenly CID’s involved? Come off it; my job’s murder, not livestock!”

“He’s not a ‘toff,’ Morgan,” Penwarren said, his voice modulated, calming. “He is a citizen, and a friend. A very good friend.”

“So what?” The imposing detective, her short and bleached blond hair spiked and stiff as quills, her arms clamped beneath her generous breasts, stood her ground. “And what are we supposed to do, anyway? Have Calum West’s SOCO boys do a search and then take the damned cow up to the Treliske mortuary? Have Dr. Duncan do a postmortem? Why not just put a uniformed constable on it and have the beast hauled away to a butcher shop?”

DCI Penwarren sighed. “Look, there’s more to this, Morgan. When you’ve calmed down, come back. It’s complicated. This may not be some sort of sick vandalism….”

Morgan shook her head and went back to her office and desk. I should have known; nothing about DCI Penwarren is ever simple….

DAVIES KNOCKED BUT did not wait for an answer. Penwarren was, as usual, at his stand-up desk facing the wall of windows that encased much of the nearly new, three-story Bodmin Operational Hub. All the other brass in the building had desks in the power position: facing the door. Not Penwarren. His looked out across a valley cross-hatched by stone walls and dotted with white and black sheep scattered like dice thrown against a green felted playing table. Arthur Penwarren was slender and almost six and a half feet tall. Nearing retirement, he wore his silvering hair long and swept back to his collar and, despite his height, always stood erect. This was less a matter of the posture training he’d got at the much-revered Harrow School near London he’d attended as a scholarship boy and more about adjusting to the stiffness in his increasingly arthritic spine. He hated chairs.

“Do come in, Morgan,” he said without looking to see who’d entered. Morgan Davies, a twenty-five-year veteran of the force, was both his most difficult and most brilliant detective. A big-boned woman just under six feet tall in her practical low heels and wearing her usual navy blue “plain clothes” pantsuit, Morgan Davies was nonetheless arrestingly attractive—handsome was perhaps a better description. When she entered a room it seemed like she’d taken up all the space. She had presence. People took notice and it was as if time had briefly stopped whenever she showed up. But Penwarren knew she had a special instinct, almost a second sense, in murder cases that set her apart from her alleged peers. She was dogged in investigations and let nothing get in her way, including, occasionally, normal police procedure. As a woman, she worked harder and longer, but also more successfully, than any man who’d ever been under his command. He respected her immensely and was determined to see her continue to advance in the force, even if that meant him frequently having to defend her unorthodox methods to the bosses at headquarters up in Exeter.

“Okay, out with it,” she said with customary grace.

“Have a seat, Morgan.”

“I’ll stand.”

“Good. So shall I.”

“So?”

Penwarren lifted a file from his desk and turned. He still preferred paper records.

“So: Sir Michael Rhys-Jones: long time financial adviser to Prince Charles and his charity, the Prince’s Trust. Also a friend of mine. You will keep that confidence between us, are we clear?”

“Very impressive, I’m sure, but what’s this got to do with a dead cow?”

“Found on his land early this morning, but it’s not about the cow.”

“Somehow, I doubt the cow would agree.”

Penwarren turned back to his office windows. A scrim of a light rain was climbing up the valley below like a rising fog and would soon cloud his view. The view was important. Now that he didn’t get out much it kept him from feeling deskbound.

“The Rhys-Jones’s had been miners, come south from Wales to work the Cornish tin mines in the late seventeen hundreds. They did very well indeed, and started their own mines, sinking vertical shafts all along the Atlantic Coast south of St. Ives and sometimes running them far out beneath the sea floor. It was at the height of the tin boom, in the mid-eighteen hundreds, that Sir Michael’s great grandfather, Thomas, had Trevega House built. It is Sir Michael’s country estate and it is currently the home of Nicola Rhys-Jones, Sir Michael’s ex-daughter-in-law, and her partner, Andrew Stratton. They’re both ex-pat Americans.

“I’m sorry: ex-daughter-in-law?”

“Yes. She married Sir Michael’s son, Jeremy. But the son turned out to be a wife-beater.”

“Bloody hell...”

“Yes, exactly. So, Sir Michael arranged their divorce and banished his son overseas. Sir Michael loves Nicola as if she were his own daughter. She’s a talented and commercially successful painter and, according to Michael, a wonderful woman. Her partner’s an architect. They’re tasked with restoring the entire estate: outbuildings, gardens, and so forth, to make it self-sufficient from tourism income. They’ve also adopted a Boscastle girl—age nearly twelve, I think—whose parents were killed in an accident in the aftermath of the flood.”

“Jesus.”

“Yes. But the girl—her name is Lee—seems to be thriving.”

“Unlike the cow.”

“There’s more.”

“I certainly hope so.”

“But I am not at liberty to discuss it.”

“What a surprise. So I’m supposed to go on faith?”

Penwarren turned back to face her. “You have always gone on faith, Morgan, often when there was nothing else to go on. And you have almost always been right.”

“Almost?”

Penwarren smiled. “I’m still not sure about your recruiting that witch in the Chynoweth case year before last. But you got a conviction in the end. I’ve already called Calum. The animal has not been moved and only the vet has been there, so there is minimal disturbance to the scene. Calum will meet you there at three.”

“And we’re supposed to…?”

“Look for evidence, of course.”

Morgan turned toward the door. “Jesus wept,” she mumbled as she left. It was a biblical phrase the nuns at her secondary school in Wales often used when dealing with the headstrong and contrary girl.

AS WAS HIS habit, SOCO crime scene manager Calum West arrived at the Trevega estate early. He stopped at the farm manager’s house near the top of the lane. Nigel Lawrence was off moving cattle to a fresh meadow, but his wife, Annabelle, slender as a sapling despite having borne a son, welcomed him. Their toddler, Jesse, clung to her leg like a limpet to a rock but smiled shyly up at the visitor. West introduced himself, and Annabelle gave him directions to the field down by the coast where the dead animal lay.

“Detective Inspector Morgan Davies should arrive shortly,” West said.

“I’ll send him along after you.”

“He’s a she, actually. And one of the best. If anyone can get this matter sorted, it’ll be DI Davies.”

BACK IN HIS car, West took in the view. The Trevega estate and its farm spread along a broad, gently sloping shelf of coastal land that lay at the foot of a north-south trending ridge of steep moorland hills between St. Ives and Zennor. The hills above were cloaked in dense, yellow-flowering gorse and waist-high bracken fern and topped with castellated granite tors. A narrow two-lane road, the B3306, hugged the foot of the steep hills, as if sheltering from the Atlantic gales from the west. Farther down-slope was the lush coastal plateau, its verdant expanse broken into a fractal network of dozens of small, irregularly-shaped meadows bounded by stone walls.

Based far to the north in Bodmin, West had known little about this rugged coast until the Chynoweth case, which introduced him to this part of Cornwall. Ever since then, he’d been captivated by its wildness and antiquity. Now, he looked at his map and saw that two marked footpaths traversed the plateau: the famous Southwest Coast Path, which clung to the cliff edge above the ocean, and the lesser-known Coffin Way, an inland path that followed mostly level ground from one field to the next. According to the laptop in his police Volvo, that path had been used by pallbearers in the distant past carrying bodies washed up on the shore from Zennor’s sixth-century St. Senara’s Church to the cemetery in St. Ives, the scenic fishing port and, more recently, famed artist colony just to the north. Lugging a casket along this path could not have been an easy task: there were dozens of stiles built into the stone walls over which the burden would have had to be lifted and transferred, field after field, mile after mile, century after century.

THE FIELD IN which the dead bullock lay under the vet’s green tarpaulin was not one crossed by the Coffin Path. It lay instead near the western edge of the plateau, just above the Atlantic cliffs. Calum was using a magnifying glass to study the stone wall bounding that side of the field when a familiar voice called: “You’re looking positively Sherlockian, Calum, but the dead cow is over here…”

Ignoring Morgan’s jibe, he reached into a small kit bag on the ground and pulled out a roll of sticky tape. He laid strips of it along the top of the stone wall, lifted them, and then placed the tapes in a plastic bag, sealing and marking it and returning it to his kit.

He turned. Morgan’s attention was on her black Wellies as she picked her way between fly-blown pats of cow manure. Silently, she thanked the vet for covering the dead beast. Flies would have made their task far more difficult. Morgan was not a farm girl and she marveled at the sheer mass of the animal beneath the cover. It was nearly the size of the unmarked white Ford Fiesta she’d driven to get here. Morgan’s notion of beef was that it came in sealed plastic foam trays in the meat department at her local Morrison’s supermarket. She was not prepared to consider the whole animal. She looked up at Calum as he approached: “Well, this is certainly a first as bodies go, isn’t it?”

West shook his head: “For me, too.”

“What were you doing by that wall?”

“Hedges, they’re called hereabouts,” Calum said. “Just guessing, but I suspect the locals call them that because the storms off the ocean blow away anything green. The stones are all that’s left. Given how many there are, I reckon stone was the first thing harvested to clear these fields, thousands of years ago. But this, I confess, is not my field of expertise.”

Davies ignored the pun: “The wall, Calum?”

“Oh. Could be something, could be not. A bit of disturbance, a fresh roughening to the granite cap stones and some hairs, maybe, or clothing fibers caught there, like someone had climbed over. Don’t know yet.”

“I thought the cow was our ‘scene.’”

“Yes, and we’ll get to that unpleasant task presently. But the question is how did the beast end up this way? Where’d the killer come from? How’d they get into this rather remote field? Answer: the Southwest Coast Path is just on the other side of that stone hedge.”

“How many times do I have to tell you, Calum: you do scene…”

“Yes, yes, and you do investigation. Just consider this a pro bono contribution from a mere detective sergeant to your far more important work, Detective Inspector Morgan Davies. Shall we move on?”

“Calum. I’m sorry. This whole situation seems idiotic.”

Davies had not meant to pull rank and, in any event, her promotion was still new. Plus, there was something so hopelessly genuine and unaffected about West that she knew he was never trying to pirate her patch. He was just reading the scene…and his search skills were unmatched. If there were something significant to be found, he’d find it. She reminded herself that she needed to learn to be grateful. The fact that she also loved the man, to the limited extent she was capable and given their mutual inability to express their affection, other than through jibes, helped marginally to keep their roles apart. Calum was a gentle soul, not too tall, not too thin. His hair was thinning but his face was almost cherubic in its soft and persistent youthfulness. Their dance was so complicated: prickly attraction, professional distance, and the dead weight of the losses in both their lives: her dead family, his dead wife.

“Perhaps not, Morgan. Let’s have a look at this big boy, shall we? But before we do, note that the ground around it is trampled by hooves and there’s blood everywhere. It took a while before the poor devil fell. I think the other animals were trying to help. Heart-breaking.”

They lifted the shroud. Remarkably, though the animal had now been dead for hours, it did not yet stink. There was a pool of congealed blood beneath the beast’s black head. The gash across the left side of its neck was ragged, as if someone had sawed at the animal more than once before it succumbed. In her mind’s eye, Morgan saw the terrified, uncomprehending look in the animal’s eyes as it staggered about, fell, and lost consciousness. She and Calum knelt beside the carcass for a moment and said nothing.

West looked closely at the wound and then sat back. Morgan, he noticed, was breathing hard and fast. “I don’t think there is anything more to see here, luv,” he said resting a hand on hers. “But if I discover anything, hairs or fibers, I’ll let you know, okay?”

Morgan nodded but stayed on her knees. In her long career with the force, investigating innumerable murders, she’d seldom felt so affected by a victim: a big, simple, innocent, harmless beast. Only hours before, she’d raged against being called out for this case but now her heart ached and her detective’s brain whirred:  Opportunity? Certainly: could be anyone. Means? Yes, a very sharp knife. Motive? But she could not imagine one. It was senseless. Cruel and senseless.

Davies rose and brushed her blood-stained knees, then wiped her hands on clean damp grass. “I want to interview the people at Trevega House, if they’re in. Do you need to be off or would you care to join me?”

“I thought you said I only do scene,” West said, grinning.

“Oh please do shut up. There is a possibility, remote I‘ll agree, that you might prove useful. Plus, I rather enjoy your company, though Lord knows why.”

“How can I resist so warm an invitation?”

NICOLA ANSWERED THE heavy oak door beneath the pillared portico that fronted Trevega House. The granite walls of the Georgian mansion were barely visible behind its cloak of ivy. A row of tall, six over six paned windows flanked the entry.

“Oh hello! I’m sorry I took a while to respond. You must be the detectives. We almost never have people come to the front door. We’re not as grand as we seem. Would you mind very much coming back to the kitchen? That’s where I was. We practically live there. It’s much cozier and I can put tea on.”

She ushered Davies and West into the foyer, the floor of which was tiled in large black and white marble squares set on the diagonal like a harlequin’s costume. A broad oak staircase led to the floor above. There were doors left and right of the foyer trimmed with ornate plaster moldings: formal public rooms, Morgan assumed.

Davies slipped her warrant card back inside her purse. “Of course, Ms. Rhys-Jones; whatever is easiest for you. Would Mr. Stratton be available?”

“The name’s Nicola, please. I’ll call Andrew’s mobile; he’s no doubt working on one of the outbuildings. He and his partner are rebuilding them. For holiday lettings, you see.”

“And might you ask Mr. Lawrence to join us as well?”

“Yes, certainly, if he can break free from the animals.”

Davies and West followed the woman back along the central hall. The walls were hung with paintings that looked to Davies like they were from the Impressionist period, and yet they seemed to be of scenes she almost recognized. Nicola noticed her interest.

“The owner of Trevega House, my ex-father-in-law, is a collector of the work of the Newlyn School of artists who painted in and around Penzance before World War I. The best known were Lamorna Birch, Laura and Harold Knight, and Ellen Naper, but there were others. Sir Michael’s family had been both patrons and friends.”

“They’re quite wonderful,” Davies said.

“Yes, and nowadays very valuable; it is an honor to live among them.”

At the back of the hall they reached a warmly lit, slate floored kitchen big enough, Davies was sure, to swallow the whole of her cottage on Bodmin Moor. Nicola filled and switched on an electric kettle and called both Andrew and Nigel from her mobile.

“They’ll both be here shortly,” she said turning to the officers a few moments later. “I must say I am surprised to have two real detectives looking into a dead bullock. Is this Sir Michael’s doing? If so, I am sorry. He is a very sweet man and I love him like my own father, but I gather he has…um…some influence.”

“Sir Michael did indeed ask the police to look into this incident, as well he might as the property owner,” Davies answered, “but it was our own superior, Detective Chief Inspector Arthur Penwarren, who decided the event was so peculiar as to require investigation. So I think you needn’t worry about your ex-father-in-law.”

“Penwarren? Yes, he’s an old friend of Michael’s…”

Nicola made tea and gestured that they sit at the long oak table.

“I’m sorry, sir, but I didn’t catch your name,” she said as she filled West’s mug.

“That’s because I tend to overshadow him,” Davies answered. “This gentleman is Detective Sergeant Calum West, crime scene manager for Devon and Cornwall. I only overshadow him because he is too polite to draw attention to himself. Really, Nicola, what are we girls to do with polite and thoughtful men?”

Nicola laughed and Andrew came through the kitchen door at that moment, followed by a gangly girl.

The girl looked at the strangers. “Who are you?” she demanded.

“Lee!” Nicola said. “Manners!”

Nicola knew Lee hated surprises and that she tended to react defensively. She and Andrew were working on that.

West rose and extended his hand to the girl. “I’m Calum. We are looking into the death of the bullock you found early this morning.”

“The murder, you mean.”

“Yes, well, perhaps. I am so sorry you had to find him. But we will try to solve this for you.”

“Who’s she?” the girl said, pointing to the big woman with the short, spiky blond hair.

Morgan rose. West had two daughters; he knew how to deal with girls. Morgan did not. Following his example, she shook Lee’s hand.

“I’m Detective Inspector Morgan Davies, but you can call me Morgan.”

“What kind of a name is that for a girl: Morgan?”

Davies smiled but continued to hold the girl’s hand. “What kind of a name is that for a girl: Lee?”

A grin grew across Lee’s face, slow as a sunrise. “Reckon you’re okay then,” she said finally. “What about that bullock?”

“Well now,” Morgan said, releasing the girl’s hand. “That’s what we’re here to investigate. But I am afraid we’ll need your expert opinion on this matter.” Morgan already knew about Lee’s loss of her family. Having lost her own, Morgan felt an odd affection for the feisty girl, so like her, so long ago.

“For example, what time did you find the animal?”

“Just before six this morning. Sometimes I wake up early, and so me and Randi, we go out for a walk along the cliffs.”

“Randi and I,” Andrew corrected.

Lee ignored him. “Me and Randi, we walk the cliffs a lot. Beautiful they are in the morning, with the sun just tipping over the moor tops.”

“I’m sorry, Randi?”

“Our dog,” she answered. “He’s a big Siberian husky and he’s way smart.” The girl skipped over to the kitchen door, opened it, put two fingers between her lips, and launched an ear-splitting whistle. She left the door open. Moments later, what seemed to Davies the most handsome dog in the world bounded in and danced around the girl. He looked just like a wolf, but a wolf with a smile.

“Sit, Randi,” Lee ordered, and the dog did so immediately.

“Has a way with animals, our Lee does.” This from a man who’d followed the dog into the kitchen.

“Nigel, come have tea,” Nicola said. “These are detectives Morgan Davies and Calum West, here to look into that dead bullock.”

Nigel nearly bowed: “Annabelle told me you’d come. We’re most grateful.”

“So, Lee…” This was West asking: “Did you hear something on your walk? Something that drew you to that particular field?”

Lee screwed up her face to remember. Her freckles seemed to dance across the bridge of her nose. “It was Randi took me there. We’d just climbed up out of River Cove along the coast path when he started acting strange: ran ahead, then ran back to me and barked twice. That’s his warning bark.”

West looked at Nicola and she nodded.

“I had to run to follow him. There’s a long narrow field, just two fields below the Coffin Way, and that’s where we found the poor animal along with the others who were right frightened. They milled around him, sniffing, their breath steaming. But he’d died before we reached him…not that I think I could have done anything, you know. There was blood everywhere.”

“Did you see anyone else nearby, Lee?” Morgan asked.

“No, but I wasn’t looking, was I? I was just being with the dead animal, kinda stroking its big warm head. I remember the black hair was almost silky. Even dead it had such a sweet and gentle face. Randi, he stayed with me but he barked a lot. Maybe he saw something or maybe he was just upset like me. I don’t know.”

No one said anything for a moment.

The head was still warm, was what Calum heard. “Lee, are there places near there where someone might hide, even for a little bit? I mean, if they’d seen you and Randi coming and needed to get out of sight?”

Lee thought for a moment. “It’s pretty bare down there by the cliffs. Just gorse and bracken fern. Bramble, too.”

“Hang on,” Nigel interrupted. “There are a few old mine shafts from the tin mining days almost two centuries ago. They’re filled now for safety, but maybe someone could have ducked down into the depression of one of them.”

“Can you show them to us, Nigel?” West asked.

“Of course. Would take no time at all. Just down the hill they are.”

Just down the hill turned out to be a walk of more than fifteen minutes. Morgan was not pleased. But when they reach the depressions in the earth, marked with warning signs, West stopped Morgan, Nigel, and Lee and approached on his own. He had his SOCO kit with him. The site was thickly overgrown as Lee had said, presumably left that way to keep people away, but he could see a recent disturbance to the foliage, too big to be the work of, say, a badger: bent branches and crushed leaves. West squatted just outside the damaged area and did not move.

“What’s he doing?” Lee whispered to Morgan.

“Studying. It’s what he does. He touches nothing and just absorbs the scene like a sponge. Looks like he’s doing nothing but you’d be dead wrong to think so. We’ll just leave him be. If there’s something to find, he’ll find it.”

“Sounds mystical,” Lee replied.

“For him, I think it almost is. He loses himself in the scene.”

After several minutes, Calum finally moved, but very carefully. He reached into his kit bag and removed a pair of sharp scissors normally used to cut clothing off bodies. Using sterile gloves, he clipped a branch of spiny gorse, its blossoms yellow as lemons. Then he pruned a length of bramble and, like the gorse, slipped the sample into a clear plastic bag. Using a black indelible marking pen, he wrote on both bags. Then he rose and backed carefully away from the mouth of the disused shaft.

“Any joy?” Davies asked.

Calum smiled. “Possibly.”

Four

HE HEARD A knock at the low front door. The afternoon was waning, the sun sliding slowly west into the restless sea. There was a slight rose tint to the watery sky; perhaps weather was coming. He’d been renting this holiday cottage at Treen Farm in the tiny hamlet of Boswednack a few miles south of Zennor for the last two weeks. The single-story slate-roofed stone building had once been a chicken coop but had been converted to a handsome one-bedroom flat with a sparkling new kitchenette and a furnished sitting room complete with a small cast-iron, coal-burning fire. Even in early summer, what with the chill wind off the Atlantic, the fire was often welcome. And the tariff was fair.

So was his landlady, Mary Trevean. She could not be much older than forty but was already a widow, she’d said over tea the day he first arrived. She always invited her guests for tea when they’d got settled. She liked there to be a personal touch.

He admired her as she served. She had mischievous green eyes and a head of wavy salon-blond hair: an immigrant from Ukraine, she said, original name Marina. She was just on the slender side of what might one day become voluptuous. She was not tall, but she held herself in a way that made her seem taller. She’d immigrated to the United Kingdom more than two decades earlier as a young concert pianist and met the man who became her husband, Bert Trevean, at a reception after a recital in the garden of Penlee House, the famous gallery and museum in the heart of Penzance. He was older but their connection had been immediate.

“We married and were together for almost twenty years when one morning Bert just dropped dead in the dairy barn during the milking: heart attack. We neither of us knew about his condition and his regular checkups with our National Health Service doctor had never indicated it even existed…not that it would ever have slowed down my Bert.”

She explained that Treen Farm had been in his family for generations and that when moneyed people from London began looking for holiday rentals in Cornwall Bert was quick to catch the trend. He’d converted three properties in all: a two-story stone hay barn away across the fields by the Atlantic cliffs, a Victorian-era miner’s cottage where Bert’s mother and father had lived in their later years and which she now rented to larger families, and the old chicken coop. Mary’s job then was to run the cottage letting business. The properties often were booked months in advance.

“You’re lucky I had a vacancy, actually, but I am glad to have you. Are you comfortable in the cottage?”

Like a dog, he tilted his head as if to understand. She went to the window and pointed up to the lane at the cottage. “Okay?”

“Si. Si!”

He was Italian and seemed to have little English. Perhaps embarrassed by that, he finished his tea, rose, and bowed. She walked him to the door and watched as he ascended the drive.

She and Bert had been well matched, she’d always thought, both of them hard workers. But they’d never been able to have children, an emptiness that never seemed to leave her. It was as if she’d missed a chapter in the book of her life. After her husband’s death she carried on. She sold their land and livestock to a neighboring farmer who had been a dear friend for years. But she retained the farmhouse and the outbuildings, and now lived off the rents from the holiday cottages and the substantial investment income from the property sale. She was comfortable and safe, if often lonely.

RESPONDING TO THE knock, he swung open the door. “Signora Trevean! Bella signora, mi fa piacere! Vieni, vieni!” He waved her into the cottage.

“I brought you some fresh eggs. I thought you might like them. Eggs. You understand?” She opened the small plastic container.

“Uova! Grazie, grazie! Lei vorrebbe qualcosa? Un bicchiere di vino rosso?”

She didn’t understand and blushed. She still held the container of six eggs in her hand. He scooped it away and gestured to a white wicker chair in the kitchen area.

“Per favore, accomodatevi. I make una frittata, yes? Uova, finocchio, cipolline, Pecornio romano…”

“Oh no, I could not possibly!”

He waved her off, poured red wine from an open bottle, and touched her glass with his.

“You give, I cook. Va bene cosi.”

Refusing argument, he turned and busied himself at the cooker. He heated a pan, turned on the oven, cracked and whisked the six eggs in a bowl with salt and freshly ground pepper, added chopped wild fennel and ramsons he’d discovered in the field beyond, diced a leftover cooked potato and finally sprinkled in grated Pecorino. He buttered the heated pan, poured in the egg mix, swirled it to coat the edges and slowly cooked the bottom.

“Goodness, you seem quite the chef!”

“Capocuoco? No, no, signora; love to eat!” His broad grin and expressive hands, spread wide, made her laugh.

She watched him work and enjoyed the wine. He was not tall, certainly less than six feet, with a bit of weight but not too much, and, she guessed, in his late forties. His beard, trimmed close to his face as if it were only a week or two old, had traces of silver and gave him a slightly rakish look. His hair, a glossy brown dark as molasses but also with streaks of gray, was long and swept back from a high forehead. She supposed it was a European thing, the long hair; Cornishmen kept theirs short. He wore slim, faded blue jeans and a dress shirt white as puffy clouds, the top buttons open revealing a bit of graying chest hair. His tan slip-on shoes looked soft, as if the leather had been oiled, and he wore no socks. There was no ring on his left hand and, given his looks, she wondered why. Maybe, like her, he’d had a loss as well.

She relaxed into the cushioned wicker chair and crossed her bare legs. It had been a warm afternoon but a chill was drifting in off the ocean. She wore a sleeveless, calf-length dress she’d made from cotton lawn mail-ordered from Liberty in London. The fabric had a white daisy and pink poppy pattern on a pale yellow ground. A butter-yellow knit woolen shawl lay across her bare shoulders and fell to her elbows.

“Why did you come to Cornwall?” she asked. “We’re at the end of the world down here, really.”

“For…” He slipped the pan into the oven and looked up from the cooker at the cottage’s beamed ceiling as if searching for the English word there. “For the nature, signora.”

“Plenty of that around,” she giggled. She was not used to drinking wine. “Miles of it we’ve got here and not much else! But please, call me Mary…”

“Ah, Maria! Like our Virgin!”

She laughed again, her hand over her mouth, her eyes dancing: “Too late for that, I’m afraid!”

They moved to the small round dining table that separated the kitchen from the sitting room and sat, mostly gesturing, their languages like stone hedges dividing them. He’d cubed some crusty bread and poured olive oil into a small bowl.

“Un antipasto,” he said, pointing to the bread and the oil. “Mangia!.”

She picked up a chunk of the bread but did not know what to do next. He noticed, took a piece, dipped it quickly in the greenish oil, and took a bite.

“You see?”

She followed suit and they nibbled as they sipped the wine. Sometimes she had to catch the oil as it slipped down her chin. She could not remember the last time she’d sat with a man, except perhaps with neighbors at the Tinners Arms just up the road. She was there most Saturday evenings now, nursing a pint of St. Austell’s Cornish Best and just enjoying their company. Everyone had been very kind to her after she’d lost Bert. They’d kept her above water until she finally was able to cope on her own, for which she was eternally grateful. But then they’d moved on, most of them, to their own routines and now she was left to her own devices. The cottage rentals kept her busy: booking in, washing linens, sweeping, cleaning kitchens and bathrooms. She’d considered bringing on some local girl to help but realized she’d be at a loss without the work. Better to be busy.

Perhaps fifteen minutes of halting chat passed when he rose and pulled the pan from the oven, a tea towel wrapped around its hot handle. He gave it a shake until the frittata loosened and then ran a large chef’s knife through the center and slipped the two sections onto plates. He halved a few cherry tomatoes as garnish, the knife cutting through as if the little red globes were made of butter.

“Ecco ci qua,” he said, setting hers before her with a bow and pointing. “Buon appetito!”

She’d never eaten such a thing before and, again, waited for her host to begin. He smiled, cracked bit of pepper from a pepper mill, cut a bite from his own plate, and gestured that she do the same.

“Attenzione, Maria!” he warned. “E caldo.”

“Cold?”

He laughed, a deep rumbling laugh, and blew on his fork to show: “Hot!”

She nodded, did the same, and took a bite. It was splendid and savory: crusty on the outside, soft on the inside, and redolent of the fresh herbs. He refilled her glass. She pointed to her plate, smiled, and waved her hands to show delight. He nodded.

Such a gentleman, she thought. Language is no barrier.

When they finished he rose and cleared the table. Outside, the dusk deepened. He lifted a green apple from a bowl, slicing and coring it expertly with the chef’s knife, handling the blade as deftly as if it were a small paring knife. Then he splayed the slices in an arc across a small plate, sprinkled them with a bit of light brown demerara sugar he normally used for coffee, and gestured that she begin. But first, he removed their glasses, rinsed them, took a bottle of Pinot Grigio from the fridge, uncorked it, and poured again.

“Vino bianco complimenta con frutta buonissima! Salute!”

At no time in her life had anyone ever catered to Mary Trevean, not even her Bert. He’d been steadfast and solid, but not especially attentive. Here, in this cottage which she had designed and decorated but in which she’d never lived, she felt completely at home: relaxed for the first time in so long she could not remember—not in the big empty house she called hers and which now seemed alien, but here, in this cozy new place. And she felt oddly embraced and warmed by her tenant’s graciousness. They ate the apple slices using only their fingers and she thought: He must be well bred.

She hugged the shawl closer and he noticed. There was a small coal fire glowing in the grate in the sitting room and he gestured to her to sit on the sofa opposite it. She settled in as he added more coal, drank more of the wine, and then thought: This is lovely but I should leave.

But she did not.

IT WAS THE sun streaming through the lace curtains that awakened her. She blinked and rolled over but the bed was empty. Her bed was always empty. It took her a moment, though, to realize that she was not in her own bed.

She sat up. “Geremio?” she called.

Silence.

Naked, arms wrapped around her and wishing she had a robe, she padded out to the kitchen where she found on the table a clean mug with a tea bag, a filled electric kettle, a currant scone beside a pot of butter, and a note: per la mia bella Signora…

The cottage was chilly. She switched on the kettle and hurried back to bed and huddled beneath the covers until she was warm again. Warm. She did not think she had ever been as warm as she had been the night before. He’d kept the coal fire stoked to warm them as the night deepened. They’d finished the Pinot Grigio.

Then he’d set her on fire as well.

Mary’s Bert had been a good and gentle lover, if less than imaginative. But last night: Oh, Lord. It began on the antique Persian rug by the fire and then moved into the bedroom. His tongue had a mind of its own and found all her sensitive places. He seemed to have no end of ways to make love to her, and no lack of staying power. He was passionate and rough, which was a bit of a shock, but her repeated orgasms were like nothing she’d ever known before. Now, in the morning light, she did not know whether to be happy or horrified.

She showered, the hot, needle-sharp spray tingling her skin and warming her limbs. She put on the clothes in which she arrived and made tea, wondering where he’d gone. Maybe he was embarrassed by what they’d done. Maybe he’d needed to walk to clear his head. She’d expected to feel rough from all the wine, but instead she felt uncommonly alive. At the same time, she also felt suddenly vulnerable. He’d opened her to a level of passion she’d never known lived just beneath her skin. It was frightening, but also thrilling. She felt bigger, more complete. It was like finding that she had a twin sister who was bolder than she’d ever been.

And she wanted more.

“DENIM TWILL, I’M afraid, common as spit,” Calum West reported Tuesday morning. He’d studied the tiny fibers he’d collected from the top of the stone hedge. He and Morgan Davies were in DCI Penwarren’s office at Bodmin, seated on blue swivel chairs at a small round table topped in birch veneer. The sunlight flooding in through the tall windows turned motes of dust in the air into dancing flecks of gold.

Penwarren shook his head. “Not your fault, Calum. Smart of you to inspect the stone hedge, though. Well done.”

“My job, sir: find the denim jeans and we could test for granite particles…”

“Unless the trousers have already been laundered,” Davies said. “I have to think there’d have been blood on them. There was blood everywhere.”

“Much as it pains me to admit it, I’m sure you’re right,” Calum said.

“Look Morgan, I know you think this dead animal is a waste of time and far out of your remit…” the DCI began.

“And you’d be wrong, boss. Not anymore.”

Penwarren’s eyebrows rose.

“That cow was executed. It was heartbreaking, infuriating, that scene. The question is why? If it wasn’t just random violence, what was it?”

“Vegetarians gone wild?” Calum suggested.

“Shut up, you idiot, I’m serious.”

“I know you are; but like you I’m at a loss. It’s my nature to be a clown when I’m stumped.”

“It’s not funny.”

“All right you two,” Penwarren interrupted. “We need more information. Morgan, what are you busy with right now?”

“Paperwork. The bane of my existence, unless you count West here…”

Penwarren ignored this. “Then I have a short break in mind for you. I want you to go down to Zennor for the night. I know that area from my years at Penzance CID. The Atlantic side near Trevega House is rugged, but there’s a fine pub tucked away in Zennor, the Tinners Arms. It has rooms in an adjoining cottage.

“Book in and hang about with the regulars listening for news about the cow killing. Everyone would have heard about it by now. Unless I miss my guess, it’ll be the only news down there in weeks. Dig into it.”

“Am I a tourist or a cop?”

“I don’t think you ever could be undercover, Morgan, even in camouflage, but do your best.”

West laughed. Davies punched his shoulder.

HE WATCHED FROM the trees across the narrow valley as the color rose into the pre-dawn sky and smiled.

A very clear message: there is danger here. You are in danger. You must leave…

Five

IT WAS RANDI who sensed it early that Wednesday morning. His growl was barely a worried grumble at first, but then it grew louder. It was not yet dawn. Lee swam up out of deep sleep and called to him but he was pawing at her bedroom door to get out. She climbed out of bed and knelt beside him, stroking the dog’s thick coat, but the animal would not be calmed.

She pulled on a pair of jeans beneath her t-shirt.

“What is it, you crazy dog?”

She opened her door and Randi rocketed downstairs. She followed, still only half awake. In the kitchen, he flung himself repeatedly against the back door. It wasn’t until she opened it that she understood.

Across the narrow valley, the gardener’s cottage they’d been working on was on fire. She could see flames: small now, like a campfire, through the gap in the unfinished front wall. She ran across the gravel terrace, the stones pricking the soles of her bare feet, and raced across the field after Randi. She called out to him, but the big husky ignored her, bounding high through the tall grass. Then she remembered: their calico farm cat, Twitchy, a brilliant mouser, had just had a litter in the loft of the unfinished cottage. Randi was going after them.

She wondered where the men were, and then remembered Andrew and Jamie were at a Cornwall Sustainable Building Trust conference in Plymouth, where Drew was speaking. She looked behind her as she ran to see if Nicola was following, but hers and Andrew’s bedroom was on the far side of the big house. She should have roused her but it was too late now. She was operating on instinct only, and racing to protect her dog.

Because the gardener’s house renovation was still underway, there was framing lumber stacked in the middle of the gutted ground floor. When she dashed through the open wall after Randi, calling his name, the flames were rising from this stockpile and now licked at the beams supporting the loft above. At the far end of the building, still untouched, there was a temporary construction stair made of pine—little more than a ladder—leading to the upper story where Andrew and Jamie had only just begun working. She found Randi picking his way down it with Twitchy—called that because she had a jerky tail—in his soft mouth. He released her at the door, barked to shoo her and then, before Lee could catch him, raced back up the stair. Lee followed, calling him until she was hoarse. The smoke collecting upstairs was so thick she could barely see and the heat trapped there rose in waves that seemed to ripple in the air. Her eyes stung as if they, too, were aflame. She found Randi pulling two kittens from a bed made of old canvas seed bags. She could smell the stink of Randi’s singeing coat. The heat kept rising. She was amazed at how loud the fire was. Between the crackle of the burning timber, the whoosh of the soaring flames, and the blinding acrid smoke, she suddenly lost her bearings; she had no idea where she was in the loft or how to escape. And yet she felt guided by some other force. One arm over a rafter for support, she swung forward, reached the remaining pair of kittens, grabbed them by their scruffs, stuffed them under her tee-shirt, and crawled across the loft floor to find the way back to the rickety stair. The floor was hot as a cooker top, burning her free hand and knees.

What she could not see below was that three of the ancient, bone-dry oak beams supporting the upper story already had flashed into flame like struck matches. As she crept across it, the floor suddenly gave way just ahead of her, leaving a gaping hole directly above the center of the fire. She pulled the kittens close to her chest.

Blind now, choking, she was feeling her way through the smoke and darkness when suddenly a strong hand grabbed her leg.

“This way, you crazy girl!”

It was Flora’s commanding voice, powered by her years behind the bar at Boscastle’s Cobweb Inn. She dragged Lee across the remaining edge of the burning floor and very nearly threw her down the loft’s stair, which was itself now smoldering

“Get out!” she yelled.

“Where’s Randi?” Lee cried from below. “I have the kittens!”

“Get out, damn you! Now!”

Then Flora saw the dog, the tips of his thick husky fur smoking, trying to climb back up the stair for the kittens which were no longer there. She stood on a rung, placed a foot on the dog’s broad head below her, and shoved. The husky dropped to the floor below, yelped, but seemed unharmed.

Hands burning, Flora reached the bottom of the ladder just as it flashed into flame and the ceiling above her collapsed, raining burning timbers upon her. A falling beam grazed her skull and knocked her nearly senseless. Her nightdress caught fire and she screamed.

Searching frantically around the burning room Lee saw a canvas tarp in a corner and flung it and herself atop Flora to choke out the flames. Then, with a sudden surge of strength she did not quite fathom, she dragged the big woman toward the open wall. Randi barked madly around them as they cleared the building and, in the light of the inferno, she saw Nicola racing across the field toward them.

She, too, was screaming.

LATER THAT MORNING, having been notified by Comms because of the coincidence of the fire and dead animal at the same location, Calum West stood outside the blackened shell of the gardener’s cottage. The stone walls were intact but the roof had collapsed. The fire had run out of fuel but the stench remained. A water pumper from the Penzance Fire Brigade sprayed the smoldering mess inside. Ronnie Walsh, chief fire investigator for Cornwall Fire and Rescue, stood beside him. Walsh was short and thick as a hydrant, with a ruddy, bloodshot face that looked like it had seen too much heat over the years. West reckoned it might also be whisky. Like him, Walsh saw a lot of tragedy and death, but maybe he coped with it differently.

“We’ve not mucked about in there, Calum,” Walsh said. “Not much we could do anyway; we let it burn out. Our lads were more concerned with the survivors. The older woman, she’s been transported to hospital in Truro for burn treatment. The girl got oxygen for smoke inhalation from our people but refused to see a doctor, demanding to go with the animals to the vet in St. Ives instead.”

“Doesn’t surprise me; I’ve met her: formidable young lady.” He looked again at the charred cottage. “So, suspicious?”

“Has to be, Calum. Look around: there are no likely sources of ignition here: no mains electricity, no gas line. The place has been disused for I don’t know how long, almost derelict. And I don’t believe in spontaneous combustion. Wood and stone is all we’ve got to work with.”

Walsh stared at the building for a moment and continued: “Let me tell you, that older woman was lucky to survive, trying to rescue the girl. Then the girl rescued the woman. Crazy. This one was so close to being fatal. So, it’s your case now, Calum. SOCO has primacy in suspicious fires like this one. But our lads are here to help: dig, dismantle, whatever. They know and trust you, as do I. They’ll do whatever you require.” He turned and looked behind him: “But what’s CID doing here?”

West followed his gaze. Penwarren and Morgan Davies had appeared outside the perimeter, behind the police tape. Andrew was there, too.

“Friend of the family, Penwarren is,” West answered.

“Okay. Sure. You calling in a fire scientist as well?”

“Already have: Ian McLellan, from Prometheus Ltd. They’re under contract. He’ll be here shortly.”

“Good man, Ian. Bit of a genius, he is, with fires like this.”

“You don’t mind then, Ronnie?”

Walsh smiled. “Calum, look: fire investigation’s only one of my jobs, yeah? But it’s Ian’s full-time patch. I’ll gladly defer to him. Funny little man, but brilliant.”

Nodding toward the group behind the police tape, Calum said, “I’d better go put them all in the picture.”

But across the field in the direction of the big house he saw McLellan approaching, a large kit bag in one hand.

Walsh followed Calum’s eyes: “Elvis has entered the building…”

McLellan strode right past the clutch of observers, ducked under the police tape, and met Calum near the cottage. He opened his satchel and pulled on a sterile white jumpsuit, Tyvek, just like the one Calum wore. McLellan was wiry as a monkey and nearly as antic, a restless whirl. He was nearly bald and his eyes were clenched in a permanent squint, as if they’d already been stung by smoke. He wore heavy, steel-toed boots and slapped a hard hat on his head.

“I read the report,” he barked at Calum. “Who’s been in there?”

“None but the survivors, Ian, and the boys who hosed down what was left smoldering,” Walsh said. “I made sure of it.”

“Good. Let me have a look. Then I’ll call in the burly fire laddies to excavate. You okay with that?” he said to West.

“You’re the boss, Ian. Meanwhile, my SOCO people will search the grounds.”

McLellan nodded and walked around the outside of the building, looking for smoke patterns on the exterior walls and anything around it that might have caused ignition. But he found nothing. Then he plunged into the scorched interior, eager as a terrier after a rat. Bent nearly ninety degrees, his hands clasped behind his back, he peered and sniffed around the soaked ground floor but touched nothing, all the while cognizant of the partially collapsed loft and roof above. He’d seen worse. The debris would have to be removed, as it no doubt covered the remains of whatever caused the fire. He prowled the interior like a rescue dog, walking in ever-narrowing circles from the areas of least damage to the areas with the most. He examined burn patterns on the stone floor of the cottage, moving from the edges to the center. Peripheral burn patterns were often able to lead to the central cause and tell a story, but in this case there was no obvious pattern. Near the center of the cottage the rubble was deep and sopping wet. Sometimes he wished people would just let a fire burn to make his job easier.

Here, at the center, he looked for a pattern on the stone floor. In the case of an arsonist starting a fire with a splash of petrol, McLellan knew to expect a V-shaped vector on the floor as the fire grew outward. But he didn’t find one. Instead, there appeared to be at least three points of ignition. Fire beginning at three separate locations could never be judged accidental.

After more than an hour, with the help of the Cornwall Fire and Rescue lads, McLellan had picked apart the central fire that had set the cottage ablaze and scoured the rest of what was left of the building. There was no question in his mind that it was arson. The start was too central, the heat too contained and too clearly ignited by some kind of incendiary device. But there was no obvious propellant, no tossed aside petrol can. Yet it had been a very hot fire.

When he finally stepped out of the building’s shell, West was waiting for him. In a latex-gloved hand Calum held out a small piece of thin, torn cardboard packaging barely three inches wide and two long. Its surface was printed in glossy black. Upon it were a few letters: a large ZI in yellow and, below this, the smaller letters, Od, in white.

Tired, filthy, and exasperated, McLellan snapped, “What? What!”

West smiled. “Something you might recognize, Ian. I use the same product at home almost every evening in the winter. Maybe you do, too. You’re the fire genius, Ronnie Walsh says. You tell me what it is…”

“Look, West, I don’t have time for show-and-tell games. I’m trying to get to the bottom of…”

McLellan stopped. You could almost see the light come on. He grabbed for the fragment, but West pulled it away: “Fingerprints, Ian!”

“You bastard!” McLellan shouted, smiling now. “That’s it! That’s why I didn’t smell anything in there: This is a bit of the top of a box of ZIP Odourless Firelighters for stoves. Of course! With that pile of building lumber just a few of them scattered about would have been all it took, and then they’d be undetectable.”

“And so?”

“Arson. Without question. I’d already determined that but this clinches it. I’m done here. I’ll send my report.”

“And your bill, no doubt, even though I solved it…” West said.

McLellan stepped out of his coveralls, stuffed them into his kit bag, doffed his hard hat, and smiled: “Always a pleasure, West.”

Six

AFTER MCLELLAN LEFT, Calum walked across the valley and knocked on the kitchen door at the rear of Trevega House. To his surprise, Lee opened it. She was back from the vet’s.

“Well?” she demanded.

West heard laughter behind her.

Andrew came to the door. “Lee, for goodness sakes, let the man in; he must be knackered. Tea, Detective West?”

“A pint of something strong?”

More laughter. Andrew gestured and West came through to the big kitchen.

“You’re on duty, Calum,” DCI Penwarren warned, smiling. Morgan Davies sat beside him at an old oak kitchen work table so long that it had three legs along both sides, each thick as a mare’s shank. The top, worn by what seemed like centuries of use, was at least two inches thick. There was a chipped sky-blue jug in the center filled with late spring wildflowers: blue harebell, oxeye daisy, magenta foxglove, and white cow parsley.

“Lee, sweetie,” Nicola said, “Can you offer Mr. West a chair?”

The girl complied, though grudgingly. She was desperate for an answer to her question. The harder she thought about it the less the fire made sense at all.

“God, but I hate smoke,” West said as he sat. “Sticks to your lungs.”

“You got that right,” Lee said. She was still standing next to him, like a guard.

He looked at his mobile phone and saw it was nearly two. He was famished.

“Any chance of some biscuits with that tea, ma’am?” he asked Nicola.

She laughed and pulled a sliced beef sandwich and a bowl of salad from a stainless-steel fridge big enough for a restaurant and placed them before him. A mug of milky tea followed. The others had already eaten.

As he ate he looked around the kitchen. Somehow, despite its size—acreage was the word that came to mind—it was remarkably cozy. The lighting was soft and sun fell through the window above a deep, stained, white porcelain double sink that looked like it had been there for a century, maybe more. There was a hulking great four-oven Aga cooker, easily a meter and a half wide against one wall, its shiny face and doors enameled in the warm ivory of Devon clotted cream. New, he reckoned. The cupboards were faced with raised pine panels that had been rubbed and waxed golden over the years. The counters were topped with thick slabs of white marble streaked with grey, as in a butcher’s shop, but stained here and there from use.

The spare furnishings—the long oak table, the ladder-backed chairs around it with their thin, mismatched embroidered seat cushions—wore their age with nobility. The flagstone floor, the slabs worn smooth by time and rounded at the edges, was scattered here and there with somewhat threadbare Persian rugs of various dimensions. And then there were the two inglenook fireplaces at each end of the room, the maws of which were so wide and their interiors so deep they could almost have been rooms of their own. They were cold now  but he could imagine the cooking fires burning there back in the nineteenth century when the house would have been abuzz with staff. In front of the one that looked most recently used there were three well-loved easy chairs upholstered in fading flowered chintz. A coal grate sat in the center of that hearth, looking like it rested in the mouth of a whale. A small, multi-colored oval braided rug lay before it. Randi was curled up there now, his thick coat clean but clearly singed. He lifted his head once, took in the new arrival, and promptly went back to sleep. West didn’t know what the formal rooms upstairs looked like, but he reckoned he could live in this kitchen forever.

He pulled himself back to the present: “How is the lady, Ms. Penwellan? Has anyone heard yet?”

“I’ve just checked,” Andrew answered. “She has relatively few second-degree burns, mostly first. She was pulled out just in time. The doctors at the hospital are treating her for pain but have every confidence that her skin will heal. No need for grafts. She should be released very soon. Jamie’s with her. I left him at Truro with the car and took the train back down here.”

“Jamie?”

“Her partner,” Nicola said. “Jamie Boden.”

“Wait, Boden the stone mason? Good Lord, he’s legendary all across this county!”

“He and Flora live here, now, on the estate,” Andrew explained. “We’re sort of business partners, restoring this estate and doing contract stonework.”

“Drew’s an architect!” Lee piped up. She was warming to West. “But he’s learning new stuff from Jamie. Drew says I could be an architect, too. Good space sense, is what he says.”

Andrew smiled. “Spatial sense.”

Lee pulled up a chair beside West and scrunched up her freckled nose. “So, what’s the verdict?”

“Sorry?”

“The fire! How’d it happen? You’ve been in there. You should know by now!”

“Lee…” Nicola cautioned from the other side of the table.

Andrew interrupted: “If you are even at liberty to say, Sergeant West.”

West looked at Penwarren, who nodded.

“I called in an expert fire scientist we often use,” Calum said to the girl. “He and the chief fire investigator with the Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service believe the fire was not accidental. It was set. In addition, my people found some evidence to support this theory, but of course we have only just begun investigating.”

Lee jumped from her chair. “I knew it! Drew and Jamie and me, we’d been working on that cottage. There was nothing there that could have caused a fire, just stone and wood!”

“Lee?” Andrew said.

“I knew it! I sensed it as soon as I got there, running after Randi. Something or someone had been there.”

Everyone seemed speechless.

Finally, West asked: “How old are you, Lee?”

“Eleven. Almost twelve. So what?”

Calum shook his head, delighting in the feisty girl. “You know what? I have two daughters, one about your age, the other a little younger. Kaitlin and Meagan, they’re called. You’d like them. But I reckon you’re way smarter than both my girls combined.”

Lee shrugged. She didn’t know where this was going.

“So, I have a proposal for you.”

Lee cocked her head to the right but said nothing, the picture of skepticism.

West looked around the room and saw no cautions.

He leaned close to her. “Can we make you a part of our investigative team? Would you like that? Working with me and Detective Inspector Morgan Davies? She’s quite famous, you know…”

Davies leaned back in her chair and shot Penwarren a look. His face showed an almost imperceptible smile.

The girl had barely survived a horrible flood and had lost both parents. Morgan admired her spirit and understood: Like Lee, Morgan had lost her entire family. In her case it was the 1966 Aberfan coal tip disaster in her native Welsh village. A collapsed mountain of coal waste wiped out an entire generation of children, including her brother, in an elementary school that was swept away. In the end, it also resulted in the loss of both her parents as well: her father by suicide, her mother by grief and insanity.

As a result Morgan had been listening to Lee at a level deeper, perhaps, than the others would ever understand. It was because of her intolerably random loss that Lee now questioned everything. She understood. They were both instinctive and impatient searchers for answers. It was why Morgan had entered the force: to find answers, to serve justice. But she knew there would be no answers for this girl, no comfort for her losses. She knew because, in the final analysis, there were none for her, either. There was only the carrying on, the searching. What Lee had, at least, was a new family that loved her. Morgan looked across the table as she considered Calum’s proposal and caught Nicola’s smile, which said: Yes, Lee needs this job.

Finally, Lee responded: “What’s my pay?”

West did not laugh. Nicola tried to speak but he held up his hand to stop her.

“What, Detective Lee, is your favorite thing in the whole wide world?”

“Besides Randi?”

“Yes, your favorite treat, perhaps…”

“Chunky Choc ices!”

“She’s addicted, poor girl,” Andrew volunteered.

“What if we made sure you had a proper supply of Chunky Chocs? Would you help us?”

Again, the girl considered. She was a thinker, not an impulsive.

“I suppose so,” she said finally.

West nodded and shook her hand.

“You’re hired.”

“Right then,” Davies said, taking charge. “Where do we start?”

The girl looked at her as if she were daft: “With the murdered animal, of course!”

“The cow?”

“Bullock. Cows give milk. Bullocks are beef. Don’t tell me you don’t think this is connected? The murdered beast? The fire? I’m sure of it. I wish Flora was here. We sense things, we two do. She could explain it better than me.”

“With respect, Lee…”

“Detective Lee.”

Morgan tried not to smile too broadly. “With respect, Detective Lee, we don’t yet have any evidence to connect these two incidents. You see, our job as detectives, yours and mine, is to collect evidence that might make that connection, if there is one, evidence that would lead to a criminal conviction before a judge. Right now, we have two random events, both suspicious, I’ll agree. But they could easily be unrelated. Do you understand?”

Lee narrowed her eyes. “You use your rules, I’ll use mine. Okay?”

Calum West stifled a chuckle. “Oh Lord, we’re creating another Morgan Davies…” he said.

“SO, WHAT DO you two think? A connection?”

Davies and West were back in the DCI’s office at the Bodmin hub Thursday morning, the day after the fire. Penwarren, whom everyone on the team privately called “Mister” out of respect, was as usual standing. Light thick and gray as fog filtered through the windows and a thin mist obscured his beloved view of the fields beyond.

“Statistical anomaly, nothing more,” Morgan answered: “Two unrelated data points.”

Penwarren looked at West, who shrugged. “Personally? I wouldn’t want to underestimate that girl, Lee.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake, Calum, don’t go all wet just because she reminds you of your daughters…” Morgan said.

“She doesn’t, Morgan. Not in the least. But you know who she does remind me of? Tegan. Tegan St. Claire, the girl your witch friend Tamsin Bran adopted two years ago after the Chynoweth case. You didn’t notice? Don’t tell me you don’t see the similarity: smart, but with something else? An inner sense? Or are you privately denying it?”

“That’s nuts.”

“Is it? Okay, so she’s not clairvoyant like Tegan. Not yet, anyway. But I believe Lee when she says she senses things the rest of us don’t. I looked it up. It’s called clairsentience.”

“May I interrupt?” Penwarren asked.

“No, wait!” Morgan held up her hand. “Are you telling me you believe in all this Cornish woo-woo stuff, Calum West?”

West smiled. “I don’t dis-believe, Morgan. And that’s how we differ. I try to keep an open mind, because what I believe or don’t doesn’t matter. And I think that kid’s idea that there’s a connection between the butchered bullock and the fire bears at least consideration.”

“You’re not in charge of this investigation, I am.”

“Indeed, you are. But if you don’t mind, I’ll just continue studying those two scenes. For example, there’s a fragment of a batch number pressed into that bit of lighter cube packaging my people found. I reckon the manufacturer might know where that batch might have been shipped: Liverpool? Aberdeen? Cardiff? Or was it Cornwall? And, if so, to which merchants? Are they local? Like to look into them? Happy to pass them on.”

“If you two are done,” Penwarren said enjoying this altercation, “I should like to suggest that Calum’s still within his appropriate remit when it comes to that packaging material. His people found it during their site search. That’s scene. He’ll enter it into evidence, file the information in the HOLMES II database, and then it will be yours to investigate, Morgan.

“HOLMES II! Who was the clown who cobbled together that name: Home Office Large Major Evidence System? Was that the best they could do? Are we in some kind of Conan Doyle story in The Strand magazine back in Victoria’s reign?”

“Morgan, the database, whatever its name, is efficient. We now have a system for cross-checking all the evidence collected in a given case. Are you complaining?”

Davies shook her head as if shaking off noise. “No. It works, okay? But the name is still ridiculous.”

“Agreed. May we move on now? I’ll speak to Sir Michael shortly about these goings on.”

“Ah yes, the mysterious Sir Michael. Where the hell is he? People are almost killed in a fire on his property and he doesn’t show up?”

Penwarren closed his eyes for a moment and rubbed his temples: “Do you perhaps read a newspaper now and then, Inspector?”

“I try not to. Reporters are idiots and the news is depressing. I’ve got plenty of bad news in my own job every day, thank you very much…”

Penwarren ignored her. “If you had done, perhaps you might have learned there were four simultaneous terrorist bombings in the London Underground last week: fifty-two people were killed and more than seven hundred others were injured.”

“Yeah, I’ve read the official reports. Barbaric.”

“British-born Islamist suicide bombers, they were. Guess who’s tracking the sources of their financial support as a consultant to MI5?”

Morgan’s broad shoulders sagged.

“So, let’s be clear: nobody’s died here in Cornwall. But scores did in London. You think Sir Michael doesn’t care about his own family, his own estate? Of course, he does and he’s been in touch. But he is also a man of honor and duty. There’s a reason for that ‘Sir’. He’s had to focus on the bigger threat. No matter how hard it is for him, our local problems do not compare. He’s got a job to do. Am I understood?”

He waited for a response and got silence.

“And we do, too,” he continued. “Right now, we have nothing with which to frame a case. We have two possibly unrelated but no less serious incidents. I hope it goes no further, but we may be waiting for a third. When and if one occurs, we’ll set up an incident room, probably at the Camborne nick; St. Ives is too small. For now, we wait. Understood?

“Meanwhile, Morgan, you have a mini-holiday at the Zennor Arms tonight.  Dinner and room already arranged. Talk to locals about Trevega House and the incidents there. You’ll have time this afternoon to go home and pack an overnight case.”

Penwarren turned to face the windows. It was not a matter for discussion. The meeting was over.

Davies had never seen Mister so upset. She thought she understood: Penwarren felt powerless to look after the family of his old friend. Powerlessness was not a condition to which the DCI was accustomed.

Nor was it hers.

Seven

THE WANING LIGHT was filtered as if through gauze early Thursday evening when Morgan ducked beneath the thick stone lintel over the front door of the Tinners Arms high above the Atlantic cliffs in the tiny village of Zennor. The low-slung inn was built of massive blocks of granite, the ancient stones blotched with orange and cream colored lichen like age spots. The pub, she’d learned from her police laptop, was founded in 1271 to serve the masons re-building St. Senara’s Church, itself originally established in the sixth century. The church sat on a low rise just across the lane from the pub. The name Zennor was, in fact, a corruption of Senara.

She was surprised at the pub’s narrow, nearly windowless interior, only perhaps twenty-five feet long and half that wide. Gaping fireplaces built of stone slabs that seemed made of prehistoric megaliths anchored each end. Though nearly summer, there was a small wood fire glowing in the hearth closest to the bar. A Jack Russell terrier basked in its warmth on the flagstone floor.

The low ceiling was made of wide wood planks supported by beams blackened with smoke and age. There was ample seating in the outdoor garden terrace overlooking the ocean, but no one lingered there now that the day had cooled. The interior was furnished simply with high-backed wood settles, long and narrow sawhorse tables and, here and there, round tables and chairs with handmade seat cushions. Though it was early, several of the seats were occupied by patrons who went silent the moment the stranger entered.

“Ms. Davies, unless I miss my guess,” the stocky middle-aged chap behind the bar said. His hair was short, iron gray, and stiff as a bristle brush.

“You a mind-reader, then?”

“Rather few of our customers arrive with an overnight case, ma’am. I’m David Moss, landlord here. Shall I have someone take it to your room?”

She smiled. “Thank you, David, but I’m perfectly capable.” She parked her bag, perched on a backless wooden stool at the bar, and looked at the wide array of ales on offer, for the Tinners was clearly a Free House. “It’s been a long drive; so many people on the road this time of year. I’m parched. How about a pint of Doom Bar?”

“Dimpled mug or jar, ma’am?”

“Jar, and if you ‘ma’am’ me again I’ll slap you silly.”

He caught her grin and passed her a small bowl of salted nuts.

“Morgan’s fine,” she said, digging in.

He looked the woman over. “She certainly is,” he said. She was displaying her best assets in a scoop neck black merino jumper.

“Go on now, you rascal, and let’s have that pint.”

“Will you be having dinner…Morgan?”

“Yes certainly, but I need to slow down a bit first.” She nodded in the direction of the folks at the tables. “Natives friendly?”

“Absolutely, but as they’re Cornish, they can be a bit shy.”

She took her pint to the long table closest to the fire. “May I join you here?” she asked. There were two men in farmers’ dark blue coveralls on either side of a petite, bird-like woman she figured to be the wife of one of them.

“Bit of a chill out there this evening. I hope you don’t mind my sharing the fire.”

The men shook their heads and made muttering noises. The woman, her long, mouse-brown graying hair pulled back into a severe ponytail, stood and waved her in.

“Of course, of course, girl!” she piped. She was not much taller standing than sitting. “Always grand to have a newcomer. You staying long then?” she said as she sat again.

“Sadly not, just the night,” Morgan answered after taking a long pull from her pint. “I wanted some time off and to see the old church and, of course, the famous mermaid chair.”

“Know about that, then, do you? Mermaid’s said to have lured the church warden’s son to live with her in the sea. Long ago, that was…”

“You reckon she did?”

The woman grinned. “No, but I reckon the story’s good for the church’s donation box. But you really must see the ancient mermaid carving on the end of that little pew. Lovely it is, and centuries old.”

Morgan leaned down and stroked the nearly catatonic Jack Russell’s warm wiry coat. The dog sighed but did not move. “I don’t imagine there’s much news down here but for that mermaid chair,” she said as if to the dog. “But I read—I think it was in The Cornishman—that there was a mysterious fire in a farm building just north of here. Am I remembering that correctly?”

The man sitting opposite her lifted his flat cap. “You are. Name’s Eldridge. Eldridge Biggins.” His face was weathered but handsome nonetheless. She guessed him to be about fifty. “I farm just down the road at Boswednack. This here’s my sainted wife, Alice.”

The woman nudged his shoulder and smiled.

“Morgan’s my name. I know, strange name for a woman, but I’m Welsh. They have odd notions about names up there.”

“You’re welcome here, you are Morgan,” Alice said, interrupting her husband. “But that fire up the road? Let me tell you: it’s a mystery to us all. Arson is what we’ve heard. But those folks at Trevega? They be honest and hard-working. Fixing up the old estate, is what we hear they’re doing. Adopted an orphan girl as well. We know her here; she’s out in the countryside walking a lot and stops in here with her dog to fill her water bottle. Lovely child and wicked smart in the bargain. Why’s anyone want to go and give those people trouble? Makes no sense to us around here, no sense at all.”

Her husband nodded but added nothing.

“And then there’s that butchered bullock,” the younger man volunteered.

“Bullock?”

“Yeah, a week back, maybe more,” he said. “Throat slit is what we heard, right in the middle of a field and left to die. Most of us we graze livestock hereabouts, the soil’s too thin for plows, but our butchering is humane, done at an approved facility. Not in a field. Someone sick in the head is what we all think.”

Morgan looked at their nearly empty glasses and went to the bar. “My round, David, please.”

Her tablemates smiled when she returned. “Mighty kind, Ms. Morgan,” Alice said.

“And also my pleasure. Now let me ask, if you don’t mind: if no one hereabouts, none of the neighbors was involved as you say, why do you think these strange events happened at all? They surely do seem malicious; at least that’s how that fire sounded in the newspaper.”

Eldridge looked at her hard. “You a reporter, then?”

Morgan laughed and waved a dismissive hand: “No, no, couldn’t write if my life depended on it; I’m just the curious sort. It’s a terrible habit and gets me in no end of trouble sometimes. But I do like a puzzle. You reckon it’s maybe someone with a long-standing grudge? Or maybe the fact that they adopted that girl you mentioned? Sure seems a head-scratcher to me.”

“To us, too,” Alice piped, as if Morgan had pried open the lid of her thoughts. “Just plain wrong. And no one here is that bloody-minded, either. We all know each other, you see. Practically in each other’s pockets we are, year after year. Families go way back.”

“That include the family at Trevega?”

“Oh yes. They go way back, too, the Rhys-Jones’s do. Made their fortune in the tin and copper mining in the eighteen hundreds. Bought their land off of my Eldridge’s great, great grandfather, they did. Been here ever since. Good farmers and good neighbors. That Sir Michael—he’s the oldest now—he’s a lovely man and can be counted on to make a donation for the church fete and any other thing that needs supporting around here. A fine gent…”

Morgan sipped from her pint, looked at the fire, and let the quiet gather for a moment.

“So do you reckon a stranger’s caused this mischief, then? Someone who’s stopped in here on occasion in the past few weeks, perhaps, that you didn’t know?”

“Lots of strangers come through here in summer,” Eldridge said. “Like you.”

“Eldridge!” Alice said, elbowing him.

He ducked his head: “Meant no offense.”

“None taken,” Morgan said, smiling.

“You’ll need to ask David,” Alice said, nodding toward the bar. “We’re not here at lunchtime, when it’s most busy. Loads of visitors then—coast path walkers, folks visiting the ancient sites up on the moors, church lovers here to see St. Senara’s or come for the Sunday morning change-ringing. There’s six old bells in the tower and Billie here,” she nodded to the younger man, “he pulls the tenor bell, he does. Genius, he is, at it. The change ringing goes on for, what Billie, twenty minutes or more? Lovely it is.”

Silent Billie blushed.

“You should come back in the autumn,” Alice said. “Quiet here then. Just the neighbors and the occasional walker, right Eldridge?”

Her husband nodded.

“Thank you, my friend,” Morgan said patting Alice’s spidery hand. “And I might just take you up on it. But now I think I’d better order something for dinner. Any recommendations?”

“The duck breast is brilliant,” Alice said. “Local, it is.” She winked and then she and Eldridge finished their pints and rose.

“Lovely meeting you, Ms. Morgan,” Alice said. Eldridge tipped his cap again. Billie hesitated. “Come on now, Billie, don’t be getting any ideas with this lady,” Alice teased. Billie nodded a shy goodbye and followed them out.

She went up to the bar to order.

“Heard a bit of what you all were talking about and I agree with my neighbors: a mystery this is. What’ll you have?”

“I’m told to try the duck breast.”

David grinned. “They’re good advertisers, those three. They’re Billie’s ducks, as it happens, and the finest. Bit of a loner, Billie is, but knows his ducks. We cook the duck breast fast and rare with a light mushroom Marsala sauce. Garlic mashed potatoes and new peas with fresh tarragon.”

“How can I resist?” Morgan said. “Mind if I sit with you here at the bar?”

“I’d be honored. Reckon among other things you’re mighty decorative. Might encourage the customers to stay…” She noted he had no ring on his left hand.

“You’re an impossible flirt, David, but I do have a question…”

“Thought you might, but let me take your order to the kitchen. Be right back.”

She sipped her pint and looked around. She’d seldom been in a cozier or more naturally welcoming pub. It was partly just sheer antiquity; the place almost sagged with the weight of its nearly nine centuries of history. There were no blaring sports video screens, no noisy slot machines with their whirring fruit pictures. It was a smaller version, she suddenly realized, of the Blisland Inn, her new local up in Bodmin: genuine, unpretentious, a kind of community living room for the neighbors. And it was slowly filling.

“Now then,” David said when he returned. “Another pint?”

“Yes, and thank you.”

He served a queue of newcomers, chatting them up, and returned: “You said you had a question,” he said as he brought her a fresh pint.

Morgan slipped her warrant card across the bar. He bent to look at it and cleared his throat.

“I need to have your confidence.”

The landlord nodded once, looking around. “Reckon you’ve got it, Inspector.”

“It’s still ‘Morgan,’ David.  Now then, this Trevega House,” she said, her voice low: “We’re looking into these strange incidents. No one here seems to be able to fathom them.”

“That’s right. We all talk about it when the tourists aren’t about, usually early evening, when folks like Eldridge and Alice and Billie come up for a pint and a bit of a chin wag before the dinner crowd arrives.”

“That Eldridge: not very talkative. Nor Billie.”

“There’s a reason Billie’s still a bachelor, I reckon. Too shy to make conversation, mostly. Maybe something else, too, but I’ve never questioned it. Keeps himself to himself but raises lovely fat ducks on a rocky bit of upland not fit for grazing. But Eldridge, he’s always been a man of few words. Reckon Alice does his talking for him. Private, Eldridge is. Spends his free time walking the moors, not that he has much what with all those cows. Hard job that is, dairying, especially after he bought up Bert Trevean’s land and cows at Boswednack after Bert dropped dead. Bit off more than he could chew, is what we hear, struggles with the debt now. But he’s that sort of farmer always wants more land. Then again, maybe he’s trying to change history…”

“Change history?”

“His ancestors owned the land that’s now the Trevega estate. Forced to sell out to the Rhys-Jones’s in the nineteenth century.”

“So Alice said.”

“Long ago and far away, that was: the Rhys- Jones’s had the money, the Biggins’s needed it. Or so it’s said. Reckon he still resents it and is still trying to make up for the loss.”

“In my line of work, we learn families have long memories.”

“True enough, especially down here…”

“But let’s get back to what’s been happening at Trevega House; I gather none of it makes sense to folks hereabouts?”

“Correct.”

David paused to pull two more pints for arriving customers.

“What about strangers?” Morgan asked when he was free.

“Lots of them this time of year, you see. Look around. And thank goodness, too; the summer trade keeps us going the rest of the year. Mighty quiet in winter, we are here: filthy weather…storms, gales. The locals, though they’re few, are loyal and keep coming, bless them, but if it wasn’t for the summer trade, we’d go under.”

“Anyone new lately maybe but not just a day tripper? Anyone unusual hanging about? Someone who sticks out?”

David thought and finally shook his head. “Honestly, no. So many people come through here, you see, and not just Brits, either. We get people from all over: Italians, Americans, and especially Germans. German telly filmed stories by a writer lady name of Rosamunde Pilcher that were set here in Cornwall. She was born just down the road at Lelant. Lives in Scotland now, I hear. The shows were popular in Germany, so we get a lot of Germans.

“But I’ll also ask Clare. She’s behind the bar at lunch and afterward. I’m only here in the evening, see. During the day, I’m usually upstairs ordering and doing the accounts. Maybe she’s noticed something or someone, though she’s said naught to me.”

“If something occurs to you or her, something that stands out or seems the slightest bit odd, you’ll let me know?” Her palm crossed the bar. Her card was beneath it.

He pocketed the card. “Bloody right I will, Morgan. We’re fond of those folks at Trevega, and that funny young girl.”

“Lee?”

“The same. Something special about her, you know? Older than she should be, if you take my meaning…wiser somehow.”

“So I hear.”

He leaned forward: “And by the way, your room’s on the house. An honor to help you with this…”

“Can I still claim it on my expense account?” Morgan said, grinning.

“I thought you were with the law…”

THE TINNERS’ BEDROOMS were in the “White House,” an adjoining early nineteenth century whitewashed cottage. Her small but luxuriously-appointed ensuite room, also white, with fancy white bed linens and thick white Turkish towels, faced the church across the lane. The room should have felt arctic, all this white, but instead she found it calming. Vases with late spring flowers added color. She’d turned off the lamps and now watched the moonlight silvering the church tower from an old rocking chair, also white, by the dormer window.

Calm, however, was not how she felt. She wished she’d brought a nightcap up from the pub. Something to slow her brain. The paid mini-vacation was fine but it was hard to take pleasure from it. It wasn’t a break anyway, just a nicely furnished investigation venue. She often felt like the proverbial shark that had to keep swimming just to stay alive. And she was getting nowhere.  She could see her faint reflection in the window pane. The reflection scowled.

Butchered cow. Suspicious fire. Random. Totally random.  Otherwise intelligent people claim that “everything happens for a reason.” It drove her round the twist: Calum’s wife’s death and his two motherless daughters; did that happen for a reason? Her own family destroyed in the Aberfan coal tip disaster? Did that happen “for a reason,” other than the incompetence and malfeasance of the Coal Board?

She thought back over her chat with the locals: No explanation for the dangerous events at Trevega. Nothing. Hell, the entire population of Zennor parish was fewer than two hundred souls and, as Alice said, everyone knew everyone else. No grudges. No motives. No suspects. None she’d uncovered, that was certain.

She rose and turned toward the bed.

Bloody waste of time…

Eight

MARY TREVEAN WATCHED from her kitchen window late Thursday afternoon until she saw him climb over the stile from the Coffin Way and turn down her gravel farm track. He walked every day, sometimes all day it seemed. She wondered where he went, and why. He had binoculars around his neck and a small backpack. Maybe he was a birdwatcher. His strides were long and so fluid it was like watching water flowing. It was nearly six and the western light was growing golden, honeying the tops of the stone hedges edging both sides of her lane. His shadow stretched far behind him until he turned into the cottage gate.

She continued looking up the empty lane, trying to make up her mind. She’d baked a chicken pie, rich and thick with potato, carrots, peas, parsnips, onion and herbs, a dash of Worcestershire sauce and topped with a short pastry crust into which she’d kneaded fresh rosemary. Now it rested on the counter in an earthenware baking dish, still steaming. It was meant for the two of them. She waited a while, then took a deep breath and, wearing a short black skirt and white cotton blouse slightly ruffled at the neck, picked her way up the lane in low black kitten heel sandals she usually reserved for funerals.

She knocked but there was no answer. She stood at the threshold a few moments more, but then lost her nerve. She left the pie on the doorstep and retreated. She’d only gone a few yards when she heard: “Maria! Aspetta! Sono qui!”

She turned and he was standing bare-chested in the cottage doorway with a white towel around his waist. Of course: he’d been showering after his walk. Out of eagerness, she’d come too soon. She felt foolish and stupid.

He beckoned her with his free arm; the other clutching the towel. “Non ti preoccupare! Sta bene! Vieni sta bene!”

She retraced her steps. He took her hand, pulled her toward him, kissed her forehead, then pointed to the container on the step: “ E questo? Che cos’e?”

She looked at the writing on a piece of paper in her hand. She’d researched it on her home computer: “Una cena intima?”

She picked up the casserole and he bowed: “Per piacere, vieni indictor cara.”

While he dressed, she sliced open the chicken pie with his big chef’s knife and scooped portions out into two bowls, the crust resting on top. She suddenly wished she knew something about presentation. She should have had a parsley garnish or something, at least, to dress up the meal. Bert had never cared; food was only fuel for him. But before she could let that worry fester, Geremio returned wearing, this time, clean blue jeans and a close-fitting black tee-shirt. She thought he looked rather dashing, despite a softening belly and graying hair.

He reached around her waist and pulled her hard against him: “Grazie, cara mio.” Then he turned to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of white wine. The bottle was shaped like a woman’s figure. A Verdicchio, he said.

After dinner, and after they made love again, he walked her home. The moon was full and the farm lane looked coated in mercury. Their own faces, bleached by the moonlight, were as pale as ghosts’. She wanted to pull him in through her own door, but he bowed instead, kissed her hand, said, “Buonanotte, amore,” and then was gone. She watched him stride back up the lane and wondered how he could be so passionate one moment and yet so distant the next. Again, their lovemaking had been almost brutal but, for her, also transporting. She hoped it had been for him too, but could not tell. He was a mystery to her, but a mystery she longed to unravel.

JAMIE BROUGHT FLORA home the next day. He hadn’t told anyone beforehand; Flora didn’t want a fuss made. Nicola was teaching a painting class at the light-infused waterside studio Sir Michael had given her some years earlier in the old port of St. Ives. Andrew was miles to the south in St. Just doing an estimate for a landowner who wanted a high stone hedge built to protect his wife’s perennial border garden from the Atlantic storms.

But when Jamie helped Flora from his car Lee was there waiting for them. She’d been sitting on the granite doorstep of their cottage with Randi for nearly half an hour. Now the big Siberian husky danced around the car, barking, his whole body an expression of joy. Jamie grabbed and hugged him. Randi licked his face.

Lee ran up to the older woman, her arms wide, but then stopped. “Wait,” she said. “You hurt. I feel that.”

“How do you know?”

Lee shrugged: “I just do. And I knew you were coming home. Me and Randi, we waited.”

Flora took the girl’s face in her bandaged hands and kissed her forehead. “Thank you, darling girl. Thank you for dragging me out of the fire. I don’t know how you found the strength. I only learned later what you did. You were so brave.”

She stood back: “But I still want to thrash you for risking your young life for an old lady like me, you idiot child.”

Lee grinned. “But you won’t.”

Flora put an arm around Lee’s shoulder and gave her a light hug. It was all her skin could tolerate. “Let’s go inside, shall we? I need to rest.”

THAT FRIDAY EVENING, Arthur Penwarren settled into a leather-padded pale birch dining chair at the small, round, linen-draped table he’d reserved in the glassed-in conservatory section at the front of his friend’s now famous “Seafood Restaurant” in Padstow, the Atlantic harbor town at the mouth of the Camel River. Just over half an hour drive west of his office in Bodmin, Padstow was a world away from his work there and was now his home.

The renowned restaurant with the modest name sat at the edge of the harbor. There were sailboats skittering like white moths across the wide estuary. Penwarren owned a small flat at the top of a three story nineteenth century granite building that once had been the Harbormaster’s headquarters. It had just one bedroom, but it featured a high, cathedral-ceilinged sitting room and a tall, arched, multi-paned window big enough for a cathedral that looked directly across the harbor toward the village of Rock just downstream. Furnished simply with a few overstuffed chairs and a sofa all covered with tailored white denim slipcovers, one pale blue wall lined with his books, a small coal fireplace opposite, a sand-colored sisal rug on the floor, the room was his sanctuary, its soothing colors and tones meant to blend with the seascape outside.

“Artie!” a voice called from across the dining room. It was Rick Stein, his old mate from the Harrow School just outside London. Rick had never quite fitted in at Harrow, any more than Penwarren had. They’d both been bright but lower middle class “Bursary Boys” whose tuition fees were paid by the school. Accepted as intellectual equals they’d nonetheless always felt out of place with the upper-class nobs who were the majority: famous names, lots of attitude. But after graduating they’d each found their own way in the world and had discovered work at which they excelled. Rick had wandered down to Cornwall and had run a disco there for a while in the early Seventies before he discovered his love of cooking and the bounty of local fish. Now, his wildly successful restaurant, augmented over the years in the tightly-packed old fishing village by a café, a bistro, a fish market, an upscale fish and chips shop, a cookery school, a cookware store, and two small but posh hotels, had given the press to calling the waterside town “Padstein.” He even had his own gourmet chef show on telly.

This evening, Rick was his usual casual self. He wore baggy khaki trousers and an obviously un-ironed pink Oxford shirt with Ralph Lauren’s polo pony emblem on the chest. No chef’s whites, Penwarren noted; he must be doing front of house tonight.

“Good Lord, Rick, look at you,” Penwarren said, rising and embracing Stein’s shoulders. “The more success you have the less hair. You’re nearly bald!”

Stein laughed. “That’s just me pulling it out by the roots on bad days. And you with all that long silvering hair: you trying to make up for my loss? You look like an aging Beatle. How do you get away with it in the force?”

Penwarren smiled. “They’re tolerant. They know I won’t be there much longer.”

“Bollocks. They know you’re the best chief inspector they have, is why.”

Penwarren smiled and shook his head.

“How’s the back, then?” Stein asked as Penwarren eased into his chair.

“Stiff. Sore. No change. I’m okay. It’s just age and arthritis. Otherwise fit as a fiddle.”

Stein nodded. “My staff tell me you’re a regular here now. That’s lovely. Thank you. We appreciate it.”

“Your people cook just a little bit better than I do, Rick.”

“I should hope so!”

“Plus, it’s a bit of a break from real life, honestly. I can sit here by the windows, watch the river and the world go by, and not think.”

“Like you ever stop thinking…How’s work?”

“Got a troubling case.”

“Another murder?”

“Not unless you count a dead cow.”

“Somebody killed a cow and Cornwall’s best is on it?”

“Something else is going on. I just don’t know what yet.”

Stein nodded: “You’ll sort it; you always do. Let me get you a bottle of wine. I have an organic chardonnay I recently discovered from America: Badger Mountain, from the Columbia River Valley in Washington State. No added sulfites, either. Crisp, clean, with a taste of green apple and just a touch of vanilla at the finish. I think you’ll approve.”

“I’ll try it. What’s best tonight, Rick?”

“Ah, I love that question! Like there were some dishes not worth your custom?”

“I didn’t mean…”

Stein shook his head: “I know, don’t fuss. But if I were you, I’d go with the poached monkfish in a roasted red pepper cream sauce on a saffron rice base. A few new peas tossed in for color. Maybe a small side salad.”

“You’re the boss, Rick. And thank you.”

Stein paused and leaned down. “You look like hell, Artie, if I may say so. You have ever since your Rebecca walked out what, a year ago? I see you out and about here on weekends sometimes, wandering about the harbor like some lost soul.”

Penwarren looked away to the windows for a moment, then back. “Such a lovely and elegant lady, Rebecca. I didn’t deserve her, really. And she certainly deserved better than a cop. She wanted me to choose: her or the work. I couldn’t.”

Stein shook his head. “Why do you keep at it?”

“Same reason you do with your food empire, I expect: I believe in it. I have splendid people working for me. But that’s not really it: the truth is I keep at it because my victims need someone who never stops caring about them. That’s what I do: I close their story and bring them home. Or at least I try. I’m not always successful.”

“I read about that last case, the body found in the Channel? It was in The Cornishman.”

“I’d hoped for a more severe sentence in that case, but the best we could do was conspiracy to murder. Never found the accomplice.”

Stein put a hand on his old friend’s shoulder. “Dinner’s on me tonight, Artie, and it’s my pleasure.”

“You know I can’t accept that, Rick…”

“It’s my restaurant and you’ll do as I say. We need more people like you in the world, my friend. Monkfish it is…”

The wine came in minutes, the bottle thrust into an ice-filled stainless chiller beaded with condensation. His waitress, a plump and pony-tailed blond who could have modeled for the description “fine English rose,” poured him a taste. It was, as he expected, splendid: crisp, clean, perfect for fish.

He nodded. “Yes. Thank you.”

Her cheeks flushed even rosier: “Mr. Stein’s pleasure, sir.”

He remembered, wistfully, when young women did not call him “sir.” He did not know how, exactly, he’d arrived at this older and now solitary late chapter of middle age. It was like he’d stumbled into it, unawares, and upon looking around did not recognize the landscape. He wondered how you could feel lonely and disoriented in the very center of your own life. Then he smiled to himself: middle-aged? What, was he going to live to a hundred twenty?

He watched couples stroll by the windows and thought about his ex-wife. He’d met Rebecca soon after he’d been posted to Penzance as detective sergeant, the Criminal Investigation Division’s top job in the market town that anchored southwest Cornwall. Rebecca Campbell owned a trendy women’s shop called Mount’s Bay Trading on Causewayhead, the central pedestrian-only shopping street. She had a special talent for discovering young European designers who created unusual, often asymmetrical dresses and tops in unique fabrics that could add spark to the simplest of skirts or trousers, which she also sold, as if they were backdrops to the main event. She and Penwarren met during a reception at The Hypatia Trust in Chapel Street, an organization that championed the literary, artistic, and scientific achievements of women, especially Cornish women. The night they’d met the Trust had featured the luminous, serene, and softly layered work of Kathy Todd, a painter from the Isles of Scilly, the rocky archipelago south of Land’s End.

He’d had a glass of white wine in his hand and was scanning the shelves in the Trust’s spacious upstairs library, alone. He wasn’t the mingling type and had avoided the crush on the main floor.

“Writer or reader?” an impish, bell-like voice behind him asked.

He turned to face a petite, stylishly dressed brunette who, her high heels notwithstanding, rose barely to his chin.

“Um, cop…detective, actually. CID.”

“Here?”

“Yes.”

Birdlike, she tilted her head slightly and smiled. There were tiny creases at the outer corners of her gray-green eyes. Over fifty, he decided. And lovely.

Her face brightened. “Oh! You’re that Penwarren chap I keep hearing about!”

“Hearing about?”

“From the uniformed constables who stop into my shop from time to time to make sure all is well, which I do appreciate, I must say. I ask them what’s new and their stories tend to be about some case the CID is on. I guess just walking the beat doesn’t offer much excitement, so they talk about you.”

“Good Lord.”

“Admiringly, I might add.”

They’d married six months later in a private ceremony: her second marriage, his first. She’d had no children. They lived in her Victorian-era terrace house on Morab Road, opposite the library, walking distance to the police station and to her shop as well. Like her shop, the rooms in her home were artfully composed and decorated like a magazine feature: understated, tasteful, contemporary. Earth colors. Not a hint of chintz.

But his own life—long hours, constantly being called away in the middle of the night, little chance for time just for the two of them—finally had driven her away. He didn’t blame her. They were still friends but she’d found someone else in short order, an estate agent: very successful, and reliable in a way he’d never been able to be.

Later, and very briefly, he’d considered dating Morgan Davies, whom he admired and respected, despite her rebelliousness…or perhaps because of it. It would have been interesting to discover what lay behind that lovely but turtle-tough shell, but it would have been unprofessional…and, he suspected, far more turbulent than he could handle. He’d decided just to champion her rise in the force instead.

Nine

“KIND OF YOU and Nicola to make us supper last night.”

“Come on, Jamie,” Andrew said, “that’s not kindness, it’s a joy. We’re so glad she’s back and mending. And besides, you’re family. Wouldn’t you do the same for us?”

“Reckon we would, but the food wouldn’t have been as good. I’m not much of a cook. What do the police and fire people say?”

“Arson. No question. They found a bit of evidence, but nothing yet to connect with whoever started this.”

Andrew and his building partner were standing inside the charred shell of the gardener’s house on Saturday morning.

“So, what do you think, Jamie? Do we tear it down?”

Jamie shook his head and smiled.

“What?”

“Stone doesn’t burn.”

Andrew looked at the heat-scorched walls. “No kidding, but…”

“Look, if we had used mortar to bind the exterior walls, like most builders do, the fire’s heat would have corrupted that bond. You can tell: the mortar changes color, turning a dark pink. That’s the sign it’s lost its strength. It becomes crumbly. In that case, we’d have to tear down the whole structure. But we’ve been building those walls dry first, like they did long ago, using the stone’s own weight and strength to lock in the bond. Later, we’d have tied it all together with a vertical sandwich of mortar and thin concrete blocks on the interior surface, then solid-core insulation, and finally drywall. Thankfully, we never got that far.”

“What’s next, then?”

“Pressure-wash to take away the soot and stench, right down to the clean stone, flush it all out, then carry on as we have been. The washing’s messy but the walls will hold and we want this stink gone. Everything else? The interior framing? The roof? We start over. We’ll need to salvage the roofing slates, though, as many as are not broken. Worth a fortune they are now that the slate mines are nearly gone. We’ll look for reclaimed ones to match. I know a source.”

Andrew ran his fingers through his curly salt and pepper hair. “Thank goodness Sir Michael is insured.”

“Amen to that.”

“But still, Jamie, why would someone set fire to an empty building that was under construction?”

“Because they could, Andrew, because they could. Put your professor’s brain aside for a moment. It was here. It was easy. And, because whoever did it had no idea Lee and Randi or my Flora would have been involved, it was safe, like lighting a bonfire on Guy Fawkes Night.”

“So, you think it was some sort of prank?”

Jamie looked at the ruined interior. “Oh no, Andrew. Not at all.”

“ZIP LIGHTER CUBES are produced by Standard Brands, a big international conglomerate,” Detective Constable Terry Bates said on Monday morning. “Their lighter production facility is north of Dublin, just south of the border with Northern Ireland.”

“Convenient, that,” Morgan Davies mumbled from her desk opposite.

“Sorry?”

“Incendiary devices. The Troubles? The bombings? Oh, you’re too young for all that. Forget it. What do you have?”

Bates hadn’t a clue what Davies was on about. This was often the case. But she carried on: “That batch number fragment pressed into the cardboard—I wish we had more of it—tells us, according to the company, that it was shipped to southwest England somewhere. But that’s the best they can do without the rest of the numbers. There’s a small Co-Op supermarket in St. Just that carries Zip cubes, they say. But they’re available in almost every market in Cornwall and Devon as well.”

“So we have nothing.”

“Right.”

“Bugger…”

EVER THE HUSKY, Randi was leading far ahead as Lee rounded Porthglaze Cove just before noon on Monday. It was as if he needed to clear the way and make sure the path was safe for her. He’d run ahead, then run back, panting, to lead her. Today, she was on her way to explore the ruined and overgrown hut circle above Boswednack Cliff. When she’d first moved here, Drew had taken her to Chysauster, the preserved Iron Age settlement a few miles to the south, near Penzance. It amazed her: the walls of the round houses and the storage and livestock shelters were still there, weathered to only a few feet high, sure, but intact, thousands of years later. So now she’d decided she’d be the explorer who’d find new mysteries in this ruin closer to home.

She was watching the sun dance on the waves coiling into the cove below when, over the boil of the surf, she heard Randi scream.

He was still screaming and writhing when she found him, his right foreleg clamped and bleeding in a leg hold trap. There had been some kind of meat atop the trigger plate of the shallowly buried trap. She didn’t know much about traps but she sensed something about this whole situation was wrong. Back at the farm in Boscastle, her parents had used peanuts or peanut butter as bait to lure badgers into wire cages. Then they released them to the high moorland. That much, she knew. But leg holds? They were illegal, her father had said. And besides, right along the coast path?

Lee tried to pull open the jaws clamped against Randi’s foreleg but the spring was too strong and she could only get it open a fraction of an inch before it clamped shut again. Randi was frantic, thrashing. She kept her head, looked around, and began collecting stone fragments from the ground. She pried open the clamp as far as she could, wedged a shard of rock into the hinge, then repeated with ever-larger pieces until she finally was able to extract Randi’s bleeding leg.

Randi lay in the grass exhausted from the shock and the struggling, bleeding heavily. Trying not to panic, she tore a sleeve from her tee-shirt and tied it tight above the wound to stanch the flow. Then she squatted, wrapped her wiry arms around the dog’s deep torso, bent her legs, rose unsteadily, and set him atop her bony shoulders, clutching his good legs. Randi did not fight, but he weighed three stone, Lee barely eight. She did not know where the strength came from and there was no way she could ever carry the whimpering dog all the way home, but she hoped she could make it at least to the Tinners, less than a half mile away. She staggered along the Coffin Way through the daisy-dotted meadows, lifting the crippled dog over one stone hedge after another, resting a few minutes on the other side, shouldering him again, and starting over. She talked to him constantly. A walk that should have taken fifteen minutes took nearly an hour. Her legs were rubbery with fatigue. She pushed the pub’s door open with her head and collapsed to her knees on the stone floor. Randi rolled off her shoulders and screamed. Her clothes were covered with blood. Lunch patrons froze. Clare called David down from the office upstairs.

The watcher who had followed at a distance slipped down the farm lane beside the pub to the coast path and turned south.

“HE HAS DAMAGED tendons but no metacarpal fractures,” the doctor at the St. Ives Veterinary Surgery explained later that afternoon.

“What’s that mean?” Lee demanded. The girl was angry and afraid. She was still in her bloody clothes.

“Please, sweetie, try to calm down,” Nicola said, knowing her words would have little effect. Randi was the girl’s closest companion. There was no calming her.

The vet understood. “Here, come look at this x-ray. See these four bones just above his paw?”

“Yeah. So?”

“They’re called metacarpals. Look closely: do you see any dark lines cutting across any of those bones?”

She peered at the image. “No.”

“Correct. That means none are fractured. That’s the good news. But the jaws of that trap, well, they dug into a few of the tendons that connect his leg muscles to those four bones. Must have hurt like anything. None were severed, thank goodness, but they’re damaged a bit and certainly sore. They need to mend. The blood came mostly from his skin, which he tore up trying to escape. I’ve used a few stitches to sew him up safe and sound. I’ll remove them in time.”

“How much time?”

The vet smiled at her impatience. “He’s a strong, healthy boy and he’ll mend quickly. But your friend won’t be able to run around the countryside with you for a while. You’ll need to keep him safe at home. He’ll need to keep still for a week or more and then not run loose from your house for a bit. You’ll need to keep him on a lead. I’ll see him again in two weeks. I might be able to take the sutures out by then.”

“How will he pee and poop?”

The doctor chuckled: “He can come out on a lead for just a few minutes. He’ll know enough not to put weight on that foreleg. He’ll get by on only three.”

“You sure about this?”

“Do you want your dog back in tip-top shape?”

“That’s a silly question.”

“Correct. So, do what I’ve said and he’ll be right as rain in no time, okay? I promise.”

Lee looked at the vet as if judging his competence. Finally, she nodded. “Does he come home now?”

“Certainly. I’ve got a big carrier kennel for him. He’s ready to go. He’ll stay in the kennel for a while as he heals. I’ve given your mother antibiotic and anti-inflammatory pills, as well as painkillers should he need them.”

“She’s not my mother.”

“No?”

Nicola looked at Lee.

“Well, almost,” the frightened girl said.

Ten

THE INCIDENT ROOM for the routine Tuesday morning briefing at Bodmin was more crowded than usual, but it was mostly because of departmental sightseers: word was out that they had a visitor. Davies was there, along with Terry Bates. Some of Calum West’s SOCO people were, too, as well as Bodmin’s manager of the HOLMES II crime data management system.

Detective Chief Superintendent Malcolm Crawley, balding and paunchy, tricked out as usual in his crisp black officer’s uniform with the four glittering white bars of rank on each shoulder, starched white shirt and black tie, had come down from headquarters in Exeter, as if from the mount, for one of his rare flying visits.

Crawley was a Devon man. He’d served for many years in Barnstaple, on the River Taw in North Devon, before being transferred to the increasingly geriatric Victorian-era resort town of Torquay on the English Channel in South Devon. As a detective, he’d been adequate. As an ambitious bureaucrat rising in the force, though, he’d been brilliant. He’d become a DCS not for his case-solving skills but for his dogged cultivation of his immediate superiors. And while Cornwall was now within his jurisdiction, the far southwest tip of England was so alien to him that it might well have been a foreign land. He didn’t understand the people or their odd, ancient customs and didn’t care to.

Detective Chief Inspector Penwarren presided. Crawley sat some distance behind him; he felt sitting with the others at the conference table was beneath his rank. He’d tucked his black brimmed officer’s hat with its checkboard head band and badge of office under one armpit, as if at attention even while sitting. To his very great discomfort, the rest of the investigative team ignored him; their loyalty was to Penwarren.

Crawley disliked Penwarren. The DCI was so polite and well-bred he could answer a question, smiling, and make it quite clear without ever saying so that you should have figured it out on your own. Of course, Crawley never did. But Penwarren solved cases and Crawley needed him to bolster his own position at headquarters. So, they co-existed: Penwarren and his team succeeding, Crawley sopping up the commendations.

But before Penwarren could begin, Crawley asserted himself: “What’s all this going on down in West Penwith? These people at, what’s it called? Trevega House? Why are these minor events taking up CID’s time?”

The heads of the Major Crime Investigation Team members pivoted to Penwarren as if controlled by invisible wires.

“Did you wish to hear the weekly reports from our team, sir?” he asked.

“No, we wish to know why scarce police resources are being squandered on something as inconsequential as a dead cow!”

“Bullock, sir,” Penwarren corrected.

“I repeat.”

“You needn’t, sir; we heard you the first time.”

Smiles around the table.

“We want an explanation, dammit, Penwarren. We have to justify it to the brass!”

At some point after his elevation to DCS in Exeter, Crawley had begun referring to himself only in the first-person plural, a habit that amused Penwarren’s team to no end.

“That explanation, which we are happy to provide, would be for your ears only…sir,” Penwarren said, his voice calm, his chosen pronoun mimicking Crawley’s.

“What the hell’s that mean?”

“It means it is something we should discuss privately. At your convenience, of course.”

THEIR MEETING AFTERWARDS was short and not at all sweet.

“Why didn’t we know about this Trevega matter, Penwarren?”

“Because we were advised not to divulge it.”

“By whom?”

“By Sir Michael Rhys-Jones.”

“Who the hell is he when he’s at home?”

“He’s an adviser to Prince Charles and MI5.”

Crawley blinked. “But we are your superior officer!”

“Though not superior to domestic military intelligence, from whom we received official instructions.”

“This is intolerable!”

“I’m sure MI5 will consider your complaint.”

Outflanked but unwilling to admit it, Crawley rose: “We will remember this, Penwarren,” he said, stalking out and slamming the door behind him. Penwarren smiled and shook his head. Crawley would never recommend him to advance to detective superintendent, but that didn’t matter as he loved being a DCI and being in the thick of every investigation. He wasn’t the slightest bit interested in being moved up into administration…or in leaving Cornwall for Exeter.

LEE HAD BECOME fascinated by the prehistoric stone monuments that were scattered about the high and storm-swept moorland above her new home. Their age was almost incomprehensible to her—thousands of years: Bronze Age and Iron Age, some even earlier. She’d looked it up. Amazing: not to mention that they actually still existed, rising from the bony hills like messages from another world altogether.

Back in what she’d come to think of now as her previous life, in Boscastle, she’d roamed the valley of the Valency River and had learned most of the plants, trees, wild flowers, and wildlife there. But now she was a student of stone and moorland. She reckoned working with Jamie and Andrew was part of it. Through them, she’d learned that stone had a history all its own: sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous. Back in Boscastle, the local stone was sedimentary; houses and walls were built mostly of thin slabs of blue-gray slate. But all around Trevega and the rest of West Penwith, it was blocks of igneous granite. Granite was much stronger than slate, Jamie explained, and that was somehow comforting. It wouldn’t flake or break. This stone was old, formed by volcanoes millions of years ago. This stone was forever: its permanence was something you could count on. That’s what she believed, anyway.

Lee’s whirring brain was always planning ahead, and lately her ambitions zig-zagged between becoming an architect like Drew or an archaeologist. She couldn’t choose and so she studied. She’d found the website for the Cornish Ancient Sites Protection Network (CASPN) on her school laptop. She wanted to join their walks over the moorland and learn more about the ancient monuments that littered the landscape around her new home, but she worried she was too young and would not be welcomed. So instead, using an Ordnance Survey Explorer Map for West Penwith and Land’s End, she decided to explore on her own. She wanted to see an especially mystifying site, the Men-an-Tol, a triad of two standing stones with a third round one with a carved hole it its center that sat between the uprights, all in a line. Many mysteries and rites had been woven around these stones over the centuries.

On Tuesday morning, having checked on the recovering Randi in his kennel, she stepped off the pokey St. Ives-to-St. Just local bus at Rosemergy farm, a few miles south of Zennor, crossed the B3306, and followed a faint footpath up the steep valley to the moorland ridgetop. The path wound through thickets of yellow gorse, purple heather, pale green bracken fern, and thorny bramble that clawed at her bare legs. At the exposed summit, she stopped and pulled a half-liter plastic bottle of water from the small knapsack she carried, the same pack she used during the year to carry her school books. From this high viewpoint, she could see the roiling Atlantic far below to the west and, across the finger-slender peninsula, the English Channel to the east, its smoother, sun-burnished surface cut in silver slivers by the wakes of pleasure and fishing boats. Just to the northeast beyond Penzance, as if a misty mirage floating above the Channel, she could make out the pinnacle and castle of St. Michael’s Mount, just offshore the village of Marazion. She felt on top of the world.

Descending the gentler eastern flank of the peninsula’s spine, picking her way through the dense thickets, she found the rough farm track leading south marked on her map. Within only a few minutes she saw the well-worn footpath leading southeast toward the stones.

When she reached the Men-an-Tol, she just sat in the tall grass for a bit and studied the stones. The two vertical ones were short by megalith standards hereabouts, barely four feet high and clearly shaped by someone long ago to come almost to a point. She wondered why. But it was the center stone, slender and round as a four-foot tall doughnut with a nearly two-foot hole in the center, that held her attention. She got up and walked around it. The three stones were in horizontal alignment: if you sighted from one of the uprights you saw straight through the hole of the round middle stone to the upright on the other side. She’d read that local lore claimed you could be cured of back problems by crawling through the hole. The tales also said by doing so you could have success getting pregnant.

She didn’t crawl through the hole.

Strange as they were, she felt disappointed by the Men-an-Tol stones. She’d hoped they might talk to her, tell her something ancient and meaningful, but they were just three big rocks in a row and mute, at least to her. They did not divulge their mystery. She wondered if it was because one of them had been moved and they no longer made sense, no longer had anything to say to someone who listened. Not even her.

She retraced her steps, reached the crest, and once again marveled at the view to the west. From this height, at nearly two hundred fifty meters, she could see far beyond the verdant stone walled meadows of the coastal plateau to the cliffs along which she so loved to walk. Directly below was Castle Rock. Just to the north, the sliver of pebble beach at Porthmeor Cove glittered in the sun. Farther north was Gurnard’s Head, the sea-shattered promontory she loved most, where the ceaseless pounding of the Atlantic surf had bludgeoned the cliff and broken off slabs of granite big as houses that now lay on the sea floor, breaking up incoming swells. Sometimes there were seals, fat as sausages, basking on the broken rocks. She’d climb out to the rim of the headland to watch them. Sometimes they called to her. But she didn’t know their language.

SHE HAD JUST begun her descent back to Rosemergy when it happened: she sensed another presence. She scanned the ridgetop and saw nothing. But the back of her neck prickled. She did not feel so much afraid as guarded. She’d long since learned not to fear her sensations, but she dearly wished Randi were with her; he’d have known if something was out there. Following the steep footpath into the valley and listening for any odd noise, feeling watched the whole way, she reached the B3306 and, unwilling to wait for a return bus, began walking north. Fifteen minutes later, a farm tractor going the same way stopped. She recognized the driver. It was Eldridge Biggins. She knew him from the Tinners Arms.

“You’re a long way from home, girl,” he said.

“I took the bus.”

“Won’t be back along here for a while. Come on up,” he said, offering a hand. “I’ll fetch you home.” He set her on his lap and they bounced along the road on the tractor’s big fat tyres until they reached the lane leading down to Trevega.

“This is fine,” she said, slipping down to the road. “Ta!”

IT WAS AFTER supper when Lee walked across the estate grounds and knocked on the weathered oak door of Jamie and Flora’s cottage. Jamie answered. Having washed off the stone dust and dirt from the day’s work he looked younger and handsomer than she’d noticed before. No wonder Flora was smitten.

“Would Flora see me?”

Jamie ducked his head and whispered: “She’d thrash me if I didn’t let you…”

“Who’s there, love?” Flora called from their sitting room.

“Someone from the Old Lady’s Care Charity come to see you, dear.”

“Tell them to piss off!”

“Flora!” Lee said, entering the room. “Language!”

Flora started laughing and had to will herself to stop so her burnt skin would not hurt. The burns were now like leathery patches on her limbs, but they would soon yield to new skin. She was recovering faster than expected. Jamie withdrew to the kitchen to leave the ladies alone.

Lee loved this room in the old property manager’s cottage. It had a low ceiling supported by thick oak beams. The walls had once been whitewashed, but Jamie had cleaned them and exposed the granite stone blocks beneath. The ground floor was covered with worn slate flagstones and several old hooked rugs were scattered here and there to soften the look and warm the feet. There was a coal fire glowing in the grate in the ancient hearth at one end of the room, and Flora sat in a plump old chair with her feet propped up on a padded bench. She’d been reading.

“Shouldn’t you be doing homework at this hour, girl?”

“School’s over, Flora.”

“And no one’s found something else to keep you out of my hair?”

Lee crossed the room and kissed the top of Flora’s head.

“Shut up,” she said.

‘Manners, you rude young lady! Respect for your elders!”

“Yeah, well that’s why I came. Advice from my favorite elder…”

“I think that was rude, too, but I’m too tired to fight. What is it, you troublesome child?”

“I’m not a child.”

“No, no. You’re right. You’re the oldest girl I’ve ever known. More than a bit strange, you are. Now then, what is it?”

“I sensed something today, Flora. Watching me. I’m almost sure, but I didn’t see anything.”

“Where?”

“Near the Men-an-Tol.”

“You went way down there?”

“It interests me. I took the bus.”

“What about Randi?”

“He’s laid up.”

“So I heard, poor devil.”

“Between Randi and you, I’m on my own. You both need to get better soon.”

Flora’s laugh was a low rumble like boulders rolling in a stream bed. “What do Nicola and Andrew say about what you felt?”

“You think I’d tell them? They don’t understand. Not like you. You told me about this clairsentience thing. It’s a pain in the bum, I can tell you. I get way too much information most of the time.”

“Yes, I know. And it’s not like having visions, either; it’s about feeling. I think that is harder. So, you sensed you were being watched?”

“It wasn’t just that I felt watched. I felt tracked. Like an animal.”

“By an animal?”

“Of course not. By a human. A man, I think. I’m almost sure.”

“Why do you think that?”

Lee shook her head. “I don’t know why. First, it’s just this sensation, like you’ve become a target, like someone’s focused one of those little red laser lights on you like you see on someone’s shirt before they’re shot in a movie at the cinema. I can feel it. I’m a target. Then there’s the scent.”

“The what?”

“No, not the scent. I don’t know how to explain it but I can smell something in the air that isn’t the heather or gorse, something that does not belong. You know that kinda sharp smell that happens just before a thunderstorm on a hot day?”

“It’s called ozone.”

“Well it’s like that, only different.” Lee shook her head. “I don’t know how to explain it, Flora. I’m sorry.”

“I think you’re doing just fine, girl.”

“Is that the smell of the devil?”

Flora laughed. “No, the devil’s supposed to stink of Sulphur, but that’s just Christian lore, that devil talk. A rotten egg makes the same smell. Is an egg the devil?”

“I reckon it’s just an egg.”

“Correct. Plus, we’re pagans, you and me, and in our world, there is no devil.”

Lee nodded. “Can I tell you something else?”

“Why else am I here?”

“I think what I sensed today, being watched, is connected to the dead bullock and the fire in the gardener’s cottage. Maybe even Randi’s accident.”

“Why?”

“I feel like someone is trying to scare us.”

Flora studied the girl for a moment. Between the flood and the death of her parents, was this simply hyper-vigilant watchfulness, or was it paranoia? Did Lee really sense what was real? Flora loved the girl. They kept talking and she listened carefully.

Eleven

AFTER SUPPER THAT same evening, Nicola and Andrew sat in two of the old overstuffed chairs facing the big hearth in the kitchen at Trevega. There was a fire glowing in the coal grate. Even though it was early summer, the forested swale from which the house rose could be chill and damp when fog-thick ocean air snaked in from the sea as it had this evening. They could barely see across the narrow valley. Nicola, Andrew, and Lee spent most of their family time here in the old kitchen, and it was easier and cheaper to heat this room with the fire than trying to heat the whole house. In the upstairs bedrooms, they had plug-in radiant heaters to warm them when it was cold and damp.

The three of them loved to do jigsaw puzzles on the big kitchen table, the more complicated the better, and spent long hours on them. To Nicola, the formal dining room, with its high ceiling, ornate plaster cornice moldings, draped windows, long Georgian era walnut table polished to a blinding shine, and neat rows of matching dining chairs, always seemed too austere for regular suppers…other than, perhaps, a rare overnight visit from Sir Michael. From her point of view, the dining room did not compare with their big warm kitchen. Still, she loved everything about the graceful old house. The formal living room was made somewhat less so by being furnished with cushy slipcovered old furniture. A vast, worn, but still luminous antique Persian rug, a Heriz, covered much of the parquet oak flooring. There was a yawning fireplace at the north end with a mantle made of rough-hewn local granite, the center of its lintel blackened by more than two centuries of use. They sometimes spent evenings there in the winter, with a wood fire blazing. French doors on the south wall led to a glassed-in orangery which soaked up sun and made it possible for Nicola to maintain lemon trees in big planter boxes. This was Randi’s favorite space in winter. He’d bask in a shaft of sunlight on the orangery’s warm brick floor and drag himself across it as the sun made its slow transit across the bricks during the course of the day.

IT HAD BEEN another hard day of rebuilding at the gardener’s cottage. Andrew was slouched in his chair, staring at the glowing coals in the kitchen fire, and sipping on a pint of Figgy’s Brew, a local amber ale.

“You okay, love?”

“It was way easier being a professor.”

She reached a hand across to stroke his forearm. “But not happier, am I right?”

Andrew smiled. “Yes, of course. This work is honest, the other wasn’t.”

“Come on, teaching isn’t dishonest.”

“Never dishonest to my students; dishonest to me. I arrived there, professionally, by climbing up the academic ladder, yes. But I know now it wasn’t what I was meant to do.”

“I’m very proud of you, you know. It took courage to leave that life behind.”

Andrew grinned: “No, it just took falling in love.”

Andrew Stratton had been a popular professor of architectural theory at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He’d never worked in an architecture firm, though, and had never built anything. He was a theorist. It wasn’t until his wife divorced him for someone more ambitious that he finally realized that his academic career was as arid and bloodless as his marriage. Shocked awake and suddenly adrift, on a whim he’d come to Cornwall, the home of his ancestors, to take a one-week course in building dry stone walls—hedges, as they were called here in Cornwall. Buried somewhere deep beneath his academic façade, or maybe in his family’s history, Andrew craved a kind of architecture that was genuine, sustainable, and true to local materials and traditions; he’d just had no experience with the very idea that spoke to him most. His wall-building course transformed him. Jamie Boden had been his teacher. Then, in less than an hour one afternoon, the Boscastle flood swept away all that he and Jamie’s other students had built that week: gone, as if insubstantial as tonight’s sea fog.

But having met Nicola and so many others in Boscastle, he’d decided to stay on to help rebuild the village; he never returned to Philadelphia. He’d found home at last on this rocky coast, he’d found Nicola, and he’d found work that was tangible and deeply rewarding, work that wasn’t just a theory in his or someone else’s head to be spooned out to students, but something meaningful, something lasting—something you created with your bare hands.

After the flood, what Sir Michael had given him and Nicola, as well as Jamie and Flora, was more than just a new home and a fresh start: it was a challenge to make his family’s slowly deteriorating country estate come alive again and, by the way, earn its keep. But Andrew also understood that Michael was not simply interested in creating a group of holiday rental properties from the estate’s outbuildings, he also wanted to create a showcase for Jamie and Andrew’s skills as stone builders. Andrew shook his head and smiled: Sir Michael’s motives were never fully transparent.

“Andrew?”

He came back from his thoughts. “Yes, love?”

“Lee. She’s changing. Have you noticed?”

He blinked, took a sip from his glass and prodded the coals, buying time: “Well, she would do, wouldn’t she, after losing her parents. It’s got to have shattered her, not that she’d ever show it. Not our Lee. Too tough for that, she is. But let me tell you, when she works with me and Jamie I feel like she’s trying to build a new life through the stone, she’s that focused.

“We’ve adopted her, or will have done when the paperwork’s finalized, and we love her like she’s our own. She feels safe with us, too, that’s clear, but I doubt it’s the same as a bond of birth. And I think she needs a bit of distance from us sometimes, her alone time. So, she goes off walking. I think that’s fine.”

“No. That’s not it. That’s not what I’m talking about.”

Andrew turned. “What, then?”

“I mean that in Boscastle she was such a supple girl, absorbing the energy of the world around her as if she were a fruit ripening. But lately she seems, to me at least, to be hardening, or maybe toughening is a better word. She’s such a bright girl, but she questions everything now, no matter how trivial. It could be just an inquiry about how her day went, but she takes it almost as an intrusion. She’s becoming private, almost secretive. Now that school’s out, I really have no idea where she is when she’s not working with you and Jamie. And she seems to have lost interest in painting just at the very point when she was becoming uncommonly good. She has a wonderful eye and I love teaching her.”

Nicola looked at the fire. “I miss her, Andrew; I just miss my old Lee.”

Andrew took her hand. “Nicky, she’s always been her own person, even back in Boscastle, remember? Wandering up the river valley for hours all on her own, exploring and discovering what so few other children her age ever would: a wood nymph, almost? It nearly killed her in that flood. She was lucky to have escaped that valley alive.”

“That was mostly your doing…”

“And her dad’s, too. He was brilliant to think of setting that smoky brush fire to catch the rescue helicopter pilot’s attention. But as wise old Flora tried to explain even then, our Lee is different. You can’t expect her to be otherwise, nor can she continue to be a little girl.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“Yes, you do; you just don’t want to accept it. She’s not your fantasy of a daughter. Nor mine, either, for that matter. No flouncy dresses for this one: it’s denim coveralls in winter and shorts and tee-shirts in summer. I’m never going to be able to spoil the girl, much as I might like to. She wouldn’t have it, and I love that about her. I guess we could call her a tomboy, but with an edge of something else, according to Flora, something beyond our guidance or in any child-rearing manual. This is Cornwall: there are people, like Flora, who tap into deeper streams of the spiritual world here than we ‘normal’ folks do. I’m only beginning to accept their alternate vision of reality. Lee is just plain gifted, Flora says. She senses things, like that loft about to collapse during the fire. She sensed it, ran back in even as it fell, pulled Flora out, and saved her. Can’t we just accept her differentness and love her all the more for it?”

“But she’s become so headstrong…”

Andrew chuckled, his modest belly bouncing. “Like you’re not? But she always was, love. Always. And then there’s that other matter…”

“What?”

“Hormones.”

Nicola punched his shoulder. “That’s such a ‘man’ explanation! And anyway, what would you know about pre-adolescent girls? She’s only eleven!”

“No, almost twelve, but I know girls are maturing earlier than ever. And, as I understand it from my inadequate ‘man’ perspective, that will not be easy either for her or for us. So, I’m expecting a bit of a rollercoaster ride in the next few years…are you up to that?”

Nicola flashed back to her own early adolescence in Boston, and to the older brother who repeatedly molested her. No, she’d never had the opportunity to be a rebellious pre-teen; she’d been too busy trying to protect herself, and doing so unsuccessfully. She wondered whether she’d ever have the courage to tell Andrew the whole story. Was it even necessary? Couldn’t that part of her past just stay buried? She often feared she was not an affectionate enough partner for Andrew and wondered if she’d ever find the trust to give her heart and body fully and fearlessly, like a precious gift, to the man she truly loved. And she wondered if she could protect Lee from the dangers of being a young woman out in the world and knew she could not. Not really. She could only prepare her…if Lee would even permit it.

“Of course I’m up to it,” she said. But her answer was mostly bravado. However uncertain she was in this new role as mother, at least she had Andrew, her anchor. And Lee adored him. They had Jamie and Flora, too. They’d be fine. She looked at the clock on the kitchen wall; it was time for Lee to be home. The fog was thickening. She opened the kitchen door and beat an iron rod against an old bronze bell hanging outside. The bell had been salvaged from an old sailing ship that had been wrecked on the Carracks, a group of rocky inshore islets just off their coast that had brought many ships to grief over the centuries. Away across the valley she heard Lee’s answering whistle. Randi, on the hearth, heard it too, barked once, and dropped his head back to the rug. He was still recovering.

“I think she’s been with Flora and Jamie,” she said, and she felt her body relaxing.

Twelve

NIGEL LAWRENCE DISCOVERED the poisoned well early Wednesday morning while the fog was still lifting.

Shortly after Andrew and Nicola had moved in, Sir Michael had arranged for the estate to receive its fresh water supply from South West Water’s mains line which ran parallel to the B3306 between St. Ives and Zennor. Mains water was expensive but reliable. The bore hole well that had long served the house in the old days was now used only to fill the water tubs in the fields for the cattle and for watering the garden that Nicola had only just begun restoring. Using the well for these high-flow needs was far cheaper than using mains water.

Just after dawn, Nigel had hitched the farm’s wheeled cylindrical water tank to the back of his tractor, filled it directly from the well’s electric pump, towed it across several fields, and had just begun discharging into one of the galvanized field tubs from which the cattle drank when he noticed soapy foam. He didn’t even pause to call Andrew first; he dumped the tub and phoned the police directly from his mobile.

Given the other events at Trevega, Comms headquarters in Exeter contacted the Bodmin Operational Hub instead of the local St. Ives station. DCI Penwarren took the call as he was driving to work. He decided to assign it to Morgan’s understudy, Detective Constable Terry Bates, and met her at Bodmin.

“You’re asking me to investigate a possible well poisoning? Down in West Penwith? Is this a test or something, Sir?” This was not the sort of crime, if it even was one, for which Bates had become a detective to solve.

Penwarren laughed. “There is no question in my mind, Detective Constable Bates, that you are tailor-made to be Morgan’s successor. Cut from the same bright but very scratchy cloth you both are, but I still have hope for you. I’ve given up on Morgan. She’s impossible: brilliant, but impossible. Let’s you try not to be, okay? And yes, this is now your case.”

Bates blinked. Slender, petite, late twenties, with a cascade of ginger blond hair and mischievous green eyes, she was much admired by many of the men at the Bodmin hub, but she took no notice. Taking a lesson from Morgan, she stayed utterly focused on her job. If you were a female detective in the force, that’s what you did to stay above the male fray. The coarse comments? You gave back as good as you got.

“There may be more to this than first appears, Terry,” Penwarren continued, “so please bear with me a moment.” And he then filled her in on the other odd events at the Trevega estate.

“So, we’ve got a dead beast, a suspicious fire, a mangled dog, and now a fouled well?” she said.

“Exactly.”

“It doesn’t add up.”

“Exactly.”

“Sir?”

“We’re missing something, Terry. I don’t know what, but it troubles me. And with each new event, it begins to look more troubling.”

“And so you want me to…”

“Go down there. Look around. Ask questions. I’ve contacted West and he has called in a bore hole expert.”

“A what…?”

“Bore hole. A well. The engineer is coming down from Exeter and will be there later this morning, eleven or thereabouts. Lucky to get him on a weekend. Talk to him. Get his analysis. And talk to the others at Trevega. I sent Morgan down there a while back. She says the locals all like the folks at Trevega. The question is: who doesn’t?”

Bates made to leave but stopped and turned. “Why your interest in these odd events, if I may ask? They seem a matter for local police, not CID.”

“Friend of the family, Terry. Let’s just leave it at that, shall we?”

She nodded: “Sir.”

Penwarren would not reveal, not to anyone, that he had been one of Caprice Rhys-Jones’s lovers just before she died in that fiery car crash in London years before. He had been an up-and-coming detective at Scotland Yard and had provided security for Prince Charles at a charity event she attended. Sir Michael’s young wife was always on the prowl and she soon made him one of her triumphs.

What Penwarren did not know was that Sir Michael knew about it but held him guiltless: Penwarren was just another among his wife’s trophies. But he’d kept an eye on the young detective, especially after he transferred, unexpectedly, to Cornwall after Caprice’s death. Michael reckoned it was grief, and he respected that in a man. Over the years in Cornwall, Penwarren had revealed himself to be a thoughtful and intuitive investigator. Having attended a gentleman’s school, he had a gentleman’s reserve, even though he was not born to it. Sir Michael had often thought of recruiting him into MI5, but somehow, he knew the brainy but soft-spoken inspector would never fit in with the security service. In Cornwall, Michael had watched Penwarren grow and succeed where older, more seasoned detectives had failed. Even Morgan Davies, about whom he’d heard much—brash, aggressive, a rule breaker—even she was a feather in Penwarren’s cap. They’d now been a team for years; he gave her free rein and she got cases solved, even if Penwarren had to save her sometimes from the bosses in Exeter. Sir Michael’s respect for Penwarren was deep.

Penwarren watched the disgruntled young detective constable leave his office. Could Bates be another Morgan Davies? He wasn’t sure whether he hoped or dreaded it.

“THIS IS A very old bore hole,” Carl Herbst explained to Andrew and DC Bates that afternoon. He was a well engineer and the owner of Geophysical Drilling Ltd. in Exeter. Thick-set, late middle age and balding, he spoke with a slight German accent and wore navy blue cotton work coveralls with his company’s name embroidered on the left breast pocket. They stood at the edge of the rear terrace of Trevega House beside a narrow, stone-edged hole. Once, there had been a manual water pump mounted here, used by staff to haul up water for the house. But that had long since been replaced with an electric one. Herbst was just removing his testing instruments.

“More than a century old, maybe older. Hard to tell. But it’s in fine shape, according to my probes. That’s because the bedrock here is basically coarse-grained granite. Drill through that to the water table below, as someone here did long ago—and I don’t envy them—and the well will never collapse. Might as well be lined with concrete. A fine well, this is.”

“And yet poisoned,” Bates said.

“Yes, certainly, but also simply: my test says someone dumped a load of laundry powder with bleach down the hole. You can buy the laundry powder anywhere, no one the wiser. It’s the bleach that’s dangerous. It’s a trick I haven’t seen in a long time, what with so many people being on mains water nowadays. Anyone sick yet?”

“No, the house has mains water now,” Andrew explained. “Our farm manager only found this when he tried to fill the field tubs for the cattle. Called police immediately.”

“That was smart. You could have had a very sick herd by now. I recommend you keep the electric pump running, draining the discharge off to that field below. If it were not for the bleach, you could use it in your garden: plants love the phosphates in laundry water.”

“What next?” Andrew asked.

“Bleach dissipates quickly and in time the well’s own recharge rate will flush it out.”

“How much time?”

“Depends on the rate. But my instruments suggest just a few days. Still, I wouldn’t give this water to the cattle for at least a week.”

“I don’t understand how this happened,” Andrew said, almost to himself.

Herbst was packing up his instruments. He did not look up. “Got any enemies, Mr. Stratton, neighbors who might wish ill of you?”

BACK AT THE house, Terry Bates accepted a cup of tea from Nicola and Andrew in their kitchen.

“So, Mr. Stratton,” she said, looking up from her cup, “you did not answer the engineer’s last question. Do you, or perhaps Ms. Rhys-Jones, have enemies who might wish you ill—quite literally physically ill?”

Nicola answered for him: “Look, we’ve been over this before, detective, given what else has happened here recently. We’ve spoken with our neighbors. So have the police. No one seems to have a grudge that we can identify. This is a small and somewhat remote community; word gets around. There’s been not a whisper.”

“And yet your well was poisoned.”

“Yes, but what was the point? We hardly ever use it!”

Andrew stood and paced the kitchen. “As you no doubt know, we’ve had a couple of potentially dangerous events here recently, but they’re so random. I don’t understand it. And now this.”

Terry Bates sipped her tea and then looked away as a new thought approached, as if from a distance. She blinked and turned to Andrew: “You said you had mains water connected to Trevega House. When was that?”

“Less than a year ago. Sir Michael Rhys-Jones, Nicola’s former father in law and the owner, ordered it. Apparently, the well was not always reliable. And as we are renovating some of the outbuildings to convert them to holiday rentals for him, he wanted a reliable supply.”

Bates stared into her teacup for a moment and then looked up.

“It’s someone who doesn’t know you now have mains water. Someone who thinks you still rely upon the well and wants to cripple you. Someone you know…or who knows you. But not lately.”

Thirteen

ON THURSDAY MORNING, Andrew climbed into Trevega’s fifteen-year-old workhorse Land Rover Defender, shifted it into low gear, climbed up their steep lane to the main road that ran along the moorland foothills, and turned north toward St. Ives, shifting up to top gear as the road leveled. The yellow gorse blossoms on each side of the road were so vivid it was like driving through sunshine, even though the day was overcast. He and Jamie had finished repairing the ground floor level of the gardener’s cottage front wall and Jamie had sent him to Travis Perkins, the builders’ merchants in town, for scaffolding boards so they could begin work rebuilding the upper story. Andrew smiled; despite all his education, he’d essentially become a builder’s assistant, running errands. But he’d never been happier.

It was a dry morning but the sky to the west threatened rain. He’d coasted down the long gentle slope from Trevega Hill and was approaching the sharp right turn into the outskirts of St. Ives when the southbound bus to St. Just took the turn wide to avoid a cyclist. With no room to pass, Andrew slammed his foot on the brake pedal but it went straight to the floor. He yanked the steering wheel left aiming for the narrow gravel entrance to his neighbor’s property, Folly Farm. Making the turn smartly, he pulled up the emergency brake to slow the speeding car but the Defender skidded and crashed into the stone hedge lining the farm lane. Andrew’s head slammed into the driver’s window.

When he opened his eyes again there was a female medic kneeling beside him. He was on a stretcher in the lane.

“Mr. Stratton? Can you hear me?”

“Well of course I can. How’s the Land Rover?”

The medic laughed. “Dented but drivable, sir. A bit like yourself, I suspect. I want to look into your eyes a moment, if you’ll permit me.”

“Very romantic, I’m sure, but why?”

“It’s a good sign that you have your sense of humor, sir, but this is serious. You’ve had a nasty crack on the right side of your head. There is swelling but no blood and I reckon all that curly hair helped cushion the blow, but you were knocked unconscious and we have to check if you’ve had a concussion. Your eyes will tell me.”

She peered.

“Yes. The right one is dilated, without question. Do you know where you are and what happened, Mr. Stratton?”

Andrew made a face. “Had to avoid a bus, then the brakes failed. Hit a hedge. Now I’m lying here and would like very much to get up, if you don’t mind. Have things to do.”

“No doubt you do, sir, but not this morning. We’re taking you to West Cornwall Hospital in Penzance for a head scan. That’s the rules. We want to make sure your brain isn’t bleeding inside. But I’ve been at this job for some years now and I’m a pretty good diagnostician. Between you and me, my guess is you were lucky and I doubt that you’ll be detained for very long. West Cornwall Hospital’s just over seven miles away and we’ll use the lights and siren just for you.”

“Will you be with me?”

“Of course. Why?”

“You’re quite lovely.”

The medic laughed. “I’ll just put that down to the concussion, shall I? Is there someone who might meet you there?”

ANDREW SWAM UP from sleep, gasped like a man who’d been holding his breath underwater, opened his eyes and looked around. He was home, in bed. He couldn’t remember how he’d got there. His head hurt.

Jamie was sitting beside him. He’d been with him in hospital as well.

“Why did you wake me? I’m tired.”

“Because that’s what the doc told me to do, to make sure you don’t slip into a coma or some such…”

Andrew blinked and tried to focus. “That was a nasty trick, Jamie, sending me off on an errand with no brakes. Am I that bad an assistant?”

“Very funny. If you’re not still delirious, then just shut up or I’ll give you another concussion.”

“Not a good feeling, that: no brakes, especially when you’re aimed straight at a bus. Was everyone okay?”

Jamie was quietly pleased that Andrew was so clear-headed, if cranky. “Yes. No one was injured except you. Bus driver sends his regards. But sitting here a while and thinking about it I reckon you’re lucky to be alive at all. If you’d been heading south to our new client in St. Just, you’d have coasted downhill into the valley below our hill to the bridge and, when the brakes failed, you’d have lost it at the bottom and flown right off the road and into the stream. Could have been killed. The police agree, by the way.”

“The police?”

“Been here and gone. You missed them. You were dozing. Rest is the best thing for a concussion. The docs saw no damage to your skull and no bleeding in their scan. Seems that big professor’s brain of yours took a bounce, but it bounced back. You’ll soon be fine.”

“The Land Rover?”

“Taken into evidence by the St. Ives police, which is a pain in the arse, frankly. We need our farm vehicle. But they say it shouldn’t be long.”

“Where’s Nicola?”

“In St. Ives, teaching. I thought it better to handle this myself instead of frightening her.”

Andrew squeezed his eyes shut in disbelief. “She’ll thrash you, you know, when she finds out…”

“So will Flora. Who cares? It was the right thing to do. You needed someone reliable to take you home.”

“And you’re saying that Nicola…?”

“Let’s just make this a guy thing; two mates looking after each other.” He made a zip movement across his lips and grinned.

“She’ll still thrash you.”

“All in a day’s work, my friend, all in a day’s work.”

“Jamie? Thank you.”

“No thanks necessary. Just be ready to go back to work tomorrow. Lee and I can’t rebuild the gardener’s cottage alone, you know.”

“Lee…”

“She knows nothing. But, knowing her, that won’t last long.”

“You got that right,” a voice said from the hall outside. Footsteps approached.

“Jesus,” Jamie whispered. “Something creepy about the way that girl just shows up…”

“What was that? I heard something,” Lee said as she marched into the room.

“Hello, sweetie,” Andrew said.

“What have you done to your head? You’ve hurt your head. I sensed it.” She stood beside him.

“How?

“I just know stuff, okay?”

Andrew raised his hands in resignation. “Bit of a car accident, is all. I’m fine.”

“If you’re so fine, why are you in bed?”

Andrew smiled, shook his head, and promptly thought better of it. It made him dizzy. Still, there was no getting anything past his Lee.

“Okay, so I hit my head. It’s called a concussion. It’s when your brain gets banged up against the inside of your skull: brain soft; skull hard. But there’s no serious damage. It’s kinda like a bruise, but no bleeding. I’m okay. Just need to rest a bit.”

“Where’s Nicola?”

“She’s in St. Ives, teaching, as I understand it. She doesn’t know yet.”

The girl considered this for a moment. “I reckon you’re in for another concuss, or whatever it’s called. She’ll be steaming you didn’t call her.”

“That was my decision, Lee,” Jamie said. “Drew was at the hospital in Penzance.”

“Oh, wonderful,” Lee said, stalking out of the bedroom. “Now we’ll have two men with concusses. She’ll smack you senseless, Jamie, and our work will suffer. Am I supposed to do everything around here?”

Jamie shook his head and turned to Andrew. But he’d dozed off again.

MARY TREVEAN KNOCKED at the door of the Chicken Coop cottage at mid-morning. She wasn’t even sure why she felt so compelled; she’d seen her tenant head off up the lane to the moorland with his backpack earlier and knew the cottage was empty. Now, in the late morning sun, the exposed granite summits looked gilded and on the updraft from the sea, a red-tailed buzzard hung high above, almost motionless, quartering the sky, searching for prey.

She had in mind surprising her Italian…“lover”? Was that what he was? How else to describe them both? She didn’t want to name it or consider its wisdom. She knew that she’d become obsessed with him, almost possessed. But she’d resolved not to care: he made her feel alive again. And anyway, he’d be gone soon enough. She gave herself permission to take what pleasure she could in the meantime. She’d begun wearing makeup again and caring about what she wore. She hoped he noticed.

So today she’d decided to do his laundry and present it to him in the evening, fresh and folded. A surprise. She entered the cottage, picked up a few soiled tea towels in the kitchen, a damp bathroom towel, and rummaged around in the bedroom collecting obviously worn clothes from a small pile at the bottom of the old pine wardrobe. She pulled one of his t-shirts up to her nose, caught his musky fragrance, and smiled. Then, at the bottom of the pile, she found jeans and a charcoal sweatshirt covered with rust-red blotches. Dried blood. Had he hurt himself? No, this was too much blood for a kitchen accident. Perhaps he’d come upon one of the wild ponies that grazed the moorland and it was injured and he’d tried to help. It happened all the time on the rough ground up there: they’d step into a hole, break a leg, and the foxes would make quick work of them.

A farm wife, Mary knew how to wash out bloodstains. They were the norm during calving season and she’d made her husband’s overalls sparkle when they were stained. First, she’d soak the garments in a big galvanized tub with coarse salt and water for half an hour. If that wasn’t enough, she’d rub ammonia into the fabric. She’d do the same today with Geremio’s clothes, run them through two cycles in her washer, and hang them on the rotary clothesline in her garden. The day was warm, the sky cloudless. They’d dry quickly.

“YOU THERE, HELLO? I need to examine this vehicle.”

Detective Constable Terry Bates, dressed in a simple khaki cotton pants suit and white blouse, her notebook in hand, was speaking to a pair of legs that protruded from beneath the back of Trevega’s dented Land Rover on Thursday afternoon. The vehicle was in the fenced impound yard used by the St. Ives police station.

“Hold your water, lady; I’m almost done here,” a voice called from beneath the chassis.

“I’m not a ‘lady,’ I’m police.”

Using his heels, the man beneath the Defender backed out from under the car on a wheeled mechanic’s creeper. Clearing the underbody of the car he lifted his head and squinted into the sun.

“Adam! Jesus!” Bates exclaimed.

“Which of the two would you prefer, Terry?” the man said as he rolled to the ground and stood. “I thought I recognized that voice.” He wore a white Tyvek coverall over his clothes.

“And by the way, you are most definitely a lady.”

“Good Lord, it’s you!” She wrapped him in a hug and then felt it immediately inappropriate. “Sorry. Just such a surprise!”

“But apparently not an unpleasant one?”

“No, no, of course not. But what are you doing here?”

“Got reposted to St. Ives from the Falmouth nick,” Constable Adam Novak said. “After that Hansen case last year.”

“You were sent down for being successful?”

“Not sent down, ‘reassigned’ is what they called it. Too visible, as far as the duty Sarge was concerned.”

“That is so wrong.”

“And so typical: don’t stand out, that’s the unspoken rule—unless you’re Morgan Davies.”

“What were you doing messing about under that Land Rover? It’s evidence.”

“Doing my job. The boss in Camborne asked me to have a look; I have some knowledge of vehicles.”

“Well, I know you love to drive them fast, that’s for sure.”

Novak smiled. “Do you want to critique my driving skills or know what happened to this Land Rover?”

“Sure. Go ahead. But the SOCO people will be here shortly.”

“If they know what they’re doing, they’ll come to the same conclusion I have.”

“Okay, show me.”

They squatted next to one of the Defender’s rear wheels. “See that rubber tube attached to the inside wall of the wheel well?”

She looked closely. “Yes. What about it?”

“It comes from the brake system’s master cylinder under the bonnet. Inside that tube there’s another, a thin one made of steel. It carries fluid to the brakes, okay? The system’s hydraulic. With brake fluid, you have brakes; without brake fluid, you don’t. You following me?”

“I’m not an idiot, Adam.”

“Okay, fine. Now lay down face up on this creeper and I’ll push you under the rear of the car. I want you to see something.”

“You’re joking…”

“Just do it.”

“I didn’t know you could be such a bully…”

“I’m not. I’m your teacher. At least in this instance. Try to be a good student.”

Bates lay on the creeper, smoothed her clothes, and Adam pushed her beneath the Land Rover.

“Follow that rubber line from the wheel well, okay? What do you see next?”

Bates struggled to follow the line as her eyes adjusted to the dim light. Then she saw it. “There’s a steel tube just like you said, not even a quarter inch. Only it looks to have been cut. The downstream end of the steel bit is crimped tight but the upstream end is splayed open.”

Novak pulled her out and helped her to her feet.

“Absolutely correct, detective,” he said. “When you want to sabotage a brake line, you don’t have to cut it. That’s too obvious. All you need do is crimp it, like with a wire cutter or just pliers. The two sections will remain connected. But the moment someone steps on the brake, the brake pressure—a thousand pounds per square inch—blows open the upstream steel tube, severs the line, and that’s it for the brakes. You’ve got none. That’s what’s happened here.”

“Which is to say…”

“This wasn’t a mechanical failure.”

She looked at Novak, once again thinking he should be a Scene of Crimes officer at least, not just a uniformed constable. She’d have a word with Calum.

“How do you know this stuff?”

“My dad had a garage. He could fix anything.”

“Sounds like you can, too.”

Novak turned away and wiped his hands on a cloth.

“How’ve you been keeping, Terry?” he said to the cloth.

She looked at Adam Novak, a man to whom she’d felt attracted during their last case together. With her promotion she’d moved on, at least geographically, far to the north of Cornwall, well out of his jurisdiction. She felt again his quiet charm and admired his face and head: eastern European origin and chiseled into sharp edges at cheekbones and jaw as if by a master sculptor. Close-cropped curly black hair. No question, the man was handsome…but also good, perceptive.

“I’ve been pretty busy, Adam: I’m a detective now, working under Morgan Davies.”

Novak smiled: “You have both my congratulations and my sympathy.”

“No, truly, I could not have a better boss, and she has given me a lot of rope in investigations, like this one. So I’m grateful.”

“And the rest?”

She paused and looked across the lot, cluttered with damaged vehicles. “A woman in the force is always watched, even preyed upon. No shortage of sexist comments and whispered asides. I ignore them or hit back, like Morgan does. Mostly, though, I keep to myself. It’s lonely. I have thought about you, though. You were always a complete gentleman when we worked together on the Hansen case. That’s rare in the force. Hell, it’s rare in a man...”

Novak ducked his head. There was motor oil in his hair. “Thank you.”

Bates took a breath. “I’ve always wondered, though: your love of cooking and fine wines, your appreciation of the natural world around you, your sensitivity to the nonverbal signals from those suspects we interviewed together in the Hansen case. That always impressed me about you. But…and I’m sorry to ask…are you gay, Adam?”

Novak looked up: “Would you care to test that theory?”

Bates regarded the man, her head tilted as if in consultation with herself, then shook her head and smiled.

“Perhaps, Adam, perhaps. But not just now.”

Fourteen

“DON’T YOU DARE leave, you coward!”

“But Nicola’s come…I heard her car on the terrace,” Jamie whispered, as if she could hear him all the way down in the ground level kitchen. It was late Thursday afternoon, the western light still strong.

“It was you decided not to tell her; I was unconscious, remember? You’ll stay.”

“She’ll flay me.”

“So will Flora when she finds out, so you’d better prepare yourself.”

Faintly, they heard Nicola enter the kitchen three floors below.

“Hello? Jamie?” she called. She’d seen his car on the terrace.

“You’d better call down,” Andrew said. “I’m not supposed to get up.”

Jamie slouched out to the upstairs hall. “Up here, Nicky!”

She found Andrew in bed.

“Oh, sweetheart, are you sick?” She turned to Jamie: “Thank you so much for looking after him. That’s so kind.”

Jamie said nothing.

“What is it, love? Flu or something?”

“Um, no. Car accident, actually. Bumped my head. Concussion.”

“What? When?!”

Jamie found his courage and answered: “This morning; he was on the way to St. Ives for supplies. Avoided a bus and hit a hedge in the Defender. The rescue people took him to hospital in Penzance to scan his head. I met him there. But he’s going to be fine, really.”

“And you didn’t call me?”

“You were teaching.”

“I was unconscious,” Andrew added.

“I can’t believe either of you idiots! I should give you both dope slaps!”

“I already have a concussion,” Andrew ventured.

“Shut up.”

Both men winced. Nicola’s hot Boston Italian temper, seldom in evidence, was scorching when it flared.

“I’m supposed to wake him from time to time, though he needs to rest,” Jamie explained, knowing it sounded lame.

Nicola pressed her hands against her head in frustration. “I’m going down to the kitchen to make a cup of tea so as not to kill you both for sheer stupidity. Perhaps your nurse here, Andrew,” she said, pointing a stiletto finger at Jamie, “can meet your needs.” And then she was gone.

“Reckon we got off lightly, Jamie,” Andrew said just above a whisper.

“I’d like never to know what ‘heavily’ might look like.”

NICOLA SAT IN the kitchen and poured her tea into a big, stained white china mug with sunflowers on the outside. Milk and sugar added, she lifted it and realized her hand was shaking: Car accident. He could have been killed…

Shortly after they’d met, when they’d barely known each other, Andrew had found and rescued her, battered and disoriented, from the Boscastle flood. He’d gathered her up like so much soaked and broken debris and had brought her to safety. And, by some magic she did not fully understand, in time he’d also freed her from the emotional prison in which she’d been trapped for years by her abusive ex-husband and, long before that, her molesting older brother, now dead. She and Andrew had slipped into an uneasy but loving companionship—uneasy only for her because of her own history and fear of trusting any man. They’d adopted Lee and that had happened so easily, so naturally. They were a family now but she’d not really fully come to terms with that reality.

Until now.

She put down her teacup and went upstairs. Jamie had fled and Andrew was asleep. She took off her clothes, slid into their bed and curled around him.

“Andrew,” she whispered.

“Hmm? What?”

“Jamie said we’re supposed to keep you awake. I’m here to do that.”

“Right.”

“Andrew?”

“Yes?”

“I did not think I’d ever have the courage to live with a man again. Now I can’t imagine living without you. So no more accidents, okay?”

“Okay.”

She nuzzled his neck but he was asleep again, his brain resting.

LEE CLIMBED DOWN to her private place late that afternoon: the grassy cliff ledge a few feet below the coast path and high above the ocean. Despite the usual violence of the surging surf far below, this spot always comforted her. It was like the favorite old tree she’d clung to during the Boscastle flood with the Valency River raging below her, only safer, she reckoned: this was hard ground.

She was trying to understand the power of the upset she felt when she’d sensed Andrew had been injured. She’d just begun a walk down the valley to the coast that morning when she felt it. She’d turned back to the house but no one was there and she’d been anxious for hours. Andrew and her father had saved her life in the flood, yes. Andrew and Nicky had stepped in when her parents were killed. She understood and loved them for it and she couldn’t imagine a safer place. In the months since, she’d been able, slowly, to accept her situation and that Nicky clearly loved her like her own daughter. But Drew being hurt?

Even though she worked with him nearly every day on rebuilding the gardener’s cottage she’d not been able to bond with Drew as she had Nicky. He was kind and affectionate to her, but she sensed a distance, as if he did not know how to deal with a girl. She’d meant to talk to Flora about this but didn’t know how to begin without possibly hurting Drew. That was the last thing she wanted to do.

Now, late this afternoon, after the danger at home had passed, she sat at her safe place. The ocean was gentle, its swells unlashed by storm or wind. The waves lifted and fell languorously on the rocky beach below and hissed over the pebbles as they retreated. Just offshore a seal traced speedy vectors just beneath the surface as it chased fish. Gulls followed the vector hoping for leftovers. The afternoon light over the Atlantic was bright but aging to gold, almost orange near the watery horizon and then fading to pale blue above. She wished Randi were with her. He was the world’s best companion, but he wasn’t healed enough yet.

And maybe I’m not healed enough, either, she thought. It didn’t seem something you could call up from within you, embracing a new family. She admired Drew greatly. She reckoned she loved him. She knew Jamie did, too, and that said a lot. But where Nicky was artistic and emotional, Drew was cool and analytical: way smart, she reckoned, but also a puzzle she hadn’t quite yet solved.

She was considering these differences when she sensed a presence above her on the coast path. Was it Drew, summoned even as she’d thought about him? She looked upward just as a rough block of granite flew down at her from above. She twisted away from a direct hit but the stone grazed her head and crashed into her right shoulder. She screamed and clung to the turf but the pain was so intense she passed out.

“GET UP, DAMMIT, you’re needed,” Flora ordered. “Jamie’s away and Nicola is God only knows where. Lee’s in trouble. Get a move on!”

“What? Where? How do you know?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

Andrew pulled on clothes and, a bit woozy and his head throbbing, followed Flora out of the house and down the valley to the coast, trying mightily just to keep his feet under him.

At the cliff edge, Flora pointed to the inert body below.

It was his own Lee.

Surging with adrenalin, he slid down the steep path to her side. He checked that she was breathing and pulled her into his arms. He knew he couldn’t haul them both to the top of the ragged scree slope given his weakened condition, but he scrambled up as far as he could, shoes digging into the shattered granite rubble, and passed her up to Flora, who grabbed an arm from above as he lost his footing and slid back down. She still held it when he finally reached the top. Together, they pulled the child up to the coast path. Lee screamed. Andrew yanked away the collar of her tee shirt and saw that her shoulder was bleeding and misshapen, possibly dislocated. They’d pulled it to lift her. He felt sick.

“Be still, darling girl,” he whispered into her ear. “You are safe now. I’m going for help. Trust me, okay?”

Lee opened her eyes. “Hurts awful.”

“I know. Be the brave girl I know you are. Your most favorite person, Flora, is right here beside you while I get the rescue chaps. Okay?”

“You’re my most favorite person, Drew,” she said before her eyes rolled back in their sockets again.

MARY WAS JUST taking the dry clothes off the line when she saw him shuffle down the lane and enter his cottage. It was nearly six and he looked weary, his normally erect shoulders slumped. She’d already decided to invite him to her own home for dinner: prawns in pasta with a pesto cream sauce she’d bought at the Co-op in St. Just. But first she’d wait for him to shower.

Half an hour later he answered her knock. But he’d not showered. He was sweaty, like he’d been running, and held a glass of white wine in his hand.

“Goodness, are you all right?”

“Sto bene, mia Maria, bene. Solo stanko…tired.” He waved her in. “Much walking today. Vino bianco?”

“Si, senore.” She’d been studying Italian on her computer. She knocked back her glass of wine and mustered her courage: “I have a dinner for you in my house tonight. Pasta? Prawns? Pesto? You will come?”

He smiled and sank into the white wicker chair in the kitchen. She wondered how far he’d walked today, what had so tired him.

“Si, Si. Mille grazie, Maria. But first…” he gestured with his hands the need to shower.

“Of course.” She leaned down, kissed him, pulled him from the chair and led him to the cottage’s sparkling new bathroom. She undressed him, slowly, and then herself. In the shower together she soaped him and rubbed his skin, teasing him. Then she stepped out of the enclosure, leaving him there. “Dinner is soon,” she said, winking.

She dried and dressed. He was still soaking in the shower under the hot, steamy water. “When you are ready, come down the lane…and bring wine!” Her smile was lascivious…or at least she hoped it was. She’d never known a want like this.

“YOU AGAIN?”

It was the same female medic who had treated Andrew after the crash that morning.

“Busy day, you’ve had,” she said. “You should be resting.”

“No kidding.”

Andrew had the ambulance drive down the rutted valley lane to the ruined mill and they had walked from there to the cliff with the stretcher. The medic and her assistant kneeled and examined Lee’s shoulder. Flora hovered.

“Looks like a fractured clavicle. Dislocation is also possible. There’s also an abrasion on that side of her head; minor bleeding. Who is she?”

“Almost but not quite yet his adopted daughter,” Flora answered.

“And you are?”

“Friend.”

“Part of the family,” Andrew corrected.

“What happened?”

“We don’t know,” Flora said. That ledge is her special place where she goes to think.”

“So you’re saying it isn’t likely that she simply fell from the path? She knew her way down?”

“Oh, yes.”

The medic considered for a moment. “Then this is an impact injury. Something from above. If you don’t call the police, I will.”

Andrew was already on his mobile. He called Nicola first this time, and then 999.

“Excuse me, but do you have a name?” Andrew asked the medic when he rang off. “We seem to be becoming regular associates…”

“It’s Marion. Marion Robbins. And I hope not to see you again anytime soon.”

“Very flattering, that is.”

She smiled and patted his shoulder. “You know what I mean. Take care of that head of yours and this girl; looks like you’ll be needed for a while.”

DAVIES MET WEST at the cliff edge just as the sun began dipping into the western Atlantic. The SOCO team had brought battery-powered lights and now Calum, in his usual white coveralls, was on his knees studying the well-beaten coast path which, in this stretch, was a mix of ground granite and bare outcroppings. But the weather had been dry for days and he found no footprints. While Morgan and Andrew watched, he skidded down the steep slope to the grassy terrace where Lee, who was now with Nicola at the hospital in Penzance, had been injured. But apart from the flattened grass where the girl had sat, he saw nothing unusual.

It was as he struggled to climb back up to the level ground above that he realized that the fact that he could see nothing unusual on the cliff face was, in fact, what was unusual: rock falls were common on this storm-battered coast but the rock here was uniformly weathered and intact; there were no scars from fresh breaks. Wildflowers sprang from the crevices. The rock here was stable; it had not shelved off or fallen.

He was winded and his heart was doing its odd little dance when he regained the coast path. Morgan ordered him to sit.

“Something wrong here,” he said, panting.

“No kidding, you idiot: you can’t breathe!”

He shook his head. “I’m working on that, my dear, but that’s not my point. Something’s missing.”

“Besides your common sense?”

West clambered to his feet and looked around. There was an old stone hedge that separated the coast path’s right of way from the farm field just above. He did not walk toward it directly but took a circuitous route so as not to disturb the grass and bracken in between. Then he picked his way along the foot of the hedge until he found what he’d already guessed must be there…or rather, not there. This particular hedge, like many in the area, was built of roughly horizontal granite blocks and then topped with thinner stones set on edge to divert rainwater and winter frost away from the core of the hedge. Directly opposite the injured girl’s “special place,” one of these big sharp stones was missing and the faces of its neighboring stones were freshly abraded.

He retraced his steps and ordered his team look for any evidence in the bracken.

“It’s assault or attempted murder, Morgan,” he said. “One more mystery on this apparently accursed estate. Something’s going on here. Someone meant serious harm this time. I don’t know why.”

His shoulders sagged. “I’m tired. Let’s go home and let the lads finish.”

Morgan took his elbow and the two of them walked back up the narrow valley to their waiting cars.

“You okay to drive?”

“Yes, Morgan luv. Better now.” He looked at his colleague for a moment, at her handsome, chiseled face, her spiky blonde hair, and her voluptuous figure and saw beyond her prickly manner. He realized she genuinely cared for him and…that he actually adored her.

IT WAS LATE Thursday night. They lay in each other’s arms on the big sofa before the glow of the coals in her sitting room fire. Mary reckoned dinner had been a success; he’d wolfed it down like a man starving. She wondered when he’d eaten last but did not ask. They’d finished a second bottle of Verdicchio. The sex had been long, strong, and thrilling.

She got up, walked into her bedroom and brought out his clean clothes. She felt conscious of her naked body, standing before him, and proud that he wanted her.

“I washed your clothes; I hope you don’t mind?” She bowed slightly and winked.

“Certo che no. Sei molto gentile, grazie!” He reached out his arms to pull her back upon him.

“It was a bit of a struggle getting out the bloodstains,” she said into his chest, “but they’re mostly gone. What happened? I heard a cow was killed just north of Zennor a few days ago; were you there to help?”

He paused just for a moment while he thought, and then he smiled and shook his head: “Una pecora…sheep? E una volpe…fox? I try to save. I fail.”

She straddled his lap and kissed him. “I’m so sorry. The foxes are so vicious. I suppose they must be, just to survive. But at least you tried to help, you darling man.”

He nodded but looked away. “Si. Ho provato…I try.”

She held him close, pressing her breasts against his chest, but he seemed to have pulled inside himself.

“Are you all right?”

“Si, Si. Sto bene. But is time I go.”

“But…?” She wanted more. She wanted him to stay the night with her.

“Tired, amore.”

He dressed silently, gathered the folded laundry, and embraced her: “Domani, cara mia. Domani.”

She stood at the door, naked, and watched him walk up the lane.

He closed his cottage door, went to the kitchen, poured another glass of wine, and sat.

He had not anticipated this danger.

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, wrapped now in a white terrycloth robe, she answered a knock at her door.

“Oh! It’s you!”

Fifteen

IT WAS A young couple, or rather the boyfriend, who spotted the body late Friday afternoon. Tommy O’Dea and Tara Fields, his young co-worker from the department store chain Marks & Spencer’s, had rented Mary Trevean’s hay barn cottage by the cliffs for a “naughty weekend.” Tommy, an Irishman from Galway and an ambitious business graduate from University College, Dublin, had been promoted to menswear manager at the big M&S store at Cribb’s Causeway Mall, just outside Bristol. Tara, just twenty-two and a lithe brunette with cropped hair slashed with a thin line of blue dye along the right side and a silver stud in her right nostril, worked in the store’s food hall. Used to seeing Tommy in suit and tie she found him even sexier in tight jeans and a pressed light blue chambray dress shirt rolled up to his elbows. As they sped south in his black Audi A3 Friday afternoon, she noticed a delicate geometric Celtic tattoo traced around his normally covered right forearm as he held the wheel. She thought that mysterious and sexy, too. They’d had lunch together for a few weeks when Tommy suggested they go away. To his surprise, she accepted. She’d followed his advancement in the company and had decided to grab on to his rising star. Tommy was going places. She’d go with him.

They’d had lunch at an ancient, if touristy, pub on Bodmin Moor: the Jamaica Inn. He told her it had figured in a famous book by Daphne du Maurier. She’d never heard of it.

Later that afternoon Tommy pressed the buzzer mounted on the enamel-white frame of the door to Mary’s farmhouse. No one answered. Not to be deterred, for he was rather eager for this weekend with Tara to begin, Tommy walked around the old farmhouse peering into the ground floor windows. He saw nothing until, from a sitting room window, he caught sight of a bare foot. It protruded from behind a sofa, the back of which faced him. Nothing else was visible from his angle. He raced around to the front of the house and, thinking the landlord was ill or had passed out, hammered on the door. There was no answer. The door was locked. He thought of breaking a window but instead punched 999 into his mobile, the police emergency number.

Tara stepped out of the Audi and met Tommy as he walked away from the house.

“What’s the problem? Is she not at home, Tommy? How will we get our key?”

“Someone is home, luv, but lying on the floor. Unconscious, I think. I’ve spoken to the police.”

“Wait, will this ruin our weekend?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps, okay?” And in that moment Tommy O’Dea knew Tara Fields was not for him.

“TERRY? PENWARREN HERE.”

Terry Bates was at her desk at the Bodmin hub. Penwarren was on his way home to Padstow. It had just gone 4:00.

“Comms just contacted me. We’ve got a body down in Boswednack, south of Zennor. Treen Farm. Can you get there straightaway? Morgan’s on a training course in Exeter: community relations, if you can credit it. Can’t reach her. This one’s yours. West is already on his way, along with the forensic pathologist. They’ll be there first. Fast as you can, right?”

“On it, Sir.” She was grinning and was glad “Mister” couldn’t see her.

Bates grabbed her murder kit and headed for the police car park at the rear of the building. This was her first independent murder investigation. She jumped into a white unmarked two-door Ford Escort, wishing she could use a regulation squad car with its lights and claxon siren, and tore out of the lot heading for the A30 south.

DR. JENNIFER DUNCAN, one of two forensic pathologists under contract to the Devon and Cornwall Police, knelt beside the body of Mary Trevean. Duncan had been wrapping up an autopsy at the mortuary in the Royal Cornwall Hospital at Treliske, just up-county outside Truro, when she got the call. She’d driven south and had just begun her examination when she heard the unmistakable growl of Calum West’s turbocharged Volvo Estate as it down-shifted and skidded into the farmyard.

Man’s a menace, she thought to herself, but a brilliant driver. But she was glad to have her favorite crime scene manager on this one.

West logged in with the young community service officer guarding the yellow police tape outside the door, climbed into his white Tyvek jumpsuit and blue paper booties, clamped a hair cap on his head, pulled on two pairs of nitrile gloves (the top pair were always entered into evidence), and entered the house.

“We must find other ways to meet, Jennifer; these rendezvous are always so unseemly…”

“You look like hell, Calum.”

“These outfits are not flattering.”

“I’m talking about you face. You’re knackered.”

“Remind me never to marry a forensic pathologist; I was down here last night. Case nearby. A lot of driving, not much sleep.”

She smiled, patted his cheek gently, and went back to work. West began taking scene photos. The room was tastefully decorated, like one that might have been pictured in his late wife’s favorite magazine, Country Living. The walls were painted a muted light gray with a touch of brown to warm it. The carpet was a darker warm gray. At one end of the long room a white slipcovered sofa faced a hearth with a small jet black Victorian era cast iron coal grate and surround. Its ashes had not been cleared but were cold. Flanking the sofa were two easy chairs covered in natural linen in a herringbone weave. In the center, there was a weathered antique pine tea table stained with a pale lime wash. Bookshelves lined one wall—apparently, the victim was a reader. At the end of the room, opposite the hearth, stood a baby grand piano polished so high that the early evening summer sunlight slanting through the room was almost blinding. A peaceful, domestic scene, West thought.

The victim lay on her back on the carpeted floor. There was no blood. There were no evident signs of violence either upon her body or anywhere in the room itself. It was as if she’d simply fainted.

Except that she was dead.

West watched the deceptively young-looking pathologist examine every inch of the woman’s now naked corpse. She’d cut off the victim’s plush white robe and bagged it for West as evidence. He’d check the pieces later for hair and fibers. She clipped off and bagged the woman’s fingernails for analysis of whatever might be beneath them. Next, she checked the victim’s rectal temperature and swabbed every orifice. It was standard procedure and though it always seemed to West a violation of the deceased, he left her to it. The last thing she did was uncurl the victim’s fingers and take prints.

Terry Bates arrived a half hour later but remained at the door with the rest of West’s SOCO team. She knew better than to enter the house. For now, this was West’s territory. His job was critical: preserve the integrity of scene and evidence, protect against contamination. As soon as West and Duncan were finished examining the body, West’s people would examine every inch of the house: dusting for fingerprints, using tape to lift fibers from furniture and doorjambs, shining special lights to illuminate possible bloodstains, and searching every drawer, cabinet, and armoire in every room until they were satisfied they were done. Terry would follow after every chance of her contaminating the scene was cleared. Her job was investigation, analysis. In the meantime, part of West’s team was already scouring the grounds around the house. His people were experts in a range of technical fields: etymology, geology and soils, archaeology, botany, and more. If there was something to be discovered, they’d find it. Like Duncan and West, all were dressed in sterile white Tyvek coveralls. Roaming the property, bent toward the ground, they looked like a marauding band of semi-upright polar bears.

Inside the house, Duncan finally rose, stretched her back muscles, and broke the stillness that had enveloped the two of them as she worked.

“The thing most people don’t know, Calum, is that homicidal asphyxiation does actually leave a trace. Of course, if you garrote someone, there will be that wire or other ligature lesion around the throat. And manual strangulation will leave bruises and often a broken hyoid bone at the base of the neck.”

“I love it when you talk dirty…”

“Oh stop,” she said, but she was smiling. Black humor was how they got through their often gruesome tasks.

“Come here,” she ordered. “Look at this woman’s eyes.”

West did. “Okay, they’re bloodshot.”

“Most people would think that simply pressing a cushion over someone’s nose and mouth until they stopped breathing, which appears to be the case here, would be traceless. But it will always result in bloodshot eyes, like this victim’s. I’ll spare you the science, but that’s the tell-tale. This death was not of natural causes. The lady was snuffed.”

CALUM AND DUNCAN wrapped the body in a sterile white plastic sheet to protect what evidence might adhere and then slid it into a black body bag, sealing and labeling it.

“This is a first for me, Jenn: suffocation.”

“And one hopes the last, Calum,” she said touching his arm and gathering her kit.

“How do you do this, Jennifer? How do you go on up to the mortuary at Treliske now and take this person apart, piece by piece, having been right here with her, in her own home, surrounded by the things that comprised her life?”

“Same reason you’re here, Calum: to find answers. To me, it’s an honor: honor the victim by finding the answers. It’s my job, yes, but”—she looked at the black plastic bag—“I owe it to her and to everyone I examine.”

“Yeah, me too,” Calum said, his voice soft, as if trying not to wake the body resting on the floor in the bag.

“And if I were you, Calum, I’d collect every cushion in this room and take it into evidence.”

West lifted an eyebrow: “I didn’t know you’d also become a detective, Jenn.”

“Of course I haven’t. But suffocating someone is not easy; it takes determination. Anger, too, I suspect. I’m just trying to fill you in. There may be hair, fibers, even sweat or spit on whatever cushion was used.”

“Time of death?”

“Rigor’s only beginning to go off. Body’s already at room temperature. Sometime last night, I suspect, and less than twenty-four hours, but I’ll get back to you and Morgan on that. I’ll try to get blood and tox results as soon as the lab can do them. I’ll begin the autopsy as soon as I get up to the mortuary. You’ll be there?”

“Can’t this time, Jennifer. My daughters. Can someone else take record photos while you work? I’ve already ordered Roger Morris, my exhibits manager, to be there to take your samples.”

“No problem. Scotty Thomas can do the photos. Though, as mortuary manager, he doesn’t have much fun unless you are there so he can give you a hard time. Penwarren will no doubt call an MCIT meeting at Bodmin for the morning. I’ll see you there. Now, why don’t you stand aside and let these chaps do their job…”

Two men in dark suits had slipped in silently behind him: undertakers. They’d been so quiet it was like they’d appeared out of thin air. Maybe that was a skill they needed for the job. West had placed a trail of grated aluminum plates from the door to the body so no one would disturb possible evidence on the floor. The undertakers stepped carefully, lifted the body bag, and took it out to their waiting van.

“Anything else to report?” West asked Duncan as he watched them leave.

“Yes. She’d had sex. Possibly just before she died. Check the sofa cushions for semen, and the bed upstairs, though I doubt that’s where it happened. I’ve already taken a swab. I’ll have that checked too, but DNA analysis takes time.”

“Thank you, Jennifer.”

She looked at him and her shoulders sagged. “There’s something primitive, almost animalistic about this murder, Calum: copulate, then kill? Like praying mantises.”

“Except in that case the female kills the male…”

“Yes.”

TERRY BATES STEPPED through the door of the farmhouse after Duncan and the body had gone.

West looked up from the hall. “Detective Bates! What a pleasant change from my usual CID companion.”

“Morgan’s at a community relations course up at Exeter.”

“I wish them luck, whoever they are; she’s untrainable.”

Terry tried not to laugh. “Penwarren sent me here. I have some questions.”

“So do I, but you go first.”

“The door, Calum. Was it locked?”

“It was. Uniformed constables from Penzance—both women, by the way—forced it. I suspect they thought the victim was still alive and it was a rescue operation. Thankfully, they backed right out when they discovered it wasn’t and called DS Ralph Pendennis straightaway. He’s CID at the basic command unit at Penzance. Used to work for Morgan. Somehow, they’re still friends. He was here in under a half hour; raced over the moortop lanes, apparently. Immediately reported it as suspicious and Comms took it from there. St. Ives Community Support Officers have been keeping watch.”

“Other doors?”

“Just one other, also locked.”

“So, locked by whom is the question, yes? If the victim locked the doors, how did the killer get in? If the killer walked in, either a door was unlocked or he or she was let in. If the killer locked the place up again afterward, how did he or she get the key to close up the house? Where is that key? Looks like the killer knew her and was someone whom she trusted, at least to admit to her house.”

“Whoa, slow down there young lady! Put a few pounds on you, spike your hair, bleach it platinum, and I’d swear you were Morgan Davies!”

“I’ll pretend you didn’t say that.”

“Good. She’d smack me.”

“So would I, except that I know how you really feel about her.”

“Excuse me?

“Oh go on, Calum…”

West blinked. “You’re an observant woman, aren’t you?”

“I’m a woman. We observe. I’m also a detective.”

“Then I plead guilty, for what choice do I have against such an onslaught of feminine instinct?”

“Get over it. You said you had questions, too. Give.”

“I have many questions, but one especially big one: the young couple who reported that Mary Trevean appeared to be unconscious had rented one of her cottages for the weekend. Before St. Ives took them in for questioning they explained there were three properties the victim had for holiday lets. They’d chosen the one with the best view. I took a quick look around Trevean’s house for just one thing, which I did not find. My people found nothing either. But it should have been somewhere obvious.”

“And that would be…?”

West smiled, but Terry blinked once and beat him to it.

“A reservations book! Of course! The record of her renters…It’s gone?”

West shrugged. “All I can say is that we have not found it. There’s a counter in the kitchen with a tall seat by the phone where I should think she’d have kept it, but the surface is empty. Wiped clean, in fact. Let’s just have my people continue to take the place apart looking for the book, her personal papers, and whatever else and then the scene will be all yours.”

“The phone?”

“Wall-mounted land line. No mobile evident. Old fashioned, she was, I guess.”

“Who’s her phone service provider?”

“British Telecom, according to bills in a kitchen drawer: they say she had cable and Internet, too.”

“Computer, then?

“That’s not been found either.”

“I wish Morgan were here.”

“You’re doing fine, Terry. All the right questions. I’m just short of answers.”

Sixteen

DURING THE FRIDAY training workshop’s afternoon coffee break, Morgan Davies checked in both with Comms and the Bodmin Hub. She didn’t need coffee, she needed a vodka tonic just to make it to the end of this tiresome day she thought as she paced outside in the car park.

But after she received her messages she did not return to the workshop.

Keeping to the posted speed limit, the average driving time south on the A30 from Exeter, in Devon, to St. Ives, in Cornwall, over ninety miles, was just under an hour and a half. Hammering her unmarked white Ford Escort estate wagon at well over ninety miles per hour most of the way and cursing herself for not having Calum West’s turbocharged Volvo Estate with the hidden flashers, she shot down the A30 and turned into the lane to Treen Farm in Boswednack in a bit more than an hour. She’d deal with the speed camera citations later. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Terry or Calum; she just wanted to be at the scene.

Calum and his SOCO team were just packing up.

“Where’s Terry?” she barked as she climbed from her car, trying to uncurl her steering wheel fingers. She was beginning to suffer from arthritis, one more insult of aging she did not suffer kindly.

“And a fine good afternoon to you, too, Detective Inspector Davies.” Calum said.

“Where is she, dammit?”

“Been here and gone and a first-rate job she did investigating, too.”

But there was something in his voice, an uncharacteristically missing note of playfulness. She looked at him and realized he was exhausted; he was pale as limestone and his shoulders sagged forward as if boneless. In a very private part of her soul she worried for him. He should be taking care, pacing himself, but he wasn’t—he hadn’t last night and apparently hadn’t today, either. How could a man so smart be so stupid? She decided it was a male thing: he could not let go. He had to get it right; he had to excel. That part she understood. She was made of the same stuff. They were both driven to seek answers and solve puzzles. And murder was the toughest puzzle of all. Neither of them could walk away, no matter how knackered.

“Let’s sit here,” she said, pointing to the granite step by the front door, her voice somehow both gentle and commanding. “Why don’t you bring me up to speed?”

Calum sat, rested his forearms on his knees, caught his breath, and looked up at the naked tors in the distance. “Some murders are such mysteries…”

“Well, yes.”

He ignored this. “So, here’s this almost certainly blameless middle aged woman,” he said, as if talking to himself, “well-liked by her neighbors—we checked. And a widow. Former husband, a successful farmer, died young a while back. She’s been running a popular cottage rental business here ever since. Three cottages. Busy the rentals are, even in winter we’re told by a neighbor, partly because of her genuine hospitality. Not a soul who’d wish her ill. Then she’s killed.”

“What about her holiday renters?”

“It was renters, a couple arriving this afternoon, who called 999. And before you jump on them, they’re clear. The victim was dead long before they’d left home in Bristol.

“Who else was renting?”

“That’s the problem, like I told Terry. We don’t know: there’s no reservation book and the cottages are empty.”

“Computer then?”

“No, and no modem anywhere, either, though she was paying for Internet service according to her bills. Reckon she took reservations over the phone.”

“So, she doesn’t have a website?”

“Not that we know of. She’s probably listed in one of the holiday letting agencies’ websites, maybe only with a phone contact number. Terry’s gone back to Bodmin to research the agency and Internet stuff.”

Davies smiled. “The girl’s already ahead of me. I think I actually like that.”

“She’s first rate, Morgan. Thanks to you.”

“No, she had it to begin with. That was so clear in the Chynoweth case. What about the basics: Fingerprints? Fibers?”

“In the house all prints seem to be her own; there’s one outside on a sill that isn’t. If she had a visitor, he or she was very careful. Though I suspect it’s a ‘he.’ Duncan says she’d just had intercourse.”

“Jesus. Forced?”

“No evidence of that, according to Duncan, but who knows?”

“She did.”

“Yes, well…of course.”

“These holiday cottages: you’ve searched them?”

“Come on, Morgan…”

“Sorry, of course you did.”

West sighed and shook his head. “It’s been a long day, Morgan. And then you showed up…”

She softened. “I’m just trying to catch up.”

“I know. I understand. My team searched all three of her properties, okay? They’re quite charming rentals, classy even, and she was a good housekeeper: Like her own house, everything is spotless. Fingerprints here and there, naturally, but yet to be analyzed. But in one of the cottages, called the ‘Chicken Coop’ according to a neighboring farmer who walked us around, the cleaning was recent and rigorous. With our lights, we picked up bleach in a number of spots. But nothing else, and no prints. Not even hers.”

“There was no sign of cleaning bleach in the other cottages? It’s a common disinfectant.”

“None, except here in her own house. Our lights picked it out. We found a red plastic carrier tray with spray bottles of the usual household cleaning brands, each arranged neatly in compartments that I reckon she took around when preparing her cottages for the next guests. But no bleach.”

“Trash bins?”

“Nothing. It looks like she had no guests this past week; there is some fine dust on the surfaces of two of the cottage bin lids, salt dust from the sea, I reckon. The bin outside the back door of the Chicken Coop though was empty, almost sterile.”

“Your people have been busy…”

“We do our best.”

“No, Calum, you are the best. And have my greatest respect…”

“And affection?”

Morgan grinned. “A bit of that, too, but don’t get any ideas.”

“I am too tired for ideas.”

Morgan looked at him. “Calum, you’re tired because your heart isn’t working properly and you know it: heart irregular, less oxygen to that marvelous brain of yours. Thus, you tire. This is obvious and basic. When are you going to admit it? A few more health absences and the brass in Exeter are going to push you out.”

“They can’t. I’m too good.”

“You are, and you’re not; there’s always some young vulture circling to replace you. So, make sure you get all this new data entered in the HOLMES II file. I’ll do the same. Okay? And rest.”

Calum looked at the ground. “Okay. I hear you. Thank you.”

“I should slap you silly, you idiot.”

He turned and grinned: “That would be lovely.”

“Oh shit…” Morgan said.

West looked up as another car, an aging and dented VW diesel sedan, slipped down the lane and stopped near their cars. The driver’s door opened, releasing a small cloud of cigarette smoke and a wiry man in his early forties.

“Just what we need right now: bloody Lance MacLeod from The Cornishman. Stay here, Calum. I’ll handle this.”

MacLeod, his head bald enough to look nearly shaved, knew enough to stop in front of the crime scene tape. He wore a greasy old Barbour jacket, perhaps to make him look like a fellow countryman, but it had not recently been waxed and now it drooped limply from his narrow shoulders. He had a shiny new digital recorder in one hand. He grinned at the same time that she saw his thumb activate it.

“Who the hell invited you to the party, MacLeod?”

“And good afternoon to you, too, Detective Sergeant Davies…”

“That’s Detective Inspector, you leech.”

MacLeod lifted his hands as if in surrender.

“Inspector Davies; my congratulations and apologies. But you have your job and I have mine. A crime, a murder I hear, has occurred on my beat and it is my responsibility to my employer to ferret out the facts.”

“Ferret. Yes. That’s how I always have seen you: low, relentless, digging into dark holes.”

“You are unkind, but that’s to be expected. Can’t tell you how much we’ve missed you since you left Penzance.”

She wanted to smack him, but that, too, would be “news.” “What do you want? We have nothing to report as yet.”

“Ah, but I’ve done my research. The person living here is a Mrs. Mary Trevean, according to the property records. Runs a cottage letting business, I gather. May I assume she is your victim?”

“You may not. Someone did, indeed, die here, but your use of the term ‘victim’ is premature. There is no evidence yet that any crime has occurred, MacLeod. People die all the time.”

The reporter shook his head and nodded toward West, who still sat on the cottage steps, taking in the show: “Then why is Cornwall’s best Scene of Crimes expert here if no crime has been committed?” He waved at West. West did not respond.

Davies smiled. She was getting nowhere and sought a truce. “In the fullness of time, MacLeod, we will let you know what we know when we know. We have only just begun this investigation.”

“This murder investigation?”

“I did not say that, if you recall.”

MacLeod bowed. “No, you did not. But I’ll be in touch.” Then the reporter withdrew and walked around the Trevean property mumbling observations into his recorder.

Davies returned to West.

“Nicely done, Morgan.”

She shook her head. “He’ll write something nonetheless. It will be speculative but he’ll pitch it as news…and Mister will be angry.”

“I’m usually who they want to talk to about the scene. Thank you for stepping in on my behalf.”

West still looked haggard. She pulled him off the step and hugged his arm. “Go home now, Calum.”

“Yes. My little girls will be waiting.”

“Not so little anymore, your Meghan and Kaitlin…what, eight and ten now?”

“Yes, and their Gran, Ruth, isn’t getting any younger. I can see the wear the girls put on her. She adores them and they do her, but I am being unfair to continue to ask her to look after them.”

“I reckon those girls keep Ruth on top of her game, though. Pushing seventy now, isn’t she?”

West nodded.

“And no real sign of failing, last I saw her. But if you have a heart attack or stroke or something, Calum, they’d be sunk.”

“Yes. Yes, I know. I hear you.”

BACK AT THE Bodmin Hub late Friday afternoon, Terry Bates had found several holiday letting agencies serving Cornwall, but most were national organizations. It was at a local service, “Cornish Cottages,” where she finally found Mary Trevean’s listing. As she expected, there was no direct computer link to a website or even photos for the property, only descriptions, reviews, and a home phone number, so she called the agency directly. A recording said, “If you wish to make a reservation, please contact the owner; Cornwall Cottages lists and represents our clients, but we do not handle their reservations. However, if you have a billing problem, please leave a message…”

Terry left a message as brutally explicit as she could manage about Mary Trevean and did not have long to wait.

“Mary’s…gone?” Julie Weston said, her voice barely a whisper on the phone. “I can’t believe this. She was a wonderful client and her vacationers always gave her five stars. What in heaven’s name has happened?”

Terry explained, briefly.

“Good Lord. This can’t be…”

“I’m afraid it can, Ms. Weston. I only have one question for you: who were the last persons to rent Mrs. Trevean’s cottages?”

“Oh, my dear, I cannot say.”

Terry wondered if, had her voice been male, she’d be referred to as “my dear.”

“Cannot or will not, madam?”

“No, you misunderstand! We never have any idea who has rented a property from one of our clients; we are simply a connection between renter and owner. A conduit, so to speak. If you think about old phones, we’re just the line between the caller and the receiver.”

“And yet I reached you on a line that is supposed to be devoted to billing questions.”

“Yes, oh yes indeed. You see we only step in when a customer—or a client, for that matter—has a problem. Then we get the particulars and follow up. It’s part of our service.”

“And in the case of Mrs. Trevean?”

“Nothing, I’m afraid. I checked before I returned your call. She never had a complaint. Like I said, customers loved her.”

Bates rang off and beat her fist on her birch veneer desk. She could almost feel Morgan closing in. She wanted to be ahead, to have significant information to add to the case file. She was getting nowhere.

She lifted the phone again and punched in the number of the private police line direct to British Telecom.

THE LIGHT WAS fading late Friday when Morgan Davies stalked into the incident room at Bodmin, her chin, as usual, leading as if it intended to arrive a few moments ahead of the rest of her large and lushly appointed body. The sunlight that usually illuminated the office had begun to dim and she turned on the lights.

Bates was seated before a computer at one of the desks. “Good evening, Morgan!”

Morgan slumped into her usual chair. “I can see from the smug look on your face that you have something. I’ve been to the murder scene. It’s already been a long day. What do you have?”

Bates described her largely fruitless search of holiday letting agencies and the uselessness of the small company that handled Mary Trevean’s cottages.

“That’s it?”

“No. I’ve been on to British Telecom, using our single point of contact access. They gave me Mary Trevean’s itemized call record, both incoming and outgoing.

“And?  I am not interested in pulling teeth here, detective.”

Bates lifted an eyebrow. Her boss was behind the curve and clearly annoyed about it.

“So, while we can trace the renters she had up until just a couple of weeks ago and also before,” Terry said, “it seems there were no calls from holiday-renters during the last two weeks, except the couple who found her. The weather’s been filthy. It was pissing down until late this last week. There are local calls, of course. But only one other that wasn’t.”

“Yes?”

“It was from a mobile. BT were able to give me the IEMI number.”

“The what?” Morgan had been using mobiles for a few years but hadn’t a clue how they really worked.

Bates smiled. “Okay, so every phone has an international mobile equipment identity number—that’s the IEMI. According to the number, BT says this phone was purchased somewhere outside the UK. It could also have been stolen.”

“But we can track down the caller with that number?

“Actually, no. See, the phone is just the body, it’s not the brain. The brain’s the SIM card inside, the subscriber identification module.”

Morgan rolled her eyes skyward. “I know what a SIM card is, Terry.” She did, but only vaguely.

“Right. Okay. But here’s the thing: a SIM card can be moved from phone to phone. And anyone can get a SIM card just by signing up at any High Street retail mobile phone shop for a pay-as-you go subscription. They give them away.”

“So, the card tells us the identity of the caller?”

“Only theoretically. A bad guy can get one using a false ID, make a call only once, then chuck the SIM card into a bin somewhere and get another one. No way to trace identity.”

“And the—what’s it?—the IEMI?”

“Useless. The phone itself is little more than a shell.”

Morgan looked around the room as if for deliverance. “So, the net result of all this techno-chat is nothing?”

“No. It tells us that someone contacted Mary Trevean, possibly a cottage renter, but also someone who might have had something to hide, someone who did not want to be identified by their phone or traced. I think that’s helpful. It suggests a stealthy person of interest, identity as yet unknown. But a person of interest in her murder nonetheless.”

“West’s people say one of the cottages, the Chicken Coop, was practically bleached clean.”

“Could be our person of interest, our anonymous caller. Oh, and by the way, Mrs. Trevean had Internet service, although Calum’s people have found no computer.”

“I know.” Morgan shook her head, but not in disappointment. It was admiration, not that she’d ever underestimated the young detective. Morgan had been in the force for coming up on twenty-five years. She could sense retirement rising slowly from just below the far horizon of her long career. She liked to think of it as a sunrise, a beginning. It would be soon—not this year, nor the next, perhaps—but it was coming, assuming the force didn’t chuck her out for insubordination first. Terry Bates would be an able replacement, of that she was sure. But Morgan had no conscious plan for retirement. Not yet, anyway. If she thought of it at all, which she seldom did, all she had were vague dreams about how her life might become different.

One dream involved Calum West who, though he was a constant thorn in her side, she’d come to love, if that was even the right term. She didn’t really know a lot about love. But their affection and respect kept growing, unaided by romance. That had to mean something. She reckoned the rest might follow if they ever stopped sparring…or even if they didn’t. And then there were those two sweet daughters of his. She could see a dream there: being Calum’s partner and the girls’ stepmum, though she had no experience with children, not even a sibling. Still, she felt drawn to the girls as if moon-driven. Was it maternal? If so, it terrified her.

Then there was big, bearish Garry Ronan, the landlord at the Blisland Inn, her new local. There was nothing not to like about the gentle giant. They’d met at the inn soon after she’d been promoted to the Major Crime Investigation Team and moved north from Newlyn after the Chynoweth case.  She’d been looking for a friendly village near Bodmin and had found both a friendly inn and a friendly innkeeper. He’d treated her like a queen from the start. He’d also arranged for her to rent a house, a newly-renovated old stone hay barn on the flanks of Bodmin Moor, which it turned out he owned and had restored himself. He was sweet on her, no question. But was she really available? Was he? She’d married and divorced long ago. Considering something like that again seemed more daunting than facing a suspect with a gun, and possibly just as dangerous. But late at night she thought about being with the bear.

Then there was St. Mary’s, the main island in the Isles of Scilly, southwest of Cornwall, where she’d gone on holiday several times. The Isles were an archipelago washed by the still-warm remnants of the Gulf Stream, the great current having swung east and south, clockwise, from North America all the way to the Isles. The climate there was mild, supporting hardy palm trees and other sub-tropical plants and flowers, and the beaches were so white they seemed made of grains of glass crystal worn smooth. The water was as clear as the Aegean and, in summer, almost as warm. There she had found a pace of life that brought her a level of inner peace that did not come to her naturally. She smiled at how simple she really was: all it took to create that peace was a seat at a waterside island pub, a plate of freshly grilled local fish, a tossed salad, some crusty bread, and a bottle of crisp white wine: heaven. But also a lonely heaven? She loved the Isles, but maybe that was a fantasy, too. She couldn’t decide and didn’t want to.

The plain fact was that what gave her life meaning, what catapulted her out of bed each morning, was her passion for solving crimes. Without cases to solve she did not know who she was…or could ever become. It was her calling. It was all she’d ever done and all she’d ever wanted to do. Did she even need someone, a man, in her life? The whole question was a huge annoyance so she ignored it and plodded ahead, as if through a dim tunnel of her own creation. She didn’t see a light ahead.

Later that evening, just before heading north to the Blisland Inn for supper, a chat with Garry, and then home, Morgan was in the incident room trolling through the database on the Trevean case. West had just logged in a new entry about SOCO’s search of the scene. She scanned it and was about to close it out when a name in the file leapt out at her: Eldridge Biggins. West had said a neighboring farmer had walked them around the Trevean property. The farmer was Biggins, the same man who had been one of her tablemates at Zennor’s Tinners Arms: Eldridge, his “sainted wife” Alice, and Billie, the duck man…

“ALL RIGHT, YOU ragamuffins, off to bed!” Calum yelled to Megan and Kaitlin that Friday night. He’d chased his daughters around the house, arms wide to scoop them up, even though they were getting too big to scoop. They screamed and ran ahead and dove into their beds.

“Where’s Granny Ruth?” Megan, the younger daughter, demanded.

Calum struggled to catch his breath. He was so strong in other ways; why was his heart failing him?

“Granny Ruth has the night off. Needs a break. You two delinquents would drive anyone batty. It’s a wonder I haven’t locked you up in the nick already for disruption of the peace!”

“Like you’d ever,” the older and wiser Kaitlin said.

He hugged her.

“But we need a story first!” Megan protested.

Calum turned to their bedside bookcase. “Right then, what shall it be?”

“Not a book, silly,” Megan cried, mischief like a mask spread across her face, “a real story!”

He saw Kaitlin raise an eyebrow. There were times he thought his eldest was already grown, she was that perceptive: comes from my side of the family, he mused. She’s the thinker. Meagan, now, she’s the emotional one, the enthusiast, just like her Mum was.

“What kind of story?” he asked.

“From today! From your job!” Megan demanded.

They thought his job terribly exciting. He sighed and thought for a moment.

“Okay, so today was a remarkable day,” he began. “You’ll never believe what happened…”

He waited. They waited.

“I had to climb all the way up to the summit of Brown Willy, to the very highest place in all of Cornwall. Thousands of feet high, it is, mind you.

“And you’ll never guess why I did.”

They did not try.

“I got a call on my mobile, you see… I had to go all the way up there to arrest the dragon.”

“What dragon?” Megan cried.

“The Brown Willy Dragon, of course!”

“A dragon…” Kaitlin looked at the ceiling.

“But that was dangerous,” Megan cried. She pulled her covers up to her dimpled chin.

“Not really. The Brown Willy dragon is pretty peaceful most of the time. Sits up there, eats the occasional sheep…”

“Yuk!”

“…and mostly just guards the summit.”

Kaitlin cocked her head to the right, waiting for the next implausibility.

“But lately he’s been bothering walkers…”

“Bothering?”

“Yes. He’ll hear them huffing and puffing up to the summit, just like I did today, and what do you think he does?”

“He eats them?”

“Good Lord, Megan,” Kaitlin said.

“What, then?”

Calum lowered his voice and leaned close to his youngest. “He waits in his cave until they pass and then he creeps up behind them…”

Megan waited, breathless…

“...and goes BOOO!”

Megan jumped but recovered. “He does not! You said he was a good dragon.”

“Maybe sometimes he’s in a bad mood,” Kaitlin said, as if to herself.

“Maybe he is, Kaitlin,” Calum answered, thinking she might be having a bad mood, too.

“What did you do next?” Megan demanded.

“Hauled him down to the station in Bodmin, read him his rights, and locked him up, I did.”

“You didn’t!”

“I did.”

Kaitlin shook her head. She was sitting cross-legged on her bed. “But he wanted to call his lawyer, right?”

“How did you ever guess?”

“That’s what they all do.”

“Did you get him one?” Megan demanded.

“Do you have any idea, Megan West, how hard it is to find a dragon lawyer in this county? Especially late on a Friday afternoon?”

Megan sat up. “You made that all up.” He could tell she was hopeful that this was the case.

“Well, my dear, you said you wanted a story…”

He tucked Megan in and beckoned Kaitlin out with his finger. They sat at the top of the bungalow’s stairs.

He hugged her close. “The dragon isn’t the only one in a bad mood, is he?”

Kaitlin looked at him. “Maybe not.”

“What is it, dear girl?”

The girl looked away. “We need a new Mum. Granny Ruth loves us, that’s certain. But she’s old. She sleeps a lot in her chair in the lounge with the telly on. I worry about her.”

“I hear you, my love.”

Not for the first time, Calum thought about Morgan.

Seventeen

THE MAJOR CRIME Investigation Team gathered in the incident room at Bodmin at nine Saturday morning.

DCI Arthur Penwarren turned away from the window overlooking the countryside he so loved and from which he took such comfort. Morgan was there, of course, and Terry Bates. Calum West had arrived with some of his Scene of Crimes people from the previous day’s investigation. Penwarren also recognized PC Adam Novak, who represented the St. Ives station, and welcomed him back. Dr. Jennifer Duncan, though, was in charge.

Penwarren nodded for her to begin.

“Okay, Mary Trevean: healthy and well built, as it were, but not overweight,” she began. “No apparent disease or infirmity. An attractive widow, early middle age. Homicidal asphyxiation. The evidence is clear. Calum’s people have identified the cushion used.”

“Calum?”

“From her sofa, boss. Possible trace of sputum, which we’ve sent off for analysis. Might be other traces on the other side of the murder weapon, too, if a cushion can be called that. But, as you know, the DNA tests take a while.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” He turned back to the pathologist: “What else, Jennifer?”

“As I noted in the file, she had sex but I cannot determine if it was pre- or post-mortem. There are vaginal abrasions. It was rough.”

“Jesus,” Morgan mumbled.

“I have possible fibers from under her nail clippings, which remain to be analyzed. Probably from the cushion. But no skin. Little evidence of a struggle, though she may have, unless she was already unconscious from the alcohol.”

“The alcohol?”

“Yes. High blood alcohol count: enough in a woman of her size to render her inebriated, possibly semi-conscious. Stomach contents suggest she’d also had a pasta dinner, so wine is the alcohol source I’m going to say.”

Morgan watched Jennifer report. Duncan, who always looked like she’d just stepped out of a fashion shoot at these meetings, was wearing an ankle-length natural linen skirt, low heeled saddle brown sandals, and a man-tailored white blouse, tails out and cinched with a thin brown belt that matched her shoes. There was a short necklace of bleached shells around her neck and her blond hair was pulled to one side in a saucy ponytail. She must have worked well into the evening in the mortuary but managed to look fresh this morning nonetheless. Morgan tried not to hate Duncan, her friend and colleague. She admired her greatly.

“Okay, so we have opportunity, yes?” Morgan said. “And the assailant was likely known to her. And we have means: suffocation by a sofa cushion. But why? What’s the motive? Mary Trevean seems to have lived an uncomplicated and quiet domestic life: she cared for her guests; they loved her and were repeat visitors. Well-respected locally, as well. Who could want her dead?”

The room was silent.

“I wonder if I might direct our attention next to Trevega House,” Penwarren suggested.

A few days earlier, Morgan would have exploded at the shift away from the murder. She would have admitted that the events at Trevega were bizarre: a dead cow, a fire, a ruined well, a hurt dog, a car crash. A series of misfortunes at best and no evidence to the contrary. But the apparent attack on the girl, Lee, changed everything for Morgan. She and Lee were sisters in grief; they both had suffered terrible, life-changing losses. But no one had ever attacked Morgan, and they—whoever they were—had nearly killed Lee. A protective fury was building within her, as if the girl were her own.

She took a breath. “You want to fill us in on Trevega House, Sir?

Penwarren paused. How much could he reveal?

“The people at Trevega House, the family called Rhys-Jones, are close to and deeply loyal to the Crown. I have known them since my Scotland Yard days. I respect them.”

He looked around the table. “If any of you can make an argument that these events, one after another, are circumstantial and unconnected, I am eager to hear your analysis. I am serious. Someone please disabuse me of the notion that something dangerous may be going on there.”

Morgan said nothing; she was deep into her fear for the girl. There was a pause and then Terry Bates said, “Really, this is a maths problem, isn’t it?”

Penwarren tilted his head. “Go on.”

“It’s a matter of statistical probability. How many strange and random events occurring in a single place during a fixed period of time have to happen before it begins to add up to something no longer random: a pattern?”

Penwarren smiled. “My point exactly.”

“And how long,” Bates continued, “before it leads to the attempted murder of young Lee, or even, perhaps, the very real murder of Mary Trevean only a few miles away? When does it all become statistically significant?”

Silence.

Terry saw her colleagues’ disbelief. “I think they are related, Trevean and Trevega,” Terry continued, almost in a whisper, “but I have no evidence to support that conclusion.”

“For what it’s worth, Terry, I have no evidence either,” Penwarren said. “They could be entirely unrelated. But it’s time we questioned that.”

Morgan Davies looked at her clasped hands for a moment, as if her knotted fingers could contain the information she held but knew she must share.

“I have something that may be relevant,” she said.

Penwarren looked at her; he’d never known her to be indirect.

“You sent me down to Zennor and the Tinners Arms for a night to chat up the locals. It was chilly and I sat at a table by the fire with a farmer called Eldridge Biggins, his wife Alice, and their friend Billie.”

Penwarren nodded.

“Last night I read the SOCO team’s report on the scene of the Trevean case. The neighboring farmer who showed Calum’s people around Mary Trevean’s properties was Biggins. In fact, after Trevean’s husband died, Eldridge Biggins bought up their pastures and livestock. I checked the property records early this morning. Biggins was a quiet sort; his wife did most of the talking, and he professed only admiration for the people at Trevega House.” She paused and took a breath. “But I suggest he may be a person of interest.”

Penwarren turned back to his window overlooking the valley and pushed his fingers, slender as piano ivories, through his long graying hair.

“It is a lead, certainly. Interview him, Morgan. Camborne station. Adam, can you bring him up from Boswednack?”

“Yes, sir. Of course. When?”

“This afternoon, if possible. Let’s move quickly. But make sure he understands this is just a routine interview of people known to the victim, one of several we’re doing. He is not a suspect. Anything else, then?”

Adam Novak spoke up. “About that brake line failure, sir? That was definitely intentional.”

“I read your report, Constable. Please follow up when you can.”

Eighteen

SIR MICHAEL RHYS-JONES arrived at Trevega House midday on Saturday in a police car with a uniformed Devon and Cornwall Police constable as his driver. Nicola, in the laundry room on the ground floor at the back of the house, heard tyres crunching on the crushed gravel rear terrace. She thought it must be Andrew and Lee coming back for lunch.

Nicola stepped out the door to the terrace as an old man in a bespoke suit climbed out of the police car.

“Daddy!”

Sir Michael was not Nicola’s father. He was the father of her violently abusive ex-husband, now banished from his own family. But they were as devoted to each other as father and daughter. She ran across the drive and wrapped him in her arms.

“Why do you never tell us you’re coming?” she demanded, kissing his cheek. “You’re impossible!”

“Nature of my work, my dear; nature of my work. Sorry. Don’t mean to be so secretive. Or rude, come to that. Happened to be down here on business and thought I’d pop in. Might there be something for luncheon?”

The Rhys-Jones’s, miners who’d come south from Wales to work the Cornish tin mines in the late seventeen hundreds, had done very well indeed. In time, they started their own mines, sinking vertical shafts along the Atlantic Coast south of St. Ives. It was at the height of the boom, in the mid-eighteen hundreds, that Sir Michael’s great grandfather, Thomas, had Trevega House built.

Nicola pulled her mobile from her rear jeans pocket and called Andrew: “Get down here! Michael’s come! And bring Jamie and Lee!”

Nicola ushered Michael into the big kitchen, opened a bottle of claret, poured a glass for him, and busied herself preparing a platter of sliced meats and cheese and fresh salad greens from her spring garden. She slapped a crusty granary loaf on the breadboard at the table and gave Sir Michael a serrated knife.

“Here: do something useful,” she ordered. Then suddenly she turned and said, “Where’s your driver, then? Get him in here, you old cad. The man has to eat, too!”

Sir Michael had just roused his stunned driver when Andrew’s Land Rover Defender, now returned but still dented, bounced up the rutted back lane to the big house.

“Sir Michael!” Andrew called as he climbed from the Defender. He was still recovering from his concussion and moved with care. Jamie followed.

Michael took Andrew’s hand. “It’s Michael, Andrew. Or Dad. Time you got used to that, my boy. No standing on ceremony here. And Jamie, my friend: how are you?”

“Not bad for an older chap, Michael,” he said. “Come to check our progress, have you?”

“No, come to see this young lass, I did!”

Even though her shoulder and arm were in a cast, Lee had managed to squirm out from the back of the Land Rover.

“Who are you?” she demanded as she marched up to him.

“Lee!” Andrew said.

“I’m Michael,” the old man answered, bowing, hands on his hips. “I own this place. But I have heard all about you, young lady. Therefore, is it so beyond consideration that I might want to meet you? Especially after your accident?”

The girl scrunched up her freckled nose. “People don’t come to see me and I wouldn’t know what to do if they did.”

Sir Michael nodded and took her good hand. “Then that is their loss. Come, let’s us go inside and see what Nicola’s arranged for luncheon, shall we? Can you eat with you left hand?”

“I’m left-handed.”

“Are you indeed! The story goes, down here in Cornwall, that left-handers are witches. Are you one?”

“Not yet,” Lee said, ducking her head shyly as if suddenly caught out. “Working on it.”

“ALL RIGHT,” SIR Michael confessed when they’d finished lunch. He’d dismissed his driver. “I happened to be down here on another assignment and I thought I’d check on this restoration project in which I’ve invested so much. I know about the fire and whatnot but this young lady’s accident troubled me.”

“It wasn’t an accident. I felt it coming,” Lee said. She was sitting next to him and, under the table, holding his hand. She didn’t know why.

“If so, young lady, that is most remarkable and wondrous. Are you a bit like Jamie’s lady, Flora? She has many skills, I understand.”

“I’m not like Flora. She’s a witch. I’m different; I sense things others don’t.” She looked away from the old man. “It’s…it’s hard to explain, but Flora understands.”

“You needn’t try to explain,” he said, squeezing her hand. “We are all the richer for your gift, aren’t we?” he said, looking at the rest.

“We most certainly are…” Nicola said, beaming.

“Now, as the financier of all the work allegedly going on here, I should like a tour, Andrew and Jamie, if you have something to show…and if this young lady beside me might pardon me for leaving.”

Lee tilted her head and squinted at the old man.

“I help them, too, you know. I tell them where to put the stones.”

“Do you indeed?”

“She does, sir; has the knack, the vision,” Jamie said.

“But that’s hardly a lady’s job…”

“Why not?” Lee demanded.

“I wouldn’t go there, Michael, you’ll only lose,” Andrew said, laughing.

“Oh, go on then, you three,” Nicola said. “Lee and I will clean up after you, as we women so often must….”

As they left, Lee looked at Nicola as if she’d lost her mind.

“Look,” Nicola explained, “sometimes men have things they need to talk about alone, just like we girls do. Just my instinct in this case. Let’s give them a chance.”

“What is he up to, Nicky?”

“Who?”

“That Sir Michael.”

“Haven’t a clue, sweetie. I never have. The man’s a walking mystery. But I know enough to trust him. You should, too. He’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a loving father. He loves us, all of us. He gave us this estate to look after. He gave you this safe home, too. That’s enough for me. How about you?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

The girl looked out the kitchen window and watched them leave in the battered Land Rover. “Is he like my step-grandfather or something?”

“If you’d let him be I suspect that would thrill him down to his toes.”

Lee considered. She was not one for snap judgments. “Okay, I’ll give that a go. He’s important, isn’t he?”

“What makes you think that?”

Lee made a face. “Fancy clothes, police driver, owns this place and who knows what else? Come on…”

ANDREW LED SIR Michael first to the burnt gardener’s cottage. He and Jamie had already cleaned and exposed the granite walls but the house was still open to the sky.

“I know, Michael. It’s not much to look at right now, but we’ll soon begin framing and roofing. This will be a two-story, two-bedroom, one bath, self-catering unit overlooking the garden Nicola’s about to restore. The garden will include flowers, of course, but also vegetables for the bed and breakfast business we hope to establish at the main house. Nicola is even considering doing evening meals: a couple of meal choices, local ingredients, and a short wine list.”

“I might just come to stay,” Michael said.

“But come down the valley and let us show you the best part.”

Andrew and Jamie drove Sir Michael down to their pride of place: Trevega Mill. The mill race had long since been blocked, but the mill itself, an elegant gable-roofed almost three-story stone structure, stood proud but hollow-eyed above the stream that raced down from the moorland above. Its immobile oak water wheel, taller than two men, dry for decades, was still intact.

Andrew and Jamie led Sir Michael inside the abandoned structure.

“Careful how you go in here, Michael; floor’s not reliable. And this will take a little imagination on your part. But I see three separate rental units in this big space. Here on the ground floor there will be an open plan living area incorporating those magnificent granite grinding stones and the wooden shaft from the water wheel as a centerpiece in the kitchen. There’s never been a hearth in this mill, of course, but we’ll build one in the traditional style on the north wall of the lounge. It’ll be a gas fire vented directly out the back wall: very efficient, welcoming and blazing, but with almost no emissions. A fan will propel heat into the interior. There will be two bedrooms and a bath ranged along the south wall. It will be a top-of-the-line family holiday rental. Install high-end fixtures, appliances, linens, and the like and you’ll be able to charge luxury prices. Upstairs, where grain would have been loaded into the hopper to be sent down to the grinding stones, we’ll have two smaller studio suites with cathedral ceilings open to the rafters. They’ll have kitchenettes and be accessed by a new exterior staircase. All the utilities in this building will be located on the upper floor. In the unlikely event the stream floods, they’ll be protected. Nicola reckons that with St. Ives less than three miles north you’ll be able to have these units occupied almost the year ‘round.”

Sir Michael lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “It gets pretty stormy here in winter, you know…”

“Which is one reason why the windows will have triple glazing: it’s a new technology developed by an architect, David Gale, just up the coast in Devon. Central heating’s electric, by the way. But thanks to those windows and the dense foam slab insulation we’ll be using, there will be very low heating bills. You’ll earn back the extra cost of the materials in no time.”

Sir Michael smiled and shook his head. “I don’t know how you can see these flats in this dingy old space, but I trust you to make it so, Andrew. And you, too, Jamie.”

They stepped out of the mill into the sunshine and climbed into the Land Rover. But Andrew did not start the engine.

“Michael?”

“Yes?”

“You didn’t come all the way down here to check on our progress. And you have no other business in Cornwall today, do you? You couldn’t, given the limited flight schedule between London’s Gatwick airport and Newquay. And you’ll have to leave very soon to get the last plane back, won’t you?”

The old man looked at him. “When my people investigated you, Andrew, a full year or more ago and before I could fully trust you with my dear Nicola, they told me not to underestimate you. A highly developed analytic mind, they advised; MI5 quality, they said. And, no, I did not come to tour the estate.”

In the back seat, Jamie felt like he was a football fan in the stands waiting for the real match to begin.

“What is it, then?”

“We have lost track of him.”

“Who’s we?”

“Let’s just say my people.”

“Who’s him?”

“Jeremy, my own son, God help me…Nicola’s ex-husband. We have lost track of him.”

“I thought you’d banished him.”

“But I kept watch.”

Andrew stared out the windscreen. “What, exactly, is Jeremy’s status, Michael? We’ve never known. All Nicola or I know is that you made him disappear.”

Michael looked at the hands folded in his lap, which were blotched with brown age spots.

“He’s been dispossessed. Of this property.”

“If he knows that, why are you concerned? Why are you tracking him?”

“He hasn’t known.”

“What?!”

“He gets a generous stipend, like some Victorian remittance man if you can credit it. But I have made it clear he is not to return.”

“Where is he, then?”

“He’s spent the last few years in Milan, working for Credit Suisse as a currency trader there. He is very bright but also, I believe, unstable. After all, no sane man would have beaten his wife the way he did our Nicola.” He looked out the windscreen for a moment and paused: “It may be his mother Caprice’s genes. Wild, she was.”

“Yes, I remember: crashed her antique MG along the Thames Embankment road in London. Died instantly.”

“A mercy that was, I suspect. But there were other signs, furious temper and chronic infidelity among them.”

“Good Lord, I’m sorry.”

Sir Michael waved a hand to brush the memories aside. “That’s in the distant past. But my watchers believe Jeremy’s left Italy. According to the bank, he left his job after sexually assaulting a female colleague. The Italians are hunting him.”

Andrew looked at him and, for the first time, saw vulnerability in the old man’s clear gray eyes.

“Please, do not tell Nicola. He tried to crush her once before. I don’t want this burden on her lovely shoulders. She must be kept safe.”

“Look Michael, a man who abuses his wife is fundamentally a coward. That’s why he beat Nicky: to feel powerful. My point is that a coward will do nothing overt.”

The old man looked at Andrew and smiled: “I may have to recruit you to MI5 one of these days yet, young Andrew….”

“I’m just an architect, Michael, and now a stone mason.”

“You’re not, thank goodness. You’re far more. I shall rely upon you.”

“I’ll be on it, too,” Jamie said from the rear of the Land Rover.

Sir Michael turned and grasped Jamie’s rough hand. “I know you will. And may I just say that I am so pleased that flood brought you and Flora together at last and that you both are part of our family now.”

“It’s an honor, and a pretty good gig as well…except for having to listen to this damned American ‘architect’ go on and on about…well, whatever he goes on about, like I didn’t already know. Bloody technical hogwash it is to me, sir, pardon my language….”

Andrew shook his head and started the engine.

Beside him, Sir Michael chuckled. “You two deserve each other. But thank you, both. Let’s go see our ladies; I need to catch that return flight to Gatwick.”

BACK AT THE garden cottage they had begun rebuilding, Jamie lifted a shapely block of granite, set it down atop the new wall, and listened for the satisfying chock a stone makes when it’s found its rightful home. Then he turned to Andrew: “So, what do you reckon?”

“Huh?”

“Sir Michael.”

Andrew smiled: “Not much gets past you, does it my friend?”

“I’m thinking Michael’s son made a hasty exit from Italy because of that assault charge, sure. But MI5’s not a babysitter for troublesome sons…”

“I know. But maybe this isn’t an MI5 matter at all. Maybe this is Sir Michael being contacted through MI5 and asked to work through back channels, of which I suspect he has many. Maybe the Italians, via Interpol, asked Scotland Yard for help locating Jeremy and the Met, in turn, contacted Sir Michael. If that’s the case, it’s a police matter, not MI5’s. That may be why he had a local police driver today. Maybe Devon and Cornwall police are cooperating.”

“But why would this Jeremy come here?”

“I don’t know, honestly. Someplace he knows well and would feel safe?”

“Not the estate, certainly; he’s been dispossessed.”

“But Michael said Jeremy doesn’t know. I can’t imagine why not. But I’m the newcomer here, remember; I don’t know Michael’s reasons.”

“If he has been, might he go after his father?”

“I reckon Sir Michael is well-protected and not likely in danger. But you’re also forgetting the ‘unstable’ part Michael mentioned. Coward or not, Jeremy could go after Nicola somehow. Michael’s love of her, and perhaps his guilt about what Jeremy did to her, is what put us all here at the estate, that and the flood. Nicola’s an easier target if the son’s bent on some kind of revenge, and anything that happened to her would shatter Sir Michael. It would be a victory.”

“He didn’t tell us much in the end, did he, that Sir Michael?”

“No. No, he didn’t…”

Nineteen

THE CAMBORNE POLICE station was a long, three story building wedged between the B3303, the old through-road before the A30 bypass was built, and the main rail line north from Cornwall. There was nothing graceful about the structure which Morgan, a frequent visitor, described to herself as “blockhouse modern.” Despite a lame attempt at landscaping, the nearly blank ground floor exterior looked fortified, but against whom or what she’d never gathered. It was like the architects expected the place to be stormed. The offices and interview rooms, and the few windows, were all upstairs. The top floor had a patently phony mansard shingled roof to make it look “Queen Anne Modern.” If that was the objective, it failed: the building was severe and forbidding.

Technically, the station was not open to the public on a Saturday, but Morgan buzzed Eldridge Biggins and Novak in at the back entrance and gave Biggins her hand in greeting. His was cold.

“Mr. Biggins, hello again and welcome.”

Biggins nodded and looked around. He’d never been in a police station before.

“Shall we go upstairs and talk?” she said as she turned. It was not a question. Novak, in uniform, followed.

They reached the interview room and Morgan said, “Thank you Constable, that will be all for now, but please remain; we shall need you to return Mr. Biggins to his home in Boswednack.”

The interview room was stark: two wooden chairs that looked like they’d come from an old schoolroom and a scratched steel table. She wished the room were warmer; she did not want Biggins to feel intimidated. Only a year ago they’d had a more congenial interview suite, decorated like a sitting room, in a converted house just up the road in Pool, but it had been closed down and sold: budget constraints.

“Please excuse this not exactly welcoming room, Mr. Biggins. It is normally used to interrogate criminal suspects. Let me make it clear you are not one. For legal reasons, I have to read you your rights, but please understand this is not an interrogation; it’s just an interview.”

Biggins looked around the room, speechless, while she did so. There were no windows. The walls looked covered in what looked like perforated cork board painted beige. The air was close. He had a bit of a problem with claustrophobia.

With a sideways turn of her head, Davies had the technician in the recording room next door begin recording and filming their conversation.

“We are interviewing you, Mr. Biggins, along with others, to learn more about the death of your neighbor, Mary Trevean.”

“How’d she die? Heart attack like her Bert?”

Morgan did not hesitate: “No, Mr. Biggins. The evidence suggests she was murdered.”

Biggins twitched like he’d been slapped but sat stone-faced, his eyes focused off somewhere over Morgan’s shoulder. He shook his head and took a breath.

“This’ll shatter my Alice; they were that close.”

Morgan noted he hadn’t asked how Mary had died.

“I’m sure it will, sir. What we’re trying to sort out, and why we are speaking with people who knew her, like yourself, is to ascertain why she was killed. We understand she was well-loved in the neighborhood. So, let’s talk about Mary Trevean. You helped our scene of crimes people as they investigated Mary’s property, is that right? Showed them around?”

“Came to my door and asked about her, they did.”

“You were close?”

“Close neighbors and friends for years, yes: our farm’s just south of theirs on the coastal plateau. Both dairy farmers, we were, Bert and me. That and sheep grazing is all you can do on these thin soils. A plow is useless. When Bert died, I bought up their land and took on their cows. Mary, she needed the money, see?”

“Plus, it added substantially to your own holdings.”

“Yes. But I had to borrow to purchase all that. Still, it was good, rich pasture and their herd was healthy. I was certain I could make a success of it, just like Bert had.”

“And have you?”

Biggins looked aside. “Not yet; a lot of debt to pay off, you see. But soon.”

Morgan made a note to check on Bert’s bank account and switched tactics: “Mary was an attractive woman, barely middle-aged, and I’m just wondering how she fared, personally, after Bert died. Some people, you know, after a partner dies, they just pull inside themselves. That happen to Mary?”

“Did that for a while…well, that’s only natural. But we all…”

“We all?”

“Me, Alice, the other neighbors, well, we worked to bring her out again after a while. It took time, but after a bit she were back there with us of a Saturday evening at the Tinners, having a pint and laughing with us all and our nonsense.”

“Nonsense?”

“Oh, you know, trivia night competitions at the pub; that sort of thing. Very quick and bright she is…was. We all wanted her on our team.” The man’s eyes suddenly sparkled.

Morgan caught that. “Were you fond of her, Eldridge?” she asked quietly.

She watched his face. A smile grew almost shyly where she’d expected surprise.

“Reckon I was, she were that sweet and pretty and lively. But I’ve got my Alice and that’s all I’ve ever needed. Still, you ever have someone in your life seems more dear to you somehow than your own sister or wife? Someone you always feel at home with? That were Mary Trevean and me. Deep friends, is what we were.”

“Mary Trevean was a lovely woman, as you’ve said. She’d been single for a while. I should think men would have approached her, even neighbors, perhaps. You and she were close. Are you telling me no one courted her? No one showed an interest? She never mentioned?”

“Sold off her land and livestock, didn’t she? What did she have to offer to another man?”

It was everything it took for Morgan not to rise and slap him but the recording was still going. Was this “much loved” Mary Trevean merely the sum of her property assets to him: the woman as chattel?

MID-AFTERNOON THAT same Saturday, Terry Bates sat cross-legged on the slate kitchen floor by the working hearth at Trevega House with Lee and her dog. The Siberian husky, Randi, was healing fast and fought against his lead but Lee calmed him, and he settled beside her, just outside the kennel that had been his prison for days.

“He’s a beautiful and strong boy, your dog is,” Terry said, stroking his noble head. Randi rose to her hand in pleasure.

“You’re not here to talk about my dog.”

“No, you’re right. But I do think he’s rather splendid. If I had a dog I like him…”

“But you don’t, do you? So what do you want?”

Bates smiled. The girl was only eleven, going on twelve, and yet so intuitive and direct. Terry was full of admiration.

“I want to talk about what happened on the cliff.”

“What’s to talk about? I got hurt, just like Randi. Things happen.”

“Yes, but sometimes things happen because someone causes it.”

She saw Lee’s eyes redden and realized how insensitive that comment had been for a girl who’d lost her parents.

“Someone had to set the leg trap that hurt Randi, didn’t they? Right beside the footpath where you two like to walk?”

Lee blinked. “Okay. Right.”

“And the stone that hurt you. It didn’t just come loose from the cliff. Our people checked.”

Lee took a big breath and hugged Randi: “No, someone threw it down on me. I sensed it.”

“Did you see who?”

“No chance. First I sensed a danger, the way I sometimes do, and when I looked up the rock was already falling. I only had time to twist away.” She looked at her cast. “But not time enough.”

“So you sensed something or someone?”

“Someone. Yes.”

“But you didn’t see anyone.”

“No. Only the rock.”

Terry considered a moment. “Lee, do you think that person you sensed was trying to knock you over the cliff to the sea below?”

Lee looked at Terry as if she were daft.

“You ever hear of Occam’s Razor?” she asked.

Terry blinked. “Occam’s what?”

Lee shook her head in disgust: “Razor. Jamie told me all about it. He teaches me lots of stuff, Jamie does. This Occam, he was a monk or something in the Middle Ages, like seven hundred years ago or more, I’m not sure. He was a thinker. Jamie’s a thinker, too. I watch him when we have a building problem. He just sort of becomes still and, in a few minutes, he has the solution.”

“So, this Occam?”

“Okay, he said something like: when you have a complicated problem the most simple solution is likely the right one.”

Terry took this in. “And that applies here?”

Lee looked at the detective, head tilted, taking measure. “A big stone, which did not fall off the cliff, drops through the air aimed directly at my head. You reckon it was meant only to scare me?”

Twenty

AN HOUR LATER, Terry pushed the white electric buzzer mounted on the frame of the Biggins’s farmhouse door and waited. She heard footsteps descending from upstairs and then a pinched, birdlike face peered through the barely cracked door.

“Yes?”

“Mrs. Biggins?”

“Yes?”

“I’m Detective Constable Terry Bates from Devon and Cornwall Police.”

She showed the woman her warrant card and badge.

“Yes?”

We are talking to people who knew Mary Trevean in order to make sense of her death. I assume you know about that?”

“Yes. Terrible that is, but Eldridge isn’t here; he’s gone up to Camborne. With one of your people.”

“That’s true, but I wondered if we two might also have a chat?”

Alice pulled the door open and smiled as if welcome for the company. She was wearing what once might have been called a housedress and a vinyl apron in a fading sunflower print.

“I was just upstairs cleaning. Let me put on tea. Come through.”

“That would be most welcome, Mrs. Biggins.”

Alice filled and switched on the electric kettle in a kitchen that, to Terry, looked unchanged from sometime in the nineteen fifties, like in some show on the telly in the old days. But though outdated, the room was spotless and smelled faintly of cleaning fluid and bleach.

“Live hereabouts do you?” Alice asked as she scooped loose tea into a teapot.

“No, but I grew up nearby, to the south.”

“Wait: Bates? From down Porthcurno way? I knew them! Your dad still farming there? Your mother passed young, if memory serves.”

“No, dad sold up. Lives in a retirement community in Helston now.”

“Do you live near him?”

“No, I work and live in Bodmin now.”

“Bodmin!” Alice gasped, as if it were in a distant country.

“It’s only a bit over an hour; not much traffic of a Sunday.”

“No, I expect you’re right. But Bodmin! Goodness!”

Alice set the teapot and two mugs on a small rectangular table in the kitchen: stainless steel legs, Formica top, its surface pattern nearly worn through from years of scrubbing. “Please…” she said gesturing to a matching chair with a worn flat cushion.

“So, Mrs. Biggins…”

“It’s just Alice.”

“Right then, Alice: I understand that you and Mary Trevean were close?”

“’Course we were; she’s only a field away. We spent a lot of time with her and her Bert until…until he passed. She were so fragile after that, and my Eldridge and I looked after her, I guess you’d say. I made her suppers and Eldridge took them across the field.”

“That was very kind.”

“We’re all close down here.”

“Can you imagine anyone wanting to harm her?”

“Never!” Alice hadn’t even bothered to consider the question.

“I gather Eldridge bought up her pastures and livestock after a bit?”

Alice darkened. “I wasn’t in favor, actually. The cost, you see.”

“But he went ahead anyway?”

Alice shrugged and peered into her teacup. “He did, yes. That’s his nature.”

“You said you didn’t approve.”

“My Eldridge, he’s always after buying more land and expanding our dairy operation. Reckon that’s the ghost of his family history. Haunts him, I think. Not that he talks about it.”

“Ma’am?”

“The Biggins’s, they lost the land that’s now the Trevega estate, you see. Way back in the nineteenth century, that was. Went broke and sold out. But Eldridge…”

“Yes?”

“He’s forever trying to restore his family’s name. And he’s a brilliant farmer, I’ll give him that. But to me it didn’t seem sensible in a business sort of way, buying up all that land. I keep his books, you see.”

“But you’re doing well?”

“Apart from the debt, yes. He knows his dairy farming, that’s certain.”

“It must have cost a pretty penny to acquire the Trevean land.”

“Prime grazing land, it is. We’ve a big mortgage with AMC to show for it.”

“AMC?”

“Agricultural Mortgage Corporation. Based in Hampshire. Loan terms are fair, but it is a stretch for us. We’re right on the edge, we are, scrimping and saving, but don’t tell Eldridge I said so; he wants so hard to succeed.”

Terry switched subjects: “Your husband and Mary were close friends, I’ve heard. How did you feel about that?”

Alice looked away toward the kitchen window: “Those two? Joined at the hip, they were, almost, like sister and brother. Me and Bert, we understood and never had a worry. They had something special and we reckoned them lucky in their friendship.”

Terry looked around the outdated kitchen, so different from Mary Trevean’s trim, updated house. Though Terry guessed Alice was not yet fifty, her narrow face was already etched with lines: forehead, edges of eyes, cheeks. She was rail thin as well. To Terry, she looked worn beyond her age.

“You were never jealous?”

Alice’s head whipped back to face her.

“Never.”

Terry thought the answer a reflex.

“Eldridge has always been good to me. A fine man, he is. Lucky to have him. Not that many choices down here, anyway.”

“Children?”

“A son. Grown. He’s in finance, up in London, not that we see him. Too busy, I reckon. Plus, him and his dad, they fell apart…”

“Why’s that?”

“Keith—that’s his name—wanted nothing to do with the farm. But Eldridge, he’s all about heritage, continuity through the generations, you see. He pushed Keith hard to be the next in the long Biggins farming line. Keith wouldn’t have it. And he was right; he’s done very well up in London. Made bags of lolly. Sends me a bit on the quiet sometimes; Eldridge doesn’t know. Reckon Eldridge may be the last Biggins on this land.”

She gazed across the room for a moment, then turned back.

“I will say one thing about Mary…”

“What’s that?”

“She were glowing this last week, I swear. I took her some eggs, I did, from our chickens. We have tea together Thursday afternoons. We got into the habit when she were mourning her Bert and just kept on. But full of spunk she were this Thursday past, eyes dancing. I hope I’m not tellin’ tales out of school, but to my mind I wondered if she were seeing someone. You know what I mean? She were that alive.”

TERRY’S LAST STOP late that afternoon was Billie Kerrow’s duck farm at the top of Trewey Hill high on the wind-thrashed moorland above Zennor. Alice had given her directions. The small stone house—Terry figured two rooms up and two down, probably mid-Victorian and a former miner’s cottage—stood right at the edge of the remote single lane road, as if waiting for someone passing to look in. Yellow and gray lichens pocked the granite walls and slate roof. The peeling, vaguely blue window casings looked like they hadn’t been painted in decades, maybe longer. She searched for a buzzer, found none, and knocked. There was no response.

She walked around the leeward side of the house and found a low stone shed easily forty feet long and roofed in corrugated metal. It sat perpendicular to the house along one side of a large penned yard in which milled what she guessed were easily a hundred noisy, plump snow white ducks. Standing amongst them, a short balding man was slinging feed to the birds and talking to them.

“Mr. Kerrow? Billie?” She called above the din.

He turned his head and stared, motionless, as if his feet were nailed to the yard. A lifelong bachelor, he was not accustomed to female visitors, especially ones as comely as this one.

“I’m Terry Bates, sir. Police,” she called from the fence. She waved her warrant card. “Might we have a quick chat? It’s about Mary Trevean.”

Finally, he moved, wading knee deep in complaining ducks to reach the yard’s gate. She expected him to step out, but instead he waved her in.

“Feeding time,” was all he said and turned back to the ducks. White pinfeathers littered the yard like a late frost.

Though still new at her job, she’d never had her detective’s badge so summarily ignored. At the same time, she was charmed by the affection the man clearly had for his flock, talking to them softly, stroking one here or there. They followed him like pets. While Billie went about his task, she looked in at the long shed. It was built in two parts, the floors covered in clean straw. One section, by far the biggest, was empty, apparently where the grown ducks sheltered. The other section was penned and filled with still-maturing ducklings milling about and pecking absently for seeds in the straw. Their feathers were only just beginning to turn white from a golden yellow.

She didn’t hear him approach. “Pekins, they are. Much prized for their meat.”

“Peking ducks?” she asked, turning.

“Hell, no. That’s some kinda Chinese dish, I heard. Never had it. These here are the Pekin breed. I tried Muscovy’s for a while, but these lot fare better up here.”

“I suspect that’s because you take such good care of them; I watched you.”

He gave her a shy nod, like a boy caught out.

“Now, what you be wanting from me about that Mary Trevean,” he said finally, staring at his boots. “Hardly knew her. Lost her husband, you know. Bert. He were a fine man. Regular at church Sundays, too, despite the work of all them cows. I ring the changes there.”

“Sorry? Changes?”

“You know, the bell peals. I pull the tenor. At St. Sennara’s.”

It was the first thing he’d actually volunteered, and Terry smiled, though she had no idea what he was talking about.

“You say you hardly knew Mary. But wasn’t she a regular at the Tinners on Saturday evenings?”

“She were, but I don’t stay for the games; not my cup of tea. Too many people shouting and whatnot. But I heard from Eldridge that she were very good at them. Quick-witted. Close those two were.”

He looked away for a moment. “Mighty pretty she were, too,” he mumbled.

“What?”

He looked back. “Nuffin’.”

“Had she many friends?”

“Can’t say. She were known along this coast, that’s sure. Well, we all are; not that many of us, you see. But I reckon her best friends were the Biggins’s. They looked after her when Bert passed. Know them, do you?”

“I’ve just been chatting with Alice this afternoon.”

“Well then…”

“Mr. Kerrow…”

“Everyone calls me Billie…”

“Billie, then: can you think of anyone who might have wanted to harm her, anything she might have done to anger someone?”

“Me? Nah… Popular, she was. And made a tidy living off them cottages is what I heard. Maybe someone were jealous?”

“Someone else who rents vacation cottages, you mean?”

“Nah. None of them nearby. Couple of bed and breakfast rooms at a few other farms, but not self-catering cottages like hers. Handsome they are, too. Bert showed me when he’d finished them. Proud he was, as well he should have been. Built to a fine standard.”

“After Bert died, did you ever visit Mary?”

“Left some flowers at her doorstep right after. I’m not the visitin’ type. Got my ducks for company, see. I like that fine.”

Terry had never met anyone quite as walled off from the rest of the world as Billie Kerrow. Was it shyness? Trauma? She didn’t know how to ask. Morgan would have, though. She was a tougher interviewer.

Twenty-One

JEREMY RHYS-JONES SAT on the edge of the plush bed in his room at the vine-covered Garrack Hotel. It was late Saturday, and the setting sun gilded the west-facing stone walls of St. Ives far below. He was so worn out from running he didn’t know whether to sleep or shower. He’d spent Friday aimlessly hill walking and had slept in a cheap boarding house in Penzance where no one knew who he was. But he was done with that. He was not meant to be a dosser. And no one knew where he’d been or what he’d done. He’d taken care of that. Staring out toward the ocean he replayed his steps. Yes, he’d taken care of all of that.

The gracious old Garrack, built of big granite blocks just after World War I, stood high on a hill on the southern edge of St. Ives. There had been a cancellation and he was lucky to get a room this night, but there were vacancies once the weekend guests left the next day. He’d registered using his false Italian passport and name and was vague about his departure date. His room, gracious but a bit cluttered in that country house sort of way, had an expansive view of the famous little fishing port and artists’ haven to the north, the shining sands of Porthmeor Beach, and the sun spangled ocean beyond. Nicola had told him, years before, that it was the way sun played off the crystals in the sand at St. Ives that created the luminous light that had attracted artists here since the late eighteen hundreds.

But he wasn’t there for the view. He needed a haven, but one close to home. Things had got out of control. He had worked so carefully, so invisibly, toward his end. His plan had been brilliantly executed, step by step, threat by threat, almost surgical in its precision. Then everything suddenly went all pear-shaped, thanks to Mary Trevean. What he did know was that she had put him at great risk. He could be discovered.

And yet all he’d ever wanted was to go home again: home to be with Caprice. She’d first taken him to her bed at Trevega House when he was barely fifteen. His father preferred London. At Trevega, he and Caprice had been inseparable, except when some other lover showed up. But she always came back to him. Always.

He worshipped her. As an adult, he’d tried to get the same adoration and passion from other women, including Nicola and that dark-haired currency trader in Milan, but they’d all disappointed. A fury rose within him when they did; it was like a fire in his head. So, he punished them. All he could see when he had been with them was his dear Caprice, riding him hard, head arched back, crying out. No one else mattered or measured up.

Home. He needed to go home, to their special place. To the gracious, high-ceilinged bedroom they’d shared.

And he’d got so close. So close.

Until Mary…Sweet, dangerous Mary.

“HE’S DONE IT again!” Morgan barked into her mobile the next day.

“Good morning, Morgan,” Calum said to his hands-free phone. Though it was Sunday, he was on his way to the Bodmin Hub, leaving his girls, once again, with their gran, Ruth.

“Who’s ‘he’ and what has he done again, if I may be so bold as to ask?”

“Penwarren, dammit. Do you want the news or not?”

“I am hanging on your every word, my dear…”

“There was indeed sputum on the cushion, as Jennifer Duncan surmised at the scene.”

“Forgive me for saying so, but wasn’t that to be expected in this case?”

“I am not done!”

Calum pulled into the oval brick drive in front of the recently-built Bodmin Hub, its glassy, three story façade fiery in the morning sun. They’d had a lovely run of mostly fine weather.

“Do go on then…”

“There’s DNA on the other side of the cushion as well, Might be spit, might be sweat. Just traces. But we’ve got it.”

Calum switched off his engine. “Yes, well, but the question is what have we got and whose?”

“Do you honestly think you can be ahead of me?”

“Never, of course. I bow to your higher rank and intelligence. But may I suggest my team reinvestigate the Trevean house and that bleached chicken coop? Maybe there’s more…”

He could almost see Morgan shaking her head. “I’ve already put in the request,” she said before ringing off.

LATER THAT AFTERNOON, West’s SOCO team found a partial print, a forefinger they reckoned, on the underside of a bin lid behind the Chicken Coop cottage, like someone had used just a thumb and finger, daintily, to lift and close it. The top of the lid had been wiped, but someone in a hurry hadn’t considered the underside. Everything else in the rental cottage, as before, was nearly antiseptic. But in the main house, in Mary Trevean’s sitting room, West’s people found another set of prints they’d missed before, curiously high on a wall, as if someone reasonably tall had suddenly lost their balance and tried to steady themselves.

DETECTIVE CHIEF SUPERINTENDENT Malcom Crawley was back in Penwarren’s office in Bodmin midday on Monday. As usual, he was in high dudgeon.

“May we offer you a seat, Malcolm?” Penwarren asked, smiling. Crawley hated being addressed by his given name. Penwarren knew it and did so intentionally. For him Crawley’s visits were like a circus act, one involving a toothless aging lion with mange.

“We shall stand.”

“As you wish; we shall remain seated.”

“This Trevean murder, Penwarren, what have you got? The brass want me to hold a press conference at headquarters tomorrow morning, and how the hell did this happen?” He slapped a copy of the morning’s edition of The Cornishman onto Penwarren’s conference table. “We are tired of motoring all the way down here to get answers when the press already have them, dammit!”

Penwarren had long since noted that “dammit” ended many of Crawley’s sentences like a normal punctuation mark. The DCS’s impatience was almost as legendary as his fecklessness. Penwarren figured it was fear, especially fear of being caught short in the information department by the big boys in Exeter. Crawley had to appear engaged: thus, his trip south.

“If you examine it, Malcolm, you will discover that there is absolutely nothing of substance in that story, only conjecture. That reporter has left messages here almost hourly, desperate for details. We have not responded. I am pleased to report, however, that we have some new information which may make your press conference a success…or at least buy you some time.”

Crawley rolled his eyes skyward like a vaudevillian in the footlights: “Enlighten me, then.”

“Mary Trevean was suffocated. Of that there is no question.”

“That’s old news.”

“Not to the press it isn’t, if I may remind you. And we are narrowing in on the kind of person who may have committed this murder. For example, Mary Trevean did not operate a bed and breakfast, which means she did not have random visitors from who knows where seeking overnight accommodation, right? She had three self-catering rental cottages. Her guests registered through her agency, usually for a week or more, but sometimes for just a weekend break, like the couple who found her. So, reason tells us this was not something done by some passer-through. Are you with me, sir?”

“Of course. Am I an idiot?”

Penwarren ignored the opening.

“So, whoever visited her that night wasn’t likely to have been a stranger. It was someone known, yes?”

“I am following, Penwarren, but do please get on with it.”

“And just yesterday afternoon, West’s people found new prints in two unusual places: on a wall of her home and on a rental cottage’s bin lid. They’re being analyzed. And the lab found trace DNA on both sides of the cushion used to kill Mary Trevean. They’re being analyzed as well.”

“Who are your persons of interest?”

“We’ve just got this evidence, Malcolm; investigation is the next step.”

“Well, get on with it; we can’t hold the brass off forever, dammit, and we want the press vultures off our back!”

Penwarren loved the image of vultures on Crawley’s back: Crawley as dead meat.

“I shouldn’t think just over three days since the discovery of the dead woman could be labeled ‘forever,’ Malcolm. We have procedures, as you well know. We have protocols to follow which, should we violate them, will cause problems for the Crown Prosecution Service. I’m not interested in losing a case on hurried, slipshod investigation and I can only assume you feel the same way. Our job is to get convictions, unless I’ve missed something during my long career. You might emphasize these points in your press conference. Now then, was there anything else, Malcolm?”

Penwarren was angry and struggling to control it. He’d had it with Crawley. Every time he dealt with the supercilious bastard he thought about retiring.

“We want results!” the older man sputtered. “And soon!”

“As do I Malcolm, as do I,” the DCI said with forced calmness. He smiled: “Now, if you will be kind enough to let me and my team get on with our job…?”

From his window a few moments later, he could see Crawley stomp across the car park. His car lurched backward from its space, stalled, started again, and then sped to the exit to the main road. Penwarren worried about other drivers heading north into Devon.

A YOUNG WOMAN, dark hair, business suit, a civilian administrative assistant, approached Morgan’s desk at the Bodmin Hub the same Monday morning and stood quietly.

“Yes?” Morgan demanded, not even looking up.

“Sorry to interrupt, ma’am.”

“It’s not ‘ma’am,’ dammit! It’s ‘Inspector.’ Got that?”

“Um…yes…Inspector.”

“What do you want? I’m busy.”

“You asked our research department for banking information on Mary Trevean and Eldridge Biggins. As it happens, they both bank at Lloyds, 13 High Street, St. Ives. I contacted the branch. I have their account numbers. That was all I could obtain from the bank without further authority…Inspector.”

Morgan took a breath, looked up, and managed a smile. “Thank you…Ms.?”

“Best. Jackie Best.”

“Well named, it seems. And well done, Ms. Best. Unless you haven’t already heard, though I doubt that possible in this building, I can be a bit short when I’m on a murder case with all of Exeter HQ breathing down my neck. But I am grateful for your work and this information.”

Jackie nearly curtsied and left.

There were several national bank branches in St. Ives: Barclays, Nat West, and HSBC, as well as Lloyd’s. Morgan wondered at the coincidence that Biggins and Trevean used the same one. She checked the database and found the number Best had given her matched the account the SOCO boys had noted when they collected Mary Trevean’s personal papers. She made a note to ask West if those papers had been checked for prints. Then she called the bank branch.

“Lloyds St. Ives,” a cool-voiced receptionist answered. “How may we help you?”

“This is Detective Inspector Morgan Davies, Devon and Cornwall Police. Please connect me with your bank manager.”

After a pause, the voice said: “Of course. I’ll just check to see if he is available. Please hold the line…”

“Holding the line” was about the last thing Morgan was capable of tolerating, but almost immediately she heard another, deeper voice: “This is Roderick Nelson. How may I be of assistance, Inspector?”

“That’s entirely up to you, Mr. Nelson. A woman, Mary Trevean, was murdered just south of St. Ives a few days ago. I’m sure you’ve heard. It’s in The Cornishman this morning.”

“Yes, yes I saw it. But the story had no details. Is it true? We knew her here. She was a client.”

“I know that or I wouldn’t be calling, would I? We need access to her recent bank records and also those of another significant person of interest in this investigation, a Mr. Eldridge Biggins who, like Mrs. Trevean, also banks with you. And if Mary Trevean had a safety deposit box containing anything else of possible significance, we will need that evidence as well. I am hoping, as she was your client, and has been killed, you will help us in this enquiry and not force me get a formal warrant. That takes time and we are under pressure to solve this case. Lack of cooperation, if I may be blunt, would be considered obstructing the course of justice in a capital murder case. Do you follow me?” Morgan was working way beyond her remit, as usual, but she hoped the bank manager would respond.

After a pause, Nelson said, “I am new with this particular bank branch, Inspector, but not new to Lloyds. Your request is highly irregular, as I am sure you know. But ours is a small community and we aim to care for our customers. They give us their trust. We owe them ours as well, even after death. Maybe especially after death. So, what I am saying is that, yes, I will try to help, within the limits of my authority.”

“Thank you, Mr. Nelson. And I mean that,” she said, while silently pumping her fist in the air. “I am at the police operations hub up in Bodmin. Do I need to come down there to obtain this information or can we do this electronically?”

“I shouldn’t think a special trip would be necessary in a case such as this. I am less certain of what we can divulge should she also have a safe deposit box here. But give me your contact information and I shall get on this immediately.”

“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 luxury 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?”

“Sure. It’s right off the square. Manager’s John Roberts. His boy and me, we were at school together.”

“GIVE ME A moment, will you?” Morgan said quietly when they entered the store. “I need to look around.”

“Supermarket” was a big word for the little store: three grocery-packed aisles and a refrigerated meat case in the back, but it had most of life’s necessities and a friendly feel. While Sennen chatted up the older lady at the register and asked her to summon the manager, Morgan stalked the aisles until she found what she was looking for in the tiny housewares section: a stack of yellow and black ZIP Odourless Firelighter cartons.

“Inspector Davies? This is Mr. Roberts, the manager,” Sennen said behind her.

She was expecting a sort of balding, paunchy shopkeeper. She was wrong. The man was stocky and muscled, with pale blue eyes and steel gray hair trimmed close to the skull.

“Mr. Roberts is also ex-Culdrose: served in the first Iraq War alongside the Americans.”

Roberts reached out a hand: “How may I help you and David, Inspector?”

“Honored to meet you. Do you have CCTV cameras in the store, Mr. Roberts?”

“Of course. Sadly, we have to these days. Corporate policy…not that we ever see much theft in a place like this where everyone is known.”

“Would your cameras reach this aisle?” She looked around and could see none.

“I’m afraid not. We have only three: one watching the wine and liquor aisle, one the door, and one the register.”

“How long do you save these videos?”

“Generally, unless there is some incident, which is never, not more than a month.”

“If I gave you a date a few weeks ago, would you be willing to examine the videos if I told you what to look for? It’s a criminal case.”

“Well of course!”

“Do you have the authority to release those videos?”

Roberts shook his head. “Never had need to ask but I don’t care a whit about that. If it is a criminal case, and our little community is involved, I’ll assume the authority, come what may from corporate.” He grinned: “Let them fire me and try to get someone else willing to live way down here.”

Morgan nodded and gave him the date of the fire at Trevean. “I’m looking for anyone who bought these ZIP firestarters,” she said, pointing to the shelf, “anytime a week or two before.”

“Very popular they are around here. Lots of folks still with coal fireplaces. Sometimes that’s their only heat source; a bit behind we are down here. But sure, I’ll look into it. Any suggestions about who or what I should look for?”

“Caucasian male. Early middle age, we think. Not someone who had been a long-term customer, not someone you would perhaps even recognize.” She gave him her card.

“It’s a tall order, I must say. So many strangers this time of year. But I’ll do my best.”

“All we can ask, sir.” She extended her hand. “We shall be most grateful. It is possible someone we know may be in mortal danger. We’re trying to head that off.”

Roberts nodded.

Outside the shop, Morgan said, “It’s time I headed back north, David. Keep us informed as you continue searching. Stay in touch with PC Novak up in St. Ives. He’s a good man, completely reliable.”

“Reckon you’re right. Met him at a meeting in Camborne. Good chap.”

“I am grateful for your help. Thank you for welcoming me to your patch.”

“Not much of a patch now we have no police office down here…”

DETECTIVE CONSTABLE TERRY Bates sat on a threadbare, unstable wheeled office chair at a small table in the cramped St. Ives police station above the harbor on Dove Street. It was early Wednesday morning. Like everything else in the old town of St. Ives, the building was granite-built, weathered, but solid. On the other hand, the upstairs interior of the police office had been rather brutally modernized at some point with white sheetrock walls, worn office furniture and filing cabinets, and overhead blue-white fluorescent lights so bright she wished she had sunglasses. Two small, deep set windows peered out across the old port. The St. Ives harbor was protected from the Atlantic by a high stone jetty tipped by a small, rusting, white lighthouse. Brightly painted coastal fishing boats lay this way and that on the sandy harbor bottom. They’d soon be bobbing again; the tide already was slinking in around the end of the jetty.

“As you might imagine, Terry, St. Ives has dozens of overnight accommodations: B&Bs, guest houses, a few nice hotels,” PC Novak explained.

“And?”

“And I have only three Police Community Support Officers—that’s all there is apart from myself, that’s my entire staff. I am the only constable here. Used to be different, but not anymore. I have asked my people to call or visit bed and breakfast and guest houses here enquiring after this Rhys-Jones person. They’re using Tourist Office listings. There are many such places, most of them rather drab, and they rise around the harbor all the way east to Carbis Bay.

“But I have been thinking about this Rhys-Jones chap. You’ve described him as coming from money, yes? If he’s in St. Ives I can’t see him holed up in some dingy Victorian guesthouse or B&B with a saggy bed, nylon sheets, and some aging landlady bringing weak tea and greasy eggs and bacon in the morning. I’m thinking he’d be at a better hotel, of which there are just a few in and about the town. That’s where I myself have started—though, I confess, without much luck yet. We don’t even know what name he’s using.”

“I think your theory is clever, Adam. How far have you got?”

“I’ve checked, in person, at Tregonna Castle, the Paradise Valley Hotel, and a recently refurbished place overlooking the harbor, Pedn Olva. Nothing yet, I’m afraid.”

The office phone rang.

“St. Ives police station…how may we help?”

Terry heard a loud voice shouting from Novak’s receiver and recognized it immediately. “Right. Of course!” Novak replied. “She’s right here, Inspector.” He passed the phone to Terry: “Davies,” he whispered.

Twenty-Four

“LOOK FOR AN Italian!” Morgan barked into the phone.

“Pardon?”

“An Italian! Thick accent!”

“Why, if I might ask?”

“Because I said so! And because the Co-Op supermarket manager in St. Just stayed up all night, bless his heart, studying his closed-circuit videos. He’s identified a buyer of the firestarters. The timing is perfect: just the day before the cottage was burned. The manager’s grown daughter was the cashier that day and says this customer was a stranger: handsome, middle-aged, courtly, and Italian. Almost no English. She had to help him with the currency, apparently. She was charmed, of course, the silly cow. But at least she remembered.”

“And this is a lead because…?”

“Jesus, Terry, where the hell’s Jeremy Rhys-Jones spent the last year or more?”

Terry shook her head. “Italy, boss,” she said. “But does that make every visitor from Italy a suspect?”

Morgan paused. Terry could tell she was only catching her breath, gaining strength again, like a geyser.

“Of course not! Only this one! Get on it! Meanwhile, another police community support officer, David Sennen, is on his way up from St. Just to help. He’s the one who made this discovery possible. Bright young man. Ex-Culdrose. You can count on him. If I can get away, I’ll come down there, too.”

“We will be anxiously awaiting, Morgan.”

But Davies had already rung off.

Novak checked in with his community support officers: two men and a woman, all young but eager. He sent them texts to let them know about the possible Italian name. Then he called Margaret Walsh, his longest-serving CSO.

“Any joy, Maggie?” Novak asked when she answered. She was canvassing ‘Downalong,’ the oldest part of St. Ives, rising above the port, tightly packed with former fishermen’s cottages and threaded by a quirky warren of narrow, mostly cobbled lanes. She had just stepped out of the fourteenth century Sloop Inn on The Wharf, the narrow street that ran along the harbor front, and turned up Fish Street where there were a couple of small, flower-bedecked stone guest houses. Walsh had grown up in just such a cottage in the heart of the old town, gone off to school, come back, found no work, and enlisted as a community support officer when an opening appeared. She’d been in the position for three years now and loved the work, though the pay was meagre.

“Not yet,” she answered. “I’ve a few more B&Bs here in the lanes above the Wharf and then I’ll walk over the top to Porthmeor Beach.”

“That’s mostly holiday lets and condos in those modern buildings facing the beach. I shouldn’t expect much there. Those beach people have almost nothing to do with St. Ives. Most of those flats are empty off-season. Rich owners from away. Who knows where from…?”

“I hear you, but it’s worth a try. Meanwhile, Ronnie James is checking the terraced row houses above Porthmeor Hill, east of the cemetery. Lots of B&Bs there. I just heard from him. Nothing so far. And no Italians. Rob Swift’s checking the guest houses that line the A3074’s approach to town. Don’t envy him: must be more than a dozen of them along that ridge.”

“Thanks, Maggie; I won’t bother the other two. But stay in touch.”

Novak rang off and stared at the map on the wall of the office. “Most of the better hotels in and around St. Ives all share one fault,” he said, almost to himself.

“What’s that?” Terry asked.

“No dinner restaurant.”

“St. Ives is packed with restaurants!”

“Yes, but if you were in hiding, would you risk being seen in the town? He lived near here, on and off, for years, remember, and the town is small: a good chance he would be recognized. In a hotel restaurant, though, the diners would be tourists, not locals.”

Terry smiled. She needed to push for Novak’s promotion to detective constable. The man was a natural: thoughtful, analytic. Much more like Penwarren than the often impulsive Morgan Davies. The more she knew him, the more she admired him.

“What’s your suggestion, then?”

“Just two remaining likely hotels: the St. Ives Harbour Hotel and Spa, only steps from the railway station. It has a well-respected terrace restaurant overlooking Porthminster Beach. We don’t know if Rhys-Jones has a vehicle; if he doesn’t, the train would make disappearing simple and quick. If you would be so kind, might you stop in there and examine their register? Your badge will gain you access.”

“And you?”

“The Garrack Hotel. It’s on a hillside just south of the center of town. Older, ivy-covered and almost hidden. Excellent restaurant. Even a heated pool. Great views of the ocean and town, and close to the Southwest Coast Path and the Coffin Way.”

“All right, they both sound plausible.”

“But if Rhys-Jones was Mary Trevean’s tenant, both roughly the same age, do you think he killed her? If so, why? And why stay here? I’m having trouble connecting the Trevean and Trevega cases with this Rhys-Jones. Where’s the motive?”

“Maybe, in passing, she mentioned something dangerous: too dangerous. There’s no evidence that anyone fitting his description was staying anywhere else in that neighborhood, according to this Sennen fellow at St. Just. Trevean’s property is maybe two miles south along the Coffin Way from Trevega House. Very convenient. And if he was staying at Trevean’s cottage and was the only tenant she appears to have had at the time, why would he suddenly vanish? Why would the cottage be bleached sterile? What needed to be erased?”

There were footsteps on the stairs. A young, rather bulky young man in a constable’s uniform, one lacking badges of rank, entered and blinked in the harsh light.

“I’m to see a Detective Terry Bates. David Sennen. CSO St. Just.”

Terry crossed the office and shook his hand. “David, we are grateful for your help, and especially for providing us with a possible person of interest in this case—or cases, I should say, as there may be two. Thank you for coming up here, we need all the resources we can muster. This is Police Constable Novak; he’s in charge here.”

Both men nodded: typical Cornish male greeting.

“What needs doing?” Sennen asked.

Novak explained the searches already underway in the town. “DC Bates and I were about to investigate the guest lists at two larger hotels. The detective is taking one; I’m looking at the other. Would you like to ride with me? I can fill you in.” He looked at Terry and she nodded.

“But Terry…Detective Bates,” Novak said, correcting himself, “there’s a problem. As a detective, you are in plain clothes. You can enter the St. Ives Harbour and Hotel and not be noticed.”

“Oh, thank you for that compliment, Constable!”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it. But you’ll look like just another guest. On the other hand, I’m in uniform. If Rhys-Jones is at the Garrack and sees me he’ll know I’m police. I’d like to suggest that I change into civilian clothes. I keep some here.”

Terry thought for a moment. “It’s against regulation, of course, but I see your point. If Detective Inspector Davies were here I am almost certain she’d agree. She’s a great one for flouting procedure. Mr. Sennen, you’re in uniform and will have to wait out of sight in the car. That work for you?”

Sennen nodded. He was dazzled by detective Bates. Any man would be.

DAVID MOSS, THE landlord at the Tinners, heard Clare call him from the bar below his office. He picked his way down the narrow oak stairs and found a man in an iridescent orange jacket standing by the door: the chap from their Wednesday morning commercial waste collection.

“George, right?” David said, extending a hand.

“Right, sir.” George looked at his own dirty hand and withdrew it.

“Offer you a pint?”

The man ducked his head. “No sir, working, sir. But thank you.”

“Well then, how can I help?”

“Something in one of your wheelie bins in the car park, sir: not the recycling. One of the dust bins. We was just tipping them into the truck with the hydraulic lift, me and Thomas was, when we noticed. Computer gear or some such…”

David followed him out. He’d known George for years. His partner was relatively new, a younger, well-built chap. Standing beside the maw at the rear of the truck, Thomas was digging amongst the garbage. He’d already set aside a laptop covered with fragrant food waste and now pulled out a cord with another piece of electrical equipment attached.

“Not supposed to dispose of this stuff this way, sir, if I may say so,” Thomas warned. “You could be penalized. Dangerous chemicals, metals and whatnot inside, or so we’re told. Can’t go to our disposal site.”

David looked at what they’d found. “I don’t recognize any of this, honestly. Doesn’t belong to us.”

“What about this then? “Thomas said. He held a filthy ledger book in his gloved hand. It was dripping from one corner.

“Nor that either. But let me get a bag,” David said.

CLARE STOOD IN the kitchen, about to clean off the binned items, when David stopped her.

“Hang on. Just had a thought. We had a police detective guest a while back—don’t mention it to anyone, right?”

Clare nodded.

“She asked me…”

“She?”

“Yes. Inspector Davies. Striking lady. Commanding. She asked me to let her know if anything unusual happened. It’s a case they’re investigating.”

“This is pretty unusual, David…”

“Yes. Yes, it is. I’ll get on the phone in the bar. Meantime, touch none of this.”

David punched in 999. The pub was still empty; no lunch crowd yet. He was grateful. He left a message, referencing Inspector Davies.

Comms texted it immediately to her. Morgan had just stepped into her unmarked Ford Estate. She was bound for St. Ives. She read the text and changed her itinerary immediately. She reckoned she could be in Zennor by early afternoon. Bates could take care of St. Ives. She marched out to her car and called Calum from the car park. She could see him in an upstairs window.

“To what do I owe this delightful surprise…” he began.

“Get down here and into your car. We have a new scene. The Tinners Arms. New evidence. A laptop found in their garbage, among other things.”

“Trevean’s computer?”

“Was that an actual question?”

Twenty-Five

THE ST. IVES Harbour Hotel and Spa was quite beyond anything Terry Bates had experienced. It was a sprawling edifice of Victorian, Georgian, and more modern buildings, all brick, she guessed, the various periods knit together into a seamless and gracious whole by a mauve stucco exterior with white trim. It sat high along the shore side of the main A3074 road into town. She avoided the formal entrance and explored the property. Below the street level, the land fell away in manicured terraces down to the sands of Porthminster Beach, which glowed honey yellow in the late morning sun. Guests strolled barefoot on the strand, sandals and shoes in hand, pausing to snap photos with their phones. Others, an older group, basked like seals on chaises ranged along a balconied terrace high above the beach. In the wide oval harbor beyond, a small coastal fishing boat, turquoise blue hull, rounded the jetty on the incoming tide. Even at this distance she could hear its two-stroke on-board diesel engine thudding across the water like a heartbeat.

Entering from the western side of the hotel, she explored the public rooms. They were a graceful combination of classic and modern: thick drapes, overstuffed chairs, a chic dining room decorated in ebony and ivory colors. The furnishings were at once vaguely art deco and yet modern, with picture perfect views of the harbor.  She saw the train station, the terminus of the Great Western branch line, below and a few hundred yards to the west. Adam was right: it would be easy for anyone to make a quick exit by train.

Finally, she entered the lobby. It was quite intimate, with a fireplace embraced by an ornate mantle. Facing the front door was a tall, wood-paneled reception desk. Behind it, a young woman with close-cropped hair black as a raven, wearing a dark blue blazer with the hotel’s name embroidered in gold thread on the left breast pocket, stared at a computer screen. She looked up.

“Oh! Sorry, I didn’t hear you come in!”

“I didn’t. I was already here.”

“Then you’re a guest? How may I help?”

“No, I’m not a guest,” Terry said, sliding her warrant card and badge wallet across the marble desk. “I should like to speak to the manager. Can you arrange that?”

Evidently nonplussed, the young woman sputtered: “Oh dear, has someone filed a complaint? Because we did have an especially difficult guest just yesterday…”

“No, not at all. The manager, please?”

“Yes of course. I’ll just see if he’s in his office.”

She returned moments later with a slender man with smooth dark skin and sleek black hair. Handsome and, she guessed, in his mid-thirties. He extended a hand.

“I am Mr. Sunny Gupta,” he said in his faintly musical Indian voice. “I am the hotel manager. How may we be of assistance?”

Terry shook his hand and smiled. Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Gupta. Might there be someplace private where we might chat?”

“Yes of course, please come through.” He ushered her around the tall desk and opened the door to his office, holding it open for her to enter first.

She was surprised at how high-tech his large office was. There were two wide-screen computer monitors atop his desk and other monitors on the wall above which showed ever-changing scenes of both the interior and exterior of the hotel: closed circuit cameras. Beige file cabinets lined the opposite wall. She took an offered chair beside his desk and he settled into his own, swiveling to face her.

“Now, then…”

“We are searching, Mr. Gupta, for someone who may have been involved in a crime in this area. He is not a transient; he is a native but we believe he is staying in accommodations in or near St. Ives. I should like to have access to your current registration list so I might check the names of those staying here. I could, of course, obtain a warrant, but I am hoping you will want to cooperate.”

Gupta hesitated a moment, staring past her, as if reviewing hotel rules in his head.

Finally, he turned back to his desk, punched a few keys on his computer keyboard, and rose.

“Here. Please,” he said waving her to his chair. “Be my guest.”

Terry laughed. “I suspect I could never afford to be your guest here, Mr. Gupta, but thank you. This should not take long.”

“Perhaps we should make it possible for you to stay one weekend, as our guest?”

“Thanks for the offer, but I am afraid that would be out of order.”

“Yes. I should have known. Pardon me.” He retreated to the other side of the office.

Terry scrolled through the names. “Good Lord, how many rooms do you have?”

“Forty-six. All luxuriously appointed.”

Terry smiled. She wouldn’t have expected anything less.

After a few minutes of studying the list for Jeremy Rhys-Jones, or any other that might be a recognizable false name, Italian or otherwise, she stood.

“Thank you, Mr. Gupta. I have not found the person we are looking for. But I deeply appreciate your willing assistance.”

He smiled and admired the petite young woman before him.

“It has been my distinct pleasure, Detective. Please let us know if there is anything else we can do to advance your investigation.”

DAVIES WAS LESS than fifteen minutes south of Bodmin, racing down the A30 in the fast lane and well over the limit, when she saw the police flashers behind her.

“Bloody hell! I don’t have time for this nonsense!” She moved left into the slow lane and looked for a place to pull over on the verge.

The unmarked police car blew right past her. It was Calum’s silver turbo-charged Volvo estate, assigned to him because he was also a member of the Met’s terrorism squad in London and needed a vehicle that could get him there fast in the case of an attack.

“You bastard!” she shouted, stomping on the accelerator and giving chase. The Ford screamed in complaint; he was pulling away fast. She backed it off to eighty, still well above the posted limit, and cursed again.

When she reached Zennor, Calum was already in his white Tyvek jumpsuit, a blue gauze elastic cap covering his thinning hair, and latex gloves on his hands. He and David Moss stood over a sunlit picnic table in the Tinners cobbled yard. It was covered with a sterile white plastic sheet, the kind they used for bodies. Three items lay on the sheet.

“You cheat,” she said as she approached Calum.

“Glad you could make it, Detective Inspector.”

She resisted the temptation to slug him. “What have you got?”

With only a gloved thumb and forefinger Calum was just lifting the fake-leather cover of some kind of ledger book. The book was slimy and smelled rank. He looked at the first page, written in a graceful script.

“Yes. Mary Trevean’s.” He closed it and reached for a clear plastic evidence bag.

“Hold it! What’s the last entry, dammit?”

West stood, straightened his back, gloved hands on hips, and turned.

“Come on, Morgan, you know I can’t risk that. The book, this laptop and modem, they all go to the forensics lab next. I’ll take them there straightaway. Anything we do here will just muddy the results: fingerprints, hair, who knows what else…”

“This is just you making a power play.”

“No, this is me being careful; it’s in my job description: protect the evidence.”

“I hate this part.”

“No you don’t. You love it. You live for it.”

David Moss was shaking his head. “You two always have so much fun together, do you?”

They both grinned.

Morgan watched Calum load the three items, each in its own heavy plastic bag, into a large metal container, close the lid, and seal it with a labeled plastic zip tie. She watched him speed away, hoping he’d be safe, then ducked into the Tinners. It was early, but she needed a pint.

“OPEN THAT GATE, will you?” Novak asked.

“Sir?” CSO Sennen replied.

“I’ll explain in a moment.” It was just before noon and they were high on a hill at the southern edge of St. Ives, where grazing land replaced settlement. Burthallen Lane, a single lane road, dead-ended at the edge of a field, lush green and sparkling with ground-level white and pink English daisies.

Sennen got out, swung open the wide metal farm gate, and Novak parked his squad car, plastered with its instantly recognizable iridescent blue and yellow checkerboard decals, in the field behind a high stone hedge covered in ivy. He stepped out and gestured for Sennen to take the driver’s seat.

“I’ve been to the Garrack before. A friend’s wedding reception. There’s only a long and narrow entrance lane that branches off from this one. We passed it. A squad car would be noticed immediately.”

“I get it.”

“Right then, so I’ll stroll up the lane like any other country walker or guest and go to reception. If I need you, I’ll phone your mobile, yeah?”

“Sure. Good thinking.”

Novak rounded a bend and was, as he had been before, struck by how charming the vine-covered main building was. The hotel looked like it had grown out of the hillside, rather than being imposed upon it. Well-tended gardens spread in every direction. A small, gable-roofed single-story stone structure attached to one side of the main building had an arched, wrought iron sign above the sage green door which announced the hotel’s modest entrance. He stepped inside. The ceiling was open to the rafters and sunlight flooded in though skylights. The reception desk was barely six feet long and painted in shiny white enamel that reflected the light throughout the little room.

There was no one behind it. Novak waited a bit, then discovered an electric call button at one end. He pressed it. In a few moments, a middle-aged man in a suit and tie came through a low door in the back wall and blinked in the bright light.

“Good Lord, I hope you haven’t waited long. I’m afraid that Betsy, our regular receptionist, called in sick this morning. Flu or something. Most inconvenient. I’m Barry Haselton, the manager. Have you a reservation, sir? Let’s get you settled in. Baggage outside in your car?”

“As it happens, Mr. Haselton, I’m not booked in. I’m here on business.” He pulled his warrant card from his jacket pocket. “Police business.”

Haselton bristled. “But we’ve had no trouble here and I believe we are in accordance with all our licenses and codes…”

“It’s nothing to do with that, sir. And this noble hotel, where I have stayed myself, is in no trouble with the law.”

Haselton softened. “Well then…?”

Novak explained.

Forty-five minutes later, Novak walked back down the lane. He’d gone through the guest list twice, to no avail, thanked Haselton for his cooperation, and now felt defeated. His theory that Rhys-Jones would stay nearby and in a better hotel was falling apart. A part of him, bigger than he wanted to admit, felt he’d let Terry down.

Sennen saw him come through the farm gate, got out of the squad car, and moved to the passenger seat. Novak dropped into the driver’s seat and simply shook his head at Sennen’s unspoken question. He called DC Bates’s mobile.

“Anything Detective Bates?”

“Other than a growing envy and resentment of the kind of people who can afford to stay at the St. Ives Harbour Hotel and Spa, no. Sorry.” She wondered why she was apologizing to a uniformed constable and realized that, in her mind at least, Novak was already her peer.

“You?”

“Same.”

“Look, I haven’t eaten. How about a late lunch? You’re the local; tell me where.”

He thought for a moment. “Spinacio’s will still be serving. It’s right on The Wharf. Vegetarian but wonderful; all local produce. And a great wine list which, frankly, I am ready for.”

“Me too. Fifteen minutes?”

“Depending on parking.”

She was waiting for him at a table overlooking the harbor.

“You’d think a squad car could park anywhere,” Novak said slipping into his chair. “But no.”

“Where’s Sennen?”

“Manning the fort; he’s got my number if he needs me.”

A waitress asked if they wanted anything to drink. They both ordered a glass of pinot grigio, the cheapest on the list.

The waitress returned with their drinks.

Terry smiled and held up her glass: “Hello, Adam.”

It took him aback. He blinked. He was still “at work.”

“Hello, Terry,” he finally said, lifting his own glass and grinning.

“Lousy day. Let’s order, shall we?”

They looked at their menus, which were in Italian but with subtitles.

“I think I’ll just have an insalata misto and drink my frustration out,” Terry said.

“You have a long drive home,” Novak reminded her.

“I’ll be fine. I have a ‘hollow leg,’ as my grandfather used to say. Of course, he died of cirrhosis…”

Novak didn’t know how to respond. He studied the menu. He’d skipped breakfast and wanted something substantial.

“Ah, riso con i porcini.” The translation said ‘slow cooked risotto rice in a porcini mushroom white wine sauce.’

The waitress took their orders. “The rice will take just a little while, chef advises, but it is worth the wait. Only fifteen or twenty minutes.”

Novak looked across the table at Terry.

“That’s fine; we’re in no hurry,” she said.

They were in mid-conversation a few minutes later when Novak suddenly looked above and past her.

“Hello? Adam?”

He shook his head and blinked.

“I’m an idiot.”

“Come on...”

He caught the eye of the waitress. She came immediately.

“I’m sorry, sir; it’s not ready yet. I explained…”

“No, that’s not it. Please bring back your menu.”

When she returned, he spun it around before Terry and pointed to the dish he’d ordered.

“Yes? What?”

“There is a guest at the Garrack who is registered as G. Riso. Riso is the Italian word for what?

“Rice, it says so right here.”

“How about Rhys?” He pulled out his smart phone and typed in: “Italian for Jeremy.” The answer was immediate: Geremio.

Novak stood. “Let’s go.”

“No. I need to report this to Morgan first. If it is him, he’s not going anywhere and it’s best we don’t create a situation by which he might be warned…plus, I’m hungry.”

Twenty-Six

“SO, WHAT YOU’RE telling me is that Eldridge Biggins is bumping right along the edge of insolvency. Do I have that right?”

“I wouldn’t put it quite that baldly, Inspector,” Roderick Nelson at the St. Ives Lloyds Bank branch said, smiling at the handsome woman across his desk.

“That is because, Mr. Nelson, you are paid to be judicious. I’m not, and it doesn’t suit me anyway. Biggins is in debt up to his ears and drawing his account down to nearly zero every month, am I right?”

“If you put it that way…”

“I do.”

“Then, yes. His dairy farm is doing better than most. I see the income statements. It’s mostly his property debt to the Agricultural Mortgage Corporation in Hampshire that’s a strain. Usually makes the monthly payment, but sometimes he’s late and gets charged a fee. Reckon that’s only fair; AMC have an excellent reputation in the farm loan business. Mostly it’s the volatility in milk prices: up one month, down another. I’ve reviewed their separate accounts and he and his wife seem to live very frugally. Don’t quite know how they get by, frankly. Household spending is modest to say the least: some charges on their Lloyds charge cards occasionally: at the Co-Op in St. Just, utility rates, and fuel from the petrol station up at the Tesco superstore just east of St. Ives. A bit of a drive it is, but it’s the only petrol station left here, sad to say. What garages we once had just do repairs now; can’t compete with Tesco’s petrol prices. As for the rest of the Biggins’s accounts, they spend so little I reckon maybe the farm meets their basic needs for food and such. Who knows? There is also an outstanding credit card charge with a physician’s surgery in Penzance. For Alice Biggins. She has her own account and is paying a monthly penalty for that overdue debt. I don’t know, of course, what that’s about or why it’s not been paid. She has the resources.”

“Do you have the physician’s name or billing address?”

“Yes, they have sent a collection notice.”

“I’d like it.”

Morgan’s mobile buzzed. She frowned at the phone and yanked it to her ear.

“I’m busy. What is it?”

“It’s Terry Bates here.”

“Oh good, then my caller ID is still functioning…”

“Morgan, stop it. We may have located Jeremy Rhys-Jones.”

“Where?”

“It was PC Novak’s idea. He was sure Rhys-Jones wouldn’t hole up in some doss house…”

“Spare me the theory, Terry: Where?”

“The Garrack Hotel on the southern edge of St. Ives, closest accommodation to Trevega House, just a little over a mile away from it. He appears to be using an alias, an Italian version of his real name, we believe: Geremio Riso. Where are you?”

“Lloyds St. Ives and just finishing. Has Novak taken any action?”

“Of course not. We await your orders.”

Morgan thought she heard a tinge of sarcasm but let it go. “I need to inform Mister. Well done, Terry,” she added as an afterthought.

“Not me. Novak worked it out. It’s time someone pushed his promotion to CID.”

Morgan did not reply. Terry had a thing for Adam Novak; that was becoming clear. But did that make her wrong? Morgan had been watching him and didn’t think so.

“Where are you now?”

“On our way back from lunch. We’ll be at the Dove Street station in a few minutes. CSO Sennen from St. Just and PC Novak’s three local CSOs are already there.

“THERE ARE SEVEN of us down here,” Morgan reported to Penwarren from her car outside the bank. “Admittedly, four are only CSOs, but we could take him.”

“For what, Morgan?” the DCI said. “I appreciate your eagerness, and also the work of Terry’s team down there, but the plain fact is that even if this is Jeremy Rhys-Jones, and we don’t know that, we have nothing on him. A partial print, as yet unidentified, on that leg hold trap that caught the dog. Otherwise nothing. Not from the dead cow, not from the fire, not from the well-poisoning, not from the Land Rover, and certainly not from the attack on the girl. Nothing. We don’t even know what Rhys-Jones looks like.

“I’ll need to inform Sir Michael. His son—if that is who this is—is wanted by the Italian Polizia on a criminal charge. That may take precedence. I’ll have him email us a photo, if he has one. Maybe an ID photo from the bank Jeremy worked for. I’ll try to make that fast. Meanwhile, we have nothing but suspicions about his activities here in Cornwall, nothing by which we can even bring him in for an interview.”

“What about using a false passport?”

“We don’t know that this particular guest has, do we? Are you hearing me, Morgan?”

Davies paced around the small police office, her thick low heels like rifle shots on a polished wood floor dating back to who knew when. The rest of the team stood back and watched.

“Of course I’m hearing you, dammit! I just don’t like it!”

“May I just remind you, in case you’ve forgotten, Detective Inspector, that I am your commanding officer?”

Morgan slumped into a chair, defeated. “All right, Sir. No offense meant. Here’s my Plan B: PC Novak calls the manager at the Garrack with whom he’s already spoken. He lets him know this alleged Italian may be a person of interest. He lets on nothing else. He asks the manager to keep an eye out and let us know immediately if he sees something odd or out of character—like the chap suddenly checking out. How am I doing so far?”

“I don’t like how little control we’d have over the manager. Too risky. But let’s have someone check in as a guest and keep an eye out. Terry, I should think. She can pick up whatever nighttime toiletries she needs at the Boots pharmacy there in St. Ives. It’s just around the corner on the High Street, as I recall. And have her find a cheap carryall. She’ll take a cab to the hotel, not her car. Make sure she has a reservation in the restaurant for dinner.”

“Why not me?”

Penwarren laughed. “My dear Morgan, you have ‘police’ written all over your face. You’re a brilliant and intuitive detective but, as I’ve said before, you have no future as an undercover cop. Terry, however, still has a chance.”

“Not to mention that she’s so decorative…”

“I did not mention that, and I won’t go there. As soon as I reach Sir Michael, I’ll let you know and get a photo sent to Terry’s phone and yours. Patience, my dear Morgan.”

“I missed that gene.”

Morgan explained Penwarren’s orders. The only one pleased was Terry Bates.

“I get to stay in a posh hotel! Brilliant!” She looked at the plain, navy-blue pantsuit she was wearing, a white silk camisole beneath. “Well, I guess I’d better pop down to the OSKA shop on Fore Street to buy something appropriate for dinner.”

Morgan made a face. Novak just shook his head. The other four headed home.

“Adam, I’m damned if I’m going to drive all the way back up to Bodmin now,” Morgan said. “I’ve done it back and forth almost twice daily on this case. Find me a reasonable B&B, will you?”

“I’ve a spare room.”

Bates shot him a look. Davies caught it.

“That’s very kind, Adam, but I like my privacy…”

TERRY BATES ENTERED the long, narrow dining room at the Garrack as the summer sun was lowering in the west. It was just past seven-thirty. The window-clad room was flooded with evening light and most of the white linen-covered tables already were occupied. She had luxuriated in a hot bath enriched with the hotel’s Relais du Silence-brand body oil. Now she was wearing a sleeveless calf length dress in soft, pale gray jersey, high at the neckline but cut to an asymmetrical pattern, one side longer than the other and the difference accentuated by a drawstring within the fabric just below the knee she had pulled in to emphasize the quirky design. And her legs. The clingy dove-gray dress was the perfect foil for her shoulder-length ginger blond hair, which was freshly washed and shining. She wished she’d had heels, but her Roman-style tan leather sandals had to suffice.

She waited at the entry, hands stuffed in the garment’s side pockets, knowing she was being observed. Her room lived up to its “family run” reputation, which was to say that it was homey and comfortable but hardly five-star, except for the toiletries. The dining room, however, was something else. The furnishings were modern and chic: small square tables and sleek dining chairs upholstered in dark chocolate brown leather.

The hostess approached with a stack of menus in the crook of her arm.

“Ms. Bates, I presume?”

“You presume correctly.”

“Welcome. We have a table by the corner windows reserved for you. Wonderful view.”

Middle-aged and assured, Terry wondered if the hostess was part of the family.

Terry smiled at the other guests as she followed her, scanning for a man dining alone. She saw none.

Her table was set for one, with crystal glassware and silver cutlery in a clean-lined, contemporary style. The hostess pulled out the chair facing the view. Terry pointed instead to the one facing the room.

“This one, please. I like to people-watch when I travel alone,” she said, her voice muted. She also didn’t like her back to the crowd. It was a cop thing.

“Of course, Ms. Bates.” The hostess left a menu and said, “Your waitress, Melinda, will be along shortly. I’ll let her know you’ve been seated.”

In moments, the waitress was at her side. She was just a slip of a girl, barely twenty, Terry guessed, but possessed of bright sapphire eyes accented with just a touch of eyeliner.

“May I get you something to drink, Ms. Bates?”

Terry loved that everyone knew her name.

“White wine, I should think. What do you have by the glass?”

Ever so briefly, Melinda made a face. She bent down. Terry caught the scent of lavender soap, very faint. “I shouldn’t choose the house white if I were you. Italian and quite acidic. But we do have a very good split bottle of Sancerre. Roughly two and a half glasses. Good value, it is, too.”

“Right then. I’ll try that.”

“Back in a moment to take your order, Ms. Bates.”

Terry looked around the room. The other diners could have been her grandparents.

Melinda returned with a frosted silver bucket, beads of condensation sweating slowly down its sides as the metal warmed in the waning sunlight. The small bottle nestled in a bed of ice. Melinda uncorked it, poured a measure, and waited.

Terry sipped and nodded. “You’re right, this is lovely.”

Melinda filled her glass halfway and resettled the bottle in the ice.

“Are you ready to order?”

“Yes, thank you. Spoiled for choice I am with these offerings, but I’ll have the crab and watercress salad as a starter, and the seared sea bass for mains.”

“Good choices. Both local they are. Crab’s from Newlyn, the bass is right off the boat here in St. Ives. The bass fillet has a softly spicy citrus sauce and comes with snow peas and two small flash-fried rice and coconut balls with their own dipping sauce. Southeast Asian influenced. I think you’ll be pleased. Our chef’s new, just down from someplace important in London. Dishy, he is, and single, too,” she whispered, adding a wink.

“No single men here in the dining room tonight, though,” Terry said quietly, eyebrows lifted. “I was hoping for some eye candy…”

Melinda nodded and looked around. “Mostly, like tonight, we get older couples. Tourists staying with us. Reckon it’s the luxury tariff keeps others away.”

A dozen tables were occupied. In a couple of cases a pair of the small tables had been moved together to accommodate two couples dining together. Silver hair prevailed.

Melinda squatted next to Terry’s chair and confided: “We do have a chap staying with us who dines alone, though. Handsome devil, though he’s probably old enough to be my father. Sort of a poor woman’s George Clooney, you know? Same close-trimmed beard, touch of gray. Italian, he is. Barely speaks English though he understands well enough. He comes in when most everyone else has finished. A loner, I guess. Works out in our little fitness center beforehand, I’m told.”

“And showers first, I hope,” Terry grinned. “Sounds interesting.”

“Oh, he’s a bit old for someone like you, if I may say so. Of course, there’s some women…” she stood and giggled, her hand cupped over her mouth, blue eye’s dancing.

Terry smiled and shook her head. “I’m not one of them, Melinda.”

Melinda shook her head. “I didn’t mean…”

“I know. Now, how about that salad?”

The young woman blushed: “Back in just a tick.”

Terry wondered if she’d ever been that young or girlish. After her mother had died, she’d been the caretaker of the house, looking after her father and younger brother. Too busy, really, to have an adolescence, especially after her grief-stricken father took to drink and her brother took to drugs and finally ran off. She’d soldiered straight through those years, ever watchful. The habits stuck and served her well as a policewoman. Still watchful. Vigilant. And just as lonely.

Her smart phone, deep in the left pocket of her dress, vibrated. She pulled it out. It was from Penwarren, forwarding a photo sent by Sir Michael of his son. It looked out of date from the clothes the man was wearing. It would be hard to make a match.

Twenty-Seven

PENWARREN WAS AT home in Padstow when his mobile came to life. He’d never found a ring tone he liked, so he’d stuck with the sound of a regular phone.

“Calum. Good evening. I was just heading off to dinner in town. Is this about the items discovered at the Tinners?”

“Yes, sir. Forensics have not got into the laptop yet—it’s rather a mess—wet and slimed with food waste. But they have, very carefully, examined the last few pages of the reservations book. They’re clean and Mary Trevean’s fingerprints are clear. She had registered only one renter before her death, a ‘Geremio Riso.’ He was in the Chicken Coop cottage. He had been for two weeks before her murder.”

Penwarren gazed out his arched window overlooking the harbor.

“Morgan and Terry think they’ve found him, Calum. In a hotel in St. Ives. Terry is staying there tonight, keeping obbo. I couldn’t let them take him in this afternoon. We had nothing to go on.”

“But now you do.”

“No, not yet. Being a renter is not the same as being a murderer. We still have no link.”

“The cushion may help.”

“Where’s that DNA analysis?”

“The samples were so faint we sent it to a specialty lab up in Bristol.”

“We’re about to take in a person of interest who may be a murder suspect. We cannot wait. I’ll lay into that lab in the morning. If the cushion samples tell us something new, we’ll have means as well as opportunity. What we won’t have, and it is baffling to me, frankly, is motive. Not to mention, what’s this to do with the events at Trevega House we suspect Rhys-Jones to have caused, if it even is him?”

“When I searched the depression in the ground at the mine shaft near the dead animal, I found a few things. Useless denim threads, again, but whoever ducked in there hid in a thicket of thorny gorse and bramble and left a couple of hairs behind. Mighty unpleasant hiding place, the thorns clawing at you. There was a fragment of follicle on one of the samples and our lab’s getting a DNA profile. But because the sample is fragmentary, they won’t claim more than a sixty percent chance of accuracy.  Not much to go on. The Crown Prosecution Service probably would dismiss it, whatever they find.”

“Unless we learn more.”

“If there’s more to be learned through interrogation, Morgan will unearth it. She’s ace in the interview room.”

Penwarren paused and took in the water view beyond his sitting room window, thinking about Morgan but also about Rebecca, and his loss.

“Calum?”

“Sir?”

“You’re very fond of her, aren’t you?”

“Sir?”

“Morgan.”

“Uh…well, I suppose as fond as anyone could be of that woman. A handful she is.”

“Calum, meaningful relationships can be so fleeting and so fragile. Sometimes you have to seize them and protect them, no matter what other pressures are upon you. Think about it. You two are as different as chalk and cheese, yes, but well-matched it seems to me and others who care for you both. Are you listening?”

“Yes…Sir.”

“Good. Meanwhile, if I hear anything from Terry, I’ll let you know. Otherwise, I’ll see you at Bodmin early tomorrow morning, yes? We may have a suspect by then.”

“Of course.”

“Think, Calum: There’s a big heart in that woman.”

He rang off.

Calum was looking at his mobile as if the Oracle had spoken.

TERRY HAD RESISTED Melinda’s offer of a second split of Sancerre and was picking at a dessert artfully composed of lemon curd with a plum sauce atop a scoop of kiwi ice cream when he finally arrived, taking a table at the opposite end of the room, well beyond the wall of windows. The sun had dropped beneath the watery horizon and the hostess had switched on all the little table lamps, so there were tiny pockets of warm light punctuating the dining room like summer fireflies. Only a few earlier diners remained, lingering over coffee and cognac. The earlier buzz of conversation had become a murmur.

The gentleman was fit and only medium height, with salt and pepper hair and a matching close-trimmed beard, just as Melinda had said. Terry looked at the photo on her mobile once again. The man across the room was older and his face more lined, but the resemblance was clear. She punched in Morgan’s number and got her voice mail.

“Morgan, dear!” she said, hoping her voice carried across the dining room. “Hello darling! It’s been a successful day. I have one particular client I’m certain will become ours. The boss should be pleased. Had a lovely dinner here; wonderfully helpful and informative staff. We must visit here together very soon. Long day trolling for new customers, so I’m off to bed soon. Reckon I’ll have an early morning. Up before light and then off to be with you again. Sorry I have to be away at times like this. But all is well and you can trust me. Love you like crazy. Bye now…bye!”

Melinda appeared. “Coffee Ms. Bates?” Her head tilted to the other end of the room and she winked.

“No, but thank you. I’m knackered, and all this good food has made me sleepy. I’m off.”

“See you at breakfast? I’m on tomorrow morning as well. The eggs benedict are a specialty, a bit of Scottish smoked salmon instead of the usual gammon.”

“I hope so, Melinda. And thank you for your… kindness.”

She rose and crossed the room, caught the lone diner’s eye, and shyly ducked her head. Melinda had slipped her his room number, as if aiding in an assignation. But that would wait until morning.

JUST BEFORE DAWN Thursday morning, Terry stood at the reception desk in her street clothes. The manager, Barry Haselton, was not on duty. Instead a young man, pimply faced, the night clerk apparently, was behind the desk.

“How may I help, madam?”

“I should like to check out.”

“So early and without breakfast? It’s included in the tariff…”

“Other things to attend to, but thank you.”

The clerk processed the paperwork, the printer whining, and finally looked up: “Check or credit, ma’am?”

Terry passed her warrant card across the white desk and quickly withdrew it. The clerk blinked.

“Please summon Mr. Haselton. Now.”

“But this is most irregular. He will not be pleased to be disturbed at this hour. I could be…”

“Murder is irregular, young man. Do it. By the way, have you coffee at least?”

“Um, Yes. But night staff coffee only, I’m afraid. No espresso. Powdered cream substitute. That okay… Detective?”

“I’ll take it black.”

She had to wait nearly half an hour. Haselton lived off the property. The young man fidgeted but the lobby remained empty. She paced, carrying her new dress and personal items, including all of the Relais du Silence toiletries she had not used, in a worn canvas and leather satchel she’d found at the British Heart Care charity shop in Tregenna Place. In the darkness beyond the front entrance light she saw shadows moving and smiled. Dawn had begun to tinge the tops of the trees silver, like a frost.

Moments after Haselton arrived, much indisposed, and before Terry could explain, the Italian guest strode down the corridor. He wore hiking boots, shorts, and a black tee-shirt. He had a small rucksack thrown over one shoulder. He seemed surprised to see the lady from the dining room there.

She smiled. “Early morning for us both, Mr.…”

“Mr. Riso,” Haselton volunteered. “Off walking early as usual this morning, sir? Back in time for breakfast?”

The man bowed slightly. “Si. Certo, signore.”

Terry moved closer to him and smiled. “Actually, Jeremy, I suspect you won’t. I am Detective Constable Bates. You are here on a false passport and are wanted as a person of interest in a murder investigation, among other things. You’re under arrest.”

Rhys-Jones seemed to consider for a moment, head tilted to one side almost as if amused, then whipped his rucksack around at Bates’s head and bolted through the front entrance door where he slammed up against the substantial bulk of Morgan Davies. He twisted away but was brought down by PC Novak. Immediately, a squad car screeched to a stop beside the entrance, its flashers painting the hotel blue. CSO Sennen stepped out just as Morgan slapped handcuffs on the prone figure at her feet. Two additional squad cars from Penzance followed. The place was ablaze with police lights.

His face pressed into the pavement outside the ivy-clad hotel entrance, Morgan bent over and said, “Please cooperate, Mr. Rhys-Jones. You are not yet a suspect in any crime. You are only a very difficult to locate person of interest whom we should like to interview in regards to a serious crime. Unless you know something we do not, you have no reason to flee. Do you understand?”

Rhys-Jones said nothing.

“I’ll take that as assent, then, shall I? Now, how about you get up and let Constable Novak here lead you to a car. Thank you for your help this morning constable. I’ll meet you both shortly at the police station in Camborne.”

Two of Novak’s CSOs emerged from the shadows on each side of the low entrance of the building and joined Rhys-Jones in the back of the squad car.

“Where’s Terry?” Novak asked Davies.

“Here.” She was standing in the doorway, her left hand pressed against the side of her head. “He clocked me with his backpack. There was a liter bottle of water in it, among other things. Water’s heavy.”

He took her arm. “Let’s step inside and let me look at your head.”

She protested but he ignored her. In the light of the tiny lobby he looked at the side of her head. A lump was developing, but there was no blood. Hazelton and the night clerk stood beside the desk, speechless, eyes wide, as if shell-shocked.

“Nasty bump, but I reckon you’re okay.” He took her shoulders and kissed the injury. “Gotta go.”

She grinned. “I’ll be right behind you as soon as I settle my bill.”

Twenty-Eight

“IF I AM, as you say, merely a person of interest, why am I in this cell?”

Jeremy sat on a straight-backed wooden chair in the stark beige interview room in the Camborne station later that morning. Davies sat opposite him across the old metal table and had already cautioned him.

“This is not a cell, Mr. Rhys-Jones, it is an interview room. You are here so we can have a chat.”

“I am a British citizen!”

“Correct. You are a British citizen who entered this country and registered at the Garrack Hotel using an Italian passport.

Rhys-Jones smirked. “I also have Italian citizenship, from my mother’s side.”

“That may be so, but the name on your passport is inconsistent with both your Italian and British passports, which are on record. Our police and MI5 don’t like that, they don’t like that at all: people sneaking into the country using a false identity, what with terrorist attacks and all.”

“I am not a terrorist.”

“Perhaps not, though I suspect that is splitting hairs. How does one define ‘terrorist?’ Someone who does things to induce terror in others? I am interested only in your recent activities here in Cornwall.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“Ah, but we do, Jeremy, we do. We know a lot, you see. So, let’s talk about that, shall we?”

Rhys-Jones folded his arms across his chest. Morgan wondered whether it was out of belligerence or fear.

She opened a thick manila folder the contents of which had nothing to do with Jeremy Rhys-Jones. It was meant to unnerve him and she watched him eye it. She flicked several pages and then scrutinized one, letting Rhys-Jones wait. She looked up.

“For quite some time now, you have been renting a self-catering cottage in Boswednack from a Mary Trevean. Am I right?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“You’re repeating yourself, Jeremy. Also lying. We found the registration book you dumped into the wheelie bin at the Tinners Arms, the one listing you—or rather “Geremio Riso”—as her last tenant. The last before she was murdered, that is. Not the smartest move you’ve ever made, tossing that book, if I may say so.”

“I don’t know anything about that. Nothing to do with me.”

“Do you refer to the registration book or the murder, Jeremy?”

He did not respond but she saw color rising from the base of his throat.

IN THE DARKENED viewing room where Terry Bates watched a video screen and listened to the interview, the door opened and an older gentleman in suit and tie entered. She stood.

“May I help you, sir?”

“Sir Michael Rhys-Jones. You must be Terry Bates. I hear good things about you from Arthur.”

“Arthur?”

“Penwarren. A close friend.”

“Oh!” She offered her seat.

“No, no thank you. I’ve been sitting in a Royal Navy attack helicopter for more than an hour. I’ll stand.”

“YOU DO NOT deny, do you, that you rented Mary Trevean’s Chicken Coop cottage?”

Rhys-Jones looked to an opposite wall as if for instruction.

“No,” he said finally. “I do not.”

“Thank you. But I can’t help but wonder why? There you were in lovely northern Italy, where many of us might like to be, but then you left for windy and wet Cornwall. I can’t figure that, know what I mean?”

“I grew up here. Cornwall’s home.”

Morgan turned a few more pages in her phony file, and then looked up.

“So, it wasn’t because you had fled Italy after having sexually assaulted and nearly killed a female colleague who worked with you at the...” she looked at the file again, “the Credit Suisse Bank in Milan? Because the Italian Polizia have been looking for you, you see. This being Europe, our police services are all closely linked.”

Rhys-Jones looked at the ceiling and took a breath. “I did not attack that woman,” he said returning her gaze. “She was sex crazy. Wanted me to do certain things to her when we made love. Crazier every time.”

“Like what, Jeremy?”

“Like choke her during sex, if you must know. It intensified her orgasm, she claimed; said she liked to be dominated.”

“And you do like to dominate women, don’t you? Even assault them? Like your ex-wife, Nicola?”

He did not even blink.

“So, what went wrong with this Italian girl?”

Jeremy looked at the scratched surface of the steel table between them.

“Not a girl. My age. Mature. But I’d never done something like that before. I didn’t know what I was doing. Next thing I knew she was unconscious. I panicked and left her in her flat.”

“I see. Well, you may be pleased to hear that she survived, though not without some damage, according to the records of her case against you.”

“It was her idea. That’s all I’ll say.”

“Was it Mary Trevean’s idea that you suffocate her, too?”

“What? That’s crazy!”

“No, Jeremy, that’s how she died. Were you in some kind of bizarre sexual relationship with her, too…she a lonely widow and by all accounts quite lovely?”

Rhys-Jones stood. “That’s absurd. I’m leaving.”

“I’m afraid you’re not, actually. Sit down.

“For one thing, Jeremy, you have no fixed address, do you? For another, you have already demonstrated that you are a flight risk, both in Italy and here. Finally, you entered this country using false identity documents, a serious offense. Now, as you seem unwilling to cooperate further, we need only step outside to another room, take your fingerprints, and swab your cheek for DNA. And after that, you will be a guest of Her Majesty here in Camborne. We’ll chat again soon.”

Sir Michael was waiting in the corridor when a constable led Jeremy out of the interview room. Seeing his father, Jeremy stopped. Sir Michael stared at him, motionless, and finally shook his head in disbelief. Jeremy walked on, the constable’s hand on his elbow.

“WHAT NOW, ARTHUR?”

Sir Michael and Penwarren sat at a small table in the incident room that had been established at the Camborne station following the murder of Mary Trevean. Until this morning, it hadn’t seen much use. Now, Davies, Bates, and Novak sat at computers entering updates into the database for the case. HOLMES II would automatically correlate and cross-reference the reports, looking for discrepancies.

“We have no choice but to suspect your son in the Trevean murder, Michael. But I’m afraid that even if your son had nothing to do with her death, he is in serious legal trouble. Though he has legal Italian citizenship, he used a forged Italian passport to enter the UK; fake passports are easily obtained throughout Europe, as your friends at MI5 know. He could have entered using either his British passport or his legal Italian passport. But they would have carried his real name. Instead he had a new passport created with this ‘Geremio Riso’ alias. The question is why? I can only assume it’s because he knew he was being sought in Italy and did not want to be tracked returning to the UK. Our immigration laws frown upon such deceit. He could face a ten-year sentence. I’m sorry.”

Michael looked away. “No, no. I am the one who is sorry. Sorry to have dragged your people into this matter, even sorrier that he is my son.”

“He’s an adult, Michael, and no longer your responsibility.”

“Yes, I know.” He shook his head. “I have always thought Jeremy to be a bit off-kilter in some ways. I put it down to his mother’s genes, though perhaps that’s unfair. But after he beat up Nicola I wanted nothing more than to be shot of him.” He held his palms up, as if surrendering: “And now this.”

“Why do you think he came here?”

“He’s always had some kind of special connection with Cornwall, and Trevega House especially. He was furious when I told him, after the divorce, that he could never return, and even angrier when he learned Nicola and Andrew were living there.”

“When did he learn you’d dispossessed him, Michael?”

The old man sighed. “Only recently. Between his trust and his income at the bank in Milan, he’d suddenly decided he would buy the estate from me. That’s when he learned I’d bequeathed it to Nicola and her heirs.”

Morgan left her desk and joined them.

“These malicious events at Trevega, Sir Michael…do you think he might have been behind them?”

“That has been my suspicion all along, Inspector. I shared it with Arthur some time ago.”

“And that’s why you’ve pressed us to investigate Trevega?”

Penwarren nodded.

“Why didn’t you say something?”

“No evidence, Morgan. None.”

Sir Michael rested his gray and balding head in the palm of his left hand. “I am struggling to take this all in…”

“We all are, Michael,” Penwarren said, resting his hand on his old friend’s shoulder. “But you are in good hands with my people.”

Michael looked up. “Yes. I know. And I am grateful.”

“It’s too late for you to return to London, unless the ‘copter is waiting. Shall I arrange accommodation for you? One of Rick Stein’s places in Padstow? He’s an old friend and I’m going there anyway. I have influence. We could have dinner together.”

Michael waved a hand. “Thank you, Arthur, but I think I’ll stay with my Nicola and Andrew and that splendid girl of theirs.”

Penwarren nodded. “Constable?” he said turning to Novak.

“It would be an honor. Ready when you are, Sir Michael. Take us no time at all to get down there. Shall I call them?”

“I’ll take care of that,” Penwarren said.

“THAT SIR MICHAEL, or whatever we’re supposed to call him: he’s coming. He’s almost here and he is hungry,” Lee announced. “I sensed it.” She’d just come in from taking Randi out for a very short walk, the most he was allowed yet.

Nicola looked at Andrew. He shrugged. They knew from Penwarren’s call that Michael was on his way; Lee did not. Moments later they heard tyres crunching on the gravel terrace behind the kitchen. Michael opened the passenger door and seemed to struggle to extract himself from Novak’s squad car. Suddenly, Lee was there to help him. Nicola hadn’t even heard her leave and watched from the kitchen window. Lee took his arm, gave him a sideways hug, and then helped him toward the house. Novak followed with a small, well-used leather overnight bag.

“See?” Lee said to Nicola as she tugged the old man into the kitchen. “I told you!”

Nicola embraced her ex-father-in-law and sat him down in a chair at the long kitchen table. She heard his driver’s car depart.

“Lee says you’re hungry,” she said.

“Must be a mind reader, this girl.” Lee was beside him, bouncing on her toes. He squeezed her hand.

“When did you last eat, Dad?”

“Last night. They had me on an attack ‘copter just as the sun came up this morning. No respect for the elderly.”

Nicola shook her head. Michael’s face was pale as plaster.

“I made lamb shepherd’s pie last night and can warm it up in no time in the Aga. Would that suit for a late lunch?”

“Certainly. But not as much as a very large glass of a decent red wine, if you can arrange it.”

Andrew patted his shoulder: “Be right back, Sir Michael.”

“When’s that boy going to learn, Nicola? That ‘sir’ nonsense…?”

“He can’t help it; he’s polite.”

“You could do worse.”

She laughed. “I know, Dad. I have done.”

Michael’s head dropped.

As if in slow motion, he turned to look at her and took a deep breath.

“Nicola. Jeremy is here. Has been for a while, apparently. He’s in police custody now, a ‘person of interest,’ as we say so delicately here, in the murder of a woman just down the road in Boswednack from whom he’d been renting a self-catering cottage. That’s why they hauled me down here from London.”

“Wait! You don’t mean Mary Trevean? We knew her. Oh my God! It can’t be! But Jeremy? Why is he even here?”

“He fled from Italy after assaulting a woman, a work colleague. Then he apparently vanished from the Boswednack cottage after the murder. My friend DCI Arthur Penwarren’s people found him holed up at the Garrack Hotel under a false Italian name.”

“The Garrack? Jesus, Dad, that’s barely a mile from here!”

“I know.”

“What’s he want?”

“Truly, my love, I have no idea.”

Andrew returned with a dusty bottle of French burgundy. He wiped it off, showed the label to Michael, and uncorked it with a flourish. “Cote du Nuits, Gevrey-Chambertin, 2003.

“Excellent choice, young man, even if it is one of my own…but do give it a moment to breathe before you pour. No, on second thought, don’t waste any time.”

“We’ll need another, sweetie.”

Andrew saw that Nicola’s face had lost its joy. His eyebrows lifted in question but she shook her head. He went back to the cellar.

Jamie and Flora came in through the kitchen door, led by Lee. Again, Nicola hadn’t even noticed the girl had gone missing to fetch them. She was like a wraith.

“We heard there was company,” Flora announced. “And wine.” She leaned over and kissed the shiny top of Michael’s head. “Hello, Michael, you old reprobate…”

“My dear Flora,” he mumbled, grinning.

“Steady on there, sir, that there’s my dear Flora!” Jamie countered.

“Somebody pour my friend Jamie and me some wine before we end up in fisticuffs over this lovely lady,” Michael commanded, chuckling.

Nicola poured.

Andrew returned from the cellar, opened the second bottle, and let it breathe.

A few minutes later, while everyone was chatting, Nicola set a fragrant bowl of shepherd’s pie in front of Michael. There were diced carrots and peas mixed into the savory sauce with the lamb, the whole capped by browned mashed potatoes. He took a forkful, sniffed it, and chewed.

“Perfect. Are you sure you’re really from American Boston, and not the Boston up in Lincolnshire…?”

Michael picked at and pushed around his late lunch, preferring the burgundy to eating. Nicola noticed.

“Do you want to talk about today, Dad?”

Michael glanced at Lee, who sat beside him.

“Not just now. Maybe this evening. Long day already. Might have a nap this afternoon. Taking more of them lately; I seem to get tired a lot. Bedroom available?”

“Your very own; it’s always made up for you, Dad.”

“What a fine hotel this is. What’s for dinner?”

“Fresh made fettuccini with homemade basil pesto, ripe tomatoes, olives, prosciutto, new peas, and shaved parmesan. A salad if you’re good.”

“Then I’ll stay.”

“Yay!” Lee cried, hugging Michael’s arm. Michael beamed.

Nicola helped him upstairs. He paused often. This was new. She let him take his time. In the room, she turned back his bed and fluffed the down pillows.

“Are you all right, Dad?”

“Never better, dear. I’ll just rest up here a bit. I won’t bother to undress. Wake me for dinner; I’m already looking forward to it.”

She unlaced and removed his shoes, polished black brogues, kissed him, and closed the door.

When she checked on him two hours later he had stopped breathing.

Twenty-Nine

DCI PENWARREN STRODE into the cramped Camborne incident room at eight on Friday morning. The MCIT members were already there.

Bates studied their leader. Penwarren looked like he hadn’t slept. His normally handsome face sagged at the edges of his mouth. He’d hadn’t shaved.

“Would you like a chair, Sir?” she asked.

He shook his head and went to the window.

Unlike the always calming rural scene he viewed from the windows of his Bodmin office, the Camborne station faced a busy roundabout in a crowded neighborhood near the center of the town, a view as characterless as that in any aging market town in Britain, the shops in the center slowly dying thanks to superstores on their fringes. It was raining, the view to the street like a washed-out watercolor.

“Sir Michael Rhys-Jones is dead,” he said to the window.

Everyone stood. It was as if someone had called for a moment of silence.

Finally, a soft voice: “Sir?”

“What, Morgan?”

“Come sit. Please.”

He did so. He rested his elbows on the small round table, and dug his hands deep into his long silver hair as if struggling to keep his head intact.

They waited.

“Died yesterday afternoon,” he began, “during a nap at Trevega House. Had a heart problem, apparently, and high blood pressure. All these years of friendship and I never knew. The man was full of secrets. He’d been hustled out of London so early yesterday Nicola guesses he missed his medication. That, perhaps, and the stress of all this,” he added, his hand waving absently in the air.

“Nicola’s shattered.”

Morgan thought immediately of Calum. The idiot thought his weak heart, too, was indestructible. It drove her crazy.

As if summoned, Calum himself bounced into the incident room with papers in his fist and that boyish grin.

“We have a match!” he announced. Only then did he notice that the people in the room seemed frozen in place. He stopped just inside the door.

Morgan caught his eye and shook her head. A moment passed.

Penwarren looked up and then stood. “What have you got, Calum?”

Calum stared a question at Morgan.

She raised her right palm as if in warning.

“Calum?” Penwarren insisted.

West turned to the boss. “We’re still working on the DNA, Sir, but the partial print on that leg hold trap almost matches Rhys-Jones’s.”

“Almost? What the hell’s that mean?”

“The partial matches part of the whole.”

“How many points in common?”

“Eight.”

“Won’t hold up in court. What about the print your people lifted from the lid of the bin at the cottage?”

“Not his, Sir.”

“Have you run his full prints through IDENT1?”

“Yes, of course. But there is no match in the national database. No previous record.”

“Well, of course; I’m sure Michael never had his son charged in his wife’s beatings, just quietly arranged the divorce. Where are we on these DNA analyses? The hair sample? The cushion? Rhys-Jones’s cheek swab?”

“All coming, Sir. It takes time. Cushion’s up in that specialist lab in Bristol I mentioned the other day. Should have results soon. The rest are in our lab in Truro.”

“That, at least, I can handle.” He yanked his mobile from his jacket pocket and punched in a number.

“This is DCI Penwarren. I don’t care what the hell else you’re doing right now; I want the Rhys-Jones DNA swab analysis and the hair follicle DNA as well. I know you have the technology. I want it in four hours. Or less. Someone died in connection with this person. Someone else, someone close to MI5 and the Crown itself has also died as a direct result of this person’s suspected actions. Do I make myself clear? Do I have to call Exeter to get you to perform? Because if I do, let me remind you: I am the principal CID official in your lab’s annual evaluation!”

He didn’t wait for a response. He folded the mobile, slapped it repeatedly against his forehead in frustration, and paced the room.

The rest of the team stood as if glued to the floor. Penwarren had always been their pool of calm. He was no longer. He was incandescent. He wheeled on them.

“Morgan! Haul that bastard back to the interview room. Tell him his father, one of the great gentlemen serving this nation, is dead. See how he responds. Make it clear he is all alone in this now. I want him for Trevean’s murder; I want to put him away for a very long time. Terry, you’re in the viewing room. I’ve already called in Dr. Kevin White, the forensic psychiatrist. If Rhys-Jones is also responsible for those bizarre events at Trevega as this possible leg hold print seems to suggest, he’s a very sick man. White will meet you in the viewing room. So will a case investigative lawyer from the Crown Prosecution Service. When we’re done with him it will be up to the CPS to make the charge. They’ll both observe and may make suggestions about future interviews. I want this man moved from person of interest to prime suspect. Is that clear?”

“Unless he’s a complete idiot, he’ll demand a solicitor,” Morgan said.

“But he hasn’t yet. Too egotistical is my guess. Thinks he’s immune, thanks to his father’s previous interventions. But there will be no more of those, will there? So right now, we’re simply informing him of his father’s death. But keep the video running so we have evidence we broke no rules. We are still only interviewing someone who violated entry protocols. Are you capable of not breaking rules, Morgan?”

To his very great surprise, Davies went to him and gave him a hug. “I’ll do my best. I am so sorry about Michael,” she said so softly no one else would hear.

“He was like a father to me,” Penwarren mumbled into her ear, pulling her closer. “I never knew mine.”

“Me neither. It’s safe with me, Arthur,” Morgan whispered. It was the first time she’d ever used his given name. She held him a bit longer so he could compose himself.

Then she spun on her heel.

“Novak! As you seem to have become a fixture in this investigation, please escort Rhys-Jones to the interview room again. Terry? Viewing room. Pay close attention; I shall want your thoughts. Let’s get on with this.”

MORGAN CLOSED THE interview room door gently behind her, turned, and smiled. Rhys-Jones was seated again at the plain steel table.

“Good morning, Mr. Rhys-Jones. How was your dinner last night?”

“Execrable. Inedible.”

“I suspect Italy has spoiled you, though I’ll admit our standard of cuisine here at the Camborne nick has not received four stars…but not to worry, because you’ll probably be missing lunch today; then again, you’d probably rate that as inedible, too.”

“I don’t expect to be here that long; my father will handle this. He has influence.”

She regarded him for a moment.

“Had influence. Your father didn’t much care for you in the end, did he, Jeremy?”

Rhys-Jones frowned, shrugged, and looked away.

“I think you missed a subtlety in my question. Not paying attention, were you Jeremy? Nervous, perhaps? Didn’t notice I used the past tense in referring to your father?”

“Huh?” He faced her again.

“Your father is dead, Jeremy. Died yesterday afternoon. Heart failure.”

“That’s impossible! He was fine! I saw him in the corridor!”

Morgan managed a pained smile and shook her head. “Yes, it’s strange, isn’t it? There he was here in this very station, robustly alive and listening to you lying your face off yesterday. Then again, maybe he wasn’t actually ‘fine’ at all. Maybe he was crushed: his own son in jail, suspected in multiple crimes. Doctor reckons your father could thank you for the heart attack that killed him: stress and grief about what and who you’ve become straining an already weak heart. I wonder how you’ll ever get by without Sir Michael Rhys-Jones covering for you, eh?”

Morgan looked for some sign of grief or care, but Rhys-Jones’s pinched face suggested only that this was a most inconvenient and untimely development.

“Your father’s body has been taken to the W. J. Winn Funeral Directors in St. Ives. We can arrange for you to view him.”

“No.”

“No? And yet this man, no matter what you did, no matter whom you hurt, kept supporting you. A parent’s weakness, I suppose; I don’t know, having no children of my own. Still, his forgiveness is a bit hard to credit, really, given your record: beat your wife Nicola almost senseless and assaulted a female colleague in Milan. Plus, we’ve checked your university records. No shortage of complaints about you from women you dated there, however briefly. Generations ago, long before even your father’s time, we might just have called you a cad and a brute. These days, however, we call you a wife beater and a sex abuser. On top of that, we’re also thinking of you as a murderer.”

“This is preposterous!”

“In my line of work, that’s a four-syllable word for ‘truth,’ Jeremy.”

“I did not kill Mary Trevean!”

“I don’t think we’ve actually suggested that, have we? But the DNA evidence we’ve collected will sort that out.”

“I demand to see a solicitor!”

“And that is your right. Unless you already have a lawyer, we can summon someone from the Public Defense Service. Shall I arrange that?”

Rhys-Jones shrugged.

“I’ll take that as a yes, then.” She wondered if he was too egotistical to admit he needed legal help, even though he could afford it. She rose as if to leave, then stopped.

“I was just wondering, Jeremy…When your father dispossessed you of the Trevega estate, how did that go down with you?

“I was trying to buy it.”

“So I understand. But he’d already gifted it to your ex-wife, hadn’t he?”

“She has no right…”

“And is that why you have been trying to scare her off by causing curious, but very dangerous, ‘accidents’ near the house?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“I don’t know why, but somehow I just don’t believe you. But good day, Mr. Rhys-Jones; I’m sure they will have saved your lunch. We’ll let you know when and if your lawyer arrives.”

Terry was in the corridor when Morgan appeared. “Get back in there, Terry. I want to know what he’s doing: smirking, laughing, fearful, crushed, what?”

The video and audio were still active. Dr. White was watching. Rhys-Jones circled the steel table repeatedly, alternately mumbling and raging: “That bastard! Abandoned me yet again…always does, always has. But Caprice never did. Never. She believes in me. She loves me. She still wants me…I know it. She’s there, at Trevega, waiting for me. I know she is.”

“Who’s Caprice?” the CPS lawyer, Derek Martin, asked, resting his hands atop a belly which drooped below his belt.

“I have no idea, sir,” Terry answered.

“Find out,” Martin said.

“Yes. Please,” Dr. White added.

“Will you both wait here a moment?”

She found Morgan in the corridor talking with Penwarren.

“Who is Caprice?”

“Who?” Morgan said.

Penwarren shook his head. “I suspected she might have played a part in all this…”

“Sir?”

“Caprice was Sir Michael’s late wife. Italian ancestry. I knew her: younger than he and a hellion. Long dead, but perhaps not to Jeremy. I’d ask Sir Michael for more about their relationship, but...”

“Let me talk with Dr. White,” Terry said.

Back in the viewing room, Bates explained.

For a moment, White said nothing and stared at the glass before him. Rhys-Jones had stopped pacing and now sat at the table, mumbling to himself, inaudibly.

“This Rhys-Jones person may be obsessed with her, perhaps even unhinged by that obsession. From what I heard him saying when he was alone, it certainly sounds likely. He speaks of her as if she were still alive. Maybe to him she still is. Whoever and wherever he thinks he is, there is a part of him effectively still with her.”

“Might that explain actions apparently intended to scare off the current residents of the family’s home here, Trevega House?”

“It is certainly possible. But I would have to interview him and I can’t do that unless and until my colleague here from the Crown Prosecution Service recommends it. For what it’s worth, I believe this man is seriously troubled. Has he any record of issues with women?”

“He assaults them.”

“Yes…I rather thought he might.”

Derek Martin finally spoke: “I should like a full record of this interview, and I shall be present for any further interviews. I take it he will not be released?”

“No, not soon. His illegal entry is sufficient for us to hold him. But that may just be the beginning.”

Thirty

MORGAN HAD JUST dropped into the seat of her unmarked white Ford estate when her mobile buzzed. It was early Friday afternoon. She didn’t recognize the number on the tiny screen.

“What?” she barked.

“Is that Detective Inspector Davies?”

“Is that who you called?”

“Um…yes.”

“Then who the hell else would it be?”

She heard a chuckle. “Good point, Inspector. This is Roderick Nelson at Lloyds, St. Ives. I have something I can show you, privately, but cannot deliver to you. Not yet, anyway.”

“What is it?”

“I’d rather not say.”

Morgan was weary. The Rhys-Jones interview had emptied her.

“I’m just in Camborne. I can be there in about a half hour. Do you suppose you might have a decent coffee waiting for me? I’ve missed lunch.”

Nelson laughed. “How about a latte from Mt. Zion Coffee, just down the street?”

“Make it a double.”

NELSON LED HER through to a private anteroom behind his office on the High Street, just above the harbor. There was a coffee waiting for her in a tall paper cup with the café’s logo on the side. Containers of cream and packets of sugar sat beside it. Also, a wrapped sandwich.

She grabbed the coffee, black, took a sip and sputtered.

“Jesus, that’s hot!”

“I timed your arrival.”

She settled into a tufted leather chair beside Nelson’s desk and summoned up her occasionally gracious alter-ego: “Thank you, Mr. Nelson. This is much appreciated. It’s already been a long day…and the night before as well, for that matter. I envy your regular hours.”

“Not as regular as you might think.”

She regarded him: Nelson was a broad-shouldered, trim man of, she reckoned, about forty. Not tall, but he had a presence. His longish ash blond hair had flecks of gray at the temples, but was well groomed. His eyes, she noticed, were green as the rare Serpentine rock carved by jewelers on the Lizard Peninsula on the Channel coast. Handsome devil, she thought. He wore no ring. She had a bite of the sandwich. It was crab salad, a second treat in two days. She ate more and had more coffee.

“I’m reviving. Thank you, Mr. Nelson. Thank you very much.”

“Please, it’s Rod.”

“Right then: it’s Morgan, and don’t ask me what kind of name that is for a woman.”

“I like it. It’s strong.”

Morgan softened and smiled. “While this is quickly becoming a lovely social visit and a much-needed respite, which I confess is a nice change, you said you had something to show me…”

Nelson sat back and smiled. “Yes. I do. But sharing it with you without a warrant is, frankly, well beyond my authority. Yet I appreciate the urgency of your case.”

“Good. Thank you.”

“I have here a copy of Mary Trevean’s will. I obtained it from her lawyer in town because, together, we have to settle her estate. The will was drawn up after the death of her husband. I’m going to show you just one page, the page that identifies her beneficiaries. I cannot yet reveal the rest and should not be revealing even this. For the full document to be used as evidence, I must ask you to obtain a warrant.”

“I understand. I’ll get one.”

“Mary Trevean had no children.”

“Okay.”

He slid the document across his desk and pointed to a paragraph on the second page.

Morgan blinked and read the lines twice.

Mary Trevean’s sole beneficiaries were Alice and Eldridge Biggins.

She sat back and looked at the ceiling.

“What do you think,” she said finally, “is the value of her properties?”

Nelson shook his head. “I’m afraid I’m not qualified to determine that. I’m not a property agent. But with London finance millionaires buying up and renovating every abandoned building or barn in Cornwall, and the fact that she had three income-generating rentals, I should guess it to be a very great deal. As for the rest of her financial assets, I cannot yet reveal that information.”

Morgan stared through him for a moment and then connected with his green eyes.

“Which is to say that Eldridge Biggins’s money problems would be over with Mary’s death, yes?”

Nelson fiddled with a pen on his desk.

“Yes, I should think so,” he said when he finally looked up. “When you get me a warrant, and with her lawyer’s approval, I’ll release the entire will and her investment portfolio, which we also manage. Until then, I have told you nothing. Are we clear?”

“If I lived near St. Ives, you’d be my banker, Rod. Thank you for trusting me with this information. And thank you for lunch. The crab was splendid.”

He stood and took her hand in both of his. His eyes were bright. “I am delighted to have met you, Morgan. I hope you will not be a stranger.”

“Do you flirt with all your visitors, Rod?”

“No Morgan, just one.”

THANKS TO AN overturned lorry blocking the A30 at the roundabout just north of Redruth, traffic was being re-routed through minor lanes never designed for such a load. More than an hour later she decided to skip stopping at the Bodmin Hub and was just pulling into the car park at the Blisland Inn when her mobile came to life.

“Bloody hell,” she cursed. But she could not ignore the caller.

“Evening, Sir.”

“Calum’s got some new evidence. MCIT meeting in Bodmin at nine tomorrow?”

“Was that a question?”

“Certainly not.” She thought she heard him chuckle before he rang off.

She’d just found a small table in the cozy bar at the Blisland Inn, her new local, and was about get up and order at the bar when the burly landlord, Garry Ronan, appeared at her side with a pint of Keltic ale, her favorite. He bowed and placed the jar on the table.

“Will you be dining with us tonight, my queen?”

Fact was, Morgan fancied Ronan, but she tried to keep a straight face.

“You think I came here for your company, do you, Garry? What’s passably edible tonight in this establishment?”

“I can offer some luscious and tender crab cakes, madam, with fresh baby salad greens and a lime and tarragon dressing.”

“Had crab for lunch.”

“Did you, then? Didn’t know you traveled in such circles.”

“Go on, Garry, I’m a bangers and mash sort of girl, as if you didn’t already know.”

“We can do that for you tonight, Morgan.”

“Get on it, then, before I fall away to a ton from starvation!”

Ronan leaned down and rested a hand on her shoulder. “Another long day, luv?”

She put her hand on his. “They all are, Garry…”

“Right then, bangers and mash with peas coming up. Another pint?”

She smiled. “Yes. And soon, please.”

Ronan was her “landlord” in more ways than one. She also rented her fully furnished home from him. But there were nights, and this was one of them, when she just wanted to stay right where she was, at the Inn, in Garry’s company. A line from a Wordsworth poem she’d learned in school came to her: When from our better selves we have too long been parted, how gracious, how benign is Solitude…  She wasn’t sure she had a “better self,” but as time went on she’d begun to long for company. Solitude was fine, loneliness was quite another thing altogether.

Ronan arrived with her dinner, a steaming plate of mashed potatoes topped with two crisply grilled local pork sausages smothered in caramelized onions, and peas as fresh and green as a meadow in late afternoon sun. He also set down a fresh pint.

“Do you live here, Garry? I mean above the inn.”

“I do. Why?”

She stared at her plate. “Nothing. No reason. Just curious. Thank you for your attentive hospitality.”

Ronan bowed slightly again. “Could be a good bit more than attentive, Morgan, if you’d permit me.”

She looked up.

“I might, just…one day.”

“What?”

“Permit you.”

Ronan blinked. Twice. She liked that she’d confused him.

“Now attend to your other customers and let me eat in peace.”

Thirty-One

CALUM ARRIVED EARLY Saturday morning. He set up a cork board in the Bodmin incident room, tacked two enlarged fingerprint images on the board, and stood back. He loved his work. He was both the collector and protector of crime scene evidence and he considered it a high honor…an honor conferred, though unwillingly, by the victims of the crimes whom he served. He was a devotee of the principle first articulated by Edmond Locard, the early twentieth century French forensic pioneer: “Every contact leaves a trace.”

He’d found another trace, and this one was definitive.

“Admiring your handiwork, Calum?”

He spun around and found Morgan grinning at him. It had just gone nine.

“If no one else does, I guess I must.”

“Don’t be an idiot. Everyone admires you, though it’s a mystery to me.”

“Thank you, my dear.”

“Anytime. What have you got?”

“Patience, Morgan. We await the rest of the team.”

Moments later Terry Bates arrived, looking much the worse for wear: puffy eyes, her ginger hair barely brushed out but arranged to hide the bruise on the left side of her head.

“Hard night?” Morgan teased. She wondered what Bates had been up to.

“Is there coffee?” Bates asked.

“Is there?” Calum crowed. “You are in the presence of this establishment’s coffee-making expert. No damnable boiled tea here!”

“Oh good: Calum West, our barista. Have you also a cup in which to pour it?”

“I’ll have one too, Calum, as long as you are up,” Penwarren said as he crossed the room to the windows. The morning was gray and wan. Fingers of mist crept across the fields beyond like stealthy invaders. He smiled. Fog in the morning meant a sunny day to come. The changeable weather soothed him.

Novak entered next. Morgan thought the white shirt beneath his constable’s uniform needed pressing. His tie was ill-knotted. There was a slight puffiness beneath his eyes as well. She shook her head: How the young believe the old cannot see. Unless she was a crap detective, Bates and Novak had spent the night together. To her surprise, this notion made her happy.

“Right then, Calum, you called this meeting,” Penwarren said taking his coffee. “What have you got?”

“May I just ask you, ladies and gentlemen, to regard closely the two images I have posted on this cork board?”

“Oh come on, Calum, what the hell is it?”

“You are just no fun, Morgan.”

“Calum?” Penwarren said as he lowered his lanky frame into a seat at the table.

“All right, all right. These are enlarged images of two sets of fingerprints. One sample is Rhys-Jones’s, which we took at Camborne. The other is the one found on the sitting room wall of Mary Trevean’s house, just above shoulder height. A perfect match, all five digits. Without question, he was in her house.”

“Yes, okay genius, but when?” Morgan asked.

“I’m just evidence, Morgan; you’re investigation. But I will say the print is fresh.”

“If Rhys-Jones was nothing more than a cottage renter, what was he doing in Trevean’s house?” Penwarren asked.

“Paying his weekly rent?” Morgan suggested.

“Most people pay by bank card these days,” Terry said.

“Location, people, location,” Calum said. “Why was his right hand pressed up high on her sitting room wall?”

Morgan considered. “Maybe she invited him in for a visit. Maybe she was lonely. Maybe they were chatting and he just leaned against the wall.”

Penwarren’s mobile vibrated in his jacket pocket. “Pardon me for a moment, please.”

He stood and listened, pacing. Penwarren seemed incapable of being still for long.

“Okay. Thank you. I mean that. I appreciate the effort and I’ll let Exeter know about your help.”

They watched him. He turned.

“The hair follicle matches Rhys-Jones’s DNA, which, I suggest, leads us back to Trevega House. And also to Dr. White, who may be able to help us sort him out. On the basis of this evidence, however, and assuming the CPS’s agreement, we can now consider Rhys-Jones as a suspect in the malicious events at Trevega. We have evidence he was present at or near the bullock killing, though admittedly, not that he caused it. We have a partial print on the leg trap that injured the dog. I don’t see how we will ever ascertain the culprit in the brake line cutting. And I am particularly concerned about the attack on young Lee, for which we have no evidence and likely never will. That was a sly act, almost perfectly executed.”

“And still the CPS can’t charge him?”

“No, not yet. The evidence is not yet strong enough. Look, I am fully aware that I am closely connected with the people at Trevega House, perhaps too closely. And for that I have appreciated your patience. But no one has been murdered at Trevega. Our priority is still Mary Trevean. The wall print tells us he was in her house. When? Why? That’s your task, Morgan. The Trevega evidence, however serious, is incidental. The wall print is the starting point.”

“Got it, boss.”

He smiled and nodded. “If anyone can break him, Morgan, it’s you.”

“Would that be in the way of a compliment?”

He turned back toward the windows. “No. Admiration.”

MORGAN SAT OPPOSITE Rhys-Jones again in the interview room. Penwarren watched the monitor in the viewing room with Derek Martin. Terry stood next to them.

Instead of looking at Jeremy directly, Morgan stared over his head at the opposite wall, as if gathering her thoughts. She knew her silence would make Jeremy uncomfortable. Jeremy liked to talk. Jeremy liked to show off. So, she waited.

“Was there some reason for this visit, Inspector?” he finally asked.

She smiled, dropped her gaze, and looked at her thick folder, opening to the front page.

“There was and is, Jeremy. While you have been luxuriating here at Her Majesty’s expense, our people have been busy.

“So?’

Morgan found it curious that he could remain distant from the situation in which he found himself, as if he lived a separate life from which this moment was merely a temporary interruption.

“So, this question: were you recently in a field below Trevega House, close by the coast path?”

“Of course not; I was staying far to the south, in Boswednack.”

“Boswednack. Yes, in one of the late Mary Trevean’s cottages. And since when is roughly two miles far?”

She tilted her head to the right and regarded him. “So, if, as you say, you were never in this particular field, the one just above Carn Naun Point, the one where a bullock was butchered, how would you explain that our scene of crimes people found evidence of your DNA there?”

Rhys-Jones blinked, just the once: “Mistake. Obviously.”

“Ah, but that’s the problem, isn’t it? You see DNA doesn’t lie.”

“Where the hell is my solicitor?”

“We’re just chatting, Jeremy, exploring a few issues. But your solicitor should be here shortly. Moira Hennessy, she’s called. Public Defense Service. So just now we are simply trying to clarify the situation in which your DNA might have been found in that field below Trevega House. Care to explain? You needn’t until she arrives, of course. But I’m just curious. As I understand it, the Trevega estate has belonged to your family for generations. You spent many years there as a boy and you later lived there with your former wife. But then your father—your late father—dispossessed you of that property and gave it to her.”

Jeremy flared: “She doesn’t belong there! She’s not even family. I wanted kids from her when we lived there, but she produced nothing!”

“You make her sound like a brood hen.”

He ignored the comment. It wasn’t even clear to Morgan he even understood the insult.

“So, you began beating her, yes?”

His head jerked sideways, as if ducking a blow: “Once, in a fit.”

Morgan looked at her file again. “Funny you should say so, because the transcript from your divorce hearing notes several incidents. Do you deny them?”

“That hearing was a farce; my father rigged it. I never had a chance.”

“Excuse me for asking, Jeremy, but did you deserve a chance? And if that assault was just a one-off, something that only happened between you and your wife, why did you also have to flee Italy?”

“I already told you; that was all about her.”

“Is that also a lie, like your claim that you only beat your wife once? Because it doesn’t square with her complaint against you in Milan.”

Rhys-Jones glared but did not respond.

Morgan had been leaning across the table between them, crowding him. Now, she sat back.

“While you were renting your cottage from Mary Trevean, did you ever have occasion to visit her at her home?”

“I was just a tenant.”

The interview room door opened and a constable let in a young woman in a black two-piece suit, pale blue blouse beneath. Her sleek brown hair was cropped almost as short as Morgan’s but lay close to her skull like a helmet. Her eyes matched her blouse: the color of arctic ice.

Morgan ignored the interruption. “I must congratulate you on that skillfully evasive answer, Jeremy, but you see, we’ve found a handprint, yours, shoulder high on a wall in Mary Trevean’s sitting room. Any thoughts of how it got there?”

“I would not answer that if I were you, Mr. Rhys-Jones.”

Morgan rose and extended her hand. “Ms. Hennessy, thank you for coming. This is your client, Jeremy Rhys-Jones, already a person of interest in some nasty events at his ex-wife’s home but also in the murder of a Mrs. Mary Trevean.”

“I have read the file, Inspector. I’d like a word,” she said, gesturing to the door.

In the corridor, Hennessy squared her shoulders and got right into Morgan’s face: “I was briefly in the viewing room. You are a very skilled interviewer, just skirting the edge of actual interrogation. But as I see it, you have no evidence that this man had anything to do with the murder of Mary Trevean, except that he was once in her house. Have I got that right?”

Morgan stood her ground. “We await further evidence.”

“Fine. Until such time as you have it, and thereafter, you will speak to him only with me present. Are we clear?”

Morgan smiled. She liked the tough young woman immediately.

“Yes, we are clear. I’m relieved you’re here, actually; you have your work cut out for you.”

A quick frown from Hennessy: “So I gather…”

Thirty-Two

“HOW ARE YOU faring, Nicola?”

“About as well as you, I suspect, sir.”

It was Sunday morning. Nicola and Arthur Penwarren sat at the long table in the Trevega House kitchen, cups of tea going cold before them. He put a hand atop hers. She covered it with her other hand and gave it a squeeze.

“Might we stop the ‘sir?’” he said. “I’m just Arthur. I was very fond of Michael. We were closer than you’d ever guess, and from long ago, beginning during my days at Scotland Yard. Consequently, now that he is gone I am also concerned about his family.”

Nicola nodded. “Thank you. That’s very kind. I didn’t know you two went back that far…”

Penwarren smiled and shook his head: “That’s a story for another time, perhaps.  I’m more concerned about the now. How’s Lee taking all of this?”

“Not well. She barely knew him but she’s so sensitive about others. Once she got over the surprise of his coming here she was practically glued to his side. And he adored her from the start. It was something to see. She’d never had close grandparents and maybe, to him, she was also like a granddaughter.” Nicola smiled: “They’d have made a formidable pair, those two.”

“Where is she now? Working with Andrew and Jamie?”

“No, since Michael died she just walks the cliffs with Randi. The men miss her. She’s apparently remarkable at working with stone, something about her ‘spatial sense,’ Andrew says. She’ll be with them again soon, I’m sure. Just needs time. So many deaths in her young life already. It’s like whenever she thinks life is nearly safe the earth opens up beneath her again.

“This morning as she and the dog left, she said something strange: ‘At least we’re safe now.’ Then she was off. She’s a mystery sometimes.”

“No, she’s got it right. There have been no more incidents, have there?”

“No.”

“That’s because Jeremy is in custody. We have bits of evidence that place him near the spot where the bullock was killed and at the leg hold trap that injured Randi. I’m sorry to say that we also have a print of his hand in an odd spot in Mary Trevean’s house.”

“Good Lord…”

“Hang on: it only means that at some point he was in her house, perhaps for perfectly innocent reasons.”

Nicola looked at the table top and shook her head. “He’s mad, you know…”

“He seems perfectly cogent when we interview him.”

“Oh yes. But he’s not. Something in him is broken. One night when we lived together here he got stumbling drunk and wandered through the house calling for Caprice, his mother. Spent that night in the room that once was hers. It wasn’t the only time.”

Penwarren looked away. “Yes. Caprice.”

Nicola looked at him, her eyebrows pinched, but said nothing.

“Would you please tell me if there is anything I can do for you, even just helping with arrangements?”

“I think we’re okay, sir…Arthur…apart from the shock that Michael’s actually gone. He was tired when he came here that afternoon…no, deflated, like an old balloon. He was a small man with a big presence. But that day he was almost shrunken. He was here, sitting right where you are, enjoying a glass of red wine. Then he was gone.”

Penwarren said nothing. He thought if he said something he would reveal too much about himself. He nodded.

“But to answer your question, it would be lovely if you could attend the memorial service. It will be at St. Senara’s in Zennor late next week. The vicar knew him; Michael was a generous supporter, had the bells rehung, for example. There will be a little reception at the Tinners Arms afterward.”

“Will there also be a funeral and burial?”

“No. In his will he asked to be cremated and his ashes scattered across the gardens here at Trevega.” A tear slid down her left cheek. She brushed it away.

“It’s so hard,” she whispered. “Life without him, without Dad. And I couldn’t understand why he didn’t want to be buried next to his late wife in London.”

Penwarren stared at the wall opposite, remembering Caprice.

“I suspect he wanted to be close to you, Nicola. And in time that will be a comfort. I will be at the church, of course. I suspect it will be very crowded. The Tinners as well. He was much loved hereabouts. You’d better prepare for it.”

ON HIS WAY north again, Penwarren stopped at St. Ives, and even though it was late Sunday, he found Constable Novak in his upstairs office. He was alone, bent over his laptop. When Penwarren appeared, he stood, as if at attention.

Penwarren smiled. “At ease, Constable. Please sit. I can’t stay long but I should like a word with you.”

Novak’s heart sank.

“Sir?”

“First thing tomorrow, I’m recommending to Exeter that you be advanced to detective constable. Your obvious skills are wasted here. We need you. And by ‘we’ I mean the MCIT group with whom you’ve been working. When your training is complete, I’m bypassing any local posting and demanding that you work directly with our people in Bodmin. You’ll be working under Morgan Davies.”

Novak eyes widened.

Penwarren smiled. “I know. She’s a hard one. But she is also the best there is. You’ll survive. And learn a lot.”

Novak cleared his throat. “Thank you…Sir.”

“You can relocate to the Bodmin area?”

“Yes. I live alone.”

Penwarren nodded and turned toward the stairs. “I doubt that will last long. Good day, Adam,” he said as he descended.

Adam sat for a minute, taking it in. Then he punched Terry’s number into his mobile.

MORGAN SAT ON the small balcony of her new home sipping a vodka tonic and watching cloud shadows race across the bracken-covered face of Brown Willy, the castellated granite summit to her north. There was jazz on her CD player, an old Brubeck Quartet album. Inside, she heard her mobile ring.

“Christ, it’s bloody Sunday afternoon!” she cursed. She ran and followed the ring to the nightstand beside her bed.

“What?” It was her usual cordial phone greeting.

She listened for a few moments then said: “Right. I can’t say that’s welcome news but I’ll let Penwarren know and have him call an MCIT meeting for tomorrow morning. Will you be there? Good. Can you make it by nine? Great. I’ll let Calum know, too. Thank you.”

Morgan walked back to her balcony and downed the rest of her vodka tonic.

“Bloody hell!” she shouted to the ancient hills before her.

Thirty-Three

“DO YOU JUST like to make my life difficult, Jennifer?” Morgan said, placing an affectionate hand on the forensic pathologist’s shoulder as she sat next to her Monday morning. Calum West and Terry Bates also were seated at the round table at the Bodmin incident room. DCI Penwarren sat opposite them and nodded to Dr. Duncan, the talented blond pathologist whom he sometimes wished were older…or himself younger. He was not alone in the force in admiring her, both as a professional and as a woman.

“I’ve read your report, Jennifer, but why don’t you give it to us directly.”

“Right. As you know, I discovered trace evidence on the cushion we suspect was used to suffocate Mary Trevean—a terrifying way to die, by the way. But it was too faint for our Truro lab to analyze. We sent it off to consulting specialists in Bristol whom headquarters in Exeter have under contract. They are extremely busy and the DNA analysis has taken far longer than I’d hoped. But we have it now.”

“Please…” Penwarren said.

“The sample on one side is Mary Trevean’s sputum. Perfect DNA match. No doubt she coughed it up as she was gasping for breath.”

“Wouldn’t that have been expected?” Morgan asked.

“To me, to Calum, and to you, Morgan, yes, but maybe not to the killer. Still, it’s evidence, which Calum’s people did a fine job of protecting, and it needed to be analyzed and confirmed. And in any event, that’s turned out not to be the issue here. The issue is that the DNA on the opposite side of the cushion, the side pressed by the killer, does not match that of your suspect, Jeremy Rhys-Jones. Of that, there can be no question.”

“So, whose is it? Did you check the National DNA Database?”

“Of course, Morgan, and there’s no match on record.”

“Why is nothing ever easy…?”

“But there’s something I did not tell you in my call yesterday, Morgan. I collected a swab of semen from Mary Trevean’s vagina in my initial examination of her body. It’s Rhys-Jones’s.”

“What?” Morgan barked.

“They were lovers?” Calum asked.

“I can only say they had sex. I can’t even tell you if it was pre- or post-mortem.”

“Jesus wept,” Morgan mumbled.

“Okay, clearly someone else was involved in Mary Trevean’s death,” Penwarren said after a pause. “We don’t know who. And we will no doubt discover who was responsible. But in the meantime, Morgan, I have a suggestion: if you can pull it off with Rhys-Jones and his solicitor, I’d like you to lean in hard on his sexual relationship with Mary Trevean. Let him know we have his DNA when it’s the right moment. See what happens next.”

“What’s the point if he isn’t the murderer?” Terry asked.

Penwarren smiled. “Because I suspect that in the face of that semen evidence he will deny responsibility for her murder adamantly but confess to lesser charges: namely, his attacks on Trevega House. Also, Rhys-Jones has a history of using women. I suspect Mary Trevean was just his latest. Morgan?”

She scowled. “Oh yes, I think I can handle him…”

LESS THAN AN hour later, Davies was back at the Camborne station. Terry had been her driver; she was a demon at the wheel.

Rhys-Jones and Moira Hennessy sat at the tarnished old steel interview table. Someone had provided a third chair. Morgan ignored it and paced around them and the table. It was something she’d learned over the years: enclose the space within which the suspect exists. Hem him in.

“I trust you two have had time to get to know each other?”

Rhys-Jones smirked; Hennessy nodded.

“Oh good. It’s important that you trust each other. That’s only right. May I assume, Jeremy, that you and your lawyer fully understand why you are here and the crimes of which you are considered to be a person of interest?”

“He has not been formally charged,” Hennessy replied, folding her arms across her chest. “And the period during which you can keep my client detained without charging is about to expire.” She was wearing the same black suit but today had a white lace-topped camisole beneath the jacket. Morgan wondered if the camisole was designed to gain Rhys-Jones’s appreciation. There was a hint of cleavage. Hennessy, who was rather short, was also wearing black three-inch heels with a thick ankle strap. Domination, Morgan thought. This girl doesn’t miss a trick.

“Correct, Ms. Hennessy. Right now, Mr. Rhys-Jones is being held, but has not yet been charged, for a serious passport violation which, when substantiated as it certainly will be, could put him away for ten years. Formal charges, as you know, can only be made by the Crown Prosecution Service. My job is simply to interview. That’s why we’re here.

“And in that regard let me say that in the last few days we have uncovered some interesting DNA evidence about the relationship between your client and the late Mrs. Mary Trevean. Of course, we also have that interesting handprint of Jeremy’s on Mrs. Trevean’s sitting room wall. As you know, that is already in evidence.”

“So he visited his landlady,” Hennessy said. “What is your point?”

Morgan smiled. “Oh, he wasn’t just a visitor, Moira; your client also had sex with Mrs. Trevean. Isn’t that right, Jeremy?”

Rhys-Jones looked pole-axed.

His young lawyer blinked but recovered quickly. “And what is that evidence, Inspector?”

“I must say it is somewhat unseemly: semen swabbed from her vagina. He had sex with her, either before or after she died. The timing is uncertain. Unpleasant conundrum, isn’t it? I have the pathologist’s report right here for you to examine, Ms. Hennessy, if you’d like…”

Rhys-Jones vaulted from his chair. “I did not kill Mary!”

“So you’ve said before…”

“That will be quite enough, Jeremy,” the lawyer warned. “Sit down. Now!”

He obeyed.

“Yes, we’d made love. She was avid and we’d had a lot of wine. I went to see her again early that next morning, Friday. She’d wanted me to spend the night with her but I couldn’t. She didn’t answer when I knocked but her car was in the yard. I tried to open her door but it was locked. So was the rear one. Then I looked in the windows and saw her there, on the carpet. I panicked and ran.”

Morgan was behind him and leaned close: “Being a fugitive is becoming quite a habit with you, isn’t it?”

“You’ve said enough, Mr. Rhys-Jones,” Hennessy warned. But Morgan pressed.

“And the crimes at Trevega House, for which we already have your prints and DNA? What about them?”

“Jeremy!” Hennessy warned again.

“I was trying to scare them off! Those people don’t belong there! Trevega belongs to me and Caprice!”

“Caprice?”  Hennessy asked, eyes wide, looking at Morgan.

Morgan finally sat at the table and leaned toward Jeremy. “Caprice, your mother, has been dead for years…”

“No! She is still there! I know she is. She’s waiting for me!”

Hennessy stared at her client.

“Did Caprice make you her lover, Jeremy, like Mary Trevean did? Is that why you still seek her?” Morgan’s voice was warm, caring.

“Don’t answer that!”

Rhys-Jones collapsed into sobs. “Caprice loves me…”

Moira Hennessy stood. “We are done here, Inspector!”

“Oh, I suspect not, counsellor, I suspect not,” Morgan said as she rose and left the room.

Penwarren was waiting for her in the corridor. He put an arm around her. “Well done, Morgan, I knew you could…”

“With respect, Sir, I hate breaking people…”

Derek Martin said, “I will agree to have Mr. Rhys-Jones charged with both illegal entry and malicious intent and endangerment at the Trevega estate, but not murder.”

CALUM DROVE MORGAN back to Bodmin to collect her car. Penwarren had dismissed her for the day. He knew she’d hit empty.

“Do you want to talk, luv?” Calum asked as they cleared the A30 exit for Redruth and raced north.

“No. And slow down! I don’t want to die in your damned turbo Volvo…”

Calum sighed and lifted his foot from the accelerator.

After a long silence, Morgan said: “That man is damaged, Calum. Badly. Part of him is disassociated from his day-to-day existence. He lives in two realities. He needs help.”

“He’s committed a series of crimes, beyond entering the country illegally. He’s a danger.”

“I know. But he didn’t kill Trevean.”

“He almost killed Lee.”

“We don’t know that either, yet I have a feeling that he did drop that rock and that it was a terrible mistake, one that horrified him. I am almost certain it was not his intent to harm her. Just another threat, but it went wrong. He doesn’t have murder in him, Calum. I know murderers. He’s a weakling, a badly twisted one. I think he beat his subsequent partners because they were not Caprice. No woman could measure up to his vision of her. Dr. Duncan told me that her examination suggests that the sex with Mary Trevean was violent. Maybe that thrilled her, maybe he was punishing her for coming on to him. Or for not being Caprice. We’ll never know. But it is consistent with his past. I need to message Dr. Knight.”

In the empty Bodmin incident room, after Calum had left her off to go home, she emailed her thoughts to Dr. Knight.

His answer came back in moments: “Yes. And you should work for me.”

AT THE BLISLAND Inn, she ordered a take-out curry and avoided Garry. Back at home she’d finished the curry and her third vodka tonic while listening to Art Blakey’s “Jazz Messengers” on her CD player.

THERE WAS A loud knock at her door. She realized she’d dozed off. The CD player was silent. She had no idea what the time was. She looked for a weapon but knew she had none.

“Who are you and what do you want!” she yelled at the door.

“Morgan, dear lady, it’s just me, Garry. You’re safe. I was worried about you tonight when you slipped away from the inn…”

She opened the door. “Jesus, Garry. You frightened the shit out of me. No one ever comes here.”

“Maybe they should…”

Morgan was trying to clear her head. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

He stepped inside and embraced her.

“It means I should like to be welcomed and to look after you, Morgan.”

She resisted. “I don’t need anyone looking after me!”

He hugged her again, gently. “Are you sure?”

“It’s been a brutal day,” she said relaxing into his shoulder.

“Care to share it with me?”

“No, let’s just be quiet and be with each other…”

Thirty-Four

“I’M DEMANDING AN independent psychiatric evaluation,” Hennessy said Tuesday morning.

“Yes, I rather thought you would.”

Hennessy had driven up to Bodmin from Camborne. Morgan wondered why she’d not simply texted her. Then again, she suspected the young lawyer had wished she’d turned down the request for representation in this case and was looking for some level of collaboration.

“Privately, Moira, I agree,” Morgan continued. “Jeremy Rhys-Jones is broken. Maybe psychotic, maybe schizophrenic, who knows? He disguises it well. For years, his father cleaned up the damage he caused. Now, he has no one.”

“Except Caprice…”

“Exactly.”

“He is suspected of several malicious acts,” Hennessy said as if reading from a list: “attempted murder with a noxious substance—the bleached well, though no one was hurt; criminal damage with respect to the bullock and the dog; possible damage to a brake line, unproven; and offenses against a person—the girl, Lee. I suppose that last also could be construed as attempted murder, though there is no evidence he was the assailant and thus nothing yet by which to connect him.”

“Unless he confesses, of course. But I commend you; you certainly know your law.”

The younger woman grinned. “I should hope so: top of my class, University of Bristol. Two years ago.”

“Yet you opted for public defense? You must have had far more lucrative choices.”

“It’s something I believe in.”

Morgan studied her. “I’m glad,” she said after a moment. “Look, if I have any influence he will be charged only with illegal entry to the UK. I have asked the CPS to hold off on the Trevega charges, at least for now. And, as you say, the evidence is spotty, his confession notwithstanding: it would be easily challenged.”

“Why are you telling me this? You have a reputation…”

Morgan laughed: “Yes, and well earned, I promise you. But I don’t go after every suspect tooth and nail, and this case may be one of those exceptions. I have spoken to the family at Trevega House. Jeremy’s ex-wife will not press charges if your client receives the care he needs and serves the time he must for his illegal entry. They just want to be safe from him.”

“Okay. I hear you.”

“Only you did not, got that?”

Hennessy nodded.

“Look, Moira, Rhys-Jones is not Mary Trevean’s murderer, and that’s all I care about right now, okay? She’s dead. Jeremy Rhys-Jones is a desperately poor excuse for a man—or even a human-being—but he’s not a killer. He has other things to answer for, certainly, but not that.”

“Inspector Davies…”

“Morgan.”

“Morgan, then. When will he be charged formally for illegal entry?”

“The CPS says today.”

“Right, then; I’d better get back to Camborne. Thank you for your candor.”

Morgan grinned: “Candor’s never been my problem, Moira, but usually it isn’t a gift. You owe me.”

MORGAN WAS DOING paperwork—or rather computer work, the bane of her existence—when her mobile vibrated in her pocket. She pulled it out and looked at the screen.

“Your phone calls deep in my trouser pocket are almost as good as my home vibrator, Calum.”

“That is not something you needed to share, my dear.”

“I know. I just like to wind you up.”

“Too late: I’m pre-wound.”

“No kidding! That’s why you have heart trouble, you idiot! Are you attending to that?”

“Did you wish to know the substance of my call?”

“Oh, I give up; what the hell is it?”

“I’ve been scrolling through the entire case file on Rhys-Jones…”

“How many times have I told you: you’re scene and evidence: I’m investigation!”

“More than I care to count, my dear, but permit me to offer an observation, no extra charge…”

“Like I could ever stop you?”

“You interviewed an Eldridge Biggins, the same chap, as it happens, who showed my SOCO people around Mary Trevean’s house and rental cottages when we found the body. Very helpful, he was. His farm is adjacent to hers, yes?”

“Tell me something I don’t already know.”

“In your interview with him about Mary’s death, as well as Terry’s chat with his wife, Alice…who seems an odd one, if you ask me…both made it clear they had been long-time friends of the Treveans and that they looked after Mary in the period after her husband died, even brought her meals. And Alice and her husband both said that Mary and Eldridge had a special bond, closer maybe than marriage I think Eldridge suggested.”

“Yes. They were apparently soul mates, but innocent ones.”

“According to whom, Morgan? And what if Eldridge and Mary weren’t? Innocent, I mean. How do we know other than his and his wife’s own statements, which could have been articulated for at least two protective reasons, are the truth?”

“Two reasons?”

“For Alice: fear. For Eldridge: guilt.”

“Are you somewhere in the building?”

“Downstairs in the evidence room, my home away from home.”

“Get up here.”

“I HATE IT when you get ahead of me, do you know that?”

“It seldom happens, Morgan. When it comes to investigation, to burrowing deep, you have no equal.”

“Not this time, Calum. I missed it.”

“Missed what?”

She tossed a brown C4 envelope across her desk. It had come in the post earlier that morning.

“Go ahead open it. Attend particularly to page two.”

“It is unopened; how do you already know what I should look for?”

“Don’t ask.”

“Like I said, you’re always ahead of me…”

He tore open the envelope and found a certified copy of the Last Will and Testament of Mary Trevean. He scanned the first page, which was mostly boilerplate, and turned to the second page.

After a few moments, he said, “Yes. Yes, I see.” He was barely whispering. “Is this motive?”

“The Biggins’s surely needed the money. They’re saddled with a significant property debt owing to Eldridge’s purchase of Trevean’s land and livestock after her husband died.”

“And you know this, because…”

“Like I said, don’t ask.”

“But if you already knew this, Morgan…?”

She raised her hands in frustration. “It just didn’t register, okay? Frankly, I’m disgusted with myself.”

“Because you were so certain about Rhys-Jones?”

“Yes. As was Mister. But we’re both so wrong.”

“Wrong is not in your resume, Morgan, and I will certainly not add this as an addendum. So now?”

“We pull both of them in again, Eldridge and Alice. I’ll call Novak and have him drive them here.”

“The cushion DNA?”

“All we know is that it wasn’t Rhys-Jones’s.”

Thirty-Five

“I HAVE TO be home for the late milking.”

“I fully understand, Mr. Biggins,” Morgan said. “With any luck, this should not take long.”

“Why did that officer fingerprint me out there in the other room?”

“That’s just normal procedure; we do it for everyone known to the deceased. Like the cheek swabs. Not to worry; it is data we’ll likely never need.”

Biggins fidgeted on his hard chair. As before, it was clear he did not like being trapped in the interview room. Though he already knew there was none, he looked for a window. It was a reflex. Morgan couldn’t tell if it was fear of enclosed places or if he was searching for some avenue of escape. In any case, there was none.

“Where’s my Alice?”

“Just in the next room, safe and sound, I promise you. And let me just thank you and your wife for coming.”

“Not much choice.”

“No, I suppose not, but I trust Constable Novak was a gentleman?”

“Yes, yes, of course. But why call me back here? Or my Alice?”

“That’s a fair question. We just wanted to follow up on something you said the last time we interviewed you here. Do you remember that interview? That was right after Mary Trevean’s body was discovered.”

“’Course I do.”

“Good. Now then, when you were here last you talked about how close you and Alice were with the Treveans, especially after Mary’s husband died. Do I remember that correctly?”

“Yeah. Been that way for years.”

“That must have been wonderful in a place as sparsely populated as Boswednack. Good friends and neighbors. Those of us who live in cities don’t ever get to experience that sense of community and neighborliness. I envy you. But I’m also curious, Eldridge: after Bert died, were you more? Did you try to comfort your friend Mary?”

“Well a’course! We both did, Alice and me.”

“Took her meals and such, as I recall, yes?”

Biggins nodded.

“But did your comforting of Mary include becoming her lover, Mr. Biggins?”

Biggens stood so fast his chair tipped and clattered to the floor. “That’s an insult to Mary’s memory!”

The man’s face was crimson. His breathing was rapid. Was it fury or fear?

“Sit down, Mr. Biggins.”

After a moment, he righted the chair and sat. A vein in his forehead throbbed.

“Are you all right, Mr. Biggins?”

“’Course I’m not!”

“I understand. But you have not answered my question.”

“Bloody right I haven’t. And I won’t. Rude is what it was.”

“Yes, well, it is my job as a detective to ask difficult questions…”

“Nasty job it is, then…”

“Sometimes, yes; shall I gather that your answer is no?”

“’Course!”

Morgan switched her approach: “So, if not you, Mr. Biggins, did she have other suitors after Bert died? Were other men interested? She was, by all accounts, an attractive woman.”

“No idea. None of my business.”

Morgan thought the answer too quick and tinged with anger.

TERRY BATES SAT with Alice Biggins in an adjoining room. She sat next to her, rather than across, so Alice would not feel intimidated. The room, an office actually, wasn’t equipped like the interview room but there was a voice recorder.

“What’s that for?”

“We are required, you see, to have a record of every interview we do. It’s to protect your rights.”

“Oh.”

“So, how have you been keeping, Alice, since we last spoke?”

“Well enough, I reckon. Bit of arthritis in my hands when the weather’s damp. Makes it hard to keep up with the cleaning.”

“Which you do very well, don’t you? Your kitchen was spotless when I visited with you.”

“Keeps me fit and it’s what he expects.”

“Pardon?”

“Eldridge. What he expects. Clean the house, top to bottom, every day. Worries about germs; says he doesn’t want them passed on to the cows.”

“Can that happen?”

“Don’t know. What he says, okay? And I obey. Least I can do; he’s good to me.”

Terry said nothing for a moment and regarded the woman. As before, she seemed almost emaciated, as if she seldom ate and, even then, very little. Worn was the word that came to her. Just like Alice’s ancient kitchen.

“The last time we chatted you mentioned how close your husband and Mary had been…”

“All four of us, really; practically lived in each other’s pockets, we did.”

“But tell me, Alice, were you never jealous of your husband’s closeness to Mary? That would only be natural, I should think.”

“We’ve had a fine marriage, Eldridge and me. Plus, I had Bert’s friendship as well.”

“What was that friendship like, Alice?”

The woman straightened. “He were a perfect gentleman, Bert were, and a caring soul.”

“Did he care for you?”

Mary’s face clouded. “What’s that mean?”

“I mean like Mary did Eldridge, that’s all.”

“Well, sure. We spent plenty of time together—tea, chatting, that sort of thing.”

“Was that all?”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at…”

“I’m asking whether there was more than tea and company. Were you and Bert lovers, Alice, what with your husband off so much to be with Mary? I reckon Bert wanted your company, too?”

To Terry’s surprise, Alice looked as if she’d been caught out. Her birdlike eyes darted around the room.

“Alice? This is just us girls, okay?”

It seemed to Terry almost physically impossible, but Alice shrank farther into herself.

“Bert were a kind and lovely man, is what I’ll say, far gentler than my Eldridge ever was. Miss him something awful, tell the truth.”

Terry patted Alice’s bony hand. “I certainly understand. Only natural. I think that will be all for now, Mrs. Biggins. I thank you for your honesty.”

Somewhere from beneath her normal pallor, Alice Biggins almost blushed.

“We may ask to see you again. Will that be all right?”

As she had when Terry first met her, Alice brightened, as if she looked forward to it. Terry wondered if Alice was just terribly naive or simply desperate for company, like maybe she had been until Bert came along. And now he was gone.

Thirty-Six

“I ORDERED THE Biggins DNA analysis from Truro yesterday,” Penwarren said Wednesday morning. “I had his sample driven up there immediately. Given our last exchange with the lab, I must say they moved with alacrity. What used to take days can now be done in hours. Thankfully, Truro has the new technology.”

Penwarren was pacing the incident room. The key players in the MCIT were seated. They knew better than to interrupt Penwarren’s train of thought—everyone, that is, but Morgan.

“Is this a quiz game on BBC Radio 4, boss? Are we supposed to guess the answer?”

Penwarren turned and smiled. They could hear a constricted chuckle. He folded himself into a chair.

“I’ve heard from the Bristol lab as well. They’ve consulted with Truro and shared their results. The sample taken from the top side of the cushion that suffocated Mary Trevean is not Eldridge Biggins’s.”

“Damn!” Morgan cursed. She slapped her hand on the table top and rose.

“Look, Morgan,” Penwarren said. “Everything pointed to Rhys-Jones and you were all over him, brilliantly. Then it was Biggins…”

“And now it’s not. But I saw Trevean’s will; Biggins and his wife are her sole and joint beneficiaries. He owes a fortune.  He’d be rich. That’s motive in my book.”

“Yes, I read about the will in your HOLMES II entry and well done getting it, Morgan. That information was entered only yesterday, but I suspect you knew its contents earlier. Care to tell us how?”

“No.”

“Very well, Inspector; you may protect your sources…for now at least. But we will talk about this later.”

Morgan shrugged; being reprimanded was nothing new.

“Now, let me point out that at this point we have no evidence that either of the Biggins’s knew about the bequest, as near as we can tell. Nonetheless, I ordered both of them brought to Camborne once again this afternoon.”

“If Biggins is no longer a suspect, why haul him back?” Morgan challenged.

“Because I still don’t think we know the truth from either of them, that’s why. And we will need backup for Novak, who’s been our uncomplaining taxi driver through all of this. We might have some resistance this time.”

“I can take that job, Sir,” Terry volunteered.

Penwarren smiled. “Yes, I know, but I think we’ll use one of his community support officers. In case they resist.”

“What about milking his cows?” Calum asked.

“I am not concerned about his cows.”

“Won’t they explode or something?”

ELDRIDGE AND ALICE Biggins sat, side by side, at the bare table in the Camborne interview room. They’d been cautioned. Like Eldridge before, Alice had been swabbed and printed. Penwarren stood to one side of the room but Morgan was seated opposite the couple at the table. Terry Bates, Adam Novak, Calum West, and the CPS’s Derek Martin were in the viewing room next door.

“Are we under arrest or something?” Eldridge asked.

“No, not at all, Eldridge, but because of your close relationship with the deceased, you are, naturally, important persons of interest in this case. I must apologize for repeatedly interrupting your life at home. I just have a few more questions to ask each of you, but if at any time they seem intrusive, I want you to understand that you both have the right to be represented by a solicitor, either together or separately,” Morgan said. “We can arrange that for you.”

Eldridge clasped his wife’s skeletal hand and thrust out his jaw. “Done nothing wrong; don’t need no lawyer. What’s this about, then?”

Morgan rested her chin in the palm of her left hand, her right hand on a file folder, and smiled at the pair.

“It’s about what it always has been, Mr. Biggins: the murder of your neighbor, Mary Trevean.”

“Nothing to do with us.”

“Except that’s not true, is it Eldridge?”

“What?”

“There is this troublesome problem we call evidence. For example, we have a print of your hand on the sill outside the window of Mary Trevean’s sitting room.”

Biggins merely blinked. Morgan admired his discipline.

“Did work for her from time to time on that old house, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you certainly did. It’s in her accounting book on the cost of running her rental business. She kept meticulous records. But there’s just one problem: you’d done no work for her for more than a month before her death.”

“So?”

“So why were your fresh prints, not the slightest bit weathered, so easy for our people to collect and identify on that window sill, Eldridge, if not that you intended to enter her house surreptitiously? Why not knock on her door? Did you climb through that window?”

“I never did!”

“And therefore, you did not cause her death?”

Eldridge stood. “No, but I’ll tell you who did, I will!”

Morgan did not move. She called moments like these “trigger moments,” the point at which a threatening question caused a witness to overcome his caution.

“I am listening, Mr. Biggins…”

“It was some chap, a stranger. I saw them through that very window! They were naked and having sex right there on the floor of the sitting room by the fire, bold as can be!”

“Was it anyone you knew?”

“Hell no! But I reckon it were that Italian chap, her tenant. Mighty chuffed she were, having him around. Planned to stay a while, she said.”

“And you learned this when?”

“That same afternoon. We often had tea, Mary and me. A break from the farm. Just a half hour or so. But she were excited that day, searchlight bright, she were…”

“Because?”

“No idea. But it weighed upon me all afternoon.”

“And you came back that night to check on her?”

“It was late, but I could see her lights were still on. That wasn’t normal. I was worried.”

“Worried, or jealous, Eldridge?”

“Jealous? No reason to be, until I looked in that window and saw what she was doing.” He closed his eyes and shook his head as slowly as one of his cows: “My Mary.”

“How late was that, Mr. Biggins?”

“After bedtime, maybe half ten.”

“And Alice, did you not notice your husband had left?”

Alice stared at her husband.

“We have separate rooms,” she said.

Morgan’s eyes widened. “That is not an answer, Alice.”

Alice Biggins looked at Morgan, her face hard and fixed as a plaster mask. “I heard him go. Go to her. I saw his torch as he crossed the field. I knew what was happening; I’m not stupid. He thought I was asleep. I waited a while; I don’t know how long. I wanted to catch them doing it. I went right up to her door and hammered on it. She answered in a loose robe. Her skin was still pink from the sex. ‘Where is he?’ I yelled, and I pushed through the door.”

“’Who?’ she said.”

“’My husband, you whore! How long have you been shagging him? How many years? I can smell it in this room!’”

“She yelled ‘No!’ and backed away and that’s when I knew I was right. She fell over the arm of her couch—so fancy and modern, not like our old worn out one—and I jumped on her. I grabbed a cushion and pressed it over her face. I’m much stronger than I look. She barely fought. She was drunk. I could smell the wine. After just a few moments, she went limp and that was done, now and forever. No more Mary and Eldridge.”

“And then, Alice?”

Her bravado evaporated.

“And then I saw an empty bottle of wine by the hearth. It wasn’t one of ours. And Mary never drank, except maybe a pint at the Tinners. I looked at the bottle. It was something Italian.”

“And then?”

“And then I went to our barn to think.”

“Our crime scene people found no bottle.”

“I took it. Next morning, Eldridge was out early attending to the milking before I came down. He’d made himself tea and toast. Usually he waits for me to make breakfast, the full English: two fried eggs, bacon, sausage, beans. Said it held him all morning. But he was gone. I didn’t know why.”

“Did you look for him, Alice?”

“No, I was too afraid.”

“I can understand, Alice.” Morgan rose. “Might you two give me a moment? I’ll be right back.”

The two sat in silence, never looking at one another. In the viewing room, Morgan just looked at Derek Martin.

“Yes,” he said.

“SORRY ABOUT THAT,” Morgan said when she returned moments later. “I needed to check something but then it came to me: you knew what to do next, didn’t you, Alice? You did what you always do: you cleaned. You cleaned Mary’s house, which you entered using a spare key, yes?”

“We each had keys, her and me. For emergencies.”

“Of course, being neighbors and all. And then you went to work. Spic and span is how you left the place before removing her computer and registration book and locking the front door.”

Alice glared: “You think you know everything, don’t you…”

“No, but I do know what you did next…”

“Please,” Eldridge whispered, his hands up, supplicating.

Morgan ignored him. “Care to tell us, Alice? Tell us what you did next?”

Alice stared across the room, as if into another realm of being, a haven perhaps, but was silent.

“Well, allow me to continue then: once you realized Mary’s tryst the night before was with her Italian tenant and not with your husband, you went up to the Chicken Coop cottage next. You found it unlocked and vacant, right? Are we on the same page, Alice?”

The woman ignored her.

“And then you went to work again, cleaning and bleaching, didn’t you? That was very clever, I must say, Alice: made it look like the tenant had tried to erase all signs he’d been there—which is to say, you did so to make him look guilty. How am I doing so far, Alice?”

Alice Biggins looked brittle as Venetian blown glass and just as hollow. Penwarren tried to get Morgan’s attention to back off, but she wasn’t done and ignored him.

“Then, clever clogs you, you dumped Mary’s computer, modem, and registration book into the bin at your local, the Tinners Arms in Zennor, didn’t you, wiping them all with the same cleaner? The Italian wine bottle, too?”

Alice Biggins’s face had gone blank. Disassociation, Morgan thought. She’d seen it before. The suspect had checked out.

Morgan stood. “Mrs. Alice Biggins, you are under arrest for the murder of Mary Trevean, your neighbor and friend. You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you say may be given in evidence. You will be held in custody here at Camborne. You have the right to a lawyer. If you cannot afford one, we will have someone represent you from the Public Defender Service. Do you understand?”

She did not respond. Morgan nodded to the viewing room camera. A uniformed constable entered and led Alice Biggins out to a cell.

Morgan turned. The man opposite her was as rigid as a granite monolith. “Mr. Biggins; I am deeply sorry.”

He blinked and looked at her: “It was her killed my Mary?”

She did not see disbelief in his eyes, only shock, as if he’d just witnessed a fatal accident.

“That is what she’s just admitted, sir. We await other bits of evidence, but the case against her, given her confession, is pretty clear. Again, I am so very sorry.”

“What happens next?”

“The case goes to the Crown Prosecution Service who must decide whether to charge her. Then the case will first be heard at the county magistrate’s court in Bodmin. Her defense lawyer will want to study the evidence and may also wish to call for a second post-mortem exam of Mrs. Trevean, though I doubt it under these circumstances. All this will take time.”

Penwarren crossed the room and rested a hand on Eldridge’s shoulder. “You are free to go now, Mr. Biggins. Constable Novak will take you home. Is there someone in Boswednack who might look after you?”

Biggins looked around the room as if for an answer.

“Lost my Mary,” he said. “Lost my Alice, too, I reckon. Got the cows still. Sweet beasts, they are, and they love me.”

“This is a terrible shock, I know, sir…”

“She were always a little high-strung, my Alice. Explosive sometimes. She’s not well, I reckon. But I put up with it. Loved her. But not no more.” He shook his head. “Not after this. Not after Mary.”

“When you’ve had a bit of time to recover,” Morgan said, “I suggest that you contact your banker, Mr. Roderick Nelson at Lloyds in St. Ives. He has some good news for you. It’s from Mary.”

“News from Mary?”

“Yes.”

“And Alice…she killed my Mary…?”

Thirty-Seven

“YOU’VE NOT LEFT my people much to do. Plus, this coffee’s terrible,” Derek Martin groused. The Crown Prosecution Service’s portly investigating solicitor sat with Davies, Penwarren, and Hennessy in the noisy café of the Morrison’s supermarket just downhill from the Magistrate’s Court in Bodmin. He had a sausage roll in one pudgy hand and the coffee in the other. The court, having heard the police evidence and a statement from Martin himself, had remanded Alice Biggins for trial to the nearest women’s prison, HM Eastwood Park, far north in Gloucestershire.

“Well, she pretty much did your work for you, Alice did. And the DNA evidence simply supported it.” Morgan said.

“But I will still need any and all documentation you have on this case, including that associated with your initial suspect, Jeremy Rhys-Jones.”

“Why?” Moira Hennessy demanded. “He had no role in Trevean’s murder.”

Penwarren interrupted: “Because the prosecutors, the ‘Queen’s Silk’ chaps at Crown Court, will require it for trial. Derek’s job is to collect every piece of documentary evidence associated with the case so Alice Biggins’s own lawyer, another of your able Public Defender colleagues, can’t claim the police or the prosecution have left anything out. And anyway, why were you even here today? Your client is Rhys-Jones…”

Hennessy smiled. “Research: I have a lot to learn that they don’t teach you in law school.”

“Somehow, I don’t think you’ll have any trouble keeping up, Moira,” Morgan said.

“Look, the other reason I’m here is to thank you both on behalf of my client. Having been convicted of illegal entry with a false passport, Mr. Rhys-Jones is now imprisoned but also receiving psychiatric care at HM Exeter. He was a long-term victim of incest. It seems to have damaged him. They don’t know how deeply or permanently. That this passport violation is the only charge against him, however, I owe to you two,” she said, nodding to Davies and Penwarren, “and to Nicola Rhys-Jones. She and Andrew Stratton have waived the charges against him associated with his apparent attacks upon Trevega House. They understand he is haunted. All Nicola cares about is that he be treated and that they remain safe from him. I think we can arrange that. I don’t think Mr. Rhys-Jones will be going anywhere anytime soon. I shall work to ensure that, even though I am his defense lawyer. It’s what he needs.”

“What about extradition to Italy?” Morgan asked. “I don’t know anything about that.”

“Our extradition treaty with European Union countries stipulates that if the person wanted is already charged with a crime in the UK, that crime and its prosecution has preference. In this case, given what I suspect will be the length of treatment and incarceration, that may be a very long time.”

“I doubt extradition will happen anyway,” Penwarren added. “The woman who accused him has proved an unreliable witness, according to information from the Polizia. They suspect Rhys-Jones’s version of that event may be true and the woman lodged those inflated charges pursuant to a lawsuit seeking compensation from their employer, Credit Suisse, though the investigation continues.”

Morgan’s mobile vibrated, dancing on the table top.

“Sorry.” She looked at the sender on her screen. “Oh, shit, not that. Not now…” She stood, sought a quiet corner, and listened.

“Morgan?” Penwarren was beside her when she closed her phone.

“It’s the Royal Cornwall Hospital. Calum’s there. They can’t control his heart. He’s going into surgery for a pacemaker. So help me, if he survives this I’m going to kill him.” She grabbed her purse.

“Morgan?”

“What?”

“He loves you, you know.”

A WEEK LATER, Morgan stomped into Penwarren’s office at the Bodmin hub.

“Yes, please do come in, Morgan,” Penwarren said, laughing. He’d seen her reflection in his window. “How is Calum?”

“He’s recovering, damn him. When I get my chance…”

“When you get your chance, I think he’ll need you. His girls will, too. And we need him back. Attend to that. Take whatever time is necessary. Now, assuming this is not a medical update, as you’ve provided none to us since his surgery, was there something else?”

She sat down at his small conference table and stared at its surface.

Penwarren turned. Morgan looked defeated. He crossed to the table and sat.

“Morgan?”

“I was looking over my notes on the Biggins case and found something I’d lost track of. Her banker in St. Ives mentioned she had a collection notice on her account from a physician in Penzance.”

“This banker is no doubt your ‘source’ about Mary Trevean’s will?”

“Okay, yes. But he’s done nothing wrong, nor have I, so get over it.”

“You’re angry Morgan. Talk to me.”

“Alice Biggins is dying, boss. Incurable renal cancer. Far advanced. That’s why she looks so emaciated. Her husband claims he never knew and I believe him. She had her own modest bank account, money Eldridge gave her, and when the doctor gave her the diagnosis she refused to pay the bill: denial, the doc reckons. Not uncommon.”

“Which means…”

“She’ll never serve for Mary Trevean’s murder. Probably not even make it to Crown Court. She knew her condition was terminal before she killed Trevean. I think she’d been building up a powerful hatred about Trevean’s relationship with her husband for years and killed her when she believed they were actually lovers. Mary was beautiful and lived in a beautiful house; Alice lived a life of frugal deprivation, thanks to Eldridge.”

“Her lawyers will use the provocation defense: loss of control due to suspected infidelity,” Penwarren said. “The CPS, on the other hand, are saying it was a revenge killing, pure and simple.”

“Her defense would lose the loss of control argument anyway,” Morgan answered. “Since the law on provocation was changed, that defense wouldn’t help her. I checked with Moira Hennessy. If convicted, she still would get a life sentence.”

“Which, apparently, she already has…” Penwarren said, almost to himself.

“Yes.”

“She never had anything to lose, did she…?”

“No. But everyone else did. Especially Mary Trevean.”

Epilogue

“JESUS, ARTHUR! IS this real?” Nicola said looking at sheaf of papers on her long kitchen table.

Andrew had no idea what she was going on about but he was smart enough to head for the wine cellar.

Penwarren smiled. “Nicola. Are you all right?”

“Honestly? No. This is just beyond me. Completely.”

“Nicky, it’s simple: Michael loved you.”

“Okay, fine, but I’m still that poor Italian kid from Boston’s North End!”

“And, if I may speak for Michael, it’s time you left that identity behind. You are here, where you belong, a successful artist, and here at Trevega with Andrew and Lee. Look, Michael’s made a handsome lifetime provision for his daughter, Nina, including his Mayfair house which must be worth millions. And he’s ensured that Jeremy will be taken care of, wherever he ends up and for as long as he lives.”

“Yes, but this!” She pointed to Sir Michael’s will, which lay open on the long kitchen table.

“Yes, the rest seems to be yours…”

She’d never known how wealthy Michael was and had never thought to ask. All she cared about was that he’d rescued her from her husband, loved her better than any father, and gave her, Andrew, and Lee a new life at Trevega.

“I knew so little about him…” she whispered.

“I knew him for years and felt the same.”

“And Prince Charles, of all people, attends his funeral at St. Sennara’s Church and then motors off with his security entourage? That caused quite a stir. Who the hell was Michael?”

“The Prince and he had been close for years. Michael was a trusted adviser. That’s all I can say.”

“Can say or will say?”

Penwarren smiled. “Yes.”

“And then there’s this on top of it all! I thought this would be the surprise today!” She pushed an opened letter across to Penwarren.

He read it but took some time to speak, so full was his heart: “I am so happy for you all,” he finally said. His eyes glistened. The letter confirmed Lee’s formal adoption. He’d not quite understood how much the girl had come to mean to him. Perhaps Michael’s spirit had made him his replacement, her caretaker. He didn’t know, but it felt natural and good.

“I brought a Dom Perignon up from the chiller. Will that suit?” Andrew said as he entered the kitchen. “How did I ever become the waiter here?”

They had only simple wine glasses. He removed the foil and wire, uncorked gently, and poured.

“To Sir Michael Rhys-Jones, a great credit to his country and a dear friend,” Andrew proposed. He knew nothing yet except that they were celebrating Michael, and the adoption papers.

At that moment, Lee bounced in with a nearly recovered Randi. Her arm and shoulder were still in a sling.

“You’ve had news,” Lee said in her usual manner. “I sensed it and brought Randi home.” She recognized Penwarren, shook his hand solemnly, and looked hard at him. “You have something to do with this, I know.

“So, what is it?” she said turning to Nicola. “And do I get any of that champagne?”

“What about us?” Flora demanded as she barged in. Jamie was behind her. “How many glasses come in a single champagne bottle, anyway? Enough? And what the hell’s going on?”

“The adoption papers came through, sweetie. We’re a true family at last. We love you so. But there’s more. So much more.”

That was it. It was all she could take. Nicola began sobbing.

Lee ran to her. “Nicky? Mum??”

Nicola clutched the girl to her breast...Mum, she had called her.

Keep reading for an excerpt from the next book in the Davies & West Mystery Series.

Murder On The Commons

A Davies & West Mystery

An excerpt from Book 4 in the Davies & West Mystery Series

For updates, go to

www.willnorthnovelist.com

“Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.”

Garret Hardin

The Tragedy of the Commons

The Major Crime Investigation Team

Detective Chief Inspector Arthur Penwarren

Detective Inspector Morgan Davies

Detective Sergeant Calum West

Detective Sergeant Terry Bates

Detective Constable Adam Novak

One

IT WAS THE fierceness of the caws and keening cries echoing across the wastes of Bodmin Moor that caught her attention as she neared the summit of Rough Tor late that afternoon. Nearly the highest point in the whole of Cornwall, the bizarre outcrop of granite atop Rough Tor was visible for miles around. Over the eons water, wind, and frost had found their way through softer veins of quartz and split the granite horizontally so that the huge weathered slabs looked like some giant’s building block toys. She’d just paused to catch her breath when she heard the fracas away to the northeast. She pulled binoculars from the pocket of her waxed cotton jacket but realized she’d have to move farther north to locate the source.

Crossing a high ridge she reached the shattered summit of Showery Tor and finally saw them far below to the east. She was used to seeing carrion crows pester a buzzard hawk when it had prey in its talons, the scavengers and the hunter wheeling high in the sky, battling to survive another day. But this was different. This was strange. The birds were fighting over something on the ground—if ground were even an appropriate term for the sodden waste of Rough Tor Mire.

Jan Cuthbertson knew this austere landscape well and she knew that every once in a while one of the wild ponies that roamed the moor, usually a young one, would be lured by the brighter green vegetation at lower elevations and would stray downhill, lose its footing among the reedy tussocks in the swampy ground and, as it struggled, sink slowly but inexorably into the bog until it died of exhaustion or exposure or both. Perhaps that had happened again.

The Cuthbertsons had been the Lords of Poldue Manor since the mid-sixteenth century when, having sided with the English in the conflict between Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots, they were forced to flee their native Scotland. For their loyalty, however, Elizabeth granted them the Poldue estate. Over the centuries they improved the soil, spreading lime-rich beach sand to sweeten the natural acidity of the peaty ground. Today, their land encompassed both fertile lowland fields bounded by ancient stone hedges and wide expanses of open upland moor. They grazed more than fifteen hundred sheep and several hundred shaggy longhorn Highland cattle.

Jan, just turned twenty-two, had recently completed her agricultural and environmental studies at Duchy College in nearby Stoke Climsland. She’d come home and now was in charge of regularly evaluating the condition of the manor’s commons grazing land.  She was the moorland manager for their estate, which encompassed almost fourteen hundred acres and stretched almost to Brown Willy Tor, the highest spot in Cornwall.

The manor had all-terrain vehicles by which to traverse the moor, but Jan preferred to go on foot: less damage to the fragile ground. She’d taken a keen interest in the botany of the moor and in its wildlife…which is why the battling birds troubled her. Their behavior was all wrong. She tied her mane of streaked blond hair into a messy ponytail, took a slug from her water bottle, shouldered her small knapsack, and bounded downslope nimble as a roe deer, the ground becoming ever softer until her boots squelched as she approached the mire. The buzzard looked up, hesitated for a moment, and then carried on with its grisly business, which was ripping apart the face of a body shoulder deep in the mire. The hawk was perched on the body’s skull, its talons dug in for balance. The carrion crows were frantic and relentless, diving at the hawk, batting it with their wings and pecking. The hawk ignored them.

She waved off the crows, threw rocks at the hawk until it finally hauled itself into the sky, screeching in fury, then pulled out her mobile and punched in the 999 emergency number for Devon and Cornwall Police. After the initial shock of discovery, something about the invisibility of the body and the anonymity of the ravaged face helped her stay calm, as if the thing were a curiosity in some bizarre country museum. Using her pocket GPS she gave the exact location to a police operator at the Comms Unit in Exeter, rang off, and scanned the hills. The light was fading quickly, the undulating moorland hills turning a dull gray-brown and losing definition, as if the scene were a flat theater backdrop. She looked back at the summit of Rough Tor. Mist had slipped in from the west and the tor sometimes vanished into it altogether. If she left immediately, she could reach the safety of home before dark. She turned away from the body and trudged westward, careful always to seek out firm ground. Though she knew the moor well, she also knew never to be upon it in the dark.

IT WAS PAST six that Monday evening when detective chief inspector Arthur Penwarren saw the report from the Comms unit. Though most of the other officers had left for the day he was still at his standing desk facing the tall windows that looked out over the rolling countryside beyond his office in the modern, three-story Bodmin Police Hub. Dusk had slithered up the valley, silent and snakelike, while he’d been doing paperwork.  In the distance, the trees were already losing their color, the leaves yellowing and browning a little more every day. In a few weeks, when the nation turned its clocks back, it would dark by now. The weather was closing in as well. There would be one more day of golden autumn sunshine and then the forecast was for rain to sweep down from the Scottish Highlands and hang about for a few days of unsettled weather.

The Comms report said only that a body had been discovered in Rough Tor Mire. There was no suggestion of murder so it was not a Criminal Investigation Department matter as yet. Under normal circumstances, before the CID were called in, a pair of uniformed constables would be dispatched to interview the reporting witness, but Penwarren knew the Cuthbertsons and decided to have his Major Crime Investigation Team people conduct the initial interview instead. Penwarren knew the lay of the land on that moor and also knew no ordinary hill walker would have diverted from the well-beaten walkers’ route between Rough Tor and Brown Willy. There was simply no reason to stray and the Ordinance Survey map for the moor was clear about the dangers of doing so. So what was it? Someone foolhardy? Lost in broad daylight? Forced or chased? Nothing about it was normal.

He also decided that his personal connection with the Cuthbertsons meant he shouldn’t conduct the interview himself. He hadn’t seen the reporting person, Jan Cuthbertson, since she was a rangy secondary school tomboy mad for horses.  Her mother, Beverly, was his ex-wife Rebecca’s older sister. Despite the divorce the family had remained his friends, at least for a few years.

He looked out at the gathering darkness. There was no way he could responsibly assign anyone to examine a scene as remote and dangerous as Rough Tor Mire in the dark. That would have to wait until sunrise.

Penwarren wanted his best investigators, detective inspector Morgan Davies and crime scene manager detective sergeant Calum West, for this one. But they were both on medical and compassionate leave, the former looking after the latter after his heart surgery. He smiled; though the two officers were temperamentally as different as chalk and cheese: she the bulldog investigator, he the gently meticulous crime scene manager, they seemed to getting along. He also knew that neither would tolerate being sidelined for long.

“OH. HELLO…”

Calum West had been dozing. Ever since the pacemaker operation to repair his faltering heart, he slept a lot. It was partly the painkillers, but also post-operative exhaustion. The operation had been more difficult than his NHS surgeon had anticipated and there had been an artery blockage to repair as well. He was mending, yes, but his chest still felt bludgeoned.

“Be quiet.”

“Okay. But why are you here—you know, actually here in my bed?”

“Because the surgeon said I was to keep you calm and comfortable until you could be up and about again,” detective inspector Morgan Davies said.

“This is not making me calm.”

“Shut up, you randy devil.”

Morgan curled up against him and kissed his neck: “You scared me shitless, you bastard. Don’t do that again, okay?”

“It wasn’t deliberate.”

“Like that matters?”

“You smell nice.”

“I do occasionally bathe.”

“No, something else…”

“You really are awake, aren’t you? Well done. And that’s Eau de Lust perfume.  I got it cheap at the Boots pharmacy in Bodmin if you must know. Very popular, it is.”

“It isn’t and you didn’t.”

“Okay, guilty as charged: it’s just lavender soap. But how about you keep quiet for a while and rest?” She spooned up to him, pressing her ample breasts against his back and slipping her arm around his belly, careful not to disturb the stitches in his chest.

“This is nice,” he said. “Why didn’t we do this long ago?”

“Because, detective sergeant West, we are both dim as posts, that’s why: two stubborn, stupid, scared middle-aged fools.”

West nudged his bum against her lap. “So why now?”

“Because I thought I was losing you.”

“Just your luck you didn’t.”

“Stop it.”

“Okay. How’re my girls?”

Calum was the single dad of two sharp-witted daughters: Megan, eight, and Kaitlin, eleven. Their mother had died three years before. Cancer.

“Not to worry: they’re fast asleep. I read to them…from the manual of police procedure.”

“No wonder they’re asleep.”

“They loved it.”

“They like you, you know,” Calum mumbled.

“Yeah. Go figure…”

She held him until his breathing slowed again and then slipped away to the guest room where Calum’s aging mother-in-law Ruth stayed when looking after his daughters. Sitting on the edge of the bed she admitted to herself that she was enjoying his recuperation, and her role in his family. But she also knew that in a few days he’d be tugging at the leash to get back to work.

She smiled as she undressed. She felt the same, restless to return. They were both impossible.

BEFORE HE LEFT his office Penwarren phoned Morgan’s understudy, detective sergeant Terry Bates. She’d been a detective sergeant for just over a year and would rise quickly in the force if he had anything to say about it. She picked up her mobile on the second ring and recognized the caller.

“Sir?”

The background noise was deafening.

“Where are you, Terry?”

“Umm...the Blisland Inn. Novak’s here too.”

Of course: while Davies was taking care of West at his home after his surgery, she’d let Bates use her house, a renovated stone barn “with all mod cons,” near Brown Willy Tor and close to the Bodmin Hub. The Blisland Inn was the local pub. It was renowned for its extensive line of locally-brewed cask ales.

“How much have you had to drink?”

Bates looked at her phone: What the hell is this?

“Half a shandy, sir.”

“Novak?”

“A pint of some ale called ‘Toast.’”

“Good. I need you both.”

Two

NOVAK THREADED THEIR unmarked Ford Focus Estate down lanes so narrow only a single car could pass. Whether by time or intent, the lanes were sunken below ground level, the banks topped with vegetation-cloaked stone hedge walls. Tree branches knit together above so tightly it was as if their headlights were seeking a route through a dark green tunnel. From time to time, they had to stop and back up to a passing place to let an oncoming car by.

“Bloody hell, I can’t even get out of third gear…”

“Just be glad we can see their headlights coming...”

They reached the two-lane B3266, turned, and sped west. After five miles, following Penwarren’s directions, they were again on a twisting single-lane road passing through  Tresinney, Quitecombe, and Watergate. Ten minutes later they turned sharp right into the private drive marked by a small slate sign that said simply, Poldue. The drive was hemmed by high stone hedges that even in daylight would have blocked any view of the fields on either side and was paved with smoothly-raked crushed granite the quartz crystals of which glinted in the headlights. After less than a tenth of a mile they entered a spot-lit cobbled courtyard. There was a two-story stone barn roofed in lichen-pocked slates on the left side of the yard and a rank of one-story stables along the right. As they stepped out of the car, invisible horses whinnied at the intrusion. Ahead was the hip-roofed Georgian manor house, built like the other buildings in the compound of smoothly-fashioned blocks of Bodmin granite.  The house rose to two stories from a kind of stone plinth elevated above ground level. There was a formal entry porch with a Doric pediment supported by four stone columns. Two bay trees, their branches trimmed into matching green-leafed globes, rose from white Chippendale-inspired planter boxes that flanked each side of the entry, adding a touch of softness and color to the austere facade.

The front door, painted in black enamel so shiny it still looked wet, opened just as they reached the top of the broad steps. A woman stood backlit by the light from within. Bates presented her warrant card.

“Detective sergeant Terry Bates. This is detective constable Novak.”

“I’m Jan Cuthbertson,” she said, ushering them inside. “I live here with my parents. Thank you for coming at this late hour.” And to Terry’s unasked question, she added: “We have a sensor which tells us someone is approaching and it switches on the exterior floodlights automatically. It is lonely out here on the moor. My father is very careful.”

Terry frowned: “There isn’t much criminal activity around here…”

The woman paused for a moment, then turned away: “It’s just…it’s just who he is.”

Terry guessed the woman was early-twenties: broad shouldered, a bit taller than average, with wide-set eyes that had green-tinged irises. She wore tight black jeans and a droopy dove gray jumper that looked to be well-worn cashmere. Her hair was an unruly mass of wavy blond and brown strands that fell to between her shoulder blades. She was handsome rather than pretty and reminded Terry of a young version of that American actress, Katherine Hepburn. The woman regarded constable Novak with more than passing interest.

“Please come through to the kitchen,” she said, leading the way along a hall that was nearly as chilly as the air outside. “I have a fire going there. I have tea as well, but tonight, under the circumstances, I’m having whisky. How about you two? Not while on duty I expect…”

“Tea would be fine,” Bates said as they followed her toward the back of the house.

“Please do sit,” she said to them, gesturing to a large round pine table.

They did so and while Ms. Cuthbertson switched on an electric kettle, Terry looked around the room. At the west end of the kitchen there was a gaping stone hearth topped by a blackened granite lintel, beneath which a log fire smoldered. The table stood almost out of reach of the direct warmth of the fire. Four unwelcoming ladder-backed wooden chairs ringed it. The seats had brightly-colored cushions covered in an abstract floral pattern in ivory, gold, rust red, and royal blue. They looked like they’d seldom been sat upon and it occurred to Terry that she could not imagine a family sitting comfortably at this table so far from the hearth. The whole seating arrangement looked like something a decorator thought should be there to complete the room.

The floor was covered in storm-gray slate flagstones, their edges softened by the wear of ages. The low wood plank ceiling was supported by thick lime-washed oak beams. Modern raised panel wood cabinets, but similarly lime-washed to look old, were arrayed along two sides. The counters were topped with polished granite that held the colors of tiny beach pebbles. In place of the big cast-iron AGA cooker Terry had come to expect in grand houses, there stood instead an even more imposing six-burner gas La Cornue French cooker with two ovens. It was faced in dark blue enamel with stainless steel trim and gleaming brass handles and knobs. Like everything else, it was spotlessly clean and looked seldom used. Adam rose to carry the tea tray to the table, earning a smile.

Terry picked up her mug. It was Earl Grey. Not her favorite; too much Bergamot. The young woman took the chair closest to the fire. An opened bottle of Talisker, a single malt whisky from the Isle of Skye, stood next to an already half-filled tumbler.

“Artie called to say you were coming…” Ms. Cuthbertson said.

“Artie?”

“Your superior, I assume: Arthur Penwarren? He’s a family friend, you see.”

Bates was instantly wary; her boss had said nothing about a connection. Maybe it was a test. She noticed Novak raise an eyebrow as he opened a small black notebook.

“He was married to my aunt, Rebecca, you see. They often came up from Penzance to visit in the old days when he was posted there. My aunt has a successful clothing shop on Causewayhead. They divorced, though, some years ago, but he still came by on occasion, as if it were his duty, the sweet man. But we haven’t seen him for a while.” She grinned: “Handsome devil is he still?”

Terry smiled. She could imagine her boss charming any woman of any age, but always at a gentlemanly remove.

“My parents are out tonight,” the woman continued, turning her attention to Novak and ignoring Terry’s higher rank. “I called my father about what I found, of course, but it’s the Landowners’ Association monthly meeting at the Old Inn at St. Brewards. Members of the Commoners Association also attend when invited. It’s important.  They all share the moorland, you see, and work out issues at these meetings.”

Terry tried to think what was more important than a dead body. “Share? What does that mean?”

“Oh, I thought everyone knew…”

“I’m new to this part of Cornwall.” She tilted her head toward Novak. “We both are from West Penwith originally.”

“Oh. Right then. Well, the land on and around Bodmin Moor is held by several large landowners, technically called Lords of the Manor. It’s not a royal title or anything, just what estate owners have always been called here. Each manor has its own in-bye land but it also owns and is responsible for managing a part of the commons.”

Novak stopped his note-taking. “I’m sorry, in-bye?”

“That’s the improved private pasture land, hedged fields and so forth, at lower elevations. The commons is the open upland moor. But the lords must provide rights of use of the moor to the commoners in the area.”

“Sounds feudal,” Terry said.

The woman smiled: “And indeed it is; our family has owned the Manor of Poldue for centuries. My father, Randall Cuthbertson, carries on the tradition.”

“So these ‘commoners’ who share the moor…help me out here: Who are they?”

“They’re mostly just neighboring farmers whose land adjoins the manor estate and moor. Some lease their land from the manor, some own freeholds. We have to provide access to them for grazing, cutting peat, gathering wood, and the like. But mostly it’s grazing rights: sheep and cattle.”

“You said meetings like the one tonight are to resolve issues. Are there conflicts?”

The woman stiffened: “For the most part, my father’s relationships with our neighbors have been friendly and cooperative.”

“For the most part? I should think that the ‘lords’—that’s really their title?—would have disagreements with the commoners now and again about the use of the moorland, no? Perhaps someone abusing those common grazing rights to the detriment of others…?”

“It happens, but not often. There’s a lot of peer pressure for everyone to act responsibly. Pretty much everyone wants the best for the moor, its habitat and wildlife and, of course, for the grazing animals.”

“Would your father agree?”

“Oh yes, I should think so. He’s been a leader at these meetings, working hard to be fair to all. It’s all about consensus.”

Terry doubted this and pushed her tea aside. “Let’s focus on late this afternoon, shall we?”

Jan drained most of what was left in her whisky tumbler.

“According to your phone report to Devon and Cornwall Police, you were on Rough Tor late this afternoon when you heard birds fighting, am I right?”

Cuthbertson nodded but did not look up: “Carrion crows and a buzzard hawk.”

“And you were on the moor because…?”

“Because it’s my job; I survey the vegetation for the estate. I studied land management at college. Sometimes I walk north almost to Davidstow Moor and the Crowdy Reservoir, but yesterday I went south, following the footpath along our stream—it’s a tributary of the Camel River. I went as far as Gorgelly Farm, which belongs to one of our commoners. From there, a rough farm track runs northeast to the foot of Brown Willy. It passes the remains of a Bronze Age field system and two Neolithic stone circles. Can you imagine? They’ve been there more than four thousand years!”

Terry ignored the digression. “And then I gather you climbed all the way up to the summit of Rough Tor? Why?”

“For the view. From there I can see much of our land and I can tell, even though autumn’s coming on, how the moor is faring just by its color.”

Novak looked up. “Its color?”

“We’ve had a few early frosts and the bracken ferns are already turning rust brown, as they do. Higher up, around Rough Tor the grasses have begun to yellow. But the fall rains also turn the bogs deep green and there are still bits of purple heather and yellow tormentil blooming here and there. If you know the moor, these color changes can be beautiful.”

The woman’s eyes drifted, as if to that view, and she seemed to have run out of words.

Bates prompted: “But then there was this noise, some birds fighting below?”

“Yes, but I couldn’t see them until I walked north to Showery Tor and could see down toward Rough Tor Mire. It is very rare for those birds to attack on the ground. I wondered whether it was one of my mother’s beloved ponies caught in the mire.”

Bates’s caught the sarcasm: “Beloved ponies?”

“Oh yes, my mother fashions herself as the guardian of the wild ponies of Bodmin. There are hundreds of them. It does not endear her to the others who graze livestock on the land. The ponies overgraze and their hooves rip up the fragile moorland surface.”

“So this mire: that’s like, what, a swamp?” Novak asked.

“Yes and no; it is water saturated peat, in some spots known as a ‘quaking bog’ because its surface is so unstable. Rough Tor Mire is one of them. The ground looks harmless enough, but stray onto it and you sink and the more you struggle to get out the more stuck you become. The bog builds over centuries because there is a granite plateau beneath it that keeps the rain from draining away. Vegetation grows and dies and eventually forms peat. Often, the granite is only a foot or two beneath the surface and when your feet get down to the base you can wade or crawl out. But not Rough Tor Mire; it’s deep; no one local would ever go near it.”

“And yet you did…” Terry said.

“I was worried. I can’t explain it. Something there was just not right. I did not go far.”

“This mire is known to be dangerous?” Terry asked.

“Absolutely, and it is well marked on the Ordinance Survey map most walkers use.”

“When you were up there this afternoon did you see other walkers?”

“No. It’s late in the season and it was also late in the day. Weather was closing in. No one wants to be up on the moor when the weather gets filthy. It’s rain, mostly, but you can also get closed in by mist and lose your bearings. The mist slips in from the west and soon you can only see a few feet ahead of you. All the other landscape features dissolve into gray. If you don’t know how to read the land, you can get lost.”

“So do you think this body—this person—was someone who got lost in the mist?”

“No, the day had been dry. The day before as well. The mist only rolled in after I found…whoever it is. All I saw was the head. And the birds.”

She closed her eyes for a moment as if to blot out the image and then pour herself another measure of Talisker.

“Male or female? Did you recognize the face?”

“It was just a head!” she said, her voice rising. “The hawk was tearing at the face! No eyes, no flesh.”

“Long hair or short? Color?”

“Good lord, what do you want from me? It was horrible!”

Bates looked at the clock above the kitchen sink. It was past ten.

“Yes, of course; must have been awful for you. As I am sure you can appreciate, we will not be able to investigate the scene until daylight. You have been through a lot this evening; will you be all right until your parents return?”

The woman’s eyes flashed. “I am not a child, detective.”

“I did not mean to suggest that, Ms. Cuthbertson, believe me. But it is not every day one discovers a dead body.”

Three

A SILVER SHIV of light sliced through the cloud layer that lay low and heavy like an old and discolored gray duvet above the moor the next morning as a neoprene-clad police diver rose from the black water of Rough Tor Mire. He pulled off his orange face mask and gave thumbs up to signal that he’d secured the body. Then he lay as broad and flat and still as he could on the bog’s quivering surface to keep from sinking.

Rafe Barnes, Calum West’s civilian SOCO deputy, nodded to two of his crew. They threw a coiled rope out to the diver and, as if reeling in a tuna, hauled him back to solid ground.  Then they did the same for the body, which the diver had roped beneath its armpits. Barnes watched the two men struggle and joined them, their rubber Wellies slipping on the wet peaty turf as they pulled. The mire made a sickening sucking sound as it released its victim. The body that finally emerged was barrel-chested, broad-shouldered, and heavily muscled: a man, certainly, but a man whose face was horribly mutilated.  They laid him on a sterile white plastic sheet and the frosty clumps of deer grass beneath crunched as the body settled.

AN HOUR EARLIER, at dawn, Randall Cuthbertson, stiff-backed as a cavalry general, rode a chestnut roan stallion and led detective sergeant Bates and the Devon and Cornwall Police’s Scene of Crimes Office investigators across the moor to the site where his daughter had found the body the evening before. She did not accompany them. The police followed the horse in three all-wheel-drive BMW SUVs plastered with the yellow and blue checkerboard livery of the force. Their cars crawled uphill in first gear, zig-zagged around rock ledges and boulders and climbed more than three hundred feet before veering around the northern slope of Showery Tor and descending to the valley below. Black-faced sheep, their coats marked with red paint to identify their ownership, scattered as the vehicles approached. A small herd of piebald wild horses lifted their heads from grazing and stared, unperturbed.

From the passenger seat of the lead SUV, Terry Bates studied the rider ahead. Randall Cuthbertson sported a bushy silver moustache and his bristly salt and pepper hair was cut so short that it looked like a hedgehog had sat atop his head. His face was ruddy, like someone who worked out of doors, but the paunch hanging over his belt belied that conclusion and Bates reckoned the coloration was more likely due to whisky-damaged blood vessels than to exposure to the elements. As she watched him lead, she could not help but think of Gilbert and Sullivan: he’s the very model of a modern major general…. and wonder if Cuthbertson had ever been military.

When finally they reached the edge of the mire, the SOCO team cordoned off the scene with metal stakes and yellow police tape and spread out to examine the ground. Outside the cordon Cuthbertson remained on his horse like an overseer, offering neither guidance nor comment.

“WELL, FACIAL RECOGNITION won’t help anyone ID this one, will it?” Dr. Jennifer Duncan said as she knelt beside the dripping, muck-covered corpse. The willowy forensic pathologist who’d confused many detectives by looking at least ten years younger than her real age, which was mid-thirties, wore the same sterile white Tyvek jumpsuit the SOCO boys did and had her long blond hair tucked into a light blue elastic bonnet. Her hands were encased in a double pair of blue nitrile gloves, the top pair eventually to be entered into evidence.

But before she began her preliminary field examination, Rafe Barnes hovered over the body taking record photos with his police Nikon. The victim was clad in sodden black jeans and a red hoodie sweatshirt with the crest of the Liverpool Football Club on the left side of the chest. There was only one shoe, a black trainer; its mate was gone, stuck deep, no doubt, somewhere in the mire. Matching black socks. He photographed the clothed body first and the face…or what was left of it…last. He’d have preferred to photograph the victim in situ, but the mire had been too dangerous to approach. Bates stood beside him. She’d been to several murder scenes in her short career under DI Morgan Davies’s wing, but this victim’s shredded head turned her stomach and she struggled to maintain her composure. Bodies had faces. Faces had identities. This one’s face was erased, its identity a savaged blank slate.

“What a horrible way to die,” Barnes mumbled, finishing. “Torn apart like that.”

Duncan peered at the crest printed on the red hoodie. The team’s motto scrolled across the top of the crest read—You’ll Never Walk Alone.  There was a single pencil-thin hole just to the left of the crest.

Yes you will, she thought to herself.

“Save your sympathy, Rafe. Come here you two.”

She pointed to the small hole.  “Bullet entry wound, unless I miss my guess. Close-up photo, Rafe, please; I need to have a record of this precise location. I’m going to end this examination until I can do the formal autopsy. These conditions create too much opportunity for contamination.

She lifted an arm limp as a dead fish: “Rigor’s long gone off. And there’s no use in taking the body temperature either. He’s as frigid as that bog. I’ll have more for you after the post mortem, but I’m guessing time of death would have been sometime yesterday. The body is well preserved because the bog is oxygen-starved and acidic; aerobic organisms can’t begin to decompose it as they would have had our boy been on land. But the exposed head already has some blowfly damage. They’re aggressive opportunists, those little devils; I see eggs but no larvae yet.”

“So that suggests slightly less than twenty-four hours?” Bates asked.

“Correct.”

As if on marionette strings, Bates, Barnes, and Duncan turned as one toward the sound of a fast approaching motor from the west. Cuthbertson’s horse skittered sideways but he controlled it. Then a tandem all-terrain vehicle appeared from around the north flank of Showery Tor and jounced down the slope. A young woman drove, her streaked hair streaming behind her. Bates recognized Jan Cuthbertson. She brought the vehicle to a stop just shy of her father’s fidgety horse. Her passenger, DCI Penwarren, climbed down from the passenger seat, stretched his back, and approached the cordoned crime scene. The woman remained in the ATV.

“Terry, Rafe, Jennifer, thank you for all this work,” Penwarren said as he reached them.  Usually so well dressed, this morning he wore an old olive anorak, baggy twill countryman’s trousers, and muddy black wellies. He waved at the other SOCO team members prowling the site. They returned his salute.

“An honor to have you here, boss,” Bates said, an eyebrow lifted in question.

Penwarren caught it and smiled: “No reflection on my confidence in you, Terry, or any of you.” He tilted his head almost imperceptibly toward the old man on the horse and mumbled, “I was summoned.” He looked across to the black mire and shook his head. “Nasty business, this…what have you got, Jennifer?”

Duncan summarized her preliminary findings.

“Mortuary next?”

“Truro. Yes, sir.”

“The undertakers’ van is waiting at the end of Rough Tor Lane, near the Poldue estate. Can you get the body there over this ground?”

“My men and I can handle that, sir,” Barnes said. “Maybe the young lady with the ATV will help?”

“That’s Cuthbertson’s daughter; she found the body yesterday. I’ll have a chat.”

Barnes nodded. He and Duncan folded the white sterile sheet over the body and then Barnes had his men zip it into a heavy black PVC body bag with two handles on each side. He locked it with a plastic ratchet seal and took down the serial number. It took four of his team to secure it to a rigid body board. They strapped it to the rear flatbed of the ATV and Barnes climbed up to sit beside Cuthbertson’s daughter.

“You okay with this?” he asked her.

She nodded, put the vehicle in gear, and they crawled over the ridge and down to the awaiting undertakers’ van. Barnes would stay with the body all the way to the mortuary.

Penwarren stepped away, looking out over the moor toward the mass of Brown Willy to the south. He knew this wild, inhospitable place, had explored it widely with Rebecca, his ex-wife, Randall Cuthbertson’s wife Beverly’s younger sister. Becca was a great walker and loved the moor. But its desolation had never appealed to him. The lonely expanse of barren hills, the sodden earth, and the somber, shattered granite tors depressed him.  It was like a wet desert. This particular morning the air was nearly still but he’d been up here when the wind blew in hard from the Atlantic, whipped around the tors, and howled like a child in pain. And then suddenly it might cease without even an echo and the moor would turn suddenly silent as a crypt, a stillness that did not suggest peace, a stillness that reminded him of the mute but surviving pagan stone settlements scattered all across this moor: cairns, hut circles, walled settlements, prehistoric field systems, sentinels from the Bronze Age and earlier, the people long gone but their built presence surviving through the millennia. Sometimes, if the season were right, the trilling call of a golden plover might send its music across the waste ground. But not this morning. It was as if the moor were holding its breath while they worked.

Away to the east, a small herd of wild ponies crested the summit of Maiden Tor. The brightening dawn was behind them and their stocky bodies, already growing a thicker coat for winter, steamed in the cold morning air. There were six of them: four piebalds, one Appaloosa, and a black stallion with a white forehead blaze, their apparent leader. Scenting them even across this distance, it tossed its head and they vanished from whence they’d come.

Now Penwarren ventured closer to the mire and saw there were hoof prints sunk deep into the soggy border. Terry Bates appeared at his side.

“The SOCO lads will be taking casts of these prints. They are deep but fairly fresh. Unweathered, despite last night’s mist. Think they’re from Bodmin ponies?”

“Hard to say at this point, Terry; is it one horse or several? Could someone on horseback have hounded this poor sod down into the mire and shot him there? I find that hard to credit.”

“Jennifer agrees. The question is, how the devil did he end up way out here, sunk in that mire?”

Penwarren smiled and touched Terry’s elbow as he turned toward the vehicles. “Terry, you’re doing a fine job here; Morgan would be proud. You’ll be at the post-mortem?”

“Yes, sir.  And it’s time for me to leave the rest to Calum’s people…I mean Rafe’s. Sorry. I’ll drive you back down to your car. Any news on when they’ll both be back?”

“Soon, or so Morgan tells me. He’s like a caged animal there at home, she says.”

“Davies and West back all at once? Lord help us,” she said, grinning.

Acknowledgments

The Davies & West mystery series is set in contemporary Cornwall. I love this far southwestern tip of England, a county studded with Stone, Bronze, and Iron Age monuments and settlements, many maintained by the Cornwall Ancient Sites Protection Network (CASPN), a dedicated group of mostly pagan believers in this magical place, several of whom have become my friends.

After a long career as a nonfiction writer and ghostwriter, I have a passion for accuracy, even in fiction, and in this I have been aided throughout the Davies & West series by a splendid team of local advisers, especially former Scene of Crimes Detective Sergeant Martin South and former Criminal Investigation Division Detective Sergeant Tessa Adams. Additional advisers to the series include other CID detective inspectors; Forensic Pathologist Dr. Amanda Jeffers; County Senior Archaeologist James Gossip and his volunteers in the Meneage Archaeology Group, who keep unearthing new ancient sites; and the staff at the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro, among others. I owe a special note of thanks to chef, restauranteur, author, culinary entrepreneur, and hotelier Rick Stein for his generosity in letting me make him and his Padstow restaurant part of a scene in this book.

Thanks, once again, to my eagle-eyed early readers/critics: Claire Booth in the UK, and Kate Pflaumer, Jo Hollingsworth, Lawrence Rosenfeld, and Stephanie Konat in the US, and also to my friend Nicolina Miller who made sure my Italian was accurate. And finally, a deep bow of gratitude to the entire creative team at Northstar Editions: my project manager and steadfast advisor, Stephanie Konat; gifted cover designer Laura Hidalgo, book formatting genius Adam Bodendieck, and Patricia Eddy, proofreader extraordinaire.

Will North

June 2017

* also by Will North *

The Long Walk Home

(Romance)

Forty-five year old Fiona Edwards answers her Welsh farmhouse door to a tall, middle-aged man shouldering a hulking backpack—he is unshaven, sweat-soaked and arrestingly handsome. What neither of them knows is that their lives are about to change forever.

Water, Stone, Heart

(Romantic Suspense)

Nicola and Andrew have each come to the Cornish village of Boscastle to escape their troubled pasts. When they meet, they’re bristly and sarcastic—yet are attracted to each other. What neither of them knows is that a ferocious storm is brewing, one that could destroy them, and the entire village. And that storm is about to hit.

Seasons’ End

(Contemporary Romance)

Every summer, three families spend “the season” on an island in Puget Sound. But when local vet Colin Ryan finds Martha “Pete” Petersen’s body in the road on the last day of the season, he uncovers a series of betrayals that will alter their histories forever.

Harm None

(British Murder Mystery/Davies & West Series: Book 1)

When an American archaeological team discovers the skeletal remains of a missing child, British Detectives Davies and West unearth a growing list of suspects. Just as they close in on their prime suspect, another child goes missing.

Too Clever By Half

(British Murder Mystery/Davies & West Series: Book 2)

The naked, maimed body found bobbing in the English Channel presents a vexing puzzle to Detectives Davies and West. Post-mortem confirms the body's wounds were inflicted by torture, but without a name or a crime scene, Davies and West are stymied. Unraveling this mystery of betrayal, deep secrets, and revenge will test their skills as never before.

* For news about Will's books, special offers and speaking events, go to: www.willnorthnovelist.com.*