Palmer-Jones 05 - Sea Fever Page 6

“Not according to the doctor.” She looked at him sharply. “You don’t seem very surprised.”

  He spoke slowly, his hands gripped tightly around his knee.

  “When they were looking for him, they couldn’t find any of his gear.” he said. “Even his bag and the bits of clothes he’d left below had gone. That seemed very queer to me.”

  “I see,” she said, and scribbled something in her notebook.

  Rosco stood up. He felt drained and worn out and could no longer think clearly. “Is that all?” he asked.

  She nodded. “For now.”

  “Are you going to Porthkennan?”

  “Probably.” She had already moved from the saloon and onto the deck. There was a faint breeze, but the air was still hot and humid.

  “I live there, too,” he said. “ I’m in the cottage on the shore. If you want me, that’s where I’ll be.”

  He suddenly wanted to prolong the interview. The extent of his folly struck him and cut through his panic. He should have told her. She was sure to find out for herself. Perhaps she already knew but was saying nothing in the hope of catching him out.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Rosco,” she said formally, and jumped without his help from the boat onto the quay. “I’ll probably be talking to you again tomorrow.”

  He stood for a moment in the doorway of the saloon, unable to move. With the removal of the body the crowd at the harbour wall had faded away. The town was quiet. Her shadow was already disappearing among the cranes, the boxes of cargo, and fish crates on the quay. A uniformed police constable watched her go.

  Louis suddenly came to life. He jumped from the Jessie Ellen onto the quay.

  “Inspector!” he shouted, running after her. “Inspector, there’s something I should tell you!” But by the time he reached the constable, Claire Bingham was driving away in her expensive car.

  “What’s the matter?” the policeman asked. “Can I help you?”

  “No,” Louis said. “It’s nothing that won’t wait.” He turned to the policeman, who was young, only a boy. “ You might as well come aboard,” he said. “ You’ll be more comfortable there. You’ll have a long night.” Then, because the Jessie Ellen provided the only security he had, he added, “I’ll stay here with you.”

  Claire Bingham went first to the police station. Berry had collected Greg Franks’ car, and she had arranged to meet him there. Before she did anything, she phoned her husband. She could never quite lose herself in her work. Whatever she was doing, her responsibility for him and for Thomas remained at the back of her mind, a guilty irritation.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll be very late.”

  As she had expected he was bad-tempered.

  “What about the morning?” he said petulantly. “ What shall I do if you’re not back? It’s happened before. Who takes Tom to the childminder?”

  “You’ll have to do it. You know where she lives.”

  “Claire,” he said accusingly, as if she was being awkward deliberately, just to annoy him, “You know I’d arranged early squash with Charlie tomorrow.”

  She wanted to say that there were lots of things she had arranged, too, and anyway, wasn’t murder slightly more important than showing off on the squash court in front of Charlie Turner, but she hated spending time away from him with disagreement lingering between them.

  “I’m sorry, darling,” she said. “Really sorry. I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

  Sergeant Berry had been in the canteen. She could smell the fried food and stale cigarette smoke around him as he came into the office, though she knew he never smoked. She stood up and opened a window, but away from the sea the night was still, and it did no good. Berry was young, quiet, anonymous. He still lived with his parents in one of the genteel, slightly shabby suburbs of the town. To his colleagues he was something of a joke. He was a nondrinker and had, it seemed, no girlfriends. They knew very little about him.

  Claire had come to admire and rather to like him. He was a member of one of the small exclusive eccentric churches which flourish still in the west country, and there was a girlfriend she found out, one of the diminishing congregation. She was surprised, too, to discover that Berry had a sharp, unmalicious sense of the ridiculous, and occasionally he had her in fits of giggles, like a schoolgirl.

  She sensed he disapproved of her domestic arrangements. She could tell he really thought she should be at home with her son. Yet he never preached. Sometimes his calm patience made her feel inadequate, and then she would lash out at him.

  “Do you want to be a dogsbody for the whole of your life, Berry?” she would demand. “ Don’t you want to live a bit, experience something more exciting than tea with Mummy and Daddy?”

  But she could never provoke him into a reaction. He would shake his head and smile, then melt unobtrusively away.

  “Well,” she said now, “ have you found out anything useful, before we go to Porthkennan?”

  “A few things from the computer,” he said, so she was immediately excited. He was a master of understatement.

  “Anything on Franks?”

  “He’s never been convicted,” Berry said. “He was charged with burglary five years ago when he was still a juvenile but found not guilty.”

  “Anything else?”

  Berry paused, and if it had been anyone else, she would have thought he was doing it to intensify the drama of his revelation.

  “Louis Rosco,” he said.

  “Has he got a record?” she asked. She was disappointed. She expected it to be something trivial. He nodded.

  “Arson,” he said. “And manslaughter. He got ten years.”

  “How long’s he been out?”

  “Four years.”

  “Any details?”

  “Not much. The offence happened in Bristol, and I’ve been trying to get more information from there. It was a small boat yard. Rosco was working there. They assume it was a grievance against his employer. A security guard was killed.”

  She was astonished. She would never have thought Rosco capable of such violence. He seemed such an ordinary nondescript sort of man. She was surprised by her own lack of judgement.

  She stood up. A nervous energy had kept her going all evening, but now she felt very tired. Perhaps it would be a mistake to do much more tonight, she thought. She should be alert when she was taking the detailed statements. All the same, they would have to go to Porthkennan. By now one of them might be ready to confess. Most murders were cleared up within hours, and the police were given little to do.

  Berry was looking at her with a suppressed excitement.

  “There is something else,” he said.

  “What?” Her head was swimming, and she felt she could take in little else.

  “I found this in Franks’ car. It was in the dashboard. No attempt had been made to hide it.”

  He held up a polythene envelope of white powder.

  “What is it?” she said foolishly.

  “We’ll need Forensic to test it,” he said, “but it looks like heroin.”

  Chapter Five

  Most of the trippers who explored the narrow road signposted to Porthkennan were disappointed and turned back before they reached Myrtle Cottage. At first there was little to see. Grey, sheep-cropped moorland rose away from the seaward side of the road, so there were no views of cliffs or water, and the colour of the hillside made it seem always to be in shadow. The monotony of the landscape was broken by granite outcrops, huge and brooding against the sky. After a mile there was a turn in the road and then a row of derelict cottages, windowless, with holes in the roofs and the distinctive chimneys of a disused tin mine. The scene of industrial decay so close to the road had nothing in common with the picture-postcard Cornwall of thatched cottages and cream teas. The trippers thought they had reached Porthkennan and turned back to the main road with relief.

  But beyond the abandoned hamlet the lane turned again towards the sea. Like a green scar in the bare hillside, a valley cut through the
granite to the coast. Porthkennan was the name of the valley and the scattering of houses which had been built in its shelter. There was no real village, no pub, but a forest of vegetation—trees, shrubs, and large exotic flowers—which seemed to overwhelm the houses. Even in winter the place was lush and green. In the valley the light and heat seemed trapped and intensified. If it had been daytime, Claire Bingham would have seen the whitewashed walls of the houses, dark green leaves, shining blackberries, overblown roses, all with a startling clarity. Even now, in the car, they were aware of the stillness and the trees all around them. It was like driving into the jungle.

  The vegetation was richest near the stream which followed the valley to a small cove. There the water trickled through smooth boulders as big as a child, and across shingle and sand to the waves.

  Louis Rosco’s cottage was almost on the beach, as lifeless from the outside as one of the miners’ cottages on the moor. It had no main electricity, and the water was collected from the roof in a tank. The fishermen in Heanor wondered how he could bear to live there.

  Rose Pengelly’s place was much grander. Myrtle Cottage was near the head of the valley. Once a small farmhouse and two cottages had stood on the site, but the house had been converted by a previous owner. It was long, predominantly single-storeyed. It faced the sea. Behind it the stream flowed through the garden, and by its side was the barn which Rose had turned into hostel accommodation for birdwatchers.

  They waited for the police in the living room in a state of numb exhaustion. Rose made coffee for them, but Rob Earl produced a bottle of whisky, and they drank that instead. When they did speak, it was not about Greg Franks but about the new bird. Molly was unsure whether this burst of excited conversation was a way of avoiding the subject of Greg’s death, or whether they were so obsessed with the petrel that nothing else, not even murder, was so important. Roger wanted to begin investigations into the identification of the petrel immediately. The person to contact was Jauanin in Paris, he said. He’d done all that magnificent work on Leach’s petrel. If there were any stray unconfirmed records of a large red-footed petrel, he’d know about it. They had to persuade Pym that it might be inconsiderate to telephone so late at night, but still he continued with his plans. They’d have to check all the museums, he said. Many of them, he knew, had piles of unidentified skins, collected by Victorian naturalists. It would take a long time, but they would have to check them all. And then, he said, when all the research was done and they were quite sure, they would have to think of a name for the bird.

  When Claire Bingham and Berry arrived at the cottage, it was midnight. There was the sharp smell of elderberry. They could hear the shallow running water of the stream behind the house. There was still no moon. Claire knocked at the door gently, remembering that there was a baby in the house, knowing that there is nothing more annoying than to have coaxed a child to sleep only to have it wakened by a thoughtless visitor. It was opened by the dark woman, the mother of the child.

  “Mrs. Pengelly?” Claire asked, and Rose motioned her into the living room, where they were all sitting. The inspector saw then that her instinct had been wrong, and she would get little out of them that night. The animation that had inspired the discussion about the petrel had faded. They were blank and listless. Some of them had been drinking. There was a bottle of whisky on a small table and empty glasses on windowsills, chair arms, the floor. There was, it seemed, little grief. Rather she felt a communal and overwhelming tiredness. She asked them to introduce themselves, and as they gave their names, she thought how ordinary and respectable they seemed.

  “Can anyone tell me how Greg Franks died?” Claire Bingham asked. She spoke a little too loudly, fighting against tiredness. “Someone must have seen something.”

  They looked at her in silent and unresponsive hostility. So much for a confession, she thought, and an early end to the case.

  “Look,” she said. “I don’t think there’s a lot of point in taking detailed statements tonight. If anyone has any information about Mr. Franks, you should tell me now. But it’s late, and you must tired, and if you really think you can’t help, I’ve no objection to most of you going to bed. I’ll leave Sergeant Berry here to look after you.”

  “Make sure we don’t run away, do you mean?” It was Roger Pym, a little drunk, very objectionable.

  “Yes,” she said. “That, too. Perhaps you will have gathered by now that we have to treat Greg Franks’ death as suspicious. There was no question that it was not an accident. So at the very least you’re all witnesses in a murder enquiry.”

  “And suspects?” Roger Pym interrupted again. “ I suppose we’re all suspects, too.”

  “Yes,” she said. “ I suppose you are.”

  “Can we go, then?” Jane Pym said. The skin on her face seemed to have tightened, so the ridge of cheekbone under her eyes was sharp and noticeable, and her cheeks were thin and drawn.

  “Yes,” Claire said. “ Go to bed. I’ll come back early tomorrow to take statements.”

  Perhaps by then I’ll feel more confident, she thought. I’ll know how to cope with you.

  “All except Mr. Palmer-Jones and Mr. Earl,” she added. “I’d like to talk to you now.”

  They filed obediently and helplessly away. At the door Rose paused, and for a moment it was the old Rose who thought that everyone who came to the house needed her care.

  “If you’d like anything to eat or drink,” she said, “there’s plenty in the kitchen. Just help yourself.”

  Surprised, Claire looked up and nodded, but she said nothing until the door had closed and she was left with the sergeant and the two men.

  Molly hoped that Claire Bingham would shake George from his apathy. On their return to Myrtle Cottage from the Jessie Ellen he had been engrossed in his notebook. Sketching the new petrel, adding minute details, checking other species in Rose’s books. It was as if what she thought of as the seawatching madness was still with him. He was brooding and absorbed.

  She had succeeded at last in getting him to herself by volunteering to make coffee and forcing him into the kitchen to help.

  “You do realise that Greg must have been pushed?” Molly said as she spooned coffee haphazardly into a jug. “Otherwise, how did his bag and the rest of his equipment go missing? He hadn’t taken that on deck with him. That was no accident.”

  “No,” George had said. “Probably not.”

  “Well,” she said, “what are we going to do about it?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “It’s nothing to do with us now. We’ll cooperate fully with the police, tell the inspector everything we know, then leave the rest to her.”

  “What about Mr. and Mrs. Franks?” she demanded. “Don’t you think we owe something to them?”

  He looked at her, distant and surprised. “No,” he said. “ I don’t think we do.”

  Molly began to clatter mugs and spoons onto a tray. His detachment, his cool assumption that Muriel and Dennis Franks were not worth bothering about, that they were, if anything, less important than his precious seabirds, infuriated her. It was not particularly that she wanted to meddle in the case. She did not need that sort of drama. It was that she worried about him. She knew he was trying to protect himself from the destructive guilt and depression which sometimes haunted him but could tell that the self-deception would not work. She thought he should do something. He should take the risk.

  “I think you should go to see the Franks,” she said. “They’ll want to know what happened. It will make things easier for them.”

  He looked at her.

  “I don’t know what happened,” he said. “ I should only be in the way.”

  “No!” she cried. “Trust me! I’m right about this.” As she spoke, she knew she sounded like a domineering nanny—a type of woman she detested.

  “I’m afraid,” he said, “that I’ve done enough damage.”

  “You can’t think that Greg was murdered because we were there on the Jessie Ellen to
look for him?”

  “No,” he said. “ Perhaps not.”

  But she knew that in a sense he did feel responsible for Greg’s death, and that if he did not become involved in the search for his murderer, the guilt would remain with him forever.

  Molly did not like Claire—she thought she was bossy, overcontrolled—but hoped she would force George to look again at what had occurred on the boat. It would be impossible then for him to pretend that the only thing to have happened of any significance was the discovery of a new seabird.

  When most of them filed out of the room, Claire felt more competent and businesslike. It was a room she felt comfortable in. If she lived in a cottage in the country, she would probably have decorated it like this, with white walls and stripped pine. It lacked imagination, and she could believe it belonged to her.

  “I presume you have a list of all your clients,” she said briskly to Rob.

  “Yes,” he said. “I thought you’d need it.” He handed her a typed list. She looked at it quickly.

  “Most of the people here give an address in Avon or Somerset,” she said. “Was that a coincidence?”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “We’re based in Bristol and do a lot of local advertising.”

  “Greg Franks gave an address in Bristol,” she said. “ The police have been there, but his parents say he hasn’t lived at home for some time. You haven’t anything more recent for him?”

  “No,” Rob said. “ I presume he’s been living in the city somewhere. I’ve seen him at a couple of bird club meetings.”

  “Did you know him well?”

  “Not really,” Rob said. “Whenever I went to see a bird, he was there. We’d talk, maybe go for a beer; then I might not see him again for months. That’s how it is with a lot of serious birders.”

  “I see,” she said, but she did not understand the obsession which was the only thing these men had in common. Besides, she would never allow such a chaotic arrangement to rule her social life.

  “What work did he do?” she asked. “His parents were rather vague. He must have had some sort of regular employment to afford a car, a holiday like this.”