Elizabeth George - A Suitable Vengeance

'You've not seen Peter?' Lynley asked.

'Not since Friday afternoon. At the cove.'

St James glanced at the boy over his shoulder. 'Peter said he didn't see you then.'

Mark raised a brow, winced, touched the plaster there. 'He saw me,' he replied, and with a cautious look at Lynley added, 'Maybe he forgot.'

Following the Austin, the Rover crawled along the narrow lane. Aside from their vehicles' lights and the occasional glimmer from a cottage or a farmhouse window, the darkness was complete, and the gloom in conjunction with the storm made the going slow. Water filmed the road. Hedgerows bent perilously towards the car. Their headlamps glared upon the torrential rain. Stopping twice to clear the road of debris, they took fifty minutes to make what should have been a quarter of an hour's drive.

Outside Treen they jolted over the uneven track to Cribba Head, pulling the cars to a halt some twenty yards from the path that led down to Penberth Cove. From the rear seat, Mark Penellin handed Lynley a fisherman's oilskin which he pulled on over his worn grey guernsey.

'You'd best wait here, St James.' Even in the closed confines of the car, Lynley had to raise his voice to be heard over the wind and the roar of surf which pounded the shore below them. The Rover rocked ominously like a lightweight toy. 'It's a rough walk.'

‘I’ll come as far as I can.'

Lynley nodded, shoving open his door. The three of them climbed out into the storm. St James found that he had to use the entire weight of his body to shut his own door once Mark Penellin hopped out.

'Jesus!' The boy shouted. 'Some blow, this.' He joined Lynley in pulling ropes, life-jackets, and life-rings out of the car's boot.

Ahead of them, the fisherman had left his headlamps burning, and they illuminated the distance to the cliff. Sheets of rain drove through the arc of light, angled by the bellowing wind. The fisherman began to trudge through weeds which clung to his trousers. He carried a coil of rope.

'She be down in the cove,' he shouted over his shoulder as they approached. 'Some fifty yard from shore. Bow to stern, northeast on the rocks. Most o' the mast and yards 's gone, I fear.'

Bent into the wind which was not only fierce but also icy cold, as if it took its inspiration from an Arctic storm, they struggled towards the cliffs edge. There, made slick and dangerous by water, a narrow path led steeply down to Penberth Cove where lights glimmered from small granite cottages at the water's edge. Torches bobbed and glittered near the surf where locals brave enough to contend with the storm were watching the broken sloop disintegrate. There was no way they could get to the boat. Even if a small skiff could have managed the surf, the reef that was destroying the Daze would have done as much for any other vessel. Beyond that, storm-driven waves impeded them, crashing upon a natural spur of granite, sending plumes of spray towering into the air.

'I can't manage it, Tommy,' St James shouted when he saw the path. ‘I’ll have to wait here.'

Lynley lifted a hand, nodded, and began the descent. The others followed, picking their way among the boulders, finding handholds and footholds in outcroppings of rock. St James watched them disappear into a patch of heavy shadow before he turned, fighting the wind and the rain to get back to the car. He felt weighted down by the mud on his shoes and the snarl of weeds that tangled in the heel-piece of his brace. When he reached the Rover, he was out of breath. He pulled open the door and threw himself inside.

Out of the storm, he stripped off his Hl-fitting oilskin and sodden guernsey. He shook the rain out of his hair. He shivered in the cold, wished for dry clothes, and thought about what the fisherman had said. At first it seemed to St James that he hadn't heard him correctly. Northeast bow to stern on the rocks. There had to be a mistake. Except that a Cornish fisherman would know his directions, and the brief glimpse St James had had of the sloop acted as confirmation of the fact. So there was no mistake. That being the case, either the boat wasn't the Daze at all, or they needed to take a new look at their theories.

It was nearly thirty minutes before Lynley returned with Mark at his heels, the fisherman a short distance behind them. Hunched against the rain, they stood at the Austin talking for a moment, the fisherman gesturing with hands and arms. Lynley nodded once, squinted towards the southwest, and with a final shouted comment he tramped through the mud and weeds to the Rover. Mark Penellin followed. They stowed their gear in the boot once again and fell rather than climbed inside the car. They were soaking.

'She's destroyed.' Lynley was gasping like a runner. 'Another hour and there'll be nothing left.' 'It's the Daze?' 'Without a doubt.'

Ahead of them, the Austin roared. It reversed, made the turn, and left them on the cliff-top. Lynley stared into the darkness which the Austin left behind. Rain pelted the windscreen.

'Could they tell you anything?'

'Little enough. They saw the boat coming in towards dusk. Apparently the fool was attempting to run through the rocks into the cove to be winched out of high water, as the other boats are.'

'Someone saw it hit?'

'Five men were working round the capstan winch on the slip. When they saw what was happening, they gathered a crew and went to see what could be done. They're fishing people, after all. They'd be unlikely to let anyone run aground without trying to help in some way. But when they finally got a clear sight of the boat no-one was on deck.'

'How is that possible?' St James regretted the impulsive question the moment he asked it. There were two explanations, and he saw them himself before Lynley and Mark put them into words.

'People get swept overboard in this kind of weather,' Mark said. 'If you're not careful, if you don't wear a safety line, if you don't know what you're doing-'

'Peter knows what he's doing,' Lynley interrupted.

'People panic, Tommy,' St James said.

Lynley didn't respond at once, as if he were evaluating this idea. He looked across St James to the passenger's window in the direction of the sodden path that led to the cove. Water from his hair trickled crookedly down his brow. He wiped it away. 'He could have gone below. He could still be below. They both could be there.'

This wasn't an immediately untenable assumption, St James thought, and it fitted rather nicely with the position in which the Daze had gone aground. If Peter had been using when he'd made the decision to take the boat out in the first place – as was clearly indicated by the fact that he had done so in the face of a coming storm – his reasoning would have been clouded by the drug. Indeed, the effects of cocaine would probably have prompted him to see himself as invincible, superior to the elements, in full command. The storm itself would have been not so much a clear and present danger as a source of excitement, the ultimate high.

On the other hand, taking the boat might have been a final act of desperation. If Peter needed to run away in order to avoid answering questions about Mick Cambrey and Justin Brooke, he may have decided the sea was his best means of escape. On land, he would have been noticed by someone. He had no transport. He would need to thumb a lift. And, with Sasha with him, whoever picked them up would be quite likely to remember them both when, and if, the police came calling. Peter was wise enough to know that.

Yet everything about the position and the destruction of the boat suggested something other than flight.

Lynley switched on the ignition. The car rumbled to life.

'I'll get up a party tomorrow,' he said. 'We're going to have a look for any signs of them.'

His mother met them in the north-west corridor where they were hanging their dripping oilskins and guernseys on the wall pegs. She didn't speak at first. Rather, she held one hand, palm outwards, between her breasts, as if in some way this would allow her to ward off a coming blow. With the other hand, she clasped a wrap she'd thrown on, a paisley stole of red and black that did battle with her colouring and the shade of her dress. She appeared to be using it more for security than for warmth, for the material was thin and perhaps with the cold or with trepidation her body quivered beneath it. She was very pale, and Lynley thought that for the first time in his recollection his mother looked every one of her fifty-six years.