Elizabeth George - A Suitable Vengeance

'And you?'

She was holding her coffee cup between her hands, as if to keep them warm. Her fingers were long; she wore no rings. 'He didn't appeal to me. When Harry saw that, he started having Nancy Penellin come to do the books during our regular office hours instead of at weekends.'

'And as to developing the newspaper's stature?'

She indicated the word processor. 'Mick made the attempt at first. He started with new equipment. He wanted to update. But then he seemed to lose interest.'

'When?'

'Just about the time he made Nancy pregnant.' She lifted her shoulders in a graceful shrug. 'After they married, he was gone a great deal.'

'Pursuing a story?'

She smiled. 'Pursuing.'

They strolled across the narrow street to the harbour. The tide was out. Five sunbathers lay on the narrow strand. Near them, a group of small children dabbled their hands

and feet in the water, shrieking with excitement as it lapped at their legs.

'Get what you need?' Cotter asked.

'Pieces, that's all. Nothing seems to fit together. I can't make a connection between Mick and Tina Cogin, between Tina Cogin and Trenarrow. It's nothing more than conjecture.'

'P'raps Deb was wrong. P'raps she didn't see Mick in London.'

'No. She saw him. Everything indicates that. He knew Tina Cogin. But as to how and why, I don't know.'

'Seems 'ow and why's the easiest part, 'cording to Missus Swann.'

'She's not an admirer of Mick's, is she?'

'She hated 'im, and there's the truth.' Cotter watched the children playing for a moment. He smiled as one of them – a little girl of three or four – fell on to her bottom, splashing water on the others. 'But if there's truth to her talk about Mick Cambrey and women, then far's I can see, looks to me that John Penellin did it.'

'Why?'

'It's 'is daughter involved, Mr St James. A man's not likely to let another man hurt 'is daughter. Not if it can be stopped in some way. A man does what 'e can.'

St James recognized the bait and acknowledged the fact that their morning's discussion was not yet concluded in Cotter's eyes. But he had no need to ask the question which Cotter's comment called for: And what would you do? He knew the answer. Instead he said, 'Did you learn anything from the housekeeper?'

'Dora? A bit.' Cotter leaned against the harbour railing, resting his elbows on the top metal bar. 'Great admirer of the doctor, is Dora. Works 'is fingers to the bone. Gives 'is life to research. And when 'e's not doing that, 'e's visiting folks at a convalescent 'ome outside St Just.'

'That's the extent of it?' 'Seems to be.'

St James sighed. Not for the first time did he admit to the fact that his field was science, crime-scene investigation, the analysis of evidence, the interpretation of data, the preparation of reports. He had no expertise in an arena that demanded insightful communication and intuitive deduction. More, he didn't have the taste or the talent for either. And the further he waded into the growing mire of conjecture, the more frustrated he felt.

From his jacket pocket, he pulled out the piece of paper which Harry Cambrey had given him on Saturday morning. It seemed as reasonable a direction to head in as any. When you're lost, he thought mordantly, you may as well head somewhere.

Cotter joined him in studying it. 'MP,' he said. Then, 'Member of Parliament?'

St James looked up. 'What did you say?'

'Them letters. MP.'

'MP? No-' As he spoke, St James held the paper to the sunlight. And he saw what the gloom of the newspaper office and his own preconceived notions had prevented him from realizing before. The pen, which had skipped in the grease on other spots on the paper, had done as much again next to the words procure and transport. The result was an imperfectly formed loop for the letter P, not the number 1 at all. And the 6, if the thought followed logically, had to be instead a hastily scrawled C.

'Good God.' He frowned, examining the accompanying numbers. Dismissing gun-running and Ireland and every other side issue from his mind, it wasn't long before he saw the obvious. 500. 55. 27500. The last was the multiple of the previous two.

And then he recognized the first connection of the circumstances surrounding Mick Cambrey's death. The position of the Daze had told him, bow to stern northeast on the rocks. He should have clung to that thought. It had been pointing to the truth.

He thought about the coastline of Cornwall. He knew without a doubt that Lynley's party of men could scour every cove from St Ives to Penzance, but it would be as limitedly useful an activity for them as it had been for the Excise officers who had patrolled the same area for two hundred years. The coast was honeycombed with caves. It was scalloped by coves. St James knew that. He did not need to clamber among the rocks and slither down the faces of cliffs to see what he knew quite well was already there: a haven for smugglers. If they knew how to pilot a boat among the reefs.

It could have come from anywhere, he thought. From Porthgwarra to Sennen Cove. Even from the Scillies. But there was only one way to know for sure.

'What next?' Cotter asked.

St James folded the paper. 'We need to find Tommy.' 'Why?'

'To call off the search.'

After nearly two hours, they found him on the quay at Lamorna Cove. He was squatting on the edge, talking to a fisherman who had just docked his boat and was trudging up the harbour steps, three coils of greasy-looking rope dangling from his shoulder. He paused halfway, listening to Lynley above him. He shook his head, covered his eyes to examine the other boats in the harbour, and with a wave towards the scattering of buildings set back from the quay he continued his climb.

Up above, on the road that dipped into the cove, St James got out of the car. 'Go back to Howenstow,' he told Cotter. 'I'll ride with Tommy.'

'Any message for Daze?'

St James considered the question. Any message for Lynley's mother seemed a toss-up between relieving her mind about one set of circumstances only to fire her worries about another. 'Nothing yet.'

He waited as Cotter turned the car around and headed back the way they had come. Then he began the descent into Lamorna, with the wind whipping round him and the sun warming his face. Below him, the crystalline water reflected the colour of the sky, and the small beach glistened with newly washed sand. The houses on the hillside, built by Cornish craftsmen who had been testing the strength of the south-western weather for generations, had sustained no damage from the storm. Here, that which had been the ruin of the Daze might not even have occurred.

St James watched as Lynley walked along the quay, his head bent forward, his hands deep in trouser pockets. The posture said everything about the condition of his spirit, and the fact that he was alone suggested either that he had disbanded the search altogether or that the others had gone on without him. Because they'd been at it for hours already, St James guessed the former. He called Lynley's name.

His friend looked up, raised a hand in greeting, but said nothing until he and St James met at the land end of the quay. His expression was bleak.

'Nothing.' He lifted his head, and the wind tossed his hair. 'We've completed the circuit. I've been talking to everyone here as a last-ditch effort. I thought someone might have seen them getting the boat ready to sail, or walking on the quay, or stocking supplies. But no-one in any of the houses saw a blasted thing. Only the woman who runs the cafe even noticed the Daze yesterday.'

'When was that?'

'Just after six in the morning. She was getting ready to open the cafe – adjusting the front blinds – so she can't have been mistaken. She saw them sailing out of the harbour.'