by Graham Ison
Even though it was a Sunday, Commander Cleaver had succeeded in bringing his influence to bear and had arranged for two helicopters to get us to the Isles of Scilly. I don’t like helicopters because they have this nasty habit of stopping in mid-air in order to allow other aircraft to pass in front of them. Nevertheless, I could hardly refuse the commander’s offer as he had gone to so much trouble to save us from a time-consuming train journey that might have got us there too late.
We were transported – this time by a traffic car on blues and twos – to the London base of the National Police Air Service. Its Airbus helicopter flew Kate and me as far as the outskirts of Yeovil where we touched down. We then transferred to a similar helicopter that had flown up from the NPAS base at Exeter. Just over two hours after leaving London we arrived at St Mary’s airport on the Isles of Scilly.
We were met by a man who promptly produced his National Crime Agency identification. ‘I’m Sandy, a member of the surveillance team.’ I suppose Sandy might even have been his real name; there was no way of knowing because his ID disappeared as quickly as it had been produced. He went on to explain that the target was now under the surveillance of his colleagues.
I introduced myself and Kate Ebdon. ‘Where exactly is Madison Bailey at this moment?’ I asked.
‘Sitting on Porthcressa Beach in a bikini, taking in the sun, admiring the view and acting like she hasn’t got a care in the world. A couple of my colleagues are keeping an eye on her. We’ll take a walk across there. It’s only about a mile and a half.’
‘I presume she’s got the all-important make-up case with her, then?’ I asked, as we set out from the airport.
‘No, she hasn’t. We think she must’ve left it in her room at the bed-and-breakfast she booked into when she arrived. My colleagues are searching her room as we speak.’
‘Of course, it could be that she’s only an innocent mule, after all,’ said Kate Ebdon.
‘What d’you mean, exactly?’ Sandy frowned.
‘Perhaps she’s unaware that she’s been carrying cocaine worth seventy grand all the way from Bogotá. If she knew, surely to God she wouldn’t have left it in a hotel room – not that she knows it no longer contains the real stuff. But if she’d known all along that she was carrying cocaine, she’d be unlikely to leave it lying around, would she?’
Sandy nodded. ‘If that’s the case, what’s she doing on the Isles of Scilly?’
‘Well, according to the airline she works for, she’s on holiday,’ said Kate. ‘It might be as innocent as that. But if your people do find the duff packages that were put in her case at Heathrow, you’ll have a bit of a job proving possession of talcum powder if the packages are in her guesthouse room and she’s down here. She’ll deny all knowledge of them and might even suggest that your colleagues planted them to incriminate her.’
‘Bloody hell!’ exclaimed Sandy, as we reached Porthcressa Beach. ‘That’ll mean this whole operation will have been a complete blowout.’
‘Welcome to the real world of crime detection, mate,’ said Kate, sounding more Australian than usual. She didn’t have a very high opinion of the National Crime Agency.
Sandy pointed out the man and woman surveillance team who were sitting on the beach not far from Madison Bailey. The air stewardess, distinctive in a white bikini, was sitting with her arms clasped around her knees, and peering out to sea.
‘Yes, that’s her,’ said Kate. ‘She looks as though she’s expecting something or someone.’
Sure enough, further discussion was interrupted by the arrival on the beach of an inflatable dinghy with an outboard motor. The man in the dinghy was wearing a colourful shirt and shorts, sunglasses and a white baseball cap pulled well down, making it difficult to identify him without binoculars, perhaps even then. He waved at the girl.
Madison Bailey waved back and stood up. Picking up her large beach bag – the one she’d been carrying when we saw her at the Pretext Club – she walked casually across the sand to the boat, splashing through the shallow water of an incoming tide. The man who had brought the dinghy inshore helped her aboard and gave her a hug and a kiss. She relaxed in the stern of the vessel and her companion spun the craft before heading back to sea.
‘Ye Gods!’ exclaimed Sandy. ‘Now what’s happening?’
‘At a guess,’ I said, ‘they’re going out to one of those yachts that are moored out there.’
‘But there are dozens of them.’ Indeed, there were yachts of all shapes and sizes ranging from the very small to the very expensive.
‘You’ll just have to wait and see,’ said Kate, who was rather enjoying the spectacle of an NCA officer who seemed to have lost the plot. ‘The smart money says that the bag she’s carrying contains what she thinks is cocaine to the value of seventy grand.’
‘Oh my God!’ Sandy suddenly realized that what Kate had said was almost certain to be the truth. He pulled out his mobile phone and, like a man possessed, started to wander about the beach trying to get a signal. ‘I’ve alerted Guardian, one of the customs cutters,’ he said, when eventually he’d managed to make contact, ‘which unfortunately is quite a distance away. Now we’ll have to wait and see what happens next.’ Taking a small telescope from his pocket, he trained it in the direction of the disappearing inflatable. ‘They’re both climbing aboard a cabin cruiser, Harry, and the inflatable is being hooked on the stern.’
‘Is there a name on the cruiser that you can see, Sandy?’ I asked.
‘No, just a number, but that’s good enough. Ah! He’s going southeast, at some speed, too. It looks as though he’s making for France. I hope Guardian gets here in time to track him.’
Within minutes, the cabin cruiser with Madison Bailey aboard had vanished over the horizon.
Sandy collapsed his telescope with a snap that betrayed his annoyance. ‘I suppose I could alert the French police,’ he said.
‘Only if you can tell them which part of France they’re making for,’ said Kate.
SIXTEEN
The three of us made our way back to the police station in St Mary’s and Sandy made a call to the team who were searching Madison’s room at her guesthouse. ‘They’ve found nothing, Harry,’ he said dejectedly when he’d finished the call. ‘The make-up case was there, obviously, but when they opened it up, the dummy packages had gone. Oh, God! The whole thing’s a fucking disaster,’ he said and, realizing too late that Kate was standing beside him, apologized for his bad language.
Kate laughed. ‘You wait till I get going, mate,’ she said.
There was now no alternative but to await a report from the customs cutter if, in fact, its crew had managed to catch up with the errant cabin cruiser.
The three of us adjourned to one of the few restaurants in the area and enjoyed a well-deserved meal.
It was now nearing ten o’clock in the evening of what was proving to be a very long day. I was tempted to give up and return to London. As we were leaving the restaurant, Sandy received a phone call from the skipper of Her Majesty’s Cutter Guardian.
‘It’s a blowout, Harry,’ said Sandy, as he finished the call. He was still as dejected as ever, if not more so. ‘Guardian couldn’t find the damned cruiser anywhere.’
‘Got any ideas, Sandy? Where could this guy have gone in the time available?’ I asked.
Sandy did a quick calculation. ‘I suppose it’s possible that he’ll finish up in a French port or, for that matter, on any one of the dozens of beaches and coves on the Brittany or Normandy coast where it’s possible to land. It’s going to take forever to track him down, and what’s more, he might’ve got rid of the boat by now which will make it even harder to find him. Oh, to hell with it! He could be anywhere.’ He paused as another thought occurred to him. ‘God, even if we find him, he’s bound to have disposed of the bogus cocaine by now. If the handover’s taken place, that’s it. Finished. Zilch!’
‘I should imagine that the receivers would have tested the produce before parting with any cash,
in which case the transaction probably ended in violence. For all we know, Madison and her conspirator could both be feeding the fishes by now,’ said Kate, a comment that appeared to make Sandy even more dejected than before. ‘But how about the Cornish coast?’ she suggested. ‘Who’s going to query a cabin cruiser turning up there and mooring? And he could’ve doubled back just to fool your people. I don’t think this guy is an amateur. And he might have to wait to keep his meet with whoever he’s selling the cocaine to.’
‘It’s possible, I suppose,’ said Sandy, reluctant to admit that someone from another organization might know better than he did. ‘But why?’
‘Because there aren’t any customs officers on the Isles of Scilly,’ said Kate, ‘and our man probably thought that it would be risk-free. No one would be much interested in a guy in a cruiser coming into Porthcressa Beach and picking up an attractive girl in a bikini to take her for a run round the islands or for a day of sex on one of the dozens of uninhabited islands. Happens all the time,’ she added dismissively.
‘What time is Guardian expected to dock, Sandy?’ I asked.
‘In about half an hour’s time. We’ll have a chat with the skipper, but I doubt we’ll learn any more than we know already.’
And indeed, that turned out to be the case. The skipper of Guardian reported that he had arrived off Porthcressa Beach about thirty minutes after receiving the call and started a sweep between there and the French coast but found nothing. Perhaps, after all, Madison Bailey’s accomplice had been taken in by the dummy packages and had made for somewhere where he was sure of offloading them without being seen. Which left a number of unanswered questions. Who was the girl’s confederate and where was he now? And who was the intended recipient of the cocaine? However, that was for the customs element of the NCA to sort out. My own concern was that if Madison’s partner was Robert Sharp’s murderer, I wanted to put him in the dock at the Old Bailey. But first we had to find him.
We had more important priorities than those, however. Both Kate and I were tired out. We found a comfortable guesthouse that had two rooms vacant.
Next day, after a tortuous journey involving a twenty-minute helicopter trip from St Mary’s to Land’s End, a nine-mile cab ride from there to Penzance railway station, a five-hour train journey to Paddington and, finally, a taxi to Belgravia, Kate and I arrived at the office at about five thirty on the Monday evening.
‘We’ve had a vague message from the National Crime Agency, sir,’ said Wilberforce, by way of greeting. ‘The cabin cruiser has been found abandoned at Penzance. Does that make any sense, sir?’
‘I’m afraid it does, Colin, but I’m damned if I’m going all the way back there just to look at a bloody motor boat. Did they say anything else about it?’
‘Not in the message, sir, but it contained a request for you to liaise with Mr Sullivan at Heathrow.’
I rang Peter Sullivan’s extension from my office and after a short delay he came to the phone.
‘I gather you had a disappointing day in the Isles of Scilly,’ he began.
‘You could say that, Peter. So, what have your people got?’
‘It’s not so much our people as the Devon and Cornwall Police. It was their officers who found the cabin cruiser and it had previously been reported stolen from Totland on the Isle of Wight on Tuesday the thirtieth of last month.’
‘Interesting. If it was Brooks who nicked it, I wonder where he’s been since absconding from Ford open prison on Saturday the thirteenth of July.’
‘Are you going down to have a look at this boat, Harry?’
‘No, there’s no point. I doubt there’ll be anything to find that’ll be of any use in my murder investigation. I’ll ask the Devon and Cornwall Police to check any fingerprints they find. If James Brooks’ dabs are there it’ll be a help. He’s my number-one suspect for Robert Sharp’s murder. But if it is him, he’ll be long gone by now.’
It was at eight thirty on Tuesday morning that a phone call from Peter Sullivan informed me of an event that was to take us one step nearer finding Sharp’s killer.
‘I’ve just had a call from the headquarters of the Devon and Cornwall Police, Harry. The body of an unidentified woman has been washed up on Lamorna Cove beach. It was found by a young couple who were going for an early-morning swim.’ Sullivan chuckled. ‘Quite put them off their breakfast by all accounts.’
‘You say unidentified, Peter. Is there any clue as to who she might be?’ I wondered why Sullivan thought this would be of interest to me. But his next statement explained it.
‘Oh yes,’ said Sullivan. ‘She is described as a very attractive twenty-five-year-old, with long black hair and light black skin. She was wearing a white bikini. Remind you of anyone?’
‘Madison Bailey,’ I said. ‘Have they come up with a cause of death yet?’
‘First indications were that she had drowned while swimming, but an initial examination showed that she’d been the victim of manual strangulation. Subject to confirmation when the post-mortem is completed, of course.’
‘Is it just the woman’s body that’s been washed up, Peter?’ I asked.
‘That’s all they mentioned, Harry. What makes you ask?’
‘My Inspector Ebdon has a theory that both Madison and her colleague might’ve been murdered if the receiver believed they’d reneged on the deal when he found the dummy packages.’
‘Oh, God! This job just gets worse, Harry.’
‘Where’s the body now, Peter?’ I asked.
There was a rustling of paper as Sullivan went through his notes before he replied. ‘The West Cornwall Hospital in Penzance, Harry.’
There was really no way out of it. I would have to view the body that had been found if for no better reason than to satisfy myself that it was that of Madison Bailey. To make doubly sure, I decided that Kate Ebdon would come with me.
Colin Wilberforce was very good at travel arrangements, but even he couldn’t manage to cut our journey time by much. A combination of flying from Gatwick to Newquay and taking a train from there to Penzance – which included a change – only managed to shave a few minutes off the time it would have taken to go all the way by rail.
Wilberforce had informed the Devon and Cornwall Police of our approximate time of arrival at the hospital and we were met in the entrance hall by a man of about fifty. He was a touch overweight, balding and had a greying, ragged moustache. His tweed suit had turn-ups and there were leather patches on the elbows of the jacket.
‘DCI Brock, is it?’ He asked, raising his pork-pie hat.
‘Yes, that’s me.’
‘I’m DI Trevelion, sir, from Penzance. I’m looking into the matter of this dead girl who was found at Lamorna Cove this morning.’ Trevelion spoke with a soft Cornish accent.
‘I take it that you’ve not yet had a formal identification, Mr Trevelion.’
‘No, sir. My name’s John, by the way.’
‘Mine’s Harry,’ I said, ‘and this is DI Kate Ebdon.’
Trevelion shook hands, first with me and then with Kate. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said. ‘I understand from these Crime Agency people that you’ve been across to the Scilly Isles.’
‘Yes, we have, John,’ I said, and gave Trevelion a brief rundown on what had taken Kate and me to St Mary’s. I went on to describe the escape of the cabin cruiser that had first picked up Madison Bailey.
Trevelion nodded. ‘I knew no good would come of removing the customs officer from St Mary’s. We’ve got three police officers there and a police community support officer, but they can’t be doing customs work as well as their own. It’s the cut-backs you know. Anyway, you’ll not want to stand here gossiping. I’ll take you to view the body.’
The Cornishman led the way along a corridor, turning corners a few times, until we reached the mortuary. He rang the bell and the door was opened by a man in a white coat. ‘All ready for you, Inspector.’
We followed Trevelion into the mortuary and the atte
ndant withdrew the shroud that was covering the female body.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s Madison Bailey, an air stewardess. Would you agree, Kate?’
‘Yes, sir,’ replied Kate without hesitation.
‘It would oblige me if one of you could make a formal written statement of identification, Mr Brock.’
‘Of course, John.’ It appeared there was no way that I was going persuade Trevelion to use my first name. He was obviously a policeman of the old school – all too rare these days, I’m sorry to say. We strolled back to the entrance hall of the hospital. ‘Did you have anything to do with the cabin cruiser that was found at Penzance, John?’
‘I did, sir, and from what you’ve been telling me, it would appear now that there’s a connection.’
‘There’s no doubt about that. Were there any packages aboard the cruiser when you searched it? Dummy packages made to look as though they contained cocaine that had been placed there by the customs people at Heathrow.’
‘No, there was nothing like that. The National Crime Agency officers who were here never mentioned anything about that.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ said Kate. ‘That lot play their cards very close to their chest. You wouldn’t think we were on the same side.’ Kate Ebdon had this habit of saying aloud what the rest of us were thinking.
‘Have you examined the cruiser for fingerprints, John?’ I asked.
‘Yes, but although we found quite a few on the steering wheel, they didn’t find a match in the national fingerprint database. Incidentally, some were the dead woman’s, but that’s hardly surprising.’
That none of the prints were on record puzzled me and I said as much. ‘That rather upsets my theory, John. I was convinced that the man who stole the cruiser and who picked up Madison Bailey from Porthcressa Beach in St Mary’s was James Brooks, an escapee from Ford open prison. Could the other prints belong to the owner of the cruiser, d’you think?’
