by Will North
“Prints?” Morgan asked.
“They were compromised by his immersion but Rafe is running them through the national registry and the HOLMES II data system,” Jennifer answered. “Too soon to say.”
Penwarren levered himself from his chair and crossed the room to the board to which an Ordnance Survey Explorer map of Bodmin Moor was pinned. The scale—two and a half inches to the mile—was so detailed that every feature, from prehistoric stone circles to individual field hedges, was visible. A small red adhesive arrow pinpointed the spot where the body had been found. Morgan and Terry joined him.
“The shortest distance to this site would be from the Rough Tor visitors’ car park north of Poldue,” he said, his finger tracing the route over ascending and descending contour lines. “But the descent from Showery Tor to the mire is steep.”
“We got there yesterday safely enough,” Terry reminded him.
“Yes, but you had four-wheel vehicles and there were no other tread marks on the ground, according to the report.”
Terry nodded.
“Someone carried him there?” Morgan asked.
“The victim’s too big. More likely on a horse, but even then, that descent is heavy going. Pretty risky. Let’s say you manage to somehow get this big guy up over the back of a horse. What if he slipped off on the descent?”
“Speaking of horses,” Rafe said, “the castings our lads made of the hoof prints found at the edge of the mire yesterday prove they were made by wild ponies: no horseshoes.”
“So that theory is out,” Penwarren grumbled.
“What about this?” Morgan was pointing to a bridle path that came south from the northeast. “If I’m reading the contours right that would be only a gentle rise and descent.”
“Yes, but it is much longer, nearly two miles, and after the bridle path stops it’s just open moorland,” Penwarren said. “Still, let’s get some of our lads to see if there are recent tire tracks on that side. That whole area is spongy, like walking on a mattress—until you step into an invisible wet hole and break an ankle; I know it well.”
Calum West had risen from the conference table and was studying another board which posted photos of the victim’s tattooed chest. Davies joined him and peered closely; her eyesight was not what it once was, but she would not don reading glasses in front of the others.
“Cage wrestler,” she said after a few moments.
“What?”
“This bloke’s either a cage wrestler or some kind of rabid fan, Calum. See that diamond pattern of dark lines over the other images? That’s the cage’s chain link. The rest of the tattoos are heads in a screaming crowd and meant to threaten an opponent.”
Penwarren joined them and Barnes and Bates crossed the room.
“Cage wrestler?” Terry asked.
“The formal term is ‘mixed martial arts.’ It’s sort of bare hand boxing, kicking, and wrestling with few rules. The fighters are in a raised ring, like in boxing, but instead of ropes there’s an octagonal chain link cage penning them in; no way to escape.”
“Charming,” Penwarren said. “And you know this because…?”
Davies shrugged. “Sometimes when I can’t sleep, I watch the matches late at night on the telly. The sport’s gone big, if you can call it sport. I reckon half of it is real and the rest is theater performance. Still, it’s pretty brutal. This bloke here—the shaved head, the overdeveloped physique, and those tattoos—they all say cage wrestler to me.”
West was staring at her open-mouthed, as if his closest colleague, and lately caretaker, had suddenly become someone else.
“Recognize him?” Barnes asked.
“He’s got no face…”
“I meant from the tattoos.”
“Lots of them have tattoos, so…no.”
“Would the matches have been filmed and archived?”
“Good question, Rafe, as they’re now televised. But we’d probably be better off speaking to someone at BAMMA.”
“BAMMA?” West asked. He was still trying to take this all in.
“British Association of Mixed Martial Arts. They organize and promote fights.”
“Association? It’s a charity under the law?”
Morgan laughed. “Oh no, a business. The whole sport has gone global. BAMMA’s moved beyond the UK. Matches in Ireland and elsewhere. Big betting money as well.”
“Like there isn’t already enough violence,” Penwarren mumbled.
Terry had been quiet. Finally, she said, “Why was he there at all, stuck in a mire on Bodmin Moor? Who is he? Is he local? If not, where’s he from and what’s the connection?”
Morgan smiled at her protégé. “I reckon the tattoos can help us identify him.” She looked at the DCI. “You want me to look into that, boss?”
“You seem to be our cage wrestling expert,” Penwarren said, closing his eyes and shaking his head: “All right, it’s yours.” He went back to the conference table. “I think we’re done here for now and thank you all. Morgan and Calum? I shall consider your request.”
“Oh, come on, boss,” Morgan complained.
“I’ll expect a doctor’s okay, Calum. Are we clear?”
Calum grinned. “Sir!”
The MCIT team began to shuffle out of the incident room.
“Bates and Novak? My office, please.”
Seven
“I READ YOUR report. Good job, both of you,” Penwarren said when they sat. “You make a good team.” He watched as Bates colored slightly.
“Thank you, sir,” Novak said.
The two were seated at a round, birch-veneered table in the middle of Penwarren’s office. There were four chairs, upholstered in royal blue with birch arms, part of the light and dark color scheme throughout the bright, airy Bodmin Hub building. The DCI turned to his windows. He’d taken off his jacket and his white shirtsleeves were rolled partway up his forearms. Store-bought shirts in regular sizes were never long enough for his arms but he would not buy bespoke. As a consequence, his cuffs always fell a bit short of his wrists.
“What did you make of the Cuthbertson girl?” he said to the window.
“Sir?” Terry asked.
He turned to face them. “What did you think of her?”
Bates looked at Novak. He lifted both eyebrows.
“How do you mean?” she asked.
Penwarren smiled. “She was my niece, before my divorce. I knew her as a teenager; haven’t seen much of her since. What was she like?”
“As a witness?”
“As a person.”
Bates looked at Novak again, looked back, and took a breath: “Snooty. Impatient. Spoiled brat, frankly…Sir.”
Penwarren laughed and lifted his hands as if in surrender. “There is no question in my mind, Detective Sergeant Bates, that you are destined to be the next Morgan Davies, and sometimes I think I couldn’t be happier.”
Terry grinned. “Only sometimes?”
“Early days yet, detective; early days.”
He sat with them at the table, leaned back on his chair’s rear legs, and looked at the ceiling.
“It’s been a couple of years since I saw her but what you said doesn’t surprise me, Terry. Only child, she is. Wonderful mother but emotionally distant and much older father. I doubt that girl has ever lacked for anything…except, perhaps, a father’s attention and affection.”
“You said ‘emotionally distant’ about her father; but that’s also how she seemed to me, actually, and about the whole situation. Emotionless. Cold.” Terry said.
“Adam?”
Novak nodded. “She drank a lot last night, boss; she was well into a bottle of Talisker. But she honestly did not seem all that upset about finding a dead body on their land. I should think a woman—no, sorry, anyone—would have been a bit more upset.” He shook his head. “Maybe I’m new at this murder business, but that seems mighty odd to me.”
Penwarren nodded. “To me, too, Adam. And yesterday morning her father, Randall, my fo
rmer brother-in-law, acted like I was a stranger and that we all were there to ruin his day. Do you think they recognized the body?”
“Not the woman,” Terry answered. “Besides the ruined head, all she ever saw was the body bag. She wasn’t there when Rafe’s people pulled the victim out.”
“Randall was, though,” Penwarren said. “Then again, he was at some distance and the body was covered in muck.”
“Yeah, and I don’t get that: I should have thought he’d want to get down off that damned horse and get a closer look. I mean—a dead body on your estate?”
“In my experience, Terry, Lords of the Manor on Bodmin Moor—one or two of them and Cuthbertson’s the prime example—can act as if the rest of us truly are just ‘commoners’ and that they are a superior class. Most are just like us, and solid citizens, but Cuthbertson is one of those few who act like they are truly Lords. He was polite to me over the years but somehow made it clear that having his wife’s younger sister marry a cop had not been in his dynastic plan. And of course he was right; it didn’t last. Still, his behavior yesterday was odd, even for him, as if he were there in body only. I plan to talk with him today. Meanwhile, let’s see what the redoubtable DI Davies comes up with on our tattooed victim. Are you two okay with her barging in?”
Terry grinned and tilted her head: “Have we any choice?”
“I suspect not. But she will report to us; you two are in the lead on this one. Understood?”
“There’s something else, sir,” Adam said. “Ms. Cuthbertson said her parents were at that meeting, right?”
“And?”
“And then she said that the car that sped out of their drive as we approached was theirs. That doesn’t make sense. They’d have been there already, since she said she called them.”
“What was the car?”
“A silver Range Rover, latest model. It was in our headlights briefly.”
Bates shot him a look. “How do you do that?”
“What?”
“Know the model?”
Novak shrugged. “It’s a guy thing.”
Penwarren smiled. “Well done, Adam; check their vehicle records.”
OH WHAT A tangled web we weave, Morgan Davies thought as she stared at her screen. She’d sent the still wobbly West back to his home and daughters after the MCIT meeting and now was researching the British Association of Mixed Martial Arts. The deeper she dug into BAMMA’s history, the more twisted it became. She jotted notes on an A4 pad of graph paper. Something about the orderly little boxes outlined in light blue pleased her, gave form to what often were formless thoughts, notions, hunches, worries. She hadn’t been on leave long, barely a fortnight, but she felt rusty, nonetheless.
What she was discovering was that the history, mostly recent, of this cage wrestling business was a fits-and-starts cycle of fight organizations forming to hold matches and building a following, only to be swallowed up by a larger and better-bankrolled competitor, most recently, BAMMA. Harold Lugg was one of their most prominent fighters.
It was clear that there was big money now behind mixed martial arts. And its source—at least its legal source—was television coverage. Second tier broadcasters in the UK—not the BBC or ITV or Channel 4—competed for the franchise and paid big for it.
She picked up her mobile and punched in the number for BAMMA’s London headquarters.
IT WAS JAN Cuthbertson who answered when Penwarren yanked the old-fashioned bell pull chain outside the big white door of Poldue Manor later that morning. She was wearing a black pullover, khaki riding breeches, and polished, knee-high black leather riding boots.
“Archie! After all this time, twice in one week!”
A fully formed woman was suddenly in his arms.
“I gather you’ve recovered,” he said, extracting himself.
Though she was dressed to ride, she took his hand and led him inside. “You really must come by more often; we have missed you!”
Penwarren wondered who the “we” included.
“And recovered from what? That body? I never did see the poor sod. He was just a sort of…I don’t know… like a landscape feature that was out of place.”
Penwarren watched her hips as she swayed down the hall toward the kitchen. It was like she was on the catwalk in a fashion show, expecting him to enjoy her strut and the sharp crack of her boot heels on the marble tiles.
“Tea?” she said when they reached the cavernous kitchen. She snapped on the electric kettle without waiting for an answer. “Or something more bracing?”
Penwarren shook his head and sat at the table.
“No, I didn’t think so.” She hitched herself up to sit atop the granite counter, crossed her legs, and very nearly winked at him. “Are you always so professional?”
Penwarren smiled. “Nature of the job, I’m afraid.”
The kettle clicked off and she hopped down from the counter. “Daddy never approved, you know, about your job. Why do you keep at it? Depressing business, I should think, tracking down murderers.”
Penwarren closed his eyes for a moment. It was a question he got often.
“It’s not the criminals I care about. It’s the victims. They have histories, but histories cut short. I suppose I aim to close their final chapter. Like this chap you found below Showery Tor.”
“Frankly, this whole thing has been a nuisance,” she said, ignoring him. “Neighbors and alleged friends ringing me up and peppering me for details even though they claim only to ask how I am, as if I had lost a dear friend or something. Bloody nonsense and nosiness is what it is.”
“How do the neighbors even know about this?”
“Oh, you know: it’s Bodmin Moor; there are no secrets. Word gets around.” She turned away from him. “Earl Grey or the usual?”
Penwarren didn’t believe her. “No tea, but thank you. I came by to have a word with your father; he barely spoke to me yesterday.”
“Oh, but he’s not here; he and Mummy are at Millpool. You just missed them,” she said holding the kettle, her free hand planted on her hip.
Penwarren got the distinct sense Jan thought he’d come only to see her, as if she were somehow the main event.
“The shooting range? Why ever for?”
“We’ve a shooting party coming next week. Woodcock or snipe, I’m not sure which. You wouldn’t believe how much people will pay to shoot on our estate. Thousands. Although they use shotguns in wildfowl shoots, Mum and Dad practice with target rifles at the range to stay in the game.”
“Beverly shoots as well?”
“Oh, goodness, yes. She joins the shoots as well, with the guests. Randall doesn’t anymore. I don’t approve. Killing birds. Barbaric.”
Penwarren noted she called her father by his first name. Not “Daddy” or something more affectionate. And that to her it seemed the discovery of a dead man in the mire apparently did not count as “barbaric.” Just shooting game birds. Indeed, the whole family seemed to have no curiosity about the victim at all.
Penwarren rose. “How long do you think your parents will be at the range?”
“Oh, an hour or more I should think. You’re not leaving?”
Penwarren ignored the question. “Don’t you even wonder who that ‘poor sod’ was, Jan?”
The girl blinked.
“Because I do. I need to give him a name, an identity, and discover how and why he died on your land. Whoever he is, he deserves at least that. I’ll see my own way out.”
Eight
THE MILLPOOL SHOOTING range was on private moorland near Cardinham, a few miles north of the market town of Bodmin. The range had been leased by the estate owner to the Ministry of Defense for training purposes ever since World War II, but a local shooting club also had scheduled access.
When technically off duty, Penwarren avoided the force’s nondescript fleet of unmarked white Vauxhalls in favor of his meticulously restored 1964 Austin Healey 3000 Mark III convertible. Big for a sports car and heavy, it wasn’t th
e most nimble auto for twisty Cornish lanes, but the six-cylinder engine beneath its long bonnet produced enough horsepower to make it loaf at 100 miles per hour on a motorway. His Healey was fire-engine red with a black leather interior and a polished walnut dashboard. It was admired and known by the staff at the Bodmin Police Hub as “Penwarren’s Baby.” But Penwarren knew its days were numbered: not by its age or condition, but by his own. His back was beginning to complain on any longer trip and his right leg would go numb holding down the throttle pedal. But it was the thing he cherished most. He’d cherished his ex-wife until she demanded a divorce, but he remained unwilling to give up the Healey.
Just outside Cardinham, Penwarren guided the roadster along a single lane road that snaked between thickets of thorny gorse, still flowering bright lemon yellow even this late in the year. Twice, he’d had to avoid free-ranging long-horned Highland cattle which yielded right of way only grudgingly, ambling slowly away from the manure-splattered lane to the grassy verge. Strangely, a stag—a thick-shouldered buck with a full rack—watched over the cattle at a distance, as if he were guardian of the herd, the sentinel. Penwarren slowed to admire it. It did not move.
Up ahead on a high hill, Penwarren could see the crumbling remains of Bury Castle—not a castle at all, but an ancient Iron Age settlement and fortress with two ascending rings of ditches and stone ramparts. With a view that took in much of southern Cornwall all the way to Land’s End, it would have been a formidable redoubt in its time.
There was a keypad locking mechanism at the gate of the shooting range, but it now stood open. He parked the Healey beside the other cars and walked up the rough track toward the range. The crack of gunshots ahead came in short bursts of three or four. He reached a long wooden shelter just as mist slipped in over the summit of Brown Willy in the distance to the west. An older gentleman with a carefully trimmed white beard stood inside, gazing out the window.
