by Will North
“I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. We haven’t slept together for years.”
It was not what Penwarren had meant.
She changed position and patted the space on the loveseat next to her for him to sit.
“I’ll weather this as I have the other crises.”
“Other?”
She smiled and shook her head. “Did my very stylish but, let’s face it, rather self-absorbed sister never tell you? Randall is chronically unfaithful, or rather was. For years. Went after anyone and everyone, and often succeeded. It was humiliating.”
“Jesus…”
“After everyone but me, that is. When Jan was born, I learned I could have no more children. He acted like producing a mere daughter was a failure on my part, a rebuke to the lineage. No male heir. And that was that, romantically…if you know what I mean. Not that there was much in the way of intimacy even before that.”
“That would have more than two decades ago.”
“Yes. It’s been a long time.”
Penwarren understood what she was implying.
“I’m so sorry, Bev,” he said again.
She smiled and patted his thigh. “Do you know you’re the only one who’s ever called me ‘Bev,’ besides my sister? Everyone else around here treats me like I was truly a ‘Lady of the Manor,’ some kind of aristocrat. It’s always ‘Miss Beverly’ or ‘Lady Cuthbertson.’ I hate it. I’m just a girl from a modest family in a small village on the Channel coast. The title comes with the land, for God’s sake. It’s not even ceremonial.”
“Well, you wear the title, such as it is, with grace. And by the way, almost no one but this family has ever called me ‘Artie,’ either.”
“I should think not. You’re far too senior for that!”
“Is that a commentary on my age?”
She winked and echoed him. “You wear your age with grace, ex brother-in-law.”
He dodged this comment as well. “Actually, Rick Stein still calls me Artie.”
“Stein? The Padstow restaurant owner, hotelier, TV chef, and God knows what else? That’s right you live there now, I forgot. He has so many enterprises in that village, I hear they call it ‘Pad-Stein’ now!”
Penwarren smiled and nodded. “We were at Harrow together, Rick and I. Bursary boys, we were. Taken in as ‘charity cases’ because we had good families and good grades but no money.”
“You’ve always been private about your family.”
“Not much to share. My father inherited a small estate to the south, near Penzance, just above the Lamorna valley. His parents had been patrons of the painters there, the so-called Lamorna School of English Impressionists, before the first war—Stanhope Forbes, Laura Knight, Ellen Naper, the lot. Dad made it through the second war but died of an aneurism not long after I was born. The death duties were crippling. Mother had to sell the estate, including all those paintings, and was never the same afterward. When I chose to join the Met as a policeman after university, I think she felt I’d failed her. She died soon thereafter. It was the smoking that killed her, really, but I’ve always felt responsible. She was a remarkable lady, smart, strong, elegant.”
For a split second, Penwarren realized he could be describing the woman beside him.
“As for Rick, I wasn’t so sure about him at the beginning. He was a bit of a tear-away. Ran a couple of discos after Harrow, I think. I can’t recall if he even went to university. We lost touch. He lived in Australia for a while, too. Somewhere along the line, he discovered a love of cooking and of seafood, created that first waterside restaurant at Padstow, and he’s quite the impresario now—restaurants, boutique hotels, cookery school, TV shows, books, and more. But to him I’m still his school chum, ‘Artie.’ I often eat at his main restaurant when I am too tired to cook for myself, and he takes care of me: typically a bottle of good wine on the house.”
“About time someone took care of you.”
Penwarren let that statement hang in the air. He got up and added wood to the fire and saw that Beverly’s glass was empty. He looked the question at her. She nodded. He refilled her glass, added a splash, and took the seat beside her again.
“Look, Bev, you’re frightened. I see it. Detective Davies saw it. But are you in danger? I know damn-all about Randall’s condition, but I don’t want you hurt. How dangerous is he?”
“I honestly don’t know, Artie. It’s like he’s a volcano, mostly dormant and then the eruption. As I said, it’s worse in the evening. He’s attacked me only that one time. To be honest, I think he is more afraid than I am. I think he knows he is losing his mind.”
“Have you said anything to your sister?”
“’Becca? No. She never approved of Randall anyway. Too old. Just as Randall never approved of her marrying you, a cop. What a family this is.”
Penwarren rose and fussed with the fire again. “Look, we have a domestic violence team,” he said to the blaze. “I can arrange for one of those officers to visit and make an assessment, if that would reassure you. If they think you are in danger, they can arrange to give you a direct line to Comms in case of emergency…”
He listened to his own words and knew they were inadequate.
“I think that’s premature, Artie. But if I had a sudden need for your help do you at least have a private mobile number? I would feel safer if I had that.”
Penwarren hesitated. Only his major crime team members had that number. But he gave her his card and wrote the private number on the back. She rose and embraced him, kissing him this time like she meant it…at which point her daughter, Jan, breezed into the room.
“Well, this is cozy,” the girl smirked. “Am I interrupting?”
“Don’t be disgusting. Artie’s just leaving. He’s offered to help us with your father. Where have you been?”
“Out. Lunch with a friend. Might have had too much to drink. She put a hand on the door jamb for balance and looked at Penwarren: “Hello again, Artie. Is Randall in trouble?”
Beverly answered for him. “Your father’s mind is going. You haven’t noticed?”
“I try not to notice anything he says. It’s generally insulting.”
“Perhaps if you spent more time at home, you might have. He has a rare form of dementia. It develops very quickly. The doctor says he may not have long to live.”
“Well, that’s a mercy…”
Beverly wanted to slap her.
“Stop it, Jan,” Penwarren ordered and, to his surprise, she did so, blinking in surprise. “Your father is dying. He apparently also is becoming violent. He has attacked your mother.”
Briefly, Jan’s eyes widened.
“We’re just trying to keep him from harming himself—or someone else,” he added. “Including you.”
The young woman shrugged as if with indifference but remained holding onto the door jamb.
“Look, Jan,” her mother interjected, “I know that he has never been close to you, even resents you. He wanted a male heir, as if that mattered anymore, which it doesn’t. It’s just wrong. But you have proven your worth and importance since you returned from school. He supported your desire to study farmland and countryside management. You excelled. I am certain he respects that. And he gave you the job of managing our part of the Commons.”
Jan let go of the door jamb to point a finger, wobbled as if the floor were moving, and grabbed the jamb again. “With respect, mother, he has done absolutely nothing I have recommended. Not a damn thing. Nothing I say matters to him and it never has. And as for the commons, it’s in tatters, massively overgrazed and struggling.”
“Those roe deer…”
“NO! Those damned ponies you’re so keen to protect. They’re ripping up the turf, and more of them will die this winter for lack of forage. But that will only strengthen your cause, won’t it? More people sobbing over ‘the poor dears.’ Of course that means more donations for your rescue operation.”
Beverly sank back onto the sofa and changed t
he subject. “Your father is not a man much capable of displaying affection. Not even to me. I’m sorry. You deserve better. But you need to understand that this illness may mean that life as you have always known it—and, for that matter, possibly even the future of this estate—may be in jeopardy. Without your father here to manage…”
Jan uttered something between a laugh and a grunt. “Manage?! Have you ever looked at the accounts? I have, and we’ve been running a deficit here for several years. He’s just let it slide. If this place matters to you, why have you made no effort to become involved? I swear, all ‘Lady Cuthbertson’ has ever loved is those damned ponies!”
“I have loved you and been your advocate from the beginning,” Beverly said, almost in a whisper.
“And a lot of good that’s done me. The plain fact is that this estate, as you call it, is practically bankrupt!”
The girl looked defiantly at her mother and spun out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
Beverly looked up at the ceiling to stop the tears. Penwarren sat next to her and took her hand.
“Bev. What can I do?”
“Nothing, Artie. This is not your battle. You have plenty of your own. I just need to know that I can reach you in case he gets dangerous.”
“He’s already dangerous.”
“No. Not yet. Not really. But it may come.”
PENWARREN WAS BACK at his stand-up desk later Sunday afternoon, working out the details of the required face-to-face CONFI meeting with Liverpool detectives the next day. The trip was a bloody nuisance, unnecessary, as he saw it, in this Internet day and age. But that was procedure, and he was not about to question it and draw attention. He wanted Terry Bates to be present as well. He believed in her and was determined to challenge her. He wasn’t sure how long his back would let him stay in the force…or, for that matter, how long Crawley’s scheming would take before he could push his DCI out of succession and into retirement. But Bates was his hope for the next Morgan Davies, and he meant to give her every opportunity to grow…or fail.
Penwarren’s mobile buzzed just after 4:00 Sunday evening. The light was already fading but he’d been expecting the call.
“Good afternoon, DS Bates.”
“Hello. I was wondering how early we were leaving tomorrow morning for Liverpool. It’s a long drive even without tailbacks, and they’re inevitable around Bristol.”
“We’ll leave here mid-morning.”
“But it’s a five- or six-hour drive!”
“We’re flying from Newquay to Manchester on a 12:15 flight and hiring a car there. The flight is just about an hour and then it’s less than an hour to Liverpool on the motorways.”
“Hang on, why didn’t I know about this last week? That drive is exhausting!”
“Did you ask?”
“No. Would it have been approved?”
“Probably not.”
“So why is it okay for us to fly there tomorrow?”
“Because I didn’t ask.”
Bates took this in. “So…”
“In life and in policing, Terry, it is often far easier to ask forgiveness than permission. I should think Morgan’s history would have taught you that by now.”
She heard the smile in his voice.
“Right then, what’s the plan?”
“We’ll leave here at 10:30. Please reserve one of our cars. We’ll leave it at Newquay overnight.”
Day Eight
Sixteen
AS BEFORE, DCI Waggoner met Bates and Penwarren at the bulletproof glass-enclosed security foyer on the ground floor of Liverpool headquarters and badged them in.
“DS Bates,” Waggoner said, bowing slightly and taking her hand in both of his, “what a pleasure to see you again so soon!” She was wearing a black pantsuit and low heels. A white cotton lace-topped camisole peeked out from between the lapels. Demure.
She smiled and removed her hand.
“And DCI Arthur Penwarren! This is a special pleasure. Your reputation precedes you. I am honored to meet you.” Penwarren wore casual gray trousers, his usual tweed jacket, and an open neck pale blue dress shirt, his concession to formality.
“Legends, Detective. Just legends…”
“Ach, but does that not make you legendary?”
“No, Waggoner, it makes me a plodding cop. Thank you for giving us a helping hand.”
Waggoner laughed, led them to the aging lift, and pressed a button for the fifth floor.
“I thought Special Branch was on six,” Bates said as the lift creaked upward.
“Good memory, Detective, but intel is on five. We have a secure room there for these occasions.”
When the lift doors opened, Waggoner ushered them down a short hall floored in linoleum tiles the color of sand. The walls were painted a bland institutional green that reminded Terry of hospitals. It ended in a door with a keypad entry system. That led to another hall, but before they reached its end, he unlocked a door on the right side of the corridor. It opened to a small, windowless room, the walls of which were lined with waffle-board soundproofing. There was a large machine-loomed mock-Persian rug beneath a long oval conference table of polished Cherry, flanked by several matching chairs. The room was musty, smelled of furniture wax recently applied, and looked seldom used. There were glasses and glass bottles of Buxton Spring water at the center of the table.
A slender, older man, slightly shorter than Penwarren, with silvering hair, round rimless spectacles, and an elegant pinstriped gray suit that looked bespoke, stood waiting at the far end of the table. He reminded Penwarren of a headmaster.
Waggoner introduced him as Detective Superintendent Rodney Winterbourne, the head of force intel in Liverpool and the arbiter of any CONFI proceeding. Winterbourne nodded a greeting, sat, and gestured that they do the same. Terry noticed a thin film of dust on the wooden arms of her chair the cleaners had missed.
Winterbourne had two folders on the table. He opened the first, a slender one, and adjusted his spectacles. Penwarren put him at mid-sixties and reckoned he was still on the force because he knew too much.
“DCI Penwarren, you have an interesting dossier.”
From his seat at the other end of the table facing Winterbourne, which he’d commandeered before Waggoner could, Penwarren stared him down. “We’re not here to discuss my dossier, as you call it, Winterbourne.”
Ever so slightly taken aback, as if he’d seldom before been thus addressed, Winterbourne looked down the long table over the top of his spectacles, owl-like.
“Quite so, Detective Penwarren. Quite so,” he said. “I was merely reviewing —”
“We don’t have a lot of time here in Liverpool,” Penwarren interrupted. “So, what say we get on with the matter of Mr. Lugg?”
Bates saw that her boss had taken an instinctive dislike to the intel officer. She admired Penwarren’s control.
Waggoner, who’d thus far been content to watch the jousting, now cleared his throat. “It turns out that your Mr. Lugg’s history is rather long in Liverpool, you see,” he said.
Bates said, “We know he had form. Mostly anti-social behavior—pub brawls, that sort of thing.”
Waggoner smiled and shook his head. “Yes. Well. Tip of the iceberg, as it were. Tip of the iceberg.” He looked down the table: “Rodney?”
Winterbourne opened the thicker file before him, paused, and looked up at the Cornwall delegation.
“The intel revealed in a CONFI arrangement is, of course, secret, DCI Penwarren and Ms. Bates. You may use it to pursue your enquiries, of course, but you may never reveal its source. Are we understood?”
Penwarren bristled at Winterbourne’s use of the royal “we” when referring to himself. It reminded him of Crawley. He nodded with a deferential dip of his head but said nothing. He was glad he’d told Crawley nothing of this meeting. Those two would have made a fine pair: After you, Alphonse…No, no, after you my dear Gaston… He waited.
Reading from the file, Winterbourne said,
“Harold Lugg—‘The Hammer,’ as he was known in his, um, trade—had quite a reputation. He was highly rated nationally in an activity, I hesitate to call it sport, formally known as mixed martial arts—arts—don’t you just love that? Winterbourne made a slight moue with his lips as he said this, as if smelling something disagreeable.
“We know all that,” Penwarren said, looking at his watch. “DCI Waggoner,” he said, turning, “you suggested this CONFI arrangement, telling Detective Bates there was more that you could not share with her in the absence of one. We have little CONFI experience down in our poor, benighted Cornwall, so I may be wrong, but I had expected something new and of value to our investigation. Will that be forthcoming or are DS Bates and I wasting our time and two airplane tickets?”
Waggoner looked at Winterbourne and sighed: “Rodney, may we get on with this? These people have come a long way at my suggestion and have a murder to solve.”
Winterbourne stiffened and straightened the knot of his tie, unnecessarily.
“Mr. Lugg, as you may already know,” he continued, “was a formidable combatant in the ring...or cage, I think they call it. An animal, frankly. But very popular with the betting crowds. He dominated his opponents, driving them to the mat by sheer—some would say crazed—ferocity. There are videos. But —”
Penwarren waited and said nothing. Bates followed his lead.
“—there was a problem,” Winterbourne said, and then paused again. It was like his mouth was an engine that had to be kick-started to keep going.
“Yes, he got banned because he failed the drug tests,” Bates finally said. She, too, was losing patience and was inwardly furious that this prat had called her ‘Ms. Bates.’
“That, from our point of view, was not the problem.”
Winterbourne paused again, as if delighted Bates had got it wrong.
