Murder on the Commons (A Davies & West Mystery Book 4)

by Will North

  “Good morning, boss. Got a minute?”

  Penwarren looked at his watch. It had just gone 7:00. “It’s very early for you. That worries me.”

  “I am worried. About Calum. I think you should be, too.”

  Penwarren gestured to his small conference table and they both sat. Then he jumped up again. “Coffee? I haven’t any but I can have it brought up from the canteen…”

  Morgan smiled as a uniformed constable arrived with two cups, his black, hers milky. “Thank you,” she said to the young man and he retreated.

  “So…” Penwarren said, toasting her and taking a sip.

  “So Calum’s losing his marbles or something.” She ignored her coffee.

  Penwarren drank again. “Care to elucidate, Morgan?”

  “The body in the mire. He’s obsessed.”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  “No, you don’t understand. He’s up there on Rough Tor almost every day, just staring down into the valley and the mire, trying to make sense of a murder scene that makes no sense.”

  Penwarren smiled. “Well, at least he’s getting some exercise.”

  “That’s not funny, boss.”

  “Okay, you’re right. And he’s impossible, I agree, when he feels unemployed. But I have an idea for him. It all depends on Terry.”

  “Terry?”

  He looked at his watch again. “She’s on her way to Ireland right now. Cork.”

  Morgan just stared. He was delighted to find her speechless. He changed the subject.

  “Now, for Calum: he’s got that fire-breathing Volvo Estate because he’s part of the anti-terrorism task force in London, right? Rapid response. If they need him, he can get there in a couple of hours and no speeding tickets, as I understand the arrangement.”

  Morgan rolled her eyes. “Supercharged and more than 300 hp, as he likes to brag. Plus hidden blues and twos, so it’s like a stealth cop car. He’ll kill himself in it one day.”

  “I’ve been with him in it. He’s a brilliant driver. But that’s not my point.”

  “If I may be so bold, what is your point?”

  Penwarren hesitated. He wasn’t quite ready, but he knew he couldn’t put Morgan off.

  “You heard Terry at our last MCIT meeting reporting on the Liverpool meeting.”

  “Waste of time, she said.”

  “Yes. Unless perhaps it wasn’t.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Liverpool were lying. I’m almost sure of it. That’s what Terry’s checking on in Cork with the Irish Garda. I expect to hear from her later this morning.”

  Morgan tilted her head. “And this has to do with Calum…how?”

  “Terrorism. I think Liverpool gave us a morsel of truth, that Lugg was somehow involved with the IRA. They wanted us to think it was a dead end. I don’t think it was. That’s where Calum comes in. I want him to talk to his friends at SO15.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “I’m sorry, I thought you knew. SO15 is the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command. He’s a member, though few people know and he’d be the last to say. These days, they’re mostly involved in finding ISIS and Al Qaeda cells here and other threats, but they still keep an eye on IRA splinter groups. The peace accords never changed that. In that context, we need to know if they’ve really been sniffing around Liverpool and Calum can find out. He’s respected. Has he never mentioned his role with SO15?”

  “Only the damn car.” Morgan looked away to the windows, frowning. “I suppose we all have our secrets,” she said almost to herself.

  “He won’t need the car this time. Where is he now?”

  “Haven’t a clue, boss. Not here, anyway.”

  “Find him and tell him MCIT meeting at 3:00. Text the others.”

  TERRY BATES DID not wait until her flight brought her back to Cornwall. She punched Penwarren’s number into her mobile from the airport in Cork while the Westwind Air flight waited for clearance.

  Penwarren had just rung off from another contentious call from his titular superior, Crawley, about the lack of progress in the Lugg murder. His phone buzzed again and he was about to lace into Crawley when he saw the name on the phone screen.

  “Terry?”

  Her voice was excited. “Cork’s never heard a word from Liverpool, boss. You were right. They’ve never been in contact, nor has any branch of the Garda reported contact with them, as far as Cork knows. But the people here do suspect the New IRA have a drugs distribution enterprise based somewhere in the UK. They’ve just failed to locate the hub.”

  “New IRA?”

  “Long story. Gotta turn of the mobile now. About to take off.”

  Penwarren got up and paced around his office. It wasn’t his job to investigate a force not his own. In fact, it was prohibited. But the whole situation—the bogus meeting in Liverpool, the information from Cork, the “accident” which had hurt Terry, the mystery surrounding Lugg—rankled. There was something—he felt it instinctively—just out of his reach, beyond his control, and wrong. He knew he should raise the issue to Crawley, but he couldn’t. He’d persuaded himself that this was all still part of his murder investigation. And Crawley would only make a bollocks of it. He needed Calum. Calum had the contacts. He also had a sensitivity that Morgan, for all her strengths, lacked.

  ALL THE TEAM members arrived in the incident room early, as if by doing so they could move the stalled investigation forward more quickly. Penwarren was waiting and more agitated than they’d seen him be since he’d returned from Liverpool.

  “This is mostly an assignments meeting, people. None of you has anything to report, other than Terry, and we’ll get to her directly. But meanwhile I am asking some, or maybe all, of you to take a risk and trust me.”

  Quizzical faces all around. Doesn’t he know we’d walk through fire for him? Morgan thought. “I never take risks.

  There was a moment of silence and then raucous laughter at this utterly bald lie, even from Penwarren. The tension was broken.

  “Actually, people, I was being serious.” The laughter died down. “This investigation has reached a point where I’m beginning to think we know too little, but also too much. I’ll explain, but first Terry: would you fill in the team?

  She did so, in detail. Morgan figured out what Penwarren was thinking before Terry finished, and she smiled to herself. The pieces were falling into place. Her boss had a reputation for pushing boundaries, just as she did. But she could see where this was going; Penwarren was putting his career at risk. She was full of admiration. This is where Calum would come in, she realized, but Penwarren changed the subject, and turned to Adam Novak.

  “Adam, you mentioned you chatted up an old chap at the Old Inn in St. Breward during their Sunday roast lunch a week or so ago. Name of Bishop. Works at the Poldue estate and has for years, you said. I confess I’ve been slow to see the significance, but I reckon he might know a lot more about the Cuthbertsons and maybe even who might have been visiting Jan the night she discovered Lugg’s body. I want you and Morgan to interview him.”

  Adam nodded. “Distant relative, he is.”

  “Even better.”

  Morgan bristled: “What, do I need a minder?”

  Penwarren winked at Novak.

  “No, but you might need a translator,” Adam said.

  “Huh?”

  “You’ll see.” Adam said, as he rose to research Bishop’s address.

  Penwarren smiled at Morgan. “Consider it a training opportunity.”

  Davies scowled. “Yeah, but for whom?”

  Penwarren ignored her. “We’re done here for now, people. Terry, you keep in contact with Roger Dunleavy in Cork in case anything emerges there. Calum? My office next. That suit you?”

  “Is that a question?”

  PENWARREN HADN’T BEEN out of the Bodmin Hub all day. The light was fading beyond his windows and pools of mist were gathering in low spots in the shallow valley beyond. It had been a clear day earlier, but already frost jeweled the tips
of the ornamental grasses that had been planted around the guest car park below his windows.

  Calum came through Penwarren’s open office door but said nothing. It took a moment before Penwarren noticed West’s reflection in the window. His mind was elsewhere. He turned and gestured to the small, round meeting table in the middle of the room.

  “Calum. Thank you,” he said as they both sat. Penwarren hesitated. “I need your help. SO15.”

  West blinked. “Sir?”

  “You are not just the best crime scene manager in the Southwest...”

  Calum grinned. “Boss, I’m the only crime scene manager in the Southwest. But I have a good staff.”

  Penwarren waved this away. “…you’re also a respected member of the Met’s Antiterrorism Department. Thankfully, I haven’t lost you to London very often, but I am honored to have someone with your credentials on my team.”

  Calum nodded.

  “I need you to do some very private work for me. For all of us, really. I should like you to ask your SO15 colleagues whether they have anything on the force at Liverpool. You heard Terry’s report this afternoon. All my instincts tell me we are being lied to, and the question is why? What are they hiding? Let’s be fair to them for a moment. Maybe Liverpool have their own investigation into the IRA. If they do, then wouldn’t SO15 know about it?”

  “Yes, sir. I should think so. I can check.”

  “You have friends at New Scotland Yard?”

  Calum grinned. “Believe it or not, yes. I have friends. I can call them.”

  “No, you can’t, Calum, not with your personal mobile. Nor can you email them. There can be no traceable record. I am, for the sake of this investigation, putting you, and us, in jeopardy by snooping around in another police force. Something smells wrong to me, and to Terry and I believe Lugg’s murder is a piece of a larger puzzle. But that killing was on our patch and solving it is my job.”

  “Mine too, boss. It haunts me that I can’t make sense of that scene.”

  “Morgan’s told me. And maybe this is a way to an answer. I don’t know. Go into Bodmin this afternoon and get a pay-as-you go throw away phone like any other skulking criminal, okay?” Penwarren grinned. “You have someone at the Met you could talk to?”

  “Brian Mathison. Old mates we are. Reckon he’ll know, or know someone who does, if anything’s afoot. You were with the Met when you started, boss. We all know that. There’s no one you know today?”

  Penwarren smiled. “That was long ago and far away, Calum, and I wasn’t in your league back then. Just a footpad.”

  “Why’d you leave, then?”

  Penwarren looked across the table to his trusted crime scene manager.

  “Personal matter. Only child. My mother died and I had to sell off the family manse, as it were. Death duties. Small estate down south of St Ives. One of her tenants bought it with my help. And then I guess maybe I decided it might be better to be a big fish in a small pond, instead of a plod in the Met.”

  “I don’t believe that. There was something else.”

  “Yes, there was. I finally found home.” He turned to the windows. “I found the place where I belonged.”

  And suddenly Calum had a peek behind Penwarren’s characteristic reserve, and an understanding of his passion for justice. The boss wasn’t a cop on a career trajectory. It was known he’d rejected promotions on several occasions. Penwarren was protecting his “home.” It was as simple, and as complicated, as that.

  Calum rose. “I’m on it, boss.”

  “This is risky, Calum. Be discreet.”

  Twenty-Seven

  “JESUS, ADAM! LET’S not die today, okay?!”

  Novak smiled and eased off the gas pedal, but only slightly. No pool cars were available at Bodmin and he and Morgan were in his silver Volkswagen GTI on the way to interview Bishop. They’d raced up the A30 from Bodmin to Temple and now were twisting through the moorland countryside on roads—lanes, really—barely able to take two cars. Novak had not slowed much and Morgan had to admit that the car barely even leaned as Adam threw it through one nearly blind field end turn after another. She knew he was showing off his extraordinary driving skills and she was relaxing into it, though she’d not let on. It was like he and the GTI were one entity moving almost effortlessly through the torturous lanes.

  “I’ve lived here for a couple of years now. How do you know these lanes so well?”

  Adam rammed the gearshift into second and they drifted safely through the apex of another ninety-degree curve, accelerating out the other side.

  “I come here to practice. I suppose it’s a hobby. My dad taught me. He was a perfectionist, at both car repair at our shop down in St. Ives, and at driving. It’s a high art, driving is, he’d say, and if you don’t understand that, you should stay off the road.”

  “You understand it.”

  “He was a tough dad but a good teacher.”

  “He’s gone?”

  “And the shop gone as well. But he left me this legacy.”

  “You mean skill?”

  “Yes. Perhaps.”

  “Might you train me, too?”

  Adam grinned and geared down as they entered the tiny hamlet of Watergate. The tax records said Cornelius Bishop lived here with his wife, Mavis. No wonder, Adam thought, he preferred just to be known only as “Bishop”. The taunts at school must have been brutal back then. Corny? Nellie? Mavis was Adam’s distant relative.

  He pulled up at a small granite cottage beyond the northern edge of the settlement. The dark slate sign by the gate said “Edenvale” in white paint. It was roughly halfway between the hamlet and Poldue and had a view over a broad lake. Beyond it, the land rose steeply toward the whale-backed summit of Brown Willy.

  “Nice view,” Morgan said as she unclipped her seatbelt.

  “Today, yes. But that lake’s actually a former China clay mining pit, now filled by the stream that runs past Poldue. China clay—its scientific name is kaolin—is essentially cooked granite.”

  “Cooked?”

  “Volcanism, eons ago. The resulting kaolin made the Poldue estate rich. It was never moorland grazing that built that manor house. It was China clay.”

  Morgan looked at him. “And you know all this because?”

  “Because I am curious. I like to dig into the history of places. This pit fed the porcelain potteries in Staffordshire around Stoke-on-Trent for decades.”

  Adam stepped out of the car, but their arrival already had been noted. A short, partridge-plump woman with a swirl of white curls tinted light blue stood at the open front door of the cottage, a floral apron tied around her housedress, slippers on her feet. He made straight for the cottage. Morgan extracted herself from the passenger seat, skipped kissing the ground that she’d made it here alive, and followed the young constable.

  “Hello, Mavis,” Morgan heard him say at the door.

  The old woman peered at him, head cocked to one side. “Ah knaw ye, but caant caall ye ‘ome,” she said.

  Morgan looked at her young detective constable in confusion.

  He opened his warrant card and showed it to her. “It’s Adam, Mavis. Adam Novak. Your late sister’s nephew. How are you this fine afternoon?”

  The woman’s eyes widened in surprise. Morgan noticed they were almost lavender.

  “Lor a massy, that were backlong! Ow ee do-un, me ‘ansome?”

  “I’m fine, Mavis. All grown up now, and a detective.” He introduced Morgan and the lavender eyes squinted, taking her in.

  “We were wondering if we might speak with your husband, ma’am,” Morgan said, trying to take charge of the nearly incomprehensible conversation.

  “’E were layin’ a Kersey wave fer Poldue this day.”

  Adam leaned toward Morgan’s ear. “Building a stone hedge at the Cuthbertson’s place, in a herringbone pattern. It’s an art.”

  “Is he there still, then?” Morgan said.

  Mavis laughed. It was a good laugh. Warm. Affectio
nate.

  “Naw, reckon e’s off ta Chu’town now.”

  “Church?” Morgan asked.

  Adam shook his head. “No, The Old Inn. Churchtown, St. Breward.”

  Mavis nodded. “Tha war ‘ard lowster, tha hedge, an’ he be getting’ on in years, though he still be a strong one. Reckon ee’d be thirsty. Ah don begritch ‘im tha…”

  THE OLD INN was up a long ridge from the village itself and in the shadow of the squat granite Church of St. Breward. The inn had been established in the eleventh century to serve the masons building the Norman church on what had been the site of a Celtic holy place. Novak pulled his car into the car park on the west side of the inn and he and Morgan climbed out.

  The Old Inn is the highest pub in Cornwall. Morgan was transfixed by the view. The whitewashed stone inn sat across the road from the edge of a ridge, almost a cliff, dropping off and looking south over the forested valley of the River Camel, its colors starting to yellow and brown, and then west to the distant coast. The afternoon had become increasingly frosty, and just now the setting sun above the Atlantic burnished everything, including the two of them, with gold.

  “Jesus,” Morgan said. She was seldom at a loss, but this was one of those moments.

  “You’ve not been here before?” Adam asked.

  “Oh you know us English. We don’t venture far unless we must. My local’s the Blisland Inn, close to home.”

  “And it’s ours, too,” he said referring to Terry Bates, “now that we’re renting your house on the moor. This inn has a longer and richer history than the Blisland. The old granite quarries along the moor’s edges hereabouts built Tower Bridge in London and so many other famous structures. Eddystone Lighthouse beyond Plymouth? Built from this granite. And this inn served all those masons. When I think about it, I have trouble imagining the sheer human effort to blast out those granite cliffs and shape the stone into building blocks.”