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

by Will North

  A pause and then a head shake. No eye contact. Old Cornwall natives are not big talkers.

  Bishop pushed the pastry plate away. Novak came across the room and rested a hand on the old man’s shoulder.

  “A man was murdered up there on the moor. We’re just trying to gather information,” he said. “Can you help, uncle?”

  “Sarved tha’ family fer years, before tha’ Jan were even born.”

  “We understand, Mr. Bishop,” Morgan said softly. “And I assure you nothing you share with us will ever become public. You are safe.”

  Bishop turned and looked at Novak. “B’aint my binness, ya ken?”

  “We understand,” Novak said.

  Bishop stood, pausing to scoop up the remaining bit of pastry. “Need to be ‘ome. Mavis’ll be worryin’.”

  Morgan stood and clearly wanted more. But Novak raised a cautioning hand, took Bishop’s elbow, and led him through the incident room door.

  “Ta fer tha’ Eccles,” Bishop called back as he walked into the corridor.

  BY THE TIME Novak had returned from taking Bishop home, Morgan had called in Penwarren, West, and Bates for a MCIT meeting. It was just past noon.

  Penwarren, at home in Padstow when summoned, laughed at her call. “Isn’t that my job?”

  “Happy to turn it over, boss, but we may have a bit of a lead.”

  “On my way.”

  When Terry arrived, they’d already gathered around the incident room table. “I was doing the wash; you ruined my day!” she groused. But she was grinning. Morgan wondered whether Terry and Adam needed to wash their sheets a lot but pushed the thought away with a private smile. Wasn’t she rediscovering bedtime intimacy herself, if only the once?

  Penwarren was, as usual, standing at his window, his back to them. Morgan wondered if he felt caged at headquarters and longed to be out on a case. He turned and joined them.

  “This one’s yours, Morgan,” he said. “Fill us in.”

  She looked at Adam and nodded to him. She wanted it to be his show.

  “Well, sir, Morgan and I interviewed Bishop yesterday afternoon late at the Old Inn. He was clearly nervous. Not surprising given he’s never had much contact with police.”

  “He’s a canny devil, old Bishop is, when it comes to the Cuthbertsons,” Morgan interrupted. “Careful. Then again, they’ve been his employers for ages and it’s not like he could hire on somewhere else at his age. But he did toss us some crumbs.” Again, she nodded to Novak.

  “We had him in again this morning. He reckons she has an admirer who visits her on occasion. All very secret, however.”

  “Which would explain why she will not reveal who saw her that night,” Penwarren said.

  He rose and walked again to the window. He said nothing for a few moments. Then, he turned.

  “Let’s remember a few things. First, having an admirer is not a crime. Second, having that admirer visit in an emergency is not a crime—and we still have no idea who it might have been. Third, and more importantly, there is, at present absolutely nothing to connect either of them to our victim.

  “Therefore, new assignments. Adam? Check again with Bishop when you can. But gently, gently, yeah?” Novak nodded. “Calum? Keep worrying over that scene. You’ll figure it out, I know you will. Morgan? I need to consult with you alone when we’re done. And Terry you may return to your washing. But be here—all of you—tomorrow morning at 9:00.”

  Terry, a trifle miffed, said, “And what will you be doing, boss?” She immediately regretted it.

  But Penwarren just smiled. “I need to talk to someone.”

  Thirty

  MORGAN FOLLOWED PENWARREN down the hall to his office overlooking the guest car park and the valley below. The clusters of late golden rudbeckia flowers along the walk were fading and nodding, as if the black central cone of each blossom were too heavy to support on withering stems. Amongst them, feathery ornamental grasses were turning bronze. Although frost often hit them in the morning, sun now poured through his tall windows. It was a perfect autumn day.

  “Take a seat,” he said, and they both sat in the blue upholstered armchairs at his small birch conference table. “Would you like a coffee?”

  Morgan looked at him askance. He wasn’t usually this solicitous and she decided she was having none of it. “What is it, boss?”

  Penwarren hesitated, looked across the room at his windows, and spoke to them, avoiding her eyes. “I have put Calum in a tenuous position.”

  “News to me.”

  “Yes, and let’s keep it amongst us. I’ve asked him to use his Met terrorism connections to investigate the Liverpool force. I am, he is, and we are at risk, professionally, because of my decision. You may decline to participate at any stage. I just wanted you to know that if he seems distracted that’s the likely reason. It is clear to me that, thanks to his heart repair and your care, you two are much closer—is that the term?—than you were before.”

  “You made that happen.”

  “Yes, and I don’t regret it. We are all getting on and I don’t think we should be alone.”

  Morgan smiled.

  “You two were the only ones oblivious,” he added.

  He was right. She’d known it for years but couldn’t give in, couldn’t take the risk. One failed marriage, even one long ago, was one too many. It took Calum nearly dying to get through to her.

  “And what about you, boss? You’re getting on, too.”

  He looked away. “I know, I know. I think about that sometimes, too. But let’s face it, this job and its hours don’t make anyone a particularly good prospect. I’m only just saying, keep an eye on Calum. If he seems distracted, you’ll now know why.”

  “CAN YOU TALK?” Penwarren had been speeding the red Healey southwest along the twisting A389, heading first to the Tesco’s Superstore at Wadebridge for groceries and then home to his flat overlooking Padstow’s harbor. But he’d pulled into the breakdown lane to place the call. He didn’t trust the hands-free system Novak had wanted to install.

  “Artie? Um…yes. He’s napping. What’s happened?” Beverly said.

  “It’s all right, Bev. Everything’s fine. How are you?”

  He heard her sigh.

  “It’s like there are sticks of dynamite everywhere and you never know when one will explode. I just go day to day and hope for peace.”

  “Are you still safe?”

  “Yes, most of the time. But how are you, dear man? How is your investigation going?” He heard her dancing away and let it pass.

  “It’s moving, but slowly and I’m not sure in what direction. But I want to ask you a question: does Jan have a man in her life? Boyfriend? Lover?”

  His ex-sister-in-law laughed. “Jan’s loves seem to be horses and that damn moor. She’s never shown interest in anything or anyone else. If there’s someone else, it’s news to me, some secret she’s keeping. Lord knows why…well, okay. I know why.”

  “Does she never have male visitors?”

  “Certainly none that I am aware of. She’s always been a solitary soul. I think she has a few girlfriends from school, maybe boys, too, but none that have ever visited here. Maybe she meets them at pubs from time to time, but I honestly don’t know. Could be she fears what her father might blurt out to a visitor. She’s a grown woman now, who just happens to live at home. I don’t probe…and if I did, she’d just bite my head off. We used to be close. Not anymore. My own daughter. Her father has succeeded in alienating her from both of us. And I understand why she keeps her distance and holds her counsel.”

  “I’m sorry, Bev. I don’t know anything about raising children.”

  “You’re a solitary soul, too, Artie. Even when you were married to my sister, you maintained a distance. She’s a dimwit, agreed, but I don’t think your policeman’s hours were the only thing that made her demand a divorce and take up with that odious estate agent in Penzance. I hope you don’t hate me for saying it, but I don’t think it is easy for you to
open your heart. You’ve been alone since the divorce, but I don’t think it’s been from mourning. I think solitude is safer for you.”

  Penwarren sat in the Healey at the layby, his left hand on the leather-topped gearshift, and said nothing for a long moment.

  “What if I told you I was tired of that?” he said, finally.

  “I would celebrate it! You are a wonderful and caring man. You should have someone who cares back.”

  “Not many women are interested in a detective nearing retirement, Bev. I’m not young anymore.”

  “Maybe you should look closer to home.”

  “What, in Padstow?”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  Penwarren tried to take this in. He looked across the field beyond the stone hedge where he’d pulled over. Already, the lowering afternoon sun was gilding the autumn grass.

  “Artie, come by and visit when you can. I miss you. And right now I depend upon you. It’s a safe feeling. He’s becoming more unpredictable.”

  “What does his doctor say?”

  “Weeks, at the most.”

  “I’m sorry, Bev.”

  “I’m not.”

  Day Fourteen

  Thirty-One

  PENWARREN WAITED IN his office until a little after 9:00 on Sunday morning. He could hear the voices of his team down along the corridor, but he’d been watching a dark squall line race east off the Atlantic. Fat, wind-driven rain drops splat upon his office window like gunshot. It would be a filthy day. He’d have preferred to watch the storm approach from the comfort of his flat, curled up with a book in his big reading chair before the fire. He turned away from the view.

  Good lord, I’m becoming wooly headed, he mused as he walked to the busy incident room.

  “Good morning, people!” he said with more cheer than he felt. He hadn’t given Morgan a real assignment the day before and she was scowling. He looked at Terry and winked. “Laundry all sorted, Detective?”

  To his surprise, she smiled: “Done and dusted, boss, though laundress wasn’t my strongest course at police school.”

  Adam sat at a desk tapping away at his computer keyboard.

  Penwarren folded his lanky frame into a chair at the conference table.

  “Shall we begin?” It wasn’t an invitation and West and Novak joined him.

  “Right then,” the DCI said, “what have we learned since yesterday?”

  Five sets of eyes scanned their compatriots. Finally, Adam Novak raised a hand.

  “Sir,” he said.

  Penwarren closed his eyes and shook his head.

  “You’ll never learn, will you, Adam?”

  Novak grinned and looked younger than Penwarren had noticed before…although maybe it was Penwarren himself, noticing age.

  “Probably not, sir.”

  “Well, what have you got, young man?”

  “You posted a report after you and Morgan interviewed the Cuthbertson girl and in it she confessed she was seeing someone. A local. On a hunch, I started looking at landowners for all the estates around the moor. The Landowners’ Association has a list.”

  Penwarren sighed. “And?”

  Novak grinned so wide Penwarren thought the young man’s face would crack. Terry was smiling too. Penwarren realized they were in this on together and shook his head.

  “The Davidstow Estate is owned by our favorite shell company: Celtic Property Development, Ltd.”

  Morgan was speechless. Penwarren rose.

  “Bloody hell! A shell company?”

  Adam nodded. “Which means, insofar as it matters to Ireland for tax purposes, it doesn’t exist as an entity. Ireland welcomes shell companies. The Republic’s a tax haven. Celtic Property Development is invisible. It’s probably just a mailbox somewhere. Might as well be in the Bahamas for all the good it’s gonna do us.”

  “Hang on a moment,” Calum interrupted. “The Range Rover you traced days ago, Adam, was leased by…”

  “Yes, Celtic Property Development.”

  Calum got up, walked to the map on the corkboard.

  “So bloody what?!” he fumed in frustration. “We have a moorland estate that’s owned by an Irish shell company. God only knows how many other estates across this sceptered isle are owned by offshore companies. And we have a silver Range Rover which, may I point out, might or might not have anything to do with Jan Cuthbertson’s visitor that night. Essentially, we have nothing, and certainly nothing that has anything to do with the dead man in the fridge in the mortuary at the Royal Hospital in Truro! Is any of this evidence? Is it even useful? Or are we just chasing shadows?!”

  No one said a word. Penwarren stood and walked to a white board that had been set up next to the cork board on which Calum had pinned the map. He picked up a marking pen and turned to the group. “Thank you for digging, Adam. It sheds some light on our very minor mystery, but what Calum says is absolutely right.” He bowed to West. “We have nothing new that’s useful to solve our murder. But let’s chart what we do have.”

  Penwarren was a visual thinker. He was fond of drawing maps, charts, and diagrams, if only because it kept the bits and pieces of a case in sight always. One of his greatest fears was missing something minor that, in the end, turned out to be critical.

  At the top of the board he wrote “Lugg” and circled it. He drew a short diagonal line down to the left and wrote “Bodmin.” Immediately below that he drew dotted lines to a cluster of words: “Jan,” “Visitor,” “Range Rover,” “Bishop,” hesitated, then added “Davidstow.”

  He turned to them. “None of this, as Calum, and before him Morgan, have pointed out, in her customarily gracious manner, is of any use when it comes to this man,” he said, tapping his index finger against Lugg’s name.

  Next, he drew another short diagonal line, this time down to the right from “Lugg,” wrote “Liverpool,” and then a dotted line between “Liverpool” and “Bodmin” on the left. He turned to them again.

  “All my instincts tell me this dotted line should be solid. There’s a connection. We just haven’t found it yet. But we will, and we’ll ignore the nagging from Superintendent Crawley which, by the way, is daily. We’re going to connect the dots because”—he turned back to the white board and slammed his palm into the name at the top—“this man deserves everything we can do for him, whatever his alleged past misdeeds.” He paused and then smiled. “We’re done for now. Keep digging. You’re a fine team.”

  As they broke up, Terry said, “Boss, any chance of a meeting in your office?”

  “Of course, Terry. When?”

  “Um, now?”

  Penwarren chuckled. “Sure, Detective.”

  “COFFEE, TERRY?” PENWARREN gestured to a chair in his office.

  “If I have any more caffeine this morning, I’ll be crawling out along the ceiling.”

  Penwarren laughed. “Right then, what’s my brilliant young detective sergeant got on her mind? If it’s a personnel problem, they’re one flight down.”

  Now Terry grinned and sat. “No, nothing like that. It’s just that I’ve not been able to let go of the Irish connection Liverpool teased us with, so I have been studying the IRA, and especially its latest mutations.”

  Penwarren smiled. This was exactly the kind of self-motivation he wanted in his team, in both veterans like Davies and West, but also recruits like Bates and Novak. It had been five years since the force instituted the idea that a Major Crime Investigative Team should be formed for each new case. Some of his fellow inspectors thought it nothing but a bureaucratic shuffle. Penwarren, however, had seized the opening and had begun forming his team. What he wanted was to bring up the next generation of smart investigators with an inbred sense of deductive reasoning. And after a couple of years and two difficult murder investigations, Morgan Davies was his first graduate. What he wanted now, before he ever accepted retirement, was more Morgans. Terry Bates was one of them. That, he already knew. Maybe Adam, too.

  “Good. I’m pleased,”
he said. “What have you discovered?”

  Terry flipped open her black leather pocket notebook, glanced at it, and looked up.

  “You’ll recall that Liverpool mentioned the IRA as possibly being involved in benefiting from Lugg’s thrown matches. When he lost, they won. At least that’s what they told us. They claimed they consulted the Irish Garda but, as you know from my visit to Cork, the Garda say they never heard from Liverpool.”

  Penwarren nodded.

  “I thought the 1998 peace accords had brought an end to IRA violence, and for the most part, it did. But it turns out that a minority never accepted the accords. They formed a hard-line splinter group and called themselves the ‘Real IRA.’ There have been a handful of bombings and apparent assassinations in Northern Ireland since then that are believed to be their work, but no arrests or convictions.”

  She looked again at her notes. “Then, in 2012, another group, called ‘Republican Action Against Drugs,’ merged with Real IRA and the organization, such as it is, started calling itself the ‘New IRA’.”

  “Well, fighting drugs sounds a good thing…”

  Terry laughed. “Not exactly, boss. That was not the objective, apparently. The objective was to threaten or eliminate independent drug dealers in both Irelands.”

  “Independent of what?”

  “Independent of the New IRA. It turns out they are one of the better funded terrorist groups in the world. In the top five. They’re supported by individual donations and income from illegal fuel operations, contraband cigarettes from Eastern Europe, and…”

  “Let me guess. Drugs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lugg was expelled from the British Association for Mixed Martial Arts for repeatedly failing their drugs tests. Cocaine as I recall.”

  “Yes.”

  “But he couldn’t have been more than a bit player, as an IRA income stream.”

  “Unless he was part of a larger system, a distribution system here in the UK.”

  “Do we have any evidence of that?”

  “No. At least not yet.”