by Will North
Harris, a senior DS with a neatly trimmed salt and pepper beard, turned off his computer and rose. Bukhari, a bronze-skinned young female DC of Iranian descent, born and raised in Liverpool, did the same.
“Suicide or foul play?” Harris asked.
“No fucking idea, Harris,” Waggoner snapped. “Talk to the doc.”
Back in his glassed-in office, Waggoner stared out at the Mersey. The tide was retreating, the fresh, blue water of the Irish Sea pushed seaward by the river’s muddy outflow. If he, too, was “rumbled,” to use Doherty’s term, he’d be disgraced and dismissed. What he saw retreating beyond his windows were his pension, his life, his mistress and, perhaps his marriage. He’d put in thirty-one years. He could have retired earlier, but he’d stayed on for what he pleased himself to call his “Irish stipend.” We went back to his desk and rummaged through the long, low array of white filing cabinets behind it, searching for the pension manual he’d never thought about before, his thoughts swirling angrily. Doherty might be exposed. He was the go-between, after all, communicating with the New IRA in Cork through what he’d claimed were unbreakable coded messages. Had they been broken? Was he named? Waggoner had no idea. He picked the mobile up from his desk and speed dialed Doherty’s private number.
“What?” Doherty answered.
“Where the fuck are you?!”
“Lounging on my bed at the Manchester Airport Hilton, waiting for room service and emptying the mini bar. Might have to get it restocked. First Aer Lingus flight to Dublin in the morning. The prodigal returns, eh?”
“Leaving destruction behind. What the hell’s happened?”
PENWARREN WATCHED THE copter lift Beverly skyward. There was too much to do at the scene for him to follow. He felt impotent. His mobile buzzed. It was Novak.
“Adam.”
I am so sorry, boss; I should have looked into the records in Ireland when we knew who O’Dare was. He’s got an Irish pilot’s license, sir.”
“Bloody hell!” It was the closest he ever came to cursing out loud. His shoulders sagged. Of course, the aerodrome, only minutes to the north of the Davidstow estate.
“Good work, Adam, but we might be too late. He’s gone. Come here and help Morgan. We need you.”
“Terry!” he shouted. “Let Calum’s people in and have a uniform guard his cordon. You’re with me.” He sprinted to the Healey. She ran across the forecourt and jumped into the passenger seat. They sped past the Crowdy Reservoir and reached the main road. The ragged remains of the RAF site were straight ahead. The Healey’s stiff frame bucked as he entered the potholed entrance. A young man outside a derelict concrete outbuilding was mending the rainbow-striped fabric of what looked like a hang glider wing.
“O’Dare’s hanger!” he called. The fellow pointed to the end of a string of arched steel huts. “Last on the left. But you’ve missed him. Took off about thirty minutes ago.”
Penwarren found the Rover alongside the hut. Terry rounded the corner. “Hanger doors are locked, boss.”
“Of course they are. We’ll get Calum’s team here as soon as they are done at Davidstow.” Vibrating with frustration, he hammered the wooden doors with his fist. “Damn! Nothing we can do until Calum breaks in. We’ll go back and find out what he and Morgan have unearthed at the house. Meanwhile, text your friend Dunleavy in the Garda and tell him we have a fugitive on the run, probably headed his way. Irish national, Irish pilot’s license. Where the hell else would he go?”
Terry slid into the Healey and Penwarren whipped it in a tight circle, zigzagged around the potholes, and spun out onto the main road. Terry had never seen him so obviously angry. On the way back, he kept turning one question over and over, Why the hell had O’Dare shot the two Cuthbertson women and why had they been there in the first place?
Morgan was just coming out of the house when Penwarren drove back into the forecourt. Novak was with her. They both sat on one of the manor’s granite steps. Mercifully, a uniform had made and brought tea, mugs, and milk from the kitchen. Morgan poured one for the boss, another for Terry.
“I’m being Mum. You look like you could use a boost,” she said to him, her eyes full of caring.
Penwarren nodded thanks. “What have you got?”
Morgan shook her head. “Damn all. The house is nearly empty, except for the bedroom. Old wardrobe with newer men’s clothes. Quality duds. Vintage carved oak four-poster that must be a hundred years old. The usual in the adjoining bathroom: tooth comb, paste, soap, towels. Big claw-foot porcelain tub. Bottle of Boots shampoo on the floor by the tub. No shower. Rafe and some of Calum’s team are in there now dusting for prints and taking photos.”
“Calum!” he called across the yard. Covered in the regulation white Tyvek SOCO coverall, a blue stretch cap on his head, West was on his knees, his nose almost in the gravel beside the pool of blood left from Beverly’s body. The blood had oxidized to the point now that it was almost black.
Calum waved a hand above his head, begging time. He’d spied something almost buried that wasn’t gravel. He pulled a pair of plastic tweezers from the kit by his side, carefully dug it out as if it were a precious jewel, placed it in a small plastic bag, stood, held it up, and smiled at them as he rose and crossed the forecourt. He placed the bag next to Penwarren.
“I’m no ballistics expert, but I’d say this is a .22 caliber bullet. Rimfire. And that rifle we bagged in evidence? Almost sure it’s a .22 target gun.”
Penwarren rested his head in his palm. “Jesus. Cuthbertson shot his own family?”
“Steady on, there, boss,” Morgan cautioned. “Cuthbertson was on the ground, barely conscious, and with a bloody great lump on his skull when we arrived. It could have been either of them.”
“Yes. Yes, you’re right.”
She put a hand on his shoulder. He looked knackered. But she knew it was anxiety about his ex-sister-in-law.
He looked at her and then his SOCO chief. “Calum, take a uniform and one of your team who’s not working in the house with Rafe and go to the aerodrome. O’Dare’s Range Rover is parked next to one of the old hangers there. Get it taken to impound and have the forensics people give it a thorough going over. The hanger is locked, of course. Break the lock and take a close look inside before the light fades.” He looked east. There would not be daylight for long. “Then relock it. Do you have locks?”
Calum chuckled. “Locks, chains, the whole dominatrix kit, boss.”
Penwarren managed a smile. “Be off then. And Adam, find out who the head of the local flying club is and what kind of plane O’Dare has. We need to know its range.” He thought for a moment. “We’ll need uniforms here overnight.”
“Already arranged,” Morgan said. “They claim they’re stretched, but I got them.”
Just then, Terry felt her mobile vibrating in her padded winter jacket. She couldn’t find the right pocket and when she did the vibrating had stopped. There was a text from Roger Dunleavy in Cork. We have names, thanks to your intelligence people. Will keep you apprised.
“Yes!” she cried.
Penwarren looked at her.
“The Garda,” she said. “They’re rolling.”
Penwarren nodded, then looked at his watch. He wanted desperately to call the Royal Hospital, but he knew it was too soon. If she were still alive, she’d be in surgery. If she wasn’t…? He looked around. “Nothing more we can do here this afternoon. I’ll wait to hear from Calum. Meanwhile, let’s take you back to Bodmin, Morgan.”
“You need to go home and rest, boss,” Morgan said as they rose.
“Yes. Soon. But not yet. I need to report to Crawley. I should have done it when I learned of the shooting. ‘Suspect flew away in heretofore unknown private plane.’ He’ll be livid.”
“It’s his natural condition, that and incompetence,” Morgan said as she ducked into the red Healey. The aid cars were gone. Only their own vehicles and two of the uniform branch’s Battenberg blue and yellow painted SUV’s remained. Penwar
ren rested his hands on the polished wood steering wheel for several moments, looking back at the empty house, before finally starting the engine. He slipped the car into first gear, gunned the big engine, and scattered gravel as he sped across the forecourt.
“Slower this time, boss?” she said.
Forty
CALUM BENT AT the waist and looked at the hanger door lock. Combination, not key. Heavy duty. “Bolt cutter, Stuart,” he said to the man next to him.
In short order, Stuart, one of his best crime scene men, returned and cut through the thick shackle. Calum pulled open the big wooden doors. He waited for an alarm, but none came. He slipped paper booties over his shoes, shrugged on another paper jumpsuit, and stepped inside. He found a switch on the right wall. A bare light bulb hanging from the roof at the rear struggled to illuminate the interior, but largely failed, only adding depth to the shadows inside. “Torch,” he said to his colleague. Stuart brought two large LED torches. Just inside the door, what looked like a shallow baking pan lay in the center of the floor. He knelt. A few drops of what he reckoned was engine oil from the plane. He scanned the rest of the cavernous space. There were unopened boxes marked as airplane engine oil stacked neatly along the upward-curving corrugated left wall, and a short stack of other cardboard boxes on the opposite side. He opened one of them. It was packed with smallish, clear plastic bags.
Straight ahead, along the back wall and beneath the solitary bulb, was a long, new-looking stainless-steel table, the kind you might find in a restaurant kitchen. He approached and swiped the beam of his torch across it. Here and there he saw thin patches of dust. He bent at the waist, his white Tyvek body suit rustling, and shone the torch beam low across the surface. Yes. Dust. But white. He pulled off the blue Nitrile glove on his left hand, dipped a finger in a patch, and put it on the tip of his tongue. Bitter.
“Gotcha, you bastard!” Then his mobile buzzed and he had to pull down his protective suit to reach it. It was a text from Penwarren: Incident room MCIT meeting tomorrow, 9:00 am. Crawley will attend.
“Oh, joy,” he mumbled.
“Sir?” Stuart asked.
“Nothing. Lock up and tell Rafe I want you people to scour this place early tomorrow.”
IT WAS DARK and well past rush hour, as Penwarren sped south on the A30 between the two market towns, Bodmin and Truro. It was only a thirty-minute drive but a cold and steady rain had moved across the peninsula from the Atlantic, cold enough that little starbursts of sleet splatted against the Healey’s windscreen. The wipers beat furiously and his headlamps illuminated a relentless curtain of wind-blown rain ahead of the car. He’d had to slow.
He peeled left off the A30 to the A390 at the Truro exit. The hospital was just west of the old granite market town, in a neighborhood called Treliske. He knew it well from all the autopsies he’d observed with Dr. Jennifer Duncan, the forensic pathologist who might just as well have been part of his MCIT team. He parked on the three-story complex’s “emergency vehicles only” forecourt, opposite the helipad, but out of the way of ambulances, slapped a dog-eared Police sign on the dash, and walked through the electronic doors into emergency, where he was immediately stopped by a guard in a starched white shirt, complete with badge and epaulets. He could have been a cop, but was just security.
“Wrong door, and no visiting at this hour.” His voice was warm but firm. He rose from his desk as if to bar entry.
Penwarren showed his warrant card.
“Um…sir…right. How may I help?”
“Beverly Cuthbertson. Where is she?” He was desperate for her to be registered there and not in the mortuary.
The guard sat, punched his computer keyboard, and squinted. “Yes, sir,” he said looking up. “Critical Care Unit. Second floor. Elevator just down the hall. Left when you exit.”
The lights in the ward had been dimmed for the night. At the nurses’ station a young woman with short, raven hair looked up from behind a counter bathed in a pool of bright light. There was a gold stud in her left nostril.
“How did you get in here?” she demanded. She looked at the clock on the wall. “At this hour?”
Again, he held up his warrant card. “Police. DCI Penwarren. Beverly Cuthbertson. Shooting victim,” he said.
She stood, leaned across the counter, and scrutinized the card and badge. It was clear she’d never seen one before. “Oh. I see. I’ll just page the charge nurse then.”
It took some minutes before the senior nurse, an older woman in blue scrubs, hair bonnet, and thick-soled white trainers, bustled down the corridor, halted, and glared at him.
“Police?” she said, cocking her head in the general direction of the nurse behind the counter who’d paged her. “The Cuthbertson woman? Most irregular.”
He reckoned her to be nearly fifty. And formidable. He smiled and, yet again, presented his card.
“DCI Penwarren. Yes, police. But also a relative. Brother-in-law.” He smiled again.
Her face softened and she nodded, extending a blue Nitrile-gloved hand. “I’m Clare Treleffen. You’ll want to know how she is. Come with me.”
Down the corridor, she stopped at a window that looked into a private room. The room had been dimmed, but blue and yellow lights flashed from a phalanx of monitors surrounding Beverly’s bed. A thin, branched tube was inserted in her nostrils. Oxygen. Clear vinyl bags of what he assumed were drugs, fed into her arm. Another bag hung off the bedside railing draining her bladder. Even in the faint light he could see the urine was stained with blood.
“I can’t let you in. She’s still too critical. Four-hour surgery, but I understand they knit her up successfully, inside and out. The trauma surgeon—our best, mind you—reported that the injuries were mostly to the small intestine, below her stomach and spleen, thank goodness. The bullet clipped the coccyx before exiting. If she survives, that will take some rehabilitation.”
“What do you mean, ‘If she survives’?”
“She lost so much blood. There is a major artery at about waist level. It splits to feed the lower extremities. But it has branches, and the bullet sliced through several of them before exiting. The surgical team reconnected them. She’s had several transfusions.” The nurse looked at her watch. “And it’s time for another. Are we done here, Detective? I do understand your concern is more than just professional, but I need to get back in there.”
He gave her his card. “Please,” he said: “Anything.”
“Of course.”
“There are other wounded members of her family here.”
She blinked once and shook her head in surprise. “I didn’t know. Jesus. But not on this ward. Check with the nurse at the desk. She looks a bit Goth but she’s first rate. She’ll tell you where they are. I—we—will all do our best for this lady.”
TRURO’S ROYAL CORNWALL Hospital, a teaching hospital, was composed of three roughly square, concrete block, three-story buildings facing the entry drive, with multiple extensions to the rear. The Goth found Cuthbertson and his daughter on the same floor in the wing in the next building and gave him the room numbers. He badged his way in again and started with the old man. In the darkened corridor, he found a young uniformed constable on a chair outside Cuthbertson’s room and smiled. Morgan’s doing, he was sure. Security. The PC jumped up.
“DCI Penwarren! Late night for you?”
“Lots of them lately. At ease Constable, just a quick check.” He looked into the room through the window. Cuthbertson seemed asleep, his head swathed in white gauze bandages. “How’s the old boy doing?”
PC Baxter looked at his notebook. “Doc says concussion. But it must be a bad one, because when he’s awake, which isn’t often, he gets out of bed and wanders around mumbling nonsense. It’s like he wants to get out but hasn’t yet figured out how. Guess the knock he got left him a bit disoriented. Reckon that’s why DI Davies had me posted here.” He lifted the mobile in his left hand. “At least I can read a book on my iPhone.”
“It’s pr
obably not just the concussion. The man’s mind is gone. Rapid onset dementia. Shot his wife and daughter both this afternoon.”
“I was briefed. Daughter’s on this ward, too.”
“How is she?”
“Dunno. Best check in with someone at the nurse’s station…sir.”
“I’ll do that next. Thank you, Constable…” he hesitated.
“Baxter, sir. Charlie.”
“Well, carry on Charlie. And please,” he said pointing to the chair, “have a seat.”
Down the dim hallway he stopped at the station. An older nurse, with silver hair held in a bonnet, was studying a computer monitor. He held out his badge again.
“Jan Cuthbertson,” he said. “I’m also a relative.”
She rose and extended a gloved hand. “Elaine Smithfield. This way.”
They stopped just inside the door. Like her father, Jan was asleep. He reckoned they both had been sedated. She lay on her back. Her chest and left shoulder were heavily bandaged, her arm immobilized. There were fewer monitors than in Beverly’s ICU room and she was breathing on her own.
“Prognosis?”
“Good. Not even guarded. A and E surgeon reports the bullet missed her lung, grazed a rib, and lodged in the left deltoid. The rib apparently slowed the bullet. She’s a very lucky girl. A little lower and it would have been much more serious. We’re watching for any sign of infection right now and have her on antibiotics, but I suspect she’ll be discharged day after tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow, if she feels up to it.”
Penwarren sighed. “Thank you, Ms. Smithfield.”
“Mrs., actually. And if you don’t mind me saying so, sir, you look shattered. Go home.”
He smiled. “I shall do as ordered, Mrs. Smithfield.”
Day Nineteen
Forty-One
