Operation Piracy

by Paul Somers

  “Well,” Mellor said, “she was very annoyed because I insisted on going to see Anstey this morning. She said all I cared about was the boat and that she was fed up—and then she went off and packed. The next thing I knew she’d called a taxi and left me flat.”

  “Surely not flat?” Mollie said, ogling him over the edge of her glass. “I think that’s very ungallant of you, Guy …”

  So it was “Guy”, now! I began to feel pretty annoyed, and for two pins I’d have left, but my drink had arrived and Mellor seemed quite glad to have me around. I said, “Cheers!” to Mellor, and asked him what he planned to do now, and he said he hadn’t decided anything definite but he thought he’d do a bit of exploring around Cornwall now he was here. Mollie broke in and said she’d discovered a wonderful cove that morning and why didn’t they go swimming some time, and he said that would be very nice, without any great enthusiasm. We talked a bit about Cornwall, and a bit about sailing, and then I suggested another drink. Mellor hesitated. “Thanks—but I think another time, if you don’t mind. It’s been quite a day—I’d like to get an early night.”

  Mollie said, “Oh, come on, Guy!—just one more.”

  “No, really—I’m pretty tired.”

  “Well, I’ll be seeing you, then—won’t I? Don’t forget you promised to show me the Bentley’s engine.”

  He gave a slightly embarrassed smile. “I won’t forget. Good night, Mollie. Good night, Curtis!” And he went out.

  There was a short, frosty silence. Then I said, “What’s the idea, Mollie?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

  “No? Why, you did everything except play footy with him! Maybe you did that, too! What are you up to?”

  “I’m not up to anything,” she said. “I just find him rather fascinating, that’s all.”

  “You’re not serious!”

  “Why shouldn’t I be?”

  “The chap’s a wolf.”

  “I don’t know why you should say that. He hasn’t been a wolf with me. Rather the reverse.”

  “My dear innocent, that’s just his technique … Anyway, he didn’t need to be, with you throwing yourself at his head all the time.”

  “If I was,” she said, “I don’t know that it has anything to do with you.”

  “The fellow’s a womaniser,” I said angrily, “anyone can see that. Damn it, he’s just got rid of one tart and now …”

  “Don’t say it!”

  “And you know I want to marry you,” I finished lamely.

  She made no reply to that. She just picked up her bag, and got up to leave. At the door she turned, and gave me a little wave, and a very nice smile. I lit a cigarette and sat on in the bar till closing time, wondering whether she was crazy or whether I was.

  Chapter Nine

  The story looked deader than ever when I went in to breakfast next morning. The newspapers, without exception, carried brief and scrappy pieces. The message that Lawson and I had sent had been cut to ribbons. What was worse, I couldn’t think of a single new approach to the case. I should have to keep in touch with Anstey, of course, but otherwise the day stretched emptily ahead as far as getting any real news was concerned. Perhaps, after all, Lawson had had a better break than he’d realised.

  I wondered what the other reporters would be doing—those who hadn’t already been recalled. I looked out of the dining-room window to see what Press cars were still in the square. Mollie’s Sunbeam Talbot was parked right opposite me—she, at least, was still around. I wondered if she had a hangover today—too much whisky seemed the most charitable explanation of her behaviour the night before. It wasn’t credible, I told myself, that she could really have fallen for Mellor’s toothpaste smile.

  A clock in the square struck nine. As the last note died, I saw Mollie come out of her hotel and walk briskly to her car. No sign of a hangover there! No sense of story anticlimax, either. She looked alert and purposeful. I watched her drive in to the filling station across the road. Judging by the time it took the man to operate the pump, she was taking a lot of petrol aboard. While she waited, she sat studying the map. Afterwards she had the man check her oil and tyres. It looked as though she planned to go farther than police headquarters. My professional antennae registered curiosity and mild anxiety. “Keep your eye on Mollie!” Lawson had said. Perhaps this was the moment.

  I went out to the Riley. She saw me, and acknowledged my waved greeting, but she showed no inclination to stop and talk. In fact, the speed with which she drove off directly the man bad finished suggested violent avoiding action. For a second or two I hesitated. Blair would probably be coming through on the phone soon after eleven, perhaps with fresh instructions. Still, he could leave a message—and it was my story now, to handle in my own way. If Mollie could take time off for a drive, there was no reason why I shouldn’t. I got into the Riley and set off after the Sunbeam Talbot.

  With its conspicuous coachwork, it was an easy car to keep in sight. Now that Mollie was away she seemed in no great hurry, and I dawdled along behind her, keeping well out of driving-mirror range. People were still going to work, and there was quite a lot of traffic on the road out of Falmouth, which helped. I closed up a little as we approached the lights at the Helston-Truro crossing. She slipped through, turning right towards Truro. I had to wait. By the time I’d caught up again, there was another car between her and me, travelling at the same pace, which was ideal. It was a most attractive road, and driving in the warm sunshine was very pleasant. I began to feel much more cheerful.

  I closed up again as we entered Truro, to avoid losing her in the busy town. There were three cars between us now, but I had no difficulty in keeping her in sight. Then, just outside the town, she forked left, heading north along a quieter road, and I had to drop back. We covered six miles uneventfully, and then joined A 30 the main London-Land’s End artery. The Sunbeam Talbot turned towards London, and suddenly Mollie opened up.

  For the next fifteen miles it was all I could do to keep pace with her. She was a first-class driver, with a newer car, and she had the edge on me in nipping past lorries. Much of the time we were both doing well over seventy, and it seemed only a matter of minutes before we were in Bodmin. There, I got badly stuck behind a huge lorry drawing a tree trunk, and lost her altogether. I had to gamble that she was still on A 30, but it turned out all right for I picked up her tail again as we began the long pull up on to Bodmin moor.

  She was still going very fast, and I began to feel a bit anxious about where I was going to end up. She hadn’t got her luggage with her, so there couldn’t be any question of her going back to town—but I should feel pretty foolish if it turned out she’d been given the day off and was visiting some West Country aunt! Yet reporters working alone on important out-of-town stories just didn’t get days off, I told myself. Whatever she was doing must be strictly business.

  We were well up on the moors, now, and the undulating road, stretching away across nearly twenty miles of wild and almost uninhabited country, was most inviting. The rugged slopes of the hills on either side were a blaze of heather, and the tors looked magnificent against the deep blue of the sky. The air smelt divine.

  I roared up a long slope to one of the road’s highest points, slowed a little as I topped the rise, and looked ahead to see where the Sunbeam Talbot had got to. Then I saw something else, and braked hard, scarcely able to believe my eyes. There was a car drawn up on the grass verge—an unmistakable car. It was Mellor’s old Bentley!

  For a second I felt a surge of wild, unreasoning jealousy. The car was empty, but Mellor must obviously be somewhere close at hand, and it couldn’t possibly be a coincidence. Mollie must have made a tryst with the blighter! I gazed ahead, but there was a dip in the road, and I couldn’t see him, or the Sunbeam Talbot either. I rammed the gear in and trod on the gas. Almost at once I was over the dip and there was a clear view of the road for the best part of a mile ahead and I still couldn’t see anyone. The Sunbeam Talbot seemed
to have vanished. I slowed again, baffled. It couldn’t have covered that distance in a few seconds—and there was nothing to block the view, not even a tree. Then as I trickled along, looking to right and left, I came to a place where a bit of the moor had been quarried out at the side of the road—and there was Mollie’s car, in the quarry. She was still sitting in it, by herself. I turned in and parked alongside.

  For a moment she just stared at me in astonishment. Then she said, in a haughty, spoiled-darling-of-the-Courier voice, “I suppose I’m following you again!”

  I was inwardly seething, but there didn’t seem much I could do. I couldn’t even think of anything to say now that I was here. If she was so smitten with the fellow that she’d made a secret assignation with him, the only dignified thing I could do was to take myself off and leave her to it. I re-started the engine and put the gear into reverse. “If I’d known you were meeting Mellor,” I said, “I wouldn’t have come. I’m afraid it never occurred to me.”

  “I’m not meeting him,” she said.

  “But …”

  “He just happens to interest me, that’s all,” She took a mirror from her bag, examined her face, and removed a speck of dust with the corner of her handkerchief. “In a purely professional way.”

  “Really?… I’d have said your interest went well beyond the call of duty.”

  “Well, you’d be wrong.”

  “Then why on earth didn’t you say so last night?”

  “For one thing,” she said, “you looked so beastly proprietorial I just couldn’t take it.”

  “Oh!” I switched off the engine. “Anyway, what’s interesting about him?”

  “Perhaps you’d like to see a carbon copy of all my stories from now on?” she said.

  It was an old gag between us, but I smiled just the same. “Still war to the knife, is it? Okay, I can take a hint.” I reached for the ignition key.

  “You’re like someone with St. Vitus’s Dance,” she said. “Why don’t you relax for a moment?”

  “You know I don’t want to muscle in …”

  “On the contrary, I know there’s nothing you’d like better—isn’t that what you came for? But as it happens there’s probably nothing to muscle in on—it’s just a hunch I had, and it’s too libellous to use, anyway. I simply wondered if Mellor was quite what he seemed to be, that’s all.”

  “Why?—don’t you believe his story?”

  “I don’t disbelieve it. I just wondered. He could be involved in this thing, you know.”

  “I don’t see how. He certainly couldn’t have been one of the raiders—not if he was in Belgium.”

  “No, but he might be in cahoots with them. He might have agreed to let them use his boat—in return for a ‘cut’. That would explain how they were able to go off in her so confidently.”

  “Oh—you thought of that too, did you?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Well,” I said, “if he was in with them he’d have known that he wouldn’t find his boat in the creek when he got here—in fact, he couldn’t ever have intended to go on his Scillies trip.”

  “Perhaps he didn’t. Perhaps it was just an excuse to bring the boat down here.”

  “All I can say is, he went to an awful lot of trouble …”

  “I wouldn’t say so. It doesn’t take long to dump a few provisions in a car and buy a chart or two.”

  “What about Gloria?” I said. “If he’d known all the time that he wasn’t going to make the trip, would he have dragged her into it?”

  “He might. After all, she makes the whole thing more convincing.”

  “She’s been quite a headache to him. He told me the publicity would probably ruin the rest of his love-life.”

  “I imagine he’ll get by.”

  “H’m! Well, my impression was that he was genuinely worried—about Gloria, about the boat, about everything … What started you off on this line, anyway?”

  “To be quite honest,” she said, after a slight pause, “his attitude to me. He doesn’t seem to want to have anything to do with me.”

  “That makes him a crook, for sure!” I said.

  She laughed. “I know it sounds silly—but just consider. He came down here for a holiday, a good time. He’s obviously not indifferent to women. His own girl friend’s abandoned him. He’s nothing much to do except check with the police occasionally to see if there’s any news of his boat. In fact, he’s really quite at a loose end. But when I throw myself at his head, as you put it, tell him I’m interested in his car, suggest we go swimming together, all that sort of thing—he shies right away. Why?”

  “He doesn’t find you attractive.”

  “If you believe that,” she said, “of course there’s nothing more to discuss.”

  I didn’t believe it.

  I said, “Perhaps you piled on the pressure too much. Men do like to pick their own girls, you know.”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t pile on the pressure to start with. I was just ordinarily nice to him, and he still shied. That rather surprised me, so I really did begin to hang around him then, just to see what it was all about.”

  “What do you think it is all about?”

  “I think he wants to be left on his own—and I’d like to know why. That’s why I’m keeping an eye on him.”

  “He wouldn’t have been on his own if his girl friend hadn’t left,” I said. “And he could hardly have known she was going to rush off in a tantrum.”

  “I’m not so sure. We don’t know who started that quarrel. Perhaps he did.”

  I grinned.” You remind me of Lawson.”

  “Thanks!”

  “In some ways … Honestly, though, there’s not much evidence against Mellor, is there?”

  “There’s none at all. I told you, it’s a hunch.”

  “M’m! What’s he doing here now, anyway?”

  “He’s walking on the moor. I caught sight of him just after I’d passed his car.”

  “You knew he was coming, of course?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well,” I said, “it hardly looks as though he’s got much to hide to-day if he told you his plans.”

  “He didn’t tell me. All he said was that he was going to walk somewhere.”

  “Then how did you know he would come here?”

  “He was looking at an inch-to-the-mile map when I joined him in the pub last night. He folded it up when he saw me and put it in his pocket, but the number was still visible—136, Ordnance Survey. That turned out to be the Bodmin sheet—and where else would he walk but the moor?”

  “Very clever,” I said. “But I certainly don’t see anything sinister about it. He’s been talking about walking, all along. He’s obviously an open-air type—when he’s not wolfing!”

  “It seems a long way to come for a walk,” Mollie said.

  “Not with a car—and from Falmouth, it’s about the nearest stretch of really open country … What do you imagine he’s doing out there beside walking?”

  “I don’t know—meeting someone, perhaps … He might even be collecting his share of the loot!”

  “What an imagination!” I picked up the binoculars and climbed out of the quarry. “Which direction was he going in?”

  “Up towards the high tors,” she said.

  I could see the tors, two of them, their tops jutting sharp and clear above the gentler line of the foothills. They looked quite a long way away, and the intervening ground was rough. I swept the lower slopes with the glasses, and presently I spotted him. He was about a quarter of a mile away across the heather, climbing slowly. As I watched, he turned for a moment and gazed back over what must already have been quite a view.

  I dropped down into the quarry again. “Well, he looks genuine enough to me,” I said. “Anyway, what are you going to do about him? You can’t keep an eye on him from here.”

  “I’m going to follow him, of course,” Mollie said, and got out of the car. I noticed that she was wearing a pair of
stout walking shoes. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

  “Do you mind if I do?”

  “Not now you’re here.”

  I gazed around. It was a lovely morning, and the moors looked most inviting.

  “Then I think I’ll come,” I said, “as you’re so pressing!”

  Chapter Ten

  I had a look at the car map before we set off. It was a poor substitute for an inch-to-the-mile, but it showed enough to leave little doubt where Mellor was making for. He was heading, as any hiker would, for the dominating tors, and I thought his objective would probably be the nearer one, called Brown Willy, which was shown on the map as 1,375 feet and was the highest point on the moor. From where we stood, it was a little over two and a half miles in a straight line. It would be quite a hike, but we were already nine hundred feet up so the climb wouldn’t amount to much. In an hour and a half, at most, we should be there.

  We reparked the cars, placing my less conspicuous Riley between Mollie’s and the road in case Mellor should drive past the quarry or turn there when he came down. Then I slung the binoculars over my shoulder, and we set off. At first we dropped down a little, skirting a stone farmhouse with a few hedged fields. Then we followed a contour north-westwards above a trickling stream that the map had shown as the beginning of the River Fowey. Mollie left it to me to pick the route. The going was pretty rough all the way. Sometimes a sheep track happened to coincide with our direction for a while, but mostly we just ploughed through the heather and bracken on the sides of our feet. The long dry spell had baked the peaty ground on the hillside, which helped quite a lot. The air was very warm, and deliciously scented. There was a summer murmur of insects, a whirring of grasshoppers at our feet, a skylark or two trilling away above us, the occasional bleat of a sheep. That was all. Back on the ribbon of road, cars and lorries were still roaring by, but the sound was already muted. Very few of the cars stopped, I noticed, and even when they did the occupants rarely moved more than fifty yards from their seats. Before long, it was as though Mollie and I had the world to ourselves. I had no complaints. When I thought how unpromisingly the day had started, I could scarcely believe in my good fortune.