She nodded again, and that was all the go-ahead that was needed. As the band played and the audience danced and sang and enjoyed the set, the police moved through the crowd. There was a dog with them and it strained at the leash in its haste to reach the far side of the stage. Following, Ness and Max watched as the dog made a beeline for a canvas holdall that was lying next to a pile of empty guitar cases. Within seconds this was unzipped to reveal hundreds of polythene bags, each containing what looked very much like an illicit substance.
“Who does that bag belong to?” Inspector Allen asked Ness.
“I’ve absolutely no idea.” Ness was feeling as though she might pass out. “I’ve never seen it before.”
Her protest sounded feeble even to her own ears, especially as it was clear that this amount of drugs wasn’t just for someone’s personal use. An amount this large was intended for one thing only: to supply.
“But this is nothing to do with any of us or the festival!” Ness cried. “It really isn’t! Somebody must have planted it!”
“I can guess who,” Max said. His mouth was set in a grim line.
“No prizes there,” Adam agreed.
A look passed between the two men, and if she hadn’t been so upset Ness would have asked them exactly what they meant. As it was she was too busy trying to fight the rising panic of knowing that she would have to stop the festival and deal with a possible drugs charge to worry about anything else.
“That bag’s been planted,” Ness said again, her voice wavering. “It’s nothing to do with anyone here.”
Max took her hands in his and held them tightly. “We know that and so do the officers, I’m sure, but you’re going to have to let them do their job and search. It’s all going to be fine.”
But Ness was shaking too much to speak. How was it all going to be fine?
Suddenly she felt well and truly on her own – and she feared the same would be true for Pirran Island.
Chapter 28
Lucy sat at the kitchen table with yesterday’s local papers and felt herself slide deeper into despair. She’d made a pot of coffee and poured a cup, but it was long cold and her plate of toast was untouched too. As she scanned the pages the print jumped about and blurred before her eyes, as though her exhausted brain couldn’t bear to read another word or try to make sense of the events of the past days. She wasn’t sure what to do next or even if there was anything she could do next. Drugs had been found on the island and it was a disaster.
She placed her head in her hands. What Lucy would really like to do was phone Adam and talk things through with him, but since their disastrous dinner at Sorrentina the closeness that had been growing between them appeared to have withered away. Previously they’d been in the habit of meeting for up coffee or spending lunchtimes together on the island, whereas now they could only manage to exchange a hello in passing. The easy chatter they’d once shared had been replaced by awkward silences. She missed their friendship terribly.
She missed Adam terribly.
The castle was eerily quiet. It happened to be one of the castle’s open days, but Lucy couldn’t imagine visitors feeling inclined to come to Pirran Island now, unless out of mawkish curiosity. The place was deserted. Ness had left at first light to catch the train to London. Meanwhile Fern was still utterly heartbroken and blaming herself for everything. She was refusing to talk to anyone except Merryn; Lucy supposed he was with her now, seeing as he hadn’t shown up for breakfast. She glanced at her watch. It was almost ten o’clock. Annie Luckett would be over at some point, but Lucy had already decided she would send her home again. She couldn’t face opening the tea room today. In fact, Lucy wasn’t sure she would ever feel like opening it again. All she wanted to do was hide away and try to ignore the dreadful suspicions that were growing stronger and stronger.
If only Adam had been working here today. She would have swallowed her pride, told him she was so sorry about walking out of the restaurant that night, admit she’d made one of the biggest mistakes of her life and ask him if they could go back to the way things had been before. How was it possible that in such a short time a total stranger had become the centre of her world? She’d been happy before Adam had arrived on the scene, hadn’t she? Life had been busy and she’d had more than enough to occupy her with looking after her uncle and running the tea room. How had Adam Miller managed to fill such a huge void when she’d never even noticed one existed?
It wasn’t just Adam that Lucy missed. Usually Josh was here too, chatting about something or practising his scales. He’d eat her cakes, make her improve her iPhone skills or be tearing around the place with a barking Biscuit, like a gap-toothed scabby-kneed whirlwind. But today there was no Adam because work on the gate had skidded to a very abrupt halt, and Josh was yet to arrive.
Oh God, Adam didn’t believe all the furore about the drugs, did he? She hadn’t seen him since the festival had been interrupted in such a dreadful fashion, but surely he didn’t think any of them here were dealing drugs? It was all totally absurd! On the other hand, the papers were full of half the story, predictably the shocking and sensationalist half, and she could only imagine that a responsible father like Adam would be concerned about what his child could have been exposed to. Her hand hovered over her phone as she toyed with the idea of calling him to explain. Then Lucy pushed the handset firmly out of reach. If Adam Miller was really her friend then he’d know it was all nonsense.
“I guess we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?” Lucy said to Biscuit, who simply looked up at her with sad brown eyes. The spaniel was probably missing Josh too, Lucy thought bleakly. It seemed that they’d both grown fond of the new additions to their island family and were going to find life without them rather empty.
She took a sip of cold coffee, grimacing at the bitter stewed flavour, and forced herself to return to the newspapers. Merryn had fetched them over the day before. Even though she knew it was all rubbish, Lucy wasn’t finding the coverage of the festival easy to read. “Drug Fest” was what the papers had dubbed it. If it was true that mud stuck, then the inhabitants of Pirran Island were going to be trying to pressure-wash this lot off for a very long time to come.
Lucy cast her mind back to moment it had all started to go so wrong. She’d been in the tea room, making what had felt like her millionth pot of tea, when the music that had been a background thud for over five hours stopped. Shortly after that, a river of people flowed across the causeway.
“What’s going on?” Annie flipped her tea towel over her shoulder and was standing by the door, shading her eyes against the bright sunshine. “We’re not due to finish yet, are we?”
Lucy put the teapot down and joined her. “Absolutely not. The fireworks display doesn’t start until half nine.”
“Is there a problem? Are they evacuating the island?” Annie fretted. Her family had come to the island today to watch the bands, and her immediate thoughts were for their safety. Lucy had done her best to reassure Annie that everything was bound to be fine, but it had been difficult to convince somebody else of this when Lucy herself was so worried. Apologising to the customers still queuing, she abandoned her duties; leaving Annie at the helm, and run across to the stage area to find out what was happening.
“What’s happened?” she’d asked, grabbing hold of Merryn’s unplastered arm and pulling him around to face her.
If Lucy had been worried before, she was doubly so when she saw how white Merryn was. In front of them Ness was deep in conversation with several policemen. Even more concerning was the fact that Max Reynard was there too.
“What’s Max done?” Lucy demanded. Whatever calamity had taken place was bound to be down to that awful man. He’d stop at nothing to get his hands on the island.
Merryn shook his head. “For once this is nothing to do with him. Lucy, you’re going to have to hear this from someone, so it may as well be me. The police are searching the island. They think there’s drug dealing going on here.”
> Lucy had started to laugh because this was totally ludicrous. “That’s ridiculous! Of course there isn’t. Do they think Fred’s growing marijuana in the vegetable garden? Or I’m baking hash cakes?”
But Merryn wasn’t laughing. “They had a tip-off from a member of the public who said they’d seen suspicious goings-on backstage. Apparently they’ve found a bag full of drugs and now they want to search the whole place.”
“You’re not serious?”
“They’ve found a lot of drugs, Lucy. This is as serious as it gets.”
Lucy shook her head as though trying her best to shake away the unpleasant memories. It hadn’t seemed real. She, who rarely even took an aspirin, was now being accused of dealing drugs? It was mad! This was Cornwall, not Colombia!
Fern had been inconsolable.
“This is all my fault,” she sobbed, tears running down her face and streaking her make-up into sooty rivulets. She’d looked so young and Lucy’s heart had gone out to her.
“Of course it isn’t,” she said firmly. “There’s no way you can blame yourself, Fern. When you suggested a festival you weren’t to know this would happen.”
Merryn tried to pull Fern into his arms but she shook him off impatiently.
“Don’t, Merry. You know I’m right. Logan’s done this because I wouldn’t go back to him. He’s done it to get his own back after what happened the other day.”
She burst into another storm of weeping, gasping for breath and gabbling out a complicated story about punches and insults and drug-dealing ex-boyfriends, growing more hysterical by the second. It was only when Annie Luckett, veteran of many teenage emotional tempests, grabbed her by the shoulders and spoke very firmly that Fern calmed down enough to explain herself.
And what a tale it was. Shaking her head sadly at the memory, Lucy got up to refill the kettle. As she waited for it to boil she leaned against the Aga and marvelled again at how cruel life could be. That a young girl, barely sixteen and no way old enough to know her own mind, could be manipulated by an older boy and find herself spiralling into despair and desperation was hardly an original story – but that didn’t make it any less shocking. Armand would have known, of course. That was why he’d let her stay. There’d been a heart of gold under that gruff exterior and today Lucy missed him more than ever.
“So when this Logan came back and started threatening Fern, I saw red,” Merryn had finished, squeezing Fern’s hand. Annie couldn’t help noticing how small Fern’s hand seemed, and how bitten her nails were. “I saw him off all right. He won’t be back.”
“You mean you punched him.” Annie raised her eyes to the tea-room ceiling. “It’s good to know you learned something from being excluded from school, Merryn Hellier.”
“He was really brave,” said Fern defensively.
“No, Annie’s right,” Merryn sighed. “I’ve given Logan even more of a grudge – and not just against you either, Fern, but against me and the island too. If he’s planted drugs then it’s to get back at me.”
“No one’s to blame apart from whoever did this.” Lucy had been adamant on this score. Besides, she wasn’t entirely sure that all the drama had been caused by this unsavoury Logan character acting alone. Deep down inside, a small part of her was starting to have a suspicion that she was terrified to even acknowledge.
Surely not? Jamie couldn’t hate them all this much, could he?
By the time Ness had finally joined them, grey-faced and shaken, Lucy had been vacillating between feeling hideously guilty for thinking this way and wondering if she might actually be right. When Ness told them that apart from the one bag of cannabis that had attracted the sniffer dog, the holdall was actually filled with packets containing nothing more sinister that Italian seasoning and icing sugar, Lucy’s fears had been confirmed. Jamie had played this trick on a schoolmate and almost got him excluded. It was only when he’d been cornered that he’d admitted it, but he’d never once seemed sorry.
The suspicion alone had sickened her, but Lucy always trusted her gut feelings. This one was telling her that it was Jamie’s school prank again all right – only this time he’d involved somebody very nasty to help him. Over the years she’d tried her best to convince herself that Jamie’s persistent sniff was hay fever or a winter cold, but who was she really kidding? His constant need for money and his foul moods all made sense when she stopped making excuses for her brother. There was every chance Jamie would come across a lowlife like this Logan character.
“I don’t understand,” Annie Luckett had said with a frown. “If not this man, then why would anyone do such a dreadful thing?”
“DCI Allen says we’re the victims of a malicious hoax.” Ness buried her face in her hands. “Whoever tipped the police off wanted to totally discredit us.”
“Well, that won’t work when they know it was just herbs that were found,” Merryn said, hugging Fern. “It’s going to be fine.”
But Annie wasn’t so sure. “I think they may need a little convincing, Merryn. You know what it’s like here once rumours begin.”
“And rumours apart, I’m going to have to refund everyone because the concert ended early,” Ness added.
“So we won’t have made a penny.” Fern’s eyes shimmered. “I’m so sorry, Ness.”
“It’s not your fault,” Ness said fiercely. “But I’m afraid there’s something worse than not making a profit, and that’s making a loss. This will have cost us money and I don’t think I can claw it back from here. We were just about to break even if this had worked out, but now…” She shook her head. “I don’t see how with the winter coming we can pay the loan back and keep the castle running. We haven’t even started to look at the pier yet, and the surveyors said it probably won’t last through the winter. There simply isn’t any money left.”
Everyone fell silent. They all knew exactly what this meant.
“I’ll go and see Jonathan Ambrose and see if I can buy us some more time,” Ness said. “If he’ll extend the repayment schedule for six months and maybe lend us a little more, it may be enough.”
“He’ll do that, won’t he? If it makes him money?” Fern asked hopefully.
Ness shrugged. “To be honest, I have no idea. It’s also about whether we can even afford to do that. The terms were clear – if we default then the loan will be called in. I’m so sorry. I’ve made things even worse for us.”
“Nonsense. Nobody could have tried harder than you,” Lucy said staunchly.
“Absolutely,” Annie agreed. “I don’t always claim to have a clue what Armand Penwellyn was thinking, but he certainly did the right thing putting you in charge – no disrespect, Lucy.”
Lucy waved her hand. “None taken. You’re right, Annie. Ness has given it everything and more. She’s a Penwellyn through and through.”
“And at least you never sold to bloody Max Reynard,” Fern added.
At this Ness had dashed another flood of tears away with her sleeve. Goodness, thought Lucy, Max must be a monster if just the mention of his name makes her cry. Adam might insist that Max was one of the good guys, but Lucy wasn’t convinced.
“I just keep feeling that there’s something I missed. It’s like there was always a solution to this but I just can’t figure it out,” Ness sighed. “I know it makes no sense but surely our uncle left the island to me for a reason? We just haven’t discovered it yet.”
“Uncle Armand always used to tell me there was a fortune at my fingertips,” Lucy recalled. “I think it must have been his idea of a joke.”
Annie frowned. “Armand was never one for joking. Quizzes and cryptic puzzles yes, but he didn’t say things unless he meant them.”
“Your granny told me the answer was in the music, whatever that meant,” Ness said to Merryn, who’d rolled his eyes.
“Yeah, that sounds like my gran. She loves to come out with a cryptic line. If she ever offers to read your tea leaves, don’t be fooled. She uses teabags.”
In spite of her heavy heart
, Lucy smiled. “Ignore him. Rose is the real thing, so let’s just keep hopeful. Maybe something will come up after all?”
It wouldn’t if these papers were anything to go by, Lucy decided now as she returned to the kitchen table with a fresh pot of coffee. Predictably the local press had chosen to focus on the drug haul and the suspicions of dealing rather than the far less exciting reality. Just because a sizeable amount of drugs hadn’t yet been discovered didn’t mean they weren’t there, was the implication. Lucy threw the papers away in a fit of disgust. If only she could talk to Adam and share her deepest suspicions. She hadn’t dared voice them to anyone else, partly because she felt so disloyal and partly because she was convinced she was right.
Lucy drained her cup and set it down with a thud as the caffeine hit her blood stream. There was only one thing for it: she would have to confront Jamie. He wasn’t her cute little brother anymore, and neither was she the cowed and nervous spinster without friends or purpose. Everything had changed – and most of all her, she realised.
Jamie was going to be surprised, that was for certain. This encounter was way overdue.
Chapter 29
“Nessa, my dear, I wish you’d told me you were coming to London. I would have spoken to you over the telephone and saved you a long journey.”
Jonathan Ambrose was sitting at his huge desk as before, resplendent in a Savile Row suit and looking every inch the successful businessman. Ness, crumpled and wrung out after the events of the past few days, waited to be invited to take a seat – but the invitation never came.
She swallowed back her nerves. The five-hour journey to London had given her long enough to ponder her circumstances and she’d reluctantly reached the conclusion that she was powerless in this situation. Before, she’d been full of confidence and convinced she could turn the island’s finances around. It had been a high-stakes gamble but Ness had thought the odds were stacked in her favour. Now, however, she was terrified that she’d been wrong. What if it turned out that she’d bet everything on red when black was the winning spin, so to speak?
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