Hell's Mouth

by BATEMAN, A P

  “We are.”

  “Makes sense. I wasn’t sure where you were going.”

  “I was just familiarising myself with the river,” he said. “Getting an idea what the tide was doing.” He grinned. She rowed well, her breasts straining against the material of the blouse. Her arms looked toned and he could tell that her stomach and core were strong. “You’ve done this before, DS Hosking.”

  “Do you still want to ask me out for a drink when we’re done?”

  “I might. It’s only been a day.”

  “Well, call me Becky,” she said. “Can you do that, Superintendent?”

  “Acting Superintendent.”

  “I have a feeling you’ll be DCI very soon.”

  “Why?” He looked shocked.

  “I don’t think you make things ride easily for you.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  He shrugged. “Easy come, easy go.”

  The jetty loomed and she took the oars out of the water. The boat glided slowly towards it, then nudged the timber edge. “It’s deep here,” she said. “Look. The bottom is six-feet deep, I’d say.”

  “The bank is sheer. That’s how they got a bigger boat in here last night.”

  “Who did?”

  “I saw a boat come in at dusk. You see that tree?” He pointed at the submerged tree and she nodded. “That hid the boat from view.”

  “What kind of boat?”

  “A fishing boat. On old and battered thing. It had two men in the cabin. When I looked with binoculars, people were getting off it. I increased the focus and light setting and saw a man looking back at me with a pair of binoculars.”

  “Creepy.”

  “It was, but in the next instant, Sarah Penhaligan came in with a takeaway and switched on the light. Naturally I couldn’t see anything with the light on and by the time she switched it back off, the people and the man with the binoculars had disappeared.”

  “And you never saw these men again?”

  “Oh, I think I did,” he said. “I’m sure they were the two men who threatened me with the gun and attacked me.”

  “Why didn’t you say this last night?”

  O’Bryan scoffed. “I could tell he was a lousy copper. His line about Sarah told me that. As far as I was concerned, the woman had been sexually assaulted and taken against her will.”

  “I’m sure she’s had worse.”

  O’Bryan looked at her. “I’m sure she has,” he said seriously. “But there is always more to a situation than what can be seen at face value.”

  “I know, but…”

  “No. That woman sells her body, that much is clear. I didn’t see it coming, but I don’t know any more than that,” O’Bryan said. He looked at her, a feeling of uncertainty rising within him. Her comment had been callous. But then again, he’d thrown his hat into the ring with a woman he barely knew. He’d never done that before. What did he expect? He didn’t even know DS Becky Hosking. If anything, he knew Sarah Penhaligan better. “Look, you clearly have history with this woman, other than nicking her for prostitution, so tell me.”

  “It’s nothing,” she answered curtly. “I knew of her when I holidayed down here. She was always knocking around Falmouth. I saw her around at the beaches, then when I was older, at the pubs and places older kids hang out. When I first nicked her it was awkward for her. A little for me too.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “I don’t like people selling themselves,” she added, “There’s no need.”

  O’Bryan stepped out of the boat and DS Hosking scowled as she was left rocking and trying to stash the oars. “Need and want.”

  “What?”

  “Everybody wants sex. It’s a basic human emotion. We all want it for different reasons. To feel loved, to feel secure, to feel liberated. To feel in control, to feel dominated. Or just because it feels good,” he said. “But in all my years as a police officer, I have never met anybody who truly wanted to sell their body for money. Not when you scratch away at the reasoning for doing it.”

  “Easy money.”

  “Is it? I’m sure if Brad Pitt came round and wanted to get his rocks off, the majority of women would jump at the chance…”

  “Brad Pitt! You’re showing your age!”

  “Alright, that bloke off Poldark then,” he said curtly. “But women in the sex industry don’t get that. They get halitosis and missing teeth, fat and smelly beasts with hygiene problems and perverse desires. They can’t simply say no when they open the door to them.”

  She shrugged. “It’s their career choice. Sarah Penhaligan could work on a supermarket checkout, but she chooses to spread her legs for a hundred quid a pop.”

  “I’ve known crime syndicates force women into that sort of work. There are immigrants who have their passports held and are forced to work for free to pay off the debt for being brought over. The sex industry is full of modern-day slaves with little choice.”

  “But Sarah has choices. She just makes bad ones, that’s all.” She pulled down the legs of her jeans and put the boots back on.

  O’Bryan shrugged. He could see that history was unforgiving and made a note to delve deeper in Sarah Penhaligan’s past. He would need the national crime database for the task, but he figured tomorrow would be the time for that. He had a meeting with Sarah at nine, he just hoped she would attend voluntarily.

  “So what are we looking for?” DS Hosking asked, sensing it was time for a change in topic. “The boat brought people in, you say?”

  “There were people on the jetty. All sizes. I only caught a fleeting glance. It could have been women or children. There were the two men who piloted the boat in.”

  “Smuggling, I’d bet,” she said. “It goes on. Always has. It’s just the booty that has changed. Drugs is the biggest and most valuable commodity. Everything from weed to ecstasy to cocaine. Drugs are rife in Cornwall.”

  “Really?”

  “There’s a big scene. Everybody smoked weed when I was a kid. Especially surfers and beach bums. Now it’s as likely to be speed or ice. Heroin is in favour again.”

  O’Bryan shook his head. “I’d never have thought that.”

  “Cigarettes and tobacco is next, booze third. Vodka makes good sense. There are a lot of Polish here, they love the stuff. But pub landlords buy up anything and decant it into the branded optics. It’s not so common now, not smuggled at least, because the budget supermarkets offer spirits so cheap, the landlords buy that instead. It goes on more than you’d think.”

  O’Bryan looked around, focusing his attention on the ground. There was a lot of mud and footprints. The jetty led to a path. The path looked well-used, like a coastal footpath, carved through the ground, but the wooden boards of the jetty were clean. One-way traffic. “Notice anything?”

  DS Hosking studied the area. She looked at him and shook her head.

  “The jetty is clean. People have moved in one direction. Or at least, a high proportion have.”

  She nodded. “Well, let’s follow the path.”

  They walked single file, O’Bryan taking the lead. The path wound around the bank of the creek, then angled straight up a hill, so steep that O’Bryan could almost touch the ground in front of him. After fifty-metres or so the path went through a cluster of trees which gradually turned into a small wood. He turned to DS Hosking. “I thought they might have been poaching.”

  “Well this is Ogilvy’s land, and the Malforth Estate hosts shoots.”

  “This is definitely his land?”

  “Yes. It runs right down to the bank opposite Barlooe. That jetty has to be his.”

  “What do they shoot?”

  “They breed and rear pheasants and drive them with beaters. I know people who have driven the birds for a part-time job. They stock deer as well. I think people pay to hunt them too.”

  “So it would be a worthwhile venture to sail up the river and shoot a deer. I suppose they are pretty big and could be butchered up and sold
fairly easily. There was venison on the menu at The Smuggler’s Rest. It would be worth selling it to kitchens via the backdoor.”

  “Absolutely,” she said. “But you’re not down from London to look into poaching and selling a bit of venison.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “And the tie-in is the dead Syrian family.”

  “That’s what I think.”

  She hesitated, her eyes catching something in the grass. Then she said quietly, “Oh Jesus…”

  “What?”

  “You know it’s not smuggling don’t you? Not contraband at least.”

  “That’s what I’m going to prove.”

  “You think it’s people trafficking, don’t you,” she stated flatly.

  “I’m pretty sure it is, yes.”

  She walked off the path a few feet and bent down. She picked something up and walked over to him. She held it out and O’Bryan took it from her and looked at it. It was a tatty, worn teddy bear. Part of the arm had torn and stuffing was visible between the stretched threads and torn fabric. “I think you’ve found something,” he said. He brought it close to his nose and smelled it, sniffing deeply. It smelled of something other than the woods, not yet taking on the musty, dank smell of the foliage and mud and grass.

  It still smelled of its owner.

  13

  DS Hosking put the teddy in an evidence bag that she carried in her handbag. She marked the label with a marker pen. MM1. Malforth Manor, one. She dated it and put her name on it. She was about to enter O’Bryan’s name, but he told her not to. She frowned, but he shook his head.

  “I’m down here ruffling feathers,” he said. “You take the credit.” It was a good enough reason, but O’Bryan conceded it was not the only reason. But he couldn’t tell her. Not yet.

  “You think they trafficked children?”

  He shook his head. “I think they trafficked a family.”

  “The Elmaleh family? You think they were being trafficked?”

  “Not exactly…” he broke off, dropped to the ground as a huge clump of soil splattered over their faces and a gunshot sang out across the valley. It echoed sharply, unlike the gunshots he had heard previously during his stay.

  “What the hell?” DS Hosking cried out. “Someone shot at us!”

  There was another gunshot, another clump of soil. It was close to O’Bryan’s feet. He rolled over and pulled DS Hosking down into a culvert. There were bones and animal fur in the culvert and it spread out from a large hole. O’Bryan realised it was a badger’s sett.

  “You there!” a voice called out. “What the hell are you doing on this land?”

  O’Bryan chanced a peek and saw a tall, thin man dressed in tweed striding towards them. He was accompanied by a shorter, stockier man who wore a cheap and tatty green jacket and ripped jeans, which would have once been blue, but now looked the colour of mud.

  The taller man carried a hunting rifle with a scope. The stockier man carried a shotgun, its barrels broken over his arm.

  O’Bryan took out his warrant card and held it up. “Put the gun down!”

  “I’ll do nothing of the sort!” the taller man snorted. “Who the hell are you and what are you doing on Malforth Manor Estate?”

  O’Bryan nodded for DS Hosking to get up. He turned to the men and said again, “Put the guns down. I’m a police officer, this is my colleague.”

  “You’re trespassing without a warrant,” the taller man said. “I’m Charles Ogilvy and I own this land.”

  “You shot at us,” O’Bryan said. “Now put the guns down, or I’ll take them off you.”

  The stockier man snapped the shotgun shut and the barrels drifted up towards O’Bryan’s midriff. “No, I don’t think you will…”

  “Now, now Mitchell…” Ogilvy said. “I think we gave the inspector here a scare when we mistook him for a red hind on my land.” He pulled back the bolt action and ejected a large brass cartridge into his hand. He rested the rifle on the ground at his feet. The man called Mitchell opened the barrels of the side by side shotgun and rested it in the crook of his elbow. He stared at O’Bryan, a smirk on his lips.

  O’Bryan looked at the man’s hands and forearms. Tattooed and tanned like the man holding the shotgun last night. The shotgun looked the same too. The blueing worn and shiny at end of the barrels. He looked at the man, watched his eyes carefully. He wasn’t close enough to see if the iris of his right eye had bled into the white. “I didn’t recognise you,” he said. “Without your balaclava.”

  The man smiled. “Don’t know what you mean, officer.”

  “I think you do.”

  Ogilvy coughed. “You know each other?”

  Mitchell shook his head. “Never seen he before…”

  “You sound the same.”

  “Well we’s all sound the same to you emmets…”

  O’Bryan looked at Ogilvy. “Mind if I take a look at your rifle?” He didn’t wait for a reply, simply bent down and picked it up. He shouldered it and aimed at the point he had first seen the two men. He lowered the rifle, looked back at Ogilvy. “That scope looks pretty clear to me. You must be half blind if you thought both DS Hosking and I looked like deer.”

  “You’re a sergeant now?” Mitchell said with a smirk. “Well, the promotion ladder is open for women to climb here. They’ll let anybody up, if they’s give something in return, I s’pose.”

  “You shut your face! You odious little…”

  “DS Hosking!” O’Bryan snapped. “That’s enough…” He looked back at Ogilvy. “I was saying that you took two shots at people thinking they were a deer.”

  “Well, it’s the light, you see,” Ogilvy caught hold of the fore-stock and pulled, but O’Bryan gripped harder. “I didn’t expect trespassers on my land.”

  “I think a visit from Firearms Licensing may be in order. Just to check you have everything in place. Like your DSC is valid. You need that to stalk deer, I gather.”

  “We run professional shoots here, Mitchell is in charge of all that.”

  Mitchell nodded. “Can’t tell us a bloody thing…”

  O’Bryan frowned and interrupted him. “Well, you thought I was a red hind. It’s illegal to shoot female red deer this time of year. It’s fallow deer and roe deer males in England and Wales. Just a quick Google earlier. With such a simple mistake, I imagine you’re making many more.”

  “I’ve only made one mistake lately,” Mitchell said.

  “You bet your life you have,” O’Bryan said coldly. “And when you make another, I’ll see it’s the last you ever make…”

  14

  “Well, that could have gone better.”

  “I think it went pretty well myself,” O’Bryan said. He stepped into the boat, eased himself to the back. “You’re rowing, by the way.”

  “Naturally.” She sat down on the jetty and eased herself down into the boat and onto the seat. The boat rocked, but O’Bryan was holding onto the edge of the jetty and it was far more stable than it had been both on the other side and in the middle of the creek. “And why didn’t you mention the teddy bear?”

  “Time and place. It wasn’t looking too safe with the guns. And besides, if something is amiss, I want to hold the cards.” He pushed away from the jetty once she got the oars into the water. “They shot at us on purpose. I saw the clarity of that rifle scope and it was a quality piece. If anything, they would have seen so much more than merely a figure moving. Ogilvy could have read the front page of a newspaper with that scope at that range.”

  “Are you sure it was the rifle that fired and not the shotgun?”

  “Absolutely. The sound for one. And no spread pattern meant it was a bullet, not shotgun shot.” O’Bryan looked at her as she rowed. “So what’s with you and Mitchell? You know him. Or at least, he knows you and has an opinion of you.”

  “Remember I told you my ex took me apart in the courtroom and got a man off a rape charge? Well, that man was Pete Mitchell.”

  O’Bryan was
silent for a moment, looked at her and said, “I’m convinced he was one of the men from last night. He had similar tattoos, from what I remember. The shotgun looked a match too, and he all but hinted as much. He thinks he’s untouchable for some reason.”

  “That will be Ogilvy’s influence.”

  “So who is he?”

  “Sometime fisherman, now works as a gamekeeper and general dog’s body for Ogilvy.”

  “And he was the one you were prosecuting? This was the case that cost you your relationship with your lawyer boyfriend?”

  “No. It cost my lawyer boyfriend his relationship with me,” she corrected him. “It showed me what a scumbag he was and what he would do to win his case.”

  “Okay. I get the differentiation.” They were approaching the other side of the creek and O’Bryan nodded to her. “Twenty-feet, stop rowing.”

  She lifted the oars and the boat glided into the beach. There was a foot or so of mud and shingle to step onto. The boat was grounded and not going anywhere. O’Bryan, not caring for his filthy shoes and trouser bottoms, stepped out and into a few inches of water. DS Hosking started to unzip her boots, but he stopped her. “I’ll lift you if you want,” he said. “Save you messing about.”

  She looked up at him and shrugged. “Okay,” she said and stood up.

  O’Bryan bent down and put a hand behind her knees, the other around her waist and scissor motioned his arms. She dropped into his arms and looked up at him as he walked out of the water and onto the muddy beach. He looked at her, felt a quickening of his heartbeat as he watched her eyes. He swung her up to the top of the stone quay. She landed nimbly on the grass and he let go. The moment was gone and he bent down and lifted the prow of the boat up to the quay. “Here, take this,” he said and walked around to lift the stern. She pulled and O’Bryan pushed and the boat slid neatly up the quay and rested still on the grass. The oars were inside. He’d turn the boat over and store it properly another time. For now, he wanted to change his trousers and shoes before he made his next port of call.

  O’Bryan led the way through the garden and around the side of the house, letting them in through the front door. He dropped his keys onto the hall table and nodded towards the kitchen. “Get a brew on,” he said, kicking his muddy shoes off. “How do you have your coffee?”