Hell's Mouth

by BATEMAN, A P

  “Who found the body?” DS Hosking asked.

  Gwenapp turned to her. “Local chap, does a bit of potting and long-lining. Not regular, like. He used to but now works as a handyman and gamekeeper nearby. Over at Malforth Manor. He keeps a boat in Flushing too. Knew John Turner well.”

  “What’s his name?” O’Bryan asked, a tingle running up his spine. He already knew the answer.

  “Mitchell. Pete Mitchell,” the harbourmaster said. “He was at the service too.”

  17

  “I’ve never signed an exhumation order before.”

  “Few have.”

  “But why don’t you want to do it?”

  “I don’t want it to be blocked.”

  “Who is going to do that?”

  “Someone might,” O’Bryan paused. “There is a someone working against justice here, somebody with an ear to the ground and an eye on the law.”

  “Who do you suspect?”

  “Well, we need to find out who visited the Swanvale burial site, because clearly more action could have been taken.”

  “That shouldn’t be too difficult,” DS Hosking commented. She watched the road ahead and said, “Next left.”

  O’Bryan slowed and took the left off the mini-roundabout. They had driven on the Falmouth bypass and were heading back towards Camborne police station. He needed to log into the police database and make some checks. He also needed a good internet connection to search for a few things. He wanted DS Hosking to see to exhuming the bodies, or simply confirming that they were actually still in the ground. If they were, then he wanted a Home Office pathologist to perform an in depth autopsy on the Syrian family. That was not as easy as it sounded. He was hoping that a detective sergeant would have enough clout to set the ball rolling. But he didn’t know Cornwall and its procedure. And he didn’t want to make the case high-profile. He had instructed DS Hosking to over-play an obvious race card from the start. A dead family deserved justice, would an exhumation not be granted quicker if the family were white? Exhumation is a sacrilegious act in Islam, so perhaps it should be done quietly and without unnecessary obstruction or procedure. If this was to be refused, was it a race thing? Nine out of ten times people wouldn’t want to be involved in any of that. They would be susceptible to bending with the pressure.

  “You need to play it,” O’Bryan said. “And you need to make it clear that the damage done to their grave indicated potential, or actual body snatching and that we are not certain whether or not this has been achieved.”

  “I’ll get it done,” she said.

  O’Bryan found himself driving through Lanner and onwards down into Redruth. Strangely, with the sun on it and a blue sky, it looked a little less grey and depressing. He commented on this to DS Hosking.

  “It’s all granite around here. And Carn Brea, the big hill and monument over there,” she said and pointed at a hill which must have been just short of a mountain, “It seems to suck in the cloud and make it all grey and damp. To be fair, it’s never usually bright and sunny like this around here.”

  “Well, it’s a little less depressing than this morning,” he commented flatly.

  It was cloudy and grey in Camborne. But this was Cornwall and the weather was different every few miles you travelled. O’Bryan had read that it was something to do with being a narrow peninsular meeting the weather patterns from the Atlantic. The Gulfstream current warmed the water and the Airstream was meant to sweep in and blow north of Cornwall. In recent years, the Airstream had shifted and that had left Cornwall with cooler, wetter summers. As if a place with such unsettled weather needed worse summers. O’Bryan couldn’t complain though, he hadn’t seen rain for his entire stay, and the early evenings always seemed sunny and mild regardless of cloud or breeze in the daytime.

  He parked the Alfa Romeo in a narrow space and squeezed out of his half-open door. He saw DCI Trevithick getting into an unmarked Ford Focus at the other end of the carpark. O’Bryan raised a hand, not for a greeting, but to indicate that he wanted to speak to him, but the car shot out of the carpark and turned left.

  “I don’t think he wanted to speak to you,” DS Hosking said sardonically.

  “You don’t say,” O’Bryan replied.

  DS Hosking led the way and opened the door with a swipe card and a four-digit code. “You’ll need one of these,” she said. “I’ll speak to the duty officer and set you up.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So, I’ll call the coroner and get something in progress before knocking off,” she said. “Unless there’s anything else?”

  “No, that’s fine. Do I need anything to log on?”

  “Yes. I’ll sort you out with the password.” She led the way through to the CID suite and the ginger-haired detective with the greying beard looked up as they entered. He said nothing, turned back to his screen. She leaned over a desk in front of O’Bryan and tapped on the keyboard. “That should be okay. Unless you want to take the boss’s office?”

  O’Bryan shook his head. “This’ll do,” he said. He felt he had made his point earlier. “When you get my pass card and give me the pass-code, ask the duty officer to arrange an office for me with a computer terminal. I’ll be back in for eight-thirty tomorrow morning, there must be a space somewhere they can shoe-horn me in.”

  She looked a little shocked, but nodded. “I’ll get onto it now, Ross,” she said, then glanced at the detective who had looked up. “I mean, Superintendent.”

  “Great,” he said and sat down at the desk. He didn’t look back up and she left to talk to the desk officer. He looked up when she was outside the suite. “Detective,” he said.

  “Yes, sir. Detective Sergeant Harris,” he said. “Chris Harris.”

  “DS Harris, do you know where DCI Trevithick has gone? Or when he is planning on getting back?”

  “I think he’s knocking off duty, sir.”

  He won’t be back, thought O’Bryan. Still licking his wounds…

  O’Bryan looked at his watch. It was an oversized Omega Seamaster on a black rubber strap, and was precious to him. He had won it in his final year of university in an international water polo match sponsored by the watch maker. The entire winning team had been awarded one. He had pawned it once to pay for booze, a rock bottom moment, and he was lucky enough to have managed to buy it back when he had reached one-hundred days’ sobriety. Each time he looked at it, he knew he could make it. And this time, he would.

  The time was five-fifteen. It wasn’t an unreasonable time to punch out, it depended upon what investigation was in progress. He knew that Trevithick would have put in more than a few twenty-hour shifts in his time, he wouldn’t have made DCI if he hadn’t, but he suspected that DCI Trevithick had merely wanted to make himself scarce. He couldn’t blame him, but he had more than a few questions for the man when he came back in.

  “Right, all done,” DS Hosking said, walking in with a file. “You’ll have the broom cupboard next door.” She smiled. “Joke. There’s an interview room that’s going to get a makeover in the next hour or so. Should be serviceable by the time you come in tomorrow.”

  “Great,” O’Bryan smiled. “Did you catch the coroner?”

  “I did. He’s going to be working until six, but he said he’d check his emails at home every hour or so until about ten. So he’ll evaluate the report and email me back.”

  “Was he… open to the request?”

  “I think so. He agreed we need to know whether they are actually still in the ground or not. That’s a given. It should be signed by the morning. He didn’t hint as to whether we’d get the autopsy if they were still there, we need to find that out first. But he agreed we don’t want to have to fill it in, merely to dig it all out again, but he wanted to get a second opinion on it first and would forward our report on. I explained our findings and our doubt as to any conclusion of misadventure.” She looked up as DS Harris walked past them without a word, she frowned at his apparent rudeness. From the way he was putting on his j
acket, it was clear he was leaving his shift. “Sorry, where was I? Oh, yes… First we get confirmation, but it would be worth calling him as soon as we discover whether or not they are there.” She shivered. “Creepy, isn’t it? I mean, laid to rest and then some monster digs you up, for Lord knows what purpose…”

  O’Bryan had his theories, but he didn’t share them with her. Better to wait and see if there would be an in depth autopsy. “Well, get our findings and theories down and email him as soon as you’ve finished.”

  “Okay,” she said and went over to her work station. She pulled out her chair and sat down heavily.

  O’Bryan logged onto the computer and made the searches he required on the police database. He opened the browser and started to search the internet, then flicked between the open tabs. He jotted on a notepad and occasionally saved documents or internet URL’s to his personal cloud. He would be able to access them later from his laptop. He worked solidly for twenty-minutes, then looked up as DS Hosking stood up and pushed her chair under the desk.

  “I’m done,” she said.

  “You sent it?”

  “I have,” she replied. “Do you want to see what I’ve sent?”

  He wasn’t one to micro-manage. She was an experienced DS. “No,” he said. “I’ll see you back here in the morning. I’m interviewing Sarah Penhaligan about the assault at nine-thirty.” He noted she looked disinterested. “Leave tomorrow free, you can assist me again.”

  “Really?” she smiled.

  “Yes.”

  “Alright,” she said, a little coyly. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  O’Bryan returned to his screen and worked for another twenty-minutes. He was satisfied that the CID suite would not be in use for the rest of the day. He shut down his computer and glanced down the corridor before heading to search DCI Trevithick’s office.

  18

  O’Bryan dropped the keys onto the kitchen table and opened the fridge. He needed to go to a shop. He knew it would be empty, but it was a force of habit. He realised he was going to be staying longer than he had initially anticipated. There were two bottles of wine at the back. They were screw top sauvignon blanc. Next to them were European mini bottles of beer, which he thought had been German, but now suspected Czech Republic. He hesitated, he should have picked up some groceries. He closed the door and picked up the kettle. Anderson had a fancy Italian coffee machine installed into a recess in the wall, but O’Bryan had tried and failed to get it working. He filled the kettle, put it back on its base and took a sachet of coffee and a cafetiere out of the cupboard. He looked back at the kettle, then opened the fridge again. The beer and the wine were still there. He had resisted temptation before. He had dramatically poured all the alcohol down the sink in an act of finality, back when his wife had failed to support him and continued to buy it for herself and entertaining their friends, who had later all become her friends. But he knew that the act of ridding himself of the alcohol was one thing and the simplicity of driving to an all-night supermarket in the early hours was another. Whether he got rid of the drink or let it remain in the fridge calling to him didn’t matter. There was always access and he needed to overcome the urge. He took out his wallet and slipped out the photograph of his daughter Chloe. The photograph was creased and worn, it had been unfolded and looked at daily. She was laughing, sitting on a pony at a petting farm. O’Bryan stood one side, and the photo had been folded, in a darker time, to hide his wife, who was standing on the other side. A snapshot of a happy family, unaware of the torment and misery, the disappointment and rawness of the split that lay ahead of them. He looked at the woman in the photograph, now his ex-wife. She had once been pretty and kind, but he had taken all of that away, eroded it to a husk. She would never love him again, and nor did he feel he deserved her love for that matter. In his darker hours, he would blame her for not giving him her support, for not accepting his alcoholism as an illness and fighting it alongside him as one would with something more tangible like a cancer, but ultimately he knew the fight was always his and his alone. He had put too much weight on her, and more besides. She had played her part too, but his condition would always have been the catalyst. He still wasn’t ready to unfold her, probably never would, but he would never tear the photograph and remove her presence altogether. She needed to be there as a permanent reminder, a spectre of regret. Because without regret, there would never be hope or fulfilment.

  The kettle switched off, seemingly boiling faster because of the distraction, and he made the coffee, poured it into an oversized mug and walked through to the lounge. The sun was low, almost touching the hill far beyond the creek and casting a golden hue on the water’s surface. The tide was full and with little wind, the water looked like a mirror.

  He drank a good mouthful of coffee and placed the cup down on the top of the bookcase, before opening the sliding glass doors. He took off his clothes, keeping his boxer shorts on. His heartrate quickened, there was an underlying panic he did his best to quell, but he knew he needed to do it, and he had already proved he was no oarsman in the rowing boat with DS Hosking earlier.

  O’Bryan stepped out onto the grass and it was soft and warm underfoot. He walked the length of the garden and looked at the surface of the water, saw the depth of the mud and stones underneath. He estimated it was a little less than a metre. He looked each way, to the neighbouring property on his right, and to the grass-topped quay and area of grass to his left. There was nobody on the footpath, nobody anywhere in sight. He closed his eyes, saw the face in his dreams, the face of his nightmares. The water was no longer the same for him, but he must try to suppress his anxiety. He had been brilliant once, a phenomenal swimmer and diver. He felt a little less anxious and knew that it was now or never.

  O’Bryan leaped and shallow dived into the water. His chest and stomach scraped the bottom and sent up a great cloud of silt. He chanced opening his eyes and saw several flat fish darting off in front of him. The water was cool, but not unpleasant and he stroked hard, crawling and alternating his intake of breath under each arm, blowing a clear stream of bubbles with his head straight for three strokes. He could no longer see the bottom, the visibility was only around three-feet or so. He looked straight ahead, his eyes stinging from the salt and kept his focus on the jetty. He was halfway across and the current was negligible. He figured it was just about on high tide.

  As he approached the jetty, he could see more and the water was deeper. He was not entirely sure why the visibility was better here, but when he finally reached the jetty, he took a breath and dropped down, pushing his feet towards the bottom. The water was noticeably colder and he estimated it to be around ten-feet deep.

  O’Bryan pulled himself out of the water and sat for a moment on the jetty. The sun was still visible, the rays warming him, but as he got up and walked to the path, the shade was cold and unforgiving. The ground was slippery underfoot, but he shortened his stride and made good progress. He was soon in the place where both he and DS Hosking had been shot at. The place where she had found the teddy bear.

  Now starting to shiver, O’Bryan entered the wooded area. There was movement around him, scuffling and digging and the sound of birds darting through the undergrowth. His presence did not seem to scare them away. The ground ahead of him rose and there were granite boulders of varying sizes from football-sized fragments through to the size of family hatchbacks. After a few more paces, he realised that this must have been the distance and area from which Charles Ogilvy had taken his two shots at them. He turned around and surveyed the area he had come from. Even without the rifle scope, he was convinced that Ogilvy would have been able to see that they were people and not deer. So why would Ogilvy have risked shooting? Why take the chance? O’Bryan walked back the way he had come and stepped back onto the path. He continued on the route that both he and DS Hosking would have taken. The huge slabs of granite piled up on both sides, funnelling the pathway and then the area opened out into a clearing. At the far end
of the clearing he could see a gap in the granite. As he walked closer, he could see that it was a cave entrance. The light was fading fast, and with it the temperature felt as if it had plummeted. Standing in only the pair of damp, white boxer shorts, O’Bryan was cold and felt vulnerable. He glanced around him, then stepped into the cave entrance. It was pitch black, but just a few feet inside, he could see the heavy metal bars of a pair of double wrought iron gates. He caught hold of them and gave the structure a shake. It was solid, but rattled in the middle. He felt along and could see that there was a half-inch gap where the two sections of bars met. A large padlock, as big as his fist shackled two rings, fastening them in place. He ran his hands over the edges nearest the stone wall and could feel enormous hinges set at three intervals.

  O’Bryan stood back. He had heard of such smuggling tunnels. There was even a black and white picture and short paragraph framed on the wall of The Smuggler’s Rest pub across the water in Barlooe. Used in the late seventeen-hundreds and early eighteen-hundreds by smugglers and wreckers to hide their bounty, there had been several discovered over the years. O’Bryan assumed that Malforth Manor had such a concession going on two-hundred years ago. The rum and tobacco would have been brought in by boat coinciding with the appropriate tides and cover of darkness, perhaps even with the right amount of moonlight, and the contraband would be divvied up and walked out of the doors of the manor house and onto horse and carts for distribution across Cornwall, maybe even to London where it could buy influence. Things hadn’t changed over the years, but it was the thought of what may be being smuggled that left O’Bryan cold, and not just the night time air. He looked down at the ground in the cave entrance. It was worn enough to have had multiple people passing through its entrance for a while.

  There was nothing more he could do here, so he made his way back down the pathway, stopping occasionally when he heard movement in the undergrowth. Paranoia was getting the better of him and he was relieved when he reached the jetty. It was almost completely dark now, save for the golden strip of light above the distant hill at the far end of the valley. To his right, down the creek and towards the sea, it was dark and he could see the lights of Point Geddon in the distance. He looked across the water, but could not see the Hemingway House, as he had forgotten to leave a light on. He cursed his lack of thought. But for his money, it was a direct swim straight out from the jetty. He closed his eyes, already seeing the face and the vision he so often felt recently when he looked at water.