Soft Summer Blood

by Peter Helton

  ‘Did you hear about Nicholas Longmaid’s death, too?’

  The news made no visible impression on Kahn as he shook tea leaves from a tin into a brown teapot. ‘No. He was another of my dad’s painting colleagues. Was he also murdered?’

  ‘He was. We’re working on the assumption that they were killed by the same person.’

  ‘And you came out here because you think I had something to do with it?’

  ‘We’re talking to anyone even remotely connected to the victims.’

  ‘Remote is right. I haven’t seen any of them since my father disappeared eighteen years ago and I can’t say I’ve thought about them much recently. A lot back then, but not recently.’

  ‘You’re a painter, like them, and like your father.’

  ‘No, not like them. My father was a doctor. Painting was a hobby for him. I’m a professional painter.’

  ‘Do you make a living from it?’

  ‘If you can call it that. If I didn’t own this place outright, I’d be stacking shelves in a supermarket; as it is, I’m surviving.’ He had poured out three mugs of tea while he spoke. ‘I’ll just take one of these through to Berti.’ But the girl – McLusky revised down her age by a few years – saved him the trouble as she appeared in the doorway, expertly wrapped in her white cotton sheet. Kahn handed her the mug. ‘I’ll be back in a moment; have some tea.’ The girl took the mug, said ‘Ta’ and padded back to the studio.

  McLusky blew on his own tea. ‘When you spoke about your father, you said “the day he disappeared”, not “died”.’

  Kahn shrugged. ‘Habit. His body never turned up. I was a kid. I didn’t want my dad to be dead. No body, not dead. To me, he had mysteriously disappeared. As far as I was concerned, they were all wrong about him. It took me a while to accept that he wasn’t coming back.’

  ‘It must have been especially hard for you. You had already lost your mother.’

  ‘I hardly remembered my mother; she died when I was three.’

  ‘What do you think happened to your father?’

  ‘You’re asking me? I wasn’t there.’

  ‘Two of those who were are now dead.’

  ‘I don’t see any connection. Do you? After all this time?’

  Back in the car, McLusky asked himself the same question, not for the first time, and answered himself that he had nothing else to go on. He started the engine and realized that with the old camper van in the yard there was no space to turn the big Mercedes around. He gave himself a crick in the neck reversing the two hundred and fifty yards back to the road. As he sat massaging his twisted muscles, he imagined himself inside the triangle of victims and suspects. Mrs Mohr lived in Dundry, which was part of the triangle, and David Mendenhall, who she now presumably worked for, had moved into his father’s house. The gardeners, Gotts and Lucket, lived in Bristol, outside the triangle. To the only other place of possible significance not inside the triangle, McLusky had the key: Rosslyn Crag.

  EIGHT

  ‘Cornwall?’ Laura sounded doubtful.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ McLusky coaxed, ‘it’s nearly the end of term anyway and it’s only a long weekend.’ He sensed Laura weakening in the pause that followed but barely dared breathe, holding his office phone very still. This could decide their whole future together. If Laura agreed to spend a whole weekend with him in romantic Cornwall in a windswept – or so he assumed – cottage by the sea and it went well, then he might have come a step further towards persuading her to move in with him. Once he had found somewhere to move into.

  ‘I have an extended essay to write; I can’t really afford to take time off now. Does it have to be now?’

  McLusky had not been entirely frank about the provenance of the cottage nor about the fact that he himself would be working, at least for part of their stay. ‘I only have the use of it for a while. Bring your books and laptop. What’s wrong with writing your essay with a sea view between meals of excellent seafood?’

  It was probably the mention of seafood that had swung it, McLusky thought as he steered his Mercedes through the narrow hedgerow-funnelled country lanes with the windows down and Laura lecturing on Neolithic Cornwall, burial sites, menhirs and quoits. She had been happily slouched in her seat with one foot up on the dashboard and only stopped her lecture when, at the end of their long drive, McLusky had found Rosslyn Crag, on the high ground overlooking the sea near Port Isaac. She sat up. ‘Is this it? Are you sure?’

  ‘That’s what it says.’

  ‘You said “cottage”. This is huge. Look at it. The conservatory is as big as a cottage.’

  McLusky had to admit that Rosslyn Crag did not correspond in any way to how he had described it to Laura. Had it been his own defective imagination or had it been Poulimenos who had led him to imagine a quaint little country cottage?

  Rosslyn Crag turned out to be a substantial nineteenth-century house with a long conservatory constructed from decorative ironwork of the same period. The garden was surrounded by a waist-high dry-stone wall that carried on along the pasture to either side of the property until it disappeared out of sight around a bend in the road. The drive from the road to the house was washed-out gravel and narrow enough to demand caution in a large car like McLusky’s Mercedes or the house owner’s Bentley. It was when he had left the car on a patch of grass and stretched his aching limbs that he saw why the house was here; the spot commanded views of the sea and a stretch of rugged coastline, and provided a tiny glimpse of the little harbour town of Port Isaac. There were only two trees in the surrounding garden, both sheltering from the prevailing wind in the lee of the house.

  ‘So let me get this right,’ said Laura, dropping her holdall at his feet. ‘Some chap you know through work said, “I’ve a little pad in Cornwall. Go and spend the weekend”, right? Who is he, the chief constable?’

  ‘He’s someone I interviewed about the case, and when I said I needed to go to Cornwall as part of the investigation, he gave me the keys to this.’

  ‘We’re here as part of your investigation?’

  McLusky squirmed a little. ‘I need to ask someone a couple of questions, that’s all; it won’t take more than a couple of hours – half an afternoon, tops. Anyway, you’ll be too busy writing your essay on … on …’

  ‘New evidence for changing burial practices in post-Roman Britain.’

  ‘Yeah, that.’

  The inside of the house had the faint smell of holiday homes everywhere – an empty, underused smell that can only be detected in the first half hour, after which it fades into memory. The house was simply furnished, almost stark, with many dark mahogany pieces that looked pre-war but utilitarian, as if all of them were rejects from Nicholas Longmaid’s antiques business. ‘Cheerful seaside cottage,’ said Laura, but she passed a caressing arm around McLusky’s waist as she said it. Upstairs they chose the master bedroom with the best sea views and the conservatory below the two windows. The kitchen was fully equipped but twenty years out of date. They found that all the downstairs windows had locks but the key could not be found. They managed to unlock the conservatory which was empty apart from a stack of striped deckchairs and some rusting iron garden furniture in one corner.

  In the sitting room and dining room the walls were hung with many paintings, mostly unframed seascapes and coastal views. Laura ran a thoughtful finger over furniture and the top edges of paintings, then held it accusingly under McLusky’s nose. ‘Didn’t you tell me your chap said you’d be doing him a favour using the place since no one had been out here this year? Someone was here – two days ago, I’d say. Maybe three, no more. And they gave the place a good dusting. This place has not been unvisited for six months. I know my dust.’

  ‘I remember it. You’re wasted as an archaeologist; you should go into forensics instead.’

  ‘Much the same thing. I might become a forensic archaeologist – you never know.’

  ‘He must have a cleaner. With a place this big, he’d have to or he’d spend all his
holidays tidying.’ McLusky didn’t see anything mysterious in the lack of dust, but he realized it meant that someone else, probably a local, must have a key to the house.

  They had brought with them supplies of milk and tea but nothing beyond that. ‘I’ll have to go out in a minute; I’ll buy something for tonight on the way back,’ McLusky promised.

  ‘You’ll do no such thing! You’ll take me out and buy me dinner. Seafood, remember? Good for the brain. By all means get something for breakfast, though. You realize there’s no phone here? No Wi-Fi and’ – she held up her mobile accusingly – ‘one flickering bar. How do people work out here?’

  ‘In peace? It’s a holiday cottage. House.’

  ‘What if I break my leg?’

  ‘Smoke signals. They’ll see it in Port Isaac.’

  Brian Wagstaff had been known to his friends in the Devon and Cornwall constabulary as ‘Waggy’ or simply ‘the Wag’. He had retired a lowly detective inspector to a cheerless bungalow on the outskirts of Rock. There were no sea views, no flowerbeds in the windswept garden, and the car on the concrete hardstanding beside the house was a ten-year-old Ford with a dent in the bonnet. The net curtains on his windows had yellowed from cigarette smoke; when Waggy Wagstaff opened the door to McLusky, he had a hand-rolled cigarette in the corner of his mouth. It was short enough to threaten his moustache. Everything about him appeared grey, from his fragile comb-over to his shoes. ‘DI McLusky?’

  ‘Liam.’

  ‘Call me Waggy – everyone does.’ He led the way into the kitchen. ‘Hope you don’t mind, I’m in the middle of brewing more beer,’ he said and coughed richly. He laid his cigarette, no more than an inch long, on the rim of a large and full ashtray on the kitchen table. He would later split the cigarette end open and save the tobacco in a tin to mix with fresh tobacco. There was a half-empty pint of dark beer on the table.

  The electric kettle had clicked off as they entered and now Wagstaff emptied it into a large plastic brew bin and began stirring the sludge at the bottom with a long-handled spoon. There were four plastic beer barrels lined up by the door. McLusky rightly concluded that DI Wagstaff was systematically smoking and drinking himself to death. ‘You’ve come about this Kahn business. After all this time. Did you know Kahn means “old boat” in German? I did German at school, see. Kahn. He fell from an old boat and drowned.’

  ‘There was never any doubt about that?’

  ‘Plenty of doubt, believe me. You go out on a boat and come back one short? Of course there’ll be bloody doubt.’

  ‘The body was never found and it worries me. Two of Ben Kahn’s painting buddies have been killed.’

  ‘How?’ Wagstaff’s interest was roused.

  ‘Shot with a thirty-eight.’

  ‘It’s eighteen years later and they were shot. If they were both found drowned in the bath, I’d believe it. Any indication there’s a connection other than that they once went on a boat trip together?’

  ‘Not yet. You never suspected anyone in particular?’

  ‘All of them. None of them. We couldn’t find a motive and couldn’t prove anything anyway. All the witnesses said they were a happy bunch. They had lunch here in Rock that day. Witnesses all said they were laughing and drinking, and there appeared to be no tensions. And without a body and all five sticking to the same story, it was death by misadventure, end of.’

  ‘What do you mean “all five”? Who else was on board?’

  ‘Apart from the painting party, just the skipper and his son.’

  ‘His son? I didn’t read anything about a son in the statements.’

  ‘He was a boy. Fourteen? Fifteen? He didn’t see anything; he was doing something in the wheelhouse when it happened. I think he may have been at the helm. Can’t remember.’

  McLusky had his notebook out. ‘The name of the boat was …’

  ‘Destiny. Which it was. For one of them, anyhow.’

  ‘Is the owner still about? Tigur, was it?’

  ‘John Tigur, known as Jonti. He’s no longer with us.’

  ‘Oh? How did he die?’

  ‘Car accident.’

  ‘Not suspicious?’

  ‘Drunk as the proverbial. Drove into a wall. They all drink and drive round here. In Cornwall, who’s to stop them?’

  ‘Is the son running the boat now?’

  ‘Boat broke its moorings in that big storm three years ago and smashed itself into driftwood.’ Wagstaff was done stirring and was now noisily topping up the brew bin with cold water. ‘But the son’s still about. Mickey. Michael. Last thing I heard he was living or working in Port Isaac.’

  ‘I’ll look him up. In the meantime, I’ll be looking for a good place to eat in Port Isaac. Any ideas?’

  Wagstaff looked him up and down. ‘Try the Mote; you’ll be all right there.’

  ‘You go there a lot?’

  ‘Me? Not on my pension. And I don’t eat seafood. But you’ll be all right there,’ he said again.

  ‘Seafood, eh?’ McLusky saw himself out while Wagstaff sprinkled dried yeast over his frothy brew, paused to cough, then sprinkled some more.

  Back at Rosslyn Crag, McLusky found Laura fast asleep in her bikini bottoms and T-shirt in one of the deckchairs outside the conservatory. It was late afternoon but still very warm. He woke her with a kiss and within minutes had persuaded her that, for health reasons alone, she’d be much better off upstairs in bed. Three hours later they screamed together under a cold shower when they realized they had no idea how to procure hot water from the groaning taps.

  By the time they were ready to go out, the weather had changed and grey clouds had pushed in from the Atlantic, threatening rain. They left the Mercedes in the car park on the hill and walked down into Port Isaac; it was a warm evening and even McLusky managed to enjoy it, despite the fact that Laura had squirmed out of his arm to walk in her own step beside him as the first fine raindrops fell. They passed a birdwatcher on the way, kitted out in rainproof and hood, busy staring through binoculars, standing elbows akimbo right in their path; they passed around the figure on either side and giggled conspiratorially. The holiday season was not in full swing yet and the village, with its whitewashed houses, narrow alleys and slipway port, not yet stripped of all its romance by the brightly coloured hordes of high season. McLusky, knowing that he had to deliver a flawless performance if he wanted to impress Laura, had booked an upstairs table with a view of the harbour at the Mote, the restaurant closest to the water. As it was high tide, it was almost like dining in the harbour, with the waves below the window and the wind throwing moisture against the window pain. When Laura had ordered mussels to start and lobster to follow, McLusky happily said, ‘Same for me.’

  While they waited for their food to arrive, their conversation moved to holidays they had taken together. Their last one had been in Italy. ‘But you’re not really a museum person, are you?’ Laura said. ‘Me, I could spend days in a museum as long as it has sculptures of aliens from the planet Zorg. I get the feeling I don’t have your full attention, DI Liam.’

  ‘Look casually to your left. No, your left. Out the window,’ said McLusky, himself not looking and returning to his food. ‘See the figure on the edge of the slipway on the opposite side?’

  ‘Looks like the birdwatcher we passed on the way down. Seems to be watching us at the moment or maybe there’s a rare bird sitting on the roof. Should we wave?’

  When McLusky looked up again, the figure was turning away. He had missed the opportunity to catch a glimpse of the face. ‘Gone now,’ he commented.

  ‘Hey, Inspector. We’re having a good time, the house is great, the views are to die for, this lobster is excellent. You don’t have to lay on a mystery to make it complete. It’s just a birdwatcher.’

  Later that night Laura worked out how to procure hot water from the old-fashioned boiler, which meant the next day started well enough: McLusky had a very long shower and then, with hair still damp, cooked a cholesterol feast for their breakfas
t which they ate at the rusty table in the conservatory just as the sun broke through the clouds. Laura felt duty-bound to tease him about his recent weight gain. ‘No wonder you’ve piled on the pounds, hon, if this is how you breakfast.’

  ‘I don’t normally. It’s usually coffee and Danish.’

  ‘It’s Special K for you from now on.’

  McLusky feared it might come to that.

  He left her outside in a deckchair typing on her laptop with the wind noisily flicking the pages of her notebook in the grass beside her. Michael Tigur was not easily found. McLusky had imagined that the son of the Destiny’s skipper would be working on another tourist or fishing boat, but Michael Tigur had emphatically turned his back on boat life when he took a job as a driver for a fruit and vegetable wholesaler. After several phone calls McLusky managed to catch up with him at the Slipway Hotel where Tigur had dropped off crates of produce for the kitchen, his last delivery of the morning. They drank tall beakers of coffee outside on the terrace where Tigur could keep an eye on his delivery van in case it blocked the traffic through the narrow lane. Tigur was the same age as McLusky but looked careworn; he had complex Celtic tattoos on his arms, pierced ears and a pierced nose, though his employer insisted he wear no studs or earrings while at work. His hair was dark and short and he looked as though he spent most of his life indoors.

  ‘I was never happy on that boat. It was child labour, really. I had to help my dad run the bloody thing because it didn’t make enough money to pay someone. I’m a lousy sailor, much happier on land. I mean, I don’t even surf.’

  ‘But back then you were crewing for your father. Did you often take people out?’

  ‘Yeah, quite a bit. Around Daymer Bay, up the estuary, across to Padstow …’

  ‘Tell me what happened on that day.’

  Tigur puffed up his cheeks and let the air out slowly, then fortified himself with a sip of coffee. ‘I’m not really sure, to be honest. I thought about it a lot. Then, I mean. And I never could make up my mind afterwards. But it was obvious something weird had happened because my dad told me not to say anything.’