by Katie Penryn
“There’s no way Ben would have done this once or twice a week, boss. Apart from the difficulty, his family would have seen him and wondered what he was doing.”
“We should check anyway, just to be sure.”
The attic proved to be unboarded and after a tricky search involving moving carefully from joist to joist, we gave it up as an unfeasible hiding place. That left the garden.
We stopped to make a cup of tea and stood looking out over the vast expanse we’d have to search while we drank. The shed stood off to the right at the bottom of the garden and to the left the Marin’s had turned Marcel’s large sandpit into a safe landing area for a swing.
“I’d better get a spade from the garage,” Felix said. “It’ll take us ages. You’ll be turning up nails and broken garden tools and anything else that was buried here when the house was built.”
“As long as we find no skeletons, I shall be happy,” I said.
We washed our cups and set off to check the garden.
“We’ll leave the front garden to last,” I said. “I don’t see Ben digging holes there when the neighbors could catch him at it.”
Felix agreed with me. I summoned up the mental energy required for casting a spell and took several deep breaths to fill my brain with oxygen. Once I had the images fixed in my mind, I uttered the magic words veni metallice. Immediately, a tingle ran up my arms.
“I’m standing on something, Felix. Dig down here and check the spell is working properly.”
“He wouldn’t bury the book right outside the kitchen door. I can see I’m going to be digging up the whole garden by the time we’ve finished.”
Although he spoke with ill grace, he dug down a few inches and uncovered an old fork with twisted tines.
“The spell’s working, boss,” he said as he scuffed the soil and gravel back into position with his foot. “I suggest we start over on the right.”
For the next two hours, we covered the whole of the back yard, working in a grid pattern. I hoped no one could see us as I had to appear to be mad as I wandered about waving my arms above the ground like a water diviner. Of course, that’s what I was. A diviner of metal objects. We found old nails, tin cans, the business end of a shovel, and even an old handmade horseshoe, but we didn’t find any metal boxes with secret documents.
As Felix straightened up from filling in the last hole and relaying the turf, I said, “Time for a break before we tackle the front garden.”
I clicked my fingers to end the spell, not wanting my arms to whirl like a windmill when they sensed all the metal objects in the kitchen.
“Do you think Désirée would mind if we helped ourselves to a beer?” Felix asked as we entered the kitchen. “After all that hard work, a cup of tea is not going to cut it.”
I opened the fridge and took out a couple of bottles of lager and held them up to Felix. He nodded, “That’s more like it.”
I walked over to join him by the kitchen window and looked out over the garden. We’d been careful when carrying out our excavations, but the areas we’d dug up were slightly proud of the surrounding grass. I hoped Désirée wouldn’t notice before they sank back to their original level. Soil unlike sand doesn’t settle straight away. Sand?
I gripped Felix’s arm and pointed at the swing standing in its bed of sand.
“We didn’t try the sandpit. That would make more sense when you think about it. Ben wouldn’t have wanted to dig up his garden every time he had to make an entry in his JB2. In the sandpit, it would be easy. Just scoop the sand aside, put in the tin and cover it over again. A couple of minutes.”
We plonked our half empty beer bottles down on the kitchen counter and rushed outside, driven by the desire to test my theory and spurred on by the rapidly approaching autumn twilight. Off in the distance a police siren ee-awed through the evening air breaking the suburban peace. I closed my mind against the sound as I relaunched the veni metallice spell and stepped into the sandpit. I moved slowly forwards along the right-hand board holding my arms out in front of me. Nothing. The siren grew louder and stopped out front. Spinning red and blue lights strobed past the house and down to the bottom of the garden where I stood poised ready to take my next step. Instinct made me drop my arms to my side and click my fingers to end the spell.
Two policemen ran round the house down towards us shouting at us to stand still and raise our hands above our heads. I was too startled to signal to Felix who was standing behind me. I hoped he wouldn’t do anything silly.
One officer stepped towards me and frisked me rapidly making my stomach lurch in unjustified fear and dread. He told me to drop my hands and moved on to Felix. The blood was draining out of my head and I was close to fainting.
“Let her sit down,” Felix called out to the man in charge. “Can’t you see how you’ve frightened her?”
For answer the officer patting Felix down grabbed hold of him and hauled him out of the sandpit. The chief said, “She can sit down in our police car on the way to the gendarmerie. We’re taking you both in for questioning.”
“We haven’t done anything illegal,” Felix said trying to shake off the officer’s hand.
“If you do not desist, monsieur, I shall cuff you.”
And with that they dragged us up the garden and pushed us into their patrol car.
Felix sat upright in the back seat, clenching and unclenching his fists.
“Don’t you dare, Felix,” I whispered. “Never argue with a man in uniform and certainly not a French gendarme.”
I jerked my head to point out the guns worn by the officers.
“Do not provoke them. I’m sure there’s a simple explanation, and they haven’t arrested us.”
Felix subsided and crossed his arms over his chest as if he couldn’t trust himself not to use them if he didn’t.
“I don’t like this, boss.”
*
When we reached the gendarmerie, the officers hustled us through to an interview room and closed the door. They had received a report from one of Désirée’s neighbors that two prowlers were up to no good in her house and garden while she was away.
On the one hand I was glad to hear that her neighbors were looking out for her interests but on the other it left Felix and me in an embarrassing position. I explained to the officers that she had given us permission to walk round her garden, but I had no proof. To be fair, my assertion must have sounded fishy. What would two people be doing that late in the day digging holes in someone’s garden while the house owner was away?
“Can’t you call Madame Marin and check with her?” I asked.
“You have her phone number?” the tall one countered.
“Of course,” said Felix pulling out his phone. “Shall I call her?”
The officer nodded. Felix made the call, but she didn’t answer. Of course, she would have her phone switched off if she was watching Marcel’s karate class.
“You’ll have to stay here until we can get hold of her to corroborate your story,” the officer said.
“Is Inspector Dubois here today?” I asked. I hadn’t mentioned him before because I hadn’t expected us to be held.
He was about to answer me when the door opened and Madame Fer-de-Lance, the prosecutor who hated my guts, popped her head around.
She gave a curt nod in my direction.
“What are you doing here, Madame Munro? I’ve warned you before about interfering in police business.”
I gulped behind my hand and kicked Felix to keep him quiet. She couldn’t possibly know Felix and I were investigating the Marin brothers’ murders, or could she? We’d been discreet and Dubois wouldn’t have told her.
Fortunately, the officer answered for me.
“We’ve brought them in for questioning, Madame le Juge. Someone reported them scurrying about in a neighbor’s garden. They say they had the owner’s permission. We’re waiting on confirmation.”
I sighed with relief. He hadn’t mentioned whose house. With her quick int
elligence, Madame Fer-de-Lance would have put two and two together if he’d said it was Désirée’s garden.
“Very well,” she said, scowled at us all and ducked her head back banging the door to with unnecessary force.
The two officers gave me the brief smile of fellow sufferers of the Fer-de-Lance bad temper.
One of the officers got to his feet. “You asked about Inspector Dubois?”
“Yes, he knows us well. He will vouch for us.”
“I’ll find out if he’s here,” he said leaving the room.
Felix pointed at his watch. Time was running out. Désirée would be home soon. She would probably answer her phone then and clear us, but we’d have lost our chance to search the sandpit. The three of us sat in silence waiting for the officer to return. When he did, he brought Dubois with him. Dubois was all apologies. He was genuinely sorry to hear we’d been brought in for questioning but, of course, he wanted to keep my parallel investigation into the Marin killings a secret.
“We’re so short of staff with two murders to solve, we have drafted in extra officers from Cognac. That’s why these two gentlemen didn’t know you, Madame Munro. Please accept our apologies.”
“But, Inspector,” said the officer. “We have to write up our report. We have to confirm that these two had permission to be digging up the garden?”
Dubois raised his eyebrows. “Digging up the garden, Madame Munro?”
“That’s an exaggeration, Inspector. We’d been to visit with our dogs and lost their ball. Madame Marin said we could search for it this evening.”
Dubois gave me a slanted look but didn’t pursue the subject.
“Give the officers Madame Marin’s number so they can keep trying, but I see no reason to hold you here in the gendarmerie.” He looked at the two officers, “One of you stay and keep trying Madame Marin and the other take Madame Munro and her friend back to Madame Marin’s house to fetch their car.”
And with that he strode out but not without giving me a quick wink while his officers had their heads down in the notebooks.
*
We’d wasted over an hour and a half at the police station and night was drawing in fast. We had to hurry if we were to finish our exploration before Désirée returned. I didn’t want to have to explain to her why we were digging up her son’s old sandpit. Armed with our flashlights, Felix and I walked briskly down to the swing area. With all the stress, I hoped I’d be able to remember the metal spell when we reached it.
I dropped to the ground and sat with my legs crossed for a few minutes to calm my pulse and focus on the job ahead. Felix waited quietly for me to ready myself and gave me a pull to my feet when I nodded at him. I summoned up the energy to cast the spell, concentrating hard on the idea of a metal box. I took a deep breath and stepped back into the sandpit one pace over from the time before. I shuffled through the sand to the other end moving my hands slowly from side to side, palms outstretched.
I turned round when I hit the end and took a step to the right. This time I’d gone only four paces when my hands began to tingle. My arms shuddered as I advanced one more step.
Felix joined me, his spade at the ready. I moved aside to give him space to dig. He scraped the first few inches aside before driving his spade downwards. It hit an object with a dull clank. Finding the edge of the object, he dug out all round it in a rectangle. It was a tin of some kind. We crouched down on our hands and knees and loosened the sand from around the edges until Felix could lift the object out. A tin box lay in front of us. A cashbox or a fishing tackle box. A small padlock hung from the hasp but that was no problem for me. I cast the unlock spell. The padlock sprang open with a soft click. I was about to lift the lid when Felix reminded me to put my gloves on. A book with a thick cardboard cover, similar to an invoice book, lay in the box. I took the book out and turned over the pages but, of course, I couldn’t read what was written there, so Felix took over.
“It looks like Ben’s handwriting,” he said as he flipped through a few pages. “It’s notes of where they sailed. The GPS co-ordinates. So you were right about it being a duplicate logbook, boss.”
“We’ll need to compare it with the agenda on Ben’s laptop. If the dates and times coincide, this has to be their secret record of where they sailed and what they did.”
“Only one problem. The entry for the day Joseph was murdered hasn’t been entered, which supports the idea that Ben never returned from that voyage.”
“And we won’t know where they went?” I asked Felix.
“No,” said Felix taking his anorak off and using it to wrap up the box and JB2. “We should get out of here before Désirée comes home,” he said. “You carry this while I put the spade away.”
We met up at the car and turned out of the drive as Désirée turned in. I buzzed my window down and told her we’d finished. She smiled a thank-you. We drove home anxious to find out what information JB2 would yield.
Chapter 27
We compared all three references to the itineraries of the Princesse over the months since April: the notes in Ben’s agenda, the official logbook of which Dubois had given me a copy and our new find, the mysterious JB2. All the entries agreed for date and time but definitely not for the areas of the sea covered by their sailing trips.
Felix pulled a map from the internet for the area covered by those trips, both fake and real, and zoomed in. He downloaded the resulting image and began to plot the trips from the JB2 logbook to determine a pattern behind the secret voyages.
The Marin brothers would sail out to sea, anchor and stay on the spot for several hours, and then sail back to port. Each trip took the boat along the same line of latitude and moved them to the west from one degree of longitude to the next. It appeared that they had been systematically covering a large area of the ocean to the west of the Cordouan Lighthouse where the depth was given as thirty feet or about five fathoms.
“What’s so special about this area?” I asked Felix.
“I’ll be blowed if I know,” he said. “Let me do a web search and see what I can find out.”
I left Felix to his task and went to the kitchen to check on Gwinny, Sam and Jimbo.
“How’d it go with Desjardins today?” I asked Gwinny.
She pointed out of the window at the dystopian scene of our back garden. Piles of soil had been scraped off and stacked against the back wall. Desjardins’ men had begun to lay the weed-proof film for the lawn. It had to get worse before it got better, but it was a depressing sight.
When she saw my face Gwinny held up some pictures of flowering plants. “I keep looking at these to keep my spirits up,” she said. “Half an hour’s warning for supper.”
“Felix and I are working on something in the study. We might be late, so start without us. I’ve come to fetch drinks.”
I took a couple of tins of lager out of the fridge for Felix and poured myself a long drink of pineau over ice.
I was on the point of walking out when I remembered Marcel and Désirée.
“How was it at school today with your teacher back in charge of your class, Jimbo? Did anyone bully Marcel today?”
“No, Marcel was fine. People were a bit shy of him at first because they felt so bad about the way they treated him, but Madame Marin got us all playing a team game in class and everything changed.”
“And Madame Marin?”
“She was brave.”
“What do you mean?”
“When no one was looking she was a little weepy, like a kid who’s homesick.”
I gave Jimbo a quick hug and took my booty back to the study.
“Thanks,” said Felix when I handed him an ice cold beer. “All I’ve found out so far is that this part of the coast is famous for its shifting underwater sandbanks and the violence of the storms, which are aggravated by the tidal race of the River Gironde. There’ve been many shipwrecks over the centuries.”
“Were they hunting for a wreck?”
“It’s possible, but
it would have been pointless. All the wrecks are marked on the charts.”
“All the known wrecks, Felix.”
“True, but these are such busy shipping lanes, I’m sure there aren’t any undiscovered wrecks. And treasure hunters research all missing ships. It’s big business nowadays.”
“What about smuggling?”
“People, you mean?”
I nodded thinking of the misery that drives desperate people to try illegal immigration. I hoped we wouldn’t find Joseph and Ben had been profiteering from the trade. I had liked them too much to find out they were criminals.
Felix stared at the trips he had marked on the map.
“That doesn’t make sense. Why would they stop at a slightly different spot on every trip?”
“To confuse any monitoring systems. Satellites and so on. That’s all too technical for me but I’m sure someone somewhere keeps track of everything.”
“Boss, it’s late. We should eat. Perhaps we should go to the library tomorrow and get some local knowledge about the area.”
Felix shut his laptop. He was closing the study door behind me when I remembered something Désirée had said. I hadn’t paid much attention at the time, but now it struck me as pertinent.
I placed my hand on Felix’s arm to keep him back in the hall.
“Felix, Désirée told us that when Ben wasn’t working, sailing or out in his shed, he’d be at the library. He’d been spending more and more time there. What did he find so interesting, I wonder?”
“I’d hazard a guess that his visits were involved with this sailing mystery. We should make a midnight visit to the library tonight.”
A sudden wave of fatigue hit me. We’d had a busy day.
“Tonight? Can’t it wait?” I asked.
He must have seen how exhausted I was.
“Sorry, boss. I forget how much it takes it out of you to cast your spells. And we’ll need magic to get into the library if we go at night. How about we have an early night and tackle the library in the early hours, say, four o’clock?”
