by Will North
“Please…” Penwarren said.
“The sample on one side is Mary Trevean’s sputum. Perfect DNA match. No doubt she coughed it up as she was gasping for breath.”
“Wouldn’t that have been expected?” Morgan asked.
“To me, to Calum, and to you, Morgan, yes, but maybe not to the killer. Still, it’s evidence, which Calum’s people did a fine job of protecting, and it needed to be analyzed and confirmed. And in any event, that’s turned out not to be the issue here. The issue is that the DNA on the opposite side of the cushion, the side pressed by the killer, does not match that of your suspect, Jeremy Rhys-Jones. Of that, there can be no question.”
“So, whose is it? Did you check the National DNA Database?”
“Of course, Morgan, and there’s no match on record.”
“Why is nothing ever easy…?”
“But there’s something I did not tell you in my call yesterday, Morgan. I collected a swab of semen from Mary Trevean’s vagina in my initial examination of her body. It’s Rhys-Jones’s.”
“What?” Morgan barked.
“They were lovers?” Calum asked.
“I can only say they had sex. I can’t even tell you if it was pre- or post-mortem.”
“Jesus wept,” Morgan mumbled.
“Okay, clearly someone else was involved in Mary Trevean’s death,” Penwarren said after a pause. “We don’t know who. And we will no doubt discover who was responsible. But in the meantime, Morgan, I have a suggestion: if you can pull it off with Rhys-Jones and his solicitor, I’d like you to lean in hard on his sexual relationship with Mary Trevean. Let him know we have his DNA when it’s the right moment. See what happens next.”
“What’s the point if he isn’t the murderer?” Terry asked.
Penwarren smiled. “Because I suspect that in the face of that semen evidence he will deny responsibility for her murder adamantly but confess to lesser charges: namely, his attacks on Trevega House. Also, Rhys-Jones has a history of using women. I suspect Mary Trevean was just his latest. Morgan?”
She scowled. “Oh yes, I think I can handle him…”
LESS THAN AN hour later, Davies was back at the Camborne station. Terry had been her driver; she was a demon at the wheel.
Rhys-Jones and Moira Hennessy sat at the tarnished old steel interview table. Someone had provided a third chair. Morgan ignored it and paced around them and the table. It was something she’d learned over the years: enclose the space within which the suspect exists. Hem him in.
“I trust you two have had time to get to know each other?”
Rhys-Jones smirked; Hennessy nodded.
“Oh good. It’s important that you trust each other. That’s only right. May I assume, Jeremy, that you and your lawyer fully understand why you are here and the crimes of which you are considered to be a person of interest?”
“He has not been formally charged,” Hennessy replied, folding her arms across her chest. “And the period during which you can keep my client detained without charging is about to expire.” She was wearing the same black suit but today had a white lace-topped camisole beneath the jacket. Morgan wondered if the camisole was designed to gain Rhys-Jones’s appreciation. There was a hint of cleavage. Hennessy, who was rather short, was also wearing black three-inch heels with a thick ankle strap. Domination, Morgan thought. This girl doesn’t miss a trick.
“Correct, Ms. Hennessy. Right now, Mr. Rhys-Jones is being held, but has not yet been charged, for a serious passport violation which, when substantiated as it certainly will be, could put him away for ten years. Formal charges, as you know, can only be made by the Crown Prosecution Service. My job is simply to interview. That’s why we’re here.
“And in that regard let me say that in the last few days we have uncovered some interesting DNA evidence about the relationship between your client and the late Mrs. Mary Trevean. Of course, we also have that interesting handprint of Jeremy’s on Mrs. Trevean’s sitting room wall. As you know, that is already in evidence.”
“So he visited his landlady,” Hennessy said. “What is your point?”
Morgan smiled. “Oh, he wasn’t just a visitor, Moira; your client also had sex with Mrs. Trevean. Isn’t that right, Jeremy?”
Rhys-Jones looked pole-axed.
His young lawyer blinked but recovered quickly. “And what is that evidence, Inspector?”
“I must say it is somewhat unseemly: semen swabbed from her vagina. He had sex with her, either before or after she died. The timing is uncertain. Unpleasant conundrum, isn’t it? I have the pathologist’s report right here for you to examine, Ms. Hennessy, if you’d like…”
Rhys-Jones vaulted from his chair. “I did not kill Mary!”
“So you’ve said before…”
“That will be quite enough, Jeremy,” the lawyer warned. “Sit down. Now!”
He obeyed.
“Yes, we’d made love. She was avid and we’d had a lot of wine. I went to see her again early that next morning, Friday. She’d wanted me to spend the night with her but I couldn’t. She didn’t answer when I knocked but her car was in the yard. I tried to open her door but it was locked. So was the rear one. Then I looked in the windows and saw her there, on the carpet. I panicked and ran.”
Morgan was behind him and leaned close: “Being a fugitive is becoming quite a habit with you, isn’t it?”
“You’ve said enough, Mr. Rhys-Jones,” Hennessy warned. But Morgan pressed.
“And the crimes at Trevega House, for which we already have your prints and DNA? What about them?”
“Jeremy!” Hennessy warned again.
“I was trying to scare them off! Those people don’t belong there! Trevega belongs to me and Caprice!”
“Caprice?” Hennessy asked, eyes wide, looking at Morgan.
Morgan finally sat at the table and leaned toward Jeremy. “Caprice, your mother, has been dead for years…”
“No! She is still there! I know she is. She’s waiting for me!”
Hennessy stared at her client.
“Did Caprice make you her lover, Jeremy, like Mary Trevean did? Is that why you still seek her?” Morgan’s voice was warm, caring.
“Don’t answer that!”
Rhys-Jones collapsed into sobs. “Caprice loves me…”
Moira Hennessy stood. “We are done here, Inspector!”
“Oh, I suspect not, counsellor, I suspect not,” Morgan said as she rose and left the room.
Penwarren was waiting for her in the corridor. He put an arm around her. “Well done, Morgan, I knew you could…”
“With respect, Sir, I hate breaking people…”
Derek Martin said, “I will agree to have Mr. Rhys-Jones charged with both illegal entry and malicious intent and endangerment at the Trevega estate, but not murder.”
CALUM DROVE MORGAN back to Bodmin to collect her car. Penwarren had dismissed her for the day. He knew she’d hit empty.
“Do you want to talk, luv?” Calum asked as they cleared the A30 exit for Redruth and raced north.
“No. And slow down! I don’t want to die in your damned turbo Volvo…”
Calum sighed and lifted his foot from the accelerator.
After a long silence, Morgan said: “That man is damaged, Calum. Badly. Part of him is disassociated from his day-to-day existence. He lives in two realities. He needs help.”
“He’s committed a series of crimes, beyond entering the country illegally. He’s a danger.”
“I know. But he didn’t kill Trevean.”
“He almost killed Lee.”
“We don’t know that either, yet I have a feeling that he did drop that rock and that it was a terrible mistake, one that horrified him. I am almost certain it was not his intent to harm her. Just another threat, but it went wrong. He doesn’t have murder in him, Calum. I know murderers. He’s a weakling, a badly twisted one. I think he beat his subsequent partners because they were not Caprice. No woman could measure up to his vision of her.
Dr. Duncan told me that her examination suggests that the sex with Mary Trevean was violent. Maybe that thrilled her, maybe he was punishing her for coming on to him. Or for not being Caprice. We’ll never know. But it is consistent with his past. I need to message Dr. Knight.”
In the empty Bodmin incident room, after Calum had left her off to go home, she emailed her thoughts to Dr. Knight.
His answer came back in moments: “Yes. And you should work for me.”
AT THE BLISLAND Inn, she ordered a take-out curry and avoided Garry. Back at home she’d finished the curry and her third vodka tonic while listening to Art Blakey’s “Jazz Messengers” on her CD player.
THERE WAS A loud knock at her door. She realized she’d dozed off. The CD player was silent. She had no idea what the time was. She looked for a weapon but knew she had none.
“Who are you and what do you want!” she yelled at the door.
“Morgan, dear lady, it’s just me, Garry. You’re safe. I was worried about you tonight when you slipped away from the inn…”
She opened the door. “Jesus, Garry. You frightened the shit out of me. No one ever comes here.”
“Maybe they should…”
Morgan was trying to clear her head. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
He stepped inside and embraced her.
“It means I should like to be welcomed and to look after you, Morgan.”
She resisted. “I don’t need anyone looking after me!”
He hugged her again, gently. “Are you sure?”
“It’s been a brutal day,” she said relaxing into his shoulder.
“Care to share it with me?”
“No, let’s just be quiet and be with each other…”
Thirty-Four
“I’M DEMANDING AN independent psychiatric evaluation,” Hennessy said Tuesday morning.
“Yes, I rather thought you would.”
Hennessy had driven up to Bodmin from Camborne. Morgan wondered why she’d not simply texted her. Then again, she suspected the young lawyer had wished she’d turned down the request for representation in this case and was looking for some level of collaboration.
“Privately, Moira, I agree,” Morgan continued. “Jeremy Rhys-Jones is broken. Maybe psychotic, maybe schizophrenic, who knows? He disguises it well. For years, his father cleaned up the damage he caused. Now, he has no one.”
“Except Caprice…”
“Exactly.”
“He is suspected of several malicious acts,” Hennessy said as if reading from a list: “attempted murder with a noxious substance—the bleached well, though no one was hurt; criminal damage with respect to the bullock and the dog; possible damage to a brake line, unproven; and offenses against a person—the girl, Lee. I suppose that last also could be construed as attempted murder, though there is no evidence he was the assailant and thus nothing yet by which to connect him.”
“Unless he confesses, of course. But I commend you; you certainly know your law.”
The younger woman grinned. “I should hope so: top of my class, University of Bristol. Two years ago.”
“Yet you opted for public defense? You must have had far more lucrative choices.”
“It’s something I believe in.”
Morgan studied her. “I’m glad,” she said after a moment. “Look, if I have any influence he will be charged only with illegal entry to the UK. I have asked the CPS to hold off on the Trevega charges, at least for now. And, as you say, the evidence is spotty, his confession notwithstanding: it would be easily challenged.”
“Why are you telling me this? You have a reputation…”
Morgan laughed: “Yes, and well earned, I promise you. But I don’t go after every suspect tooth and nail, and this case may be one of those exceptions. I have spoken to the family at Trevega House. Jeremy’s ex-wife will not press charges if your client receives the care he needs and serves the time he must for his illegal entry. They just want to be safe from him.”
“Okay. I hear you.”
“Only you did not, got that?”
Hennessy nodded.
“Look, Moira, Rhys-Jones is not Mary Trevean’s murderer, and that’s all I care about right now, okay? She’s dead. Jeremy Rhys-Jones is a desperately poor excuse for a man—or even a human-being—but he’s not a killer. He has other things to answer for, certainly, but not that.”
“Inspector Davies…”
“Morgan.”
“Morgan, then. When will he be charged formally for illegal entry?”
“The CPS says today.”
“Right, then; I’d better get back to Camborne. Thank you for your candor.”
Morgan grinned: “Candor’s never been my problem, Moira, but usually it isn’t a gift. You owe me.”
MORGAN WAS DOING paperwork—or rather computer work, the bane of her existence—when her mobile vibrated in her pocket. She pulled it out and looked at the screen.
“Your phone calls deep in my trouser pocket are almost as good as my home vibrator, Calum.”
“That is not something you needed to share, my dear.”
“I know. I just like to wind you up.”
“Too late: I’m pre-wound.”
“No kidding! That’s why you have heart trouble, you idiot! Are you attending to that?”
“Did you wish to know the substance of my call?”
“Oh, I give up; what the hell is it?”
“I’ve been scrolling through the entire case file on Rhys-Jones…”
“How many times have I told you: you’re scene and evidence: I’m investigation!”
“More than I care to count, my dear, but permit me to offer an observation, no extra charge…”
“Like I could ever stop you?”
“You interviewed an Eldridge Biggins, the same chap, as it happens, who showed my SOCO people around Mary Trevean’s house and rental cottages when we found the body. Very helpful, he was. His farm is adjacent to hers, yes?”
“Tell me something I don’t already know.”
“In your interview with him about Mary’s death, as well as Terry’s chat with his wife, Alice…who seems an odd one, if you ask me…both made it clear they had been long-time friends of the Treveans and that they looked after Mary in the period after her husband died, even brought her meals. And Alice and her husband both said that Mary and Eldridge had a special bond, closer maybe than marriage I think Eldridge suggested.”
“Yes. They were apparently soul mates, but innocent ones.”
“According to whom, Morgan? And what if Eldridge and Mary weren’t? Innocent, I mean. How do we know other than his and his wife’s own statements, which could have been articulated for at least two protective reasons, are the truth?”
“Two reasons?”
“For Alice: fear. For Eldridge: guilt.”
“Are you somewhere in the building?”
“Downstairs in the evidence room, my home away from home.”
“Get up here.”
“I HATE IT when you get ahead of me, do you know that?”
“It seldom happens, Morgan. When it comes to investigation, to burrowing deep, you have no equal.”
“Not this time, Calum. I missed it.”
“Missed what?”
She tossed a brown C4 envelope across her desk. It had come in the post earlier that morning.
“Go ahead open it. Attend particularly to page two.”
“It is unopened; how do you already know what I should look for?”
“Don’t ask.”
“Like I said, you’re always ahead of me…”
He tore open the envelope and found a certified copy of the Last Will and Testament of Mary Trevean. He scanned the first page, which was mostly boilerplate, and turned to the second page.
After a few moments, he said, “Yes. Yes, I see.” He was barely whispering. “Is this motive?”
“The Biggins’s surely needed the money. They’re saddled with a significant property debt owing
to Eldridge’s purchase of Trevean’s land and livestock after her husband died.”
“And you know this, because…”
“Like I said, don’t ask.”
“But if you already knew this, Morgan…?”
She raised her hands in frustration. “It just didn’t register, okay? Frankly, I’m disgusted with myself.”
“Because you were so certain about Rhys-Jones?”
“Yes. As was Mister. But we’re both so wrong.”
“Wrong is not in your resume, Morgan, and I will certainly not add this as an addendum. So now?”
“We pull both of them in again, Eldridge and Alice. I’ll call Novak and have him drive them here.”
“The cushion DNA?”
“All we know is that it wasn’t Rhys-Jones’s.”
Thirty-Five
“I HAVE TO be home for the late milking.”
“I fully understand, Mr. Biggins,” Morgan said. “With any luck, this should not take long.”
“Why did that officer fingerprint me out there in the other room?”
“That’s just normal procedure; we do it for everyone known to the deceased. Like the cheek swabs. Not to worry; it is data we’ll likely never need.”
Biggins fidgeted on his hard chair. As before, it was clear he did not like being trapped in the interview room. Though he already knew there was none, he looked for a window. It was a reflex. Morgan couldn’t tell if it was fear of enclosed places or if he was searching for some avenue of escape. In any case, there was none.
“Where’s my Alice?”
“Just in the next room, safe and sound, I promise you. And let me just thank you and your wife for coming.”
“Not much choice.”
“No, I suppose not, but I trust Constable Novak was a gentleman?”
“Yes, yes, of course. But why call me back here? Or my Alice?”
“That’s a fair question. We just wanted to follow up on something you said the last time we interviewed you here. Do you remember that interview? That was right after Mary Trevean’s body was discovered.”
