by Will North
“Yes.”
“And Alice…she killed my Mary…?”
Thirty-Seven
“YOU’VE NOT LEFT my people much to do. Plus, this coffee’s terrible,” Derek Martin groused. The Crown Prosecution Service’s portly investigating solicitor sat with Davies, Penwarren, and Hennessy in the noisy café of the Morrison’s supermarket just downhill from the Magistrate’s Court in Bodmin. He had a sausage roll in one pudgy hand and the coffee in the other. The court, having heard the police evidence and a statement from Martin himself, had remanded Alice Biggins for trial to the nearest women’s prison, HM Eastwood Park, far north in Gloucestershire.
“Well, she pretty much did your work for you, Alice did. And the DNA evidence simply supported it.” Morgan said.
“But I will still need any and all documentation you have on this case, including that associated with your initial suspect, Jeremy Rhys-Jones.”
“Why?” Moira Hennessy demanded. “He had no role in Trevean’s murder.”
Penwarren interrupted: “Because the prosecutors, the ‘Queen’s Silk’ chaps at Crown Court, will require it for trial. Derek’s job is to collect every piece of documentary evidence associated with the case so Alice Biggins’s own lawyer, another of your able Public Defender colleagues, can’t claim the police or the prosecution have left anything out. And anyway, why were you even here today? Your client is Rhys-Jones…”
Hennessy smiled. “Research: I have a lot to learn that they don’t teach you in law school.”
“Somehow, I don’t think you’ll have any trouble keeping up, Moira,” Morgan said.
“Look, the other reason I’m here is to thank you both on behalf of my client. Having been convicted of illegal entry with a false passport, Mr. Rhys-Jones is now imprisoned but also receiving psychiatric care at HM Exeter. He was a long-term victim of incest. It seems to have damaged him. They don’t know how deeply or permanently. That this passport violation is the only charge against him, however, I owe to you two,” she said, nodding to Davies and Penwarren, “and to Nicola Rhys-Jones. She and Andrew Stratton have waived the charges against him associated with his apparent attacks upon Trevega House. They understand he is haunted. All Nicola cares about is that he be treated and that they remain safe from him. I think we can arrange that. I don’t think Mr. Rhys-Jones will be going anywhere anytime soon. I shall work to ensure that, even though I am his defense lawyer. It’s what he needs.”
“What about extradition to Italy?” Morgan asked. “I don’t know anything about that.”
“Our extradition treaty with European Union countries stipulates that if the person wanted is already charged with a crime in the UK, that crime and its prosecution has preference. In this case, given what I suspect will be the length of treatment and incarceration, that may be a very long time.”
“I doubt extradition will happen anyway,” Penwarren added. “The woman who accused him has proved an unreliable witness, according to information from the Polizia. They suspect Rhys-Jones’s version of that event may be true and the woman lodged those inflated charges pursuant to a lawsuit seeking compensation from their employer, Credit Suisse, though the investigation continues.”
Morgan’s mobile vibrated, dancing on the table top.
“Sorry.” She looked at the sender on her screen. “Oh, shit, not that. Not now…” She stood, sought a quiet corner, and listened.
“Morgan?” Penwarren was beside her when she closed her phone.
“It’s the Royal Cornwall Hospital. Calum’s there. They can’t control his heart. He’s going into surgery for a pacemaker. So help me, if he survives this I’m going to kill him.” She grabbed her purse.
“Morgan?”
“What?”
“He loves you, you know.”
A WEEK LATER, Morgan stomped into Penwarren’s office at the Bodmin hub.
“Yes, please do come in, Morgan,” Penwarren said, laughing. He’d seen her reflection in his window. “How is Calum?”
“He’s recovering, damn him. When I get my chance…”
“When you get your chance, I think he’ll need you. His girls will, too. And we need him back. Attend to that. Take whatever time is necessary. Now, assuming this is not a medical update, as you’ve provided none to us since his surgery, was there something else?”
She sat down at his small conference table and stared at its surface.
Penwarren turned. Morgan looked defeated. He crossed to the table and sat.
“Morgan?”
“I was looking over my notes on the Biggins case and found something I’d lost track of. Her banker in St. Ives mentioned she had a collection notice on her account from a physician in Penzance.”
“This banker is no doubt your ‘source’ about Mary Trevean’s will?”
“Okay, yes. But he’s done nothing wrong, nor have I, so get over it.”
“You’re angry Morgan. Talk to me.”
“Alice Biggins is dying, boss. Incurable renal cancer. Far advanced. That’s why she looks so emaciated. Her husband claims he never knew and I believe him. She had her own modest bank account, money Eldridge gave her, and when the doctor gave her the diagnosis she refused to pay the bill: denial, the doc reckons. Not uncommon.”
“Which means…”
“She’ll never serve for Mary Trevean’s murder. Probably not even make it to Crown Court. She knew her condition was terminal before she killed Trevean. I think she’d been building up a powerful hatred about Trevean’s relationship with her husband for years and killed her when she believed they were actually lovers. Mary was beautiful and lived in a beautiful house; Alice lived a life of frugal deprivation, thanks to Eldridge.”
“Her lawyers will use the provocation defense: loss of control due to suspected infidelity,” Penwarren said. “The CPS, on the other hand, are saying it was a revenge killing, pure and simple.”
“Her defense would lose the loss of control argument anyway,” Morgan answered. “Since the law on provocation was changed, that defense wouldn’t help her. I checked with Moira Hennessy. If convicted, she still would get a life sentence.”
“Which, apparently, she already has…” Penwarren said, almost to himself.
“Yes.”
“She never had anything to lose, did she…?”
“No. But everyone else did. Especially Mary Trevean.”
Epilogue
“JESUS, ARTHUR! IS this real?” Nicola said looking at sheaf of papers on her long kitchen table.
Andrew had no idea what she was going on about but he was smart enough to head for the wine cellar.
Penwarren smiled. “Nicola. Are you all right?”
“Honestly? No. This is just beyond me. Completely.”
“Nicky, it’s simple: Michael loved you.”
“Okay, fine, but I’m still that poor Italian kid from Boston’s North End!”
“And, if I may speak for Michael, it’s time you left that identity behind. You are here, where you belong, a successful artist, and here at Trevega with Andrew and Lee. Look, Michael’s made a handsome lifetime provision for his daughter, Nina, including his Mayfair house which must be worth millions. And he’s ensured that Jeremy will be taken care of, wherever he ends up and for as long as he lives.”
“Yes, but this!” She pointed to Sir Michael’s will, which lay open on the long kitchen table.
“Yes, the rest seems to be yours…”
She’d never known how wealthy Michael was and had never thought to ask. All she cared about was that he’d rescued her from her husband, loved her better than any father, and gave her, Andrew, and Lee a new life at Trevega.
“I knew so little about him…” she whispered.
“I knew him for years and felt the same.”
“And Prince Charles, of all people, attends his funeral at St. Sennara’s Church and then motors off with his security entourage? That caused quite a stir. Who the hell was Michael?”
“The Prince and he had been close fo
r years. Michael was a trusted adviser. That’s all I can say.”
“Can say or will say?”
Penwarren smiled. “Yes.”
“And then there’s this on top of it all! I thought this would be the surprise today!” She pushed an opened letter across to Penwarren.
He read it but took some time to speak, so full was his heart: “I am so happy for you all,” he finally said. His eyes glistened. The letter confirmed Lee’s formal adoption. He’d not quite understood how much the girl had come to mean to him. Perhaps Michael’s spirit had made him his replacement, her caretaker. He didn’t know, but it felt natural and good.
“I brought a Dom Perignon up from the chiller. Will that suit?” Andrew said as he entered the kitchen. “How did I ever become the waiter here?”
They had only simple wine glasses. He removed the foil and wire, uncorked gently, and poured.
“To Sir Michael Rhys-Jones, a great credit to his country and a dear friend,” Andrew proposed. He knew nothing yet except that they were celebrating Michael, and the adoption papers.
At that moment, Lee bounced in with a nearly recovered Randi. Her arm and shoulder were still in a sling.
“You’ve had news,” Lee said in her usual manner. “I sensed it and brought Randi home.” She recognized Penwarren, shook his hand solemnly, and looked hard at him. “You have something to do with this, I know.
“So, what is it?” she said turning to Nicola. “And do I get any of that champagne?”
“What about us?” Flora demanded as she barged in. Jamie was behind her. “How many glasses come in a single champagne bottle, anyway? Enough? And what the hell’s going on?”
“The adoption papers came through, sweetie. We’re a true family at last. We love you so. But there’s more. So much more.”
That was it. It was all she could take. Nicola began sobbing.
Lee ran to her. “Nicky? Mum??”
Nicola clutched the girl to her breast...Mum, she had called her.
Keep reading for an excerpt from the next book in the Davies & West Mystery Series.
Murder On The Commons
A Davies & West Mystery
An excerpt from Book 4 in the Davies & West Mystery Series
For updates, go to
www.willnorthnovelist.com
“Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.”
Garret Hardin
The Tragedy of the Commons
The Major Crime Investigation Team
Detective Chief Inspector Arthur Penwarren
Detective Inspector Morgan Davies
Detective Sergeant Calum West
Detective Sergeant Terry Bates
Detective Constable Adam Novak
One
IT WAS THE fierceness of the caws and keening cries echoing across the wastes of Bodmin Moor that caught her attention as she neared the summit of Rough Tor late that afternoon. Nearly the highest point in the whole of Cornwall, the bizarre outcrop of granite atop Rough Tor was visible for miles around. Over the eons water, wind, and frost had found their way through softer veins of quartz and split the granite horizontally so that the huge weathered slabs looked like some giant’s building block toys. She’d just paused to catch her breath when she heard the fracas away to the northeast. She pulled binoculars from the pocket of her waxed cotton jacket but realized she’d have to move farther north to locate the source.
Crossing a high ridge she reached the shattered summit of Showery Tor and finally saw them far below to the east. She was used to seeing carrion crows pester a buzzard hawk when it had prey in its talons, the scavengers and the hunter wheeling high in the sky, battling to survive another day. But this was different. This was strange. The birds were fighting over something on the ground—if ground were even an appropriate term for the sodden waste of Rough Tor Mire.
Jan Cuthbertson knew this austere landscape well and she knew that every once in a while one of the wild ponies that roamed the moor, usually a young one, would be lured by the brighter green vegetation at lower elevations and would stray downhill, lose its footing among the reedy tussocks in the swampy ground and, as it struggled, sink slowly but inexorably into the bog until it died of exhaustion or exposure or both. Perhaps that had happened again.
The Cuthbertsons had been the Lords of Poldue Manor since the mid-sixteenth century when, having sided with the English in the conflict between Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots, they were forced to flee their native Scotland. For their loyalty, however, Elizabeth granted them the Poldue estate. Over the centuries they improved the soil, spreading lime-rich beach sand to sweeten the natural acidity of the peaty ground. Today, their land encompassed both fertile lowland fields bounded by ancient stone hedges and wide expanses of open upland moor. They grazed more than fifteen hundred sheep and several hundred shaggy longhorn Highland cattle.
Jan, just turned twenty-two, had recently completed her agricultural and environmental studies at Duchy College in nearby Stoke Climsland. She’d come home and now was in charge of regularly evaluating the condition of the manor’s commons grazing land. She was the moorland manager for their estate, which encompassed almost fourteen hundred acres and stretched almost to Brown Willy Tor, the highest spot in Cornwall.
The manor had all-terrain vehicles by which to traverse the moor, but Jan preferred to go on foot: less damage to the fragile ground. She’d taken a keen interest in the botany of the moor and in its wildlife…which is why the battling birds troubled her. Their behavior was all wrong. She tied her mane of streaked blond hair into a messy ponytail, took a slug from her water bottle, shouldered her small knapsack, and bounded downslope nimble as a roe deer, the ground becoming ever softer until her boots squelched as she approached the mire. The buzzard looked up, hesitated for a moment, and then carried on with its grisly business, which was ripping apart the face of a body shoulder deep in the mire. The hawk was perched on the body’s skull, its talons dug in for balance. The carrion crows were frantic and relentless, diving at the hawk, batting it with their wings and pecking. The hawk ignored them.
She waved off the crows, threw rocks at the hawk until it finally hauled itself into the sky, screeching in fury, then pulled out her mobile and punched in the 999 emergency number for Devon and Cornwall Police. After the initial shock of discovery, something about the invisibility of the body and the anonymity of the ravaged face helped her stay calm, as if the thing were a curiosity in some bizarre country museum. Using her pocket GPS she gave the exact location to a police operator at the Comms Unit in Exeter, rang off, and scanned the hills. The light was fading quickly, the undulating moorland hills turning a dull gray-brown and losing definition, as if the scene were a flat theater backdrop. She looked back at the summit of Rough Tor. Mist had slipped in from the west and the tor sometimes vanished into it altogether. If she left immediately, she could reach the safety of home before dark. She turned away from the body and trudged westward, careful always to seek out firm ground. Though she knew the moor well, she also knew never to be upon it in the dark.
IT WAS PAST six that Monday evening when detective chief inspector Arthur Penwarren saw the report from the Comms unit. Though most of the other officers had left for the day he was still at his standing desk facing the tall windows that looked out over the rolling countryside beyond his office in the modern, three-story Bodmin Police Hub. Dusk had slithered up the valley, silent and snakelike, while he’d been doing paperwork. In the distance, the trees were already losing their color, the leaves yellowing and browning a little more every day. In a few weeks, when the nation turned its clocks back, it would dark by now. The weather was closing in as well. There would be one more day of golden autumn sunshine and then the forecast was for rain to sweep down from the Scottish Highlands and hang about for a few days of unsettled weather.
The Comms report said only that a body had been discovered in Rough Tor Mire. There was no suggestion of murder so it was not a Criminal Investigation Department matter as
yet. Under normal circumstances, before the CID were called in, a pair of uniformed constables would be dispatched to interview the reporting witness, but Penwarren knew the Cuthbertsons and decided to have his Major Crime Investigation Team people conduct the initial interview instead. Penwarren knew the lay of the land on that moor and also knew no ordinary hill walker would have diverted from the well-beaten walkers’ route between Rough Tor and Brown Willy. There was simply no reason to stray and the Ordinance Survey map for the moor was clear about the dangers of doing so. So what was it? Someone foolhardy? Lost in broad daylight? Forced or chased? Nothing about it was normal.
He also decided that his personal connection with the Cuthbertsons meant he shouldn’t conduct the interview himself. He hadn’t seen the reporting person, Jan Cuthbertson, since she was a rangy secondary school tomboy mad for horses. Her mother, Beverly, was his ex-wife Rebecca’s older sister. Despite the divorce the family had remained his friends, at least for a few years.
He looked out at the gathering darkness. There was no way he could responsibly assign anyone to examine a scene as remote and dangerous as Rough Tor Mire in the dark. That would have to wait until sunrise.
Penwarren wanted his best investigators, detective inspector Morgan Davies and crime scene manager detective sergeant Calum West, for this one. But they were both on medical and compassionate leave, the former looking after the latter after his heart surgery. He smiled; though the two officers were temperamentally as different as chalk and cheese: she the bulldog investigator, he the gently meticulous crime scene manager, they seemed to getting along. He also knew that neither would tolerate being sidelined for long.
“OH. HELLO…”
Calum West had been dozing. Ever since the pacemaker operation to repair his faltering heart, he slept a lot. It was partly the painkillers, but also post-operative exhaustion. The operation had been more difficult than his NHS surgeon had anticipated and there had been an artery blockage to repair as well. He was mending, yes, but his chest still felt bludgeoned.
