COVER THE LIES: A TREGUNNA CORNISH CRIME NOVEL

by Carla Vermaat

  ‘I will take Mr Warren to the station.’

  ‘Okay.’ He nods as if he’s seen and heard it all before and lost interest a long time ago.

  Beside me, Warren stamps his feet to stay warm. He scrutinises my ID card as if he thinks I am a fake policeman looking for a scapegoat. He slumps beside me in my car, putting the plastic bag in his pocket and fiddling with a woollen hat, contemplating whether to put it on. His padded jacket is thick and he wears a woollen jumper underneath it, his collar turned up, yet he is shivering.

  ‘Where do you work, Mr Warren?’ I ask, starting the engine and turning the heater on full blast.

  He replies with a considerable amount of pride in his voice: ‘I work at the Lobster Hatchery in Padstow.’

  This immediately stirs up a memory in my mind. A clear day, Lauren’s birthday. We had browsed the shops in the picturesque fishing village, and then walked on the beach. Her 10-year-old twin sons ran in front of us like young horses, flapping their arms and shouting in the clear air. We were supposed to go to the Lobster Hatchery afterwards, but something had happened and the lovely day had ended under a dark shadow. The promise of a visit to the Lobster Hatchery has still not been fulfilled …

  ‘Are you one of their volunteers?’ I ask Josh Warren.

  ‘No, no, I’m part of the team.’ He looks almost offended.

  ‘So what’s your job exactly?’

  ‘I look after the little ones.’ His voice makes it clear that he is not going to disclose any more details.

  As I pull out of the car park and wait for a supermarket delivery van to cross the narrow bridge, he sighs involuntarily.

  ‘Glad to be away from that,’ he announces. ‘I’ve never seen anything like that before. Just as well Eddie could … ‘

  ‘Just as well what? Eddie?’ The engine hums in protest when we climb the steep hill and negotiate a sharp, narrow S bend next to an old church.

  ‘I’d thought he’d better go. My mate. Eddie. He was with me.’

  I cast him a quick glance. ‘Are you saying that you weren't alone when you discovered the body?’

  ‘No. Yes. I mean, that is what I am saying. I thought there was no point for him to wait until you lot showed up. I decided that I would go back and … show you.’

  I try to hide my annoyance. ‘I will need Eddie’s name and address, Mr Warren. I hope you have that?’

  ‘Whatever for?’ His amazement is genuine. 'Eddie will tell you exactly the same as me.’

  ‘To confirm your statement.’

  ‘I haven’t given a statement yet. The officer said you would deal with that.’

  ‘Okay.’ Obviously he is now wishing that he hadn’t come to the fishing pond in the first place. ‘It’s okay, Mr Warren. It’s just a formality.’

  ‘I … we didn’t touch her, or anything like that. I didn’t touch anything. Or Eddie.’

  I give him an encouraging smile. ‘Okay. Good. I will need a statement about the circumstances when you found the body. Both yours and Eddie's.'

  I round a steep bend, nearly scraping the side of my car on the wall as another delivery van comes down at a dangerously careless speed. I can see the driver grinning before he disappears.

  ‘It's right here, past the bend with a car park to the right.’ Warren points.

  The Swan Inn is closed, but a cleaner opens the door and Warren walks in as if he has every right to be there. The place is dark and gloomy; the smell of stale beer mixed with cleaning detergent and food preparation. A variety of cooking smells assails us as we move into the pub: a hint of curry, garlic, tomato sauce, roast meat, pastry, freshly baked bread. I feel my stomach rumbling and realise I haven’t eaten except for a slice of toast with my morning coffee.

  Warren knocks on the kitchen door and I hear a muffled conversation with only a couple of recognisable words as the cleaner switches on a vacuum cleaner.

  ‘They will bring us some coffee.’

  We sit at one of the tables close to the window and I retrieve a small notepad from my pocket. I rarely use it, but the sight of it normally puts people at ease.

  ‘Let’s start with your details please, Mr Warren, and of course I will need those of your friend Eddie.’

  He gestures with two hands. ‘Your colleague has my details already.’

  ‘I’d like to have them too.’ I smile gently.

  ‘How long will this take?’ he asks, impatiently waiting as I write down the information. He lives in Rumford, next to his sister and her family; they share a car, a dark grey VW Polo, to minimise their costs.

  ‘It takes as long as it takes, Mr Warren. I’m sure you’ll understand that this is a serious matter. A woman was found dead and we are treating her death as suspicious.’

  His lower jaw drops and he licks his lips nervously. ‘I didn’t kill that woman! I don’t even know who she is! I have nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Why were you there this morning, Mr Warren? Let’s start at the beginning. You and Eddie arrived at the scene and … what happened?’

  He hesitates, stares at my face and decides that the best and quickest option is to cooperate. ‘I pick Eddie up for work in the morning. We both work in Padstow. As I said, I work at the Lobster Hatchery, and Eddie works in the harbour. Sand dredging.’ He looks at me, half expecting me to ask for an explanation. I wait quietly and he continues. ‘Normally, we don’t take the coast road, but today … well, let me explain first that the Swan Lake is owned by an angling association and I’m a committee member.’

  ‘Last Saturday, we had our first angling competition of the season. I wasn’t there myself, because I had to work, but most of our members were there, and some guests too. Anyway, the system is that our members can use the lake for free but guests have to pay a fee. There’s a moneybox in the little shed at the entrance to the car park and you leave the fee and a forms with your name and other details on it in the box. Sometimes people put the money in an envelope.’

  For some reason, he is avoiding my eyes, playing with a cardboard beer coaster and studying the images on either side as if he’s never seen them before. ‘Erm … because I drive by on my way to work, it’s my job to collect the money every week. Sometimes our treasurer does it himself, but I do it normally on Monday after work. Obviously our members are mostly there on Saturdays and Sundays. I’ll go extra times when we’ve had a competition, like this weekend.’ He pauses and is silent for a moment or two. ‘I was supposed to collect the money on Saturday evening after work, but I forgot. And yesterday … well, I had been out on Saturday evening.’ His face turns a shade of red and I can see him struggling with on the one hand being honest and on the other the fear of admitting that he’d probably driven home with too much alcohol in his blood stream.

  I don’t say anything and he shrugs. ‘The moneybox is safely attached to the wall but, still, there would be a considerable amount of money in it because it was the first competition of the season, so I thought it would be best to collect it this morning before work and take it to the bank in Padstow in my lunch break.’

  ‘So you went directly into the shed.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But the woman was in the lake, which is at least twenty yards from the shed. Could you see her from there?’

  ‘Erm … no. But my mate Eddie got out of the car … to have a pee. Then he saw her.’ He grins sheepishly. ‘Eddie likes to pee in the pond.’

  ‘Was that unusual for him?’

  ‘No.’ He shakes his head, embarrassment crossing his face. ‘Well, uhm, I shouldn’t say this, maybe, but Eddie is … a bit … you know.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand, Mr Warren.’

  ‘Eddie is … damaged, that’s perhaps the right word. He was abused by his father when he was young and now … he is kind of … strange himself.

  ‘So it was Eddie who discovered the body?’

  ‘Yeah. First, I wasn’t interested. I had collected the money and I wanted to go to work, but he kept yelling at me ab
out floating boobs. Of course I thought that it was ridiculous, but his voice sounded like he was somewhat upset, so I thought I’d better calm him down a bit. If he gets in a state, he can be awkward all day and since, things haven’t been all hunky-dory with his boss lately, I thought I’d better sort him out before he got himself sacked.’ He shrugs with a sheepish grin. ‘And then I saw that he was right. She was naked, you see, all white flesh in the water. She looked like a mermaid, with her hair floating like weeds.’

  ‘What did you two do next?’ I am slowly getting the picture of the events that shocked the two men.

  ‘I told Eddie to go back to the car. He was crying, you see, saying how beautiful she was, and all that. Uhm, I don’t think he understood that she was dead. He said something like we needed to rescue her, mouth-to-mouth, that sort of thing. But he did as he was told. I secured the rope around the gate, so that it would be a bit more difficult for anyone to get into the car park and we drove up the hill where I stopped to call the police.’ He pauses briefly. ‘I have no reception down at the lake with my mobile.

  'You didn’t touch the body? Either of you?’

  ‘Definitely not. I watch those programmes on TV, inspector, I know everything about DNA and fingerprints.’

  I suppress a smile. ‘And what happened then?’

  ‘As I said, I stopped to call the police. The person I spoke to said they would send a patrol car within half an hour and I thought … if it takes them half an hour, I'll have plenty of time to drive to Padstow and drop Eddie at his work.’

  ‘How long had you been away from the scene?’

  ‘Not more than fifteen minutes.’ He shrugs, tugging at the collar of his shirt. ‘I had secured the rope at the gate, using a special seaman’s knot. It was exactly the same when I got back, so I knew nobody had been there. I parked exactly where I had parked before, in case police would be looking for tyre marks, and I stood at the gate, waiting for the police and making sure no one else came in there.’

  ‘We appreciate your thoughtfulness, Mr Warren. Now, going back to the moment you and Eddie discovered the body, was there anyone else? Did you see anyone?’

  ‘There was no one. Nothing.’

  ‘Did you recognise the woman?’

  ‘To be honest, I didn’t look at her again once I realised that she was dead.’

  ‘As you come here quite often, was there something out of the ordinary?’

  ‘No, but … uhm…’ He grabs another beer coaster and flips it on the edge of the table. Catches it between his thumb and index finger. Flips it again. ‘I wasn’t sure whether someone had dropped them there on the day of the competition … but that didn’t make sense. I mean, you would miss them immediately, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘What are you saying, Mr Warren?’

  He bends to pick up the beer coaster from the floor.

  ‘I found these. I picked them up before I saw the body.’

  Putting the beer coaster down and placing his cup on it, he leans back and, as if the significance only occurs to him now, he produces a set of keys. There’s a car key and two other keys on a key ring with a small children’s doll made of light blue plastic. The doll has a capital A on its stomach.

  3

  The incident room is deserted. Several tables are set out in neat rows, reminding me of a classroom at school. The tops are wiped clean of greasy fingerprints and spilled coffee, and chairs are stacked against the wall on one side. The smell of disinfectant hangs in the air, giving the room a sense of expectation.

  In the meantime, forensic investigators are still scrutinising the area around the lake, gathering samples that will hopefully turn out to be connected to the crime, while other officers are out looking for witnesses. In the mortuary, the pathologists are taking samples from the body for DNA testing and taking fingerprints and dental impressions in preparation for the official autopsy which is scheduled for early afternoon.

  Putting my coffee on the table nearest to the whiteboard, I grab a handful of magnets from a plastic tray underneath it. It annoys me that the board is not properly clean but covered with the faded remains of the details of a previous case. Someone had also pinned up a newspaper cutting about an incident that happened a few weeks ago, its headline screaming ‘Teenager in hit and run’, and for some reason, it has been left behind. The article describes a nasty hit-and-run: a sixteen-year-old without a driver’s licence but with seven times the limit of alcohol in his blood. On the pavement, a caring father was collecting his young teenage daughter from a friend’s birthday party. Miraculously, the father was physically uninjured, but the 13-year-old girl was left with two broken legs, and head and back injuries. The young man was sent to prison, but the girl was paralysed from the waist down. Two families ruined for life.

  I take down the newspaper cutting and find the wiper for the whiteboard in a drawer of one of the desks. Soon enough the board will be filled with details of a new case, a new investigation, this time about a woman found dead in a fishing lake. I pick up the photo and, for a moment, I stare at a mainly black-and-white image of the victim, her skin is unnaturally white and the dark sheet underneath her is wet from water dripping off her hair. Sadly, she doesn’t have a name yet.

  The shrill ringing of my phone interrupts the quietness of the empty room. I sigh, not even attempting to hide my annoyance when I reply curtly, ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is that Tregunna?’

  It’s the new desk officer. I can’t recall her name. Something like Annie or Allie. She sounds as though she is being careful not to get into a long conversation with me. We haven’t had a good start. I can’t think why she's been so hostile towards me. Unless it’s because I seemed to have totally ignored her on her first day. I remember vaguely that I was introduced to her, at which moment my phone rang and I turned my back to her to take the call.

  ‘It is.’

  ’Sorry sir, Philip isn’t here yet and I can’t find anyone else in the team. But you are in the building, right?’

  Philip, that must be Maloney. I am Tregunna. Not Andy, but just Tregunna.

  ‘I am.’ I sigh. ‘Did you say that Philip hasn’t arrived yet?’

  ‘That’s right, sir. We think he might be held up on the A30. There’s been a collision near Launceston.’

  I stare at the clock. It’s approaching twelve, the time I scheduled the first briefing in the expectation that Maloney would be back by then. But as there is still no sign of him, I suspect I will have to take the lead. In a few minutes the room will be charged with excitement. The first hours of an investigation are crucial for its success and although I am glad for the opportunity, I also dread the responsibility. Perhaps I am not quite ready to do my job a hundred per cent after all.

  ‘I’ve got someone here to see you, sir.’ The desk officer sounds curt, formal and there’s something else I can’t fathom. I suspect that this isn't the right moment to find out what it is.

  ‘Okay, I’ll come down,’ I say and she ends the call without a word.

  The hall seems to be filled with more people than there actually are. Two uniformed officers, hands in blue latex gloves, are standing firmly behind a man who is leaning heavily on the desk with both arms. Further away as is another man, his back to the wall and his eyes raised towards the ceiling, breathing heavily through his mouth, as dried blood obstructs his nostrils. A third officer has placed himself deliberately between him and the trio at the desk.

  With a sinking feeling, I hear the man leaning at the desk muttering obscenities and one of the officers telling him that he is only making his case worse with his offensive language. The man doesn’t seem to be bothered. Nor is the desk officer. Although her face is slightly flushed, her stare is fixed and firm and she speaks with authority as she tries to calm the man.

  She stops mid-sentence as she spots me opening the door. ‘Tregunna.’

  Following my gaze, she smiles faintly but there is a certain triumph in her eyes when she picks up a single sheet of paper and nods
towards one of the interview rooms opposite her. Half expecting her to ask the two officers to escort the abusive man into the room, I can’t hide my surprise when she points in the direction of another man sitting on one of the seats against the wall, his arms folded across his chest viewing the scene with a mixture of impatience and amusement.

  ‘Can you have a word with that gentleman, Tregunna?’

  She – her name badge still doesn’t help me with her name as it only says A. M. Barron - hands me the sheet and I see a one name written in the corner in neat and tidy handwriting that corresponds with her air of competence. Kenneth Poole.

  Our eyes meet for a split-second and I realise that she knows perfectly well that my initial thought was that she called me to deal with the abusive man.

  ‘Erm … thanks,’ I say, glancing at him and the man with the bloody nose who have clearly had some kind of fight and haven’t calmed down yet. A word, a glance, a gesture, anything can ignite the situation again into a serious fight.

  ‘Mr Poole?’

  My voice attracts the attention of the three officers as they try to keep the two angry men apart. Even the man leaning on the desk turns his bald head to stare at me. He has a puffy, pink face with small blue eyes and ginger eye brows. I can see beads of sweat on his forehead. The silence continues and the beads join up, trickling down the side of his angry face. He scowls, casting me a threatening glance, then turns back towards the man with whom it appears he had the fight.

  ‘Sir,’ one of the officers begins, his eyes darting towards his colleagues for support. But they all seem frozen rigid, as if they are waiting for someone to make the first move.

  More silence, broken only by the rustle of the sheet of paper in my hand and the drama starts again.

  ‘You listen to me,’ shouts the abusive man, as he leans further over the desk towards the desk officer who, I must admit, is holding the fort with admirable patience and stoicism.

  ‘No,’ she says firmly. ‘You have said enough. You have sworn enough. Now you listen to me. I need to know your full name and address.’