The Lamorna Wink (6 page)

He rose and padded shoeless to Chris's room.

Nothing had changed, as he knew it wouldn't. He went downstairs, careful on the treacherous steps, and into the kitchen to put on the kettle. Meringues and scones still gave the impression that the person who had put them there would be back at any minute. He filled the kettle, plugged it in.
A cup of tea, a cup of tea, a cup of tea.
As if it were a mantra (and it very nearly was), he repeated the words over and over under his breath.

There was a phone on the wall over the kitchen table, so he sat down and unhooked the receiver to call Charlie. It really was the last thing he could think of.

 

“John-o! How are you?”

Even if it was only Charlie, his obvious delight in hearing from him made Johnny feel a little better. “Fine. Listen, Chris doesn't happen to be there?”

Yes, yes she is. Right here; I'll just put her on.
Johnny didn't realize how intense was his wish to hear these words until he heard the others.

“No, I haven't seen Chris since that last time she bailed me out.” Charlie's tone changed then, became more urgent. “Why? What's going on, Johnny?”

“She isn't here. She's cleared off and forgot to tell me where to.” Johnny tried to laugh, but it was more of a choke.

“That's bloody awful. Did you try that place she does volunteer work? I seem to remember once the old dame she was carting back home having some kind of fit and Chris staying overnight. You remember that?”

Johnny did, now. “I did ring them up, but they hadn't seen her.”

Charlie seemed to hesitate. “What about police?”

It was something Johnny had hoped no one would suggest.

“Here, that's PC Evans. Not someone you'd want to have to bet your last dollar on, Charlie. Thanks, though.”

“Sure. And let me know, okay? Seriously. I can be there in an hour and a half if you want me.”

“Yeah. Okay. Thanks again.”

He hung up. As far back as he could remember, he'd never heard Charlie talk seriously and sober.

T
he following morning, Melrose sat in the Woodbine Tearoom at ten-thirty, sans Agatha, who didn't show. She and Esther must have been on the razzle last night.

He drank his tea and watched John Wells move from table to table. The boy's face, which was by nature pale—handsomely, Byronically pale—seemed to be whiter this morning. His manner was certainly subdued. Melrose watched him move between and around tables—all of which were occupied—with none of yesterday's ebullience, move in a lurching, almost drunken fashion as if he were a little boat pitching in choppy waters. When he stopped, he seemed to be staring at nothing, but then at what (Melrose realized) was something: the door. He looked as if he was waiting for someone to walk through it.

Melrose motioned him over to his table. “When do you finish up here, Johnny?”

“Soon. 'Bout an hour.”

“Could I talk to you? Could you come across to the Drowned Man?” The pub was directly across the street.

Johnny scraped the hair back from his forehead. “Sure.” He sighed.

Melrose thought it was almost a sigh of relief.

 

“Morning, Mr. Pfinn,” said Melrose cheerily, as he walked into the saloon bar sometime later. “Beautiful day, isn't it?”

“Easy for you to say,” retorted Mr. Pfinn, as he continued wiping the pint glass in his hand.

Easy for him? It was as if Melrose the tourist, the just-passing-through person, could revel in this fine day and then leave, leaving Mr. Pfinn to be plagued by the rest of September. Mr. Pfinn did not ask Melrose what he wanted but merely looked at him from under his hedgerow of eyebrow.

Melrose sat down on a bar stool. “Half-pint of Old Peculiar if you have it.”

“Bottled.”

“Fine.”

Mr. Pfinn slapped the bar towel over his shoulder and plucked out the bottle from a shelf beneath the beer pulls. Morosely opened it, morosely poured.

“I expect there's a big change in custom, summer to winter, isn't there?”

“Depends.”

Most things do, thought Melrose. “On what?”

“Why, on the weather, man.”

Melrose thought that was what he'd just said.

Mr. Pfinn saw fit for once to elaborate. “Too many tourists.”

Melrose always marveled at the ability of inn- and shopkeepers to bite the hand that fed them. He excused himself and took his half-pint to a corner table, darker even than the bar. Wavering lights pooled on surfaces; slowly turning shadows gathered in corners. Nothing moved but the publican's hand wiping the glassware. They could all be under water.

Half an hour passed in this way, during which time a few regulars entered and sat at the bar, all of them turning to eyeball Melrose. Johnny Wells came in from an Indian summer brightness to the cold shades and shadows of the Drowned Man.

He looked done in, thought Melrose, as he waved Johnny over.

“Obviously, something's gone wrong for you. What is it?”

“It's my aunt.”

Melrose waited.

“I don't know where she is.” He shrugged. The gesture didn't do much to minimize his trouble. He told Melrose about the previous night. “Something's happened to her, I know it.” Johnny looked everywhere but at Melrose, as if seeing concern in another's face mirroring his own would be too much for him. He'd break down.

“Not necessarily. From the way you describe it, it sounds more like
she
happened
to
something.”

“What do you mean?”

“That she apparently left under her own steam, for one thing. You say there was no sign of anyone else's being there. It might not be your Uncle Charlie's emergency, but that doesn't mean it wasn't somebody's.”

“She'd've called.”

“Hard to believe, but there still are places and people that don't have phones or fax machines or even e-mail.”

“Well—”

“As well as you know her, you can't know everything about her.”

“I've lived with her most of my life,” Johnny protested.

Maybe that was what rankled: that his aunt might know someone who was more important than Johnny.

Then he looked up, his expression changed. “She wasn't at Bletchley Hall, either. Or at least that's what the nurse said. I'm not sure she even asked around.”

“Bletchley Hall. Just what is that?”

“It's a sort of hospice-nursing home the other side of the village. Chris helped out there with things like transport, giving rides to ‘her ladies,' as she called the ones she dealt with. And other things. Still, that doesn't explain why she didn't call.”

“Call the place again, then. Mr. Pfinn”—Melrose raised his voice—“have you a telephone in here?”

As if he were taking up a challenge, Pfinn pulled a black telephone out from under the counter and brought it over to the table. “That'll be a pound to use it; that's besides the call itself.”

Melrose put a five-pound note on the table and moved the phone over to Johnny.

Johnny talked to a different person this time. She hadn't seen his aunt for several days. Johnny asked her to check with some of the others to make sure. Yes. Thanks.

“How about the police? Have you talked to them?”

Johnny nodded. “They can't do anything, or won't do anything, until more time's gone by.”

“You mean the Devon and Cornwall police have to wait for twenty-four—” Melrose stopped. Of course. He pulled the telephone closer.

 

Divisional Commander Macalvie, according to the police constable who'd answered the phone at Exeter headquarters, wasn't in his office, but he'd see if he could find him. In another minute, the constable was back.

“He's gone to Cornwall.”

“
Cornwall?
”

The constable reminded him this
was
the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary.

Melrose ignored the sarcasm. “Where in Cornwall?”

The constable didn't know. Sorry.

“Is there any way he can be reached?”

The constable's irritation was obvious. Of course he could be reached. But not by the public.

“Could you get a message to him? It's rather important.”

Yes, that could be done.

Melrose gave him the message.

B
rian Macalvie was not there to take Melrose's call because he was at that moment on a public footpath that stretched between Mousehole and Lamorna Cove, a path that made its rocky way along the cliffs above Mounts Bay and the Atlantic. One would find, if taking this two-mile walk, that the sea air acts as a restorative unequaled in other parts of England, untainted and unpolluted air that results in a pleasant light-headedness.

But the sea air had not served as tonic or restorative for the woman who lay on the footpath. One could not, however, blame location or light-headedness for her death, as she'd been shot twice in the chest with a twenty-two-caliber semiautomatic pistol. There was not much damage done to the chest area. The precise caliber of the bullets had not been discovered, of course, before the medical examiner and firearms expert had been given a chance to examine the body.

The chance was hard to come by.

“Are we stopping here all day, then?” asked Gilly Thwaite. She was the scene-of-crimes expert and the first one permitted the opportunity to examine both the body and the scene. The first one, that is, after Divisional Commander Macalvie. Until he gave her the go-ahead, she couldn't even set up her camera equipment or take pictures with the hand-held. It was as if a camera flash would contaminate the scene.

It was extremely rare that any of his investigative “team” got smart with Brian Macalvie, who had eyes of a near-unholy cerulean blue, a hot blue that could strip you with a look. Macalvie was famous for his long and inflexible silences when first viewing a body and its context, its mise-en-sce‘ne. No one was permitted to get close enough to examine anything at the crime scene until he was done with looking. No one in the CID could look the way Macalvie could look. Macalvie seemed to get lost in looking. Until he had seen everything seeable, no one was supposed even to breathe on the crime scene.

They had all been standing first on one foot, then the other, for nearly fifteen minutes while (Gilly Thwaite had said) “the whole damned scene erodes.” This had earned her another long blue look.

The medical examiner, a local doctor from Penzance and not officially with the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary, had been one of those waiting in silence for Brian Macalvie to finish looking, and it irked him to no end. He'd objected more than once to being kept here, an objection that fell on deaf ears. Macalvie was now kneeling near the body. The woman was in early middle age and quite pretty, though in a rather hard way that bespoke the backlash of too much makeup over too many years. Same thing for the hair, the bright gold of a crayon. She was wearing a designer suit, now darkly stained, and an expensive watch, but no other jewelry. Near her right hand lay a piece of black plastic that looked like the corner of something. Macalvie took out one of the small plastic bags he carried around and dropped the plastic into it.

The good doctor was chirruping away about his whole surgery full of patients, it being Monday, his busiest day of the week, people having caught the flu or broken bones falling out of boats over the weekend. Weekends were disaster areas in Penzance, he said.

Macalvie couldn't care less about Penzance weekends or the doctor's heavy schedule.

This place on the public footpath was not far beyond Lamorna Cove and perhaps a hundred feet from the nearest house. They knew this because they'd had to leave their cars in its parking area. Two men had been dispatched to go back and have a look round.

“We don't have a warrant.”

“So look around the outside.”

These two were back and telling Macalvie that the place was unoccupied. No sign of life. They could make out that the fireplace in the living room hadn't been used in a while and no wood was stacked there. In a place as cold as this one in late September, one would expect to see fireplaces in use.

“Okay, Gilly. Go ahead.”

They might have been playing at statues till then, for everyone seemed to want to move arms and shake out legs as if numbed. Gilly started moving around the body with her camera.

“When she's through, it's all yours, Doc,” Macalvie said. “Then yours, Fleming.” He gave the forensics man a punch on the arm. “I'm sure you'll turn up something.”

“Maybe, guv,” said Fleming. “But not whatever it was you stuck in that Baggie.”

Macalvie could inspire terror in incompetents (of which Devon and Cornwall police had more than their share, he was fond of pointing out). Fleming wasn't one of them. Neither was Gilly Thwaite, though he could still have her wishing sometimes that she'd never joined the force. The good ones, the crack technicians, Macalvie kept by him. He smiled ruefully at Fleming and handed over the Baggie. “Sorry,” he said.

He watched Gilly as she moved in for the close-up shots. He wished the victim could tell him something with a look. But the faces of the dead wear no expression, no matter whether they're looking down the barrel of a gun or at a charging bull. Except in the case of a spasm, which freezes the victim in instant rigor mortis, the expression on the face gives nothing away.

Death is the great expression leveler.

M
elrose was coming to the bottom of his third Old Peculiar while sitting at the bar of the Drowned Man. There had been a very brief debate with Mr. Pfinn as to whether he had any more, an argument hardly supported by the fact he had half a case of the stuff on a shelf beneath the bar. He hated this whole business and what it was doing to this seventeen-year-old kid, whose entire family consisted only of an afterthought of an uncle in Penzance and this dearly loved aunt, Chris. And now she was gone.