Palmer-Jones 05 - Sea Fever (7 page)

“Would you like some tea?” he asked. The boy and Fat Freddy had been allowed home after a brief discussion with Sergeant Berry. “I was going to make some anyway. If you’ve got questions to ask, we’ll be more comfortable in the saloon.”

She nodded gratefully, and he felt relieved. He showed her where to go, forcing himself to be natural and polite. But as he went to the galley to make the tea, he felt his heart racing and his breath coming unevenly in gulps.

When he returned to the saloon, her legs were crossed, and she rested a notebook on one knee. He handed her a mug and sat on the opposite side of the table on the bench seat.

“Was the dead man a birdwatcher?” she asked. Rosco nodded.

“They all were,” he said. “As far as I know. I never realised until I started this business what fanatics they are.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, that they’d go to such lengths to see a few gulls and petrels. It’s not cheap to charter the boat for twenty-four hours, an there’s the tour company’s commission on top of that.”

He felt on safe ground and was beginning to relax.

“Where does Mrs. Pengelly come into it?” She remembered the untidy woman with the baby and could not keep the disapproval from her voice.

Panic made it hard for him to think rationally. She was waiting for an answer, and he forced himself to speak.

“She runs a sort of guest house,” he said. “Down at Porthkennan at the top of the valley. She has a lot of birdwatchers to stay in the spring and the autumn. After the boat trip the passengers have a few days there. It’s all organised by the company in Bristol. A package, like. The Cornish Spectacular they call it. They do four over the summer. This would be the last.”

He thought he was speaking too much, but she seemed not to notice his nervousness.

“Was one of the company’s representatives on the boat?”

“Yes. Mr. Earl. He’s been on every trip. He looks after the birdwatching side of it.”

“So he’d have a list of all the passengers?”

“Sure to.”

“And he’s staying at Porthkennan, too?”

He nodded.

“Was there anything unusual about this trip?” she asked. “ Did you notice anything different from the other three?”

He considered.

“They were more serious,” he said. “About the birdwatching, like. On the other trips there were one or two fanatics, but most were there to have a good time. They wanted to see the birds, but if they didn’t, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. On this one you felt it was a matter, well, of life and death.”

“Did they see what they wanted to?”

“Yes,” he said. “They got themselves into a right state, too. It started off like all the others. They saw Wilson’s petrels. That’s what they all came out to see. Then there was something else which really excited them. They couldn’t identify it; Mr. Earl said it must be something really rare. Perhaps it had never been seen before. That’s when we realised the boy was missing. They went to fetch him to show him the new bird, but they couldn’t find him.”

“He wasn’t birdwatching with the others?”

“No,” Rosco said. “ He’d been seasick in the night and still didn’t look well in the morning. He dragged himself out for a couple of hours, then went to lie down again.”

“In his bunk?”

“No,” Rosco said shortly. “On deck. Mostly they were birdwatching from the stern. He was up this end, where it was a bit quieter.”

“Couldn’t you see him from the wheelhouse, then?”

“Not directly, no. He was hidden by the saloon.”

“But you would have noticed someone going up to him and talking to him?”

Again the panic returned.

“No. You don’t know what it was like when they saw that bird. It was pandemonium. They were all shouting and running about. I wasn’t thinking about anything else but getting the boat exactly where they wanted her to be.”

Claire found the scene hard to imagine. In her experience adult birdwatchers were elderly, rather dotty women, who fed blue tits in their gardens and went for nature rambles. Most she had met were children—earnest and pretentious schoolboys. The variety described by Rosco seemed implausible. He sensed her incredulity.

“You talk to them,” he said. “ You’ll find out then what they’re like.”

She nodded reassuringly. She did not want to offend Louis Rosco. If Franks had been murdered, surely the skipper was the least likely to have anything to do with it. What would a Cornish boatman have to do with a young man from Bristol?

“There was nothing else unusual?” she asked. “ No arguments or disagreements?”

“Not exactly,” he said. “Not a real row. You had the feeling they were getting at each other, winding each other up, but Friday night was like that on each of the trips. They were worried, Rob Earl said, that they wouldn’t see any birds. It seemed to get on their nerves. Then there was all that fuss about lists.”

“Lists?” She was mystified. Perhaps it was some obscure nautical term.

“They all make a list of the birds they’ve seen. They all wanted the boy that died to tell them the number of his, but he was teasing them, leading them on. ‘You’ll have to wait and see’ he said. ‘I’ll add it up and let you know tomorrow.’”

“It sounds very childish,” she said.

He shrugged. “ You should see some of the fishing parties,” he said. He had an irrational desire to defend the birdwatchers. Perhaps it had something to do with Rose Pengelly.

Claire Bingham was starting to feel impatient. She should be at Porthkennan while the other passengers were still tired and shocked. She should not give them too much time to discuss things and concoct a story among them. It was reassuring that George Palmer-Jones was with them. He would give her reliable inside information. But in a way, too, his presence only increased the pressure on her. She did not want to let herself down in front of someone so respected in the profession, someone who could possibly influence her career if he chose. Outside on the deck she heard the voices of the men who were taking away the body. It must have slipped because there was a thud and a muffled oath.

“Are there any more parties booked onto the boat?” she asked.

“Not this week.”

“You do realise we’ll want to examine it in more detail? There’ll be experts to see it first thing in the morning, and there’ll be someone here all night.”

“Why all this, then?” he asked suddenly. “Don’t you think it was an accident?”

“No,” she said calmly. “ He was hit on the head before he drowned.”

“Couldn’t he have done that when he fell?”

“Not according to the doctor.” She looked at him sharply. “You don’t seem very surprised.”

He spoke slowly, his hands gripped tightly around his knee.

“When they were looking for him, they couldn’t find any of his gear.” he said. “Even his bag and the bits of clothes he’d left below had gone. That seemed very queer to me.”

“I see,” she said, and scribbled something in her notebook.

Rosco stood up. He felt drained and worn out and could no longer think clearly. “Is that all?” he asked.

She nodded. “For now.”

“Are you going to Porthkennan?”

“Probably.” She had already moved from the saloon and onto the deck. There was a faint breeze, but the air was still hot and humid.

“I live there, too,” he said. “ I’m in the cottage on the shore. If you want me, that’s where I’ll be.”

He suddenly wanted to prolong the interview. The extent of his folly struck him and cut through his panic. He should have told her. She was sure to find out for herself. Perhaps she already knew but was saying nothing in the hope of catching him out.

“Goodbye, Mr. Rosco,” she said formally, and jumped without his help from the boat onto the quay. “I’ll probably be talking to you again tomorrow.”

He stood for a moment in the doorway of the saloon, unable to move. With the removal of the body the crowd at the harbour wall had faded away. The town was quiet. Her shadow was already disappearing among the cranes, the boxes of cargo, and fish crates on the quay. A uniformed police constable watched her go.

Louis suddenly came to life. He jumped from the
Jessie Ellen
onto the quay.

“Inspector!” he shouted, running after her. “Inspector, there’s something I should tell you!” But by the time he reached the constable, Claire Bingham was driving away in her expensive car.

“What’s the matter?” the policeman asked. “Can I help you?”

“No,” Louis said. “It’s nothing that won’t wait.” He turned to the policeman, who was young, only a boy. “ You might as well come aboard,” he said. “ You’ll be more comfortable there. You’ll have a long night.” Then, because the
Jessie Ellen
provided the only security he had, he added, “I’ll stay here with you.”

Claire Bingham went first to the police station. Berry had collected Greg Franks’ car, and she had arranged to meet him there. Before she did anything, she phoned her husband. She could never quite lose herself in her work. Whatever she was doing, her responsibility for him and for Thomas remained at the back of her mind, a guilty irritation.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll be very late.”

As she had expected he was bad-tempered.

“What about the morning?” he said petulantly. “ What shall I do if you’re not back? It’s happened before. Who takes Tom to the childminder?”

“You’ll have to do it. You know where she lives.”

“Claire,” he said accusingly, as if she was being awkward deliberately, just to annoy him, “You know I’d arranged early squash with Charlie tomorrow.”

She wanted to say that there were lots of things she had arranged, too, and anyway, wasn’t murder slightly more important than showing off on the squash court in front of Charlie Turner, but she hated spending time away from him with disagreement lingering between them.

“I’m sorry, darling,” she said. “Really sorry. I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

Sergeant Berry had been in the canteen. She could smell the fried food and stale cigarette smoke around him as he came into the office, though she knew he never smoked. She stood up and opened a window, but away from the sea the night was still, and it did no good. Berry was young, quiet, anonymous. He still lived with his parents in one of the genteel, slightly shabby suburbs of the town. To his colleagues he was something of a joke. He was a nondrinker and had, it seemed, no girlfriends. They knew very little about him.

Claire had come to admire and rather to like him. He was a member of one of the small exclusive eccentric churches which flourish still in the west country, and there
was
a girlfriend she found out, one of the diminishing congregation. She was surprised, too, to discover that Berry had a sharp, unmalicious sense of the ridiculous, and occasionally he had her in fits of giggles, like a schoolgirl.

She sensed he disapproved of her domestic arrangements. She could tell he really thought she should be at home with her son. Yet he never preached. Sometimes his calm patience made her feel inadequate, and then she would lash out at him.

“Do you want to be a dogsbody for the
whole
of your life, Berry?” she would demand. “ Don’t you want to
live
a bit, experience something more exciting than tea with Mummy and Daddy?”

But she could never provoke him into a reaction. He would shake his head and smile, then melt unobtrusively away.

“Well,” she said now, “ have you found out anything useful, before we go to Porthkennan?”

“A few things from the computer,” he said, so she was immediately excited. He was a master of understatement.

“Anything on Franks?”

“He’s never been convicted,” Berry said. “He was charged with burglary five years ago when he was still a juvenile but found not guilty.”

“Anything else?”

Berry paused, and if it had been anyone else, she would have thought he was doing it to intensify the drama of his revelation.

“Louis Rosco,” he said.

“Has he got a record?” she asked. She was disappointed. She expected it to be something trivial. He nodded.

“Arson,” he said. “And manslaughter. He got ten years.”

“How long’s he been out?”

“Four years.”

“Any details?”

“Not much. The offence happened in Bristol, and I’ve been trying to get more information from there. It was a small boat yard. Rosco was working there. They assume it was a grievance against his employer. A security guard was killed.”

She was astonished. She would never have thought Rosco capable of such violence. He seemed such an ordinary nondescript sort of man. She was surprised by her own lack of judgement.

She stood up. A nervous energy had kept her going all evening, but now she felt very tired. Perhaps it would be a mistake to do much more tonight, she thought. She should be alert when she was taking the detailed statements. All the same, they would have to go to Porthkennan. By now one of them might be ready to confess. Most murders were cleared up within hours, and the police were given little to do.

Berry was looking at her with a suppressed excitement.

“There is something else,” he said.

“What?” Her head was swimming, and she felt she could take in little else.

“I found this in Franks’ car. It was in the dashboard. No attempt had been made to hide it.”

He held up a polythene envelope of white powder.

“What is it?” she said foolishly.

“We’ll need Forensic to test it,” he said, “but it looks like heroin.”

Most of the trippers who explored the narrow road signposted to Porthkennan were disappointed and turned back before they reached Myrtle Cottage. At first there was little to see. Grey, sheep-cropped moorland rose away from the seaward side of the road, so there were no views of cliffs or water, and the colour of the hillside made it seem always to be in shadow. The monotony of the landscape was broken by granite outcrops, huge and brooding against the sky. After a mile there was a turn in the road and then a row of derelict cottages, windowless, with holes in the roofs and the distinctive chimneys of a disused tin mine. The scene of industrial decay so close to the road had nothing in common with the picture-postcard Cornwall of thatched cottages and cream teas. The trippers thought they had reached Porthkennan and turned back to the main road with relief.