Chapter Fifteen
FIFTEEN
When Megan arrived at her desk in the Launceston police station on Friday morning, it was already covered with a blizzard of paper. As she dropped aghast onto her chair, Jennifer, the day-shift switchboard girl, brought in another two memos.
“Bloody hell, Jen, what is this lot?”
“You asked for it.” She perched on the corner of the desk.
“Every daily had the victim’s photo in it,” she said.
“And most of ’em the car’s licence plate, too, though we haven’t had any calls on that yet.
But I reckon twenty-five percent of readers all over the country think they recognise your bloke, and a quarter of those rang up their nearest cop-shop right away and another quarter will ring in the next day or two, and the other half won’t bother. ”
“Thank heaven for the other half! At least, I hope they’re not the ones who really do know him. I mean”—she waved at the desk—“these can’t possibly all be right.”
“Photos in the papers are always pretty bad, and it wasn’t the greatest to start with, and he didn’t have any warts on his nose or birthmarks on his cheeks.
Most of these, the caller claimed to have seen him yesterday or the day before, so you can count them out.
I tried to keep those on this side of the desk, but it’s been a madhouse and the pile fell over twice—Oops, there goes the phone again. Have fun!”
“Thanks, Jen.”
Megan stared at her desk, wondering where on earth to start.
Then she heard Scumble’s voice, speaking to the desk sergeant.
It didn’t matter so much what she did, she decided, as that when he walked in she should be doing something and give the appearance of knowing what she was doing.
She reached for the heap Jennifer had told her were impossible sightings.
The inspector burst into the room. “Driscoll says the—Ye gods, every nut in the kingdom’s called in! Hell, if the Great British Public were always this cooperative, we wouldn’t have any crimes to solve. What are you doing?”
“I thought I’d start by winnowing out the people who claim to have seen the deceased on Tuesday or Wednesday, sir.”
“They’re forwarding—? Does every sodding copper in the rest of the country think the Cornish police have nothing to do?”
“Could be they just think we’ll want to judge for ourselves?”
“Doesn’t look as if we’ve much choice. When’s this laddie from the Yard going to turn up to swipe our jewelry?”
“He didn’t give a time, sir.”
“Never mind. The super will want to deal with him. Maybe the CC, too. There were murmurs last night about handing over the case to the Yard.”
“Oh no!” The prospect of being seconded to assist DS Kenneth Faraday, or worse, to act as liaison between him and DI Scumble, appalled Megan.
“Probably not. We’re not doing too badly considering, and I shouldn’t think they’d be interested.
They have a finger in the pie, though, with this jewel robbery being in their territory.
All right, this lot needs dealing with whether or not.
Let’s get on with it. If you’re starting over there, I’ll take these.
” His large hands scooped up a pile of memos and he retired to his own desk, where he sat rustling paper and muttering irritably.
Megan was surprised at how quickly they whittled down the heaps to a manageable level, in spite of a continuing trickle from Jennifer.
Besides the obvious impossibilities, there were sightings in Liverpool, Durham, and other northern parts on Monday afternoon.
Though these were highly unlikely, they were not quite inconceivable and would have to be kept on file.
Having thus increased the clutter on her desk by dividing one stack into two, Megan moved on to the next lot. She and Scumble worked steadily for some time. She had nearly finished winnowing her last lot when he sat back with a sigh, easing his back.
“Bet you a quid a good half of these didn’t look past the long hair. They see that, they think beatnik, and the stereotype is all that sticks in their minds.” He sighed. “I’ve got a couple of dozen that’ll need to be gone into. How about you?”
She glanced through the remaining three memo sheets, set them aside, and picked up a pile about the same as his. “These seem possible—”
His phone rang and he picked it up. “Scumble here.”
Megan could hear Jennifer saying, “Sir, Exeter thinks they may have found your car.”
“May have?” Scumble snarled. “Don’t they know how to read a number plate?”
“Fits the description—dark grey Hillman Minx in bad repair—but the plates’ve been removed. They say do you want to send someone over to search the area.”
“I could go, sir,” Megan suggested. Even slopping around in ditchwater—somehow searches always involved ditches—was preferable to facing Ken.
Maybe she sounded too eager. He gave her a suspicious look, waved at the papers they had just sorted and said, “I need you on the telephone. A couple of uniforms can do it. If it’s really ours. Where is the car, Jennifer, and how long has it been there?”
“Exeter station, in their car park. This time of year they let it go for a couple of days before they start to give them grief. So sometime Monday night, Tuesday morning.”
“Right. Peters’ll have to go to do it over for dabs. Tell him and Farley I want ‘em here pronto. But put Exeter through first. I’ll have a word with them.”
While he talked to someone at the Exeter police, Megan appropriated his final pile of sighting reports and quickly went through them.
Based on what he considered worthy of further investigation, a few of hers could be moved to the back burner.
By the time he got off the phone, she had whittled down the numbers to something that looked almost feasible.
However, a dismaying number of the public-spirited citizens had not provided telephone numbers.
When she pointed this out to the inspector he said, “You’ll have to ring back the station that sent us each report and ask them to get further details. If you have any trouble, remind them that this is murder, not a parlour game. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.” Megan pulled the telephone towards her.
By lunchtime she had eliminated half the list, was waiting for call-backs on a quarter, had failed to contact several more individuals, and had two real possibilities.
“Both in Bristol, sir,” she reported to Scumble. “Doesn’t that make it more likely they’re the real thing?”
“Could be.” He scarcely glanced up from the report he was perusing. His desk, like Megan’s, looked as if a blizzard had hit it.
“One’s the proprietor of a pub. The other’s a tobacconist. He’s pretty sure it’s a boy who comes—used to come in for cigarette papers but never bought tobacco.”
That got his attention. “Sounds like our lad! I just read the forensic report—where is it?” He scrabbled through the detritus.
“Traces of cannabis in his clothes, hair, and under his fingernails. The pathologist mentioned it, too, in his system. I didn’t take much notice.
So many kids smoke the stuff these days. But it’s a link.”
A pretty tenuous link, Megan thought, wondering what percentage of young men with long hair smoked pot. She didn’t say so, nor did she propose that someone, namely herself, ought to go to Bristol and check the only leads they had to the victim’s identity.
Her discretion was rewarded.
“Someone’ll have to go and talk to these blokes,” he growled. “I’ve got to stick around till this bright spark from the Yard turns up, so you’re elected. Likely the tobacconist and the pub are on the wrong side of Bristol so take Dawson.”
“I can manage on my own, sir.”
“Take Dawson! That’s an order, not a suggestion.
Let’s see, it’s quite a drive. You’d better plan on spending the night, in case you actually get something useful out of them and have to follow up.
But before you leave, send someone out for pasties for both of us.
You stick by the phone in case any of those calls you’re waiting for come through. ”
They were halfway through their pasties, and a couple of phone calls had knocked another two tips off the list, when a rumpus in the town square outside drew them both to their open window.
The centre of the square—actually a triangle—was used as a car park, with narrow one-way streets on three sides.
The street below the window was blocked by a large van, a rectangular, solid-looking vehicle that the constable on duty was urging to move along please and stop holding up the traffic.
A man in a dark grey suit jumped lithely down from the cab, announcing, “Police business,” as he took something from his pocket and held it up for the constable to examine.
They couldn’t see much of him except his corn-gold hair, trimmed short but which Megan knew, if left to grow, would burst into wild curls.
“DS Faraday, sir.”
“From Scotland Yard? Ye gods, they’ve sent an armoured car! What do the silly buggers think we’ve got here, the Crown Jewels?”
“We don’t actually know what they’re worth, sir,” said Megan, realising too late that she was giving the inspector the false impression that she cared what he thought of Scotland Yard.
Below, the desk sergeant had come out and added his voice to the dispute. Scumble ignored them. He turned to Megan with a glint in his eye that she instinctively distrusted, though she couldn’t guess what it might portend. “Know him, do you?”
“We worked together in T Division before I moved back to Cornwall.”
“And now he’s at the Yard,” Scumble muttered. “Must be highly thought of.”
Megan didn’t consider it necessary to respond.
“Fancies himself, does he?”
“Well . . .” God’s gift to women, that was Ken. “. . . I suppose so.” What was the inspector up to? She didn’t trust him an inch.
He leant out of the window and shouted down, “Get that bloody van out of the road. Now!” Without waiting to see if he was obeyed, he pulled his head back in, saying gloomily, “Now the super’ll be getting complaints about language from all the old biddies.”
“Shouldn’t be too many about, sir. The shops are closed for lunch. The van’s moving.”
“You don’t care about ‘language’?”
He seemed genuinely curious, so she told him, “Compared to what I heard daily in London, it’s nothing.”
“Ah. We’re old-fashioned, here in the country.” His voice was more self-satisfied than discontented. He cocked his head at the sound of footsteps running up the stairs. “Here comes the boy wonder.”
And that put Ken firmly in his place. Megan faced him without qualms as he knocked on the door and came in. He was as tall and broad-shouldered as the inspector, considerably slimmer, twenty years younger, and all too good-looking.
“DI Scumble? Sorry about that, sir.” The boy wonder sounded not in the least repentant.
And he had still not managed to get rid of his public school accent.
“My driver’s used to central London where there’s never any parking spaces and we coppers stop wherever we need to.
DS Faraday reporting. The Yard sent me to pick up the loot.
” He looked around as if he expected diamonds and rubies to be spread out on one of the desks. “Oh, hello, Megan.”
She nodded in response, as Scumble said frostily, “In this part of the world we expect our drivers to do as they’re told.”
Before hostilities could progress, Superintendent Bentinck came in.
Grey-haired, barely regulation height, thin as a whip, he had a casual manner.
However, it was rumoured that the only officer ever to cross swords with him since he attained his present rank had subsequently sought political asylum in Outer Mongolia.
He perched on one corner of Megan’s desk, careful not to disarrange her papers.
“This is Detective Sergeant Faraday, sir,” said Scumble, “from the Met. He’s come to fetch away that jewelry. Superintendent Bentinck,” he added curtly to Ken.
“Afternoon, Sergeant. I’m afraid it’s not so simple. I’ve been having a bit of a word with our CC. Given that the Yard’s already involved, because of the jeweller who was robbed—What was his name?”
“Donaldson, sir,” Megan and Ken both said at once. Ken had a confident, almost gloating gleam in his bright blue eyes.
DI Scumble was seething. It wasn’t often he had a chance to get his teeth into a murder, and here it was being taken out of his hands, apparently to be given to a mere sergeant.
Major Amboyne, the chief constable, always asked for and followed his superintendents’ advice, so Scumble felt betrayed by his own guv’nor.
“We aren’t certain yet that the jewels are the same, sir,” he pointed out through gritted teeth.
“Very true, Inspector,” the super agreed in his mild voice.
“Mr Donaldson will have to identify them. But the descriptions do match quite closely, you know. We wouldn’t dream of taking the case away from you, especially as the Yard can’t spare anyone of appropriate rank—” That was one in the eye for Ken!
“—at this point. So they’re allowing us to keep DS Faraday as liaison and to assist you and DS Pencarrow in any way he can. ”
“Thank you, sir,” said Scumble. The glint in his eye that Megan distrusted was back. “I’m sure we can make use of his experience.”
Bentinck took Ken away to arrange the transfer of the jewelry to the armoured van in the custody of the two uniformed constables he’d brought with him and the private guard hired by Donaldson’s insurance company.
“I’d better get going, sir,” Megan said to Scumble, gathering up her shoulder-bag and rewrapping the remains of her pasty. “I’ll eat this on the way.”
“Not so fast! Forget Dawson. You can take Faraday with you.”
“Sir! I’d much rather have Dawson.”
“So would I. I want the boy wonder out of my hair, and you’re the only excuse I can think of.”
“But he doesn’t know anything about the murder. He’ll have to read all the reports.”
“You’ve got the carbons. He can read them in the car, and you can answer any questions he has.”
Wonderful, Megan thought gloomily, gathering a huge pile of blurry carbon copies. She’d not only have Ken on her hands, she was going to have to try to explain Aunt Nell to him.