Twenty-Three

ST. JUST-IN-PENWITH, the last town before Land’s End, Britain’s southwesterly tip, had long been a sad reminder of the halcyon days of Cornwall’s tin and copper mining industry in the nineteenth century. Crumbling stone winding towers rose like skeletal fingers all along the barren coast and abandoned mine shafts pocked the bracken and gorse-coated hills around the town itself. Squat and neglected, storm gray granite shops and homes huddled, cheek by jowl, around a vaguely triangular “square” as if sheltering from the Atlantic gales. Nearly treeless, and almost as barren as the cliffs beyond, St. Just, like many old mining towns in Britain, had limped along, slowly deteriorating, for more than a century after the mining boom went bust.

Morgan had seldom visited St. Just during her days as detective sergeant in Penzance. There was little need. St. Just was only a few miles south of Penzance, but nothing ever happened there, apart from an occasional break-in—she always wondered what could even be worth stealing, the town was so poor.

But in the last few years St. Just had begun to revive as an artists’ colony, thanks to cheap housing. It was also a nascent tourist venue, thanks to the wild cliffs, broad beaches, and its proximity to Land’s End. It was gradually being reborn.

It had just gone noon on Tuesday and she stood next to the tall clock tower, a World War I memorial at the western edge of the square, trying to get her bearings. She had an appointment with David Sennen, the Police Community Support Officer, a uniformed civilian posted in the town. He’d emailed her that he had keys and access to the Town Council’s chamber, but no office of his own. At the appointed time she found him, a young man, late-twenties, with a military haircut, in the Council’s lobby, which was simply the front room of a former miner’s cottage.

She reached out her hand: “Culdrose?” she asked, referring to the naval air base nearby.

He smiled. “Reckon you must be a detective. I only work here when I’m off duty which, thanks to an Afghanistan injury, is a lot of the time. But I was born here in St. Just. It’s home.”

“Fair enough, and thank you for seeing me.”  She looked around the spare space. “What say we move on to the King’s Arms for lunch and a pint? My shout.”

 

MORGAN HAD TO duck to enter the fourteenth century inn’s low front door. Sennen followed suit. The beamed ceilinged lounge bar had raw granite walls warmed by the soft light of electric sconces and the floor was carpeted in a deep red and blue pattern reminiscent of a Persian rug, a pattern that easily hid beer stains. It was early yet and the bar was empty but for a petite, dark-haired young woman behind it whose dimpled cheeks deepened when she saw Sennen.

“Officer David! Don’t usually see you here at lunchtime.” She looked at the handsome older woman with the spiked platinum hair beside him and winked: “New girlfriend, David?”

“This is Detective Inspector Morgan Davies, Jess.”

“What sort of trouble have you got into now, you devil?”

Morgan smiled. She liked the saucy girl’s attitude. She remembered, vaguely, when she was much the same, before her years on the force had hardened her. She shook off the thought and looked at the range of draft ales on tap. It was a St. Austell’s Brewery pub, not a Free House.

“I’ll have a pint of Tribute, Jess, if you will.” She would have preferred St. Austell’s stronger amber HSD, but it wasn’t on. “David? And don’t say you’re on police business or I’ll report you…”

The girl laughed. Sennen colored.

“Same for me, then, I reckon.”

“And let’s have a look at your bar menu as well, please Jess,” Morgan added.

The young woman passed her a somewhat battered red leather-covered menu. 

It took Morgan only a moment. “I’ll have the local crab salad. Small sized one, though. Must watch my weight,” she said winking and taking a long pull from her pint. “David?”

“Bowl of steamed mussels, please, Jess.”

“That’s just a starter! How you going to maintain that hunky soldier’s body eating so little?”

This time David laughed. “That’s exactly how I maintain it, girl.”

Jess dipped her head and took their order through to the kitchen, and Morgan slid onto a cushioned old wood settle beneath a window deep set in what she guessed were foot and a half thick granite walls. David sat across in a new Windsor chair stained dark to look old. He was glad Morgan had chosen the King’s Arms, facing the square. There were two others, once local pubs, but they’d gone upscale recently, catering to tourists with luxury rooms and fancy menus. The King’s was still a local.

After their lunch arrived, courtesy of blushing Jess, Morgan asked, her voice low, for the pub had begun to fill, “Right then, what have you got?”

Sennen passed her a handwritten note on lined paper. No computers or printers in St. Just, apparently.

She studied it. “That’s not much.”

“We don’t actually have much hereabouts in the way of accommodations, Morgan. Not anymore. Things are changing. We’ve got the Commercial Hotel just across the way, not that it’s big. Used to be dreadful but it’s gone all posh. I checked there. No one stayed recently with anything anywhere near your Rhys-Jones’s name. Meanwhile, most all of what used to be bed and breakfast places have either closed because of strict new government safety standards people couldn’t afford to meet, like installing fire doors and such, or they’ve upgraded and now rent out only as self-catering units or cottages. Minimum stay a week. More money, see, and less work: no daily laundry, cleaning, and turnover. More stable. There just are no more affordable spare bedrooms with full English breakfast in some old Gran’s house anymore. A lot of our older folks here once depended on that extra income.”

Morgan nodded. It was becoming the same all over Cornwall. Devon, too, for that matter. Progress. The kind that made poor people, especially older folks, even poorer.

“Have you checked out these places? Only eight of them hereabouts it seems from this list.”

“Yes, mostly farms and spread out around the precinct. I’ve found nothing yet, but I have a couple more to check. Some folks here, well, they’re a bit reluctant when police arrive. But so far, I’ve got them to cooperate. Many of them, they know me. Reckon that’s the reason.”

Morgan finished her salad. She’d have liked another pint but had miles yet to drive.

“I have one more request. There is a Co-Op Supermarket here. I’d like to talk to the manager. Will you make the introductions?”

“Sure. It’s right off the square. Manager’s John Roberts. His boy and me, we were at school together.”

 

“GIVE ME A moment, will you?” Morgan said quietly when they entered the store. “I need to look around.”

“Supermarket” was a big word for the little store: three grocery-packed aisles and a refrigerated meat case in the back, but it had most of life’s necessities and a friendly feel. While Sennen chatted up the older lady at the register and asked her to summon the manager, Morgan stalked the aisles until she found what she was looking for in the tiny housewares section: a stack of yellow and black ZIP Odourless Firelighter cartons.

“Inspector Davies? This is Mr. Roberts, the manager,” Sennen said behind her.

She was expecting a sort of balding, paunchy shopkeeper. She was wrong. The man was stocky and muscled, with pale blue eyes and steel gray hair trimmed close to the skull.

“Mr. Roberts is also ex-Culdrose: served in the first Iraq War alongside the Americans.”

Roberts reached out a hand: “How may I help you and David, Inspector?”

“Honored to meet you. Do you have CCTV cameras in the store, Mr. Roberts?”

“Of course. Sadly, we have to these days. Corporate policy…not that we ever see much theft in a place like this where everyone is known.”

“Would your cameras reach this aisle?” She looked around and could see none.

“I’m afraid not. We have only three: one watching the wine and liquor aisle, one the door, and one the register.”

“How long do you save these videos?”

“Generally, unless there is some incident, which is never, not more than a month.”

“If I gave you a date a few weeks ago, would you be willing to examine the videos if I told you what to look for? It’s a criminal case.”

“Well of course!”

“Do you have the authority to release those videos?”

Roberts shook his head. “Never had need to ask but I don’t care a whit about that. If it is a criminal case, and our little community is involved, I’ll assume the authority, come what may from corporate.” He grinned: “Let them fire me and try to get someone else willing to live way down here.”

Morgan nodded and gave him the date of the fire at Trevean. “I’m looking for anyone who bought these ZIP firestarters,” she said, pointing to the shelf, “anytime a week or two before.”

“Very popular they are around here. Lots of folks still with coal fireplaces. Sometimes that’s their only heat source; a bit behind we are down here. But sure, I’ll look into it. Any suggestions about who or what I should look for?”

“Caucasian male. Early middle age, we think. Not someone who had been a long-term customer, not someone you would perhaps even recognize.” She gave him her card.

“It’s a tall order, I must say. So many strangers this time of year. But I’ll do my best.”

“All we can ask, sir.” She extended her hand. “We shall be most grateful. It is possible someone we know may be in mortal danger. We’re trying to head that off.”

Roberts nodded.

Outside the shop, Morgan said, “It’s time I headed back north, David. Keep us informed as you continue searching. Stay in touch with PC Novak up in St. Ives. He’s a good man, completely reliable.”

“Reckon you’re right. Met him at a meeting in Camborne. Good chap.” 

“I am grateful for your help. Thank you for welcoming me to your patch.”

“Not much of a patch now we have no police office down here…”

 

DETECTIVE CONSTABLE TERRY Bates sat on a threadbare, unstable wheeled office chair at a small table in the cramped St. Ives police station above the harbor on Dove Street. It was early Wednesday morning. Like everything else in the old town of St. Ives, the building was granite-built, weathered, but solid. On the other hand, the upstairs interior of the police office had been rather brutally modernized at some point with white sheetrock walls, worn office furniture and filing cabinets, and overhead blue-white fluorescent lights so bright she wished she had sunglasses. Two small, deep set windows peered out across the old port. The St. Ives harbor was protected from the Atlantic by a high stone jetty tipped by a small, rusting, white lighthouse. Brightly painted coastal fishing boats lay this way and that on the sandy harbor bottom. They’d soon be bobbing again; the tide already was slinking in around the end of the jetty.

“As you might imagine, Terry, St. Ives has dozens of overnight accommodations: B&Bs, guest houses, a few nice hotels,” PC Novak explained.

“And?”

“And I have only three Police Community Support Officers—that’s all there is apart from myself, that’s my entire staff. I am the only constable here. Used to be different, but not anymore. I have asked my people to call or visit bed and breakfast and guest houses here enquiring after this Rhys-Jones person. They’re using Tourist Office listings. There are many such places, most of them rather drab, and they rise around the harbor all the way east to Carbis Bay.

“But I have been thinking about this Rhys-Jones chap. You’ve described him as coming from money, yes? If he’s in St. Ives I can’t see him holed up in some dingy Victorian guesthouse or B&B with a saggy bed, nylon sheets, and some aging landlady bringing weak tea and greasy eggs and bacon in the morning. I’m thinking he’d be at a better hotel, of which there are just a few in and about the town. That’s where I myself have started—though, I confess, without much luck yet. We don’t even know what name he’s using.”

“I think your theory is clever, Adam. How far have you got?”

“I’ve checked, in person, at Tregonna Castle, the Paradise Valley Hotel, and a recently refurbished place overlooking the harbor, Pedn Olva. Nothing yet, I’m afraid.”

The office phone rang.

“St. Ives police station…how may we help?”

Terry heard a loud voice shouting from Novak’s receiver and recognized it immediately. “Right. Of course!” Novak replied. “She’s right here, Inspector.” He passed the phone to Terry: “Davies,” he whispered.