A Suitable Vengeance (38 page)

“We need to go to Penzance.”

Detective Inspector Boscowan took them to the officers’ mess. “The yellow submarine,” he’d called it, and the name was very apt: yellow walls, yellow linoleum, yellow formicatopped tables, yellow plastic chairs. Only the crockery was a different colour, but as this colour was carmine, the overall effect was one which did not encourage the thought of lingering over a meal with one’s mates. Nor did it suggest the possibility of consuming one’s food without developing a ferocious headache in the process. They took a pot of tea to a table overlooking a small courtyard in which a dispirited ash tree attempted to flourish in a circle of dirt the colour of granite.

“Designed and decorated by madmen,” was Boscowan’s only comment as he hooked his foot round the leg of an extra chair and dragged it to their table. “Supposed to take one’s mind off one’s work.”

“It does that,” St. James remarked.

Boscowan poured the tea while Lynley ripped open three packages of digestive biscuits and shook them onto an extra plate. They fell upon it with a sound like small artillery fire.

“Baked fresh daily.” Boscowan smiled sardonically, took a biscuit, dunked it into his tea and held it there. “John’s spoken to a solicitor this morning. I had a devil of a time getting him to do it. I’ve always known the man’s stubborn, but he’s never been like this.”

“Are you going to charge him?” Lynley asked.

Boscowan examined his biscuit, dunked it again. “I’ve no choice in the matter. He was there. He admits it. The evidence supports it. Witnesses saw him. Witnesses heard the row.” Boscowan took a bite of his biscuit after which he appreciatively held it up at eye level and nodded his head. He wiped his fingers on a paper napkin and urged the plate upon the other two men. “Not half bad. Just put your faith in the tea.” He waited until they had each taken one before he went on. “Had John only
been
there it would be a different matter. Had there not also been that flaming row which half the neighbourhood appear to have heard…”

St. James looked at Lynley. He was adding a second cube of sugar to his tea. His index finger played along the handle of the cup. But he said nothing.

St. James said, “As to Penellin’s motive?”

“An argument over Nancy, I dare say. Cambrey was trapped into the marriage, and he made no bones about hating every minute of it. There’s not one person I’ve talked to who hasn’t said that.”

“Then why marry her in the first place? Why not simply refuse? Why not insist on an abortion?”

“According to John, the girl wouldn’t hear of abortion. And Harry Cambrey wouldn’t hear of Mick’s refusing to marry her.”

“But Mick was a grown man after all.”

“With a dad sick and likely to die after his surgery.” Boscowan drained his cup of tea. “Harry Cambrey recognised a string when he saw one. Don’t think he didn’t pull it to keep Mick in Nanrunnel. So the lad got trapped here. He started stepping out on his wife. Everyone knows it, including John Penellin.”

Lynley said, “But you can’t truly believe that John—”

Boscowan raised a hand quickly. “I know the facts. They’re all we have to work with. Nothing else can matter, and you damn well know it. What difference does it make that John Penellin’s my friend? His son-in-law’s dead and that has to be seen to, whether it’s convenient in my life or not.” Having said this, Boscowan looked abashed, as if his brief outburst had come as a surprise to him. He went on more quietly. “I’ve offered to let him go home pending arraignment, but he’s refused. It’s as if he wants to be here, as if he wants to be tried.” He reached for another biscuit but rather than eat it, he broke it in his hands. “It’s as if he did it.”

“May we see him?” Lynley asked.

Boscowan hesitated. He looked from Lynley to St. James, then out the window. “It’s irregular. You know that.”

Lynley pulled out his warrant card. Boscowan waved it off. “I know you’re Scotland Yard. But this isn’t a Yard case, and I’ve my own Chief Constable’s sensibilities to consider. No visitors save family and solicitor when it’s a homicide. That’s standard procedure in Penzance, regardless of what you allow at the Met.”

“A woman friend of Mick Cambrey’s has gone missing from London,” Lynley said. “Perhaps John Penellin can help us with that.”

“A case you’re working on?”

Lynley didn’t reply. At the next table a girl in a stained white uniform began stacking plates onto a metal tray. Crockery crashed and scraped. A mound of mashed potatoes fell to the floor. Boscowan watched her work. He tapped a hard biscuit on the table top.

“Oh hell,” he murmured. “Come on with you both. I’ll arrange it somehow.”

He left them in an interrogation room in another wing of the building. A single table and five chairs were the only furnishings besides a mirror on one wall and a ceiling light fixture from which a spider was industriously constructing a web.

“Do you think he’ll admit to it?” Lynley asked as they waited.

“He doesn’t really have a choice.”

“And you’re sure, St. James?”

“It’s the only reasonable explanation.”

A uniformed constable escorted John Penellin into the room. When he saw who his visitors were, he took a single step backwards as if he would leave. The door was already closed behind him, however. It had a small window set at eye level, and although Penellin glanced at this as if considering whether to signal the constable to take him back to his cell, he made no move to do so. Instead, he joined them. The table wobbled on uneven legs as he leaned against it when he sat.

“What’s happened?” he asked warily.

“Justin Brooke took a fall at Howenstow early Sunday morning,” Lynley said. “The police think it was an accident. It may well have been. But if it wasn’t, there’s either a second killer on the loose locally or you yourself are innocent and there’s only one killer. Which do you think is more likely, John?”

Penellin twisted a button on the cuff of his shirt. His expression did not change although a muscle contracted as quickly as a reflex beneath his right eye.

St. James spoke. “The
Daze
was taken from Lamorna early yesterday morning. She was wrecked at Penberth Cove last night.”

The button Penellin was twisting fell onto the table. He picked it up, used his thumb to flip it onto its other side. St. James went on.

“I think it’s a three-tiered operation, with a main supplier and perhaps half a dozen dealers. They seem to be running the cocaine in two possible ways: Either the dealers pick it up from the supplier—perhaps on the Scillys—and then sail back to the mainland, or the supplier arranges to meet the dealers in any number of coves along the coast. Porthgawarra comes to mind at once. The shore’s accessible, the village is too far off for anyone to notice clandestine comings and goings in the cove. The cliff is riddled with caves and caches in which an exchange could take place if it seems too risky to try it on the open sea. But no matter how he gets it from his supplier, once the dealer has it—either from the Scillys or from one of the coves—he sails back to Lamorna in the
Daze
and then takes the cocaine to the mill at Howenstow where he packages it. With no one the wiser.”

Penellin said only, “You know, then.”

“Who is it that you’ve been trying to protect?” St. James asked. “Mark or the Lynleys?”

Penellin reached in his pocket and brought out a packet of Dunhills. Lynley leaned across the table with the lighter. Penellin looked at him over the flame.

“It’s a bit of both, I should guess,” Lynley said. “The longer you keep silent, the longer you protect Mark from arrest. But keeping him from arrest makes him available to Peter unless you do what you can to keep them apart.”

“Mark’s dragging Peter down,” Penellin said. “He’ll kill him eventually if I don’t stop him.”

“Justin Brooke told us that Peter intended to make a buy here in Cornwall,” St. James said. “Mark was his source, wasn’t he? That was why you were trying to keep them from seeing each other on Friday at Howenstow.”

“I thought Mark might try to sell to Peter and the girl. I’ve suspected him of dealing in drugs for some time, and I thought if I could just find where he was bringing the stuff in, where he was packaging it…” Penellin rolled his cigarette restlessly between his fingers. There was no ashtray on the table, so he knocked the growing cylinder of ash onto the floor and smashed it with his foot. “I thought I could stop him. I’ve been watching him for weeks, following him when I could. I’d no idea he was doing it right on the estate.”

“It was a solid plan,” St. James said, “both parts of it. Using the
Daze
as a means of getting the cocaine. Using the mill to cut and package it. Everything was associated with Howenstow in some way. And since Peter was—and is—the known Howenstow user, he stood to take the fall if things didn’t work out. He’d protest his innocence wildly, of course. He’d blame Mark when it came down to it. But who’d believe him? Even yesterday, we immediately assumed he’d taken the boat. No one gave a thought to Mark. It was clever of them.”

Penellin’s head lifted slowly at St. James’ final word. “You know that part as well.”

“Mark didn’t have the capital to orchestrate this alone,” St. James said. “He needed an investor, and I should guess it was Mick. Nancy knew that, didn’t she? You both knew it.”

“Suspected. Suspected is all.”

“Is that why you went to see him on Friday night?”

Penellin gave his attention back to his cigarette. “I was looking for answers.”

“And Nancy must have known you’d be going there. So when Mick was killed, she feared the worst.”

“Cambrey’d taken out a bank loan to update the newspaper,” Penellin said, “but little enough got spent on that. Then he started going all the time to London. And he started talking money to Nance. How there wasn’t enough. How they were close to bankrupt. Rent money. Baby money. They were going to sink, according to Mick. But none of it made sense. He had money. He’d managed to get the loan.”

“Which he was investing rather copiously in cocaine.”

“She didn’t want to believe he was involved. She said he didn’t take drugs, and she wouldn’t see that one doesn’t have to take them in order to sell them. She wanted proof.”

“That’s what you were after Friday night when you went to the cottage.”

“I’d forgotten that it was one of the Fridays when he did the pay envelopes. I’d thought he’d not be home and I’d be able to have a thorough search. But he was there. We had a row.”

St. James took the Talisman sandwich wrapper from his pocket. “I think this is what you wanted,” he said and handed it to Penellin. “It was in the newspaper office. Harry found it in Mick’s desk.”

Penellin looked the paper over, handed it back. “I don’t know what I wanted,” he said and gave a low, self-derisive laugh. “I think I was looking for a typed confession.”

“This is more design than confession,” St. James admitted.

“What does it mean?”

“Only Mark could verify it, but I think it represents the original deal the two of them struck together.
I K 9400
would signify the cost of the original purchase of cocaine. A kilo for £9400. They’d split that between them to sell, which is what the second line tells us. 500 grams for each of them at £55 per gram. Their profit: £27,500 each. And next to their profit, the particular talent each of them would bring to the plan. MP—Mark—would provide the transportation in order to pro cure the drug. He’d take the
Daze
and meet the dealer. MC—Mick—would provide the initial financing from the bank loan he’d secured in order to purchase new equipment for the newspaper. And Mick covered himself by beginning those initial equipment purchases so no one’s suspicions would be aroused.”

“Then it fell apart,” Penellin said.

“Perhaps. It could be that the cocaine didn’t sell as well as they thought it would and he lost money on the deal. Perhaps things didn’t work out between the partners. Or there may have been a double cross somewhere along the line.”

“Or the other,” Penellin said. “Go ahead with the other.”

“That’s why you’re in here, John, isn’t it?” Lynley asked. “That’s why you’re saying nothing. That’s why you’re taking the blame.”

“He must have discovered how easy it was,” Penellin said. “He didn’t need Mick once he’d made the initial purchase, did he? Why bother with an added person who’d expect part of the profits?”

“John, you can’t take the blame for Cambrey’s death.”

“Mark’s only twenty-two.”

“That doesn’t matter. You didn’t—”

Penellin cut Lynley short by speaking to St. James. “How did you know it was Mark?”

“The
Daze
. We thought Peter had taken her to get away from Howenstow. But the boat was northeast on the rocks at Penberth Cove. So she had to be returning to Howenstow, not leaving. And she’d been there for several hours when we arrived, so there was plenty of time for Mark to abandon her, to make his way back to Howenstow, and be ready—somewhat banged up, admittedly—to help us search for Peter.”

“He’d have needed to abandon her,” Penellin said numbly.

“The cocaine gave him good enough reason to do so. If anyone at Penberth phoned the coastguard, he’d be in serious trouble. Better risk his life by jumping ship near the shore than risk a jail sentence by getting caught with a kilogram of cocaine on the boat.”