The Valley of the Shadow (18 page)

She gave up as the cathedral clock chimed the quarter. Five minutes to get to Canon Dinesh’s office and she couldn’t remember whether Joce had said to turn left or right when she reached the street.

A helpful verger gave her directions. She went out by the south door. In the short time she had been inside, the sky had filled with mackerel clouds, small, fleecy puffs delightful in themselves but presaging bad weather. If a storm came in, the chances of a continuing search for Kalith’s family diminished to the vanishing point.

Eleanor found the cathedral offices. Jocelyn had told the secretary she was expected, and she was ushered straight into Canon Dinesh’s room. There was a desk, adorned with a plain gold crucifix and a colour photo of a woman wearing a turquoise sari with a gold border and several gold chains round her neck. However, the canon and Jocelyn were sitting by a small driftwood fire in two of a trio of well-stuffed armchairs, intended, presumably, to make those consulting him more comfortable, less intimidated.

Not that the canon looked intimidating. He was a short, chubby man with a round, solemn face, considerably darker than Kalith, with quite different features. That didn’t mean they were not related. But even if he had no connection with the Chudasamas, his own family might have arrived in the country illegally. He just might know something that would lead to the smugglers responsible for Kalith’s family’s plight.

As he stood to greet Eleanor, the skirts of his black cassock made him look even shorter and tubbier. Jocelyn introduced them and they shook hands.

“Do sit down, Mrs. Trewynn,” he said in a soft voice without a distinguishable accent. “Mrs. Stearns tells me you’re in no hurry, and I usually take tea at about this time.”

The secretary brought in a tray. Jocelyn took it upon herself to do the honours. While she poured, Canon Dinesh said to Eleanor, “I understand you were present when the unfortunate young man was rescued from the sea?”

“Not exactly. I went for help when he was spotted. It’s terrible to think he’d have died if we hadn’t happened to walk that way and found him just in time.”

“But the Good Lord sent you, and I shall pray for his swift recovery.”

“I’m so sorry for his family, not knowing where he is.” Eleanor accepted a cup of Earl Grey from Jocelyn, declining a bourbon biscuit—not her favourite and she was still full of chips. “Kalith seemed very worried about them, from the little he was able to say. Do you have a family, Canon?”

“Yes, indeed. My wife and children and my wife’s sister came from Africa with me, several years ago, before the law was changed. We have no relatives there now, though many in India.”

Eleanor continued to probe the subject as far as she decently could, without asking directly whether he was aware of any smuggling. She was pretty sure he wasn’t. She would leave it to the police to ask that question if necessary. Jocelyn would kill her if she confronted him and upset him.

The secretary came in to remind the canon of another appointment. They parted with many expressions of mutual esteem and many earnest promises from the Reverend Dinesh to pray for the sufferer and his family.

“Well, what do you think?” asked Jocelyn as they walked back to the car.

“I don’t believe he has any personal interest in the Chudasamas, though their situation distresses him.”

“He’s a gentle soul. I agree, I didn’t see the slightest sign that he suspected they might have arrived illegally.”

“The trouble is,” said Eleanor gloomily, “they might not. Perhaps he simply went for a solo swim and no one has reported him missing because no one was expecting him, and he was raving when he talked to Megan. It’s all too plausible. If the authorities decide that’s the case…”

“Unless Kalith wakes up and clarifies things, they might stop the search,” said Jocelyn. “We can’t let them get away with that, when there are—or may be—several lives at stake. Let me think.”

In silence they got into the car and Jocelyn negotiated the one-way streets back to the A39.

“Bother,” Eleanor said as they left the town behind them. “If I’d known you were going to carry me off to Truro, I could have brought the clothes Megan and Nick borrowed and returned them to Julia and Chaz. They both live near Falmouth, I think.”

“But you didn’t bring the clothes. I wish I knew who’d make a decision like that. Someone local, or someone in London? Plymouth?”

“I don’t know. Is the Coast Guard part of the Navy?”

“I don’t think so, but in any case, it’s useless to try and influence the military mind. The RNLI, though … Their mission is saving lives. If they threaten to quit, the press … perhaps the Race Relations Board, though that would probably take too long. And in the end it’s always a question of money. Could we persuade them to regard it as a training exercise?”

“Joce, I’m sure they’ll keep searching as long as there’s the slightest hope.”

“I wouldn’t count on it. Bureaucracy! The Church will have to get involved. I’m afraid Canon Dinesh is not a very forceful person.”

“What does a canon do?”

“Do you really want to know?” Jocelyn asked ironically.

“Not particularly,” Eleanor admitted. “I just don’t want to dwell on what Megan and the lifeboat men may be finding. Or not finding.”

EIGHTEEN

Megan hung on to a loop of rope as the skipper, at the outboard in the stern, piloted the lifeboat between the quays. Walter and Maggie perched on the sides, facing each other, apparently at ease. The
Belinda
cleared the headlands and swung northward. As soon as they were far enough from shore not to tangle with lobster pot lines, their speed increased. The bow rose at an angle. Spray flew back on either side and spattered Megan’s face and helmet.

The sun had sucked up the last wisps of mist. The sea glittered as if a fortune in silver coins miraculously floated on the surface. No wonder seamen always had creases at the corners of their eyes.

Megan reckoned the boat was about sixteen feet end to end, with the covered bow taking up a good chunk and the outboard another. The puffy, inflated sides narrowed the space inside. Gunwales? Perhaps they didn’t count as gunwales in an inflatable, if that was the right word to start with. Although she had grown up near Falmouth, Megan’s experience of boats was limited to ferries, cross-Channel and otherwise, and a rowboat on the Penryn River as a child.

“Get on the radio, Maggie, and give Falmouth our numbers,” said the skipper. “Don’t forget to tell them DS Pencarrow’s wearing the sixteen.”

When Maggie had reported in and signed off, Megan asked her, “What difference do the numbers make?”

“In case of … accident. They won’t be notifying the wrong family.” She shouted backwards, “We’re lucky with the weather, Skipper. Couldn’t be calmer.”

“For the present. Till that front they forecast rolls in.” He hoicked a thumb at the western horizon. Megan saw a dark line marking the meeting of sea and sky.

“What about the tide, Skipper?” asked Walter. “On the turn, isn’t it?”

“That’s why we’re in a hurry. Let’s hope we make it to Lye Rock while the gut’s dry, for a start. I wouldn’t want to be caught in there when the current’s running.”

Megan, out of her element and a trifle shaken by Maggie’s explanation of the numbers, said, “What I don’t quite understand is, if the approach to these caves is so difficult and dangerous, how did the smugglers manage it? Presumably they’d prefer to work under cover of dark nights and stormy weather.”

The skipper nodded. “A good question. Familiarity, I suppose. I doubt they’d tackle that area in really bad weather, but at sea a very little light goes a long way because it reflects off the water. As well as having experience of safe channels, I imagine they’d use a narrow boat with shallow draught, flat-bottomed, even, and they’d have someone in the bow with a pole to feel for unexpected rocks. As I told you, things move.”

“And we don’t know where the channels were to start with,” Walter pointed out pessimistically.

Maggie jeered, “I swear that load of gloom you carry around is going to sink you one of these days, Walter. That’s what we’re going to find out.”

“I’ll have to take you aboard the
Daisy D.,
Sergeant—”

“Megan.”

“Megan. To show your map to Tom.”

“Tom?”

“Coxswain Kulick, the skipper.”

“Kulick? That doesn’t sound English.”

“He’s Polish, or was. He got out of Poland as the Nazis and the Commies moved in, in ’39, and joined the Wavy Navy, the RNVR. After the war he went into the Coast Guard. Then, when he retired, he came over to the RNLI. He can explain your map to Jackson, skipper of the
Lucy,
the Bude boat. It has farther to come than we do. You all right, Megan?”

“I think so,” Megan said uncertainly. She had been perfectly all right until the boat started skipping across the crests of the waves.

“Watch the horizon,” Maggie suggested, pointing westward.

Megan looked, but the sight of the clouds, already a band rather than a line, was not encouraging, so she turned her gaze to the east. The dark band in that direction was cliffs. Unfortunately, they jigged up and down to the motion of the boat. She closed her eyes, but the uneasiness in her middle immediately became queasiness. She’d just have to put up with the sight of the advancing front. It was definitely an improvement on watching the waves go up and down.

By the time they rounded Tintagel Head, some twenty minutes later, Megan was beginning to adjust to the motion. The
Belinda
’s course curved eastward, standing clear of a group of offshore islets Maggie told her were the Sisters.

“And that’s Lye Rock,” the skipper pointed out. “You can see the cleft separating it from the headland. That’s where one of your aunt’s caves is supposed to be.”

Megan glanced at the narrow “gut,” as Aunt Nell’s smuggler had called it, but she was more interested in the view ahead, where a black-and-orange ship stood out like a hornet against the speedwell-blue sea.

“The
Daisy D.
Maggie, signal her and tell her we’re coming alongside.”

Maggie announced their imminent arrival and asked for permission to board, which was duly granted.

To Megan’s relief, as they approached the
Daisy D.
it shrunk from a distant monster to quite a small ship. She had envisioned making a fool of herself trying to climb the side of a vessel towering over the tiny inflatable. It turned out to be only about three times the length of the
Belinda,
though much more solid, with a wooden hull and a considerable superstructure, painted orange. Aerials sprouted here and there.

Larkin handed over the controls to Walter, who manoeuvred
Belinda
alongside the all-weather boat. Magically, he held her in position about a foot from the larger boat’s side as both rose and fell with the swell. A crewman stood by on the
Daisy D.
—to help with the crossing, Megan hoped. He wore a life jacket like those of
Belinda
’s crew but with yellow waterproof trousers instead of a dry suit and without a helmet.

“Think you can make it, Megan?” Larkin asked.

“Yes,” said Megan with confidence. She had forgotten her borrowed garb. It hampered her movements, she lost her balance, and in spite of a boost from the skipper and the crewman on the
Daisy D.
grabbing her arm, she landed on hands and knees on the deck. Not the dignified appearance she would have liked to present.

She hoped Coxswain Kulick wasn’t watching. If he was sceptical about what Kalith had said to her and didn’t really believe there was a family in danger, or if he scoffed at Aunt Nell’s map, she needed to present a competent appearance, cool, calm, and collected, to persuade him.

“All right, miss?” The sailor helped her up and released her arm.

“Yes, thank you. I’m not really RNLI. I was lent these clothes and they don’t fit. I’m a copper—Detective Sergeant Pencarrow.”

He grinned. “A landlubber, eh? The coxswain’s expecting you, Sergeant. And you, Coxswain Larkin,” he added, as the
Belinda
’s skipper swung himself aboard. He waved them towards the wheelhouse at the rear. Stern? Aft?

Larkin led the way, one hand on the safety rail, the other ripping open the Velcroed breast pocket of his jacket and taking out the map and his chart.

“Afternoon, Tom.” He handed them over to the
Daisy D.
’s skipper, a grizzled man who looked tired. “This is DS Pencarrow. She’ll explain the map to you. I won’t stop. We must get going before the tide starts to rise.” To Megan, he said, “No sense you coming till we find them.”

“I’d only get in your way,” she agreed. She stepped into the wheelhouse out of his way, and he went back to the
Belinda.
A moment later, she heard the roar of the outboard.

“Steady as she goes, Gavin,” Kulick told the helmsman. Unfolding the map and Larkin’s chart, he pinned them up on his chart board and beckoned Megan to join him. “Right, Sergeant, let’s hear it.” He rolled his
rrr
’s like a Scot, or, Megan supposed, like a Pole.

Megan explained that the arrows on the map showed the locations of the secret caves once used by smugglers. “I gather they can’t be seen from offshore, except the middle one, which looks as if it’s full of water whatever the tide level.” She described the secrets of the three.

“And just how did you happen to find out?”

“My aunt was told by a descendant of a family with a tradition of smuggling in the old days.”

“It all sounds pretty unlikely, you must admit. And this story about people being stuck in one of them? The Coast Guard didn’t mention hidden caves when we were called out in the middle of the night.”

“In the middle of the night? What did they expect you to do in the dark?”

“We have searchlights. We might have found survivors in a small boat. But mostly to be on hand when the inshore boats arrived at dawn. We’re considerably slower and had farther to come. We got out of Padstow just before the fog closed down.”

“Then they couldn’t come out and you couldn’t go back.”