A Suitable Vengeance (Inspector Lynley, #4)(90)

Cotter joined him in studying it. “MP,” he said. Then, “Member of Parliament?”

St. James looked up. “What did you say?”

“Them letters. MP.”

“MP? No—” As he spoke, St. James held the paper to the sunlight. And he saw what the gloom of the newspaper office and his own preconceived notions had prevented him from realising before. The pen, which had skipped in the grease on other spots on the paper, had done as much again next to the words procure and transport. The result was an imperfectly formed loop for the letter P, not the number I at all. And the 6, if the thought followed logically, had to be instead a hastily scrawled C.

“Good God.” He frowned, examining the accompanying numbers. Dismissing gunrunning and Ireland and every other side issue from his mind, it wasn’t long before he saw the obvious. 500. 55. 27500. The last was the multiple of the previous two.

And then he recognised the first connection of the circumstances surrounding Mick Cambrey’s death. The position of the Daze had told him, bow to stern northeast on the rocks. He should have clung to that thought. It had been pointing to the truth.

He thought about the coastline of Cornwall. He knew without a doubt that Lynley’s party of men could scour every cove from St. Ives to Penzance, but it would be as limitedly useful an activity for them as it had been for the excise officers who had patrolled the same area for two hundred years. The coast was honeycombed with caves. It was scalloped by coves. St. James knew that. He did not need to clamber among the rocks and slither down the faces of cliffs to see what he knew quite well was already there, a haven for smugglers. If they knew how to pilot a boat among the reefs.

It could have come from anywhere, he thought. From Portgwarra to Sennen Cove. Even from the Scillys. But there was only one way to know for sure.

“What next?” Cotter asked.

St. James folded the paper. “We need to find Tommy.”

“Why?”

“To call off the search.”





CHAPTER 19


After nearly two hours, they found him on the quay at Lamorna Cove. He was squatting on the edge, talking to a fisherman who had just docked his boat and was trudging up the harbour steps, three coils of greasy-looking rope dangling from his shoulder. He paused halfway, listening to Lynley above him. He shook his head, covered his eyes to examine the other boats in the harbour, and with a wave towards the scattering of buildings set back from the quay, he continued his climb.

Up above, on the road that dipped into the cove, St. James got out of the car. “Go back to Howenstow,” he told Cotter. “I’ll ride in with Tommy.”

“Any message for Daze?”

St. James considered the question. Any message for Lynley’s mother seemed a toss-up between relieving her mind about one set of circumstances only to fire her worries about another. “Nothing yet.”

He waited as Cotter turned the car around and headed back the way they had come. Then he began the descent into Lamorna, with the wind whipping round him and the sun warming his face. Below him, the crystalline water reflected the colour of the sky, and the small beach glistened with newly washed sand. The houses on the hillside, built by Cornish craftsmen who had been testing the strength of the southwestern weather for generations, had sustained no damage from the storm. Here, that which had been the ruin of the Daze might not even have occurred.

St. James watched as Lynley walked along the quay, his head bent forward, his hands deep in trouser pockets. The posture said everything about the condition of his spirit, and the fact that he was alone suggested either that he had disbanded the search altogether or that the others had gone on without him. Because they’d been at it for hours already, St. James guessed the former. He called Lynley’s name.

His friend looked up, raised a hand in greeting, but said nothing until he and St. James met at the land end of the quay. His expression was bleak.

“Nothing.” He lifted his head and the wind tossed his hair. “We’ve completed the circuit. I’ve been talking to everyone here as a last-ditch effort. I thought someone might have seen them getting the boat ready to sail, or walking on the quay, or stocking supplies. But no one in any of the houses saw a blasted thing. Only the woman who runs the cafe even noticed the Daze yesterday.”

“When was that?”

“Just after six in the morning. She was getting ready to open the cafe—adjusting the front blinds—so she can’t have been mistaken. She saw them sailing out of the harbour.”

“And it was yesterday? Not the day before.”

“She remembers it was yesterday because she couldn’t understand why someone was taking the boat out when rain had been forecast.”

“But it was in the morning that she saw them?”

Lynley glanced his way, flashed a tired but grateful smile. “I know what you’re thinking. Peter left Howenstow the night before, and because of that, it’s less likely he’s the one who took the boat. That’s good of you, St. James. Don’t think I haven’t considered it myself. But the reality is that he and Sasha could have come to Lamorna during the night, slept on the boat, then taken her out at dawn.”

“Did this woman see anyone on deck?”

“Just a figure at the helm.”

“Only one?”

“I can’t think Sasha knows how to sail, St. James. She was probably below. She was probably still asleep.” Lynley looked back at the cove. “We’ve done the whole coastline. But so far, nothing. Not a sighting, not a garment, not a sign of them.” He took out his cigarette case and flipped it open. “I’m going to have to come up with something to tell Mother. But God only knows what it’ll be.”