A Suitable Vengeance (Inspector Lynley, #4)(91)

St. James had been placing most of the facts together as Lynley spoke. His thoughts elsewhere, he’d heard not so much the words as the desolation behind them. He sought to bring that to an immediate end.

“Peter didn’t take the Daze,” he said. “I’m sure of it.”

Lynley’s head turned to him slowly. It looked like the sort of movement one makes in a dream. “What are you saying?”

“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.