'What about his paperknife, Inspector?' Miss Yates was examining his desk. I turned to face her. Hell's goblins! She'd taken her spectacles off! The desk was totally bare except for a marble-based executive paper knife holder, essential for the job, complete with stainless-steel knife. I held it between my fingertips and examined it as if I knew what I was doing.
'Smashing,' I said, 'do you mind if I borrow this for an hour or two?'
She perched herself on the corner of his desk. As I faced her she drew up one long leg and folded her hands around her knee. 'Not at all, Inspector. Did you say it was an interesting case?'
I dropped the knife into a plastic bag. 'Very interesting. I'd like to tell you all about it sometime. Meanwhile, I'd better have this examined. Then I can bring it back to you' — I gave her the smile 'personally.'
Fingerprints were in the middle of a panic. Every white male in the city who could run a mile in under five minutes with his trousers round his ankles was in the process of being eliminated from enquiries. The constable laid aside what he was doing and gave the knife a brush-over with aluminium flake. It didn't show up too well against the bright metal, but he assured me there were some useful dabs present. He pressed strips of Sellotape over the smudges to lift them off. I could see them easily enough then. Chalk and soot are still used sometimes, but they have particles that squash flat when Sellotape is pressed on to them, distorting the image. This doesn't happen with the ally flake. The sticky strips are then placed on pieces of clear plastic sheet, to produce instant negatives, thereby eliminating half of the photographic process.
'Will they do?' he asked. 'Or do you want some contact prints making?
They'll take a while, I'm afraid.'
'Make me some prints, please. There's no immediate hurry.'
I wiped the powder from the paperknife, put it in an envelope with a note and posted it in the internal mail. The note read:
Dear Rita,
I've had to dash away. Thanks for the loan of the knife. (They were not Mr. His prints, thank goodness.) I haven't forgotten that I promised to tell you all about it.
Charles PS I'd appreciate it if you didn't mention this to Mr. H it might not be good for my promotion prospects!!!
Or my breathing, I'd thought, as I folded it.
Chapter Fourteen
Hard physical exercise; that's what I needed. I retrieved the gardening tools from the back of the shed and spent the rest of the day digging the old vegetable patch. It looked better for it, but my hands were blistered and my back felt dodgy. That evening I hobbled to the nearest pub for a couple of pints. It's not my idea of a local, with its polystyrene beams and flickering electric candles. There were only four others in the place, all leaning on the one, short bar. They made little effort to move so I could be served. As I reached between them for my pint I accidentally let it drip on someone's portable phone. One of them was complaining that he'd had to drive the Rover all the way to Leeds to fill up, because that's where the company account was. I narrowly avoided puking down the back of his Pierre Cardigan. It didn't work: next morning still found me drinking tea in the kitchen at four a.m.
I lunched in Whitby, after a three-hour drive, then went walkabout in the rain, looking for the address Longfellow had given me for Cakebread's flat. It was in an imposing Victorian terrace, on the north side, near Captain Cook's monument. I sat outside for over an hour, watching for comings and goings. Nobody came, nobody went.
Whitby was as depressing as the weather, but without the possibility of changing in the near future. The front door of the building was not locked, so I entered and climbed the stairs. When I reached his door I took out the third key that had been in the envelope Gloria had given me. It wouldn't even go in the lock. If it had fitted I don't think I would have opened the door, but it would have been useful to know that I had the means to, at a more favourable time. Never mind, this wasn't the real purpose of my journey. I went back to the car and set off up the coast.
I'd scoured the Ordnance Survey maps and the only PM I found was a place called Port Mulgrave, near Staithes, to the north of Whitby, and only thirty miles from Teesside airport. Captain Diaz had suggested we ask ourselves why Cakebread flew to Teesside. I was working on the lines that the drugs were dropped to accomplices waiting in a boat.
He'd be flying in unrestricted airspace, and could easily divert twenty miles out to sea. It'd been done before. Port Mulgrave looked the perfect spot to bring the booty ashore.
The east coast doesn't have the reputation of, say, Cornwall, as a hotbed of smuggling, but it happens. Not too long ago a major racket was exposed involving the importation of illegal immigrants, and recently a ton of cannabis was found on an oil-rig service boat. The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that I'd cracked the note's last riddle. 'Nineteenth-century port, used for exporting iron ore. Never commercially successful' was the only reference I'd been able to find in the library. It was time to investigate first-hand. In the car I had my old walking gear and a pair of binoculars; today I was an ornithologist.
It was mid-afternoon when I parked about a mile down the road from the turn-off to Port Mulgrave. The rain was coming down as if the second flood was already here. I changed into my waterproofs, stuffed the binocs down the front of my cagoule, and went for a walk. Half an hour later I arrived at the cliff top overlooking the port. There was a hotel that would have been a perfectly sensible place to park. The cliffs here are not like the ones at Bempton or Dover. Although the overall height might be just as great, they don't rise vertically from the sea. They slump against the land, at about forty-five degrees.
Another noticeable difference is that they are not carved from chalk.
Their chief component is mud.
A narrow path zigged and zagged down towards the broken little pier that jutted into the unwelcoming ocean. Skeins of rain flurried across the surface of the water. There were no buildings down there, just a couple of what looked like garden sheds, and a pair of boats dragged on to the shingle. I was hardly halfway down the path when two figures came out of one of the huts. I stopped and took out the binoculars. I had a good scan round, at nothing in particular, and proceeded downwards. I hadn't looked at the two men; I'd already noticed that they were carrying shotguns.
We met where the path levelled out. 'Afternoon! Not that it's a very good one,' I bellowed with enthusiasm.
They stood blocking my progress. 'Wouldn't go any further, if I was you,' one of them said. If Wales really does produce fine tenors, the East Riding should be famous for its baritones. This one sounded as if he gargled with bitumen.
'Oh, really. Why's that?' I asked.
'Shooting,' he stated. They were both wearing Barbour jackets that were pale with age, and the rain was running off their hats.
'Oh, thanks for the warning. What are you shooting?'
'Rabbits.'
'Hard luck on the rabbits,' I laughed. I stood looking around for a few moments, then pointed past them and said: 'Will it be safe if I just look for fossils for a minute or two, down near your boats?'
They exchanged glances, and the spokesman said: 'Aye, that should be all right.'
They followed me down. I told myself that this was England, not Beirut, but I had to admit it was a good setting for a murder. They both went back into the shelter of the hut, but kept the door open, so they could watch me. I wandered up and down and kicked a few pebbles over. Once I took out my knife and squatted on my heels, closely examining nothing in particular. A squadron of guillemots came whirring over the wave-tops, as if on a suicidal torpedo run. I pulled out the binoculars and followed them until they vanished against the blackness of the rocks. It seemed a crazy place to build a port for the exporting of bulk cargo they'd have to lug everything down the cliffs. But then I noticed the tunnel.
The cliffs were banked with scree comprised of shale, heaped up like mining spoil. Rusty rails ran back from the pier, and pointed up the scree towards the blanked-off entrance. The iron ore wasn't brought down the cliff; it
