Neil looked away.
‘Are you?’ Anna enquired.
‘That’s my business.’
‘It’s also mine, Mr Baggerly. This man has disappeared, he has been missing for some considerable time and it’s possible he has been murdered.’
Neil gave a soft laugh. ‘Possible? Either he has or he hasn’t.’
‘You think it’s funny? I need to talk to anyone who knew him. I need to find out who else knew him – and if you know
‘Straighten out?’
‘Yes. We can either do it here and now, or I will have you taken into the police station for questioning. Now: just how well did you know this man?’ She jabbed the photograph of Alan.
‘Sammy introduced me to him a couple of summers ago. We had a few nights together, but he was an oddball and could get quite nasty and I’m not into that stuff. Also, he was with Sammy Marsh. Whether or not they were an item I couldn’t tell you.’
‘Did you score drugs from him?’
‘Sammy?’
‘Yes, Mr Baggerly.’
‘Few lines of coke – that’s my limit – but he could hoover it up, and didn’t like to get down to it unless he was high.’
‘You are referring to this man you know as Daniel Matthews?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You scored drugs from him?’
‘I didn’t score – he had them with him. I’ve never been with Sammy. He’s not my type and besides, he’s always got a bunch of guys fawning all over him. If I say Dan was a heavy tipper, Sammy used to be so stoned he would drop hundreds. Reason I was never too friendly towards him was because he was well known to throw his weight around. You never knew where you were with Sammy. One minute he was all smiles and the next he’d blank you.’
Neil Baggerly frowned. ‘He never used to be like that – I’m talking about Sammy now. He was always Mr Sharp, but the last few times I saw him here he was well out of it. I kept my distance because the management here are very classy.’
‘Was Daniel Matthews drugged up?’
‘No, he would stick to soft drinks, but like I said, when he was alone with me he’d snort up a few lines.’
‘When you were with him, did you go to his place?’
‘No. I’ve got a room here. Apart from that, the summer is our busy time and I’ve not got a car. On my days off we’d go into Falmouth, but I never went over to Newquay, and he never seemed to want me to go there. In fact, I know he didn’t like Sammy to know he was seeing me.’
‘When was the last time you saw him?’
Neil closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He recollected that it had to have been seven or eight months ago.
‘He came in alone for some lunch and I told him that I wouldn’t be off-duty for the afternoon and that I was also working that night. He said that he was not going to be around as he was heading back to London. Oh yeah . . .’ Neil clicked his fingers. ‘Another thing, we always have all the newspapers, local as well as the London ones, and I gave him one to read because he was sitting by himself. It was the local one – about that girl they’d found dead, washed up on the beach. The coroner’s report said that it was a heroin OD. Front page, it was.’
Anna waited as Neil licked his lips, frowning.
‘I brought him some iced water and I said to him, joking, I said, nodding to the paper, that I hoped Sammy wasn’t involved. At that he kind of freaked, rolling up the paper and slapping the table with it. He was really uptight, if you know what I mean.’
She nodded and waited, but Neil just shrugged.
‘That was it. He got up and left without touching his food. When I went out to the back of the hotel to see if he’d really gone or whether he just wanted the lavatory, he was walking out. I asked him if there was something wrong.’
Neil described the odd look on Alan Rawlins’s face, but he’d said nothing else and that was the last time he had seen him.
‘What about Sammy Marsh?’
‘Same day or night, Sammy was here asking if I’d seen Dan. I told him he’d been in for lunch, and Sammy never even waited for me to finish talking. He just pushed past me. Like I said, he was a weirdo.’
‘Did you tell the Cornish police this?’
‘Not about Daniel. They never asked me about him, just wanted to know the last time I’d seen Sammy.’
Anna held up the photograph of Alan Rawlins again.
‘And you are sure that this man is Daniel Matthews?’
Neil laughed crudely. ‘I’d know him anywhere – not that you can see it in this photograph. If you know what I mean.’
Unaware that Anna was driving to the Neve Hotel far beneath him, Paul was coming to the end of his tour of the beaches, as the pilot flew them over Polzeath and Padstow.
‘We’re turning back now,’ Williams said.
Paul was grateful. His stomach felt as if it was lurching up into his mouth thanks to the helicopter constantly swooping low for him to get a good view of the beaches. The wind was picking up, and the single-bladed craft was bouncing as Williams pinpointed where one of the victims had been washed ashore; Constantine Bay, with its dangerous reefs.
‘This beach is avoided by beginners. You get a tidal flow sweeping you onto the rocks and they can cut you to shreds, which is why our victim’s body was so damaged.’
‘How far to go?’ Paul asked plaintively.
‘About twenty minutes. We’ll be coming over Newquay soon.’
Paul closed his eyes and whispered, ‘Thank God.’
Williams smiled at the pilot, as they’d both noticed that Paul’s face was ashen. ‘There’s a sick bag tucked into the back of the seat, should you require it.’
Anna almost had a head-on collision with a tractor as she drove slowly along very narrow lanes, with high hedgerows on either side. The sun had gone and the rain had started. It was light at first, but then it became a deluge and she half-wished that she had taken up Harry Took’s offer to drive. She took the wrong turning over and over again, even though she was following the signs to the hotel. Twice she ended up in a field, through a cart track, and then turning back on herself she checked her map. The SatNav was useless. In fact, she had followed its instruction and that was the reason she had ended up in the fields. Covering her head with the borrowed fleece, she ran across to a farmworker and asked him the way. He laughed as he told her she was almost there and to continue on the narrow road for two miles and she would pass a small village and fishing cove. Three miles beyond that was the beach and cove and the Hotel Neve on the cliffs.
Soaked from just the few minutes of conversation, Anna set off and drove through a small village on a very narrow road with houses huddled on either side. It was impossible for two cars to pass each other and she constantly had to swerve into a tiny gap as a vehicle passed her. Eventually she managed to drive out of the village and she continued as instructed, next passing a cove with a small beach and sheltered by rocks. Hotel Neve was high up above it, with direct views of the cove and ocean.
The rain was still coming down thick and fast and she held the fleece over her head as she hurried from the car park to the hotel entrance, hoping it was not a wasted journey.
The hotel resembled a country house with antique furniture and Persian carpets in a panelled hallway. The reception desk was behind a windowed cubicle where a young girl was working at a computer. Anna waited a moment until the girl looked up.
‘Could you tell me if Craig Sumpter still works here?’
‘Yes, but he’s not on duty right now. Lunch is over and dinner isn’t served until seven.’
‘Where could I find him?’
