Here was the need to wound that he'd recognized before. Still, it came out of nowhere. He hadn't expected it. And, whether the attack was accurate or not, he found that he could not summon a response.
Sidney drew a hand across her eyes. 'I'm leaving. Just tell little Peter when you find him that I have lots to discuss with him. Believe me, I can hardly wait for the opportunity.'
Trenarrow's house was easy enough to find, for it sat just off the upper reaches of Paul Lane on the outskirts of the village, the largest structure within view. By the standards of Howenstow, it was a humble enough dwelling. But in comparison to the cottages that stacked one upon the other on the hillside beneath it the villa was very grand, with broad bay windows overlooking the harbour and a stand of poplar trees acting like a backdrop against which the house's ashlar walls and white woodwork were displayed to some considerable effect.
With Cotter at the wheel of the estate Austin, St James saw the villa at once as they came over the last rise of the coastal road and began their descent into Nanrunnel. They wound past the harbour, the village shops, the tourist flats. At the Anchor and Rose, they made the turn into Paul Lane. Here debris from yesterday's storm littered the pitted asphalt: rubbish from cottage dustbins, assorted food wrappers and tins, a wrecked sign that once had advertised cream teas. The road twisted on itself and climbed above the village where it was strewn with broken foliage from hedges and shrubs. Pools of rainwater reflected the sky.
A narrow drive branching north off Paul Lane was discreedy marked The Villa. Fuchsias lined it, drooping heavily over a drystone wall. Behind this, a terraced garden covered much of the hillside where a carefully plotted, meandering path led upwards to the house, through beds of phlox and nemesia, bellflowers and cyclamen.
The drive ended in a curve round a hawthorn tree, and Cotter parked beneath it, a few yards from the front door. A Doric-columned portico sheltered this, with two urns of vermilion pelargoniums standing on either side.
St James studied the front of the house. 'Does he live here alone?' he asked.
'Far's I know,' Cotter replied. 'But a woman answered the phone when I rang.'
'A woman?' St James thought of Tina Cogin and Trenarrow's telephone number in her flat. 'Let's see what the doctor can tell us.'
Their knock was not answered by Trenarrow. Rather, a young West Indian woman opened the door, and from the expression on Cotter's face when she first spoke, St James knew he could dismiss Tina Cogin as the woman who had answered the phone. The mystery of her whereabouts, it seemed, would not be solved through the expediency of her clandestine presence at Trenarrow's house.
'Doctor see nobodies here,' the woman said, looking from Cotter to St James. The words sounded rehearsed, perhaps frequently and not always patiendy said.
'Dr Trenarrow knows we're coming to see him,' St James said. 'It's not a medical call.'
'Ah.' She smiled, showing large white teeth which protruded like ivory against her coffee skin. She held wide the door. 'Then, in with you, man. He's looking at his flowers. Every morning in the garden before he goes off to work. Same thing. I'll fetch him for you.'
She showed them to the study where, with a meaningful look at St James, Cotter said, 'I could do with a walk round the garden myself,' and followed the woman from the room. Cotter would, St James knew, find out what he could about who she was and why she was there.
Alone, he turned to look at the room. It was the sort of study he particularly liked, with air faintly scented by the smell of the old leather chairs, bookcases filled to absolute capacity, a fireplace with coals newly laid and ready to be lit. A desk sat in the large bay window overlooking the harbour but, as if the view would be a distraction from work, it faced into the room, rather than outwards. An open magazine lay upon it with a pen left in the centre crease as if the reader had been interrupted in the middle of an article. Curious, St James went to examine it, flipping it closed for a moment.
Cancer Research, an American journal, with a photograph of a white-coated scientist on its cover. She leaned against a working area on which sat an immense electron microscope. Scripps Clinic, La Jolla was printed beneath the photograph, along with the phrase Testing the Limits of Bio-Research.
St James went back to the article, a technical treatise on an extra-cellular matrix protein called proteoglycans. Despite his own extensive background in science, it made little sense to him.
'Not quite what one would call light reading, is it?'
St James looked up. Dr Trenarrow stood in the doorway. He was wearing a well-tailored three-piece suit. He'd pinned a small rosebud to its lapel.
'It's certainly beyond me,' St James replied.
'Any word of Peter?'
'Nothing yet, I'm afraid.'
Trenarrow shut the door and gestured St James into one of the room's wing-back chairs.
'Coffee?' he asked. 'I've been discovering it's one of Dora's few specialities.'
'Thank you, no. She's your housekeeper?'
'Using the term in the loosest possible fashion.' He smiled briefly, without humour. The remark seemed largely an effort to be light-hearted, an effort he dismissed with his very next words. 'Tommy told us last night. About Peter seeing Mick Cambrey the night he died.
About Brooke as well. I don't know where you stand in all this, but I've known that boy since he was six years old, and he's not a killer. He's incapable of violence, most especially the sort that was done to Mick Cambrey.' 'Did you know Mick well?'
'Not as well as others in the village. Just as his landlord. I let him Gull Cottage.' 'How long ago was that?'
Trenarrow began an automatic answer, but then his brow furrowed, as if he'd suddenly wondered about the nature of the question, 'About nine months.'
'Who lived there before him?'
'I did.' Trenarrow made a quick movement in his chair, an adjustment in position that betrayed irritation. 'You can't have come here on a social call at this time of the morning, Mr St James. Did Tommy send you?'
'Tommy?'
'No doubt you know the facts. We've years of bad blood between us. You're asking about Cambrey. You're asking about the cottage. Are these questions his idea or yours?'
'Mine. But he knows I've come to see you.' 'About Mick?'
'Actually no. Tina Cogin's disappeared. We think she may have come to Cornwall.' 'Who?'
'Tina Cogin. Shrewsbury Court Apartments. In Paddington. Your telephone number was among her things.'
'I haven't the slightest… Tina Cogin, you say?'
'She's not a patient of yours? Or a former patient?'
'I don't see patients. Oh, perhaps the occasional terminal case who volunteers for an experimental drug. But if Tina Cogin was one of them and she's disappeared… Excuse me for the levity, but there's only one place she'd be disappearing to and it wouldn't be Cornwall.'
'Then, you may well have seen her in a different light.' Trenarrow looked perplexed. 'Sony?' 'She may be a prostitute.'
The doctor's gold-rimmed spectacles slid fractionally down his nose. He knuckled them back into place and said, 'And she had my name?'
'No. Just your number.'
'My address?'
'Not even that.'
Trenarrow pushed himself out of his chair. He walked over to the window behind the desk. He spent a long moment studying the view before he turned back to St James. 'I've not set foot in London in a year. Perhaps more. But I suppose that makes little enough difference if she's come to Cornwall. Perhaps she's making house calls.' He smiled wryly. 'You don't really know me, Mr St James, so you have no way of knowing if I'm telling you the truth. But let me say that it's not been my habit to pay a woman for sex. Some men do it without flinching, I realize. But I've always preferred love-making to grow out of a passion other than avarice. This other — the negotiating first, the exchange of cash later — that's not my style.'
'Was it Mick's?'
'Mick's?'
