On the path that skirted the circumference of the harbour, they passed overturned skiffs, lopsided piles of fishing nets redolent with the odours of the sea, and waterside buildings whose windows reflected the unchanging grey mask of the weather. Not until they reached the point at which the path inclined between two buildings as it led into the village proper did any of them speak. It was then that Lynley noticed that the cobbled pavement was already slick with rain. He glanced uneasily at St James.
The other man answered his look. 'I can manage it, Tommy.'
They'd talked little about the knife. Just that it was obviously a kitchen utensil, so if it had been used on Mick Cambrey and if Nancy could identify it as having come from the cottage, it served as further evidence that the crime against her husband had not been planned. Its presence in the cove did nothing to absolve Justin Brooke from blame. Rather, the knife merely changed his reason for having gone there in the first place. Not to rid himself
of Deborah's cameras but to rid himself of something far more damaging.
Thus the cameras remained a piece still not tucked into position in the jigsaw of the crime. They all agreed that it was reasonable to continue to conclude Brooke had taken them from Deborah's room. But where he had disposed of them was once again as elusive a location as it had been two days ago.
Rounding the corner of an antique silver shop on the Lamorna Road, they found the streets of the village deserted. This was an unsurprising summer-time phenomenon in an area where the vicissitudes of the weather often forced holidaymakers to be flexible in matters concerning how they spent their time. Where sun would see them strolling the village streets, exploring the harbour, and taking pictures on the quay, rain usually provoked a sudden need to try their luck in a game of chance, a sudden hunger for tucking into a fresh crab salad, a sudden thirst for real ale. An inclement afternoon was a welcome boon to the proprietors of bingo parlours, restaurants and pubs.
This proved to be the case at the Anchor and Rose. The pub teemed with fishermen forced to shore by the weather as well as day visitors seeking shelter from the rain. Most of them were packed into the public bar. The formal lounge beyond it was largely empty.
In any other circumstances, two such diverse groups, inhabiting the same watering-hole, would hardly be likely to blend into a cohesive unit. But the presence of a teenaged mandolin-player, a fisherman conversant with the Irish whistle, and a pale-legged man wearing running-shorts and playing the spoons had broken the barrier of class and experience, blending what should have been motley into montage.
In the wide bay window overlooking the harbour, a leather-skinned fisherman — backlit by the dull light outside — engaged a fashionably clad tot in a game of cat's cradle. His weathered hands held out the string to the child; his broken teeth flashed in a grin.
'Go on, Dickie. Take it. You know how to play,' Mummy coaxed the little boy.
Dickie co-operated. Approving laughter ensued. The fisherman rested his hand on the child's head.
'It's a photograph, isn't it?' Lynley said to Deborah in the doorway where they stood watching.
She smiled. 'What a wonderful face he has, Tommy. And look how the light just barely strikes the side of it.'
St James was on the stairs, climbing up to the newspaper office. Deborah followed, Lynley behind her.
'You know,' she went on, pausing briefly on the landing, 'I was worried for a time about the scope for my photographs in Cornwall. Don't ask me why. I'm a creature of habit, I suppose, and my habit has been to do most of my work in London. But I love it here, Tommy. There's a photograph everywhere. It's grand. Truly. I've thought that from the first.'
At her words, Lynley felt shamed by his earlier doubts. He paused on the steps. 'I love you, Deb.'
Her expression softened. 'And I you, Tommy.'
St James had already opened the door of the newspaper office. Inside, two telephones were ringing, Julianna Vendale was typing at a word processor, a young photographer was cleaning half a dozen camera lenses lined up on a desk, and in one of the cubicles three men and a woman leaned into a circle of conversation. Harry Cambrey was among them. Advertising and Circulation was painted in faded black letters on the upper half of the wood and glass door.
Cambrey saw them and left his meeting. He was wearing suit trousers, a white shirt, a black tie. As if in the need to explain this, he said, 'Buried him this morning. Half-past eight.'
Odd, Lynley thought, that Nancy hadn't mentioned it. But it explained the acceptance with which she had greeted their presence. There was a degree of finality to burial. It didn't end sorrow, but it did make easier the acknowledgement of loss.
'Half a dozen coppers hanging about in the graveyard,' Cambrey continued. 'First thing they've done besides trying to stick the killing on John Penellin. And isn't that a thought? John killing Mick.'
'Perhaps he had a motive after all,' St James said. He handed Mick Cambrey's set of keys to his father. 'Mick's dressing. Would a man be driven to kill another man over that?'
Cambrey's fist closed over the keys. He turned his back on his employees and lowered his voice. 'So. Who knows about it?'
'You covered up well. Nearly everyone sees Mick exacdy as you painted him. A real man's man, an insatiable womanizer.'
'What the hell else could I do?' Cambrey asked. 'God damn, he was my son. He was a man.'
'Whose main source of arousal was dressing like a woman.'
'I never could break him. I did try.'
'So this wasn't something recent?'
Shoving the keys into his pocket, Cambrey shook his head. 'He'd been doing it all his life, off and on. I'd catch him at it. Whip his arse. Push him stark naked into the street. Tie him to a chair and paint his face and make like I'd plan to cut off his cock. But nothing made a difference.'
'Save his death,' Lynley said.
Cambrey didn't seem to care about the implication behind Lynley's words. He merely said, 'I protected the lad as best I could. I didn't kill him.'
'The protection worked,' St James said. 'People saw him as you wished him to be seen. But in the end he didn't need your protection because of the cross-dressing, but because of a story, just as you thought.'
'It was the guns, wasn't it?' Cambrey asked. 'Like I said.'
St James looked at Lynley as if wanting direction or perhaps permission to add to the man's mourning. An explanation of the 'notes' Cambrey had found in Mick's desk would do it. Through their real meaning, nearly everything could be revealed. Not only cross-dressing, but drug-dealing as well. Not only spending money frivolously instead of using it to upgrade the newspaper, but filtering much of it off in order to support a double life.
Every delusion, Lynley thought, deserved destruction. Building anything on the foundation of a lie — be it a single relationship or an entire way of life — was to rely upon sand to remain unshifting. While the illusion of solidity might exist for a while, whatever was built would ultimately crumble. The only question seemed to be at what point Harry Cambrey's inaccurate vision of his son ought to be laid to rest.
Lynley looked at the old man, studying the face that was creased with age and failure, jaundiced by ill health. He saw the stark bones of his chest pressing against his shirt, the ugly nicotine stains on his fingers, the arthritic curl of those fingers as he reached for a bottle of beer on a desk. Let someone else do the telling, he decided.
'We know he was working on a story about a drug called oncozyme,' Lynley said.
St James followed his lead. 'He was spending time in London visiting a company called Islington and a biochemist there called Justin Brooke. Did Mick ever speak of Brooke? Of Islington?'
Cambrey shook his head. 'A drug, you say?' He still seemed to be adjusting to the fact that his previous idea about gun-running had led nowhere.
'We need access to his files — here and in the cottage — if we're to prove anything,' St James said. 'The man who killed Mick is dead himself. Only Mick's notes can give us his motive and some sort of foundation to build a case against him.'
'And if the killer found the notes and destroyed them? If they were in the cottage and he pinched them that night?'
'Too many other things have occurred that needn't have happened had the killer found the notes.' Lynley thought about St James' explanation once more: how Brooke tried to eliminate Peter because of something Peter must have seen or heard that evening in Gull Cottage; how he'd taken Deborah's cameras to get at the film. This
