A Suitable Vengeance

largely shaven as well.

He was panting, and he winced as if the words hurt him when he spoke. 'Howenstow folks said you'd be here. Come down to the office. Something to show you.'

'You've found notes?' St James asked.

Cambrey shook his head. 'Worked it all out, though.' When St James opened the car door, Cambrey clambered inside. He nodded at the introduction to Cotter. 'It's those numbers I found. The ones from his desk. I've been playing with them since Saturday. I know what they mean.'

Cotter remained in the pub with Mrs Swann, chatting amiably over a pint of ale. He was saying, 'I wouldn't say no to one o' them Scotch eggs,' as St James followed Harry Cambrey up to the newspaper office.

Unlike his former visit to the Spokesman, on this morning the staff was at work. All the lights were on – creating an entirely different atmosphere from the previous gloom – and in three of the four cubicles newspaper employees either pecked at typewriters or talked on the phone. A long-haired boy examined a set of photographs on a display board while next to him a compositor engaged in the process of laying out another edition of the newspaper on an angled green table. He held an unlit pipe between his teeth and tapped a pencil in staccato against a plastic holder of paper clips. At the word processor on the table next to Mick Cambrey's desk, a woman sat typing. She had soft, dark hair drawn back from her face and – when she looked up – intelligent eyes. She was very attractive. Julianna Vendale, St James decided. He wondered how and if her responsibilities at the newspaper had altered with Mick Cambrey's death.

Harry Cambrey led the way to one of the cubicles. It was sparsely furnished, hung with wall decorations which suggested that not only was the office his own, but also nothing had been done to change it during his convalescence after heart surgery. Everything spoke of the fact that, no matter Harry Cambrey's desire, his son had not intended to assume either his office or his job. Framed newspaper clippings, gone yellow with age, appeared to represent the older man's proudest stories: a piece on a disastrous sea rescue attempt in which twenty of the would-be rescuers had drowned; an accident which dismembered a local fisherman; the rescue of a child from a mine shaft; a brawl during a fete in Penzance. These were accompanied by newspaper photographs as well, the originals of those which had been printed with the stories.

On the top of an ancient desk the most recent edition of the Spokesman lay open to the editorial page. Mick's contribution had been heavily circled in red. On the wall opposite, a map of Great Britain hung. Cambrey directed St James to this.

'I kept thinking about those numbers,' he said. 'Mick was systematic about things like that. He wouldn't have kept that paper if it wasn't important.' He felt in the breast pocket of his shirt for a packet of cigarettes. He shook one out and lit it before going on. 'I'm still working on part of it, but I'm on my way.'

St James saw that next to the map Cambrey had taped a small piece of paper. On it he had printed part of the cryptic message which he'd found beneath his son's desk. 27500-M1 Procure/Transport and, beneath that, 27500-M6 Finance. On the map itself, two motorways had been traced in red marking-pen, the Ml heading north from London and the M6 heading northwest below Leicester towards the Irish Sea.

'Look at it,' Cambrey said. 'Ml and M6 run together south of Leicester. The Ml only goes as far as Leeds, but the M6 continues. It ends in Carlisle. At Solway Firth.'

St James considered this. He made no reply. Cambrey sounded agitated when he continued.

'Look at the map, man. Just look at it square. M6 gives access to Liverpool, doesn't it? It takes you to Preston, to Morecambe Bay. And they every bloody one of them-'

'- give access to Ireland,' St James concluded, thinking of the editorial he'd read only the morning before.

Cambrey went for the paper. He folded it back. His cigarette bobbed between his lips as he talked. 'He knew someone was running guns for the IRA.'

'How could he have stumbled on to a story like that?'

'Stumbled?' Cambrey removed his cigarette, picked tobacco from his tongue and shook the newspaper to make his point. 'My lad didn't stumble. He was a journalist, not a fool. He listened. He talked. He learned to follow leads.' Cambrey returned to the map and used the folded newspaper as a pointer. 'Guns must be coming into Cornwall in the first place, or if not into Cornwall, then through a south harbour. Shipped from sympathizers, maybe in North Africa or Spain or even France. They come in anywhere along the south coast -Plymouth, Bournemouth, Southampton, Portsmouth. They're shipped disassembled. Trucked to London and put together. Then from there, up the Ml to the M6, and then to Liverpool or Preston or Morecambe Bay.'

'Why not ship them directly to Ireland in the first place?' St James asked, but he knew the answer even as he asked it. A foreign ship docking at Belfast would be more likely to arouse suspicion than would an English ship. It would undergo a thorough Customs check. But an English ship would be largely accepted. For why would the English be sending arms to assist an uprising against themselves?

'There was more on the paper than Ml and M6,' St James pointed out. 'Those additional numbers have to mean something.'

Cambrey nodded. 'Likely to be some sort of registration numbers, I think. References to the ship they'd be using. Numbers on the type of weapons they'd be supplying. It's some sort of code. But make no mistake about it. Mick was on his way to breaking it.'

'Yet you've found no other notes?'

'What I've found's enough. I know my lad. I know what he was about.'

St James reflected upon the map. He thought about the numbers Mick had jotted on the paper. He noted the fact that the editorial about Northern Ireland had appeared on Sunday, more than thirty hours after Mick's death. If the two were connected somehow, then the killer had known about the editorial in advance of the paper's appearance on Sunday morning. He wondered how likely a possibility that was.

'Do you keep your back issues of the newspaper here?' he asked.

'This isn't a back-issue problem,' Cambrey said. 'Nonetheless, do you have them?' 'Some. Out here.'

Cambrey led him from his office to a storage cabinet that sat to the left of the casement windows. He pulled open the doors to reveal stacks of newspapers upon the shelves. St James glanced at them, pulled the first set off the shelf, and looked at Cambrey.

'Can you get me Mick's keys?' he asked.

Cambrey looked puzzled. 'I've a spare cottage key here.'

'No. I mean all his keys. He has a set, doesn't he? Car, cottage, office? Can you get them? I expect Boscowan has them now, so you'll need to come up with an excuse. And I'll want them for a few days.'

'Why?'

'Does the name Tina Cogin mean anything to you?' St James asked in answer. 'Cogin?'

'Yes. A woman from London. Mick knew her apparently. I think he may have had the key to her flat.'

'Mick had the key to half a dozen flats, if I know him.' Cambrey pulled out a cigarette and left him to his papers.

An hour's search through the past six months gleaned him nothing save hands that were stained with newsprint. As far as he could tell, Harry Cambrey's conjecture about gun-running was as likely a motive for his son's death as was anything else the paper had to offer. He shut the cupboard doors. When he turned, it was to find Julianna Vendale watching him, a coffee cup raised to her lips. She'd left the word processor, coming to stand near a coffee maker that was bubbling noisily in the corner of the room.

'Nothing?' She put her cup down on the table and pushed a lock of long hair back from her shoulder.

'Everyone seems to think he was working on a story,' St James said.

'Mick was always working on something.'

'Did most of his projects get into print?'

She drew her eyebrows together. A faint crease appeared between them. Otherwise, her face was completely unlined. St James knew from his previous conversation with Lynley that Julianna Vendale was in her middle thirties, perhaps a bit older. But her face denied her age.

'I don't know,' she answered. 'I wasn't always aware of what his projects were. But it wouldn't surprise me to find out he'd begun something and then let it die. He'd shoot out of here often enough, convinced he was hot on the trail of a feature he could sell in London. Then he'd never complete it.'

St James had seen that himself in his perusal of the newspapers. Dr Trenarrow had said Mick interviewed him for a story. But nowhere in the back issues of the paper was there a feature that in any way related to a