The Lamorna Wink

23

Brian Macalvie breathed police work. For him it was like the advertisements of carpenters and handymen: “No job too small.” A divisional commander, Macalvie was one of the highest-ranking officers in Devon and Cornwall. Yet he would happily chase a speeding car and hand out a ticket.

He was demanding-how could he not be?-perhaps too much so, for the people under him often applied for transfers. As far as Melrose was concerned, if these lesser lights couldn’t tell the difference between arrogance and commitment, maybe the CID was well shut of them.

Melrose was speaking to Macalvie now; he’d called him after Karen had left the next morning to report on his visit with Rodney Colthorp.

“Bolt. Simon Bolt. There was an investigation-” Macalvie paused, musing. “Years back he lived in Lamorna. Which is where I am now. You’ll be interested in the crime scene. Come along.”

Melrose was taken aback by this invitation. Although he had always gotten on with Macalvie, it was usually when Jury was on the case. Macalvie disliked amateurs, but then he disliked most professionals, too.

It must be instinct.

His earlier question still unanswered about the death of the Bletchley children, he asked it again: “Couldn’t they have been-say-drowned in their own bathwater and then moved to the rocks?”

“No.”

“How can you be sure?”

“The little kids were holding hands.”

Macalvie hung up.

Johnny Wells sat in the kitchen of the Woodbine, taking some small comfort in the familiar aromas of baking scones and freshly brewed coffee, and taking comfort also in the familiar movements of Brenda Friel.

Brenda stopped her hard beating of a pastry dough that already shone in the light like satin and looked at him. “Sweetheart, you ought not to worry so much. I know Chris will be back.”

How? he wanted to ask her. But she was only trying to lift his spirits, so he said nothing about Chris. Instead, he said, “What about that murdered woman in Lamorna?”

Brenda’s eyes widened. “You aren’t thinking that has anything to do with Chris?”

He sat studying the worn place on the vinyl floor and went back to sampling one of the Sweet Ladies. “These are terrific; no wonder people like them. What’s in the meringues?” He thought he should be generous enough to make Brenda feel her Sweet Ladies had gotten his mind off Chris.

She laughed. “I don’t give out my recipes, sweetheart. People have been trying to get this one out of me for years. The scones are done; you can take them right on the cookie sheet as proof positive that they’re fresh-made. You know how particular Morris Bletchley is.”

Johnny smiled for the first time that day, thinking about Moe Bletchley.

24

They bent to get under the tape that cordoned off this section of the footpath, then walked on wet leaves to the place where the body had been found. Macalvie hunkered down and looked with such intensity, the body might still be there.

“What are you looking for?”

Macalvie grunted. “Rest of this.” He held up the fragment of black plastic he’d retrieved from his forensics man, Fleming, who’d exacted a promise from Macalvie that he return it.

“What is it?” Melrose turned it over and over.

“Probably a piece off the top of the plastic box that holds a tape. You know, video tapes.”

“Oh.” He waited for Macalvie to continue, but he didn’t.

Macalvie stayed in this kneeling position, motionless, for what seemed a long time. The place didn’t lend itself to measured time. All that could be heard was the low soughing of the waves below them and the slight rustle of the trees around them.

Macalvie rose and looked behind them in the direction of the house where they’d left the car. A large front garden had been converted to hard standing to accommodate several cars.

“Who lives there?” asked Melrose.

“No one, now. Sada Colthorp’s friend Simon Bolt used to. So there’s a connection with our murdered lady. With some checking-well, say more of a lucky break I had running into a detective in London who works Vice. He told me Bolt was in the filmmaking business. Producer, director, scriptwriter. He managed to do all of it because he wasn’t making Titanic. Or anything else that might be shown in your local cinema. He made zip films: a lot of blood, S and M, that sort of stuff. His sideline was pornography-though it all sounds pornographic to me. They tried to get him on vice charges but couldn’t make it stick. Anyway, that’s who the house belonged to.” He frowned. Even Macalvie’s frown was intense, as if more were stored in his expression than was common to a frown. He divested himself of what was superficial, shallow or oversimple. Everything not case-specific was burned away, and that included the suppression of his Scots accent and Glaswegian upbringing. He seemed to be getting down to cases and roots.

“This where the tape comes in?”

“Probably.”

Melrose looked at the trammeled ground where police had worked. What was it Rodney Colthorp had said about Bolt? Bit of a wide lad, that one.

25

The usual frisson of apprehension ran like a ripple through the crowd when Macalvie walked in the bar of the Lamorna Wink, time stopping for a second so the scene looked like a frieze rather than a room with flesh-and-blood people.

Melrose got the drinks. Some of Macalvie’s fame had rubbed off on him, for the regulars watched him walk up to the bar and signal the barmaid. They had taken a table in the corner near the fireplace, though even the corner offered little escape from the inquisitive eyes of the customers. Macalvie, however, didn’t appear to notice his celebrity as he went up to the jukebox, slotted in some coins, and punched up a tune. He was still wearing his coat even though the fire poured out heat as if it came from a pitcher.

One might suppose the man was always cold, as some people are. But Melrose felt as if Macalvie were instead always leaving. He was surprised by the deep anxiety this provoked in him, as if a support kept threatening to give way. In this respect, Macalvie was different from Richard Jury; Jury seemed cloaked in a sort of melancholy, yet always seemed to leave some of his comfort behind; when Macalvie left, consolation left with him. And it seemed to have something to do with that coat which he never took off.

Macalvie said, “There was so much lying going on in that house, I didn’t know who not to believe.” Arms crossed on the table and looking at his drink, he went on. “We got there a few minutes after midnight, the ambulance before us. I told them not to take the bodies up before the ME and I looked at them. It was raining this time and the steps were like glass, bloody slippery. The little kids were lying on their stomachs. The bodies didn’t sink or get carried away because they got tangled up in the rope that anchored the boat. They were side by side, their faces turned toward each other as if they’d been talking; probably they had, before-well, whatever happened, happened. They were wearing cotton pajamas, hers white, his blue, and flannel robes that would have been some protection against the cold but not much. Slippers, too. Two of them-the slippers-had been washed away by the choppy water. Their feet weren’t any bigger than the palm of my hand.” His elbow propped on the table, he held up