The Valley of the Shadow Page 8

  What was his first name? She sat down at her desk and opened the notebook. Kalith … Kalith Chudasama. How close her scribble was to the proper spelling was anyone’s guess, but she headed the page with his name.

  She kept her description of the rescue brief, trying to explain the unlikelihood of anyone choosing to bathe there without glorifying her own decision to jump into the hazardous waters to pull him out. As for relating how Chaz and Julia had helped, she was hampered by her inability to remember their surnames, if she had ever heard them. She hoped Scumble had taken them down.

  A very young constable delivered her shoulder bag and jacket. She went to the ladies’ to try to do something with her salt-encrusted hair. In the end, she dunked her head in a basin of lukewarmish water and dried it on the roller towel as best she could. Naturally, Scumble arrived during her absence. He had rolled her unfinished report out of the typewriter, thus messing up her carbons so she’d have to retype the page.

  He greeted her impatiently. “Where did they take him?”

  “Plymouth, sir.”

  “Damn! Get me the central station, whoever’s in charge at this time of night. Urgent. If Chudasama comes round again and no one’s listening—”

  Megan passed on the order to Nancy, glancing at the wall clock as she spoke. It was not yet eleven. The way she felt was more like three in the morning.

  Plymouth, being a large and lively port city, had a superintendent on night duty. Megan listened as the inspector made his case for sending someone immediately to Chudasama’s bedside to take notes of anything he might say.

  “Yes, sir, I realise the bloke may be an ordinary, everyday bather in trouble. The thing is … Yes, sir, lovely weather for the time of year, but … Yes, sir, but I’ve talked to the only locals of Indian extraction … Family restaurant in Camelford, sir, and our local police surgeon. They don’t … Sir, my superintendent agrees that we just can’t risk … Superintendent Bentinck, sir. I can give you his home telephone number … Thank you, sir. And you’ll have him let me know … Thank you, sir.” He put down the receiver, making sure it was firmly in place before letting out an explosive breath. “Bloody nitpicking bastard.”

  “Is that why you didn’t ask him to have a police doctor look at the head injury?”

  “That would make it a possible cross-jurisdiction criminal case, instead of just an unidentified accident victim. He’s the pernickety sort to insist on going through our respective chief constables. Who knows, maybe even call in the Yard. You want the Boy Wonder buzzing around again?”

  “No, sir!” The Boy Wonder, also known as DS Kenneth Faraday of the Metropolitan Police, had been Megan’s boyfriend when she worked in London. He still pursued her in a desultory way when her existence happened to be drawn to his attention, though long-legged blondes were more his style.

  “It’ll be a different matter if the bloke dies. They’ll call in the pathologist as a matter of course.”

  “Yes. But the Plymouth super’s posting a man in the hospital?”

  “Yes. He knows our super. Bentinck would back me to the hilt, even if he didn’t know what the hell I was talking about. I’ve stuck out my neck on this one, Pencarrow, so don’t go changing your mind about what Chudasama said!”

  “I wrote it down immediately, sir, and transcribed it word for word in my report. Sorry I didn’t quite finish. I couldn’t swear to the spelling of his name.”

  “Both names are Indian and not uncommon, according to Dr. Prthnavi. He says he doesn’t know of anyone missing, of that name or any other, and in my opinion he’s telling the truth.”

  “Why shouldn’t he, sir?”

  “Because it’s conceivable that he might be mixed up in this racket. But I’ve known him for a good few years and I’m ninety-nine percent certain he wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole.”

  “Racket?”

  “Use your head!”

  Megan felt as if she had treacle circulating in her brain. “I’m sorry, sir, I can’t see it.”

  “All right, let’s assume for argument’s sake that Chudasama was in his right mind. His family is stranded in a cave, somewhere not too far from Rocky Valley. There are plenty to choose from on that bit of coast. How did they get stuck there?”

  “Exploring, and the tide came in?”

  “That’s reasonable,” Scumble conceded grudgingly. “In fact, it would have been my first thought if I hadn’t already pretty much ruled it out in the case of Chudasama. I talked to the lifeboat people and the Coast Guard. They agree that even seasoned climbers think twice about tackling the cliffs in that area. They’re too unstable. Bossiney Cove is the only place you can safely scramble down to, and it is a scramble. When you get to the bottom it’s all rocks, with sand exposed only at low tide.”

  “I didn’t know that.” Megan tried to keep the accusatory tone from her voice. It was entirely unfair of him not to give her the facts before asking her to speculate, but protesting was pointless. “I grew up at the other end of the county. By the sound of it, even if Kalith might have gone there, his mother, a middle-aged Indian woman—”

  “We mustn’t make assumptions based on age, race, or sex,” the inspector said sanctimoniously. “You’re right, though, it’s a dead cert she wouldn’t go near the place by choice. So how did they end up in a cave?”

  “By sea? In a boat, that is. It must be possible; smugglers used to use those caves, didn’t they? I read a book about smuggling in Cornwall and they were very active roundabout Boscastle. But why…? You think they were being smuggled into the country!”

  “Makes sense of everything, doesn’t it?”

  “Ye-es. I know the Commonweath Immigrants law has left lots of people holding British passports but not allowed to live here. There was a lot of talk about it on the Beeb.”

  “No right of residency. And who’s it hit hardest? In fact, who was it aimed at in the first place? Indians, the ones living in East Africa. Now the Africans are independent, they don’t want ’em. Some of the poor buggers are being shipped round from country to country and not allowed ashore anywhere.”

  “So someone was bound to get the idea of smuggling them in. But why here? There are so few coloured people they couldn’t go unnoticed.”

  “Just because it’s unlikely,” Scumble suggested. “The immigration people can’t keep an eye on all the little fishing ports. By the time they heard about it, the refugees’d be in Birmingham or wherever they could disappear into a bunch of their own people.”

  “Not without help.”

  “Which didn’t arrive.”

  Megan was horrified. “You mean someone took their money and abandoned them?”

  “Looks like it, doesn’t it?”

  “But that’s murder!”

  “We’ll let the lawyers quibble about charges. Our business is to find these people before they die. I’m glad your interpretation is the same as mine, because I’m laying my credibility on the line over this. I just hope Chuda-whatsit was in his right mind.”

  “I think so.” But she couldn’t be certain. She’d been neatly steered into agreeing with his guess at the implications of Chudasama’s words. Not that it really mattered. They had to act as if it was true. “So what do we do now, sir?”

  “I interrupt Mr. Bentinck’s nightcap and get things moving.”

  “With the RNLI and Coast Guard?”

  “Lifeboats certainly. I imagine the Coast Guard will want to be involved as it’s a matter of smuggling and illegal entry. Or should I say, that’s what it may turn out to be. They won’t be able to do much till daylight, though.”

  “Sunrise at six, sir.”

  “So, first light about five, unless the clouds roll in. Go and snatch a few hours’ sleep.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “And be back here at half four.”

  Another short night, but at least she’d spend it in her own bed. Scumble might not make it home to Tregadillet, the village where he lived. If he got any sleep at a
ll, it would be scrunched in a chair with his head on the desk. He had said Megan looked peaky before the rescue and the bedside vigil. She probably looked like death warmed up by now. She decided not to look at herself in a mirror until she got home, and then to take a long hot bath, even though it would rob her of half an hour’s sleep.

  She was about to step over the threshold on her way out when Scumble attacked: “Can you explain your aunt and Gresham being at Dr. Prthnavi’s when I arrived?”

  Surprised, though not as surprised as she tried to appear, she swung round. “Aunt Nell?”

  “She’s the only aunt of yours I’m acquainted with, thank heaven.”

  “My other aunts are far less … enterprising. I’ve no idea why she was there, but I’m sure Nick Gresham was just chauffeuring her. They brought me this skirt, at the hospital.”

  He scrutinised her. “Hmm. Very fetching.”

  “It’s not mine. I don’t know where … Oh, probably from the shop.”

  “Mrs. Stearns’s car was parked outside the doctor’s house. She wasn’t present, though. I hope it means she has the sense not to stick her nose into police business again.”

  “She must have lent it to them. The Incorruptible is getting a bit creaky and I know Mrs. Stearns worries about Aunt Nell driving any distance at night.”

  “If a breakdown stops Mrs. Trewynn interfering,” growled Scumble, “then I, for one, hope the damn car—”

  “I’ll be back at four thirty, sir,” Megan interrupted, and she stalked out.

  Walking home through the quiet moonlit streets, she contemplated her irascible boss. His fulmination against Aunt Nell was nothing new, and not unreasonable, though rude and excessive. What had surprised her was his knowledge of the effects of the Commonwealth Immigration Act, especially his sympathetic tone towards its victims. She’d always assumed his only interests were the job and his garden.

  His interest in the stranded refugees started with their presumed status as victims of a crime, of course. But he seemed to care genuinely about their plight and to be willing to battle the brass to save them.

  “My family,” Chudasama had said. Not “my parents.” His dying mother. His father? Grandparents? Brothers and sisters? Aunts and uncles? Children?

  ELEVEN

  Eleanor and Nick didn’t stay long at the Prthnavis’ after Scumble left. Lois was still deeply distressed by the whole affair, though relieved that the patient’s removal from Launceston meant that her husband would not be called upon to go out again that night to examine him.

  Rajendra was grave. Showing them out, he said, “Confusion is a common symptom of concussion. We must hope the young man spoke of a dream, a nightmare, or something he had read. A film or television, perhaps. However, I’m glad the inspector is taking it seriously.”

  “Mr. Scumble can be extremely irritating,” said Eleanor, “but he’s a good detective, for all that.”

  They repeated good nights and she and Nick went on out to Jocelyn’s car.

  Nick drove in thoughtful silence as Eleanor navigated back to the main road. Once he knew where he was and where he was going, he said, “Given that Scumble is a good copper, don’t you think it’s odd that he repeated aloud all—or most—of what Megan told him? Almost as if he wanted the rest of us to know.”

  “You’re right, it was odd. And I don’t believe that man ever does anything without a reason. Could he have been hinting that he wants us to do a bit of investigating?”

  “Come off it, Eleanor! After all the times he’s warned us off? You won’t catch me giving him an excuse to arrest me again.”

  “You weren’t actually under arrest.”

  “It felt like it. Anyway, if you ask me, he was aiming at Dr. Prthnavi.”

  “Rajendra? Why?” Eleanor asked in surprise.

  “Because he thinks—or thought—he might be involved somehow, that the people in the cave, if they exist outside the chap’s imagination, could be relatives of the doctor trying to get into the country. Didn’t you notice how closely he was watching him? Of course doctors have to perfect the poker face, so he didn’t have much luck. Though I suppose detectives must get good at reading poker faces.”

  “Really, Nick, as if Rajendra would abandon relatives to die, in a cave or anywhere else! Or anyone else, come to that. You’re letting your imagination run away with you.”

  “I’m not suggesting he would. Not even that Scumble believes him capable of it. Just that, Indians being thin on the ground in these parts, it crossed Scumble’s mind that there might be some connection. The doctor might have known of such a plan without having any part in it, or any knowledge of when it would take place. So he wouldn’t be worried about their not appearing, but when he heard…”

  “I suppose so. It sounds much too complicated. Besides, having been born here, couldn’t he bring relatives in legally?”

  “Don’t ask me. I’m sure you’re much better up in immigration law than I am.”

  “That’s even more complicated. I doubt anyone really understands the implications of every detail, even those who wrote the new law. But that’s beside the point. If people are in danger and I can do anything at all to help them, I don’t give two hoots what Scumble has to say.”

  Nick sighed. “No, you’re right. Though I can’t see what we can do that he can’t do a thousand times better and faster. He has the resources.”

  “But we, between us, may have local information he doesn’t. You’ve taken thousands of photos of the coast—”

  “Dozens. Hundreds, perhaps.”

  “Lots. Didn’t you once go out in a fishing boat to take pictures from the sea?”

  “More than once,” Nick admitted. “Including Bossiney Cove. I had to pay for that trip. Neither fishermen nor lobstermen like it. Tricky rocks and currents.”

  “Bossiney Cove—is that where Rocky Valley comes out? I’ll have to look at my map. I know how to get from hither to yon, but picturing the lie of the land is another matter.”

  “When you see it, you’ll agree that— What was the bloke’s name?”

  “Kalith Chudasama, the inspector said.”

  “Chudasama almost certainly started his swim from somewhere in the cove. If he’d been swept round Lye Rock from the east or the Saddle Rocks and Darvis Point from the north, he wouldn’t have had a chance in a thousand of surviving.”

  “Did you see many caves there?”

  “Plenty. A lot of them, you’d have to have an inflatable dinghy to reach them. Only when high tide covers the rocks, at that. Some you could get to in a wooden rowboat, if you knew what you were doing, where the submerged rocks are and where the currents are dangerous.”

  “Only local fishermen would know.”

  “And not many of them. As I said, they don’t like going there.”

  “That must be why no one saw the young man or his family. They must have waved and shouted for help from the mouth of the cave, surely.”

  “The mouths of some of the caves are underwater, though they’re dry farther back. I went into a couple to see if there were any interesting rock formations, but nothing worth photographing.”

  Eleanor shuddered. “Horrible!”

  “At least Scumble seems to be taking it seriously. The police will get the lifeboat out tomorrow. They have inflatables. They’ll soon find … Hell!”

  They had reached the highest point on the road over Bodmin Moor. Below and ahead of them, bright moonlight shone on a flat white sea of fog, stretching towards the coast as far as Eleanor could see.

  “Oh, Nick, the lifeboat won’t go out in that!”

  “It could be clear at sea level. Down there it may be just low cloud, or not half as solid as it looks from above.”

  “I do hope so. Or it might clear by tomorrow,” she said doubtfully.

  Nick zipped downhill, slowing as they reached the fringes of the fog. At first it was wispy. As they penetrated, it became denser, until they had to crawl along. The full beam of the headlights reflect
ed back blindingly, so Nick dipped them. Eleanor stuck her head out of the window from time to time to warn him if the car was about to go off the road. Not that she could see much.

  “What I’d really like,” said Nick, leaning forward over the steering wheel, peering into nothingness, “is someone else’s taillights to follow.”

  They nearly missed the turn off the main road, but once in the lanes, driving was easier, if no faster, because of the vague, looming presence of hedge-banks closing in on each side. They met no other vehicles, no stray cows or sheep, not even a rabbit or a pheasant.

  Though the drive seemed to go on forever, at last the crowding hedges ended as they reached what Eleanor thought of as the bungalow zone, where meadows were rapidly disappearing beneath the onslaught of summer visitors and retired people. The lights of the small self-service grocery appeared, fuzzily haloed. The fog was no less dense down here. It smelled of the sea.

  Just where the slope steepened, entering the old village, Nick pulled over to the side of the road. “Whew, made it.”

  “What … Oh, the Vicarage. Joce’s car. I forgot. I wonder whether they’re still up?”

  “It looks as if they’ve left the lamp on over the front door.”

  “We’d better pop in. Poor Teazle will be in despair, but another few minutes won’t make any difference.”

  “Hold on a mo. I’ll go and see whether there’s a light in any of the windows. If not, I’ll just lock up the car and put the keys through the letterbox.”

  Eleanor heard him tapping on glass. A moment later, a curtain was drawn back and she saw his silhouette against the light within. She rolled up the window, and as she got out of the car, she heard Jocelyn’s voice.

  “Nicholas! I’m so glad you’ve made it back safely. Where is— Oh, there you are, Eleanor. Come in, do. What a foul night.” She swung the casement to and closed the curtain. A moment later the front door opened. “Come in,” she urged again. “Tell me everything.”