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Lethal Touch
Lethal Touch
Lethal Touch
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Lethal Touch

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When a racing yacht is found abandoned off the Cornwall coast, with only the skipper’s brutalized body on board, suspicion spreads through the town. Crewman Lobb and all the other crew members are unaccounted for, including a celebrity tennis star and Kate, the owner’s fiancée, who have seemingly disappeared.
Once ashore, the owner finds evidence that the yacht had been fitted with explosives, and that Crewman Lobb had left the stricken yacht while the others slept. Sightings of Lobb since the sinking lead police to wonder – could he be planning further killings?
Links between the group surface, as it comes to light that Kate manages the hotel which is the venue of a major tennis and golf centre. Financial crimes committed in the luxury resort hotel mean that the Cornwall Police had already been searching for Kate, but when private investigator Hoyle and the police realize the seriousness of the murders, bombing threats, angry employees and threats from powerful people, it becomes clear that everyone is placed in increasing jeopardy.
As the death tally builds and Kate makes a secretive return, the police are forced to face the growing list of suspects, and decide who had the lethal touch for murder.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 1, 2015
ISBN9781784629601
Lethal Touch
Author

Tony Clark

Tony Clark is Assistant Professor of Ethics at Friends University and was previously Teaching Fellow at the University of St Andrews, Scotland.

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    Lethal Touch - Tony Clark

    TWENTY-NINE

    TEN YEARS BEFORE

    She turned away from the picture window with far more regret than she had expected to feel, and with considerably more pain. She had known she would miss her personal vista but with the moment now gone she stopped, almost overcome with grief. This was the second and last time she would know such massive grief in the cliff-top house.

    Opening her eyes and clamping her lips together until they hurt, she struggled to find the right words to speak to her silent, watchful family. They all looked at her, expecting her to speak, as they should. She knew their expressions, written on their faces as though with words, set on their brows and lips with an awful familiarity. Avarice was always there, in all but one of their faces whenever they met like this, which they could be doing for the very last time. She had always been ready to help them: she had given them massive help, and mostly it had been wasted.

    ‘Child.’ She pointed. ‘You. Mathew. Draw the curtains,’ said Chantelle.

    ‘But Grandmother, it isn’t nearly dark enough yet.’

    ‘Do what I ask you, Mathew, do not argue. I do not wish to see it again. Ever. Now go, and do it child.’

    ‘Mother.’ Mathew’s father, Chantelle’s eldest son, stood up and assumed the posture of the boardroom and again used his strong voice which never sounded more than a pathetic parody. ‘Mother, what can you be saying? Of course you will see the sea again. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, the day after, and all the days after that.’

    Chantelle Cupidi raised her hand, a gesture they would never misunderstand after the first time. He stopped, as always. Thank God, he had learned something. If only he had always stopped when she scolded him, especially those times when he believed he knew better than her. The pumped-up fool. His fortunes would have made them proud; his business failures made her ashamed.

    ‘When Mathew sits down I will explain.’ She ignored her son’s quickly-changing expression, knowing he would be trying to fathom her meaning and see it as the prospects of further rescue funds. She sat while he remained staring at her. In a louder voice, she said: ‘Do take your time, Mathew. I’m turning into stone while I wait.’ She paused before continuing.

    ‘Now then.’ Chantelle eased her back against the custom-designed chair, which never failed to ease and please. ‘As you know, I have enjoyed this place from the day my dear husband and I moved here all those years ago. We have been very fortunate, but now after ten years deprived of him, and alone, I cannot, will not, continue to live here any longer. I have loved the Heg estuary more than most other stunning places in the world. And I have been to most of them.’

    She watched the pampered faces reveal their anxieties, never hidden or disguised in her presence. It was her youngest son who prepared to speak, the only one of her offspring whose words she valued. Simon, who had suffered from the bullying and torments of his older brothers until the day he rose above them in every way. And in every way, he remained above them.

    ‘When are you leaving here, Mother? This place, which you and Father so loved.’

    Chantelle smiled. Explanations were seldom required for Simon. Not so the others. She had made no secret of her ultimate plans for the estate, sparing all but Simon most of the detail. The others had chosen to ignore her words, as they had often ignored her to their cost. She had had good reason not to reveal the timing. Simon would have believed her. One of the others’ wives, who never hid her feelings interrupted.

    ‘You can’t sell it, Chantelle. You can’t,’ she exclaimed, with all the horror of a woman abused and damaged by the excesses of their accidental prosperity. ‘This place belongs to… to the whole family. It’s always been here for us: a refuge, a sanctuary an… oh, I don’t know. You just can’t…’ Her hands flew away from her like startled crows. ‘The family, your family, belong here, Chantelle. You can’t mean it.’

    ‘Some of what you have said is true. It has been a place where you have been welcomed, Lillian.’ Chantelle raised an eyebrow and held her daughter-in-law’s petrified gaze. ‘Those days have ended, today. Tomorrow, you will leave here for good. Those days are behind you, behind me. I have looked upon the bay most days, which I have loved from the first day of my marriage. After my husband was torn from me ten years ago today, the time has now come to leave.’

    ‘But…’ Lillian had, for once, failed to find some words to express her ill-considered thoughts, which usually centred on herself. She had failed herself and the family for the last time.

    ‘I sold this place last month,’ explained Chantelle, watching Simon. ‘I am moving out next week. To a new place. A place I have never been to. But I have been promised that it will please me.’

    ‘Next week?’ Her younger son came over, with genuine concern on his face. ‘So soon, Mother?’ He knelt beside her chair and looked up at her. ‘What will you do. Are you sure? How can anywhere be better than this?’ His eyebrows shot up but he had fully understood and played his part of the act.

    She smiled at him and rested a hand on his dark hair, a gesture calculated to infuriate his brothers. Had she always spoiled Simon? Had she heaped more affection and direct assistance on him? Had he been her favourite? She hoped it had not been obvious. But there had been times he deserved more than all the others combined.

    Chantelle looked up at one of her elder sons then the other, then at Simon, saying: ‘You, my sons, will meet with me for a last jacuzzi meeting. Fifteen minutes, no more.’ Chantelle stood and moved towards the door.

    They were there when she arrived, each in a corner of the large tub, leaving a place for her over the strongest massage jets. The temperature that she could see from the wall thermometer, was just as she liked it. The faithful Tompkins would have ensured that that and all other details were as she demanded. She climbed the steps and painfully lowered herself into the troubled surface, allowing the water to enfold her as far as her chin, until, feeling strengthened, she sat upright and began to speak.

    ‘I have sold this place through a Swiss banker who I met five years ago in the Bahamas, the year I sold my house there. A kind man, who often advised me on the more complex financial arrangements.’ None of her pink-faced sons looked at her, as if dreading the worst, as well they should. He met my price exactly. And he wanted most of my furniture and artworks.’

    ‘But you promised…’ began her middle son, the most greedy.

    ‘I have not overlooked all that I promised, Michael, and I will honour them.’ Her middle son continued to show his fury, then was calm as his slow brain responded. She continued: ‘I have changed my will and none of you will be denied a generous share of my fortune. But it is only a share as you will discover, but a considerable sum to each of you, be assured.’

    ‘You have helped us a great deal, already, Mother.’ Simon smiled at her, while his older brothers scowled.

    She nodded. ‘Which brings me to the next point.’ She looked at Simon, then her other sons, feeling certain what they would be thinking. ‘As you say, Simon, I have helped you and you have repaid me handsomely with dividends from your companies.’

    ‘My pleasure,’ he said, smiling lightly.

    Her elder sons, facing her and growing redder by the minute, were losing patience. ‘As to you two, you have not used my investments at all wisely, and I have gained little from them. In fact…’

    ‘You well know why, Mother, began Michael. ‘Business is always risky.’

    ‘And I fully understand that you have taken too many risks too lightly, expecting that, perhaps, I would bale you out if they didn’t succeed. Once, I overlooked, twice, I contained my anger, but on the third time, I decided that I would help you no more. You may not have realised that I knew exactly what you were doing all the time, and I could see where you went wrong. You fools. I have sold all my shares in both your companies.’ She looked from one of her elder sons to the other. ‘What I said applies to both of you in full. All your companies.’

    ‘You cannot do that,’ said one.

    ‘That will ruin us,’ said the other.

    Chantelle raised her hand. ‘I have already instructed my brokers to sell all the shares today.’ She glanced at the digital clock on the wall. ‘Done.’

    As always, the older men left her without a word, so obviously seething with pain and indignation. Simon watched them go, then slowly turned towards his mother, who knew she had been right to do all that she had pondered over for a year.

    ‘How do you feel, my son?’ She watched him with pride and great affection; he had served them both well. ‘Your success cannot be guaranteed, I know, but you have worked with wisdom and care. With my further help, I believe you can continue to enjoy further success. We deserve it.’

    ‘We will succeed, Mother. Have I ever let you down?’

    ‘Not once, Simon. Not once.’ Chantelle paused as she sank further into the water with her eyes half-closed. ‘All I ask is that I can spend the rest of my days in your hotels. I wish to have three suites for my exclusive use, made available in three hotels, which I will name shortly. When this property becomes a luxury spa hotel, I will have one of my suites here. This room and the view included, of course. The other two we’ll speak about later. I have provided enough money for this through my solicitor, which he will put to your solicitor later this month.’

    ‘You will have the choice, Mother.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘And thank you.’ He glanced at the clock. ‘Please excuse me. I have to make a conference call with my American Cupidi Hotels CEO.’

    ‘Of course.’ She watched him go, knowing that he would tell his wife of their good fortune before making his calls.

    As Simon left, Tompkins entered and stood beside the door. He would comply with her wishes exactly. Whatever she now decided to do or say, and whatever happened, he would not intervene.

    She had promised that whatever she did, and providing he did not intervene, he would be a moderately wealthy man in under a month. His reward was no more and no less than he deserved. For being her constant lover, companion, friend, ally and confidant from the week after she had married her husband, Tompkins would have good reason to remember her.

    Chantelle inhaled sharply, waited for as many seconds as she could, then slipped under the foaming water.

    ONE

    The salvage tug slowed as we came up to the yacht. The crewmen watched silently; I was more than a little nervous. As the yacht turned in the strengthening wind, I saw what remained of her name on the stern.

    The Chantelle’s masts were like tree stumps, and the rigging and a torn sail were draped across her carcass like shrouds. The varnish was badly damaged in places, exposing the hard wood beneath. There was no sign of any humans ever having been on her; ocean creatures had sprayed, crapped and smeared their excretions on the finely shaped hull and the saloon roof.

    ‘I should have known… God. If only she…’ Robert Craig quickly removed his rimless glasses and lifted the binoculars to his eyes again. ‘If only…’

    The Chantelle was reported lost with all hands, seven days into the Hegmouth–Madeira yacht race; Robert had searched further south for the large ketch and her crew for five weeks, until he was ill from exhaustion. Even then, he had clung to the hope that his fiancée Katherine Stockley was still alive. I felt pity, touched by fear.

    Robert used his binoculars to hide his tears; at the time, I misread them. ‘If only,’ he said again, more quietly, lowering his binoculars and turning away.

    ‘What?’ I asked.

    He had gone, and if he answered, the wind took his words away. I saw no reason for the change in him, as I studied the swinging yacht through my own binoculars, fighting to stay upright.

    Minutes later, Robert was first aboard the Chantelle, moving dangerously fast across the heaving deck and jumping down into the cockpit. He stopped at the lashed wheel, and appeared to remove and pocket something from it. The possibilities were clear in my mind when I thought about the lashed wheel. If the whole crew had been lost overboard, who had lashed the wheel? And why, in God’s name?

    Ten minutes after, two of the tug crewmen had secured a towline to the Chantelle, and another had destroyed the last shred of hope with a shaking head and down-turned thumbs. He shouted over about a foul smell. At the time, nobody thought to ask what it might be. The questions, the regrets, the Chantelle’s hulk, and a gutted seagull on her saloon roof were all that remained of a beautiful cruising yacht and four people. Or had it been five? Had Simon Cupidi’s beautiful daughter Teresa been on board? The police in seven countries and millions of tennis fans had pinned their last hopes on finding her alive onboard the Chantelle.

    Other crewmen speculated as they worked, and seagulls screamed obscenities as they wheeled over us. Most probably, Katherine and the others had been swept over the side when the storm overtook them off the Portuguese coast. Without food and water, protection from the cruel Atlantic and from the summer sun, they would have perished; their remains would have been picked over by marine predators. But why had the huge wheel been lashed?

    ‘There was little left of their possessions,’ Robert shouted at me, his face alive with a private excitement when he returned. ‘What the sea, the wind and the sun didn’t foul and damage, plunderers cut off and stripped out. They even cut the masts free as if to salvage her. Bastards. How she stayed afloat I’ll never know.’ He continued speaking, as though afraid I would ask more questions: ‘She was not the first boat to have wandered around the Atlantic, at the mercy of the sun and wind, driven on by currents. Fine boat. The finest. We have to get her back to Hegmouth. We have to.’

    With that, he thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his torn, greasy oilskins; his grey-stubbled jaws were clamped shut and his narrow shoulders were rounded. He was holding back his excitement, with difficulty.

    ‘What did you find? Any clue what happened?’

    He shook his head and exhaled sharply.

    ‘You took something off the wheel…’

    ‘I found nothing.’ He turned on me angrily. ‘Nothing. D’you hear. Just think about what’ll happen when that storm over there arrives.’ He gestured, wildly. ‘And it will.’

    In that long, cold trip back to Hegmouth, we almost lost the Chantelle when the westerly storm overtook us. The details of the passage are best recorded in the salvage vessel’s log; sufficient to say, I hope never to repeat it. Mountains I love with a passion, except when they are made of granite-coloured water five metres high and come up behind like a freight train. The biggest waves seemed to have my name on them, as they rose above the tug. More than the passage itself, I recall thinking how much worse it would have been on the night the other storm overwhelmed the Chantelle off Portugal, the month before.

    Five hours later, Robert relaxed, although he remained pensive. We sat below with large mugs of tea on the corkscrewing table, exhaustion slowly receding in the cabin’s warmth. Robert studied me over his smeared glasses.

    ‘You would have liked her, Matt. She could be very funny, when she wasn’t working. And my kids loved her. I loved her, more than… than…’

    I nodded, sipped the scalding tea and clamped the mug to the table. ‘Everybody I met in Baltimore thought the world of her. She’s greatly missed.’ But there were some who thought far less of her. Her rivals.

    He sighed. ‘Kate’s smile… she cared, Matt. She really cared about people. Can’t say that about all the high-fliers.’

    His description of her matched how I had imagined her personality, from the small figure in a photograph of vice-presidents at a conference: her wide smile, her lifted chin, and her hands expressing a strong emotion. But there was a side of Katherine Stockley that Robert had not known.

    At my briefing in Baltimore, Simon Cupidi had said: ‘She was a shrewd, effective manager, Matt. A glowing future. God, I miss her like hell; she was almost as much my daughter as Teresa. Please God I haven’t lost them both.’

    ‘I’ll do what I can to fill the gap,’ I had replied, having been asked to manage Simon’s Cupidi Hotels in the UK until Katherine could be replaced. ‘I heard her deputy will pull through. They say his car was just a heap of metal.’

    ‘I don’t believe Kate would have allowed fraud to happen, Matt,’ Simon had gone on to say. ‘I just won’t accept it. She was far too smart.’

    She had joined the company in South Carolina, and had risen to become the director of a group of hotels by the time she was thirty-one. Simon Cupidi learned of Katherine’s talents, and after a spell at the corporate headquarters in Baltimore, she became a vice-president two years later. An affair with a more senior executive and clashes with longer-serving men and women left a trail of enemies; her continuing success and support by Simon Cupidi had only consolidated the opposition. Yet, Simon rewarded her with responsibility for the UK hotels a further year later. Jealousy, rivalry from other young executives, and some startling oversights, made her vulnerable by the time of the yacht race. I was in Cornwall to manage the UK hotels and investigate fraud at the Hegmouth Cupidi hotel, their star British hotel where Simon’s mother Chantelle spent most of her declining days.

    It was almost dark on Sunday when we arrived back at Hegmouth harbour. The tide was too low for us to do anything with the Chantelle, other than to moor her in sheltered deep water for the night. We located the buoys in darkness and attached her fore and aft with warps borrowed from the salvage tug. Robert paid off the crew, and wished them well. We untied the small tender that had been left on the stern buoy and rowed across the black river mouth to Robert’s boatyard in the village of Tregyre. The cliffs loomed over us as the swirling waters seemed to draw us into their depths. I had read about the Heg Gyre: a body of swirling water that formed in certain tide and wind conditions. The little excursion, as Robert had described our trip beyond the Scilly Isles, had not been in my plans; it would feature in my dreams for years to come.

    Robert began drinking immediately we were in the boathouse. ‘I’ve never felt so bloody low,’ he told me after downing the first glass of malt whisky, and pouring the second. Sitting again, pushing his free hand through his long, greying hair, he repeated it. ‘The storm off Portugal hit them hard; it hit us all fucking hard, including my boat the Suella. But no, it was Kate’s bloody boat somewhere behind that bought it.’

    He had said much the same throughout the passage back to Hegmouth. I offered what little comfort I could. He was sparing me much of the truth, and nothing I could say or do would alter that.

    ‘The best sixteen-metre ketch, with the most experienced skipper. Randy was far and away the best, and Kate… Kate was so damned good.’

    Robert would suffer mood swings, which turned him from a quick, anecdotal companion into a sullen, impatient and withdrawn dog. He would like as not attack some wood or metal with his tools, or remove an engine to strip it; then he would bounce back and set puzzles for whoever was there, or embark on a current affairs topic with a depth of understanding I never seemed to master. A few hours in Robert’s company is enough, but compared with the suffocating predictability of many men and women I meet in my work, he is a man I will always turn to.

    That evening, he never once surfaced above self-pity. Halfway through the bottle of single malt he began to complain about living in Cornwall and how he had been made to feel like a leper for being an incomer. He ignored my murmurs of support, perhaps forgetting I had been an incomer most of my life, never more than when returning to England with Sarah four years before. I have never been able to accept people who would say: This is Matt. He’s American, you know, as though to explain the nose on my face or the five fingers on my hands. ‘And I can fart, like you just did,’ I want to say in reply.

    I don’t know when Robert stopped drinking and fell asleep, but it was too late for me to go back to my suite at the Cupidi hotel in Hegmouth. I made a few phone calls to explain my absence.

    Sometime in that uncomfortable night, I woke with the knowledge that somebody was trying to break into the boathouse. The dingy flat, which Robert spoke of as home when he was feeling generous towards what had once been the lumber store, was built over the workshops. I remember walking barefoot across to the window when I heard another sound from below, punching it open at the cost of some skin, and peering down into the blackness, then at the dark outline of Tregyre village hanging onto the cliffs above the harbour. Other than the water lapping at the boats nearby and against the concrete hard, I heard nothing to suggest an intruder. I called out and only a neighbour’s dog replied.

    Sleep did not easily return. When I wasn’t dreaming of Katherine and Teresa drowning, screaming in desolation and misery, I saw my wife Sarah breathing water, her eyes like steel washers.

    ***

    The next morning began when the side door was assaulted by Robert’s first caller of the day. Robert was fast asleep and snoring loudly. I stepped out of bed, not knowing when I had finally drifted back into sleep. It was cold and raw inside, but bright outside; the stairs were dark and even colder. The air hung like sails in fog.

    ‘I’m coming. I’m coming.’ I approached the door though the mess of ropes, unusable timber, three dead engines and other stuff I didn’t know from moon dust. It was Monday, when I needed to get on with a full agenda at the hotel. The promise of a difficult day was matched by the temptation to evade it with fast cliff hiking and rock scrambling.

    The man standing in the warmth of the early morning sunshine smiled with his grey teeth. His face remained taut and leathery. His hair was the colour of wire wool and his clothes were in accordance with some official code. His voice confirmed what I sensed. ‘Mr Craig? I’m Detective Inspector Penhale. I want to talk to you.’ The air had the aroma of seaweed and oil.

    ‘I’m not Robert Craig. I’m Matt Hoyle. But you can speak with him, for sure.’ He looked back at me, as though my name should mean something; I hoped it didn’t. I felt as though he was already collecting reasons for disliking me. There had been no ID flicked in front of my eyes. I should have asked to see it. But he looked and sounded the part. ‘Okay. Come on in.’ I stood aside, hoping he would decline.

    ‘A friend of Mr Craig’s, Mr Hoyle?’ The next second, Penhale was standing beside an oily engine, looking as much out of place as I feel in police stations, and eyeing me with his first impression firmly in place.

    ‘Sure. I don’t live here; just passing through.’ It seemed from his expression that I should not admit anything, even the time of day. ‘I work for Cupidi Comfort Hotels. The company’s got a financial interest in a yacht Robert salvaged yesterday; they sponsored her in the Hegmouth–Madeira race. I’m on assignment here.’

    The other man made no response.

    ‘Did you try to get in earlier?’ I asked.

    ‘No.’ He frowned. ‘Why? I was in Padstow. Asleep. Why?’

    Without waiting for an answer, Penhale twisted and turned his head when a heavy sound came from Robert overhead. As I turned away, I recalled when I first met Robert, in very different circumstances.

    He came to London as an expert witness for a client of the firm that employed me at the time. The firm had a grey-coloured formulae for every event and process, and Robert was supposed to have complied with them. His disregard of our procedures, by championing his own, almost lost us the insurance claim, but gave me a friend. In a suit and formal shirt, Robert always looked like the expert in ship structural stress for which he had been world class. His reputation was of a diligent and exacting researcher; as a legal witness he was contemptuously above lawyers’ tricks. He would take an instant dislike to DI Penhale, I knew.

    ‘Come this way,’ I said over my shoulder, leading him up into Robert’s private jungle, to the part of his accommodation he named the living room. Penhale appeared to struggle with this idea when I mentioned it. ‘Sit down, Inspector. Coffee? I’ll rouse Robert.’

    ‘That would be very welcome, Mr Hoyle. Thanks.’ He sat down and looked at me steadily. ‘Very welcome. Boston? New York? Been in England long?’

    ‘El Dorado County. Quite some time.’ I smiled at his confusion and turned for the kitchen; it was too early in the day for long explanations, and Penhale was there to listen to Robert’s story, not mine.

    I could have told him I was born less than three hundred miles away, and had travelled so much in the four decades of my life, I knew no other; I could have said that my marriage to Sarah was as much adrift as had been the Chantelle and was not as likely to be salvaged. My destiny was not meant to have been in a broken-down boatyard or working in a luxury hotel on a cliff edge.

    In the very small kitchen, I said: ‘Robert. Visitor. Inspector Keystone, no less.’

    ‘I know. I bloody know.’ The water for tea and coffee had already boiled. He completed the task without saying more, and silently led me back to the centre of his small kingdom. He stopped, faced Penhale, sat on an equally sordid little chair, and asked him what he wanted; the standard opening I always thought. On this occasion, it didn’t work. Robert’s clipped, emphatic voice was evidently disliked by Penhale; Robert would not have understood the policeman’s scowl.

    ‘How long have you been in Tregyre, Mr Craig?’

    ‘I bought the yard just a year ago, Inspector. Why?’ I wondered what Robert had failed to do. Some authorization he should have had: the licence to lose money, for example. ‘Came down here from Hampshire, if you must know.’

    ‘I must, Mr Craig.’ Penhale stared at Robert when he spoke; his voice was flat and he seemed to be uneasy and lacking in confidence. ‘And I will. You were employed by a large company, I understand. Research. Maritime science expert of some sort, eh?’ Penhale was both testing and fishing. ‘Something of a change for the likes of you, wasn’t it? Why?’

    ‘It’s none of your business, Inspector, but I see no reason to be secretive about what is public knowledge, if anybody cared.’ Whatever the reason for Robert’s hostility, the whisky he had downed the night before would have been a large factor. He fiddled with a small ballpoint, then dropped it onto a side table. It was then I realized how little I knew of Robert Craig’s life in the last three years. But the earlier part, I knew, of course, although Robert was hesitant to expand upon Penhale’s statement. Slowly, in a drone, he said: ‘I was a senior research scientist and consultant with the Fairmount Research Corporation for almost twenty years. They didn’t want my knowledge and experience any more. I went my own way and bought this yard. Why are you asking?’ he added, testily.

    ‘We are investigating a number of crimes in the area, and I believe you may be able to help us.’ Penhale smiled coldly, then said: ‘Is that the Chantelle out there in Hegmouth harbour? Abandoned, would you say?’

    ‘You’re not a boat user, are you Inspector? She was not abandoned?’

    ‘How do you know?’

    ‘She was all but wrecked in a severe Atlantic storm,’ Robert snapped at him. ‘Off Portugal. She was not abandoned, for God’s sake. The crew were swept overboard. They could not possibly have reached…’

    He stopped, realizing Penhale had been accidentally right. Robert had rejected the possibility until he saw the lashed wheel. Now, he was not prepared to admit to it. Why had Robert jumped to a conclusion, when in all the years I had known him he analyzed every situation and proposition with a ruthless logic.

    Penhale and I waited for Robert to continue. ‘Either way,’ he began in a clipped, rasping voice,

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