A Suitable Vengeance - By Elizabeth George Page 0,111

in the water, shrieking with excitement as it lapped at their legs.

"Get what you need?" Cotter asked.

"Pieces, that's all. Nothing seems to fit together. I can't make a connection between Mick and Tina Cogin, between Tina Cogin and Trenarrow. It's nothing more than conjecture."

"P'raps Deb was wrong. P'raps she didn't see Mick in London."

"No. She saw him. Everything indicates that. He knew Tina Cogin. But as to how and why, I don't know."

"Seems 'ow and why's the easiest part, 'cording to Missus Swann."

"She's not an admirer of Mick's, is she?"

"She hated 'im, and there's the truth." Cotter watched the children playing for a moment.

He smiled as one of them - a little girl of three or four - fell onto her bottom, splashing water on the others. "But if there's truth to her talk about Mick Cambrey and women, then far's I can see, looks to me that John Penellin did it."

"Why?"

"It's 'is daughter involved, Mr. St. James. A man's not likely to let another man hurt 'is daughter. Not if it can be stopped in some way. A man does what 'e can."

St. James recognised the bait and acknowledged the fact that their morning's discussion was not yet concluded in Cotter's eyes. But he had no need to ask the question which Cotter's comment called for: And what would you do? He knew the answer. Instead he said, "Did you learn anything from the housekeeper?"

"Dora? A bit." Cotter leaned against the harbour railing, resting his elbows on the top metal bar. "Great admirer of the doctor, is Dora. Works 'is fingers to the bone. Gives 'is life to research. And when 'e's not doing that, 'e's visiting folks at a convalescent 'ome outside St. Just."

"That's the extent of it?"

"Seems to be."

St. James sighed. Not for the first time did he admit to the fact that his field was science, crime scene investigation, the analysis of evidence, the interpretation of data, the preparation of reports. He had no expertise in an arena that demanded insightful communication and intuitive deduction.

More, he didn't have the taste or the talent for either. And the further he waded into the growing mire of conjecture, the more frustrated he felt.

From his jacket pocket, he pulled out the piece of paper which Harry Cambrey had given him Saturday morning. It seemed as reasonable a direction to head in as any. When you're lost, he thought mordantly, you may as well head ~ somewhere.

" Cotter joined

him in studying it. "MP," he said. Then, "Member of Parliament?" St. James looked up.

"What did you say?" "Them letters. MP." "MP? No - " As he spoke, St. James held the paper to the sunlight. And he saw what the gloom of the newspaper office and his own preconceived notions had prevented him from realising before. The pen, which had skipped in the grease on other spots on the paper, had done as much again next to the words procure and transport. The result was an imper~ectly formed loop for the letter P, not the number 1 at all. \nd the 6, if the thought followed logically, had to be instead a hastily scrawled C. "Good God." He frowned, examining the accompanying numbers.

Dismissing gunrunning and Ireland and every other side issue from his mind, it wasn't long before he saw the obvious. 500. 55. 27500. The last was the multiple of the previous two. And then he recognised the first connection of the circumstances surrounding Mick Cambrey's death. The position of the Daze had told him, bow to stern northeast on the rocks. He should have clung to that thought. It had been pointing to the truth. He thought about the coastline of Cornwall. He knew without a doubt that Lynley's party of men could scour every cove from St. Ives to Penzance, but it would be as limitedly useful an activity for them as it had been for the excise officers who had patrolled the same area for two hundred years. The coast was honeycombed with caves. It was scalloped by coves.

St. James knew that. He did not need to clamber among the rocks and slither down the faces of cliffs to see what he knew quite well was already there, a haven for smugglers. If 3 they knew how to pilot a boat among the reefs.

I| It could have come from anywhere,

he thought. From Portgwarra to Sennen Cove. Even from the Stillys. But there was only one way to know for sure. "What next?" Cotter asked. St. James folded