“If he wasn’t a goddamn genius …” Bloch muttered through clenched teeth.
Clive Batty had been around the docks in Penzance for all his sixty years but he’d never seen anything like it. The harbormaster stared at the little sloop that had just crawled in out of the mist. It was propelled by a few strips of loosely sewn canvas and what looked like a flower-print bed sheet. The boat eased closer to where he stood on the dock and a young woman moved to the bow with a coiled rope. She tossed the line and it fell across the planks right next to him. Batty secured it to a cleat and she threw him another line, this one attached to the stern of the crippled little boat. Together they pulled and pushed Windsom alongside the dock and tied her on.
“Must’ve been a bad blow you went through there, missy. We had some of it ’ere, but it didn’t hit us hard.” Batty kept looking up at the rigging. Damnedest thing he’d ever seen. Broken lines everywhere. A bunch of spaghetti, like you’d expect if the mast had gone down — only the mast was up.
The woman jumped onto the dock and her gait turned wobbly. Batty knew sea legs when he saw them. He thought she looked tired, too.
“Been out for a while, ’ave ye?”
She walked up and offered a hand. “Christine Palmer.”
“Clive Batty. They just call me Bats.” He scratched the gray stubble of whiskers on his chin. “Looks like you’ll be in the market for a good sailmaker. Me cousin Colin just happens to run a shop up the street. He does quality work and charges a lot for it.” Batty leaned toward Christine and whispered conspiratorially, “But I think you could get a more reasonable deal than most. He’s got a soft spot for the ladies, he does.”
Christine laughed. “Now I know I’m back in the real world.”
The harbormaster was puzzled.
“I’m sure your cousin is a terrific sail-maker and an honest man. I’ll be sure to see him.”
Batty grinned amiably, but the young lady’s features tightened.
“Before I can talk to him, though, I’ll need to see the police.”
He stood back and eyed her curiously. “Police, is it? And what might you be needin’ them for?”
“It’s a long story, I’m afraid. But I should talk to them right away.”
“Aye, then.” He pointed ashore. “Up that street and take the second right. Hester Street. Number 6.”
“Thanks.” She pointed toward her boat. “Can you look after her for now?”
“Like a child o’ me own.”
Christine smiled. “Thank you, Bats.”
He nodded. “Good luck, missy.” Batty watched her walk up the dock and then took another look at the ripped apart sailboat in front of him. He wondered what a nice young lass like that might have gotten into.
It took Slaton three hours to reach Exeter on the Brough. The machine was running rough by then and seemed to be overheating. He left it among a group of motorcycles parked together in a hospital parking lot, a few blocks from the train station. He walked the remaining distance and arrived, by the station clock, at 4:21. Slaton had been without a timepiece since Polaris Venture had gone down, but he estimated it had been roughly five hours since he’d left Windsom. He wondered if Dr. Palmer had gotten her boat to Penzance yet. Probably not, he decided, but it shouldn’t matter now. He had put a lot of distance between himself and West Cornwall, and the next step would take him even farther out of reach.
He’d hoped to acquire his ticket from an automated machine, but the only one he could find was out of service. With two sales booths to choose from, Slaton studied the respective clerks. One was an officious older woman, the other a young man, not much more than a teenager, with spiked hair and a bored, lethargic manner. An easy choice, even though the young man’s line was a little longer. Slaton purchased his ticket with cash, the agent barely looking up at the scruffy bloke who wanted a one-way for the 4:50 to Reading, with a connection to Oxford.
Slaton went to the men’s restroom. He cleaned up his face and hands in a washbasin while another man stood at a urinal, humming while he went about his business. When the hummer finally left, Slaton was alone. He moved into a toilet stall and shut the door. Five minutes later, he emerged in a pair of jeans, a collared knit shirt, and a red windbreaker. All of it fit badly and the beard still promoted a rough texture, yet it was an altogether different impression versus the ruffian who had gone into the loo — still working class, but a few rungs higher up the ladder. Slaton spotted a London Times in the trash can. He pulled it out, gave one neat fold to display the sports section, and slid it into the pocket of his canvas backpack, a picture of footballer David Beckham protruding obviously.
He boarded the train twenty minutes later, selecting an open seat next to a nicely dressed older woman. She had an expensive, well-tended appearance, and sported a tremendous diamond wedding ring. Like a good snob, she avoided eye contact with Slaton, no doubt put off by his pointedly proletariat showing. He doubted she’d find a word for him the entire way to Reading.
With doors sealed, the train started off, slowly picking up speed. Slaton settled back and closed his eyes. He’d be in Oxford in five hours. Five hours to get some rest, and to concentrate on his next step.
The Penzance police station, a remote outpost of the Devon and Corn-wall Constabulary, was a small affair. Nothing more had been necessary when it was built two hundred years ago. After the First World War, one of the original stone walls had been taken down to allow for the construction of three holding cells adjacent to the main room. The police chief at the time had been an ambitious man, but aside from the occasional brawl at the Three Sisters pub, the cells went largely vacant and had evolved over the years. One remained a holding cell, one was redone as the chief’s office, and the last had taken plumbing to become a water closet — at least that was what the sign on the door said. Virtually all business was undertaken in the main room, where a hodgepodge of desks and chairs served as foundation for a hodgepodge of books and papers. Altogether, it afforded the station a compact, yet very busy appearance, decidedly at odds with the sleepy hamlet outside.
Christine sat in an uncomfortable wooden chair, her clenched hands resting on a rickety folding table. She had just finished her story for the third time and the man across the table was methodically going back over the details.“
And when he tore apart your boat and took the dinghy … how far from shore did you say you were?” the man asked.“
Two miles, I guess. Plus or minus a half mile.”
Chief Walter Bickerstaff nodded. He was a broad-chested man whose round face was fronted by a broad, flattened nose that looked like it might have been broken any number of times. Presently, his jowls were darkened by the shadow of a coarse beard — the type that would yield to nothing but the sharpest of razors — and his brow set furrowed in deep concentration.“
So let’s see,” Bickerstaff said, thinking aloud, “if a man can row at three … let’s give him four miles an hour, he might have been ashore in half an hour. And you said he left at roughly noon today. That would put him ashore just before one o’clock this afternoon. Of course that’s if he went straight in. He might have had a time finding a place to land along the coast. Pretty rocky in those parts.”
Christine tried to look interested in Bickerstaff’s thoughts, but she was tired. She’d been rehashing the facts for three hours. Once for Constable Edwards, and now twice for the chief. Bickerstaff had gauged her closely the first time, in the way one might size up a person thought to have stayed out a pint too long. The second time through, her answers got terse, enough to make him realize that she was serious and not the least bit inebriated. Still, Christine couldn’t really blame the man for being skeptical. It was a pretty incredible story.