Death in the Cove, page 1
DEATH IN THE COVE
Crime novels by Pauline Rowson
The Inspector Andy Horton Series
Tide of Death
Deadly Waters
The Suffocating Sea
Dead Man's Wharf
Blood on the Sand
Footsteps on the Shore
A Killing Coast
Death Lies Beneath
Undercurrent
Death Surge
Shroud of Evil
Fatal Catch
Lethal Waves
Dead Passage
Art Marvik Mystery/Thrillers
Silent Running
Dangerous Cargo
Lost Voyage
Standalone Mystery Thrillers
In Cold Daylight
In For the Kill
DEATH IN THE COVE
An Inspector Alun Ryga crime novel
PAULINE ROWSON
This first World edition published 2019 by Fathom
Copyright 2019 by Pauline Rowson
All rights reserved. The moral right of the author has been asserted.
ISBN-13 978-0-9928889 6 1 (eBook)
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd. 90 Tottenham Court Road, London, England W1P 9HE. Applications for the copyright owner's written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publisher.
Warning: The doing of an unauthorised act in relation to a copyright work may result in both a civil claim for damages and criminal prosecution.
Fathom is an imprint of Rowmark, Hayling Island, Hampshire, England. PO11 0PL
Typeset and eBook conversion by www.benottridge.co.uk
Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
One
Wednesday 13 September 1950
Inspector Ryga?'
'Yes.'
'Sergeant Jack Daniels. Like the whisky, I'm an acquired taste.'
Daniels' handshake was firm and dry. Ryga returned the smile. 'I bet you've said that a few times.'
'Hundreds. I don't mind. It helps to break the ice.' Daniels opened the boot of the Wolseley and Ryga placed his holdall and the brown briefcase inside.
'Where to, skipper? Sorry, sir.'
'RAF?'
'Yes. Not for long though, the war was over before I could do much damage. You?'
'Prisoner of War, Germany.'
'Oh. Sorry.'
'Why? You didn't start the war, did you?'
'No, but . . . Sorry, sir, I didn't mean . . .'
'Forget it, and you can call me skipper if you prefer. Although your superintendent might not like that.'
'He's laid up with a broken ankle.'
'I know.' Ryga climbed in.
'Of course, sorry. There I go again apologizing.'
'Do I make you nervous?' Ryga swivelled to study Daniels.
'Not really, well, a bit, yes. Never had Scotland Yard down here on a case. In fact, I've never met a detective from Scotland Yard before and neither has anyone else around these parts.'
'And you wouldn't be meeting one now if it wasn't for your rather unusual corpse in Church Ope Cove.' Ryga didn't say that he had never been out of London on an investigation before and that he'd only recently been promoted to inspector. Neither did he mention that he was just as nervous and just as keen as Daniels to prove his worth. Maybe he should have done – it might have helped to put them both at ease. But he said nothing. It wasn't that he was afraid to show weakness, or that he was too proud or cocky to admit it, it was just his way. Years working at sea and then the long years of imprisonment during the war had made him watchful and thoughtful. But the war was over. Not that you thought it sometimes – the bombs had stopped but the hardship, heartache and memories remained, more tortuous for some than others. For him? It had happened and that was it. He had moved on. And he was in a much better place now than he had been before it.
'The mortuary or the Church Ope Cove, sir?'
Ryga wished Daniels would return to calling him skipper. On the train from Waterloo to Weymouth, Ryga had decided it would be the mortuary, but when he had alighted from the London express at Weymouth and walked the couple of hundred yards south along King Street to Melcombe Regis Station for the branch line to Portland he'd begun to reconsider. He'd already requested that he be met at Easton Station on Portland rather than at Weymouth, where Daniels was stationed, so as to get an initial feel for the island, alone. As the small train had chugged and puffed its way across Ferry Bridge on to the rugged, rockstrewn and hilly Portland and then up the incline towards the south-east of the island the sight of the sea and the quarry-scarred landscape made him itch to see where this rather unusual body had ended up.
'Church Ope Cove. Is it far?'
'Nothing's far on this island,' Daniels said, putting the car into gear. 'It's only four miles long and just over one and a half miles wide. We should be at the top of the cove within four minutes.'
Daniels pulled out into what was probably a busy thoroughfare but to Ryga, having lived and worked in London for the last five years, it was almost a deserted lane. As they skirted the square with its public gardens and clock tower, Ryga noted the mothers with young children in their pushchairs and prams and elderly people sitting on benches enjoying the late afternoon sun. What little traffic there was practically vanished as Daniels drove south-eastwards along a wide road with attractive whitestone cottages on either side. From their design and mullioned windows they were clearly centuries old. A couple of women stood on their doorsteps, talking. Their eyes followed the car as it travelled past them. Everything looked as though it was being acted out in slow motion to Ryga; the world seemed so peaceful and calm, yet he knew that was an illusion. Perhaps to these few scattered pedestrians and cyclists the war in Korea was an alien concept. And yet some of them must have sons doing their national service and they must be as concerned as he was over the extension of that national service from eighteen months to two years. Did it mean the Korean War was going to escalate into another world war?
He let down the window, as though a blast of fresh air could disperse such a terrifying thought, and caught the grinding and clanging of the workings of the quarries in the distance, which, from his limited knowledge of the island, he knew were numerous. Portland was famous for its white stone, which had been used on the construction of many renowned buildings, St Paul's Cathedral and Buckingham Palace among them, as well as in the building of the large breakwaters arching into the sea protecting Portland Harbour, home to the Royal Navy and the dockyard. Before the war he had put in by cargo boat at Castletown to the north of the island twice but had never alighted. Aside from that he knew the island had two prisons – Verne, which had only opened a year ago, and Portland, which had become a borstal in 1921. He didn't know if any of the criminals he'd apprehended and who had been sentenced had been sent to either.
He would ask Sergeant Daniels to get him an Ordnance Survey map of the island. He hadn't had time to buy one at Waterloo. He'd only had an hour to catch the train after his boss, Detective Chief Superintendent Street, told him of his assignment. He'd been driven to his small flat in Pimlico, had thrown some things into his grip, then climbed back into the waiting police car for the railway station where, by the skin of his teeth and a shove from the guard, he'd managed to stumble rather than leap into the second-class carriage as the train had chugged its way out of the station.
'Why is it called Church Ope Cove and not hope cove?' he asked, breaking the silence. 'Was the H left off by mistake centuries ago?'
'Ope is local dialect for an opening in the cliff that leads down to the water's edge. The cove was famous for smugglers in the last century.'
'Was?'
'Maybe still is,' Daniels corrected, flashing him a glance and narrowly avoiding hitting a cyclist. 'Perhaps that's why the body has ended up there. He doesn't look much like a smuggler though, not if you expect them to be dressed in woollen pullovers and patched grubby trousers, as in old books and photos.' He smiled. 'So maybe they've become more fashion-conscious. And thieves and crooks come in all guises, as you'd know all too well, sir.'
Ryga did. While working for the Thames River Police he'd been called upon to assist the Port of London in helping to unc
Daniels indicated left at a slight bend and turned into a narrow lane. The handful of cottages gave way to rocks and grass verges and a stone bridge spanning the lane.
'Where does that go?' Ryga asked, pointing up at it.
'Rufus Castle, also known as Bow and Arrow Castle. It's just a ruin. All that's left of it is the keep.'
'Can we get up to it from the cove?'
'Not sure.' Daniels drew the car to halt and silenced the engine. 'This, as you can see, sir, is as far as the road goes.'
There were no other vehicles parked and no bicycles.
'We have to walk from here. The only way to the cove is on foot.'
'Or by boat. And as we haven't got the latter we'd better start walking.' Ryga climbed out and made his way to the rear of the car where he retrieved the brown briefcase. They set off along the rough track through the rocks, rubble, grass and the remains of rusting machinery that had once extracted stone from the quarries surrounding this part of the coast. Ryga could hear the sea washing on to the shore below. He thought he could taste the bitter tang of salt on his lips but that was just a figment of his imagination – he was too far away. It was a sensory perception that he'd conjured up many times in the prison-of-war camp initially as a source of comfort and hope, reminding him of what lay beyond captivity – the prospect of liberation. But as the months and years had dragged on without any hope of being freed it had become a form of torture. On his return to England he'd been grateful that the tang of the Thames hadn't been anything like he'd asked his memory to recall. The smell of the river, too, was nothing like that of the sea. It had its own scent, of mud, smoke and fog. But now, as he was reunited with both the taste and smell of the wide ocean, the memories of incarceration returned. This time, though, he noted with relief and optimism that they were not as powerful as they had once been. Maybe, finally, after five years he was beginning to forget.
'Have any of the nearby residents been questioned?' Ryga asked as they began the steep descent to the cove. The sound of the waves washing on to the shore of the small bay beneath them grew louder. Now he had a full view of the endless grey-blue sea with only a sail boat in the distance.
'No. Superintendent Meredith's accident put all that on hold and the chief constable told us to wait for the man from the Yard to arrive. He ordered me to meet you and told me I'd been assigned to assist you. I didn't arrange for the constable who was first on the scene to meet us because I wasn't sure where you wanted to go.'
Ryga nodded. If the dead man had arrived on foot would anyone have seen him? Did he park a car where Daniels had left the police vehicle? If so, his killer must have driven it away. Had anyone in the handful of cottages at the top of the road seen a car or indeed a stranger walking past? The deceased must have been one rather than a local man, but then Ryga revised that opinion. The island, although small as Daniels had said, had a fairly widespread community in pockets of villages scattered around it, so although he might not have been known in this immediate area he could have been known elsewhere.
Three-quarters of the way down to the cove, Ryga halted at an abandoned pill box, its brick and concrete crumbling to ruins. It must have been a difficult task constructing this during the war, he thought. And cold and lonely being stationed in one in the depths of winter with a gun aimed at goodness knows what – an invading German army? Spies alighting on the beach? The men inside this would have had no hope of shooting down an enemy aeroplane.
Down in the bay on the far left was a handful of beach huts and three fishing boats on the shore above the tide line. Across the sea to the west stretched the cliffs of Dorset. The sea shimmered as the sun's rays caught the top of the small waves. He turned his attention back to the pill box and peered inside. It was possible the dead man or his killer could have hidden here but there was no obvious evidence of that, just weeds, brick dust, spiders and mud.
Daniels said, 'There's another pill box on the beach not far from the water's edge. It gets flooded at spring tides. The area behind the cove was mined. It's OK, they were all cleared a couple of years ago.'
'Glad to hear it.' They continued down and soon were in the sheltered cove. Ryga surveyed the rock-strewn shore. There were some rusting fishing implements and a handful of broken nets by the three wooden fishing boats. Had the dead man come ashore on one of them with his killer?
'Have you a list of who owns the boats and the beach huts?'
'I can get one. The local police will have it.' Daniels jotted this down in his notebook. Ryga suppressed a smile – the younger man was very eager to make a good impression. His usual sergeant in London, Jacobs, wouldn't needed to have been told, but then Jacobs had many more years' experience than either him or Daniels.
'They'll need to be interviewed.' For that he would need the full cooperation of the Portland police – he and Daniels couldn't cover all the ground. He'd been told that the local inspector was called Crispin and he'd find the police station at Fortuneswell to the north of the island. Crispin would have been alerted as to his arrival. Ryga wondered what kind of reception he, an 'outsider', would get messing about on an investigation on Crispin's patch.
'Some of the beach huts are probably unlocked,' Daniels said. 'Would you like me to take a look?'
'Yes, but don't go inside. Just see if there is anything unusual.' He didn't say what and Daniels had the sense not to ask him what he meant.
Ryga removed his hat and ran a hand through his hair while squinting up at the cliffs which surrounded him on all three sides, making the small cove very sheltered from what little breeze there was. In the afternoon sunshine it felt rather hot. He peeled off his mackintosh and put it down on a large quarried boulder. Being mid-September, there were no sunbathers or swimmers, although it was hot enough for both and the sea temperature would still be warm. There were also no hikers on the clifftop. They were alone.
Picking up his briefcase, he made for the remains of the pill box, a forlorn-looking structure of brick, concrete and corrugated iron, and peered inside. There was only seaweed, seagull droppings, stones and grass growing at the top and up the side of the walls. He didn't think this was the murder scene; in fact, he'd be surprised if it was, but the killer could have been waiting inside for the pinstriped man to arrive, or perhaps the pinstriped man himself had been waiting here for his killer.
Ryga bent down, opened the small case and removed a pair of rubber gloves. Donning them, he took a small, slim, steel object from the case and began to poke around in the shingle above the most recent tideline. He couldn't see any bloodstained stones but after a few moments he unearthed a cigarette end. It probably meant nothing. It could have been washed up by the tide, but he placed it in a small brown paper envelope taken from his case, sealed it and put the envelope in a compartment on the inside of the lid.
