"I don't know where she is." He shrugged. The gesture didn't do much to minimize his trouble. He told Melrose about the previous night. "Something's happened to her, I know it." Johnny looked everywhere but at Melrose, as if seeing concern in another's face mirroring his own would be too much for him. He'd break down.

"Not necessarily. From the way you describe it, it sounds more like she happened to something."

"What do you mean?"

"That she apparently left under her own steam, for one thing. You say there was no sign of anyone else's being there. It might not be your Uncle Charlie's emergency, but that doesn't mean it wasn't somebody's."

"She'd've called."

"Hard to believe, but there still are places and people that don't have phones or fax machines or even e-mail."

"Well-"

"As well as you know her, you can't know everything about her."

"I've lived with her most of my life," Johnny protested.

Maybe that was what rankled: that his aunt might know someone who was more important than Johnny.

Then he looked up, his expression changed. "She wasn't at Bletchley Hall, either. Or at least that's what the nurse said. I'm not sure she even asked around."

"Bletchley Hall. Just what is that?"

"It's a sort of hospice-nursing home the other side of the village. Chris helped out there with things like transport, giving rides to 'her ladies,' as she called the ones she dealt with. And other things. Still, that doesn't explain why she didn't call."

"Call the place again, then. Mr. Pfinn"-Melrose raised his voice-"have you a telephone in here?"

As if he were taking up a challenge, Pfinn pulled a black telephone out from under the counter and brought it over to the table. "That'll be a pound to use it; that's besides the call itself."

Melrose put a five-pound note on the table and moved the phone over to Johnny.

Johnny talked to a different person this time. She hadn't seen his aunt for several days. Johnny asked her to check with some of the others to make sure. Yes. Thanks.

"How about the police? Have you talked to them?"

Johnny nodded. "They can't do anything, or won't do anything, until more time's gone by."

"You mean the Devon and Cornwall police have to wait for twenty-four-" Melrose stopped. Of course. He pulled the telephone closer.

Divisional Commander Macalvie, according to the police constable who'd answered the phone at Exeter headquarters, wasn't in his office, but he'd see if he could find him. In another minute, the constable was back.

"He's gone to Cornwall."

"Cornwall?"

The constable reminded him this was the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary.

Melrose ignored the sarcasm. "Where in Cornwall?"

The constable didn't know. Sorry.

"Is there any way he can be reached?"

The constable's irritation was obvious. Of course he could be reached. But not by the public.

"Could you get a message to him? It's rather important."

Yes, that could be done.

Melrose gave him the message.

7.

Brian Macalvie was not there to take Melrose's call because he was at that moment on a public footpath that stretched between Mousehole and Lamorna Cove, a path that made its rocky way along the cliffs above Mounts Bay and the Atlantic. One would find, if taking this two-mile walk, that the sea air acts as a restorative unequaled in other parts of England, untainted and unpolluted air that results in a pleasant light-headedness.

But the sea air had not served as tonic or restorative for the woman who lay on the footpath. One could not, however, blame location or light-headedness for her death, as she'd been shot twice in the chest with a twenty-two-caliber semiautomatic pistol. There was not much damage done to the chest area. The precise caliber of the bullets had not been discovered, of course, before the medical examiner and firearms expert had been given a chance to examine the body.

The chance was hard to come by.

"Are we stopping here all day, then?" asked Gilly Thwaite. She was the scene-of-crimes expert and the first one permitted the opportunity to examine both the body and the scene. The first one, that is, after Divisional Commander Macalvie. Until he gave her the go-ahead, she couldn't even set up her camera equipment or take pictures with the hand-held. It was as if a camera flash would contaminate the scene.

It was extremely rare that any of his investigative "team" got smart with Brian Macalvie, who had eyes of a near-unholy cerulean blue, a hot blue that could strip you with a look. Macalvie was famous for his long and inflexible silences when first viewing a body and its context, its mise-en-sce'ne. No one was permitted to get close enough to examine anything at the crime scene until he was done with looking. No one in the CID could look the way Macalvie could look. Macalvie seemed to get lost in looking. Until he had seen everything seeable, no one was supposed even to breathe on the crime scene.

They had all been standing first on one foot, then the other, for nearly fifteen minutes while (Gilly Thwaite had said) "the whole d.a.m.ned scene erodes." This had earned her another long blue look.

The medical examiner, a local doctor from Penzance and not officially with the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary, had been one of those waiting in silence for Brian Macalvie to finish looking, and it irked him to no end. He'd objected more than once to being kept here, an objection that fell on deaf ears. Macalvie was now kneeling near the body. The woman was in early middle age and quite pretty, though in a rather hard way that bespoke the backlash of too much makeup over too many years. Same thing for the hair, the bright gold of a crayon. She was wearing a designer suit, now darkly stained, and an expensive watch, but no other jewelry. Near her right hand lay a piece of black plastic that looked like the corner of something. Macalvie took out one of the small plastic bags he carried around and dropped the plastic into it.

The good doctor was chirruping away about his whole surgery full of patients, it being Monday, his busiest day of the week, people having caught the flu or broken bones falling out of boats over the weekend. Weekends were disaster areas in Penzance, he said.

Macalvie couldn't care less about Penzance weekends or the doctor's heavy schedule.

This place on the public footpath was not far beyond Lamorna Cove and perhaps a hundred feet from the nearest house. They knew this because they'd had to leave their cars in its parking area. Two men had been dispatched to go back and have a look round.

"We don't have a warrant."

"So look around the outside."

These two were back and telling Macalvie that the place was unoccupied. No sign of life. They could make out that the fireplace in the living room hadn't been used in a while and no wood was stacked there. In a place as cold as this one in late September, one would expect to see fireplaces in use.

"Okay, Gilly. Go ahead."

They might have been playing at statues till then, for everyone seemed to want to move arms and shake out legs as if numbed. Gilly started moving around the body with her camera.

"When she's through, it's all yours, Doc," Macalvie said. "Then yours, Fleming." He gave the forensics man a punch on the arm. "I'm sure you'll turn up something."

"Maybe, guv," said Fleming. "But not whatever it was you stuck in that Baggie."

Macalvie could inspire terror in incompetents (of which Devon and Cornwall police had more than their share, he was fond of pointing out). Fleming wasn't one of them. Neither was Gilly Thwaite, though he could still have her wishing sometimes that she'd never joined the force. The good ones, the crack technicians, Macalvie kept by him. He smiled ruefully at Fleming and handed over the Baggie. "Sorry," he said.

He watched Gilly as she moved in for the close-up shots. He wished the victim could tell him something with a look. But the faces of the dead wear no expression, no matter whether they're looking down the barrel of a gun or at a charging bull. Except in the case of a spasm, which freezes the victim in instant rigor mortis, the expression on the face gives nothing away.

Death is the great expression leveler.

8.

Melrose was coming to the bottom of his third Old Peculiar while sitting at the bar of the Drowned Man. There had been a very brief debate with Mr. Pfinn as to whether he had any more, an argument hardly supported by the fact he had half a case of the stuff on a shelf beneath the bar. He hated this whole business and what it was doing to this seventeen-year-old kid, whose entire family consisted only of an afterthought of an uncle in Penzance and this dearly loved aunt, Chris. And now she was gone.

How had he gotten embroiled in this boy's life, a boy he had known for only a day?

As if time mattered. Melrose had always believed you could meet and fall in love with a woman in the time it took to put out your hand and say h.e.l.lo.

It disturbed him that he could reach that point immediately where Johnny had landed: abandoned and betrayed. Not that his aunt had abandoned the lad, of course not. No more had his own mother abandoned Melrose; of course she hadn't. Nor his father. But Melrose still loathed public schools and the British penchant for sending children away to them.

There was Harrow. What he remembered most about Harrow was the midnight vigil. He could never get to sleep before then. He'd lie in a narrow bed, crying soundlessly. He hadn't dared make any noise or he'd wake up his roommate-what had been his name? He could not understand this reaction to public school-or, rather, to leaving home. About as independent as a baby penguin, he'd been.

Harrow wasn't the first time, either. Before that, when he was eight, there'd been a boarding school in France. Why in G.o.d's name had they packed him off to the south of France? It still made him blush to remember how he held on to his mother that day in Paris-her hand, her skirt, cool skin, warm wool. And his father's embarra.s.sment: "For heaven's sakes, lad, be a man! Get a grip on yourself! Soldier on, lad!" And despite the fact his father would say it, Melrose was trying to do just that: get a grip. So hard was he trying that the voice at his elbow gave him such a start he nearly fell off the stool.

"Plant!"

"Commander Macalvie! My lord, how are you?"

"Me? I'm fine. You don't look so hot, though. Where's your sidekick?"

He meant Richard Jury. "In Northern Ireland. Sidekicking."

"Christ, how'd he wind up there?"

"I don't know. CID matter, some kind of inquiry connected with something in London."

"Wiggins go with him? If he didn't, I could use him here."

Macalvie's partiality for Wiggins had always mystified Melrose, as it mystified Richard Jury.

Pfinn came down the bar, drawn perhaps by Macalvie's static electricity, the copper hair, the cobalt-blue eyes. Pfinn asked him what he'd have. If anything.

Pfinn always managed to make it sound like an imposition.

Macalvie asked for lager. "So what's this emergency?"

"A woman's missing from here, from Bletchley." Melrose told him the details. "It hasn't been your requisite twenty-four hours."

As he'd been talking, the expression on Macalvie's face changed.

"What's she look like?"

"I don't-" It was only then that Melrose realized her looks had never come up, not around him at any rate. Brown hair? Possibly. No, he did recall Johnny saying she was around his age.

"I can never tell what your age is, Plant. You still won't eat your peas."

"Very funny. I honestly don't remember Johnny's describing what she looked like, except to say she's pretty." Melrose paused. "Why does that look on your face bother me? Why, incidentally, are you in Cornwall? I don't expect you're sightseeing."

Macalvie cleared his throat. "Where is this boy?"

"Working one of his several jobs." Melrose consulted his watch. "It's probably the cab at this hour . . . or else he'll be getting the dining room ready here." Melrose called to Pfinn, asked him if Johnny had come yet. No, he hadn't. Not for another hour, most likely.

Melrose asked again. "So what are you doing in Cornwall?"

"Having a dekko at a body found not far from here. You know Lamorna Cove? It's about five miles away."

"A body. Male or female?"

"Female. We haven't ID'd her yet."

There was a silence before Melrose asked, "How long had she been dead?"

Macalvie took his lager, handed over some money, drank off a third, and said, "Not that long. No more than twelve, sixteen hours. Pathologist has to do a postmortem, of course."

"Well." Melrose's stomach turned over. That really was the sensation.

"The nephew must have a picture of her."

"I'm sure he does."

"Well, I'd rather see that before I show him mine."

"Yours?" Melrose said, his tone anxious.

"Can you get hold of him?"

"I'll try his house, and if he's not there I'll call the cab dispatcher. There're all of three cars to dispatch." He turned to Mr. Pfinn and asked for the telephone and Johnny's telephone number.

Giving out employees' telephone numbers was not something he did. The same telephone ceremony was repeated as had been that morning. It would cost him a pound.

"No, it won't," said Macalvie, riveting the man with his eyes, then producing his identification. "And we'll have that number, thanks."