Murder by the Sea - Libby Sarjeant Murder Mystery Series Read online

  ‘I won’t have anything more to do with him, will I? He can’t take exception to one conversation with me.’

  Ben raised an eyebrow. ‘You probably scared him to death,’ he said.

  Campbell McLean called Fran the next morning.

  ‘I expect you know why I’m calling,’ he began.

  ‘Yes,’ said Fran.

  ‘I had a rather peculiar request from Inspector Connell.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fran again.

  There was a pause. ‘I’m not quite sure how to proceed.’

  Fran sighed. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘What did you want to do before?’

  ‘I wanted to have you doing some sort of remote viewing on camera and then follow it up to see if it was right.’

  ‘As I said, investigating me rather than the murder.’

  ‘Yes, I admitted that. But now I don’t know quite what to do. The Inspector seems to think we could do an undercover operation better than he could.’

  ‘You’ve done them before, haven’t you? Into horse trading, and health issues?’

  ‘Yes, but that was when we’d had tip offs from the public.’

  ‘Well, this time you’ll have to take a tip off from the police.’

  ‘But what? They haven’t got anything.’

  Fran thought for a moment. ‘I suggest you look at everything you’ve ever done on illegal immigrants. Somewhere there’ll be a starting point. Then you get me in to have a look at what you’ve got and we’ll go from there. Think what a scoop you’ll get out of it.’

  Campbell McLean sighed. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I’ll get someone to start going through the archives. We did something last year on workers on farms with false passports.’

  ‘That’s exactly it,’ said Fran, certain that it was.

  ‘Really?’ The voice on the phone sounded more cheerful. ‘Do you – er, well, – did you –’

  ‘I think I’m sure,’ said Fran with a laugh. ‘Don’t ask me how I know, because I don’t.’

  ‘OK. I’ll get started in the morning. Speak to you then.’

  Ten minutes later, as Fran was getting ready to go to Guy’s flat for a meal, Ian Connell called. Fran told him what she’d suggested.

  ‘We’ve been questioning as many field and farm workers as we can, particularly after that big case last year,’ he said.

  ‘What about the kitchen workers and cleaners?’ asked Fran. ‘There’s just as much of a problem there, isn’t there?’

  ‘Is that where you think the problem lies?’

  ‘Not necessarily, in fact I felt it was farm workers, but I could be wrong.’

  ‘You’re not often wrong.’

  ‘I still don’t know how you expect McLean to go about this, though. I can hardly go traipsing through fields of potato pickers, or whatever they are, asking questions, can I? And it isn’t like some of their previous investigations, where I could pose as a patient, or a prospective purchaser.’

  Connell sighed. ‘Look, just do your best,’ he said. ‘I’m sure McLean will come up with something.’

  The following morning McLean did, indeed, come up with something.

  ‘Did you read about the cleaner at the council offices who was arrested?’ he asked without preamble.

  ‘I think I saw something about it on the news.’

  ‘She was an illegal immigrant, smuggled in four years ago, and she borrowed someone else’s passport to apply for the job. After she was arrested she applied for asylum.’

  ‘Good lord! Did she get it?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said McLean. ‘She’s serving six months at the moment, and the judge said the application would have to wait until she was discharged.’

  ‘Is she serving six months, or only half of it?’ asked Fran.

  ‘Probably half, I expect, or even less if she was in custody before the trial.’

  ‘So she could be out already?’

  ‘She could, but I don’t know how we could find her.’

  ‘Was this a British passport? No, it couldn’t have been, could it?’

  ‘No. She’s from Transnistria, I think, and borrowed an Italian passport.’

  ‘Transnistria? Where’s that? I’ve never heard of it.’

  ‘I haven’t had time to look it up,’ said McLean, ‘but it’s there in the report.’

  ‘Could it be in Romania? It sounds like Transylvania.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Did she give the passport back to the Italian woman?’ asked Fran.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘So what happened to her, the Italian?’

  She heard a sigh. ‘I’ll look it up. Do you think this is relevant?’

  ‘Not sure,’ said Fran, ‘but it feels right.’

  ‘This actual case?’

  ‘Not necessarily. Find out a bit more, and we’ll see what happens.’

  After McLean had rung off, Fran went up to her spare room where she had installed her new computer. Balzac followed hopefully, sniffing the keyboard and trying desperately to climb on Fran’s lap under the desk.

  The search engine provided her with the details of the case of the Transnistrian woman, but no mention of the Italian from whom she’d borrowed the passport. She also searched for Transnistria and discovered it to be a breakaway independent state between Moldova and the Ukraine, unrecognised by any other country. There was a lot of information which indicated that Transnistria was a hotbed of crime and a centre for people trafficking for both sex and labour, but right now, Fran didn’t feel up to investigating. Libby, she was sure, would.

  She had told McLean the case felt right, but so did the farm workers. This, she felt, was the problem with believing in her own “moments”. Nobody had ever told her how to deal with them, and although she was more adept at using what Libby called her “powers” after the last three murders in which she had been involved, she was privately convinced that her brain manufactured incidents to trap her. She’d have to wait until she was given more evidence, and if nothing startling happened admit defeat and quietly withdraw.

  Libby, however, was having none of it.

  ‘Listen,’ she said, when she called Fran that afternoon after waiting for news all day, ‘it needs proper detective work. We can do that.’

  ‘No, we can’t, Libby, we’ve nothing to go on this time. We’ve always had an “in”, if you like. This time we haven’t.’

  Libby was quiet for a minute. Then, ‘Do we know how long the body had been there?’

  ‘Not long, I wouldn’t have thought. Either Bert or George go round that island every day, more or less. It must have been the night before it was found.’

  ‘Bearing out the theory that it was meant to be found.’

  ‘Yes, we’ve established that.’

  ‘Well, couldn’t we find out who took a boat out the night before?’

  Fran laughed. ‘It could have come from anywhere, Lib! France even.’

  ‘No, because of the clothes. They were from here, weren’t they?’

  ‘Yes, and I suppose the police have already ruled out a boat from France.’

  ‘Perhaps they haven’t,’ said Libby, ‘and we don’t know.’

  ‘Then why would Ian have asked me to help? I can’t help in France.’

  Libby thought again. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Why don’t we go and pay a visit to one of those farms where they employ foreign pickers?’

  ‘On what excuse?’ asked Fran. ‘I’ve already said that to Ian.’

  ‘What we need is a connection.’

  ‘That’s what I’ve been saying,’ said Fran with a sigh.

  ‘Not a psychic connection, a physical one. Someone we can connect with.’

  ‘Short of pretending to be a foreign cleaner without a passport I can’t see how we do that.’

  ‘I’ll think of something,’ said Libby. ‘Just see if I don’t.’

  ‘But,’ she said to Sidney after ringing off, ‘I actually can’t see how. We had somewhere to start with each of the o
ther cases. But how do you find out about this?’

  Sidney wove ingratiatingly around her legs until she moved away into the garden. With a look of resignation, he followed her and jumped on her chair before she could.

  ‘The boat,’ she mused, turfing Sidney out. ‘I suppose the police have been on to the Coastguard or whoever it is looks after the sea. Would they know about boats appearing in the dead of night? It’s not like aeroplanes, is it? Or the Channel. Or the Solent.’

  ‘You’re talking to yourself again.’ Ben appeared from his private entrance to the garden, where it backed onto his parents’ land.

  ‘No, I wasn’t, I was talking to Sidney.’ Libby stood up. ‘Tea?’

  ‘Yes, please.’ Ben followed as Libby went back into the house.

  ‘So what was this conversation with Sidney about, as if I couldn’t guess?’

  ‘Finding a connection.’ Libby moved the kettle on to the Rayburn. ‘Fran’s taking on the investigation and we haven’t got anything to go on.’

  ‘What’s with the “we” business? I thought it was Fran’s investigation.’

  ‘Oh, I’m helping. You know that,’ said Libby airily, getting mugs out of a cupboard.

  Ben sighed. ‘Even after last time?’

  ‘Even after all three times,’ said Libby firmly. ‘It’s always about helping people, really, isn’t it?’

  ‘And ‘satiable curiosity, like the Elephant’s Child,’ said Ben.

  ‘Good job somebody has it or nothing would ever get solved, would it?’ Libby poured water into a teapot. Ben sniffed appreciatively.

  ‘Nothing like real tea made in a pot,’ he said.

  ‘That’s the only reason you come here, isn’t it,’ said Libby, grinning at him over her shoulder.

  ‘Not quite the only reason,’ said Ben, sliding his arms round her waist from behind.

  Libby giggled. ‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘you still make me feel like a sixteen year old?’

  ‘And me a randy eighteen year old,’ he replied, nuzzling her neck.

  ‘We probably wouldn’t have liked each other at all,’ said Libby. ‘You know what it’s like when you meet someone after twenty-odd years – you just want to see what they look like, what they’ve been up to, and that’s that. If you’d really been friends you wouldn’t have lost touch. Let me get the milk.’

  Ben let her go, regarding her thoughtfully. ‘So, the reverse is true? Don’t like someone at eighteen and you’ll probably like them at fifty?’

  ‘No.’ Libby wrinkled her forehead. ‘I don’t think I’ve thought this through properly. But when you think of the number of young marriages that fail because people change so much in their teens and early twenties. If you marry an eighteen-year-old boy, you might not like the twenty-five-year-old man.’

  ‘But there are some people,’ said Ben, accepting his mug, ‘who come together years later and love blossoms afresh. It happened on that old friends website, didn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, and look at the trouble it caused!’ Libby led the way back into the garden. ‘Marriages were broken up because people got seduced into thinking their old love was their only love. Just novelty, that’s all it was.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Ben pulled over a deckchair and collapsed into it. ‘I’m not sure it’s always like that.’

  ‘Prove it, then,’ said Libby, removing Sidney from her chair. ‘Go on, find me a case study and prove it.’

  Ben raised his eyebrows. ‘Pleasure,’ he said.

  ‘Too much introspection,’ said Guy, ‘that’s what it is.’

  He and Fran were sitting outside The Sloop looking out at a particularly pretty sunset. Fran twisted her tall glass between her fingers.

  ‘I can’t help being introspective, can I?’ she said. ‘I’m expected to be able to look inside my mind and come up with something startling. Trouble is I’m imagining things now.’

  ‘Because you’re trying too hard, I expect,’ said Guy. ‘I don’t think you should have taken this on. It’s all so muddled, and I think Connell’s got a cheek, involving you.’

  Fran sighed. ‘You’re right, he has. Especially as I’d already said no to Kent and Coast. They must think I’m a nut.’

  ‘And Libby’s keen, of course.’ Guy shook his head. ‘If it wasn’t for her –’

  ‘We’d never have met,’ Fran finished for him, despite what she’d said to Libby.

  Guy looked up, brown eyes twinkling above his goatee. ‘So of course, I’ll love her for ever,’ he said.

  ‘You need her pictures, anyway,’ said Fran, ‘so don’t try and kid me.’

  ‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ he said, reaching across to take her hand. ‘Now – your place or mine?’

  Chapter Eight

  ‘THE ITALIAN WOMAN’S DISAPPEARED,’ Fran told Libby in the morning on the telephone. ‘McLean just called. So we’re no further forward.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Libby. ‘What have the police found out about her? There must be something. They wouldn’t just leave it there.’

  ‘Who did McLean ask about it?’

  ‘Don’t know. It wasn’t this division as far as I know.’

  ‘Phone Connell. Tell him it’s a line on the Dragon Island body.’

  ‘He’ll want to investigate himself, then.’

  ‘Well? So what? If he’s telling the truth about having you do an undercover job, he can’t refuse to let you have the details to see what you come up with.’

  Fran frowned out of the window. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Say you had a “moment” about her,’ said Libby, sounding more excited by the minute.

  ‘The Transnistrian or the Italian?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t care, either.’

  ‘I’ll have to say how I heard about her. I wouldn’t have had a flash about something I’d never heard of.’

  ‘I bet you do, but you don’t connect them up. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, you can say McLean told you about illegal immigrant cases and this one caught your attention. That’s true, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. You’re right, I’ll call him.’

  ‘Do it now,’ said Libby, and put down the phone.

  It was Wednesday, and Steeple Martin’s shops still adhered to the age old tradition of early closing day, so collecting her basket from the kitchen and shutting Sidney out, Libby left the house.

  Allhallow’s Lane was in full sunshine at this time of day, the ruts in the grass verge left by parked cars turned to hard baked clay. The lilac tree which hung over the wall at the end now brushed Libby’s head with dark green leaves. The high street was quiet, and after a visit to Ahmed in the eight-til-late, she went into The Pink Geranium and surprised Harry laying up tables for lunch.

  ‘On your own?’ she said.

  ‘Donna’ll be in soon.’ Harry waved her to the ancient sofa in the window. ‘Did you want something? Or is this just social?’

  ‘I thought I might tell you all about Fran’s new investigation.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ Harry looked interested. ‘Drop of wine, then, to help it along?’

  Once he was settled at the other end of the sofa and a bottle of wine had been provided, Libby told him everything that had happened since the discovery of the body, including the pending introduction of Jane Maurice to The Oast House Theatre.

  ‘Has she got anything to do with all this?’ asked Harry. ‘The body and everything?’

  ‘Only that she was the first one to spot it, and she was, I suppose, instrumental in getting Fran on the case. She also ran a front page article last week, and I expect she’ll have quite a large feature this week. Why?’

  Harry shrugged. ‘I don’t know. There’s no reason why she should be involved, I just wondered.’

  ‘How could she be?’ said Libby. ‘She didn’t know anything about the body!’

  ‘No, I know.’ Harry frowned. ‘I dunno. Having one of Fran’s moments, I expect.’

  ‘Oh, I do hope not!’ said Libby. ‘One’s enough.’

  Harry laughed a
nd stood up. ‘Come and sit in the yard and have a fag and I’ll make you some lunch,’ he said.

  Libby sat in the cool, shady yard at the back of the restaurant and looked up to the flat above, where Fran had, for a brief time, lived.

  ‘She’s happy, you know,’ she called to Harry in the kitchen.

  ‘Who?’ Harry came to the doorway with his hands full of onions.

  ‘Fran. I miss her being here, though.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Lib, she was only here for a few months.’

  ‘I know, but it was so great having someone round the corner.’

  ‘Hey! I’m round the corner.’ Harry was indignant. ‘And what about your cher ami? So’s he.’

  ‘I know, I meant a woman friend. I haven’t had one since I moved here.’

  Harry looked mystified. ‘But you’ve got us,’ he said.

  ‘You’re not women,’ said Libby, and giggled.

  ‘Good job too,’ said Harry, and returned to the kitchen.

  When Libby returned to number 17 Allhallow’s Lane after lunch with Harry, she found a message waiting on her answerphone, and one on her mobile, which she had left, not unusually, on the kitchen table. Both were from Fran, informing her that she would be arriving in Steeple Martin in half an hour.

  ‘From when?’ muttered Libby, and found out almost immediately when she heard Fran’s roller-skate outside.

  ‘Ian found out about the Italian,’ she said.

  ‘Great. Shall we go into the garden? Tea?’

  ‘Tea would be lovely,’ said Fran, pausing to say hello to Sidney.

  ‘So what’s happened?’ Libby came into the garden while she waited for the kettle to boil.

  ‘Apparently, the investigation turned up the original owner of the passport, because details were taken, photocopied, I think, by the council. So, obviously, the police went looking for her at her registered address and found that she was missing. There was no record of her returning to Italy, so they tried to trace her family, but not very hard, I gather. I mean, they obviously had to get onto the Italian authorities, but these things take an awful long time, apparently. You have to put in requests and it can take months.’

  ‘And does it relate in any way to our body?’