Palmer-Jones 05 - Sea Fever by Ann Cleeves Page A

I prepare social enquiry reports on people going to court, and there have been hundreds like that. I see them for a couple of interviews, then never meet them again.”
    “I understand that he spent a couple of weeks in a probation hostel in Bristol when he was on bail. Could you have met him there?”
    Jane remembered the big family house on the corner of the suburban road which managed to carry with it the air of an institution.
    “Yes,” she said, trying to picture Greg in the kitchen doing his turn at washing up, in one of the house meetings baring his soul. “That’s possible. I did a six-months’ stint there about four years ago.”
    “What about Louis Rosco?” the inspector asked, and then echoing Jane’s earlier words, mocking them, asked, “Could you have met him professionally?”
    Jane looked at her sharply. “ Has he been in trouble?” she asked.
    The inspector nodded. “ Why? Do you remember him?”
    “No, but there’s something about him that’s familiar. Not about him personally, but the way he talks to people he doesn’t know. He’s suspicious. Has he been in prison?”
    The inspector nodded again. “He completed his sentence in Leyhill Open Prison in Gloucestershire at about the same time as you were working in the hostel,” she said. “You don’t remember him?”
    “No,” she said, but the inspector, who was skilled at picking up these things, did not quite believe her and thought that she was being guided by a peculiar social workers’ code of confidentiality. Claire thought it did not matter. The man’s records would be available to them, and the name of his probation officer would be there. She turned back to Jane Pym.
    “How did your husband get on with Mr. Franks?” she asked.
    Jane shrugged. “ They were friendly rivals,” she said. “Roger has been birdwatching for a long time. He’s seen a lot of birds in Britain. The younger twitchers were a little envious. Greg liked to think he was catching Roger up.”
    “Did you talk to Greg Franks after he went to sleep off his seasickness yesterday on the Jessie Ellen ?” Claire asked.
    “No,” Jane said. “ Of course not. What on earth would I have to talk to him about?”
    Then she sat in a calm, detached way smoking a cigarette and waited for the inspector to tell her that the interview was at an end.
    When she had spoken to Jane Pym, the inspector sent Berry to the car to radio the police station. Her superintendent had promised to contact Customs & Excise and the Drugs Squad to see if they had information on Greg Franks. But now, too, there should be more details on the Louis Rosco case. Claire did not have much faith in her superintendent’s abilities as an investigator but acknowledged that he was a good liaison man. He seemed to have friends in every force in the country. She never asked how he managed it but was willing to use the information he provided.
    Berry walked through the house and out into bright sunlight. Swallows were gathering in clouds in the valley and perching on the telegraph wire along the road preparing for the migration south. On a white bench outside the cottage Rose Pengelly was sitting, barefoot and brown legged, like a Gypsy, with the baby at her breast. Unembarrassed, he continued towards the car. In the house the phone rang. Berry thought it might be the superintendent and turned back to answer it, but Roger Pym had already picked up the receiver, and Berry heard him say to no one in particular, “It’s Tim Robertson from Madeira.”
    When the sergeant returned to the dining room, he was carrying coffee in big earthenware mugs shaped like flowerpots.
    “Miss Pengelly thought we might like this,” he said.
    “Well?” the inspector demanded, refusing to be distracted, irritated by his lack of urgency, by the time he had been away. “What have we got?”
    “Greg Franks was well known to the customs investigations department,” he said, spooning brown sugar in his coffee. “