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

They’re a bit upset. They were all set up for a big operation. They hoped he might lead them to the organiser. He was certainly a courier, they say. Probably a small-time dealer, too. They’re interested, of course, in all his contacts and would like to see his diary or address book if we find one.”
    “We’ve got to find a home for him first,” she said. “We know he hadn’t been living at his parents’ house for months. That’s why they hired George Palmer-Jones. We can’t trace him by his belongings because apparently they all went overboard when he did.” She drank the coffee in small, polite sips and continued thinking aloud. “Perhaps that’s the significance of the missing bag and equipment,” she said. “ Perhaps the murderer threw it away to stop anyone finding out where Greg had been living. It’s interesting that he was killed after the first serious attempt to trace him.”
    “Mr. Palmer-Jones didn’t seem to think he’d have any problem discovering Franks’ address,” Berry said. “ He told me that these twitchers all keep in touch with each other by phone. It was just a question of asking one of them for Greg’s phone number and tracing the address from that.”
    “Well,” she said, “ Roger Pym is one of these twitchers, isn’t he?
    Let’s have him in and see if he knows where Franks has been hiding.”
    Roger Pym was nervous. He talked too much and waved his arms. He insisted over and over again how upset he was by Greg’s death. He had known the boy for a long time, he said. Since he was a youngster. In fact, he thought he could take the credit for starting Greg Franks on his birdwatching career. He hadn’t actually taught Greg, but the lad used to hang around with some of his pupils at school.
    “Have you seen him around lately?”
    “Of course. He was a serious twitcher. I see him at most of the rare birds which turn up in the country.”
    “You never met him socially?”
    “Good Lord, no! We’d have nothing in common.”
    “Your wife described you as friendly rivals. Would that be accurate?”
    A touch of annoyance, of vanity, crossed his face, and she thought for a moment he intended to contradict her, but he laughed with a forced aimability and said yes, that would probably be right. She had probably heard about their little argument on the boat. It was Greg teasing, of course. There was absolutely no possibility that Greg could have seen as many birds in the U. K. as he had. She took him through the events of the day before, and even to her he propounded the fantasy that he had found the unidentified petrel. Of course he hadn’t spoken to Greg Franks, he said. There was too much going on. He hadn’t left the deck for a moment.
    “Could you give me Mr. Franks’telephone number?” the inspector asked. “I understand that birdwatchers keep in frequent touch on the phone.”
    The question startled Pym. For the first time in the interview he was quiet. Then the words started again, fast, jumbled, nervous. No, he said, he was sorry but he didn’t have Greg’s latest number. He had the old one, of course, for his parents’ home but nothing recent.
    “Isn’t that unusual?” the inspector asked.
    “Not really,” he said. “Not now. There’s Birdline, a telephone answering service, and the old grapevine is dead.”
    “So you don’t know where he had been living recently?” she asked, though by now the young man’s address had become such a mystery that she no longer expected a positive answer.
    “In Bristol,” Roger Pym said. “I’m sure he was living in Bristol. But not his exact address. No.”
    Late in the morning the superintendent arrived. Not, Claire thought, to offer assistance, to accept some of the responsibility in a difficult case, but to check up on her and because the trip to Porthkennan would be a pleasant break from the office before he went home for Sunday lunch. He was Cornish, a great bull of a man, wide, neckless, with a big, square