Wargan shook his head. “ No need for that,” he said. “ We know that the first time Franks and Rosco met this weekend was at Heanor, and Rosco’s been under observation since then. There can’t possibly be anything belonging to Franks in the cottage. They’ve done a thorough search of the boat now and found nothing there. Rosco can go home as soon as he wants to, though I think we should have him in to the station later for questioning. He’s your most likely suspect, isn’t he? He’s killed a man once.” He nodded towards the dining room door. “I can’t imagine any of that bunch out there having the guts. Still, it’s your case.”

So a second opportunity to search the cottage on the shore was missed. When the police made a connection between Franks and Rosco, they searched the cottage, but then they were looking for drugs. By that time, the gun lying between the lumpy flock mattress and the metal frame of the bed had been moved, and they found nothing.

Chapter Seven

Duncan James spent the day outside, waiting with mounting panic for the summons to the dining room to be questioned. At least in the garden, with its open view down the valley, he could fight off the claustrophobia which had been tormenting him since he had gone below deck on the Jessie Ellen to sleep. His father had worked as a young man in a tin mine, and whenever Duncan thought of the working conditions he must have endured, he felt ill. Claustrophobia had dominated Duncan’s childhood and altered his life. The irrational fear of dark, damp places had been one of the spurs to his academic success. It had sent him from Cornwall to civilised inland Britain. It had made him cautious and thrifty. The tin mine represented insecurity, poverty, failure.

Now he was back in Cornwall, and the childhood fear had returned. In the bunkroom across the yard he had slept badly, and when he did drift into unconsciousness, he dreamed of drowning in dark cold water. Even in daylight in the sunny garden, the memory of the dream returned. He tried to banish it by thinking of Anne at home in Somerset with the children and, by an effort of will, maintained a degree of equilibrium and calm.