Chapter 22: North by Northwest Cornwall
Tuesday Midday.
There was light rain as they drove but now the clouds had all but disappeared. The air was hot and still, oppressive with moisture. They parked on the gravel drive and walked up a slight hill, past a rock garden of weathered granite and a variety of abstract sculptures welded together from random junk. Other metal junk lay in a rusting heap by a stunted gorse shrub. There was no other vehicle to be seen. All around them Bodmin Moor seemed vast and deserted.
They reached the house and Penhale read the name on a sign painted with blue and purple flowers above the front door. "Larkspur Cottage. That sounds nice."
"Hm. Larkspur is toxic if ingested, just like oleander."
Penhale looked alarmed. "Pretty suspicious then, eh Doc?"
"It's just a name, not a threat."
Penhale knocked on the door. No answer.
"Didn't you check she would be home first before driving all the way out here?" Martin asked.
"Element of surprise. Don't give the suspect time to work on their story before the interrogation, I mean interview." Penhale tried the door, peeked in a window, then stepped back for a look upward. "There's an upstairs window left open. I bet I could climb up there to gain entry and have a look around… if I had a warrant, of course."
Annoyed at the waste of time the expedition was turning into, Martin casually examined the ground beside the gravel path to the door. "Someone's been here though." He pointed to two clearly visible footprints, and a few partial prints, in the sparse damp grass beside the path. "Those look fresh. They were pressed into moist earth. There was no rain for four days before today, the ground would have been too dry to show footprints made before this morning at the earliest. And they're not from either of our shoes."
Penhale came over to examine them. Martin had to put out an arm to keep the constable from treading on the evidence.
"Boots," Penhale said. "Doc Martens, if I'm not mistaken. Smallish feet, likely a woman."
"Hm. Less likely if they were wearing, er, Doc Martens. The housekeeper is a rather tall woman, if I remember. The boots could be worn by a man of shorter stature."
"You're right, Doc. We make quite a team. A short man, or at least one with feet on the small side, could have been here to see Mrs. Daniels."
Martin looked up at the cottage. He thought there was a slight movement from the open upstairs window. It might have been a bit of breeze moving the curtain, but the air felt very still. He sniffed and frowned. For a moment he caught a whiff of something sickly sweet, like butterscotch but artificial, chemical-smelling. "Do you smell that? It's like butterscotch, or a cheap imitation."
Penhale sniffed too. "I don't smell anything. I think your imagination's playing tricks on you. This place does give off a strange vibe."
Martin looked around. The ground was relatively flat here, with few trees. No neighbouring houses were visible. There was a large field of sunflowers to the side of the house, perhaps 20 meters away, all the yellow and black flowers facing in their direction. Beyond that was a tall thin tower that appeared to made of slate bricks, as many buildings were in this part of the country. The tower was the only structure visible from the vantage point of the small hill where the cottage stood.
"It's funny, Doc," Penhale was saying. "This place being so isolated, it sorta makes me feel… funny."
"How do you mean, funny?"
"My hands are sweating. I can hardly breathe. I feel like I might be sick. It's like being out here just doesn't feel right. Maybe it's them sunflowers, it's like they're all… looking at us."
Martin pondered this, then took Penhale's wrist to feel his pulse. "Hm. Rapid heartbeat. Have you experienced this sort of sudden onset of symptoms before in situations without any obvious reason to feel threatened?"
"Yeah, just once or twice. It started after that time I got kicked in the head by the horse, like I told you. The doc back in Bude said it was a something-phobia about being out in wide open spaces."
"Agoraphobia?"
"That's it."
"Didn't he prescribe medication or therapy?"
"No. It was always mild before and went away on its own. This is the worst I've ever felt." Penhale wiped his hands on his trousers and was starting to hyperventilate."
"Hm, idiot!" Martin said. "I mean your old GP, not, er… you. Here, lie down and take a long deep breath through your nose. Try counting to 10 as you inhale and then count to 12 as you exhale slowly through the mouth."
Penhale lay on his back on the grass. "I can't count and inhale at the same time, Doc."
"Count to yourself."
As he held Penhale's wrist to monitor his pulse, Martin had to admit to himself he too felt strangely uneasy in this isolated location. The masses of sunflowers with their round, blank faces did indeed give an unpleasant sensation they were being watched. He caught a whiff of the cheap butterscotch scent again.
Don't be ridiculous, you're being taken in by Penhale's delusion, and this hot, steamy weather is playing on both our nerves, he told himself.
"Your pulse rate is improving," he said to Penhale. "Continue the slow breathing. Nothing to fear here."
A faint buzzing sound suddenly erupted from behind the cottage.
"I'm feeling a bit better Doc, but now my ears are buzzing."
"It's not your ears," Martin said. "Someone must be using a string trimmer."
As he spoke the buzzing became louder and a peculiar flying object came whizzing around the side of the cottage following an erratic path. Penhale leapt to his feet and pointed.
"Look, up in the sky," he shouted. "It's absurd! It's insane!"
"It's a drone!" Martin exclaimed. "A big quadcopter."
"I was thinking of getting one of those, strictly for surveillance use of course."
"If you do, keep it away from the surgery. The noise is very irritating."
They watched curiously as the square, horizontal object with the whirling rotors at each corner darted about irrationally above their heads.
"It's like that movie where Cary Grant was waiting on a dusty road and the little plane came out of nowhere," Penhale said, fascinated.
The drone dropped in altitude and came to a shaky stasis hovering just above Martin's eye level, no more than three meters away.
"It's got a camera. It's looking at us," Penhale said.
"More like someone is looking at us."
Martin glanced around, then up at the cottage. Someone had to be operating the buzzing machine from nearby.
"It's got something else attached underneath," Penhale said. "Something metallic. It looks like… like a… Doc, it's a gun!"
Penhale lunged at Martin, tackling him to the ground as a deafening shot rang out and blasted a chip out of a rock right behind them both. Martin could smell the reek of burned gunpowder. They scrambled to their feet, heading toward the path to the police vehicle. The drone, momentarily thrown off course by the gun's recoil, swerved about crazily, obstructing the way. They turned in unison and headed for the nearest shelter – the sunflowers. Martin hadn't run so fast since his school days and, despite his shorter legs, Penhale matched his stride. Together they dove into the forest of tall stalks and burrowed deep within.
They came to a stop, hunkered down, gasping to catch their breath but trying not to create any movement that would give away their position. The flowers towered above them, some dark red ones mixed with the yellow ones, drawing in bees and small birds in to pick at the blossoms. This late in the season the rayed flowers were starting to dry up but it was as humid as a jungle amongst them and the bristly stalks and sandpapery leaves caught at their clothing. Martin suddenly recalled Aunt Joan had a patch of sunflowers on the farm many years ago, at summer's end he had run and hidden there once in a vain attempt to avoid having to go to the train station to return to school.
Sudden irrational thoughts popped into his head: the memory as a child being fascinated by the fact that a sunflower disk is actually made up of many tiny flowers whose pattern follows the Fibonacci mathematical sequence. Up close the big flower discs resembled not so much faces as thousands of dark, blank eyes; the tiny component flowers looked disturbingly like the compound eyes of insects. Large or small, all the eyes seemed to be searching for them.
Heat. Dread. Danger. Unnerved, Martin forced himself to focus on the situation at hand.
He stood up, his head popping up amongst the flowers. The drone was flitting about the edge of the field where they had entered the stalks, apparently not seeing him yet. At the other end of the field was the thin tower he was seen earlier. He recognized it as the chimney stack of an old tin mine, one of many that dotted the Cornish landscape. Beside it stood a small slate building, with a wooden door that looked to be ajar. He quickly ducked down again.
"We should head over this way," he whispered, unsure if the drone could hear anything or not. "It's a short run to a shelter. If we're lucky we can get a mobile signal there to call for help."
Penhale nodded and carefully they crawled through the stalks to the edge of the field. It looked about 20 meters to the door. They could hear the drone buzzing much closer now. Martin hoped it might be near the far end of its range. Penhale silently counted out one-two-three with his fingers, then they sprinted for the old mine. They couldn't both fit through the door together, so Martin unconsciously slowed to let the constable through first. As Martin ducked inside and turned to push against the heavy oak door, the drone zoomed down to look him right in the eye. The trigger clicked but it failed to fire. Penhale joined him to shove their full weight against the door but it hadn't been moved in some time. The door slowly started to scrape along the ground. As it slammed shut, they heard the drone bang against it and drop to the ground. There was a muffled noise outside as the rotors buzzed impotently in the dirt for a moment or two, then ground to a halt.
Either it had run out of battery power, Martin thought, or the operator was coming in person to retrieve it.
To be continued…