Careless in Red

Chapter Twenty-two

“SHE THINKS YOU KILLED SANTO.” ALAN DIDN’T MAKE THE stunned declaration until they were well away from Adventures Unlimited. He’d manhandled Kerra out of her mother’s bedroom, marched her along the hotel corridor and down the stairs. She’d struggled and snarled, “Let me go. Alan! Let me God damn go,” but he’d been obdurate. He’d been strong as well. Who would have believed that someone as wiry as Alan Cheston could be so strong?

He’d taken her out of the hotel entirely: through the dining room door, onto the terrace, up the stone stairway, and along the promontory in the direction of St. Mevan Beach. It was too cold to be out there without a pullover or a jacket, but he didn’t stop to fetch something to protect them from the rising sea wind. In fact, he didn’t look as if he was even aware that the wind was brisk and soon to be biting.

They went down to the beach, and at this point Kerra gave up her struggle, submitting herself to be led wherever he was leading. She didn’t give up her fury, however. She would unleash it upon him when they got to where he’d decided to take her.

This turned out to be the Sea Pit, at the far end of the beach. They climbed up its seven crumbly steps and stood on the surrounding concrete deck. They looked down into the sand-strewn bottom of the pool, and for a moment Kerra wondered if he intended to throw her into the water like some primitive he-man taking control of his woman.

He didn’t. Instead, he said, “She thinks you killed Santo,” and then he released her.

Had he said anything else, Kerra would have gone on the attack: verbally, physically. But the statement demanded an answer that was at least marginally rational because the tone of it was both confused and frightened.

He spoke again. “I’ve never seen anything like that. You and your mum. That was a brawl. It was the sort of thing one sees…” He didn’t seem to know where one would see such a sight, but that would be typical. Alan was hardly the type to frequent locations where women got into hair-pulling, body-scratching, screaming-and-shrieking engagements with one another. Neither was Kerra if it came to that, but Dellen had pushed her to the breaking point. And there was a reason for what had happened between them. Alan would have to admit to that at least. He said, “I didn’t know what to do. That was so far beyond what I’ve ever had to cope with…”

She rubbed her arm where he’d held on to her. She said, “Santo stole Madlyn. He took her off me, and I hated him for that. Dellen knows it, so it was easy for her to go from that to saying I killed him. That’s her style.”

Alan looked, if anything, even more confused. He said, “People don’t steal people from other people, Kerra.”

“In my family, they do. Among the Kernes, it’s something between a knee-jerk reaction and an outright tradition.”

“That’s rubbish.”

“Madlyn and I were friends. Then Santo came along and gave her the eye and Madlyn went mad for him. She couldn’t even talk about anything else, so we ended up…Madlyn and I…We ended up with nothing because she and Santo…and what he did…And God, it was just so typical. He was just like Dellen. He didn’t want Madlyn. He just wanted to see if he could get her away from me.” Now that she was finally putting it all into words, Kerra found she couldn’t stop. She ran a hand through her hair, grasped it hard, and pulled, as if pulling it would cause her to feel something different from what she’d felt so long. “He didn’t need Madlyn. He could’ve had anyone. So could Dellen if it comes to that. She can have anyone. She has had anyone, any time she’s felt the itch. She doesn’t need…She doesn’t.”

Alan stared at her, as if she were speaking a language whose words he understood but whose underlying meaning was foreign to him. A wave hit the side of the Sea Pit, and he flinched as if surprised at its strength and proximity. The spray from it hit them both. It was fresh and cold, salty against their lips. He said, “I’m completely lost.”

She said, “You know perfectly well what I’m talking about.”

“As it happens, I don’t. I honestly don’t.”

Now was the moment. There was nothing left but to present him with the evidence she’d gathered and to speak the truth as she understood it. Kerra had left the postcard in her mother’s bedroom, but the fact of the postcard still existed. She said, “I went to the cottage, Alan. I looked through your belongings.”

“I know that.”

“All right. You know that. I found the postcard.”

“What postcard?”

“This is it. That postcard. Pengelly Cove, the sea cave, Dellen’s writing on it in red and an arrow pointing straight to the cave. We both know what that means.”

“We do?”

“Stop it. You’ve been working in that marketing office with her for…how long? I asked you not to. I asked you to take a job some place else. But you wouldn’t, would you. So you sat in the office with her day after day and you can’t tell me…You bloody well cannot claim that she didn’t…You’re a man, for God’s sake. You know the signs. And there were more than just signs, weren’t there?”

He stared at her. She wanted to stomp her feet. He could not possibly be so obtuse. He’d decided this was the way to go: to feign ignorance until she simply threw up her hands in defeat. How clever of him. But she was not a fool.

“Where were you the day that Santo died?” she asked him.

“Christ. You can’t be thinking that I had something to do with-”

“Where were you? You were gone. So was she. And you had that postcard. It was in your room. It said This is it and we both know what she meant. She’d begin with red. The lipstick. A scarf. A pair of shoes. When she did that…When she does that…” Kerra felt as if she would weep, and the very thought of weeping because of this, because of her, because of them, caused all of her anger to come roaring back, swelling within her to such an extreme that she thought it might explode from her mouth, a foul effluent capable of polluting whatever remained between her and this man whom she’d chosen to love. Because she did love him, only love was dangerous. Love put one where her father was, and that she could not begin to bear.

Alan was apparently beginning to track all this because he said, “I see. It’s not Santo at all, is it? It’s your mum. You think that I…with your mum…the day Santo died. And this was supposed to have happened in that cave on the postcard?”

She couldn’t reply. She couldn’t even nod. She was working too hard to get back under control so that if she had to feel something-indeed, if she had to show that she felt something-what that something would be was rage.

Alan said, “Kerra, I told you: We talked about the video, your mum and I. I’d spoken to your dad about it as well. Your mum kept telling me about a spot along the coast that she thought would serve our purposes well because of the sea caves and the atmosphere they provided. She handed me that card and-”

“You are not that stupid. And neither am I.”

He looked away from her, not at the sea but in the direction of the hotel. From the lip of the Sea Pit the old Promontory King George Hotel could not be seen. But the beach huts could, that neat blue and white line of them, the perfect spot for assignations.

Alan sighed. “I knew what she had in mind. She suggested we go to the caves and have a look, and I knew. She’s rather painfully obvious and not very creative when it comes to innuendoes. But then, I don’t expect she’s ever had to be creative. She’s still a beautiful woman, in her way.”

“Don’t,” Kerra said. Finally they’d come to it, and she found she couldn’t bear to hear the details. It was, at heart, the same bloody story with the same bloody plot. Only the leading men altered.

“I will,” Alan said. “And you’ll listen and decide what you want to believe. She claimed the sea caves were perfect for the video. She said we had to go have a look. I told her I’d have to meet her there, and I used as an excuse the fact that I had errands to run, because I had no intention of riding in the same car with her. So we met there and she showed me the cove, the village, and the sea caves. And nothing happened between us because I had no intention of anything other than nothing ever happening between us.” He’d kept his gaze on the beach huts as he spoke, but now he looked back at her. His expression was earnest, but his eyes were wary. Kerra could not make out what that meant. He said, “So now you get to decide, Kerra. You get to choose.”

Then she understood: What would she believe: him or her instincts? What would she select: trust or suspicion? She said hollowly, “They take from me everything that I love.”

He said quietly, “Darling Kerra, that’s not how it works.”

“It’s the way it’s always worked in our family.”

“Perhaps in the past. Perhaps you’ve lost people you didn’t wish to lose. Perhaps you’ve let them go yourself. Perhaps you’ve cut them off. The point is that no one gets taken away who doesn’t want to be taken away in the first place. And if someone’s taken, that’s no reflection on you. How can it possibly be?”

She heard the words, and she sensed their warmth. The warmth made her go quiet inside. It was very strange. It was equally unexpected. With what Alan said, Kerra felt a subtle release within her. Something indefinable was giving way, as if a great internal bulwark were dissolving. She also felt the prick of tears, but she would not allow herself to go that far.

“You, then,” she said.

“Me then? What?”

“I suppose I choose you.”

“Just ‘suppose’?”

“I can’t. More than that just now…I can’t, Alan.”

He nodded gravely. Then he said, “I took a videographer with me. That was the errand I went on before Pengelly Cove. I fetched the videographer. I didn’t go to the sea caves alone.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me? Why didn’t you say…?”

“Because I wanted you to choose. I wanted you to believe. She’s sick, Kerra. Anyone with sense can see that she’s sick.”

“She’s always been so-”

“She’s always been so sick. And spending your life reacting to her sickness is going to make you sick as well. You’ve got to decide if that’s how you want to live. I, for one, do not.”

“She’ll still keep trying to-”

“Very likely she will. Or she’ll get help. She’ll make up her mind or your dad will insist on it or she’ll end up out on the street on her ear and she’ll have to make a change to survive. I don’t know. The point is, I intend to live my life the way I want to live my life regardless of what your mum does with hers. What, exactly, do you want to do? The same? Or something else?”

“The same,” she said. Her lips felt stiff. “But I’m…so afraid.”

“We’re all afraid at the end of the day because there’s no guarantee of a single thing. That’s just how life is.”

She nodded numbly. A wave broke against the Sea Pit. She flinched.

“Alan,” she said, “I didn’t hurt…I wouldn’t have done anything to Santo.”

“Of course you wouldn’t. No more would I.”

BEA WAS ALONE IN the incident room when she logged on to the computer. She’d sent Barbara Havers back to Polcare Cove to haul Daidre Trahair into Casvelyn for a tête-à tête. If she’s not there, wait for an hour, Bea told the detective sergeant. If she doesn’t show up, call it a day and we’ll lasso her tomorrow morning.

The rest of the team she’d sent to their respective homes after a lengthy postmortem on the day’s developments. Have a decent meal and a good night’s sleep, she told them. Things will look different, clearer, and more possible in the morning. Or so she hoped.

She considered logging on to the computer a last resort, a giving way to Constable McNulty’s fanciful approach to detective work. She did it because, before she and DS Havers had left LiquidEarth earlier that day, she’d paused in front of the poster that had so fascinated the young constable-the surfer wiping out on the monstrous wave-and she’d said in reference to it, “So this is the wave that killed him?”

Both men were with her: Lew Angarrack and Jago Reeth. Angarrack was the one who said, “Who?”

“Mark Foo. Isn’t this Mark Foo on the Maverick’s wave that killed him?”

“True enough that Foo died at Maverick’s,” Lew said. “But that’s a younger kid. Jay Moriarty.”

“Jay Moriarty?”

“Yeah.” Angarrack had cocked his head curiously. “Why?”

“Mr. Reeth said this was Mark Foo’s last wave.”

Angarrack glanced at Jago Reeth. “How’d you come up with Foo?” he said. “If nothing else, the board’s all wrong.”

Jago came to the door that separated the work area from the reception area and showroom, where the poster was pinned, among others, to the wall. He leaned against the jamb and nodded at Bea. “Top marks,” he told her and said to Lew, “They’re doing the job they’re meant to be doing, taking note of everything the way they ought. Had to check, didn’t I? Hope you don’t take it personally, Inspector.”

Bea had been irritated. Everyone wanted a piece of a murder investigation if the victim was known to them. But she hated anything that wasted her time, and she disliked being tested in that way. Even more she disliked the way Jago Reeth watched her after this exchange, with that kind of knowing look men often adopted when forced to do business with a female whose position was superior to theirs.

She’d said to him, “Don’t do that again,” and left LiquidEarth with Barbara Havers. But now alone in the incident room, she wondered if Jago Reeth had made the misstatement about the poster because he was in truth testing the strength of the investigation or for another reason entirely. There were only two other possibilities that Bea could see: He’d misstated the surfer’s identity because he hadn’t known it in the first place; or he’d deliberately misstated the surfer’s identity to draw attention to himself. In either case, the question was, why? and she didn’t have a ready answer.

She spent the next ninety minutes floating round the vast chasm of the Internet. She searched out Moriarty and Foo, discovering that both of them were dead. Their names led to other names. So she followed the trail laid down by this list of faceless individuals until she finally had their faces on the computer screen as well. She studied them, hoping for some sort of sign as to what she was meant to do next, but if there was a connection between these big-wave riders and a sea cliff climbing death in Cornwall, she could not find it, and she gave up the effort.

She walked over to the china board. What did they have after these days of effort? Three pieces of equipment damaged, the condition of the body indicating he’d taken a single heavy punch in the face, fingerprints on Santo Kerne’s car, a hair caught up in his climbing equipment, the reputation of the boy himself, two vehicles in the approximate vicinity of his fall, and the fact that he had likely two-timed Madlyn Angarrack with a veterinarian from Bristol. That was it. There was nothing substantial they could work with and certainly nothing upon which they could base an arrest. It was more than seventy-two hours since the boy had died, and there wasn’t a cop alive who didn’t know that every hour that passed without an arrest from the time of a murder made the case that much more difficult to solve.

Bea studied the names of the individuals who were involved, either directly or tangentially, in this murder. It seemed to her that at one time or another, everyone who knew him had had access to Santo Kerne’s climbing equipment, so there was little point to going in that direction. Thus, what Bea appeared to be left with was the motive behind the crime.

Sex, power, money, she thought. Hadn’t they always been the triumvirate of motives? Perhaps they were not generally obvious to the investigator in the initial stages of an enquiry, but didn’t they turn up eventually? Look at jealousy, anger, revenge, and avarice, just as a start. Couldn’t you trace each one of them back to a progenitor of sex, power, or money? And if that was the case, how did those three originating motives apply in this situation?

Bea took the only next step she could think to take. She made a list. On it she wrote the names that seemed probable to her at this juncture, and next to each she logged that individual’s possible motive. She came up with Lew Angarrack avenging a daughter’s broken heart (sex); Jago Reeth avenging a surrogate granddaughter’s broken heart (sex again); Kerra Kerne eliminating her brother in order to inherit all of Adventures Unlimited (power and money); Will Mendick hoping to make an inroad into Madlyn Angarrack’s affections (there was sex once more); Madlyn operating from a hell-hath-no-fury perspective (sex yet again); Alan Cheston desiring a more significant handhold on Adventures Unlimited (power); Daidre Trahair putting an end to being the Other Woman by ridding herself of the man (more sex).

So far, the parents of Santo Kerne didn’t seem to have a motive to do away with their own son, nor did Tammy Penrule. What, then, was she left with? Bea wondered. Motives aplenty, opportunity aplenty, and the means at hand. The sling was cut and then rewrapped with Santo Kerne’s identifying tape. Two chock stones were…

Perhaps the chock stones were the key. Since strands of heavy wire formed the cable that made it, it would require a special tool to cut. Bolt cutters, perhaps. Cable cutters. Find that tool and she would find the killer? It was the best possibility she had.

What was notable, though, was the leisurely nature of the crime. The killer was relying upon the fact that the boy would use the sling or one of the damaged chock stones eventually, but time was not of the essence. Nor was it necessary to the killer that the boy die in an instant since he might have used the sling and the chock stone on a much simpler climb. He might only have fallen and been hurt, requiring the killer to come up with another plan.

Thus they weren’t looking for someone desperate, perpetrator of a crime of passion. They were looking for someone crafty. Craftiness always suggested women. As did the approach that had been used in this crime. Invariably, when women killed, they did not use a hands-on method.

That line of thought shot her directly back to Madlyn Angarrack, to Kerra Kerne, and to Daidre Trahair. Which in turn made her wonder where the bloody hell the vet had taken herself to for the day. That, in turn, led her inevitably to consider Thomas Lynley and his presence at Polcare Cove that morning, which took her over to the telephone to punch in the number of the mobile she’d given him.

“So what do we have?” she asked when her third attempt to get a connection to wherever he was proved successful. “And where in God’s name are you, Detective?”

He was on his way back to Casvelyn, he told her. He’d made a day of Newquay, Zennor, and Pengelly Cove. To her question of how the dickens this got them to Daidre Trahair, whom she still wished to see, by the way, he told her a tale of adolescent surfers, adolescent sex, adolescent drugs, drink, parties, caves on the beach, and death. Rich kids, poor kids, and in-between kids, and the cops failing to solve a case despite someone grassing.

“About Ben Kerne,” Lynley told her. “His friends thought from the first that Dellen was the grass. This is Dellen Kerne. Ben’s father thinks so as well.”

“And this is relevant for what reason?” Bea asked wearily.

“I think the answer to that is in Exeter.”

“Are you heading there now?”

“Tomorrow,” he told her. He paused before saying, “I haven’t run into Dr. Trahair, by the way. Has she turned up?” He sounded far too casual for Bea’s liking. She wasn’t a fool.

“Not a sign of her. And may I tell you how little I like that?”

“It could mean anything. She may have gone back to Bristol.”

“Oh please. I don’t believe that for a moment.”

He was silent. That was enough of a response.

“I’ve sent your Sergeant Havers out there to bring her in if she’s slithered home,” Bea told him.

“She’s not my Sergeant Havers,” Lynley said.

“I’d not be so quick about saying that,” Bea said.

She’d not rung off from him for five minutes when her mobile chimed with Sergeant Havers herself ringing.

“Nothing,” was her brief report, mostly broken up by a terrible connection. “Sh’ll I wait longer? Can do, if you want. Not often that I get to smoke in peace and listen to the surf.”

“You’ve done your bit,” Bea said. “Shove off home, then. Your Superintendent Lynley’s heading towards the inn as well.”

“He’s not my Superintendent Lynley,” Havers told her.

“What is it with you two?” Bea asked and rang off before the sergeant could work up an answer.

She decided her last task before leaving for the day was to phone Pete and make mother noises about his clothing, his eating, his schoolwork, and football. She’d enquire about the dogs as well. And if by chance Ray answered the phone, she’d be polite.

Pete answered, though, saving her the trouble. He was all afire about Arsenal’s acquisition of a new player, someone with an indecipherable name from…Had he actually said the South Pole? No. He had to have said São Paolo.

Bea made the appropriate noises of enthusiasm and ticked football off her list of topics. She went though eating and schoolwork and was about to go on to clothing-he hated to be asked about his underwear, but the fact of the matter was that he would wear the same pair of undershorts for a week if she didn’t stay on top of him about it-when he said, “Dad wants you to tell him when the next Sports Day is at school, Mum.”

“I always tell him when the next Sports Day at school is,” she replied.

“Yeah, but I mean he wants to go with you, not come on his own.”

“He wants or you want?” Bea asked shrewdly.

“Well, it’d be nice, wouldn’t it? Dad’s all right.”

Ray was making further inroads, Bea thought. Well, she could do nothing about that just now. She said they would see, and she told Pete she loved him. He returned the sentiment and they rang off.

But his remarks about Ray sent Bea back to the computer, where this time she went to her dating site. Pete needed a permanent man about the house, and she believed she was ready for something more defined than dating and the occasional bonk when Pete was staying the night at Ray’s.

She scrolled through the offerings, trying not to scrutinise the photos first, telling herself that keeping an open mind was essential. But a quarter hour of this topped up her dating despair in ways that nothing else ever could. She decided that if every person who indicated a love for romantic strolls on the beach at sunset actually took romantic strolls on the beach at sunset, the resulting mass of humanity would resemble Oxford Street during the Christmas season. It was such rubbish. Whose interests actually were candlelit dinners, romantic beach strolls, wine tasting in Bordeaux, and intimate chats in hot tubs or in front of a blazing coal fire in the Lake District? Was she meant to believe this?

Bloody hell, she thought. The dating scene was bleak. It got worse every year, making her more and more resolved to stick to her dogs for companionship. They might very well enjoy a soak in a hot tub, those three, and at least she’d be spared the pseudo-intimate conversation that went along with it.

She logged off the computer and headed out. Sometimes going home-even alone-was the only answer.

BEN KERNE COMPLETED THE cliff climb in good time, and his muscles were burning from the effort. He’d done it as Santo had intended to do it, abseiling down and then making the climb on the return although he could just as easily have parked below in Polcare Cove, and done everything in reverse. He could even have hiked up the coastal path to the top of the cliff and just done the abseil by itself. But he’d wanted to walk in Santo’s footsteps, and that required that he park his Austin not in the car park of the cove itself but in the lay-by not far from Stowe Wood, where Santo had left his own car. From there, he trudged along the public footpath to the sea as Santo would have done, and he fixed his sling to the same stone post where Santo’s own sling had failed him. Everything else was a matter of muscle memory. The abseil down took no time at all. The climb up required skill and thought, but that was preferable to being in the vicinity of Adventures Unlimited and Dellen.

At the end of the climb, Ben wanted to be exhausted. He sought to be drained, but he found that he was as agitated as he’d been when he’d begun the whole enterprise. His muscles were weary, but his mind was rattling along on autopilot.

As ever, it was Dellen he thought of. It was Dellen and the understanding he now had of what he’d done with his life in the pursuit of her.

He hadn’t understood at first what she was talking about when she’d shouted, “I told.” And then when her meaning began to dawn upon him, he didn’t want to believe her. For believing her would mean accepting that the cloud of suspicion under which he’d lived in Pengelly Cove-that very cloud of suspicion that had ultimately driven his final removal to Truro-had been deliberately created by this woman he loved.

So to avoid both belief and its aftermath, he said to her, “What the hell are you talking about?” and he concluded that she was striking out at him because he’d made accusations of her, because he’d thrown her pills from the window, and because, in doing so, he’d demanded something of her that she could not cope with at the moment.

Her face was screwed up with rage.

“You know,” she cried. “Oh, you bloody well know. You always believed I was the one who grassed you. I saw how you looked at me afterwards. I could see in your eyes…And then off to Truro you go and you leave me there with the consequences. God, I hated you. But then I didn’t because I loved you so much. And I love you now. And I hate you and why can’t you leave me alone?”

“You’re why the cops came back to me,” he said, hollowly. “That’s what you mean. You spoke to them.”

“I saw you with her. You wanted me to see you and I saw, and I knew you meant to fuck her and how do you think I felt?”

“So you decided to go one better? You took him down to the cave, had him, left him, and-”

“I couldn’t be who you wanted me to be. I couldn’t give you what you wanted, but you had no right to end things between us, because I’d done nothing. And then with his sister…I saw because you wanted me to see because you wanted me to suffer and so I wanted you to suffer in turn.”

“So you fucked him.”

“No!” Her voice rose to a scream. “I did not. I wanted you to feel how I felt. I wanted you to hurt like I hurt, how you made me hurt by wanting from me all those things that I could never give you. Why did you break with me? And why-why-won’t you leave me now?”

“So you accused me…?” There. He’d finally said it directly.

“Yes! I did. Because you’re so good. You’re so God damn bloody good, and it’s your miserable sainthood that I could not tolerate. Not then and not now. You keep turning the other God damn cheek and when you do that, I completely despise you. And whenever I despised you, you broke with me, and that’s when I loved you and wanted you most.”

He was left with saying only, “You’re mad.”

Then he had to get away from her. To remain in the bedroom meant he was going to have to come to terms with having built his life on a lie. For when the Newquay police had focused their enquiries upon him for week after week and month after month, he had turned to Dellen for comfort and strength. She made him whole, he’d thought. She made him what he was. Yes, she was difficult. Yes, they had their occasional troubles. But when it was right between them, weren’t they better than they could ever have been with anyone else?

So when she’d followed him to Truro, he’d embraced what he decided that meant. When her trembling lips had pronounced the words, “I’m pregnant again,” he’d embraced this announcement as if an angel had appeared before him in a dream, as if the imaginary walking staff he daily carried had indeed bloomed with lilies upon his waking. And when she got rid of that baby as well-just as she’d done with the babies before it, his and the offspring of two others-he’d soothed her and agreed that she wasn’t quite ready, that they weren’t quite ready, that the time wasn’t right. He owed her the allegiance she’d shown him, he decided. She was a troubled spirit. He loved her and he could cope with that.

When they finally married, he felt as if he’d captured an exotic bird. She was not to be held in a cage, however. He could only have her if he set her free.

“You’re the only one I truly want,” she would say. “Forgive me, Ben. It’s you that I love.”

Now on the top of the cliff, Ben’s breath returned to normal from the climb. The sheen of sweat he wore chilled him in the sea breeze, and he became aware of the lateness of the day. He realised that in making the abseil down the face of the cliff, he’d ultimately stood in the very spot where Santo had lain, dead or dying. And it came to him that, while walking in Santo’s footsteps along the path from the road, while fastening the sling to the old stone post, while rappelling down and preparing for the climb back up, he’d not thought of Santo once. He’d come to do so, and he’d still not managed it. His mind had been filled-as always-with Dellen.

This seemed to him the ultimate betrayal, the monstrous one. Not that Dellen had betrayed him by casting suspicion on him all those years ago. But that he himself had just betrayed Santo. A pilgrimage to the very spot where Santo had perished had not been enough to exorcise the boy’s mother from his thoughts. Ben realised that he lived and breathed her as if she were a contagion afflicting only him. Away from her, he might as well have been with her, which was the reason he’d kept returning.

He was in this, he thought, as sick as she was. Indeed, he was sicker. For if she could not help being the Dellen she was and had always been, he could stop being the perversely loyal Benesek who’d made it far too simple for her just to continue.

When he rose from the boulder on which he’d sat to catch his breath, he felt stiff from cooling down in the breeze. He knew he’d pay in the morning for the rapidity of the climb. He went to the stone post where the sling was looped, and he began drawing the rope back up the cliff, looping it carefully and just as carefully examining it for frays. Even in this he found he could not concentrate on Santo.

There was a moral question involved in all this, Ben knew, but he found he lacked the courage to ask it.

DAIDRE TRAHAIR HAD BEEN waiting in the public bar of the Salthouse Inn the better part of an hour when Selevan Penrule came through the door. He looked round the room when he saw that his daily drinking companion was not nursing a Guinness in the inglenook, which Selevan and Jago Reeth regularly commandeered for themselves, and he ventured over to join Daidre at her table by the window.

“Thought he’d be here by now,” Selevan said without preamble as he pulled out a chair. “Rang me to say he’d be late, he did. Cops were there talking to him and Lew. Cops’re talking to everyone. Talk to you yet?” He gave a sailor’s salute to Brian, who’d ventured out of the kitchen upon Selevan’s entrance. Brian said, “The regular?” and Selevan said, “Aye,” and then back to Daidre, “Even talked to Tammy, they did, though that was cos the girl had something to tell them and not cos they had questions of her. Well, why should they? She knew the boy, but that was the extent of it. Wished it otherwise, and I don’t mind saying that, but she wasn’t interested. All for the best as things turned out, eh? Bloody hell, though, I wish they’d get to the bottom of this. Feel sorry for the family, I do.”

Daidre would have preferred it if the old man hadn’t decided to join her, but she couldn’t come up with an excuse that would politely communicate her desire to be left in peace. For she’d never come into the Salthouse Inn prior to this for the purpose of having a bit of peace, so why would he assume that now? No one would come to the Salthouse Inn for peace, as the inn was where denizens of the area gathered for gossip and conviviality, not for meditation.

She said, “They want to talk to me,” and she showed him the note she’d found at her cottage. It was written on the back of DI Hannaford’s card. “I’ve spoken to them already,” she said. “The day Santo died. I can’t think why they want to question me again.”

Selevan looked at the card, turning it over in his hands. “Looks serious,” he told her. “With them leaving their cards and the like.”

“I think it’s more that I don’t have a phone. But I’ll speak with them. Of course I will.”

“Mind you get yourself a solicitor. Tammy didn’t, but that’s cos Tammy had something to tell them and not the reverse, like I said. ’S not as if she was hiding something. She had information, so she handed it over.” He cocked his head at her. “You hiding something yourself, my girl?”

Daidre smiled and pocketed the card as the old man returned it to her. “We all have secrets, don’t we. Is that why you’re suggesting a solicitor?”

“Didn’t say that,” Selevan protested. “But you’re a deep one, Dr. Trahair. We’ve known that ’bout you from the first. No girl throws a dart like you without having something tricky in her background, you ask me.”

“I’m afraid that Roller Derby is as dark as my secrets get, Selevan.”

“What’s that, then?”

She tapped his hand with the tips of her fingers. “You’ll have to do your research and find out, my friend.”

Through the windows, then, she saw the Ford as it bumped into the inn’s uneven car park. Lynley got out of it and started to walk in the direction of the inn, but he turned as another car entered the car park behind him, this one a rather decrepit Mini whose driver honked the car’s horn at him as if he were in the way.

“That Jago, then?” Selevan was not in a position to see the car park from where he sat. He said, “Cheers, mate,” to Brian, who brought him his Glenmorangie, and he slurped down his first gulp with satisfaction.

“No,” Daidre said slowly. “It isn’t.” As she watched the car park, she could hear Selevan nattering on about his granddaughter. Tammy had a mind of her own, it seemed, and nothing was going to put her off a course she’d set for herself. “Got to admire the lass for that,” Selevan was saying. “P’rhaps we’re all being too hard on the girl.”

Daidre made appropriate listening noises, but she was concentrating on the action outside, what little there was of it. Lynley had been accosted by the driver of the banged-up Mini. This was a barrel-shaped woman in droopy corduroy trousers and a donkey jacket buttoned to her neck. Their conversation lasted only a moment. A bit of arm waving on the woman’s part suggested a minor altercation about Lynley’s driving.

Behind them, then, Jago Reeth’s Defender pulled into the car park. “Here’s Mr. Reeth now,” Daidre told Selevan.

“Best claim our spot, then,” Selevan told her, and he rose and went to the inglenook.

Daidre continued to watch. More words were exchanged outside. Lynley and the woman fell silent as Jago Reeth climbed out of his car. Reeth nodded to them politely, as fellow pubgoers do, before heading in the direction of the door. Lynley and the woman exchanged a few more words, and then they parted.

At this, Daidre rose. It took her a moment to negotiate payment for the tea she’d had while waiting for Lynley. By the time she got to the entry to the hotel, Jago Reeth was ensconced with Selevan Penrule in the inglenook, the woman from the car park was gone, and Lynley himself had apparently returned to his own car for a tattered cardboard box. This he was carrying into the inn as Daidre entered the dimly lit reception area. It was colder here because of the uneven stone floor and the outer door, which was frequently off the latch. Daidre shivered and realised she’d left her coat in the bar.

Lynley saw her at once. He smiled and said, “Hullo. I didn’t notice your car out there. Did you intend to surprise me?”

“I intended to waylay you. What’ve you got there?”

He looked down at what he was holding. “Old copper’s notes. Or copper’s old notes. Both, I suppose. He’s a pensioner down in Zennor.”

“That’s where you’ve been today?”

“There and Newquay. Pengelly Cove as well. I stopped by your cottage this morning to invite you along, but you were nowhere to be found. Did you go off for the day?”

“I like driving in the countryside,” Daidre said. “It’s one of the reasons I come down here when I can.”

“Understandable. I like it as well.” He shifted the box, held it at an angle against his hip in that way men have, so different to the way women hold something bulky, she thought. He regarded her. He looked healthier than he had four days ago. There was a small spark of life about him that had not been present then. She wondered if it had to do with being caught up in police work again. Perhaps it was something that got into one’s blood: the intellectual excitement of the puzzle of the crime and the physical excitement of the chase.

“You’ve work to do.” She indicated the box. “I was hoping for a word, if you had the time.”

“Were you?” He lifted an eyebrow. The smile again. “I’m happy to give it to you-the word, the time, whatever. Let me put this in my room and I can meet you…in the bar? Five minutes?”

She didn’t want it to be the bar, now that Jago Reeth and Selevan Penrule were within. More of the regulars would be arriving as the time wore on, and she wasn’t enthusiastic about the prospect of gossip developing over Dr. Trahair’s intimate conversation with the Scotland Yard detective.

She said, “I’d prefer some place a bit more private. Is there…?” Aside from the restaurant, whose doors were closed and would be for another hour at least, there was really no other spot where they could meet aside from his room.

He seemed to conclude this at the same moment she did. He said, “Come up, then. The accommodations are monastic, but I’ve tea if you’re not averse to PG tips and those grim little containers of milk. I believe there’re ginger biscuits as well.”

“I’ve had my tea. But thanks, yes. I think your room’s the best place.”

She followed him up the stairs. She’d never been above in the Salthouse Inn, and it felt odd to be there now, treading down the little corridor in the wake of a man, as if they had an assignation of some sort. She found herself hoping that no one would see and misinterpret, and then she asked herself why and what did it matter anyway?

The door wasn’t locked-“Didn’t seem to be a point, as I have nothing here for someone to steal,” he noted-and he ushered her within, politely stepping to one side to allow her to precede him into the room. He was right in calling it monastic, she saw. It was quite clean and brightly painted, but spare. There was only the bed to sit on unless one wished to perch on the small chest of drawers. The bed itself seemed vast although it was only a single. Daidre found herself getting hot in the face when she took it in, so she looked away.

A basin was fitted into the corner of the room, and Lynley went to this after setting his cardboard box on the floor, carefully, against the wall. He hung up the jacket he was wearing-she could see that he was a man who was diligent about his clothing-and he washed his hands.

Now that she was here, she wasn’t sure of anything. Instead of the anxiety she’d been feeling earlier when Cilla Cormack had brought her the news of Scotland Yard’s interest in her and her family in Falmouth, she now felt awkward and shy. She told herself it was because Thomas Lynley seemed to fill the room. He was a good-size man, several inches over six feet tall, and the result of being in such a confined space with him appeared to be having her ridiculously melting into Victorian-maiden-caught-in-a-compromising-situation. It was nothing he was doing, particularly. It was, rather, the simple fact of him and the tragic aura that seemed to surround him, despite his pleasant demeanour. But the fact that she was feeling other than she would have liked to be feeling made Daidre impatient, both with him and with herself.

She sat at the foot of the bed. Before she did so, she handed him the note she’d found from DI Hannaford. He told her that the inspector had arrived at her cottage shortly after his own arrival that morning. “I see you’re in demand,” he said.

“I’ve come for your advice.” This wasn’t altogether true, but it was a good place to begin, she decided. “What do you recommend?”

He went to the head of the bed and sat. “About this?” He gestured with the card. “I recommend that you talk to her.”

“Have you any idea what it’s about?”

He said, after a revealing moment of hesitation, that he had not. “But whatever it is,” he said, “I suggest you be completely truthful. I think it’s always best to tell investigators the truth. In general, I think it’s best to tell the truth full stop, one way or another.”

“And if the truth is that I killed Santo Kerne?”

He hesitated a moment before replying. “I don’t believe that is the truth, frankly.”

“Are you a truthful man yourself, Thomas?”

“I try to be.”

“Even in the middle of a case?”

“Especially then. When it’s appropriate. Sometimes, with a suspect, it’s not.”

“Am I a suspect?”

“Yes,” he told her. “Unfortunately, you are.”

“So that would be why you went to Falmouth to ask about me.”

“Falmouth? I didn’t go to Falmouth. For any reason.”

“Yet someone was there, talking to my parents’ neighbours, as things turned out. It was apparently someone from New Scotland Yard. Who would that be if it wasn’t you? And what is it you would need to know about me that you couldn’t ask me yourself?”

He rose. He came to her end of the bed and squatted before her. This gave her more proximity to him than she would have liked, and she made a move to rise. He stopped her: Just a gentle hand on her arm was enough. “I wasn’t in Falmouth, Daidre,” he said. “I swear to you.”

“Then who?”

“I don’t know.” He fixed his eyes on hers. They were earnest, steady. “Daidre, have you something to hide?”

“Nothing that would interest Scotland Yard. Why’re they investigating me?”

“They investigate everyone when there’s been a murder. You’re involved because the boy died close by your property. And…Are there other reasons? Is there something you’ve not told me that you’d like to tell me now?”

“I don’t mean why are they investigating me.” Daidre tried to sound casual but the intensity of his look made it difficult. “I mean, why Scotland Yard? What’s Scotland Yard doing here at all?”

He rose once again. He went to the electric kettle. Surprisingly, she found that she was both relieved and sorry that he’d moved away from her, as there was a form of safety in his proximity that she hadn’t expected to feel. He didn’t answer at once. Instead, he filled the kettle at the basin and switched it on. When he did speak in answer to her next question, he still didn’t look at her.

She said, “Thomas? Why are they here?”

He said, “Bea Hannaford is undermanned. She should have a murder squad working the case, and she doesn’t. I daresay they’re spread too thin just now across the district, and the regional constabulary made a request to the Met for someone to assist.”

“Is that usual?”

“To have the Met involved? No. It’s not. But it happens.”

“Why would they be asking questions about me? And why in Falmouth?”

Silence as he messed about with a bag of PG Tips and a cup. He was frowning. A car door slammed outside, and then another. A happy shout went up as fellow drinkers greeted each other.

He had finally turned back to her when he made his reply. He said, “As I said, in a murder investigation, everyone is looked into, Daidre. You and I went to Pengelly Cove on a similar mission, about Ben Kerne.”

“But that doesn’t make sense. I grew up in Falmouth. Yes, indeed. But why ask someone to go there and not to Bristol, where my life is now?”

“Perhaps they’ve someone else in Bristol,” Lynley said. “Is this important somehow?”

“Of course it’s important. What a ridiculous question! How would you feel, knowing the police were digging into your background for no apparent reason save the fact that a boy fell from a cliff nearby your cottage?”

“If I had nothing to hide, I don’t imagine I’d care one way or the other. So we’ve come full circle. Have you something to hide? Something you wish the police not to know about you? Perhaps about your life in Falmouth? About who you are or what you do?”

“What could I possibly have to hide?”

He gazed at her steadily before finally saying, “How could I have the answer to that?”

She felt all on the wrong foot with him now. She’d come to speak to him, if not in high dudgeon, then at least believing that she was in a position of strength: the injured party. But now she felt as if the tables had been turned. It was as if she’d tossed the dice a bit too wildly and he’d ever so deftly scooped them up.

“Is there something more you want to tell me?” he asked her again.

She said the only thing she could. “Not at all.”