Careless in Red

Chapter Seven

THE RAIN STOPPED IN CASVELYN NOT LONG AFTER MIDDAY, and for this Cadan Angarrack was grateful. He’d been painting radiators in the guest rooms of Adventures Unlimited since his arrival that morning, and the fumes were causing his head to pound. He couldn’t sort out why they had him painting radiators anyway. Who was going to notice them? Who ever noticed whether radiators were painted when they were in a hotel? No one except perhaps a hotel inspector and what did it amount to if a hotel inspector noticed a bit of rust in the ironwork? Nothing. Abso-bloody-lutely nothing. And anyway, it wasn’t like the decrepit Promontory King George Hotel was being taken back to its former glory, was it? It was merely being made habitable for the hordes interested in a holiday package on the sea that consisted of fun, frolic, food, and some kind of instruction in an outdoor activity. And that lot didn’t care where they stayed at night, as long as it was clean, served chips, and stayed within the budget.

So when the skies cleared, Cadan decided that a bit of fresh air was just the ticket. He would have a look at the crazy golf course, future location of the BMX trails, future site of the BMX lessons that Cadan was certain would be requested of him once he had a chance to show his stuff to…That was the problem of the moment. He wasn’t quite sure to whom he would be showing anything.

Indeed, he hadn’t been certain he was even supposed to come into work on this day, as he wasn’t sure that he had a job after what had happened to Santo. At first, he’d thought he simply wouldn’t show up. He thought he’d let a few days roll by and then he’d phone and express whatever condolences he could come up with and ask did they still want him to do maintenance work. But then he reckoned a phone call like that would give them a chance to sack him before he’d even had a chance to demonstrate how valuable he could be. So he’d decided to put in an appearance at the place and to look as doleful as possible round any Kerne he might run into.

Cadan hadn’t yet seen a hair of either Ben or Dellen-Santo Kerne’s parents-but his arrival had coincided with Alan Cheston’s and when Cadan brought Alan into the picture about his employment at Adventures Unlimited, Alan said he’d fetch someone at once to see what Cadan was meant to be doing. He’d strode off to do so, after unlocking the front door, letting them both in, and pocketing the keys with the air of a man who knew exactly where his place was in the scheme of things.

The old hotel was as silent as a graveyard. It was cold as well. Cadan shivered-he felt Pooh do likewise on his shoulder-and he waited in the new reception area, where a bulletin board displayed the words “Your Instructors,” along with head shots of the six staff members so far hired. These all pyramided down from a picture of Kerra Kerne, who was identified as “Director of Instruction.”

It was, Cadan thought, a decent picture of Kerra. She was no great beauty-ordinary brown hair, ordinary blue eyes, and stockier than Cadan fancied in a woman-but there was no doubt she was in the best physical condition of any female her age in Casvelyn. It was just unfortunate that her roll of the genetic dice had given Kerra her father’s looks instead of her mother’s. Santo had inherited every one of those, a fact which some might refer to as lucky. Cadan, however, reckoned most blokes didn’t fancy being pretty like Santo. Unless, naturally, one knew how to use it.

“Cade?”

He swung round. Pooh squawked and shifted position.

Kerra had materialized from somewhere. Alan was with her. Cadan knew they were a couple, but he couldn’t reconcile the matter. Kerra was sun and sinew with, unfortunately, tree-trunk ankles. Alan looked like someone who’d take exercise as a last resort and then only if threatened with disembowelment.

A few words among them had sorted things. Although Alan on the surface might have looked like small change, it turned out he was on top of almost all that was going on at the place. So before Cadan knew enough to make a spurious excuse about the delicate condition of his lungs should they ever be exposed to paint fumes, he found himself with drop cloths and a paintbrush in one hand and two gallons of glossy white in the other. Alan made an introduction between Cadan and the project, and that was that.

Four hours later saw Cadan deciding he was owed a break outdoors. Pooh, he noted, had grown ominously silent. Likely the parrot had a headache as well.

The ground was still sopping round the crazy golf course, but Cadan didn’t let that deter him. Guiding his bike, he climbed the slope to hole number one, where he quickly saw that doing a few tabletops just now in this location had been something of a pipe dream. He set his bike to one side, established Pooh on the handlebars, and gave the crazy golf course a closer look.

This wasn’t going to be a simple project. The course looked at least sixty years old. It also looked like something that hadn’t been maintained in the last thirty of those years. This was too bad because otherwise crazy golf could have been a little moneymaker for Adventures Unlimited. On the other hand, this was also a plus because an unmaintained course made it far likelier than otherwise that anyone in the position of making a decision about the future would climb onboard once Cadan laid out his plans. But the idea of laying out plans necessitated having plans, and Cadan wasn’t a having-plans sort of person. So he walked round the first five holes of the course and tried to reckon what needed to be done aside from ripping out miniature windmills, barns, and schoolhouses and filling in the holes.

He was still considering all this when he saw a panda car pulling from St. Mevan Crescent into the car park of the old hotel. The driver-a uniformed constable-got out and went inside. A few minutes later he departed.

Shortly thereafter, Kerra came out of the building. She stood in the car park, hands on hips, and she looked about. Cadan was squatting next to a tiny shipwrecked rowboat that acted as an obstacle on hole number six, and it came to him that she was searching for someone, possibly him. His modus operandi was generally to hide, since if someone was seeking him, it was usually because he’d bollocksed something up and was presently going to hear about it. But a quick evaluation of his performance in the painting department told him he’d been doing a class A job, so he rose and made his presence known.

Kerra headed in his direction. She’d changed from what she’d been wearing earlier. She was decked out in Lycra, and Cadan recognised the kit: She had on her long-distance cyclist’s gear. Odd time of day to be going for a ride, he thought, but when you were the boss’s daughter, you made your own rules.

Kerra spoke to him without preamble when she reached the ruins of the crazy golf course. Her voice was clipped. “I phoned the farm, but they told me she doesn’t work there any longer. I phoned your house, but she’s not there either. D’you know where she is? I want to speak with her.”

Cadan took a moment to think about the remarks, the question, and the implications of each. He bought time by going to his bike, removing Pooh from the handlebars, and settling the bird on his shoulder.

“Blow holes in the attic,” Pooh remarked.

“Cade.” Kerra’s voice was patient but with an edge. “Please answer me. Now would be preferable to sometime in the future.”

“It’s weird you want to know, is all,” Cadan told her. “I mean, it’s not like you’re friends with Madlyn any longer, so I was wondering…” He cocked his head so that his cheek touched Pooh’s side. He liked the feeling of the bird’s feathers against him.

Kerra’s eyes narrowed. “You were wondering what?”

“Santo. The cops showing up. You coming out here to talk to me. Asking me about Madlyn. Is all this related?”

Kerra had her hair in a ponytail and she unbanded it so that it fell to her shoulders. She shook it out, then tied it back up. It seemed as much a gesture to buy time for her as rescuing Pooh from the bike had been for Cadan. Then she looked at him and seemed to focus more clearly. “What happened to your face?”

“Plain old luck,” he said. “It’s the one I was born with.”

“Don’t joke, Cadan. You know what I mean. The bruises, the scratches.”

“I slipped. Occupational hazard. I was doing a no-footed cancan, and I hit the side of the pool the wrong way. Over at the leisure centre.”

“You did that swimming?” She sounded incredulous.

“Pool’s empty. I was practising there. On the bike.” He felt himself colour, and this irritated him. He made it a point never to be embarrassed about his passion, and he didn’t want to think why he was embarrassed now. “What’s going on?” he asked, with a nod at the hotel.

“It wasn’t an ordinary fall. He was murdered. That’s what the police came to tell us. They sent their…whatever he is…their liaison officer. I think he’s meant to hang about serving us tea and biscuits to keep us from…I don’t know…What do people generally do when a member of the family is murdered? Go mad to get vengeance? Shoot up the town? Gnash their teeth? And what the hell is that, gnashing the teeth? Where is she, Cade?”

“She already knows he died.”

“That he died or that he was murdered? Where is she? He was my brother, and as she was his…his girlfriend-”

“Your friend as well,” Cadan reminded her. “At least at one time.”

“Don’t,” she said. “Just don’t, all right?”

He shrugged. He directed his attention back to the crazy golf course and said, “This needs to go. It’s a wreck. You could repair it, but my guess is the cost would exceed the benefits. In the short term. In the long run…Who knows?”

“Alan knows the long run. Profit and loss, long-term projections. He knows it all. But none of that matters because just now there may not be a reason to worry.”

“About?”

“About anything related to Adventures Unlimited. I doubt my father will have the stomach to open after what’s happened to Santo.”

“What’s next, then, if you don’t open?”

“Alan would say we try to find a buyer and recoup our investment. But then, that’s Alan. A mind for the figures if nothing else.”

“Sounds like you’re cheesed off at him.”

She didn’t take up the remark. “Is she at home and just not answering the phone? I can go over there but I don’t want to take the trouble if she’s not there anyway. So d’you mind telling me that much?”

“I expect she’s still with Jago,” he said.

“Who’s Jago?”

“Jago Reeth. Bloke that works for my dad. She was with him all night. She’s still with him, for all I know.”

Kerra laughed shortly, without amusement. “Well, she’s moved on, hasn’t she? That was quick. Miraculous recovery from complete heartbreak. How very nice for her.”

Cadan wanted to ask what it was to her, whether his sister moved on to another man or not. But instead he said, “Jago Reeth’s like…I don’t know. Maybe he’s seventy or something. He’s like a granddad to her, okay?”

“What’s he do for your dad, then, some seventy-year-old?”

She was definitely annoying him. She was being the boss’s daughter and you-better-treat-me-as-I’m-meant-to-be-treated, and that rubbed Cadan wrong. He said, “Kerra, does that matter, exactly? Why the hell d’you want to know?”

And just like that, she altered. She gave a weird little cough and he saw the glitter of tears in her eyes. That glitter reminded him that her brother was dead, that he’d died only on the previous day, and that she’d just learned he’d been murdered.

He said, “A glasser.” When she looked at him in confusion, he added, “Jago Reeth. He does the fiberglass on the boards. He’s an old surfer my dad picked up…I don’t know…six months ago maybe? He’s a detail man like Dad. And, what’s important, not like me.”

“She spent the night with a seventy-year-old bloke?”

“Jago phoned and said she was there.”

“What time?”

“Kerra…”

“This is important, Cadan.”

“Why? D’you think she gave your brother the bump? How was she supposed to do that? Shove him over the cliff?”

“His equipment was messed with. That’s what the cop told us.”

Cadan widened his eyes. “Hang on, Kerra. No way…And I mean no way. She may have been off her nut with everything that happened between them, but my sister is not-” He stopped himself. Not because of what he’d intended to say about Madlyn but because as he’d been speaking, his gaze had moved from Kerra to the beach below them and across that beach a surfer was jogging, his board under his arm and its leash trailing behind him in the sand. He was fully garbed, as he would be at this time of year, for the water was still quite cold. Head to toe in neoprene. Head to toe in black. You couldn’t, in fact, actually tell if the surfer was male or female from this distance.

“What?” Kerra said.

Cadan shuddered. He said quietly, “Madlyn may have been all over the map with how she reacted after what happened between her and Santo. I give you that.”

“That and then some,” Kerra remarked.

“But killing off her ex-boyfriend wouldn’t be part of her repertoire, okay? Jesus, Kerra, she kept thinking he was just going through a stage, you know.”

“At first,” Kerra clarified.

“Okay. Maybe only at first she thought that. But it doesn’t mean she’d finally get to the point of understanding how things really were and deciding the only reasonable thing to do was to kill him. Does that make sense to you?”

“Love,” Kerra said, “never makes sense to me. People do all sorts of mad things when they’re in love with someone.”

“Yeah?” Cadan said. “Is that the truth? So, what about you?”

She made no reply.

“I rest my case,” he told her. And then he added, “Sea Dreams, if you have to know.”

“What’s that?”

“Where she is. Jago’s got a caravan at that holiday park where the dairy used to be. Out beyond Sawsneck Down. If you want to grill her, grill her there. For what it’s worth, though, you’ll be wasting your time.”

“What makes you think I want to grill her?”

“You sure as hell want something,” Cadan told her.

ONCE BEA HANNAFORD HAD him in possession of a hired car, she told Lynley to follow her. She said to him, “I expect this isn’t your typical heap,” in reference to the Ford, “but at least you’ll fit it. Or it’ll fit you.”

Under other circumstances, Lynley might have told her that she was being more than generous. Indeed, his breeding generally made that sort of remark second nature to him. But under the present circumstances, he merely told her that his usual mode of transportation had been totaled in February and he hadn’t yet replaced it with something else, so the Ford was fine.

She said, “Good,” and advised him to mind his driving since he would be doing so without a licence until his wallet arrived. “It’ll be our little secret,” she said. She told him to follow her. She had something to show him.

What she had to show him was in Casvelyn, and he obediently trailed her there. He drove trying to keep his mind on that-simply on the driving-but he found the strength draining out of him with the sheer effort he made to hold his thoughts in check.

He’d told himself he was finished with murder. One did not watch a beloved wife die-the victim of an utterly senseless street killing-and walk away from that to think that tomorrow was simply another day. Tomorrow was, instead, something to be endured. So far he’d endured the endless succession of tomorrows he’d been living through by doing what was set in front of him and nothing more.

At first it had been Howenstow: seeing to matters on and around the land that was his legacy and the great house sitting upon that land. No matter that his mother, his brother, and an estate manager had been handling Howenstow matters for ages. He’d thrown himself into them to keep from throwing himself elsewhere, until half of what he’d taken on was a muddle and the other half was a wreck. His mother’s gentle admonition of “Darling, let me handle this,” or “John Penellin’s been working on this situation for weeks, Tommy,” or anything of a similar persuasion was something he brushed aside with a remark so terse that the dowager countess had sighed, pressed his shoulder, and left him to it.

But he found that Howenstow matters ultimately brought Helen into his mind, whether he wanted her there or not. The half-finished nursery had to be dismantled. Countryside clothing she’d left in their bedroom had to be gone through. A plaque for her resting place in the estate chapel-for the resting place she shared with their never-born son-had to be designed. And then there were the reminders of her: where he and she had walked together on the path from the house through the wood and over to the cove, where she’d stood in front of pictures in the gallery and lightheartedly commented on the physical attributes of some of his more questionable ancestors, where she’d browsed through ancient editions of Country Life in the library, where she’d curled up with-and ultimately dozed off over-a thick biography of Oscar Wilde.

Because reminders of Helen were everywhere at Howenstow, he’d begun his walk. Trudging along the entire South-West Coast Path was the last possible challenge Helen would ever have undertaken (“My God, Tommy, you’ve got to be mad. What would I do for shoes that aren’t utterly appalling in appearance?”), so he knew he could walk the length of it with impunity, should he choose to do so. There would be not a single reminder of her along the way.

But he’d not counted on the memorials he’d come across. Nothing he’d read about the path prior to walking it had prepared him for those. From simple bunches of dying flowers to wooden benches engraved with the names of the departed, death greeted him nearly every day. He’d left the Yard because he could not face another sudden brutal passing of a human being, but there it was: confronting him with a regularity that mocked his every attempt to forget.

And now this. DI Hannaford wasn’t exactly involving him in the murder investigation itself, but she was putting him close to it. He didn’t want that, but at the same time, he didn’t know how he could avoid it because he read the inspector as a woman who was as good as her word: Should he conveniently disappear from the region of Casvelyn, she would happily fetch him back and not rest till she’d done so.

As to what she was asking him to do…Like DI Hannaford, Lynley believed Daidre Trahair was lying about the route she’d taken from Bristol to Polcare Cove on the previous day. Unlike DI Hannaford, Lynley also knew Daidre Trahair had lied more than once about knowing Santo Kerne. There were going to be reasons behind both of these lies-far beyond what the vet had told him when he’d confronted her about her knowledge of the dead boy’s identity-and he didn’t know if he wanted to uncover them. Her reasons for obfuscation were doubtless personal, and the poor woman was hardly a killer.

Yet why did he think that? he asked himself. He knew better than anyone that killers wore a thousand different guises. Killers were men; killers were women. Killers, to his anguish, were children. And victims everywhere-no matter how foul they might actually be-were not meant to be dispatched by anyone, whatever the motive for untimely sending them to their eternal reward or punishment. The whole basis for their society rested upon the idea that murder was wrong, start to finish, and that justice had to be served so that closure-if not satisfaction, not relief, and certainly not an end to grief-might at least be achieved on the entire event. Justice equated to naming and convicting the killer, and justice was what was owed to those the victim summarily left behind.

Part of Lynley cried out that this was not his problem. Part of him knew that now and forever and more than ever, it would always be.

By the time they reached Casvelyn he was, if not reconciled to the matter, then at least in moderate accord with it. Everything needed to be accounted for in an investigation. Daidre Trahair was part of that everything, having made herself so the moment she lied.

Casvelyn’s police station was in Lansdown Road, in the heart of the town, directly at the bottom of Belle Vue’s course up the town’s main acclivity, and it was here in front of the plain, grey two-storey structure that Bea Hannaford parked. Lynley thought at first that she meant to take him inside and introduce him around, but instead she said, “Come with me,” and she put a hand on his elbow and guided him back the way they had come.

At the junction of Lansdown Road and Belle Vue, they crossed a triangle of land where benches, a fountain, and three trees provided Casvelyn with an outdoor gathering place in good weather. From there they headed over to Queen Street, which was lined with shops like those on Belle Vue Lane: everything from purveyors of furniture to pharmacies. There, Bea Hannaford paused and peered in both directions till she apparently saw what she wanted, for she said, “Yes. Over here. I want you to see what we’re dealing with.”

Over here referred to a shop selling sporting goods: both equipment and clothing for outdoor activities. Hannaford did an admirably quick recce of the place, found what she wanted, told the shop assistant they needed no help, and directed Lynley to a wall. Upon it were hung various metallic devices, mostly of steel. It wasn’t rocket science to sort out they were used for climbing.

She chose a package that held three devices constructed of lead, heavy steel cable, and plastic sheathing. The lead was a thick wedge at the end of a cable perhaps one quarter inch thick. This looped through the wedge at one end and also formed another loop at the other end. In the middle was a tough plastic sheath, which wrapped tightly round the cable and thus held the two sides of it closely together. The result was a sturdy cord with a slug of lead at one end and a loop at the other.

“This,” Hannaford said to Lynley, “is a chock stone. D’you know how it’s used?”

Lynley shook his head. Obviously, it was meant for cliff climbing. Equally so, its loop end would be used to connect the chock stone to some other device. But that was as much as he could sort out.

DI Hannaford said, “Hold up your hand, palm towards yourself. Keep your fingers tight. I’ll show you.”

Lynley did as she asked. She slid the cable between his upright index and middle fingers, so that the slug of lead was snug against his palm and the loop at the other end of the cable was on her side of his hand.

She said, “Your fingers are a crack in the cliff face. Or an aperture between two boulders. Your hand is the cliff itself. Or the boulders themselves. Got it?” She waited for his nod. “The lead piece-that’s the chock stone-gets shoved down the crack in the cliff or the aperture between the boulders as far as it can go, with the cable sticking out. In the loop end of the cable”-here she paused to scan the wall of climbing gear till she found what she wanted and scooped it up-“you clip a carabiner. Like this.” She did so. “And you fix your rope to the carabiner with whatever sort of knot you’ve been taught to use. If you’re climbing up, you use chock stones on the way, every few feet or whatever you’re comfortable with. If you’re abseiling, you can use them at the top instead of a sling to fix your rope to whatever you’ve chosen to hold it in place while you descend.”

She took the chock stone from him and replaced it along with the carabiner on the wall of goods. She turned back and said, “Climbers mark each part of their kit distinctly because they often climb together. Let’s say you and I are climbing. I use six chock stones or sixteen chock stones; you use ten. We use my carabiners but your slings. How do we sort it all out quickly and without discussion in the end…? By marking each piece with something that won’t easily come off. Bright tape is just the ticket. Santo Kerne used black electrical tape.”

Lynley saw where she was heading with this. He said, “So if someone wishes to play fast and loose with someone else’s kit, he merely needs to get his hands on the same kind of tape-”

“And the equipment itself. Yes. That’s right. You can damage the equipment, put identical tape over the damage, and no one is the wiser.”

“The sling, obviously. It would have been the easiest to damage although cutting it would have shown, if not to the naked eye, at least to the microscope.”

“Which is exactly what happened. As we’ve discussed earlier.”

“But there’s more, isn’t there, or you wouldn’t have shown me this.”

“Forensics went through Santo’s kit,” Hannaford said. Hand on his elbow again, she began to guide him out of the shop. She kept her voice low. “Two of the chock stones had been seen to. Beneath the marking tape, both the plastic sheathing and the cable had been damaged. The sheathing was cut through; the cable was hanging on by a metaphorical thread. If the boy used either one for an abseil, he was done for. Same thing applied to the sling. He was a dead man walking. A dead climber climbing. What you will. It was only a matter of time before he used the right piece of equipment at the worst possible moment.”

“Fingerprints?”

“Galore,” Hannaford said. “But I’m not sure how useful they’re going to be since most climbers don’t go solo all the time, and we’re likely to find that’s the case with Santo.”

“Unless there’s a print on the damaged pieces that doesn’t exist on any others. That would be difficult for someone to explain away.”

“Hmm. Yes. But that whole bit has me wondering, Thomas.”

“What whole bit is that?” Lynley asked.

“Three damaged pieces instead of only one. What does that suggest to you?”

He considered this. He said thoughtfully, “Only one bad piece was needed to send him to his death. But he was carrying three. You might conclude that the killer didn’t care when it happened or if the fall even killed him since he could have used the damaged chock stones quite low on an upward route and not used the sling at all.”

“Any other conclusions?”

“If he generally abseiled first and climbed back up afterwards, you might conclude that three pieces of damaged equipment indicate the killer was in a hurry to do away with the boy. Or, as difficult as it might be to believe…” He pondered a moment, wondering about the final likelihood and what that final likelihood suggested.

She prompted him with, “Yes?”

“Damaging three pieces…You might also conclude the killer wanted everyone to know it was murder.”

She nodded. “Bit mad, isn’t it, but that’s what I was thinking.”

IT WAS THE SHEER madness of love that had made Kerra want to get out of the hotel and onto her bike. She’d changed into her riding kit because of it and she’d determined that twenty miles or so would be sufficient to clear her head of the thought of it. A twenty-mile ride wouldn’t take her terribly long, either, not if the weather continued to improve, and not for someone in her condition. On a good day, with the weather cooperating, she could do sixty miles with one hand tied behind her back, so twenty was child’s play. It was also highly necessary child’s play, so she’d made herself ready and headed for the door.

The arrival of the police officer had stopped her. It was the same bloke as the previous night, Constable McNulty, and he had on his face such a lugubrious expression that Kerra knew the news would be bad before he uttered it.

He’d asked to see her parents.

She’d told him that was impossible.

They’re not here? he’d asked. It was a logical question.

Oh, they were at home. Upstairs but unavailable. You can tell me what you’ve come to tell them. They’ve asked not to be disturbed.

I’m afraid I need to ask you to fetch them, the officer said.

And I’m afraid I have to refuse. They’ve asked to be left alone. They’ve made it clear. They’re finally resting. I’m sure you understand. Have you any children, Constable? Because when one loses a child, one reels, and they’re reeling.

This wasn’t exactly true, but the truth would hardly garner sympathy. The thought of her mother and her father going at each other in Santo’s bedroom like randy adolescents made the contents of Kerra’s stomach curdle. She didn’t want anything to do with them just now. Especially she didn’t want anything to do with her father, whom she was growing to despise more and more with each passing hour. She’d despised him for years, but nothing he’d so far done or failed to do held a candle to what was going on at the moment.

Constable McNulty had reluctantly left the information once Alan had come out of the marketing office where he’d been reviewing a commercial video. Alan had said, “What is it, Kerra? May I help?” and he sounded firm and sure of himself, as if the past sixteen hours were continuing to transform him. “I’m Kerra’s fiancé,” he told the policeman. “Is there something I can do for you?”

Fiancé? Kerra had thought. Kerra’s fiancé? Where was that coming from?

Before she’d been able to correct him, the cop had given them the information. Murder. Several pieces of Santo’s kit had been tampered with. The sling and two chock stones as well. The police were going to want to interview the family first.

Alan had said the expected: “You aren’t supposing one of the family…?” and managed to sound perplexed and outraged simultaneously.

Everyone who knew Santo would be interviewed, Constable McNulty told them. He appeared rather excited about this, and it had come to Kerra how tediously boring the policeman’s life must be in Casvelyn in the off-season, with three-quarters of the summer population gone and those who remained either in their houses huddling against the Atlantic storms or committing only the occasional minor traffic violation to break the monotony of a constable’s life. All of Santo’s belongings would need to be examined, the constable told them. A family history would be constructed, and-

That had been enough for Kerra. Family history? That would certainly be illuminating. A family history would show it all: bats in the belfry and skeletons in the closet, people who were permanently estranged and people who were just permanently strange.

All of this gave her another reason to ride. And then came Cadan and the conversation with Cadan, which left her feeling blamed.

After her words with him, she fetched her bike. Her father met her outside, Alan coming out behind him with an expression that said he’d passed along the information about Santo. So Alan didn’t need to mouth the words he knows although that’s what he did. Kerra wanted to tell him he’d had no right to tell her father anything. Alan wasn’t a member of the family.

Ben Kerne said to Kerra, “Where are you going? I’d like you to stay here.” He sounded exhausted. He looked it, too.

Did you fuck her again? was what Kerra wished to use as reply. Did she slip on her little red negligee and crook her finger and did you melt and not see anything else, not even that Santo is dead? Good way to forget for a few minutes, eh? Works a trick. Always has done.

But she said none of that although she was positively itching to flay him. She said, “I need a ride just now. I’ve got to-”

“You’re needed here.”

Kerra glanced at Alan. He was watching her. Surprisingly, he indicated by cocking his head in the direction of the road that she should ride, no matter her father’s desires. Although she didn’t want to be, she was grateful for this display of understanding. Alan was, in this at least, fully on her side.

“Does she need something from me?” Kerra asked her father.

He looked behind him, up at the windows of the family’s flat. The curtains of the master bedroom were blocking out the daylight. Behind them, Dellen was coping in her Dellen way: on the crushed spines of her near relations.

“She’s in black,” Kerra’s father said.

“That’ll doubtless be a large disappointment to any number of people,” Kerra replied.

Ben Kerne looked at her with eyes so anguished that for a moment Kerra regretted her words. Not his fault came to her. But at the same time there were things that were her father’s fault, not the least of which was that they were even talking about her mother and, in doing so, that they were reduced to using a carefully chosen set of words, like semaphores and they two distant communicators with a secret language all their own.

She sighed, an aggrieved party unwilling to apologise. That he, too, was aggrieved could not be allowed to count. She said, “Do you?”

“What?”

“Need something from me. Because she doesn’t. She’ll be wanting you. And no doubt vice versa.”

Ben made no reply. He went back into the hotel without another word, shouldering past Alan, who looked rather like a man trying to decipher the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Alan said, “A little harsh, that, Kerra. Don’t you think?”

The last thing Kerra wanted to show Alan was gratitude for his previous understanding, so she welcomed the criticism. She said, “If you’ve decided to remain at work here, you need to become a little more familiar with the mechanism of your employment, okay?”

Like her father, he looked struck. She was happy he felt the sting of her words. He said, “I’ve got it that you’re angry. But what I haven’t got is why. Not the anger part of it, but the afraid part of it that’s fueling the anger. I can’t suss that one. I’ve tried. I spent most of last night awake, trying.”

“Poor you,” she said.

“Kerra, none of this is like you. What’re you frightened about?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I’m not frightened at all. You’re trying to talk about subjects you don’t understand.”

“Then help me understand.”

“Not my job,” she said. “I warned you off.”

“You warned me off working here. This-you, what’s happening with you, and what happened to Santo-isn’t part of my employment.”

She smiled briefly. “Stay round, then. If you haven’t already, you’re soon to find out what’s part and parcel of your employment. Now if you’ll excuse me, I want a ride. I doubt you’ll still be here when I return.”

“Are you coming over tonight?”

She raised her eyebrows. “I think that part might be finished between us.”

“What are you saying? Something’s happened since yesterday. Beyond Santo, something’s happened.”

“Oh, I do know that.” She mounted her bike, gearing it to take the rise of the driveway, heading into town.

She coursed along the southeast edge of St. Mevan Down where unmowed grass bent heavily with a weight of raindrops and a few dogs romped, grateful for a respite in the rain. She, too, was grateful, and she decided she’d head roughly in the direction of Polcare Cove. She told herself she had no intention of going to the place where Santo had died, but if she ended up there by chance, she would consider it meant to be. She wouldn’t pay attention to the route. She would merely blast along the lanes as fast as she could, turning when she felt like turning, continuing straight on when she fancied that.

She knew she needed a source of energy to do the sort of ride she had in mind, however, so when she saw Casvelyn of Cornwall (County’s Number One Pasty) to the right on the corner of Burn View Lane, she coasted over to the bakery, a large operation that supplied pasties up and down the coast to restaurants, shops, pubs, and smaller bakeries unable to bake their own. The business comprised an industrial-size kitchen in the back and a shop in the front, with ten bakers working in one area and two shop assistants in the other.

Kerra leaned her bike against the front window, a stunning monument to pasties, bread loaves, pastry, and scones. She ducked inside, deciding in advance that she would have a steak-and-beer pasty and she’d eat it on her way out of town.

At the counter, she placed her order with a girl whose impressive thighs looked like the result of their owner having sampled the products far too often. The requested pasty was being bagged and rung up at the till when the other shop assistant emerged with a tray of fresh goods to go into the display case. Kerra looked up as the kitchen door swung closed. At the same moment as her glance fell on the girl with the tray, that girl’s glance fell upon Kerra. Her steps faltered. She stood expressionless with the tray extended in front of her.

“Madlyn,” Kerra said. It came to her much later how stupid she sounded. “I didn’t know that you worked here.”

Madlyn Angarrack went to one of the display cases and opened it, sliding fresh pasties from the tray she held. She said to the other girl, who was in the process of bagging Kerra’s purchase, “What sort is that, Shar?” Her voice was curt.

“Steak and beer.” Kerra was the one to answer. And then, “Madlyn, I was asking Cadan about you only twenty minutes ago. How long’ve you been-”

“Give her one of these, Shar. They’re fresher.”

Shar looked from Madlyn to Kerra, as if taking a reading off the tension in the air and wondering from which direction it was flowing. But she did as she was told.

Kerra took her pasty over to where Madlyn was lining up display trays neatly. She said to her, “When did you start working here?”

Madlyn glanced her way. “Why d’you want to know?” She shut the lid of the display case with a decisive snap. “Would that make some sort of difference to you?” She used the back of her wrist to move some hair from her face. It was short-her hair-quite dark and curly. At this time of year, the copper that streaked it from exposure to the summer sun was missing. It came to Kerra how remarkably like Cadan his sister looked: the same colour of hair that was thick with curls, the same olive skin, the same dark eyes, the same shape of face. The Angarracks were thus nothing like the Kerne siblings. Physically, as well as in every other way, Kerra and Santo had been nothing alike.

The sudden thought of Santo made Kerra blink, hard. She didn’t want him there: not in her mind and definitely not near her heart. Madlyn seemed to take this as a reaction to her question and to its inimical tone because she went on to say, “I heard about Santo. I’m sorry he fell.”

Yet it seemed pro forma, too much an obligation performed. Because of this, Kerra said more brutally than she otherwise would have done, “He didn’t fall. He was murdered. The police have been to tell us a little while ago. They didn’t know at first, when he was found. They couldn’t tell.”

Madlyn’s mouth opened as if she would speak, her lips clearly forming the first part of murdered, but she did not say it. Instead she said, “Why?”

“Because they had to look at his climbing kit, didn’t they. Under their microscopes or whatever. I expect you can figure out the rest.”

“I mean why would someone murder Santo?”

“I find it hard to believe you, of all people, would even ask that question.”

“Are you saying…” Madlyn balanced the empty tray vertically, against her hip. “We were friends, Kerra.”

“I think you were a lot more than friends.”

“I’m not talking about Santo. I’m talking about you and me. We were friends. Close friends. You might say best friends. So how you can think that I’d ever-”

“You ended our friendship.”

“I started seeing your brother. That was all I did. Full stop.”

“Yes. Well.”

“And you defined everything after that. No one sees my brother and remains my friend. That was your position. Only you didn’t even say that much, did you? You just made the cut with your rusty scissors and that was it. No more friendship when someone does something you don’t want them to do.”

“It was for your own good.”

“Oh really? What? Getting cut off from someone…getting cut off from a sister? Because that’s what you were to me, all right? A sister.”

“You could have…” Kerra didn’t know how to go on. She also couldn’t see how they’d come to this. She’d wanted to talk to Madlyn, it was true. That was why she’d earlier gone to Cadan about his sister. But the conversation she’d been having with Madlyn Angarrack in her brain had not resembled the conversation she was having with Madlyn Angarrack now. That mental conversation had not taken place in the presence of a second shop assistant who was attending their colloquy with the sort of rabid spectator’s interest that precedes a girl fight at a secondary school. Kerra said quietly, “It’s not as if I didn’t warn you.”

“Of what?”

“Of what it would be like for you if you and my brother…” Kerra glanced at Shar. There was a glitter to her eyes that was discomfiting. “You know what I’m talking about. I told you what he was like.”

“But what you didn’t tell me was what you were like. What you are like. Mean and vindictive. Look at you, Kerra. Have you even cried? Your own brother dead and here you are, right as could be, going about on your bike without a care in the world.”

“You seem to be coping well enough yourself,” Kerra pointed out.

“At least I didn’t want him to die.”

“Didn’t you? Why’re you here? What happened to the farm?”

“I quit the farm. All right?” Her face had gone red. Her grip on the tray she’d brought with her from the kitchen had become so tight that her knuckles were white as she went on. “Are you happy now, Kerra? Have you learned what you wanted to know? I sorted out the truth. And do you want to know how I did that, Kerra? He claimed that he’d always be honest with me, of course, but when it came to this…Oh get out of here. Get out.” She raised the tray as if to throw it.

“Hey, Mad…” Shar spoke uneasily. Doubtless, Kerra thought, the other girl had never seen the rage of which Madlyn Angarrack was fully capable. Doubtless Shar had never opened a postal package and discovered within it pictures of herself with her head cut off, pictures of herself with her eyeballs stabbed by the lead of a pencil, handwritten notes and two birthday cards once saved but now smeared with faeces, a newspaper article about the head of instructors at Adventures Unlimited with bollocks and shit written in red pencil across it. No return address, but none had been needed. Nor had been any other sort of message, when the intentions of the sender were so clearly illustrated by the contents of the envelope in which they’d come.

This quality in her former friend comprised another reason that Kerra had wanted to talk to Madlyn Angarrack. Kerra might have hated her brother, but she also loved him. It wasn’t a matter of blood being thicker. But it was still and always a matter of blood.