Careless in Red

Chapter Twenty-eight

THEY DROVE WEST. THEY TALKED VERY LITTLE. WHAT LYNLEY wanted to know was why she had lied about details that could be so easily checked upon. Paul the primate keeper, for instance. It was a matter of a simple phone call to discover there was no Paul caring for primates at the zoo. Did she not see how that looked to the police?

She glanced at him. She’d not worn her contact lenses on this day, and a bit of her sandy hair had fallen across the top of the frames of her glasses. She said, “I suppose I hadn’t thought of you as a cop, Thomas. And the answers to the questions you asked me-and the questions you had in your head but didn’t ask me-were private, weren’t they. They had nothing to do with Santo Kerne’s death.”

“But keeping those answers to yourself made you suspect. You must see that.”

“I was willing to take the risk.”

They drove for a time in silence. The landscape altered as they approached the coast. From rough and rock-studded farmland whose ownership was delineated with irregular drystone walls patchy with grey-green lichen, the undulations of pasture and field gave way to hillside and combe, and a horizon that was marked with the great and derelict engine houses of Cornwall’s disused mines. She took a route into St. Agnes, a slate and granite village that tumbled down a hillside above the sea, its few steep streets twisting appealingly and lined with terrace cottages and with shops, all of them leading inexorably and ultimately, like the course of a river, down to the pebbled stretch of Trevaunance Cove. Here, at low water, tractors pulled skiffs into the sea and, at three-quarters tide, good-size swells from the west and southwest brought surfers from surrounding areas to jostle with each other for a place on ten-foot waves. But instead of ending up at the cove, where Lynley thought she’d been heading, she chose a direction out of town, driving north, following signs that were posted for Wheal Kitty.

He said to her, “I couldn’t ignore the fact that you lied about recognising Santo Kerne when you saw his body. Why did you do that? Don’t you see how that threw suspicion on you?”

“At the moment that couldn’t be important. Saying I knew him would have led to more questions. Answering questions would have left me pointing the finger…” She glanced his way. Her expression was irked, disbelieving. “Have you honestly no idea what it might feel like to be a person who involves people she knows in a police investigation? Surely you must understand how that might feel? You’re not insensate. There were confidential matters…There were things I’d promised to keep to myself. Oh, what am I saying? Your sergeant would have put you into the picture by now. Doubtless you had breakfast with her, if you didn’t speak to her last night. I can’t imagine she’d keep you in the dark about much.”

“There were car tracks in your garage. More than one set.”

“Santo’s. Aldara’s. Your sergeant would have told you about Aldara, I expect. Santo’s lover. The fact that they used my cottage.”

“Why didn’t you just explain that from the first? Had you done so-”

“What? You would have stopped short of looking into my past, sending your sergeant to Falmouth to question the neighbours, phoning the zoo, doing…What else? Have you spoken to Lok as well? Did you track him down? Did you ask him if he’s truly crippled or if I made that up? It does sound fantastic, doesn’t it, a Chinese brother with spinal bifida. Brilliant but bent. What an intriguing story.”

“I know he’s at Oxford.” Lynley was regretful, but there was no help for what he’d done. It was part of the job. “That’s the extent.”

“And you discovered this…how?”

“It’s a small matter, Daidre. There’s cooperation between police agencies all over the world, let alone in our own country. It’s easier now than it ever was.”

“I see.”

“You don’t. You can’t. You’re not a cop.”

“Neither were you. Neither are you. Or has all of that changed?”

He couldn’t answer that question. He didn’t know the answer. Perhaps some things were in the blood and could not be shaken off merely because one desired to do so.

They said nothing more. At one point, in his peripheral vision, he saw her raise a hand to her cheek and his fantasy had her weeping. But when he looked at her directly, he saw that she was merely seeing to the hair that had fallen over the frame of her glasses. She shoved it impatiently behind her ears.

At Wheal Kitty, they did not approach the engine house or the buildings that surrounded it. These sat at a distance and cars were parked in front of some of them. Unlike nearly all of the old engine houses across the county, Wheal Kitty’s had been restored. It was now in use as a place of business and other businesses had sprung up round it, these in long, low buildings looking nothing like the period from which Wheal Kitty had come but still built of the local stone. Lynley was glad to see this. He always felt a twinge of sadness when he looked at the ghostly smokestacks and broken-down engine houses that marked the landscape. It was good to see them put to use again, for round St. Agnes was a veritable graveyard of mining shafts, particularly above Trevaunance Coombe, where a ghost town of engine houses and their accompanying smokestacks marked the landscape like silent witnesses to the land’s recovery from man’s assault upon it. And the land itself was a place of heather and gorse thriving amidst grey, granite outcroppings, providing nesting spots for herring gulls, jackdaws, and carrion crows. There were few trees. The windswept nature of the place did not encourage them.

To the north of Wheal Kitty, the road narrowed. It became a lane first and ultimately a track, coursing downward into a steeply sided gully. Barely the width of Daidre’s Vauxhall, it descended in a series of switchbacks, guarded by boulders to their left and a fast-moving stream to their right. It finally ended at an engine house far more ruined than any they’d seen on the trip from Redruth. It was wildly overgrown with vegetation; just beyond it, a smokestack shot skyward in a similar state.

“Here we are,” Daidre said. But she didn’t get out of the car. Instead, she turned to him and she spoke quietly. “Imagine this,” she said. “A traveller decides he wants to stop travelling because unlike his parents and their parents and the parents before them, he wants something different out of life. He has an idea that’s not very practical because nothing much he’s done has ever been practical, frankly, but he wants to try it. So he comes to this place, convinced, of all things, that there’s a living to be had from mining tin. He reads very poorly, but he’s done what homework he can on the subject, and he knows about streaming. D’you know what tin streaming is, Thomas?”

“Yes.” Lynley looked beyond her, over her shoulder. Some seventy yards from where they were parked, an old caravan stood. Once white, now it was mostly laced the colour of rust, which streaked from its roof and from its windows at which yellow curtains printed with flowers drooped. Accompanying this impermanent structure were a tumbledown shed and a tarpaper-roofed cupboard that looked like an outdoor loo. “It’s drawing tin from small stones in a stream and following that stream to larger stones.”

“Shode stones, yes,” Daidre said. “And then following them to the lode itself but if you can’t find the lode, it’s a small matter really because you still have the tin in the smaller stones and that can be made into…whatever you wish to make it into. Or you can sell it to metalworkers or jewellers, but the point is, you can support yourself-barely-if you work hard enough and you get lucky. So that’s what this traveller decides to do. Of course, it takes a lot more work than he anticipated and it’s not a particularly wholesome kind of life and there are interruptions: town councils, the government, assorted do-gooders coming round to inspect the premises. This causes something of a distraction, so the traveller ends up travelling anyway, in order to find a proper stream in a proper location somewhat hidden away where he can be allowed to look for his tin in peace. But no matter where he goes, there are still problems because he’s got three children and a wife to provide for and since he alone can’t provide what needs to be provided, they all must help. He’s decided he will give the children lessons at home to save time from their having to be gone for hours to school every day. His wife will be their teacher. But life is hard and the instruction doesn’t actually happen and neither does much else in the way of nurturing. Like decent food. Or proper clothing. Jabs for this or that disease. Dentistry. Anything, really. The sorts of things typical children take for granted. When social workers come round, the children hide, and finally, because the family keeps moving, they slip through the cracks, all three of them. For years, actually. When they finally come to light, the eldest girl is thirteen years old and the younger two-the twins, a boy and a girl-are ten. They can’t read, they can’t write, they’re covered in sores, their teeth are quite bad, they’ve never seen a doctor, and the girl-by this I mean the thirteen-year-old-actually has no hair. It hasn’t been shaved. It’s fallen out. They’re removed at once. Large hue and cry. Local newspapers covering the story, complete with pictures. The twins are placed with a family in Plymouth. The thirteen-year-old is sent to Falmouth. There she’s ultimately adopted by the couple who begin as her foster parents. She is so…so filled up by their love for her that she puts her past behind her, completely. She changes her name to something she thinks of as pretty. Of course, she has no idea how to spell it, so she misspells it and her new parents are charmed. Daidre it is, they say. Welcome to your new life, Daidre. And she never goes back to visit who she was. Never. She puts it behind her and she never speaks of it and no one-no one-in her present life knows a thing about it because it is her deepest shame. Can you understand this? No, how could you. But that’s how it is and that’s how it remains until her sister tracks her down and insists-begs-that she come to this place, the very last place on earth that she can bear to come, the one place she has promised herself that no one from her present life will ever learn of.”

“Is that why you lied to DI Hannaford about your route to Cornwall?” Lynley asked her.

Daidre didn’t reply. She opened her door, and Lynley did likewise. They stood for a moment surveying the home she’d left eighteen years earlier. Aside from the caravan-unimaginably once the domicile of five people-there was little else. A ramshackle building seemed to hold the equipment for extracting tin from the stones in which it was found, and leaning up against this were three wheelbarrows of ancient vintage along with two bicycles with rusty panniers hanging from their sides. At one time, someone had planted a few terra-cotta pots with geraniums, but these were languishing, two of them on their sides and cracked, with the plants sprawled out like supplicants begging for a merciful end.

“My name,” Daidre said, “was Edrek Udy. Do you know the meaning of Edrek, Thomas?”

He said that he didn’t. He found that he didn’t want her to go further. He was filled with sadness that he’d unthinkingly invaded a life she’d worked so hard to forget.

“Edrek,” she said, “means regret in Cornish. Come along and meet my family.”

JAGO REETH DIDN’T LOOK the least bit surprised. He also didn’t look worried. He looked as he’d looked the first time Bea had come upon him at LiquidEarth: willing to be helpful. She wondered if they were wrong about him.

He said that they could indeed have a word with him. They could join him and his mate Selevan Penrule there in the inglenook or they could ask for a more private location.

Bea said she reckoned they’d have their conversation at the station in Casvelyn if he didn’t mind.

He said politely, “’Fraid I do mind. ’M I under arrest, madam?”

It was the madam that gave her pause. It was the way he said it: with the tone of someone who believes he’s sitting in the catbird seat.

He went on with, “Because ’less I’m mistaken, I don’t need to accept your hospitality, if you know what I mean.”

“Is there some reason you’d prefer not to talk to us, Mr. Reeth?”

“Not a bit ’f that,” he said. “But if we’re to talk we’ll need to do it where I feel a comfort I’m not likely to feel in a police station, if you know what I mean.” He smiled affably, showing teeth long stained by tea and coffee. “Get all tightened up if I’m indoors too long. Tightened up, I can’t speak much at all. And I know this: Inside a station, I’m likely to be tightened permanently. If you know what I mean.”

Bea narrowed her eyes. “Is that so?”

“Bit of a claustrophobe, I am.”

Reeth’s companion was listening to all this agog, his gaze going from Bea to Jago to Bea. He said, “Wha’s this about then, Jago?”

To which Bea replied, “Would you like to bring your friend into the picture?”

Reeth said, “They want a word about Santo Kerne. ’Nother word. I’ve spoke to them already.” Then to Bea, “And I’m dead chuffed to do it again, eh. Often as you like. Let’s just take ourselves out of the bar…We c’n decide where and when we’ll do our speaking.”

DS Havers was about to say something. She’d opened her mouth when Bea gave her the look. Hold off, it said. They would see what Jago Reeth was up to.

They followed him into the inn’s entry, the bar door closing behind them. They left the barman wiping out glasses and watching curiously. They left Selevan Penrule saying to Jago Reeth, “Have a care, mate.”

When they were alone, Jago Reeth said in a voice altogether different from the one they’d heard him use not only a moment ago but also in their earlier conversations with him, “I’m afraid you didn’t answer my question. Am I under arrest, Inspector?”

“Should you be?” Bea asked. “And thank you for discarding the persona.”

“Inspector, please. Don’t play me for a fool. You’ll find I know my rights better than most. Indeed, you can say I’ve made a study of my rights. So you can arrest me if you like and pray you’ve got enough to hold me at least six hours. Or nine at the most since you yourself would be doing the review after those first six hours, wouldn’t you. But after that…What superintendent on earth will authorise a questioning period of twenty-four hours at this point in your investigation? So you must decide what it is you want from me. If it’s conversation, then I must tell you that conversation isn’t about to happen inside a lockup. And if it’s a lockup that you want, then I’ll have to insist on a solicitor’s presence and I’m likely to employ my primary right at that point, one so often forgotten by those wishing to be helpful.”

“And that is?”

“Don’t please play ignorant with me. You know as well as I that I needn’t say another word to you.”

“Despite how that will look?”

“Frankly, I don’t care how it looks. Now what would you and your assistant here prefer? A frank conversation or my kind and silent gaze resting upon you or the wall or the floor in the police station? And if it’s to be a conversation, then I-and not you-will determine where it happens.”

“Rather sure of yourself, Mr. Reeth. Or should I call you Mr. Parsons?”

“Inspector, you may call me whatever you like.” He rubbed his hands together, the gesture one would use to rid the palms of flour in baking or soil in planting. “So. What’s it to be?”

At least, Bea told herself, she had the answer to wily or ignorant. “As you wish, Mr. Reeth. Shall we ask for a private room here at the inn?”

“I’ve a better location in mind,” he told her. “If you’ll pardon me while I fetch my jacket…? There’s another exit to the bar, by the way, so you’ll want to come with me if you’re concerned I might do a runner.”

Bea nodded to DS Havers. The sergeant looked only too willing to accompany Jago Reeth just about anywhere. The two of them disappeared into the bar for the length of time it took Jago Reeth to fetch his belongings and have whatever word he felt necessary with his friend in the inglenook. They emerged and Jago led the way outside. They’d have to drive to get there, he said. Had either one of them a mobile, by the way? He asked this last with deliberate courtesy. Obviously, he knew they carried mobile phones. Bea expected him to make the requirement that they leave their mobile phones behind, which she was about to tell him was a complete nonstarter. But then he made an unexpected request.

“I’d like Mr. Kerne to be present.”

“That,” Bea told him, “is not about to happen.”

Again the smile. “Oh, I’m afraid it must, Inspector Hannaford. Unless, of course, you wish to arrest me and hold me for those nine hours you have available to you. Now as to Mr. Kerne-”

“No,” Bea said.

“A short drive to Alsperyl. I assure you, he’ll enjoy it.”

“I won’t ask Mr. Kerne-”

“I do think you’ll find that no asking will be necessary. You merely need to make the offer: a conversation about Santo with Jago Reeth. Or with Jonathan Parsons, if you prefer. Mr. Kerne will be happy to have that conversation. Any father who wants to know exactly what happened to his son on the day-or the night-he died would have that conversation. If you know what I mean.”

Sergeant Havers said, “Guv,” in an urgent tone.

Bea knew she wanted a word and that word would doubtless be one of caution. Don’t place this bloke in a position of power. He doesn’t determine the course of affairs. We do. We’re the cops, after all.

But believing that was sophistry at this point. The course was caution, to be sure. But it was going to have to be caution employed in a scenario devised by their suspect. Bea didn’t like this, but she didn’t see another route to take other than to let him go on his way. They could indeed hold him in custody for nine hours, but while nine hours in a cell or even alone in an interview room might unnerve some people and prompt them to talk, she was fairly certain nine hours or ninety were not going to unnerve Jago Reeth.

She said to him, “Lead on, Mr. Reeth. I’ll phone Mr. Kerne from the car.”

ONLY TWO OF THEM were inside the caravan. A woman lay on a narrow banquette, a furry-looking blanket tucked round her and her head on a caseless pillow whose edges were stained from perspiration. She was an older woman, although it was impossible to tell how old because she was emaciated and her hair was thin, grey, and uncombed. Her colour was very bad. Her lips were scaly.

Her companion was a younger woman who could have been any age between twenty-five and forty. With quite short hair of a colour and a condition that peroxide encouraged, she wore a long pleated skirt of a tartan pattern heavily reliant on blue and yellow, red knee socks, and a heavy pullover. She had no shoes on and she wore no makeup. She squinted in their direction as they entered, which suggested she either regularly wore or currently needed glasses.

She said, “Mum, here’s Edrek.” She sounded weary. “Got a man with her as well. Not a doctor, are you? Not brought a doctor, have you, Edrek? I told you we’re finished with doctors.”

The woman on the banquette stirred her legs slightly but did not turn her head. She was gazing at the water stains that hovered above them, on the ceiling of the caravan, like clouds ready to rain down rust. Her breathing was shallow and quick, as evidenced by the rise and fall of her hands, which were clasped in a disturbing corpselike posture high on her chest.

Daidre spoke. “This is Gwynder, Thomas. My younger sister. This is my mother, my mother till I was thirteen, that is. She’s called Jen Udy.”

Lynley glanced at Daidre. She spoke as if he and she were observers of a tableau on a stage. Lynley said to Gwynder, “Thomas Lynley. I’m not a doctor. Just a…friend.”

Gwynder said, “Posh voice,” and continued what she’d been doing when they entered, which was carrying a glass to the woman on the banquette. It contained some sort of milky liquid. She said in reference to it, “Want you drinking this, Mum.”

Jen Udy shook her head. Two of her fingers rose, then fell.

“Where’s Goron?” Daidre asked. “And where’s…your father?”

Gwynder said, “Your father ’s well, no matter what you like.” Although her choice of words could have carried a bitter undercurrent, they did not do so.

“Where are they?”

“Where else would they be? Daylight.”

“At the stream or in the shed?”

“Don’t know, do I. They’re wherever. Mum, you got to drink this. Good for you.”

The fingers lifted and fell again. The head turned slightly, trying to pull itself towards the back of the banquette and out of sight.

“Are they not helping you care for her, Gwynder?” Daidre asked.

“Told you. Past the point of caring for her, aren’t we, and on to the point of waiting. You c’n make a difference in that.” Gwynder sat at the top of the banquette, by the stained pillow. She’d placed the glass on a ledge that ran along a window whose thin curtains were shut against the daylight, shedding a jaundiced glow against her mother’s face. She lifted both the pillow and her mother’s head and slid herself under them. She reached for the glass again. She held this to Jen Udy’s lips with one hand and with the other-curved round her head-she forced her mother’s mouth to open. Liquid went in. Liquid came out. The woman’s throat muscles moved as she swallowed at least part of it.

“You need to get her out of here,” Daidre said. “This place isn’t good for her. And it isn’t good for you. It’s unhealthy and cold and miserable.”

“Know that, don’t I?” Gwynder said. “That’s why I want to take her-”

“You can’t possibly believe that will do any good.”

“It’s what she wants.”

“Gwynder, she’s not religious. Miracles are for believers. To take her all the way to…Look at her. She doesn’t even have the strength for the journey. Look at her, for heaven’s sake.”

“Miracles are for everyone. And they’re what she wants. What she needs. ’F she doesn’t go, she’s going to die.”

“She is dying.”

“’S that what you want? Oh, I expect it is. You with your posh boyfriend there. Can’t believe you even brought him down here.”

“He’s not my…He’s a policeman.”

Gwynder slowly clutched at the front of her pullover as she took in this detail. She said, “Why’ve you brought…?” And to Lynley, “We’re doing nought wrong. Can’t make us leave. The town council know…We’ve the rights of travellers. Aren’t bothering anyone.” And to Daidre, “Are there more of them out there? You come to take her? She won’t go without a fight. She’ll begin to scream. Can’t believe that you would do this to her. After everything…”

“After what exactly?” Daidre’s voice sounded pinched. “After everything she did for me? For you? For all three of us? You seem to have a very short memory.”

“And yours goes back to the start of time, eh?” Gwynder forced more of the liquid into their mother’s mouth. The result was much the same as before. What drained out of her dribbled down her cheeks and onto the pillow. Gwynder tried to sort this out by brushing it off, with little success.

“She can be in hospice,” Daidre said. “It doesn’t have to go on this way.”

“We’re meant to leave her there alone? Without her family? Lock her up and wait till they give us the word she’s gone? Well, I won’t do that, will I. And if you come to tell me tha’s the limit of what you mean to do to help her, you leave with your fancy man. Whoever he says he is. Because he’s not a cop. Cops don’t talk like him.”

“Gwynder, please see reason.”

“Get out, Edrek. Asked for your help and you said no. Tha’s how it is and we’ll cope from here.”

“I’ll help within reason. But I won’t send the lot of you to Lourdes or Medjugorje or Knock or anywhere else because it isn’t reasonable, it doesn’t make sense, there are no miracles-”

“Are! And one could happen to her.”

“She’s dying of pancreatic cancer. No one walks away from that. She’s got weeks or days or perhaps even hours and…Is this how you want her to die? Like this? In this place? Inside this hovel? Without air or light or even a window to look at the sea?”

“With people who love her.”

“There is no love in this place. There never was.”

“Don’t you say that!” Gwynder began to weep. “Just because…just because…Don’t you say that.”

Daidre made a move towards her but stopped. She raised a hand to her mouth. Behind her glasses, Lynley saw that her eyes filled with tears.

“Leave us to our weeks or days or hours, then,” Gwynder said. “Just go.”

“Do you need-”

“Go!”

Lynley put his hand on Daidre’s arm. She looked at him. She removed her glasses and wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her coat, which she’d not removed. He said to her, “Come,” and he urged her gently to the door.

“Hard fucking cunt,” Gwynder said to their backs. “D’you hear me, Edrek? Hard fucking cunt. Keep your money. Keep your fancy boy. Keep your life. Don’t need you or want you, so don’t come back. Hear me, Edrek? I’m sorry I even asked you in the first place. Don’t come back.”

Outside the caravan, they paused. Lynley saw that tremors ran through Daidre’s body. He put his arm round her shoulders. “I’m terribly sorry,” he said.

“Who the hell’re you lot?” The question came in a shout. Lynley looked in its direction. Two men had emerged from the shed. They would be Goron and Daidre’s father, he decided. They approached in a hurry. “Wha’s this, then?” the older man said.

The younger said nothing. There seemed to be something wrong with him. Openly, he scratched at his testicles. He snuffled loudly and, like his twin in the caravan, he squinted. He nodded at them in a friendly fashion. His father did not.

“What d’you lot want?” Udy asked. His gaze went from Lynley to Daidre and back to Lynley. He seemed to be assessing everything about them but most particularly their shoes for some reason. Lynley saw why when he looked at Udy’s own feet. He wore boots but they were long past their prime. The soles were split at the toes.

“Paying a call…” Daidre had stepped away from Lynley’s embrace. Face-to-face with her father, she bore no resemblance either to him or to her brother.

“What you doing here, then?” Udy said. “We got no need of do-gooders round here. We make it on our own and always have done. So you lot clear out. This’s private property, this is, and there’s a sign posted.”

It came to Lynley that while the women in the caravan knew who Daidre was, the men did not, that for some reason Gwynder had sought and found her sister on her own, perhaps knowing at some level that her mission was futile. Hence, Udy had no idea that he was speaking to his own daughter. But when Lynley considered this, it seemed reasonable. The thirteen-year-old who had been his daughter was someone from the past, not the accomplished, educated woman before him. Lynley waited for Daidre to identify herself. She did not do so.

Instead, she gathered herself together, fumbling with the zip on her jacket, as if with the need to do something with her hands. She said to the man, “Yes. Well, we’re leaving.”

“You do that,” he said. “We got a business we’re running here and we don’t fancy trespassers comin’ round on the off-season. We open in June and there’ll be bits and bobs aplenty for sale then.”

“Thank you. I’ll remember that.”

“And mind the sign as well. If it says no trespassing, that’s what it bloody means. And it’ll say no trespassing till we’re opened, understand?”

“Certainly. We understand.”

There was actually no posted sign that Lynley had seen, either one forbidding trespass or one indicating this desolate spot was a place of business. But there seemed little enough reason to point out the man’s delusion to him. Far wiser to clear out and to put this place and its people and their way of life behind them. He understood, then, that this was exactly what Daidre had done. He also saw what her struggle now was.

He said, “Come away,” and he put his arm round her shoulders once again and led her in the direction of her car. He could feel the stares of the two men behind them and, for reasons he didn’t wish to consider just then, he hoped they wouldn’t realise who Daidre was. He didn’t know what would happen if they realised it. Nothing dangerous, surely. At least nothing dangerous as one typically thought of danger. But there were other hazards here besides the removal of one’s personal safety. There was the emotional minefield that lay between Daidre and these people, and he felt an urgency to remove her from it.

When they returned to the car, Lynley said he would drive. Daidre shook her head. She said, “No, no. I’m fine.” When they climbed inside, though, she didn’t start the engine at once. Instead, she pulled some tissues from the glove box and blew her nose. Then she rested her arms on the top of the steering wheel and peered out at the caravan in the distance.

“So you see,” she said.

He made no reply. Again, her hair had fallen over the frames of her glasses. Again, he wanted to push it away from her face. Again, he did not.

“They want to go to Lourdes. They want a miracle. They have nothing else to hang their hopes on and certainly no money to finance what they want. Which is where I come in. Which is why Gwynder found me. So do I do this for them? Do I forgive these people for what they did, for how we lived, for what they couldn’t be? Am I responsible for them now? What do I owe them besides life itself? I mean the fact of life and not what I’ve done with it. And what does it mean, anyway, to owe someone for having given birth to you? Surely that’s not the most difficult part of taking on parenthood, is it? I hardly think so. Which means the rest of it-the rest of being a parent-they utterly mangled.”

He did touch her then. He did what he’d seen her do herself: take the hair and tuck it back. His fingers touched the curve of her ear. He said, “Why did they come back, your brother and sister? Were they never adopted?”

“There was…They called it an accident, their foster parents. They called it Goron playing with a plastic bag, but I think there was more to it than that. It probably should have been called-whatever ‘it’ was-disciplining an overactive little boy in the wrong way. In any event, he was damaged and deemed unadoptable by people who saw him and met him. Gwynder might have been adopted but she wouldn’t be parted from him. So they moved from home to home together, through the system, for years. When they were old enough, they came back here.” She smiled bleakly as she looked at him. “I wager this place-as well as this story-isn’t much like what you’re used to, is it, Thomas?”

“I’m not certain it matters.” He wanted to say more but he was unsure how to put it so he settled with, “Are you willing to call me Tommy, Daidre? My family and friends-”

She held up her hand. “I think not,” she said.

“Because of this?”

“No. Because this matters to me.”

JAGO REETH MADE IT clear that he wanted Ben Kerne alone, with no hangers-on from his family present. He suggested Hedra’s Hut for the venue, and he used the word venue as if a performance would be given there.

Bea told him he was a bloody damn fool if he expected the lot of them to traipse out to the sea cliff where that ancient perch was.

He replied that fool or not, if she wanted a conversation with him, he knew his rights and he was going to employ them.

She told him that one of his rights was not the right to decide where their meeting with Ben Kerne would occur.

He smiled and begged to differ with her. It might not have been his right, he said, but the fact of the matter was that she probably wanted him to be in a location where he felt easy with conversation. And Hedra’s Hut was that location. They’d be cosy enough there. Out of the cold and the wind. Snug as four bugs rolled in the same rug, if she knew what he meant.

“He’s got something up his sleeve,” was Sergeant Havers’s assessment of the situation once they set off trailing Jago Reeth’s Defender in the direction of Alsperyl. They’d wait at the village church for Mr. Kerne, Jago had informed them. “Best phone the superintendent and let him know where we’re going,” Havers went on. “I’d have backup as well. Those blokes from the station…? Got to be a way they can hide themselves round the place.”

“Not unless they disguise themselves as cows, sheep, or gulls,” Bea told her. “This bloke’s thought of all the angles.”

Lynley, Bea found, wasn’t answering his mobile, which made her curse the man and wonder why she’d bothered to give him a phone in the first place. “Where’s the blasted man got off to?” she asked and then replied to her own question with a grim declaration of, “Well, I wager we know the answer to that, don’t we.”

At Alsperyl, which was no great distance from the Salthouse Inn, they remained in their respective cars, parked close to the village church. When Ben Kerne finally joined them, they’d been sitting there for nearly thirty minutes. During this time, Bea had phoned the station to give the word where they were and phoned Ray to do likewise.

Ray said, “Beatrice, are you barking mad? D’you have any idea how irregular this is?”

“I’ve got half a dozen ideas,” she told him. “I’ve also got sod all to work with unless this bloke gives me something I can use.”

“You can’t think he intends-”

“I don’t know what he intends. But there will be three of us and one of him and if we can’t manage-”

“You’ll check him for weapons?”

“I’m a fool but not a bloody fool, Ray.”

“I’m having whoever’s out on patrol in your area head to Alsperyl.”

“Don’t do that. If I need backup, I can easily phone the Casvelyn station for it.”

“I don’t care what you can and cannot do. There’s Pete to consider, and if it comes down to it, there’s myself as well. I won’t rest easy unless I know you’ve got proper backup. Christ, this is bloody irregular.”

“As you’ve said.”

“Who’s with you at present?”

“Sergeant Havers.”

“Another woman? Where the hell is Lynley? What about that sergeant from the station? He looked like he had half a wit about him. For God’s sake, Bea-”

“Ray. This bloke’s round seventy years old. He’s got some sort of palsy. If we can’t take care of ourselves round him, we need to be carted off.”

“Nonetheless-”

“Good-bye, darling.” She rang off and shoved the mobile into her bag.

Shortly after she finished her phone calls-also telling Collins and McNulty at the Casvelyn station where she was-Ben Kerne arrived. He got out of his car and zipped his windcheater to the chin. He glanced at Jago Reeth’s Defender in some apparent confusion. He then saw Bea and Havers parked next to the lichenous stone wall that defined the churchyard and he walked over to them. As he approached, they got out of the car. Jago Reeth did likewise.

Bea saw that Jago Reeth’s eyes were fixed on Santo Kerne’s father. She saw that his expression had altered from the easy affability that he’d shown them in the Salthouse Inn. Now his features fairly blazed. She imagined it was the look seasoned warriors had once worn when they finally had the necks of their enemies beneath their boots and a sword pressing into their throats.

Jago Reeth said nothing to any of them. He merely jerked his head towards a kissing gate at the west end of the car park, next to the church’s notice board.

Bea spoke. “If we’re meant to attend you, Mr. Reeth, then I have a condition as well.”

He raised an eyebrow, the extent to which he apparently intended to communicate until they got to his preferred destination.

“Put your hands on the bonnet and spread your legs. And trust me, I’m not interested in checking to see what sort of cobblers you’ve got.”

Jago cooperated. Havers and Bea patted him down. His only weapon was a biro. Havers took this and tossed it over the wall into the churchyard. Jago’s expression said, Satisfied?

Bea said, “Carry on.”

He headed in the direction of the kissing gate. He did not wait there to see if they were accompanying him. He was, apparently, perfectly certain that they would follow.

Ben Kerne said to Bea, “What’s going on? Why’ve you asked me…? Who is that, Inspector?”

“You’ve not met Mr. Reeth before this?”

“That’s Jago Reeth? Santo spoke about him. The old surfer working for Madlyn’s dad. Santo quite liked him. I’d no idea. No. I’ve not met him.”

“I doubt he’s actually a surfer although he talks the talk. He doesn’t look familiar to you?”

“Should he?”

“As Jonathan Parsons, perhaps.”

Ben Kerne’s lip parted, but he said nothing. He watched Reeth trudging towards the kissing gate. “Where’s he going?” he asked.

“Where he’s willing to talk. To us and to you.” Bea put her hand on Kerne’s arm. “But you’ve no need to listen. You’ve no need to follow him. His condition to speak to us was to have you present and I realise this is half mad and the other half dangerous. But he’s got us-that’s the cops and not you-by the short and curlies and the only way we’re going to get a word from him is to play it his way for now.”

“On the phone, you didn’t say Parsons.”

“I didn’t want you driving here like a madman. And I don’t want you like a madman now. We already have one on our hands, I believe, and two would be overwhelming. Mr. Kerne, I can’t tell you how far out on a limb we are with this entire approach so I won’t even go into it. Are you able to listen to what he has to say? More, are you willing?”

“Did he…?” Kerne seemed to search for a way to put it that wouldn’t make what he had to say into a fact he might have to accept. “Did he kill Santo?”

“That’s what we’re going to talk to him about. Are you able?”

He nodded. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his windcheater and indicated with a tilt of his head that he was ready. They set out towards the kissing gate.

On the other side of this gate, a field provided grazing for cows, and the way towards the sea edged along a barbed-wire fence. The path they walked on was muddy and uneven, marked deeply by ruts made from a tractor’s wheels. At the far end of the field lay another field, fenced off from the first by more barbed wire and accessed through yet another kissing gate. Ultimately, they walked perhaps half a mile or more and their destination was the South-West Coast Path, which crossed the second field high above the sea.

The wind was fierce here, coming onshore in continuous gusts. On these, the seabirds rose and fell. Kittiwakes called. Herring gulls replied. A lone green cormorant shot up from the cliff side as up ahead Jago Reeth approached the edge. The bird dove down, rose, and began to circle. Looking for prey, Bea thought, in the turbulent water.

They headed south on the coastal path, but within some twenty yards, a break in the gorse that stood between the path and perdition indicated a set of steep stone stairs. This, Bea saw, was their destination. Jago Reeth disappeared down them.

She said to her companions, “Hang on, then,” and she went to see where the stone steps led. She was reckoning they were a means to get to the beach, which lay some two hundred feet below the cliff top, and she intended to tell Jago Reeth that she had no intention of putting her life, Havers’s life, and Ben Kerne’s life at risk by following him down some perilous route to the water. But she found the steps went down only as far as fifteen of them could descend, and they terminated in another path, this one narrow and heavily grown on each side with gorse and sedge. It, too, headed south but for no great distance. Its conclusion was an ancient hut built partially into the face of the cliff that backed it. Jago Reeth, she saw, had just reached the hut’s doorway and swung it open. He saw her on the steps but made no further gesture. Their eyes met briefly before he ducked inside the old structure.

She returned to the top of the cliff. She spoke above the sound of the wind, the sea, and the gulls. “He’s just below, in the hut. He might well have something stowed inside, so I’m going in first. You can wait on the path, but don’t come near till I give you the word.”

She went down the steps and along the path, the gorse brushing against the legs of her trousers. She reached the hut and found that Jago had indeed prepared for this moment. Not with weapons, however. Either he or someone else had earlier supplied the hut with a spirit stove, a jug of water, and a small box of supplies. The man was, incredibly, brewing tea.

The hut was fashioned from the driftwood of wrecked ships, of which there had been countless numbers over the centuries. It was a small affair, with a bench that ran round three sides and an uneven stone floor. As long as it had been in this place, people had carved their initials into its walls, so they had the appearance now of a wooden Rosetta stone, this one immediately comprehensible and speaking both of lovers and of people whose internal insignificance made them seek an outward expression-any outward expression-that would give their existence meaning.

Bea told Reeth to step away from the spirit stove, which he did willingly enough. She checked it and the rest of his supplies, of which there were few enough: plastic cups, sugar, tea, powdered milk in sachets, one spoon for shared stirring. She was surprised the old man hadn’t thought of crumpets.

She ducked back out of the door and motioned Havers and Ben Kerne to join her. Once all four of them were inside the hut, there was barely room to move, but Jago Reeth still managed to make the tea, and he pressed a cup upon each of them, like the hostess of an Edwardian house party. Then he doused the flame on the stove and set the stove itself on the stones beneath the bench, perhaps as a way of reassuring them that he had no intention of using it as a weapon. At this, Bea decided to pat him down again for good measure. Having put the spirit stove in the hut in advance of their arrival, there was no telling what else he’d stowed in the place. But he was weaponless, as before.

With the hut’s double door shut and fastened, the sound of the wind and the gulls’ crying was muted. The atmosphere was close, and the four adults took up nearly every inch of the space. Bea said, “You’ve got us here, Mr. Reeth, at your pleasure. What is it you’d like to tell us?”

Jago Reeth held his tea in both hands. He nodded and spoke not to Bea but to Ben Kerne, and his tone was kind. “Losing a son. You’ve got my deepest sympathy. It’s the worst grief a man can know.”

“Losing any child’s a blow.” Ben Kerne sounded wary. It appeared to Bea that he was trying to read Jago Reeth. As was she. The air seemed to crackle with anticipation.

Next to Bea, Sergeant Havers took out her notebook. Bea expected Reeth to tell her to put it away, but instead the old man nodded and said, “I’ve no objection,” and to Kerne, “Have you?” When Ben shook his head, Jago added, “If you’ve come wired, Inspector, that’s fine as well. There are always things wanting documentation in a situation like this.”

Bea wanted to say what she’d earlier thought: He’d considered all the angles. But she was waiting to see, hear, or intuit the one angle he hadn’t yet considered. It had to be here somewhere, and she needed to be ready to deal with it when it raised its scaly head above the muck for a breath of air.

She said, “Do go on.”

“But there’s something worse about losing a son,” Jago Reeth said to Ben Kerne. “Unlike a daughter, a son carries the name. He’s the link between the past and the future. And it’s more, even, than just the name at the end of the day. He carries the reason for it all. For this…” He gave a look around the hut, as if the tiny building somehow contained the world and the billions of lifetimes present in the world.

“I’m not sure I make that sort of distinction,” Ben said. “Any loss…of a child…of any child…” He didn’t go on. He cleared his throat mightily.

Jago Reeth looked pleased. “Losing a son to murder is a horror, though, isn’t it? The fact of murder is almost as bad as knowing who killed him and not being able to lift a finger to bring the bloody sod to justice.”

Kerne said nothing. Nor did Bea or Barbara Havers. Bea and Kerne held their tea undrunk in their hands, and Ben Kerne set his carefully on the floor. Next to her, Bea felt Havers stir.

“That part’s bad,” Jago said. “As is the not knowing.”

“Not knowing what, exactly, Mr. Reeth?” Bea asked.

“The whys and the wherefores about it. And the hows. Bloke can spend the rest of his life tossing and turning, wondering and cursing and wishing…You know what I mean, I expect. Or if not now, you will, eh? It’s hell on earth and there’s no escaping. I feel for you, mate. For what you’re going through now and for what’s to come.”

“Thank you,” Ben Kerne said quietly. Bea had to admire him for his control. She could see how white the tops of his knuckles were.

“I knew your boy Santo. Lovely lad. Bit full of himself, like all boys are when they’re that age, eh, but lovely. And since this tragedy happened to him-”

“Since he was murdered,” Bea corrected Jago Reeth.

“Murder,” Reeth said, “is a tragedy, Inspector. No matter what kind of game of scent-and-chase you lot might think it is. It’s a tragedy, and when it happens, the only peace available is in knowing the truth of what happened and having others know it as well. If,” he added with a brief smile, “you know what I mean. And as I knew Santo, I’ve thought and thought about what happened to the lad. And I’ve decided that if an old broken-down bloke like myself can give you any peace, Mr. Kerne, that’s what I owe you.”

“You don’t owe me-”

“We all owe each other,” Jago cut in. “It’s forgetting that that leads us to tragedies.” He paused as if to let this sink in. He drained his tea and put the cup next to him on the bench. “So what I want to do is tell you how I reckon this happened to your boy. Because I’ve thought about it, see, as I’m sure you have and sure the cops here have as well. Who would’ve done this to such a fine lad, I been asking myself for days. How’d they manage it? And why?”

“None of that brings Santo back, does it?” Ben Kerne asked steadily.

“’Course not. But the knowing…the final understanding of it all: I wager there’s peace in that and that’s what I’ve got to offer you. Peace. So here’s what I reckon was-”

“No. I don’t think so, Mr. Reeth.” Bea had a sudden glimmer what Reeth intended, and in that glimmer she saw where this could lead.

But Ben Kerne said, “Let him go on, please. I want to hear him out, Inspector.”

“This will allow him to-”

“Please let him continue.”

Reeth waited affably for Bea to concur. She nodded sharply, but she wasn’t happy. To irregular and mad she had to add provocative.

“So here’s what I reckon,” Jago said. “Someone has a score to settle and this someone sets out to settle that score on the life of your lad. What sort of score, you wonder, right? Could be anything, couldn’t it. New score, old score. It doesn’t matter. But a form of accounting’s waiting out there, and Santo’s life’s the means of settling it. So this killer-could be a man, could be a woman, doesn’t much matter, does it, because the point is the lad and the lad’s death, see, which is what cops like these two always forget-this killer gets to know your lad because knowing him’s going to provide access. And knowing the lad leads to the means as well because your boy’s an openhearted sort and he talks. About this and that, but as things turn out, he talks a lot about his dad, same as most boys do. He says his dad’s riding him hard for lots of reasons but mostly because he wants women and surfing and not settling down, and who can blame him as he’s only eighteen. His dad, on the other hand, has his own wants for the boy, which makes the boy roil and talk and roil some more. Which makes him look for…What d’you call it? A substitute dad…?”

“A surrogate dad.” Ben’s voice was heavier now.

“That would be the word. Or perhaps a surrogate mum, of course. Or a surrogate…what? Priest, confessor, priestess, whatever? At any rate, this person-man or woman, young or old-sees a door of trust opening and he-or she, of course-walks right through it. If you know what I mean.”

He was keeping his options open, Bea concluded. He was, as he had said himself, no bloody fool, and the advantage he had in this moment was the years he’d had to think about the approach he wanted to use when the time came for it.

“So this person…let’s call him or her the Confessor for want of a better term…this Confessor makes cups of tea and cups of chocolate and more cups of tea and more cups of chocolate and offers biscuits, but more important offers a place for Santo to do whatever and to be whoever. And the Confessor waits. And soon enough reckons that means are available to settle whatever score needs settling. The boy’s had yet another blowup with his dad. It’s an argument that goes nowhere like always and this time the lad’s taken all of his climbing equipment from where he’s kept it in the past-right alongside Dad’s-and he’s stowed it in the boot of his car. What does he intend? It’s that classic thing: I’ll show him, I will. I’ll show him what sort of bloke I am. He thinks I’m nothing but a lout but I’ll show him. And what better way to do it than with his own sport, which I’ll do better than he’s ever managed. So that puts his equipment within the grasp of the Confessor and the Confessor sees what we’ll call the Way.”

At this, Ben Kerne lowered his head. Bea said, “Mr. Kerne, I think this is-”

He said, “No.” He raised his head with effort. “More,” he said to Jago Reeth.

“The Confessor waits for an opportunity, which presents itself soon enough because the lad’s open and easy with his belongings, one of which is his car. This is nothing at all to get into as it’s never locked and a quick manoeuver opens the boot and there it all is. Selection is the key. Perhaps a chock stone or a carabiner. Or a sling. Even the harness will do. All four, perhaps? No, that likely would be-if you’ll pardon the expression-overkill. If it’s a sling, there’s not a problem in the world as it’s nylon or whatever and easily cut by shears, a sharp knife, a razor, whatever. If it’s something else, things are a bit trickier, as everything else save the rope-and rope seems too bloody obvious a choice, not to mention too noticeable-is metal and a cutting device is going to be necessary. How to find one? Purchase one? No. That would be traceable. Borrow one? Again, someone’s going to recall the borrowing, yes? Use one without the knowledge of the owner? That seems more possible and decidedly more sensible, but where to find one? Friend, associate, acquaintance, employer? Someone whose movements are intimately known because they’ve been watched just as intimately? Any of those, yes? So the Confessor chooses the moment and the deed is done. One cut does it and afterwards no sign is left behind because, as we’ve said, the Confessor’s no fool and he knows-or she knows, because as we’ve seen, she is as possible as he when it comes to this-that it’s crucial there be no evidence afterwards. And the beauty of it all is that the equipment’s been marked with tape by the lad-or even by his father, perhaps-so that it can be distinguished from everyone else’s. Because this is what climbers do, you see. They mark their equipment because so often they climb together. It’s safer that way, climbing together, you see. And this tells the Confessor that there’s little to no chance that anyone other than the lad will use this sling, this carabiner, this harness…whatever it was that was damaged because, of course, I myself don’t know. But I’ve thought about it, and here’s what I’ve come up with. The one thing the Confessor has to take care with is the tape used to identify the equipment. If he-or she, of course-buys more tape, there’s a chance the new tape won’t match exactly or can be traced back. God knows how, but there’s that possibility, so the thing is to keep that tape usable. The Confessor manages this and it’s quite a project because that tape is tough, like electrical tape. He-or she, of course, like I said-rewraps it just so and maybe it’s not quite as tight as it once was but at least it’s the same and will the lad even notice? Unlikely, and even if he does, what he’s likely to do is smooth it down, apply more tape on top, something like that. So once the deed is done and the equipment’s replaced, all that’s left is waiting. And once what happens, happens-and it is a tragedy, no one doubts that-there’s nothing really that can’t be explained away.”

“There’s always something, Mr. Reeth,” Bea said.

Jago looked at her in a kindly way. “Fingerprints on the boot of the car? In the interior? On the keys to the car? Inside the boot? The Confessor and the boy spent hours together, perhaps they even worked together at…let’s say it was at his dad’s business. They each rode in the other’s car, they were mates, they were pals, they were surrogate father and surrogate son, they were surrogate mother and surrogate son, they were surrogate brothers, they were lovers, they were…anything. It doesn’t matter, you see, because it all can be explained away. Hair inside the boot of the car? The Confessor’s? Someone else’s? Same thing, really. The Confessor planted someone else’s or even his own or her own because it can be a woman, we’ve already seen that. What about fibres? Clothing fibres…perhaps on the tape that marked the equipment. Wouldn’t that be lovely? But the Confessor helped wrap that equipment or he or she touched that equipment because…why? Because the boot was used for other things as well-a surfing kit, perhaps?-and things would get moved round here and there and in and out. What about access to the equipment? Everyone had that. Every single person in the poor lad’s life. What about motive? Well, nearly everyone, it seems, had that as well. So at the end of the day, there is no answer. There is only speculation but no case to present. Which the killer probably considers the beauty of the crime but which you and I know, Mr. Kerne, is any crime’s biggest horror: that the killer simply walks away. Everyone knows who did it. Everyone admits it. Everyone shakes a head and says, What a tragedy. What a useless, senseless, maddening-”

“I think that’s enough, Mr. Reeth. Or Mr. Parsons,” Bea said.

“-horror because the killer walks away now he-or she, of course-has done his business.”

“I said that’s enough.”

“And the killer can’t be touched by the cops and all the cops can do is sit there and drink their tea and wait and hope to find something somewhere someday…But they get busy, don’t they? Other things on their plates. They shove you to one side and say don’t ring us every day, man, because when a case goes cold-like this one will-there’s no point to ringing, so we’ll ring you if and when we can make an arrest. But it never comes, does it, that arrest. So you end up with nothing but ashes in an urn and they may as well have burnt your body on the day they burned his because the soul of you is gone anyway.”

He was finished, it seemed, his recital completed. All that was left was the sound of harsh breathing, which was Jago Reeth’s, and outside, the cry of gulls and the gusting of the wind and the crash of the surf. In a suitably well-rounded television drama, Bea thought, Reeth would rise to his feet now. He would dash for the door and throw himself over the cliff, having at long last achieved the vengeance he’d anticipated and having no further reason to continue living. He’d take the leap and join his dead Jamie. But this, unfortunately, was not a television drama.

His face seemed lit from within. Spittle had collected at the corners of his mouth. His tremors had worsened. He was waiting, she saw, for Ben Kerne’s reaction to his performance, for Ben Kerne’s embracing of a truth that no one could alter and no one could resolve.

Ben finally lifted his head and gave the reaction. “Santo,” he said, “was not my son.”