Careless in Red

Chapter Six

“YOU AND I BOTH KNOW THAT YOU CAN ARRANGE THIS IF YOU want to, Ray. That’s all I’m asking you to do.” Bea Hannaford raised her mug of morning coffee and watched her ex-husband over the rim of it, trying to determine how much further she could push him. Ray felt guilty for a number of things, and Bea was never beyond a session of button pressing in what she considered a good cause.

“It’s just not on,” he said. “And even if it was done, I don’t have those kinds of strings to pull.”

“Assistant chief constable? Oh please.” She refrained from rolling her eyes. She knew he hated that, and he’d score a point if she did it. There were times when having experienced nearly twenty years of marriage with someone came in very handy, and this was one of those times. “You can’t intend me to take that onboard.”

“You can do with it what you will,” Ray said. “Anyway, you don’t know what you’ve got yet, and you won’t know till you hear from forensics, so you’re jumping the gun. Which, by the way, you’re very good at doing if it comes down to it.”

That, she thought, was below the belt. It was one of those ex-husband kinds of remarks, the sort that lead to a row in which comments are made with the intention of drawing blood. She wasn’t about to participate. She went to the coffeemaker and topped up her mug. She held out the glass carafe in his direction. Did he want more? He did. He drank it as she did-black-which made things as simple as they ever could be between a man and a woman divorced for nearly fifteen years.

He’d shown up at her door at 8:20. She’d gone to answer it, assuming the courier from London had arrived far earlier than expected, but she’d opened it to find her former husband on the step. He was frowning in the direction of her front window, where a three-tiered plant stand displayed a collection of pot plants going through the death throes of the sadly neglected. A sign above them was printed with the words: “Fund-raiser for Home Nurses/Leave Money in Box.” Clearly, the poor home nurses were not going to benefit from Bea’s attempt to add to their coffers.

Ray said, “Your black thumb, I see, has not become greener recently.”

She said, “Ray. What’re you doing here? Where’s Pete?”

“At school. Where else would he be? And deeply unhappy at having been forced to eat two eggs this morning instead of his regular. Since when is he allowed cold pizza for breakfast?”

“He’s lying to you. Well…essentially. It was only once. The problem is, he has an unfailing memory.”

“He comes by that honestly.”

She returned to the kitchen rather than reply. He followed her there. He had a carrier bag in his hand, and he placed this on the table. It comprised the reason for his call upon her: Pete’s football shoes. She didn’t want him leaving the shoes at his dad’s house, did she? Nor did she want him to take them to school, yes? So his father had brought them by.

She’d sipped her coffee and offered him one if he wanted. He knew where the mugs were, she told him.

But she’d made the offer before she thought about it. The coffeemaker squatted next to her calendar and what was on this calendar was not only Pete’s schedule, but also her own. Given, her own was cryptic enough, but Ray was no fool.

He’d read a few of the notations inside the boxed dates. She knew what he was seeing: “Motormouth Wanker,” “Big Trouble Wanker.” There were others as well, as he would note if he flipped back to the previous three months. Thirteen weeks of Internet dating: There might be millions of fish in the sea, but Bea Hannaford kept hooking crab pots and seaweed.

It was largely to forestall a conversation about her decision to reenter the world of dating yet another ludicrous time that prompted Bea to bring up having the incident room in Casvelyn. It should, of course, have been in Bodmin where the setup would be minimal, but Bodmin was miles and miles from Casvelyn, with only tediously slow-moving two-lane country roads between them. She wanted, she explained to him, an incident room that was nearer to the crime scene.

He made his point once again. “You don’t know it’s a crime scene. It might be the scene of a tragic accident. What makes you think it’s a crime? This isn’t one of your ‘feelings,’ is it?”

She wanted to say, I don’t have feelings, as you recall, but she didn’t. Over the years she’d become so much better at letting go of matters over which she had no control, one of which was her former husband’s assessment of her. She said, “The body’s a bit marked up. His eye was blackened-healing now, so I’d guess he got into it with someone last week or earlier. Then there was the sling, that webbing thing they use for slinging round a tree or some other stationary object.”

“Hence the name of it,” Ray murmured.

“Bear with me, Ray, as I know nothing about cliff climbing.” Bea kept her voice patient.

He said, “Sorry.”

“Anyway, the sling broke, which was how he fell, but I think it may have been nobbled. Constable McNulty-who, by the way, has absolutely no future in criminal investigations-pointed out that the sling was being held together with electrical tape over a tear and is it any wonder the poor lad took a fatal tumble as a result. But every single piece of the boy’s equipment had electrical tape wrapped round it at some point, and I think the tape’s used to identify the equipment for some reason. If that’s the case, how difficult would it have been for someone to remove the tape, weaken the sling however it was weakened, and then replace the tape without the boy ever knowing it?”

“Have you had a look at the rest of the equipment?”

“Every piece is with forensics, and I have a fairly good idea what they’re going to tell me. And what they tell me is why I’ll need an incident room.”

“But not why you need one in Casvelyn.”

Bea downed the rest of her coffee and placed the mug in the sink with the bowl. She neither rinsed nor washed it and she realised this was yet another benefit to life-without-husband. If she didn’t feel up to doing the washing up, she didn’t have to do the washing up just to soothe the savage breast of the compulsive personality.

She said, “The principals are there, Ray, in Casvelyn. Not in Bodmin, not even here in Holsworthy. They have a police station, small but adequate, and it’s got a conference room on the first floor that’s perfectly adequate as well.”

“You’ve done your homework.”

“I’m trying to make it easier for you. I’m giving you details to support the arrangement. I know you can do this.”

He studied her. She avoided studying him back. He was an attractive man-hair going a bit thin but that didn’t detract-and she didn’t need to compare him to Motormouth Wanker or any of the others. She just needed him to cooperate or leave. Or cooperate and leave, which would be even better.

He said, “And if I arrange this for you, Beatrice?”

“What?”

“What’s the quid pro quo?” He was standing by the coffeemaker and he gave another look to the calendar. “‘Big Trouble Wanker,’” he read. “‘Motormouth Wanker.’ Come on, Beatrice.”

She said, “Thanks for bringing Pete’s football shoes. Finished with your coffee?”

He let a moment go by. Then he took a final gulp and handed the mug over to her, saying, “There had to have been less expensive shoes.”

“He has expensive tastes. How’s the Porsche running, by the way?”

“The Porsche,” he said, “is a dream.”

“The Porsche,” she reminded him, “is a car.” She held up a finger to stop him from retorting. She said, “Which brings to mind…the victim’s car.”

“What about it?”

“What does an unopened package of condoms in the car of an eighteen-year-old boy suggest to you?”

“Is this rhetorical?”

“They were in his car. Along with a bluegrass CD, a blank invoice from something called LiquidEarth, and a rolled-up poster for a music festival last year in Cheltenham. And two dog-eared surfing magazines. I’ve got my fingers on everything but the condoms-”

“Well, thank God for that,” Ray said with a smile.

“-and I’m wondering if he was about to get lucky, getting lucky, or hopeful of getting lucky.”

“Or just eighteen,” Ray said. “All boys that age should be so adequately prepared. What about Lynley?”

“Condoms. Lynley. Where’re we going with this?”

“What was your interview like?”

“He’s hardly going to be intimidated by being in the presence of a cop, so I’d have to say the interview was fine. No matter which way I flipped the questions, his answers were consistent. I think he’s playing it straight.”

“But…?” Ray prompted.

He knew her too well: her tone of voice, the expression that she tried and obviously failed to control on her face. “The other one concerns me,” she said.

“The other…Ah. The woman at the cottage. What was her name?”

“Daidre Trahair. She’s a vet from Bristol.”

“And what concerns you about the vet from Bristol?”

“I’ve a sense about things.”

“I know that well enough. And what’s the sense about things telling you this time?”

“That she’s lying about something. I want to know what.”

DAIDRE NEATLY SITUATED HER Vauxhall in the car park at the town end of St. Mevan Crescent, which made a slow curve towards St. Mevan Beach and the old Promontory King George Hotel sitting well above the sand, a line of decrepit blue beach huts below it. When she’d dropped him at the bottom of Belle Vue Lane and pointed him in the direction of the shops, she and Thomas Lynley had agreed on two hours.

He’d said politely, “I’m not inconveniencing you, I hope.”

He was not, she assured him. She had several things to do in town anyway. He was to take his time and purchase what he needed.

He’d protested this idea initially, when she’d first fetched him from the Salthouse Inn. Although he was considerably more fragrant than on the previous day, he was still wearing the ghastly white boiler suit, still with nothing but socks on his feet. He’d carefully removed these to cross the muddy path to her car and he’d tried to insist that buying new clothing could wait when she’d pressed two hundred pounds upon him.

She said, “Please. Don’t be ridiculous, Thomas. You can’t continue to walk round the area like…well, like someone from a hazardous-chemicals squad, or whatever they call it. You can repay me the money. Besides,” and here she smiled, “I hate to be the one to inform you, but white doesn’t suit you in the least.”

“It doesn’t?” He’d smiled in turn. He had a quite pleasant smile, and it came to her that she’d not seen him smile until that moment. Not that there had been anything in particular to grin about on the previous day, but still…Smiling was virtually an automatic response in most people, a reaction indicative of nothing other than passing courtesy, so it was unusual to find someone so grave.

“Not in the least,” she told him. “So buy something suitable for yourself.”

“Thank you,” he’d said. “You’re very kind.”

“I’m only kind to the wounded,” she told him.

He’d nodded thoughtfully and looked out of the windscreen for a moment, perhaps meditating on the way Belle Vue Lane climbed in a narrow passage to the upper reaches of the town. He’d finally said, “Two hours then,” and got out, leaving her wondering what else he had on his mind.

She’d driven off as he’d walked barefoot on a route towards the outdoor-outfitter’s shop. She’d passed him with a wave and had seen from her rearview mirror that he’d watched from the pavement as she made her way up the hill to where the street curved out of sight and split off, in one direction to the car park and in the other towards St. Mevan Down.

This was the highest point in Casvelyn. From here, one could take in the charmless nature of the little town. It had seen its heyday more than seventy years earlier when holidaying at the sea had been the height of fashion. Now it existed largely at the pleasure of surfers and other outdoor enthusiasts, with tea shops long ago morphed into T-shirt boutiques, souvenir shops, and surfing academies, and post-Edwardian homes serving as doss houses for a peripatetic population who followed the seasons and the swells.

Across Belle Vue Lane from the car park, Toes on the Nose Café was doing a good morning’s business off the local surfers, two of whom had left their cars parked illegally along the kerb, as if with the intention of tearing out of the establishment at the first sign of a change in conditions. The place was crowded with them: They were a close community. Daidre felt the prick of absence-how different it was from the sorrow of loss, she realised-as she passed by and saw them huddled round tables and no doubt telling tales of derring-do in the waves.

She headed for the offices of the Watchman, which hunkered down in an unattractive cube of blue stucco at the junction of Princes Street and Queen Street, in an area of Casvelyn that the locals jokingly called the Royal T. Princes Street served as the cross piece of the T, with Queen Street the trunk. Below Queen was King Street and nearby were Duke Street and Duchy Row. In Victorian times and earlier, Casvelyn had longed to append Regis to its name, and its streets’ appellations bore historical testimony to this fact.

When she’d told Thomas Lynley that she had things to do in town, she hadn’t been lying…exactly. There were arrangements to be made eventually about the broken window at the cottage, but beyond that there was the not insignificant matter of Santo Kerne’s death. The Watchman would be covering the teenager’s fall in Polcare Cove, and as she did not take a newspaper in Cornwall, it would be perfectly logical that she might stop by the offices of the paper to see if an issue with this story in it was soon going to be available.

When she entered, she saw Max Priestley at once. The place was quite small-consisting of Max’s own office, the layout room, a tiny newsroom, and a reception area that conveniently doubled as the newspaper’s morgue-so this was no surprise. He was in the layout room in the company of one of the paper’s two reporters, and they were bent over what appeared to be a mock-up of a front page, which Max seemed to want changed and which the reporter-who looked like nothing so much as a twelve-year-old girl in flip-flops-apparently wanted to remain the same.

“People’ll expect it,” she was insisting. “This’s a community paper, and he was a member of the community.”

“The queen dies and we go three inches,” Max replied. “Otherwise we don’t get carried away.” He looked up then and fixed on Daidre.

She raised a hand hesitantly and studied him as closely as she could without being obvious about it. He was an outdoorsman, and he looked it: weathered skin making him seem older than his forty years, thick hair permanently bleached from the sun, trim from regular coastal walking. He seemed normal today. She wondered about that.

The receptionist-who tripled as copy editor and secretary to the publisher-was in the process of politely enquiring after Daidre’s business when Max came out to join them, polishing his gold-rimmed spectacles on his shirt. He said to Daidre, “I just sent Steve Teller to interview you not five minutes ago. It’s time you had a phone like the rest of the world.”

“I do have a phone,” she told him. “It’s just not in Cornwall.”

“That’s hardly convenient to our purpose, Daidre.”

“So you’re working on the story about Santo Kerne?”

“I can’t exactly avoid it and still call myself a newsman, can I.” He tilted his head towards his office, saying to the receptionist, “Bring up Steve on his mobile if you can, Janna. Tell him Dr. Trahair’s come into town and if he manages to get back quick enough, she might consent to an interview.”

“I’ve nothing to tell him,” Daidre told Max Priestley.

“‘Nothing’ is our business,” he replied affably. He held out his hand, a gesture telling Daidre to go into his office.

She cooperated. Beneath his desk, his golden retriever snoozed. Daidre squatted by the dog and caressed her silky head. “Looking well,” she said. “The medication’s working?”

He grunted in the affirmative and said, “But you aren’t making a house call, are you.”

Daidre made a cursory exam of the dog’s belly, more a matter of form than from any real need. All signs of the skin infection were gone. She rose and said, “Don’t let it go on so long next time. Lily could lose her fur in gobs. You don’t want that.”

“Won’t be a next time. I’m actually a fast learner, despite what my history suggests. Why’re you here?”

“You know how Santo Kerne died, don’t you?”

“Daidre, you know that I know. So I suppose the real question is why’re you asking. Or stating. Or whatever you’re doing. What do you want? How can I help you this morning?”

She could hear the irritation in his voice. She knew what it meant. She was merely an occasional holiday maker in Casvelyn. She had entrée to some places and not to others. She shifted gears. “I saw Aldara last night. She was waiting for someone.”

“Was she indeed?”

“I thought it might have been you.”

“That’s not very likely.” He looked round the office as if for employment. “And is that why you’ve come? Checking up on Aldara? Checking up on me? Neither seems like you, but I’m not much good at reading women, as you know.”

“No. That’s not it.”

“Then…? Is there more? Because, as we want to get the paper out earlier today…”

“I’ve actually come to ask a favour.”

He looked immediately suspicious. “What would that be?”

“Your computer. The Internet actually. I’ve no other access, and I’d rather not use the library. I need to look up…” She hesitated. How much to say?

“What?”

She cast about and came up with it, and what she said was the truth despite its being incomplete. “The body…Santo…Max, Santo was found by a man doing the coastal walk.”

“We know that actually.”

“All right. Yes. I suppose you do. But he’s also a detective from New Scotland Yard. Do you know that as well?”

“Is he indeed?” Max sounded interested.

“So he says. I want to find out if that’s true.”

“Why?”

“Why? Well, goodness, think of it. What better claim to make about yourself if you don’t want people looking at you too closely?”

“Thinking of going into police work yourself? Thinking of coming to work for me? Because otherwise, Daidre, I don’t see what this has to do with you.”

“I found the man inside my cottage. I’d like to know if he is who he says he is.” She explained how she’d come to be acquainted with Thomas Lynley. She made no mention, however, of how the man seemed: like someone carrying across his shoulders a yoke studded with protruding nails.

Her explanation apparently seemed reasonable to the newsman. He tilted his head towards his computer terminal. “Have at it, then. Print up what you find, because we may well use it. I’ve work to do. Lily’ll keep you company.” He started to leave the room but paused at the door, one hand on the jamb. “You haven’t seen me,” he said.

She’d moved to the terminal. She looked up, frowning. “What?”

“You haven’t seen me, should anyone ask. Are we clear on that?”

“You do know what that sounds like, don’t you?”

“Frankly, I don’t care what it sounds like.”

He left her, then, and she mulled over what he’d said. Only animals, she concluded, were safe for one’s devotion.

She logged onto the Internet and then a search engine. She typed in Thomas Lynley’s name.

DAIDRE FOUND HIM WAITING at the bottom of Belle Vue Lane. He looked completely different from the bearded stranger she’d driven into town, but she had no trouble recognising him since she’d spent over an hour gazing on a dozen or more news photos of him, generated by the investigation of a serial killing in London and by the tragedy that had supervened in his life. She now knew why she had seen him as an injured man carrying a tremendous burden. She merely didn’t know what to do with her knowledge. Nor with the rest of it: who he actually was, what comprised his background, the title, the money, the trappings of a world so far different from her own that they might have come from different planets and not merely from different circumstances in different parts of the very same county.

He’d had his hair cut, and he’d had a shave. He wore a rain jacket over a collarless shirt and pullover. He’d bought sturdy shoes and corduroy trousers. He carried a waxed rain hat in his hand. Not, she thought grimly, exactly the getup one expected to see on a belted earl. But that’s what he was. Lord Whoever with a murdered wife, done in on the street by a twelve-year-old boy. She’d been pregnant as well. It was little wonder to Daidre that Lynley was among the injured. The real miracle was that the man was actually capable of functioning at all.

When she pulled to the kerb, he got into the car. He’d bought a few items from the pharmacy as well, he told her, indicating a bag he brought forth from the capacious inner pocket of his jacket. Razor, toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving cream-

“You’ve no need to account to me,” she told him. “I’m only glad you had enough funds.”

He gestured to his clothes. “On sale. End of the season. A real bargain. I’ve even managed”-he reached into the pocket of his trousers and brought forth a few notes and a handful of coins-“to bring you change,” he said. “I never thought I’d…” He drifted off.

“What?” She stuffed the notes and coins into the unused ashtray. “Shop for yourself?”

He looked at her, clearly assessing her words. “No,” he said. “I never thought I’d enjoy it.”

“Ah. Well. It’s retail therapy. Absolutely guaranteed to lift one’s spirits. Women know this at birth, somehow. Men have to learn it.”

He was quiet for a moment, and she caught him doing it another time, looking out of the car, through the windscreen, at the street. In a different place and a different time. She heard her words again and bit the inside of her lip. She hastened to add, “Shall we top off your experience with a coffee somewhere?”

He considered this. He answered slowly. “Yes. I think I’d like a coffee.”

DETECTIVE INSPECTOR HANNAFORD WAS waiting for them at the Salthouse Inn when they returned. Lynley decided that the inspector had been watching for Daidre’s car, for as soon as they pulled into the inn’s lumpy car park, she came out of the building. It had begun to rain again, March’s ceaseless bad weather having segued into April and now May, and she pulled up the hood of her rain jacket and marched across to them, moving briskly.

She knocked on Daidre’s window and, when it was lowered, said, “I’d like a word. Both of you, please.” And then directly to Lynley, “You’re looking more human today. It’s an improvement.” She turned and headed back into the inn.

Lynley and Daidre followed. They found Hannaford in the public bar where she’d been-as Lynley suspected-occupying a window seat. She shed her rain jacket onto a bench and nodded for them to do the same. She led them to one of the larger tables on which a magazine-size A to Z was opened.

She spoke expansively to Lynley, which made him immediately suspicious about her motives. When cops were friendly, as he well knew, they were friendly for a reason and it wasn’t necessarily a good one. Where, she asked him, had he begun his coastal walk on the previous day? Would he show her on the map? See, the path’s well marked with a green dotted line, and if he’d be so kind as to point out the spot…It was all a matter of tying up the loose ends of his story, she said. He would know the dance, of course.

Lynley brought out his reading spectacles and leaned over the road atlas. The truth of the matter was that he hadn’t the slightest idea where he’d begun his walk on the South-West Coast Path on the previous day. If there had been a landmark, he hadn’t taken note of it. He remembered the names of several villages and hamlets he’d come upon along the coast, but as to when on his walk he’d passed through them, he couldn’t say. He also didn’t see that it mattered, although DI Hannaford cleared the air on that concern in a moment. He took a stab at placing himself some twelve miles southwest of Polcare Cove. He had no idea if this was accurate.

Hannaford said, “Right,” although she made no note about the location. She went on pleasantly with, “And what about you, Dr. Trahair?”

The vet stirred next to Lynley. “I did tell you I came down from Bristol.”

“You did indeed. Mind showing me the route? C’n I assume you follow the same route each time, by the way? Straightforward matter and all that?”

“Not necessarily.”

Lynley noted how Daidre drew out the final word, and he knew that Hannaford would not miss it either. Drawing a reply out like that generally meant certain mental hoops were being jumped through. What those hoops were and why they existed at all…Hannaford would be fishing for the reason.

Lynley took a moment to evaluate the two women. From head to toe, they couldn’t have been more dissimilar: Hannaford’s flaming mop done up in wild spikes, Daidre’s sandy hair drawn back from her face and held at the crown of her head with a tortoiseshell slide; Hannaford dressed to mean business in a suit and court shoes, Daidre wearing jeans, pullover, and boots. Daidre was lithe, like a woman who took regular exercise and watched what she ate. Hannaford looked like someone whose busy life precluded both regular meals and regular workouts. There were also several decades between them. The detective could have been Daidre’s mother.

She wasn’t acting motherly now. She was waiting for an answer to her question as Daidre looked at the atlas to explain the route she’d followed from Bristol to Polcare Cove. Lynley knew why the cop was asking. He wondered if Daidre was working that out as well before she replied.

The M5 down to Exeter, she said. Over to Okehampton and northwest from there. There was no completely easy way to get to Polcare Cove, she pointed out. Sometimes she did the Exeter route, but other times she worked her way over from Tiverton.

Hannaford made much of studying the map before she said, “And from Okehampton?”

“What d’you mean?” Daidre asked.

“One can’t leap from Okehampton to Polcare Cove, Dr. Trahair. You didn’t come by helicopter from there, did you? What was the route you took? The exact route, please.”

Lynley saw a flush rise up the vet’s neck. She was lucky that her skin was lightly freckled. Had it not been, she would have coloured to puce.

She said, “Are you asking me this because you think I had something to do with that boy’s death?”

“Did you?”

“I did not.”

“Then you won’t mind showing me your route, will you.”

Daidre pressed her lips together. She pushed an errant lock of hair behind her left ear. Her lobe, Lynley saw, was pierced three times. She wore a hoop, a stud, but nothing else.

She traced the route: A3079, A3072, A39, and then a series of smaller roads until she reached Polcare Cove, which earned barely a speck in the A to Z. As she pointed out the journey she’d made, Hannaford took notes. She nodded thoughtfully and thanked the other woman when Daidre had completed her answer.

Daidre didn’t look pleased to have the detective’s thanks. She looked, if anything, angry and trying to master her anger. This told Lynley that Daidre knew what the detective was up to. What it didn’t tell him was where her anger was being directed, though: at DI Hannaford or herself.

“Are we released now?” Daidre asked.

“You are, Dr. Trahair,” Hannaford said. “But Mr. Lynley and I have further business.”

“You can’t think he-” She stopped. The flush was there again. She looked at Lynley and then away.

“He what?” Hannaford asked politely.

“He’s a stranger round here. How would he have known that boy?”

“Are you saying you yourself knew him, Dr. Trahair? Did you know that boy? He might have been a stranger here as well. Our Mr. Lynley-for all we know-may have come along precisely to toss Santo Kerne-that’s his name, by the way-right down the face of that cliff.”

“That’s ridiculous. He’s said he’s a policeman.”

“He’s said. But I’ve no actual proof of that. Have you?”

“I…Never mind.” She’d placed her shoulder bag on a chair, and she scooped it up. “I’m leaving now, as you said you were finished with me, Inspector.”

“As indeed I am,” Bea Hannaford said pleasantly. “For now.”

THEY EXCHANGED ONLY A brief few remarks in the car afterwards. Lynley asked Hannaford where she was taking him, and she replied that she was taking him with her to Truro, to Royal Cornwall Hospital, to be exact. He then said, “You’re going to check all the pubs on the route, aren’t you?” To which she archly replied, “All the pubs on the route to Truro? Not very likely, my good man.”

He said, “I’m not talking about the route to Truro, Inspector.”

She said, “I knew that. And do you really expect me to answer that question? You found the body. You know the game if you’re who you say you are.” She glanced his way. She’d put on sunglasses although there was no sun and, indeed, it was still raining. He wondered about this and she answered his wonder. “Corrective,” she told him. “For my driving. My others are at home. Or possibly in my son’s rucksack at school. Or one of the dogs could have eaten them, for all I know.”

“You have dogs?”

“Three black Labs. Dogs One, Two, and Three.”

“Interesting names.”

“I like to keep things simple at home. To balance all the ways things are never simple at work.”

That was the extent of what they said. The rest of the drive they made in silence broken by radio chatter and two calls Hannaford took on her mobile phone. One of them apparently asked for her approximate time of arrival in Truro, barring traffic problems, and the other was a brief message from someone to whom she responded with a terse, “I told them to get it to me. What the hell’s it doing with you in bloody Exeter?…And how’m I supposed to…That is not necessary and yes you’re right before you say it: I don’t want to owe you…Oh, grand. Do what you like, Ray.”

At the hospital in Truro, Hannaford guided Lynley to the mortuary, where the air smelled headily of disinfectant and an assistant was hosing off the trolley on which a body had been cut open for inspection. Nearby, the forensic pathologist-thin as an ageing spinster’s marital hopes-was downing a large tomato juice over a stainless sink. The man, Lynley thought, had to have a stomach of iron and the sensitivity of a stone.

“This is Gordie Lisle,” Hannaford said to Lynley. “Fastest Y incision on the planet and you don’t want to know how quick he can shear ribs.”

“You do me too much honour,” Lisle said.

“I know. This is Thomas Lynley,” she told him. “What’ve we got?”

Finishing his juice, Lisle went to a desk and scooped up a document to which he referred as he began his report. This he prefaced with the information that the injuries were consistent with a fall. He went about relating them. Pelvis broken, he said, and right medial malleolus shattered. He added, “That’s ankle to the layman.”

Hannaford nodded sagely.

Right tibia and right fibula fractured, Lisle continued. Compound fractures of the ulna and radius, also on the right, six ribs broken, left greater tubercle crushed, both lungs pierced, spleen ruptured.

“What the hell is a tubercle?” Hannaford asked.

“Shoulder,” he explained.

“Nasty business, but is all that enough to kill him? What sent him to the other side, then? Shock?”

“I was saving the best for last. Enormous fracture of the temporal bone. His skull broke like an eggshell. See here.” Lisle set his document on a work top and strolled over to a wall on which the human skeletal system was displayed on a large chart. “When he fell, I reckon he hit an outcrop on the way down the cliff. He flipped at least once, picked up speed with the rest of the descent, landed heavy on the right side and crushed his skull on the slate. When the bone fractured, it sliced into the middle meningeal artery. That produced an acute epidural haematoma. Pressure on the brain and no place for it to go that’s not lethal. He’d have died in about fifteen minutes although he would have been unconscious throughout. I take it there was no helmet nearby? No other headgear?”

“Kids,” Hannaford said. “They think they’re invincible.”

“This one wasn’t. Anyway, the extent of the injuries suggests he fell the moment he began the abseil.”

“Which itself suggests the sling broke the instant it took his full weight.”

“I’d agree with that.”

“What about the black eye? It was healing, yes? What’s it consistent with?”

“A bloody good punch. Someone gave him a decent one that likely floored him. You can still see the impression of the knuckles.”

Hannaford nodded. She gave a glance at Lynley, who’d been listening and simultaneously wondering why Hannaford was making him part of this. It was more than irregular. It was foolhardy of her, considering his position in the case, and she didn’t seem like a foolhardy woman. She had a plan of some sort. He would have laid a wager on that.

“When?” Hannaford asked.

“The punch?” Lisle said. “I’d say a week ago.”

“Does it look like he was in a fight?”

Lisle shook his head.

“Why not?”

“No other marks on him of a similar age,” Lynley put in. “Someone got one good blow in and that was that.”

Hannaford looked at him, quite as if she’d forgotten she’d brought him. Lisle said, “I’d agree. Someone snapped or someone was giving him discipline of some sort. It either resolved things, knocked him flat, or he wasn’t the type to be provoked, even by a punch in the face.”

“What about sadomasochism?” Hannaford asked.

Lisle looked thoughtful, and Lynley said, “I’m not sure sadomasochists like being punched in the face.”

“Hmm. Yes,” Lisle said. “I’d think your common S and M freak would be looking to have himself tweaked round his privates. Spanked as well. Maybe whipped for good measure. And we’ve got nothing on the body consistent with that.” All three of them stood for a moment, staring at the chart of the skeletal system. Lisle finally said to Hannaford, “How’s the dating coming along? Internet made your dreams come true yet?”

“Daily,” she told him. “You must try it again, Gordie. You gave up far too soon.”

He shook his head. “I’m finished there. Case of looking for love in all the wrong places, if I might coin a phrase.” He gazed mournfully round the mortuary. “Puts them right off, this does, and no getting round it. No dolling it up. I spill the beans and there you have it.”

“What d’you mean?”

He gestured to the room. Another corpse was waiting nearby, a sheet covering its body, a tag on its toe. “When they learn what I do. No one fancies it much.”

Hannaford patted him on the shoulder. “Well, no matter there, Gordie. You fancy it and that’s what counts.”

“You want to give us a try, then?” He looked at her differently, assessing and weighing.

“Don’t tempt me, dear. You’re far too young, and anyway I’m a sinner at heart. I’ll need the paperwork on this”-using her chin to indicate the trolley that had been washed off-“as quickly as possible.”

“I’ll sweet-talk someone,” Lisle said.

They left him. Hannaford examined a hospital plan nearby and ushered Lynley to the cafeteria. He couldn’t think she intended to have a meal after their visit to the morgue, and he found he was correct in this assessment of matters. Hannaford paused in the doorway and looked round the room till she spied a man at a table alone, reading a newspaper. She led Lynley to him.

It was the man, Lynley saw, who’d come to Daidre Trahair’s cottage on the previous night, the same man who’d asked him about New Scotland Yard. He hadn’t been identified then, but Hannaford did the honours now. This was ACC Ray Hannaford from Middlemore, she told him. The assistant chief constable stood and courteously offered his hand.

“Yes,” DI Hannaford then said to Lynley.

“Yes?” Lynley asked.

“He’s a relation.”

“Former,” Ray Hannaford said. “Regrettably.”

“You flatter me, darling,” DI Hannaford said.

Neither of them elucidated further, although the word former spoke a volume or two. More than one cop in the immediate family, Lynley concluded. It couldn’t have been easy.

Ray Hannaford picked up a manila envelope that had been sitting on the table. “Here it is,” he said to his former wife. “Next time you insist on a courier, do tell them where you are for delivery, Beatrice.”

“I did tell them,” the DI replied. “Obviously, whoever the sod was who brought this down from London, he didn’t want the bother of going all the way to Holsworthy or the Casvelyn station. Or,” she asked shrewdly, “did you put in a call for this as well?” She gestured with the manila envelope.

“I didn’t,” he said. “But we’re going to have to talk about a quid pro quo. The account’s growing. The drive from Exeter was bloody murder. You owe me on two fronts now.”

“Two? What’s the other?”

“Fetching Pete last night. Without complaint, as I recall.”

“Did I drag you from the arms of a twenty-year-old?”

“I believe she was at least twenty-three.”

Bea Hannaford chuckled. She opened the envelope and peered inside. She said, “Ah yes. I take it you’ve had a look yourself, Ray?”

“Guilty as suspected.”

She brought the contents out. At once Lynley recognised his own police identification from New Scotland Yard.

He said, “I handed that in. It should have been…What do they do to those things when someone quits? They must destroy them.”

Ray Hannaford was the one who replied. “Apparently, they weren’t willing to destroy yours.”

“Premature was the word they used,” Bea Hannaford added. “A hasty decision made at a bad time.” She offered the Scotland Yard ID to Lynley.

He didn’t take it. Instead he said, “My identification is on its way from my home. I did tell you that. My wallet, along with everything in it, will be here by tomorrow. This”-he indicated his warrant card-“was unnecessary.”

“On the contrary,” DI Hannaford said, “it was entirely necessary. Phony IDs, as you well know, are as easy to get as the clap. For all I know, you’ve spent the morning scouring the streets for the goods.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“I expect you can work that out for yourself, Superintendent Lynley. Or do you prefer the aristo title? And what the hell is someone like you doing working for the Bill?”

“I’m not,” he said. “Not any longer.”

“Tell that to the Yard. You didn’t answer. Which are you called? Which d’you prefer? Personal or professional title?”

“I prefer Thomas. And now that you know I am who I said I was last night-which I suspect you knew already or why else would you have allowed me into the mortuary with you-may I presume I’m free to resume my walk on the coast?”

“That’s the very last thing you may presume. You’re not going anywhere till I tell you otherwise. And if you’re thinking of scurrying off in the dark of night, think again. You’ve a usefulness now I have the proof you are who you claimed to be.”

“Usefulness as a policeman or as a private citizen?” Lynley asked her.

“As whatever works, Detective.”

“Works for what?”

“For our good doctor.”

“Who?”

“The vet. Dr. Trahair. You and I both know she’s lying through those pretty white teeth of hers. Your job is to find out why.”

“You can’t possibly require me-”

Hannaford’s mobile rang. She held up a hand and cut him off. She dug the phone from her bag and walked off a few paces, saying, “Tell me,” into the mobile as she flipped it open. She bent her head as she listened. She tapped her foot.

“She lives for this,” Ray Hannaford said. “She didn’t, at the beginning. But now, it’s what makes her alive. Foolish, isn’t it?”

“That death would make someone alive?”

“No. That I let her go. She wanted one thing; I wanted another.”

“That happens.”

“Not if I’d had my head on straight.”

Lynley looked at Hannaford. Earlier, he’d said regrettably about his status as the inspector’s former husband. “You could tell her,” Lynley said.

“Could and did. But sometimes when you demean yourself in another’s eyes, you can’t recover. I’d like to turn back time, though.”

“Yes,” Lynley said. “Wouldn’t we both.”

The DI returned to them then. Her jaw was set. She gestured with her mobile and said to the ACC, “It’s murder. Ray, I want that incident room in Casvelyn. I don’t care what you have to do to get it and I don’t care what the quid pro quo is going to be either. I want HOLMES set up, an MCIT in place, and an evidence officer assigned. All right?”

“You don’t ask for much, Beatrice, do you?”

“On the contrary, Raymond,” she replied levelly. “As you well know.”

“WE’LL SORT OUT A car for you,” Bea Hannaford said to Lynley. “You’re going to need one.”

They stood outside the entrance to Royal Cornwall Hospital. Ray had gone on his way, after telling Bea that he couldn’t promise her anything and after hearing her retort of “how true,” which she knew was an unfair dig but which she used anyway because she’d long ago learned that when it came to murder, the end of charging someone with a homicide justified any means one employed to get there.

Lynley replied with what sounded to Bea like care. “I don’t believe you can ask this of me.”

“Because you outrank me? That’s not going to count for much out here in the hinterlands, Superintendent.”

“Acting, only.”

“What?”

“Acting superintendent. I was never promoted permanently. I was just stepping in to fill a need.”

“How good of you. The very sort of bloke I’m looking for. You can step in to fill another rather burning need now.” She felt him glance her way as they proceeded towards her car, and she laughed outright. “Not that need,” she said, “though I expect you offer a decent shag when a woman puts a gun to your head. How old are you?”

“The Yard didn’t tell you?”

“Humour me.”

“Thirty-eight.”

“Star sign?”

“What?”

“Gemini, Taurus, Virgo, what?”

“Is this somehow important?”

“As I said, humour me. Going along with the moment is so inexpensive, Thomas.”

He sighed. “Pisces, as it happens.”

“Well, there you have it. It would never work between us. Besides, I’m twenty years older than you and while I fancy them younger than myself, I don’t fancy them that young. So you’re entirely safe in my company.”

“Somehow that’s not a soothing thought.”

She laughed again and unlocked the car. They both climbed in, but she didn’t insert the ignition key at once. Instead, she looked at him seriously. “I need you to do this for me,” she told him. “She wants to protect you.”

“Who?”

“You know who. Dr. Trahair.”

“She hardly wants that. I broke into her house. She wants me around to pay for the damage. And I owe her money for the clothing.”

“Don’t be obtuse. She jumped to your defence earlier, and there’s a reason for that. She’s got a vulnerable spot. It may have to do with you. Or it may not. I don’t know where it is or why it is, but you’re going to find it.”

“Why?”

“Because you can. Because this is a murder investigation, and all the nice social rules fly out of the window when we start looking for a killer. And that’s something you know as well as I do.”

Lynley shook his head, but it seemed to Bea Hannaford that this movement wasn’t one of refusal so much as one that acknowledged a regretful understanding and acceptance of a single immutable fact: She had him by the short and curlies. If he did a runner, she’d fetch him back and he knew it.

He said at last, “Was the sling cut, then?”

“What?”

“The phone call you received. You came away from it calling the situation murder. So I’m wondering if the sling was cut or if they’ve dug up something else at forensics.”

Bea thought about whether to answer the question and what it would signal to him if she did so. She knew little enough about the man, but she also knew when a leap of faith was needed simply for what a leap of faith meant. She said, “It was cut.”

“Obviously so?”

“Microscopic examination helped push the decision-if you will-over the edge.”

“So not terribly obvious, at least to the naked eye. Why do you think it’s murder?”

“And not…what?”

“Suicide played out to look like an accident to spare the family additional pain.”

“What do we know so far that could possibly lead you there?”

“He was hit. Punched.”

“And…?”

“It’s stretching, but perhaps he wasn’t in a position to defend himself. He wanted to but couldn’t. Who knows why. He felt unable or at least unwilling, which resulted in a sense of uselessness. He projects that uselessness onto the rest of his life, onto all his relationships, no matter how illogical the projection is…”

“And Bob’s your mother’s you-know-what? I don’t think so and neither do you.” Bea shoved her car key into the ignition and thought about what these remarks suggested, not so much about the victim but about Thomas Lynley himself. She gave him a wary look and wondered if she’d been wrong in her assessment of him. “D’you know what a chock stone is?” she asked him.

He shook his head. “Should I? What is it?”

“It’s what makes this a murder investigation,” she said.