Careless in Red

by Elizabeth George

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

  Chapter Eight

  “I KNOW THIS ISN’T A GOOD TIME TO TALK ABOUT IT,” ALAN Cheston said. “There’s not going to be a good time to talk about anything for a long while to come, and I think we both know that. The thing is, though…These guys have a diary to fill and if we’re going to commit, we need to let them know or we’re going to lose out.”

  Ben Kerne nodded numbly. He couldn’t imagine conversing rationally about any subject, let alone about business. All he could imagine was a further walking of the corridors inside the Promontory King George Hotel, one shoulder against the wall and his head aimed down to study the floor. Down one corridor and up another, through a fire door and up the stairs to begin another corridor. On and on, spectral-like, into infinity. Occasionally thinking about how much they had spent on the old hotel’s transformation and wondering what the purpose might be in spending any more. Wondering what the purpose might be in anything at this point, and then trying to stop thinking altogether.

  He’d done all that on the previous night. Dellen had pills but he would not take them.

  Ben looked at Alan. He saw him through a fog, as if a veil existed between his eyeballs and his brain. He could take in the younger man, but he had no ability to process what he was taking in. So he said, “Go on. I understand,” although he didn’t want the first and didn’t mean the second.

  They were in the marketing office, a small former conference room that opened off the erstwhile reception area. It had likely been used for staff meetings when the hotel was in operation. An ancient blackboard still hung on the wall, stained with ghostly copperplate, undoubtedly the work of a manager stirring his troops to action if the excessive underlining was anything to go by. Beneath this writing surface and encircling the room, the walls were covered with gouged wainscoting, above it faded wallpaper featuring hunting scenes. The Kernes had determined to leave all this as it was when they’d taken over the hotel. No one would see it but themselves, they’d decided, and the money could be more profitably spent elsewhere.

  Which was the purpose of this meeting with Alan. Ben tuned in to what the young man was talking about and heard “…must consider the cost as an investment towards returns. Additionally, it’s a onetime cost but not a onetime use of the product, so we’d amortise what we spent producing it. If we’re careful to avoid a look that will date the piece, we’ll be fine. You know what I mean: keep away from shots of vehicles, avoid sites likely to demonstrate anachronicity in five years and use sites likely to demonstrate their history. That sort of thing. Here. This sample came the other day. I’ve already shown Dellen, but she probably…well, understandably she probably won’t have mentioned it to you.” Alan rose from the conference table—a pitted and scratched pine affair with countless burns from forgotten cigarettes—and went to the video player. He had coloured in a febrile manner as he spoke, and not for the first time Ben speculated about his daughter’s relationship with this man. He reckoned he knew the reason behind Kerra’s choice of Alan, and he was fairly certain she was wrong about him in more ways than one.

  He and Alan were having their regular meeting about marketing strategies. Ben hadn’t possessed the will to cancel it. He sat in mute attendance now, considering which of them was the more heartless bastard: Alan for ostensibly carrying on as if nothing had happened or himself for being present. Dellen was meant to be in attendance as she, too, worked in marketing, but she’d not risen from bed.

  On the video monitor, a promotional film began. It featured a resort in the Scilly Isles: a high-end hotel and spa with golf course attached. It wouldn’t attract the same sort of clientele as Adventures Unlimited, but that wasn’t the point of Alan’s showing it to him.

  A suave voice-over provided the commentary, a sales pitch for the resort. While the voice recited the expected panegyric, the accompanying film featured shots of the hotel sitting atop white sands, spa goers basking under the ministrations of lithesome and tanned masseuses, golfers whacking away at balls, diners on terraces and in candlelit rooms. This was, Alan said, the type of film one showed at travel venues. They could do that as well, but with a much broader base of appeal. This, then, was what Alan was after: Ben’s permission to pursue yet another way to market Adventures Unlimited.

  “As you’ve mentioned, we’ve got bookings coming in,” Alan said once the film had finished, “which is brilliant, Ben. That piece the Mail on Sunday printed on you and what you’re doing with this place helped enormously as a promotional vehicle. But it’s time we looked at the potential we have for a larger market.” He ticked items off on his fingers. “Families with children from six to sixteen, independent schools with programmes taking pupils for weeklong maturing courses, singles looking to meet life mates, mature travelers in good condition who don’t want to while away their golden years rocking on a veranda somewhere. Then there are drug-rehab programmes, early release programmes for young offenders, inner-city youth programmes. We’ve an expansive market out there, and I mean to see us tap into it.”

  Alan’s face was shiny, his ears were red, and his eyes were bright. Enthusiasm and hope, Ben thought. Either that or nerves. He said to Alan, “You’ve got big plans.”

  “I hope that’s why you took me on. Ben, what you have here…This place. Its location. Your ideas for it. With an investment in areas likely to be fruitful, you’re looking at the goose and gold eggs. I swear it.”

  Alan seemed to study him, then, just as Ben had himself studied Alan. He ejected the video from the machine and handed it over, putting a hand on Ben’s shoulder momentarily. “Watch it again with Dellen when you’re both up to it,” he said. “We’ve no need to make a decision today. But…soon, though.”

  Ben’s fingers closed round the plastic case. He felt its little ridges press against his skin. He said, “You’re doing a good job. Organising the Mail on Sunday piece…That was brilliant.”

  “I wanted you to see what I could do,” Alan told him. “I’m grateful you took me on. Otherwise, I’d probably have been forced to live in Truro or Exeter, which I wouldn’t much like.”

  “Much larger places than Casvelyn, though.”

  “Too large for me if Kerra’s not there.” Alan gave a laugh, which sounded embarrassed. “She didn’t want me to come on staff here, you know. She said it wouldn’t work out, but I mean to show her otherwise. This place”—he extended his arms to take in the hotel as a whole—“this place fills me with ideas. All I need is someone to listen and okay them when the time is right. I mean, have you thought about everything the hotel can actually be in the off-season? It’s got room for conferences, and with a little tweaking of the promotional film…”

  Ben tuned out, not because he wasn’t interested but because of the painful contrast to Santo that Alan Cheston was presenting. Here was the zeal Ben had hoped for in Santo: a wholehearted embracing of what would have been Santo’s inheritance and that of his sister. But Santo hadn’t seen things that way. He’d hungered for experiencing life instead of for building life. That was how he and his father had differed. True, he’d been only eighteen years old, and with maturity might have come interest and commitment. But if the past was the best indicator of the future, didn’t it stand to reason that Santo would have continued to engage in more of what had already begun to define him as a man? Charm and pursuit, charm and pleasure, charm and enthusiasm for what enthusiasm could gain him and not what enthusiasm could produce.

  Ben wondered if Alan had seen all this when he’d asked for employment at Adventures Unlimited. For Alan had known Santo, had spoken to him, had seen him, had watched him. Thus Alan had known a gap was present. He’d assessed this gap and had deemed himself the man to fill it.

  Alan was saying, “So if we combine our assets
and present a plan to the bank—” when Ben interrupted, our having broken into his thoughts like a sharp rap on the door of his consciousness.

  “Do you know where Santo kept his climbing kit, Alan?”

  Alan stopped dead in his verbal tracks. He looked at Ben in some apparent confusion. It was feigned; it was not feigned. Ben couldn’t tell. Alan said, “What?” And when Ben repeated the question, Alan appeared to think about his reply before making it. “I expect he kept it in his bedroom, Ben, didn’t he? Or perhaps wherever you keep yours?”

  “Do you know where mine is?”

  “Why would I know?” Alan went about putting away the video recorder. A silence hung between them. In it, a car drove up outside and Alan walked to the window as he said, “Unless…” But his answer was lost as two doors slammed on the other side of the window. “Police,” Alan said. “It’s that constable again. The one who came earlier. He’s got some woman with him this time.”

  Ben left the conference room at once and went to the entry as the front door opened and Constable McNulty came inside. He was preceded by a tough-looking woman with Sid Vicious hair dyed a shade of red that bordered on purple. She wasn’t young, but she wasn’t old. She looked at him directly, but not without compassion.

  “Mr. Kerne?” she said and went on to introduce herself as Detective Inspector Hannaford. She was there to interview the family, she told him.

  All of the family? Ben wanted to know. Because his wife was in bed and his daughter was off on a bicycle ride. He felt this last made Kerra sound heartless, so he added, “Stress. When she feels pressure, she needs an outlet.” And then he felt he’d said too much.

  They would get to the daughter later, Hannaford told him. In the meantime, they would wait while he roused his wife. This was preliminary stuff, she added. They would not take up too much of his time just now.

  Just now meant there would be a later. With the police, what was implied was generally more important than what was said.

  “Where are you with the investigation?” he asked.

  “This is the first step, Mr. Kerne, aside from forensics. They’re beginning with fingerprints: his equipment, his car, the contents of his car. They’ll move on from there. You”—and with a gesture that took in the hotel and obviously meant everyone within it—“will need to be fingerprinted. But for the moment, it’s questions. So if you’ll fetch your wife…”

  There was nothing for it but to do as she requested. Anything else and he’d look uncooperative, so Dellen’s state couldn’t be allowed to matter.

  Ben went up the stairs instead of taking the lift. He wanted to use the climb to think. There was so much he didn’t want the police to know, consisting of matters both buried and private.

  At their bedroom, Ben knocked on the door softly, but he didn’t wait to hear his wife’s voice. He went into the darkness and moved towards the bed, where he switched on a lamp. Dellen lay as she’d lain when he’d last seen her. She was supine, one arm crooked across her eyes. Next to her on the bedside table were two bottles of pills and a glass of water. The glass’s rim bore a crescent of red lipstick.

  He sat down on the edge of the bed, but she didn’t alter her position although her lips moved convulsively, so he knew she wasn’t asleep. He said, “The police have come. They want to talk to us. You’ll have to come down.”

  Her head moved fractionally. “I can’t.”

  “You must.”

  “I can’t let them see me like this. You know that.”

  “Dellen—”

  She lowered her arm. She squinted in the light and turned her head away from it and from him. “I can’t and you know it,” she said again. “Unless you want them to see me like this. Is that it?”

  “How can you say that, Dell?” He put his hand on her shoulder. He felt the answering tension run through her body.

  “Unless,” she said again and she turned her head towards him, “you want them to see me like this. Because we know you prefer me this way, don’t you? You love me this way. You want me this way. I could almost think you arranged Santo’s death just to send me in this direction. It’s so useful to you, yes?”

  Ben rose abruptly. He swung round so that she might not see his face.

  She said at once, “I’m sorry. Oh God, Ben. I don’t know what I’m saying. Why don’t you leave me? I know you want to. You’ve wanted to forever. You wear our marriage like a hair shirt. Why?”

  He said, “Please, Dell.” But he didn’t know what he was asking her for. He wiped his nose on the arm of his shirt and went back to her. “Let me help you. They’re not going to leave till they’ve spoken to us.” He didn’t add what he also might have told her: that the police were likely going to come back later to talk to Kerra and they could as well talk to Dellen then. That, he determined, could not be allowed to happen. He needed to be there when they spoke to Dellen, and if the investigators came back later, there was always a chance they’d catch Dellen alone.

  He went to the wardrobe and pulled clothes out for her. Black trousers, black jersey, black sandals for her feet. He sorted out underwear and carried everything back to the bed.

  “Let me help you,” he said.

  It had been the imperative of their years together. He lived to serve her. She lived to be served.

  He drew the blankets and sheet away from her body. Beneath them, she was nude, and her scent was rank, and he looked on her with no stirring of lust. No longer the form of the fifteen-year-old girl he’d rolled with in the maram grass between the dunes, her body expressed the loathing that her voice wouldn’t speak. She was pitted and stretched. She was dyed and painted. She was simultaneously barely real and all too corporeal. She was the past—embroilment and estrangement—made flesh.

  He put his arm beneath her shoulders and he raised her. She’d begun to weep. It was a silent crying, ugly to watch. It stretched her mouth. It reddened her nose. It slit her eyes.

  She said, “You want to, so do it. I’m not holding you here. I’ve never held you.”

  He murmured, “Shhh, now. Put this on,” and he slid arms through the straps of her bra. She was no help to him, despite his encouragement. He was forced to cup her heavy breasts in his hands and fit the bra around them before he hooked it in the back. Thus he dressed her, and when he had her in her clothing, he urged her to her feet and she finally came to life.

  She said again, “I can’t let them see me like this,” but her tone was different this time. She went to her dressing table and from among its clutter of cosmetics and costume jewellery, she brought forth a brush. This she vigorously ran through her long blonde hair till she had it untangled and fashioned into a passable chignon. She switched on a little brass lamp that he’d given her on a long ago Christmas, and she bent to the mirror to examine her face. She used powder and a bit of mascara, and then she rustled among the lipsticks to find the one she wanted, which she applied.

  “All right,” she said, and she turned to him.

  Head to toe in black, but her lips were red. They were as red as a rose might be. They were as red as blood indeed was.

  IN CONDUCTING THE PRELIMINARIES of the investigation with the assistance of Constable McNulty and Sergeant Collins, Bea Hannaford learned soon enough that she had as helpmates the indisputable police equivalents of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. This realisation had abruptly descended upon her when Constable McNulty informed her—with a suitably lachrymose expression on his face—that he’d given the family the information about Santo Kerne’s death likely being a murder. While this in itself could not be called execrable police work, having gone on blithely to share with the Kernes the facts about the dead boy’s climbing equipment definitely was.

  Bea had stared at McNulty, disbelieving at first. Then she’d understood that he was not misspeaking, that he had actually disclosed vital particulars of a police investigation to individuals who very well might be suspects. She’d exploded first. She’d wanted to strangle him second. Exactly what do you
do all day, she’d enquired third in a nasty tone, toss off in public lavatories? Because, my man, you are the most wretched excuse for a police officer I’ve yet to meet. Are you aware that now we have nothing known only by ourselves and the killer? Do you understand the position that puts us in? After that, she’d told him to come with her and keep his mouth shut unless and until she told him he had permission to speak.

  He’d shown good sense in this, at least. From the moment they’d arrived at the Promontory King George Hotel—a crumbling heap of derelict art deco that needed to be pulled down, in Bea’s opinion—Constable McNulty had uttered not a word. He’d even taken notes, never once looking up from his pad as she spoke to Alan Cheston while they waited for the return of Ben Kerne, one hoped with his wife in tow.

  Cheston was not a niggard with details: He was twenty-five, he was putatively the partner of the Kerne daughter, he’d grown up in Cambridge as the only child of a retired physicist (“That’s Mum,” he explained with no little pride) and a retired university librarian (“That’s Dad,” he added unnecessarily). He’d studied at Trinity Hall, gone on to the London School of Economics, and worked in marketing in a Birmingham redevelopment corporation until his parents’ retirement to Casvelyn, at which point he moved to Cornwall to be close to them in their latter years. He owned a terrace house in Lansdown Road that was being renovated, making it suitable for the wife and family he hoped for, so in the meantime he was living in a bed-sit at the far end of Breakwater Road.

  “Well, not exactly a bed-sit,” he added after watching Constable McNulty’s industrious scribbling for a moment. “It’s rather a room in that house—the large pink cottage?—at the end of the road, opposite the canal. I’ve kitchen privileges and…well, the landlady’s quite liberal with how I use the rest of the house.”

  By which, Bea assumed, he meant that the landlady had modern ideas. By which, she assumed, he meant that he and the Kerne daughter bonked there with impunity.