Careless in Red

by Elizabeth George

  He made a long sweep with his paintbrush, the length of the board. “Me? No. I come up from Australia this time round. Been following the season long as I can tell you.”

  “Summer or surfing?”

  “Same thing in some places. Others, it’s winter. They always need blokes who can do boards. I’m their man.”

  “Isn’t it a bit early for the season here?”

  “Not hardly, eh? Just a few more weeks. And now’s when I’m needed most cos before the season starts is when the orders come in. Then in the season boards get dinged and repairs are needed. Newquay, North Shore, Queensland, California. I’m there to do them. Use to work first and surf later. Sometimes the reverse.”

  “But not now.”

  “Hell no. It’d kill me for sure. His dad thought it’d kill Santo, you know. Idjit, he was. Safer than crossing the street. And it gets a lad out in the air and sunlight.”

  “So does sea cliff climbing,” Bea pointed out.

  Jago eyed her. “And look what happened there.”

  “D’you know the Kernes, then?”

  “Santo. Like I said. And the rest of them from what Santo said. And that would be the limit of what I know.” He set his paintbrush in the pail, which he’d put on the floor beneath the board, and he scrutinised his work, squatting at the end of the board to study it from tail to nose. Then he rose and went to the door behind which the rails of a board were being shaped. He closed it behind him. In a moment, the tool was shut off.

  Constable McNulty, Bea saw, was looking about, a line forming between his eyebrows, as if he was considering what he was observing. She knew nothing about the making of surfboards, so she said, “What?” and he roused himself from his thoughts.

  “Something,” he said. “Don’t quite know yet.”

  “About the place? About Reeth? About Santo? His family? What?”

  “Not sure.”

  She blew out a breath. The man would probably need a bloody Ouija board.

  Lew Angarrak joined them. He was outfitted like Jago Reeth, in a white boiler suit fashioned from heavy paper, the perfect accompaniment to the rest of him, which was also white. His thick hair could have been any colour—probably salt and pepper, considering his age, which appeared to be somewhere past forty-five—but now it looked like a barrister’s wig, so thoroughly covered as it was by polystyrene dust. This same dust formed a fine patina on his forehead and cheeks. Round his mouth and eyes there was none, its absence explained by the air filter that dangled round his neck along with a pair of protective glasses.

  Behind him, Bea could see the board he was working on. Like the board being finished by the glasser, it lay on two tall sawhorses: shaped from its earlier form of a blank oblong of polystyrene that was marked in halves by a wooden stringer. More of these blanks lined a wall to one side of the shaping room. The other side, Bea saw, bore a rack of tools: planers, sanders, and Surforms, by the look of them.

  Angarrack wasn’t a big man, not much taller than Bea herself. But he appeared quite powerful in the upper body, and Bea reckoned he had a great deal of strength. Jago Reeth had apparently put him in the picture about the facts of Santo’s death, but he didn’t seem wary about seeing the police. Nor did he seem surprised. Or shocked or sorrowful, for that matter.

  Bea introduced herself and Constable McNulty. Could they speak with Mr. Angarrack?

  “That bit’s a formality, isn’t it?” he replied shortly. “You’re here, and I assume that means we’re going to be speaking.”

  “Perhaps you can show us round as we do so,” Bea said. “I know nothing of making surfboards.”

  “Called shaping,” Jago Reeth told her. He stood nearby.

  “Little enough to see,” Angarrack said. “Shaping, spraying, glassing, finishing. There’s a room for each.” He used his thumb to indicate them as he spoke. The door to the spraying room was open but unlit, and he flipped a switch on the wall. Bright colours leapt out at them, sprayed onto the walls, the floors, and the ceiling. Another sawhorse stood in the middle of the room, but no board waited upon it, although five stood against the wall, shaped and ready for someone’s artistry.

  “You decorate them as well?” Bea asked.

  “Not me. An old-timer did the designs for a time till he moved on. Then Santo did them, as a way of paying for a board he wanted. I’m looking for someone else now.”

  “Because of Santo’s death?”

  “No. I’d already sacked him.”

  “Why?”

  “I’d guess you’d say loyalty.”

  “To?”

  “My daughter.”

  “Santo’s girlfriend.”

  “For a time, but that time was past.” He moved by them and out into the showroom, where an electric kettle stood—along with brochures, a clipboard thick with paperwork, and board designs—on a card table behind the counter. He plugged this in and said, “You want something?” and when they demurred, he called out, “Jago?”

  “Black and nasty,” Jago returned.

  “Tell us about Santo Kerne,” Bea said as Lew went about his business with coffee crystals, which he loaded up into one mug cup and used more sparingly in another.

  “He bought a board from me. Couple years ago. He’d been watching the surfers round the Promontory, and he said he wanted to learn. He’d started out down at Clean Barrel—”

  “Surf shop,” McNulty murmured, as if believing Bea would need a translator.

  “—and Will Mendick, bloke who used to work there, recommended he get a board from me. I place some boards in Clean Barrel, but not a lot.”

  “No money in retail,” Jago called from the other room.

  “Too right, that,” Angarrack said. “Santo had liked the look of one at Clean Barrel, but it was too advanced for him, although he wouldn’t have known that at the time. It was a short board. A three-fin thruster. He asked about it, but Will knew he’d not learn well with that—if he learned at all—so he sent him to me. I made him a board he could learn on, something wider, longer, with a single fin. And Madlyn—that’s my daughter—gave him lessons.”

  “That’s how they became involved, then.”

  “Essentially.”

  The kettle clicked off. Angarrack poured the water into the mugs, stirred the liquid, and said, “Here it is, mate,” which brought Jago Reeth to join them. He drank noisily.

  “How did you feel about that?” Bea asked Angarrack. “About their involvement.” She noted that Jago was watching Lew intently. Interesting, she thought, and she made a mental tick against both of their names.

  “Truth? I didn’t like it. She lost her focus. Before, she had a goal. The nationals. International competitions. After she met Santo, all of that was gone. She could still see beyond the nose on her face, but she couldn’t see an inch beyond Santo Kerne.”

  “First love,” Jago commented. “It’s brutal.”

  “They were both too young,” Angarrack said. “Not even seventeen when they met, and I don’t know how old when they began…” He made a gesture with his hand to indicate they were to complete the sentence.

  “Became lovers,” Bea said.

  “It’s not love at that age,” Angarrack told her. “Not for boys. But for her? Stars in the eyes and cotton wool in the head. Santo this and Santo that. I wish I could have done something to prevent it.”

  “Way of the world, Lew.” Jago leaned against the doorway to the glassing room, mug in his hand.

  “I didn’t forbid her seeing him,” Angarrack went on. “What would have been the point? But I told her to have a care.”

  “As to what?”

  “The obvious. Bad enough she wasn’t competing any longer. Even worse if she came up pregnant. Or worse than that.”

  “Worse?”

  “Diseased.”

  “Ah. Sounds as if you thought the boy was promiscuous.”

  “I didn’t know what the hell he was. And I didn’t want to find out by means of Madlyn being in some sort of trouble.
Any sort of trouble. So I warned her and then I let it be.” Angarrack had not yet taken up his mug, but he did so now and he took a gulp. “That was probably my mistake,” he said.

  “Why? Did she—”

  “She would’ve got over him faster when things ended. As it is, she hasn’t.”

  “I daresay she will now,” Bea said.

  The two men exchanged looks. Quick, nearly furtive. Bea noted this and made two more mental ticks against them. She said, “We found a T-shirt design for LiquidEarth on Santo’s computer.” Constable McNulty brought the drawing forth and passed it over to the surfboard shaper. “Was that at your request?” Bea asked.

  Angarrack shook his head. “When Madlyn finished with Santo, I finished with Santo as well. He might have been doing a design to pay for the new board—”

  “Another board?”

  “He’d got way beyond the first. He needed another, beyond the learning board, if he was going to improve. But once I sacked him, he had no way to pay me back for the board. This might have been it.” He handed the design back to McNulty.

  Bea said to the constable, “Show him the other,” and McNulty brought forth the design for Commit an Act of Subversion and handed it over. Lew looked at it and shook his head. He passed it on to Jago who knuckled his spectacles into place, read the logo, and said, “Will Mendick. This was for him.”

  “The bloke from Clean Barrel Surf Shop,” Bea said.

  “Used to be. He works at Blue Star Grocery now.”

  “What’s the significance of the design?”

  “He’s freegan. Least that’s what Santo said he calls himself.”

  “Freegan? I’ve not heard that term.”

  “Only eats what’s free. Clobber he grows’s well as muck from wheelie bins behind the market and in back of restaurants.”

  “How appealing. Is this a movement or something like?”

  Jago shrugged. “Don’t know, do I. But he and Santo were mates, more or less, so it might’ve been a favour. The T-shirt, that is.”

  Bea was gratified to hear the sound of Constable McNulty jotting all of this down instead of studying the nearby surfing posters. She was less gratified when he suddenly said to Jago, “Ever see the big waves?” He’d coloured as he spoke, as if he knew he was out of order but could no longer contain himself.

  “Oh, aye. Ke Iki. Waimea. Jaws. Teahupoo.”

  “Big as they say?”

  “Depends on the weather,” Jago said. “Big as office blocks sometimes. Bigger.”

  “Where? When?” And then apologetically to Bea, “I mean to go, you see. The wife and I and the kids…It’s a dream…And when we go, I want to be sure of the place and the waves…you know.”

  “Surf then, do you?” Jago asked.

  “Bit. Not like you lot. But I—”

  “That’ll do, Constable,” Bea told McNulty.

  He looked anguished, an opportunity ripped from his hands. “I just wanted to know—”

  “Where might we find your daughter?” she asked Lew Angarrack, waving McNulty impatiently to silence.

  Lew finished his coffee and placed his mug on the card table. He said, “Why do you want Madlyn?”

  “I should think that’s rather obvious.”

  “As it happens, it’s not.”

  “Former and potentially discarded lover of Santo Kerne, Mr. Angarrack? She’s got to be interviewed like everyone else.”

  It was clear that Angarrack didn’t like the direction in which Bea intended to head, but he told her where she could find his daughter at her place of employment. Bea gave him her card, circling her mobile number. If he thought of anything else…

  He nodded and returned to his work, shutting the door to the shaping room behind him. A moment later, the sound of an electric tool shrieked in the building again.

  Jago Reeth remained with Bea and the constable. He said, casting a look over his shoulder, “One more thing…I got a conscious on this, so if you have a moment for ’nother word…” And when Bea nodded, he said, “I’d be chuffed if Lew didn’t know this, got me? The way things turned out, he’ll be dead cheesed off if he knows.”

  “What?”

  Jago shifted his weight. “Was me giving them the place. I know I prob’ly shouldn’t’ve. I saw that afterwards, but by then the bloody milk was spilt. Couldn’t exactly pour it back into the bottle when it was spread all over the floor, could I?”

  “While I admire your adherence to your metaphor,” Bea told him, “perhaps you could make it more clear?”

  “Santo and Madlyn. I go to the Salthouse Inn regular, in the afternoons. Have a mate I meet over there most days. Santo and Madlyn, they used my place then.”

  “For sex?”

  He didn’t look happy about making the admission. “Could have left them to sort things out on their own, but it seemed…I wanted them to be safe, see. Not in the backseat of a car somewhere. Not in…I don’t know.”

  “Yet as his father owns a hotel…,” Bea pointed out.

  Jago wiped his mouth on the back of his wrist. “All right. Yeah. There’s the rooms at the old Promontory King George, for what they’re worth. But that didn’t mean…the two of them there…I just…Oh hell. I couldn’t be sure he’d use what he needed to use to keep her safe, so I left them for him. Right by the bed.”

  “Condoms.”

  He looked moderately embarrassed, an old bloke unused to having such a frank conversation with someone he might otherwise have deemed a lady. One of the fairer sex, Bea thought. She could see this thought playing across his face. “He used ’em, but not every time, see.”

  “And you know he used them because…?” Bea prompted.

  He looked horrified. “Good God, woman.”

  “I’m not sure God had much to do with this, Mr. Reeth. If you’d answer the question. Did you count them up before and after? Search them out in the rubbish? What?”

  He looked miserable. “Both,” he said. “Bloody hell. I care about that girl. She’s got a good heart. Bit of a temper but a good heart. Way I saw it, it was going to happen between them anyways, so I might as well make certain it happened right.”

  “Where would this be? Your house, I mean.”

  “I’ve a caravan over in Sea Dreams.”

  Bea glanced at Constable McNulty and he nodded. He knew the place. That was good. She said, “We may want to see it.”

  “Reckoned as much.” He shook his head. “Young people. What’s consequences to them when they’re young?”

  “Yes. Well. In the heat of the moment, who thinks of consequences?” Bea asked.

  “But it’s more than consequences, isn’t it?” Jago said. “Just like this.” He was now, apparently, referring to one of the posters on the wall. It depicted a surfboard shooting into the air, its rider in the middle of a massive and memorable wipeout that had him looking crucified against a background of water that was a monstrous wave. “They don’t think of the moment itself, let alone beyond the moment. And look what happens.”

  “Who’s that?” McNulty asked, approaching the poster.

  “Bloke called Mark Foo. Minute or two before the poor bastard died.”

  McNulty’s mouth formed a respectful o and he began to respond. Bea saw him settling in for a proper surfing natter and she could only imagine where a trip down this watery and mournful memory lane was going to lead them.

  She said, “That looks a bit more dangerous than sea cliff climbing, doesn’t it? Perhaps Santo’s father had the right idea, discouraging surfing.”

  “Trying to keep the boy from what he loved? What kind of idea’s that?”

  “Perhaps one that was intended to keep him alive.”

  “But it didn’t keep him alive, did it?” Jago Reeth said. “End of the day, that’s not always something we can do for others.”

  DAIDRE TRAHAIR USED THE Internet once again in Max Priestley’s office in the Watchman, but she had to pay this time round. Max didn’t ask for money, however. The price was an interv
iew with one of his two reporters. Steve Teller, he said, just happened to be in the office working on the story of the murder of Santo Kerne. She was the missing piece. The crime asked for an eyewitness account.

  Daidre said, “Murder?” because, she decided, the response was expected. She’d seen the body and she’d seen the sling, but Max didn’t know that although he might suppose it.

  “Cops gave us the word this morning,” Max told her. “Steve’s working in the layout room. As I’m using the computer just now, you’ll have time to have a word with him.”

  Daidre didn’t believe that Max was using the computer, but she didn’t argue. She didn’t want to be involved, didn’t want her name, her photo, the location of her cottage or anything else related to her put into the paper, but she saw no way to avoid it that wouldn’t arouse the newsman’s suspicion. So she agreed. She needed the computer and this spot afforded her more time and privacy than the sole computer in the library did. She was being paranoid—and she damn well knew it—but embracing paranoia seemed the course of wisdom.

  So she went with Max to the layout room, taking a moment to cast a surreptitious look at him in order to ascertain whatever might lie beneath the surface of his composure. Like her, he walked the coastal path. She’d come across him more than once at the top of one sea cliff or another, his dog his only companion. The fourth or fifth time, they’d joked with each other, saying, “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” and she’d asked him why he walked the path so much. He’d said Lily liked it and, as for him, he liked to be alone. “An only child,” he’d said. “I’m used to solitude.” But she’d never thought that was the truth of the matter.

  He wasn’t readable on this day. Not that he ever was, particularly. He was, as ever, put together like a man stepping out of a Country Life fantasy pictorial on daily doings in Cornwall: The collar of a crisp blue shirt rose above a cream-coloured fisherman’s sweater; he was cleanly shaven and his spectacles glinted in the overhead lights, as spotless as the rest of him. A fortysomething man without sin.

  “Here’s our quarry, Steve,” he said as they entered the layout room, where the reporter was working at a PC in the corner. “She’s agreed to an interview. Show her no mercy.”