“You knew what was going on,” Jago said. “S’pose you thought you got yourself a three-way girl with no asking, eh? Or, worst case, a bit of how’s yer father. Either way, you’re happy.” He shook his head. “Blokes your age never can think outside of the envelope, and we both know what that envelope is.”
“She offered me lunch,” Cadan said in his own defence.
Jago laughed. “Bet she did. And she was planning to be your pudding.” He set down his sandpaper and leaned against the board. “Girl like that’s trouble, Cade. You got to know how to read her from the start. She gets a boy by the short ones by giving him a taste, eh? A little bit now, and a little bit then till he’s got the whole. Then it’s on again, off again till he don’t know which part of her’s the part to believe in so he believes in it all. She makes him feel ways he’s never felt, and he thinks no one can make him feel the same. That’s how it works. Best learn from this and let it go.”
“But my job,” he said. “I need the job, Jago.”
Jago pointed at him with his trembling hand. “What you don’t need is that family,” he said. “Look what hooking into the Kernes did to Madlyn. She better off for spreading her legs for that boy of theirs?”
“But you let them use your—”
“’Course I did. When I saw I couldn’t talk her out of letting Santo in her knickers, least I could do was my best to make certain they were safe about it, so I said for them to go to Sea Dreams. But did that help matters? Made them worse. Santo used her up and spat her out. Only good was that at least the girl had someone to talk to who didn’t shout the I-told-you-so’s at her.”
“Reckon you wanted to, though.”
“Bloody right I wanted to. But what was done was done, so what was the point? Question is, Cade, are you going to go the way of Madlyn?”
“There’re obvious differences. And anyway, the job—”
“Sod the job! Make peace with your dad. Come back here. We got the work. We got too much work, with the season nearly here. You can do it well enough if you’ve a mind to.” Jago returned to his own employment, but before he began, he made a final comment. “One of you two’s going to have to swallow pride, Cade. He took your car keys and your driving licence ’cos he had a reason. To keep you alive. Not every father makes that kind of effort. Not every father makes it and succeeds. Best you start thinking of that, my boy.”
“YOU’RE DISGUSTING,” KERRA SAID to her mother. Her voice was trembling. This somehow made things seem even worse to her. Trembling might suggest to Dellen that her daughter was feeling fear, embarrassment, or—what was truly pathetic—a form of dismay when all the time what Kerra was feeling was rage. Seething, white hot, utterly pure and all of it directed towards the woman before her. She was feeling far more of it than she’d felt towards Dellen in years, and she wouldn’t have believed that possible. “You’re disgusting,” she repeated. “Do you hear me, Mum?”
Dellen said in turn, “And what the hell do you think you are, coming upon me like a little spy? Are you proud of yourself?”
Kerra said, “You can turn this on me?”
“Yes, I can. You sneak round here like a copper’s nark and don’t think I don’t know it. You’ve been watching me for years and reporting back to your father and anyone else who’d listen.”
“You absolute bitch,” Kerra said, more in wonder than in anger. “You absolute, unbelievable bitch.”
“Hurts a bit to hear the truth, doesn’t it? So hear some more. You caught your mum off guard and now you’ve got the chance you’ve waited for to do her in. You see what you want to see, Kerra, instead of what’s right in front of your nose.”
“Which is?”
“The truth. He got carried away by the music. You saw for yourself I was pushing him away. He’s a randy little worm and he saw an opportunity. And that’s what happened. So get out of here with your nasty speculation and find something useful to do with your time.” Dellen moved her head in a way that tossed her hair at the same time as it dismissed whatever conclusions her daughter may have drawn. Then, despite her previous words, she apparently decided she’d not said enough, for she went on with, “I offered him lunch. There can’t be a problem with that, can there? Surely that can’t possibly meet with your disapproval. I turned on the radio. Well, what else was I supposed to do? It was easier than making conversation with a boy I barely know. He took the music as some sort of sign. It was sexy, the way Latin music always is, and he got caught up in—”
“Shut up,” Kerra said. “We both know what you had in mind, so don’t make it worse by pretending poor little Cadan tried to seduce you.”
“Is that his name? Cadan?”
“Stop it!” Kerra entered the kitchen. She advanced on her mother. Dellen, she saw, had taken care with her makeup in that way she had: her lips looking fuller, her violet eyes large, everything highlighted like a catwalk model, which was idiotic because the last thing Dellen Kerne had was a catwalk body. But even that she’d manage to make look seductive because what she knew and had always known was that men of every age respond to the voluptuous. Today she was red of scarf, red of shoes, and red of belt, which was little enough colour from which to make a judgement, but her jersey was unseasonably thin and its neck plunged downward, displaying inches of cleavage, and her trousers hugged her hips tightly. And from all of that, Kerra could judge and conclude, which she did with an alacrity born of years of experience. “I saw everything, Mum. And you’re a pig. You’re a cow. You’re a fucking minge bag. You’re even worse. Santo’s dead and even that doesn’t stop you. It gives you an excuse. Poor little me…I’m suffering so…But a nice fuck’ll take my mind off it all. Is that what you’re telling yourself, Mum?”
Dellen had backed away as Kerra advanced. She stood butted up against the work top. Then, on a hair, her mood altered. Tears rushed to her eyes. “Please,” she said. “Kerra. You can see…Obviously, I’m not myself. You know there’re times…You know, Kerra…And it doesn’t mean—”
“Don’t you bloody say it!” Kerra cried. “You’ve made excuses for years, and I’m finished with hearing ‘Your mum’s got problems’ because you know what, Mum? We all have problems. And mine is standing here in this kitchen, looking at me like a lamb that’s heading to get the axe. All innocence and pain and ‘Look at what I’ve had to suffer’ when all she’s done is make us suffer. Dad, me, Santo. All of us. And now Santo’s dead, which is probably down to you as well. You make me sick.”
“How can you say…? He was my son.” Dellen began to weep. No crocodile tears, these, but the real thing. “Santo,” she cried. “My precious.”
“Your precious? Don’t even start. Alive, he was nothing to you and neither was I. We got in your way. But dead, Santo has real value. Because now you can point to his death and say exactly what you’ve just been saying. ‘It’s because of Santo. It’s because of this tragedy that’s befallen our family.’ But it’s not the reason and it never will be although it’s perfect for an excuse.”
“Don’t talk to me like that! You don’t know what I—”
“What? I don’t know what you suffer? I don’t know what you’ve suffered for years? Is that it? Because all of this has been about your suffering? Is that what Stuart Mahler was about? About your terrible horrible agonising suffering that no one can ever understand but you?”
“Stop this, Kerra. Please. You must stop.”
“I saw it. You didn’t know that, did you? My first boyfriend and I was thirteen years old and there you were, standing in front of him, with your top lowered and your bra removed and—”
“No! No! That never happened!”
“In the garden, Mum. Faded from your memory, has it, with all the current tragedy you’re living through?” Kerra felt on fire. So much energy was rushing through her limbs that she didn’t know if she could contain it all. She wanted to scream and kick holes in the walls. “Let me bloody refresh you, all right?”
“I don’t want to hear!”
“Stuart Mahler, Mum. He was fourteen. He came round. It was summer and we listened to music in the gazebo. We kissed a bit. We didn’t even use our tongues because we were so bleeding innocent we didn’t know what we were doing. I went into the house for drinks and jam tarts because the day was hot and we were sweaty and…That was all the time you needed. Does this sound at all familiar to you?”
“Please. Kerra.”
“No. Please Dellen. That was the game. Dellen did as she pleased, and she still does. And the rest of us walk on cat’s feet all round her because we’re so afraid we’ll set her off again.”
“I’m not responsible. You know that. I’ve never been able…There are things I can’t…”
Dellen turned away, sobbing. She bent across the work top, her arms extended. Her posture suggested submission and penitence. Her daughter could do what she would with her. Buckle of belt, cat-o’-nine-tails, scourge, whip. What did it matter? Punish me, punish me, make me suffer for my sins.
But Kerra knew better than to believe at this point. Too much water had flowed beneath the arc of this endless bridge they walked upon, and all of it went and had always gone in the same direction.
“Don’t even try that,” she told her mother.
“I am who I am,” Dellen said, weeping.
“So try being someone else.”
DAIDRE TRIED TO PICK up the bill for dinner, but this was something Lynley wouldn’t allow. It was not only that a gentleman never let a lady pay for a meal that they had enjoyed together, he told her. It was also that he’d dined at her home on the previous night and if they wanted to keep matters on an even keel between them, then it was his turn to provide a meal for her. And even if she felt otherwise about the situation, he could hardly ask her to pay for what she’d barely consumed at the Curlew Inn.
“I am sorry about the meal,” he told her.
“You can hardly be blamed for my choice, Thomas. I should have known better than to order something referred to as ‘the vegetarian surprise.’”
She’d wrinkled her nose and then chuckled when she’d seen it, and he could hardly blame her. What had arrived for her consumption was something green baked into a loaf, with a side dish of rice and vegetables boiled so thoroughly that they were nearly drained of colour. She’d gamely washed down the rice and the medley of veg with the Curlew Inn’s best wine—an indifferent French Chablis insufficiently cooled—but she’d given up after a few bites of the loaf. She’d cheerfully pronounced herself “Quite full. It’s amazingly rich, a bit like cheesecake,” and she’d looked astonished that he hadn’t believed her. When he’d declared he intended to take her out for a proper dinner, she told him it would probably have to be in Bristol because there wasn’t likely to be a place in Cornwall that would meet her gastronomic standards. “I’m a troublesome wretch when it comes to food. I should broaden my horizons to fish, but somehow I can’t get my mind round to it.”
They left the Curlew Inn and went out into the evening, where darkness was falling. She remarked upon the change in seasons, the subtle manner in which daylight began extending itself from winter solstice onward. She said she never really understood why people hated winter so much as she herself found it a most comforting season. “It leads directly to renewal,” she said. “I like that about it. It always suggests forgiveness to me.”
“Are you in need of forgiveness?” They were walking in the direction of Lynley’s hired car, which he’d left at the junction of the high street and the lane leading down to the beach. He watched her in the fading light, waiting to read something revealing in her answer.
“We all are in some way or another, aren’t we?” Using this as a logical segue, she told him then of what she’d seen: Ben Kerne in the arms of a woman whom she’d assumed to be his mother. She confessed that she’d enquired on the matter: It was indeed Ann Kerne he’d visited. “I don’t know if it was forgiveness, of course,” she concluded. “But it was definitely emotional and they shared the feeling.”
In exchange and because it seemed only fair, Lynley told her a bit about his visit with Ben Kerne’s father. Not everything, because she was, after all, not above suspicion, and despite his liking for the woman he knew better than to forget that fact. So what he told her was limited to Eddie Kerne’s aversion to his son’s wife. “It seems he sees Mrs. Kerne as the root of what’s gone wrong in Ben’s life.”
“Including Santo’s death?”
“I expect he’d have it that way as well.”
Because of his conversation with the older Kerne, Lynley wanted to explore the sea caves. So when they were in the car and he’d started the engine, he drove not out of town, as logic would dictate, but rather down the steep lane in the direction of the cove below them. He said, “There’s something I want to see. If you prefer to wait in the car…?”
“No. I’d like to come as well.” She smiled and added, “I’ve never actually observed a detective at work.”
“This will be less detecting than satisfying my curiosity.”
“Most of the time, I suspect it’s the same thing.”
When he thought about it, Lynley couldn’t disagree. In the car park, he pulled parallel to a low seawall that looked to be of recent construction. As did the granite lifeboat shed, which sat nearby with a rescue torpedo buoy available next to it. He got out and looked at the cliffs that formed a horseshoe round the cove. They were high, with outcroppings like broken teeth, and a fall from them would likely prove fatal. Atop them sat houses and cottages, beaming lights in the gloom. At the far end of the southernmost cliff, the largest house of all sprawled in an impressive declaration of someone’s wealth.
Daidre came round the car to join him. “What are we here to see?” She drew her coat more closely round her body. A brisk wind blew.
“Caves,” he said.
“Are there caves here? Where?”
“On the water side of the cliffs. You can access them at low tide, but when the water’s in, they’re at least partially submerged.”
She mounted the wall and gave a look towards the sea. “I’m hopeless at this, which is pathetic for someone who spends part of her time on the coast. But I’d say it’s either going out or coming in, but in either case, it doesn’t make a lot of difference because it’s a fairly good distance from shore.” Then with a look at him, “Is that at all helpful?”
“Barely,” he said.
“That’s what I reckoned.” She hopped down on the sea side of the wall. He followed her.
Like so many beaches in Cornwall, this one began with boulders tumbled one upon the other near the car park. These were mostly granite, with lava mixed in, and the light streaks upon them gave mute testimony to the unimaginable former liquid nature of something now solid. Lynley extended his hand to help Daidre over them. Together they clambered carefully till they reached the sand.
“On its way out,” he told her. “That would be my first piece of detection.”
She paused and frowned. She looked round as if to understand how he’d reached this conclusion. “Oh yes, I see,” she finally said. “No footprints, but that could be because of the weather, couldn’t it? A bad time of year for the beach.”
“Yes. But look to the pools of water at the base of the cliffs.”
“Wouldn’t they always be there?”
“I daresay. Especially this time of year. But the rocks that back them wouldn’t be wet, and they are. The lights from the houses are glittering off them.”
“Very impressive,” she said.
“Elementary,” was his rejoinder.
They made their way across the sand. It was quite soft, telling Lynley they would need to take care. Quicksand wasn’t unheard of on the coast, especially in locations like this one, where the sea ebbed a considerable distance.
The cove broadened some one hundred yards from the boulders. At this point, when the tide was out, a grand beach stretched in both directions. They turned landward when the cliffs were entirely behi
nd them. It was an easy matter, then, to see the caves.
The cliffs facing the water were cratered with them, darker cavities against dark stone, like dusted fingerprints, and two of them of enormous size. Lynley said, “Ah,” and Daidre said, “I’d no idea,” and together they approached the largest, a cavern at the base of the cliff upon which the biggest house was built.
The cave’s opening looked to be some thirty feet high, narrow and roughly shaped, like a keyhole turned on its head, with a threshold of slate that was streaked with quartz. It was gloomy within, but not altogether dark, for some distance at the rear of the cave dim light filtered from a roughly formed chimney that geologic action had eons ago produced in the cliff. Still, it was difficult to make out the walls until Daidre produced a matchbook from her shoulder bag and said to Lynley with an embarrassed shrug, “Sorry. Girl Guides. I’ve a Swiss army knife as well, if you need it. Plasters, too.”
“That’s comforting,” he told her. “At least one of us has come prepared.”
A match’s light showed them at first how deeply the cave was affected at high water, for hundreds of thousands of mollusks the size of drawing pins clung to the rough, richly veined stone walls, making them rougher still to a height of at least eight feet. Mussels formed black bouquets beneath them, and interspersed between these bouquets, multicoloured shellfish scalloped against the walls.
When the match burned low, Lynley lit another. He and Daidre worked their way farther in, picking through stones as the cave’s floor gained slightly in elevation, a feature that would have allowed the water to recede with the ebbing tide. They came upon one shallow alcove, then another, where the sound of dripping water was rhythmic and incessant. The scent within was utterly primeval. Here, one could easily imagine how all life had actually come from the sea.
“It’s rather wonderful, isn’t it?” Daidre spoke in a hushed voice.
Lynley didn’t reply. He’d been thinking of the myriad uses a spot like this had seen over the centuries. Everything from smugglers’ cache to lovers’ place of assignation. From children’s games of marauding pirates to shelter from sudden rainfall. But to use the cave for anything at all, one had to understand the tide because to remain in ignorance of the sea’s acts of governance was to court certain death.
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