Careless in Red

by Elizabeth George

  Daidre was quiet next to him as his match burnt down and he lit another. He imagined a boy being caught in here, in this cave or in another just like it. Drunk, drugged, possibly unconscious, and if not unconscious, then sleeping it off. It didn’t matter at the end of the day. If he’d been in darkness and deep within this place when the tide swept in, he would likely not have known which way to go to attempt an escape.

  “Thomas?”

  The match flickered as he turned to Daidre Trahair. The light cast a glow against her skin. A piece of her hair had come loose from the slide she used to hold it back, and this fell to her cheek, curving into her lips. Without thinking, he brushed it away from her mouth. Her eyes—unusually brown, like his own—seemed to darken.

  It came to him suddenly what a moment such as this one meant. The cave, the weak light, the man and the woman in close proximity. Not a betrayal, but an affirmation. The knowledge that somehow life had to go on.

  The match burnt to his fingers. He dropped it hastily. The instant passed and he thought of Helen. He felt a searing within him because he couldn’t remember what this moment clearly demanded that he remember: When had he first kissed Helen?

  He couldn’t recall and, worse, he didn’t know why he couldn’t recall. They’d known each other for years before their marriage, for he’d met her when she’d come to Cornwall in the company of his closest friend during one holiday or another from university. He may have kissed her then, a light touch on the lips in farewell at the end of that visit, a lovely-to-have-met-you gesture that meant nothing at the time but now might mean everything. For it was essential in that moment that he recall every instance of Helen in his life. It was the only way he could keep her with him and fight the void. And that was the point: to fight the void. If he floated into it, he knew he’d be lost.

  He said to Daidre Trahair, who was only a silhouette in the gloom, “We should go. Can you lead us out?”

  “Of course I can,” she said. “It shouldn’t be difficult.”

  She found her way with assurance, one hand moving lightly along the tops of the molluscs on the wall. He followed her, his heart pulsing behind his eyes. He believed he ought to say something about the moment that had passed between them, to explain himself in some way to Daidre. But he had no words, and even if he had possessed the language necessary to communicate the extent of his grief and his loss, they were not necessary. For she was the one to break the silence between them, and she did so when they emerged from the cave and began to make their way back to the car.

  “Thomas, tell me about your wife,” she said.

  Chapter Sixteen

  LYNLEY FOUND HIMSELF HUMMING IN THE SHOWER THE NEXT morning. The water coursed through his hair and down his back, and he was in the middle of the waltz from Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty before he stopped abruptly and realised what he was doing. He felt swept up in guilt, but it lasted only a moment. What came on its heels was a memory of Helen, the first one he’d had since her death that made him smile. She’d been completely hopeless about music, aside from a single Mozart that she regularly and proudly recognised. When she’d heard The Sleeping Beauty in his company for the first time, she’d said, “Walt Disney! Tommy, darling, when on earth did you start listening to Walt Disney? That seems entirely unlike you.”

  He’d looked at her blankly till he’d made the connection to the old cartoon, which he realised she must have seen while visiting her niece and nephew recently. He said solemnly, “Walt Disney stole it from Tchaikovsky, darling,” to which she replied, “He didn’t ever! Did Tchaikovsky write the words as well?” To which he had raised his head ceilingward and laughed.

  She hadn’t been offended. That had never been Helen’s way. Instead, she’d lifted a hand to her lips and said, “I’ve done it again, haven’t I? You see, this is the reason I need to keep buying shoes. So many pairs end up in my mouth and my saliva ruins them.”

  She was completely impossible, he thought. Engaging, lovely, maddening, hilarious. And wise. Always, at heart, wise in ways he would not have thought possible. Wise about him and wise about what was essential and important between them. He missed her in this moment, yet he celebrated her as well. In that, he felt a slight shift within him, the first that had occurred since her murder.

  He returned to his humming as he toweled himself off. He was still humming, towel wrapped round his waist, when he opened the door.

  And came face-to-face with DS Barbara Havers.

  He said, “My God.”

  Havers said, “I’ve been called worse.” She scratched her mop of badly cut and currently uncombed hair. “Are you always so chipper before breakfast, sir? Because if you are, this is the last time I’m sharing a bathroom with you.”

  He could, for the moment, do nothing but stare, so unprepared was he for the sight of his former partner. She was wearing floppy sky blue socks in lieu of slippers and she had on pink flannel pyjamas printed everywhere with the image of vinyl records, musical notes, and the phrase “Love like yours is sure to come my way.” She seemed to realise he was examining her getup because she said, “Oh. A gift from Winston,” in apparent reference to it.

  “Would that be the socks or the rest of it?”

  “The rest. He saw this in a catalogue. He said he couldn’t resist.”

  “I’ll need to speak to Sergeant Nkata about his impulse control.”

  She chuckled. “I knew you’d love them if you ever saw them.”

  “Havers, the word love does not do justice to my feelings.”

  She nodded at the bathroom. “You finished your morning whatevers in there?”

  He stepped aside. “Have at it.”

  She passed him but paused before closing the door. “Tea?” she said. “Coffee?”

  “Come to my room.”

  He was ready for her when she arrived, dressed for her day. He himself was clothed and he’d made tea—he wasn’t desperate enough to face the provided coffee crystals—when she knocked on his door and said unnecessarily, “It’s me.”

  He opened it to her. She looked round and said, “You demanded the more elegant accommodation, I see. I’ve got something that used to be the garret. I feel like Cinderella before the glass boot.”

  He held up the tin teapot. She nodded and plopped herself onto his bed, which he’d made. She lifted the old chenille counterpane and inspected the job he’d done. “Hospital corners,” she noted. “Very nice, sir. Is that from Eton or somewhere else in your chequered past?”

  “My mother,” he said. “Proper bed making and the correct use of table linens were at the heart of her child rearing. Should I add milk and sugar or do you want to do your own honours?”

  “You can do it,” she said. “I like the idea of you waiting on me. This is a first, and it may be a last, so I think I’ll enjoy it.”

  He handed her the doctored tea, poured his own, and joined her on the bed as there was no chair. He said, “What are you doing here, Havers?”

  She gestured at the room with her teacup. “You invited me, didn’t you?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  She took a sip of tea. “You wanted information about Daidre Trahair.”

  “Which you could easily have provided me on the phone.” He thought about this and recalled their conversation. “You were in your car when I phoned you on your mobile. Were you on your way down here?”

  “I was.”

  “Barbara…” He spoke in a fashion to warn her off: Stay out of my life.

  She said, “Don’t flatter yourself, Superintendent.”

  “Tommy. Or Thomas. Or whatever. But not superintendent.”

  “‘Tommy’? ‘Thomas’? Not bloody likely. Are we fine with ‘sir’?” And when he shrugged, “Good. DI Hannaford has no MCIT blokes working the case for her. When she phoned the Met for your identification, she explained the situation. I got sent as a loan.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  Lynley
looked at her evenly. Her face was a blank, an admirable poker face that might have duped someone who knew her less well than he did. “Am I actually meant to believe that, Barbara?”

  “Sir, there’s nothing else to believe.”

  They engaged in a stare down. But ultimately there was nothing to be gained. She’d worked with him too long to be intimidated by any implications that might hang upon silence. She said, “By the way, no one ever put your resignation through channels. As far as anyone’s concerned, you’re on compassionate leave. Indefinitely, if that’s what it takes.” She sipped her tea again. “Is that what it takes?”

  Lynley looked away from her. Outside, a grey day was framed by the window, and a sprig of the ivy that climbed on this side of the building was blowing against the glass. “I don’t know,” he said. “I think I’m finished with it, Barbara.”

  “They’ve posted the job. Not your old one but the one you were in when…You know. Webberly’s job: the detective superintendent’s position. John Stewart’s applying. Others as well. Some from outside and some from within. Stewart’s obviously got the inside track on it, and between you and me, that would be a disaster for everyone if he gets it.”

  “It could be worse.”

  “No, it couldn’t.” She put her hand on his arm. So rare a gesture it was that he had to look at her. “Come back, sir.”

  “I don’t think I can.” He rose then, to distance himself not from her but from the idea of returning to New Scotland Yard. He said, “But why here, in the middle of nowhere? You could be staying in town, which makes far more sense if you’re working with Bea Hannaford.”

  “I could ask the same of you, sir.”

  “I was brought here the first night. It seemed easiest to stay. It was the closest place.”

  “To what?”

  “To where the body was found. And why are we turning this into an examination of me? What’s going on?”

  “I’ve told you.”

  “Not everything.” He studied her evenly. If she’d come to keep a watch over him, which was likely the case, Havers being Havers, there could be only one reason. “What did you learn about Daidre Trahair?” he asked her.

  She nodded. “You see? You haven’t lost your touch.” She downed the rest of her tea and held out her cup. He poured her another and put in a packet of sugar and two of the thimbles of milk. She said nothing else until he’d handed the cup back and she’d taken a swig. “A family called Trahair are longtime residents of Falmouth, so that part of her story’s on the up-and-up. The dad sells tyres; he’s got his own company. The mum does mortgages for homes. No primary school records for a kid called Daidre, though. You were right about that. In some cases that might suggest she was sent off to school in the old way: booted out the door when she was five or whatever, home for half terms and the holidays but otherwise unseen and unheard till emerging from the great machine of proper”—she rolled the r to indicate her scorn—“education at eighteen or whatever.”

  “Spare me the social commentary,” Lynley said.

  “I speak purely from jealous rage, of course,” Havers said. “Nothing I would have liked better than to be packed off to boarding school directly after I learned to blow my nose.”

  “Havers…”

  “You haven’t lost that tone of martyred patience,” she noted. “C’n I smoke in here, by the way?”

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “Just enquiring, sir.” She curved her palm around her teacup. “So while I reckon she could have gone off to primary school, it doesn’t seem likely to me because there she is in the local secondary comprehensive from the time she’s thirteen. Playing field hockey. Excelling at fencing. Singing in the school choir. Mezzo-soprano if that’s of interest.”

  “And you’re rejecting the idea of earlier boarding school for what reason?”

  “First of all, because it doesn’t make sense. I can see it done the reverse way: primary day school and then boarding school when she was twelve or thirteen. But boarding out through primary school and then returning home for secondary? This is a middle-class family. What middle-class family sends its kids off at that age and then has them back home when they’re thirteen?”

  “It’s been known to happen. What’s the second of all?”

  “The second of…? Oh. Second of all, there’s no record of her birth. Not a cracker, not a hint. Not in Falmouth, that is.”

  Lynley considered the implications of this. He said, “She told me she was born at home.”

  “The birth would still have to be registered within forty-two days. And if she was born at home, the midwife would have been there, yes?”

  “If her father delivered her…?”

  “Did she tell you that? If you and she were exchanging intimate details—”

  He glanced at her sharply, but her face betrayed nothing.

  “—then wouldn’t that have been an intriguing one to share? Mum doesn’t make it to the hospital for some reason: like it’s a dark and stormy night. Or the car breaks down. The electricity goes out. There’s a maniac loose in the streets. There’s been a military coup that history failed to record. There’s a curfew due to racial rioting. The Vikings, having missed the east coast entirely because you know how Vikings are when it comes to having a decent sense of direction, have emerged from a time warp to invade the south coast of England. Or maybe aliens. They might have landed. But whatever the reason, there they are at home with Mum in labour and Dad boiling water without knowing what he’s supposed to do with it but nature takes its course anyway and out pops a baby girl they call Daidre.” She placed her teacup on the narrow nightstand next to the bed. “Which still doesn’t explain why they wouldn’t have registered the birth.”

  He said nothing.

  “So there’s something she’s not telling you, sir. I’m wondering why.”

  “Her story about the zoo checks out,” Lynley told her. “She is a large animal veterinarian. She does work for the Bristol Zoo.”

  “I’ll give you that,” Havers said. “I went to the Trahairs’ house once I had a look through the birth registry. No one was at home, so I spoke to a neighbour. There’s a Daidre Trahair, definitely. She lives in Bristol and works at the zoo. But when I pressed a bit further for more information, the woman dummied up. It was just, ‘Dr. Trahair is a credit to her parents and a credit to herself and you write that down in that notebook of yours. And if you want to know more, I’ll need to speak to my solicitor first,’ before the door was shut in my face. Too many sodding cop dramas on telly,” she concluded darkly. “It’s killing our ability to intimidate.”

  Lynley found he was struggling with a fact that disturbed him, and it was not a fact about Daidre Trahair. He said, “You went to the house? You spoke to a neighbour? Havers, this was supposed to be confidential. Did you not understand that?”

  She frowned, drawing her eyebrows together. She used her teeth to pull on the inside of her lip and she observed him. He said nothing. Neither did she. From below them came the distant sound of pots and pans clanging as breakfast began to be sorted out at the Salthouse Inn.

  Havers finally said, with some evident care, “These are background checks, sir. When it comes to murder, everyone involved has a background check. There’s nothing secret about that.”

  “But not every background check is done by New Scotland Yard. And you identified yourself when you spoke to the neighbour. You showed your warrant card. You told her where you were from. Yes?”

  “’Course.” Havers spoke carefully and this agitated Lynley: the idea that his former partner would use care with him, whatever her reason. “But I don’t see what that has to do with anything, sir. If you hadn’t come upon the body the way you did, have you thought of—”

  Lynley cut in with, “It has everything to do with everything. She knows I work—once worked—for the Met. If the Met’s now investigating her…the Met and not the local police…Don’t you see what that will mean to her?”


  “That p’rhaps you’re behind the investigation,” Havers said. “Well, you are behind it and with damn good reason. Sir, let me finish what I was saying. You know how this works. If you hadn’t come upon Santo Kerne’s body, the first person at the scene would have been Daidre Trahair. And you know the game on that one. I don’t have to tell you.”

  “For God’s sake, she didn’t kill Santo Kerne. She didn’t show up to pretend she found the body. She came into her cottage and discovered me there and I took her to the body because she asked to see it. She said she was a doctor. She wanted to see if she could help him.”

  “She could have done that for a dozen reasons and heading the list is the fact that it might have looked damn odd if she hadn’t done it.”

  “She has absolutely no motive—”

  “Okay. What if everything you’re claiming is true? What if she is who she says she is and it all checks out? What does it matter that she knows we’re looking into her story? That I’m looking into it? That you’re looking into it? That Father effing Christmas is looking into it? What does it matter?”

  He blew out a breath. He knew part of the answer, but only part. He wasn’t willing to give it.

  He drank down his tea. He longed for simplicity where there was none. He longed for answers that were yes or no instead of an infinite string of maybe.

  The bed creaked as Havers rose. The floor creaked as she walked across it to stand behind him. She said, “If she knows we’re investigating her, she’s going to get nervous and that’s where we want her. That’s where we want them all, isn’t it? Nervous people betray themselves. Betrayal like that works in our favour.”

  “I can’t see how openly investigating this woman—”

  “Yes, you can. I know you can. You can and you do.” She touched him lightly, briefly, on the shoulder. Her voice was cautious but it was also gentle. “You’re…you’re in something of a state, sir, and that’s normal after what you’ve been through. Now, I wish this wasn’t a world where people took advantage of others when they’re susceptible, but you and I know what kind of world this is.”