Careless in Red

by Elizabeth George

  “That being the case, we might ask ourselves why he’s reluctant to dig into Dr. Trahair’s story, mightn’t we?”

  “I think he reckons the Newquay angle is stronger. But no matter, really. He’ll pick up where he left off on her.”

  Bea eyed Havers again. The DS’s body language didn’t meet her tone, one tense and the other too easy. There was far more here than met the eye, and Bea reckoned she knew what it was. “Rock and a hard place,” she said to Havers.

  “What?” Havers glanced at her.

  “You, Sergeant Havers. That’s where you are, isn’t it? Loyalty to him versus loyalty to the job. Question is, how will you make the choice if you have to?”

  Havers smiled thinly, clearly without humour. “Oh, I know how to choose when it comes to it, Guv. I didn’t get where I am by choosing like a fool.”

  “All of which is defined by the individual, isn’t it?” Bea noted. “The choosing-like-a-fool bit. I’m not an idiot, Sergeant. Don’t play me for one.”

  “I hope I wouldn’t be that stupid.”

  “Are you in love with that man?”

  “Who?” Then Havers’ eyes widened. She had unappealingly small eyes, but when she opened them wide, Bea saw their attractive colour, which was highland sky blue. “D’you mean the super—?” Havers used her thumb to point in the direction Lynley had taken ahead of them. “We’d make quite the couple, wouldn’t we?” She barked a laugh. “Like I said, Guv, I bloody well hope I wouldn’t be that stupid.”

  Bea eyed her and saw that, in this, she was telling the truth. Or at least a partial truth. And because it was partial, Bea knew she would have to watch Havers closely and monitor her work. She didn’t like the idea—damn, was there no one on this case upon whom she was going to be able to rely?—but she couldn’t see she had a choice.

  Back in Casvelyn, the incident room displayed a gratifying scene of business in motion. Sergeant Collins was making notations on the china board about activities; Constable McNulty was beavering away at Santo Kerne’s computer; in the absence of a civilian typist one of the TAG team officers was working at transcribing a stack of notes into HOLMES. In the meantime, the DVLA had weighed in with a list of owners of cars like the two seen in the vicinity of Santo Kerne’s cliff fall. The Defender, as Bea had assumed, had been the easier one when it came to comparing listed owners of such vehicles with all the principals in the case. Jago Reeth owned a Defender very similar to the car seen in Alsperyl approximately one mile to the north of the cliff where Santo Kerne was doing his abseiling. As to the RAV4, the vehicle seen to the south of that same cliff likely belonged to one Lewis Angarrack.

  “Madlyn’s stand-in granddad and Madlyn’s father,” Bea told Havers. “Isn’t that a lovely detail?”

  “As to that…?” It was Constable McNulty speaking, half risen from behind Santo Kerne’s computer. He sounded something between hopeful and excited, “Guv, there’s—”

  “Vengeance,” Havers agreed. “He takes the girl’s virtue and cheats on her. They take care of him. Or at least one of them does. Or they plan it together. That sort of thing plays strong when it comes to murder.”

  “Guv?” McNulty again, fully upright now.

  “And both Reeth and Angarrack would’ve had access to the boy’s equipment,” Bea said. “In the boot of his car? They would’ve likely known it was there.”

  “Madlyn telling them?”

  “Perhaps. But either one of them just could have seen it at one time or another.”

  “Guv, I know you wanted me off the big-wave thing,” McNulty broke in. “But you need to have a look at this.”

  “In a minute, Constable.” Bea motioned him down. “Let me follow one thought at a time.”

  “But this one relates. It’s part of the picture.”

  “Damn it, McNulty!”

  He sat. He exchanged a black look with Sergeant Collins. Bloody cow was its message. Bea saw this and said sharply, “That’ll do, Constable. All right, all right. What?” She approached the computer. He tapped frantically at the keyboard. A Web site appeared, featuring an enormous wave with a flea-size surfer upon it. Bea saw this and prayed for patience although she wanted to drag McNulty from the computer by his ears.

  “It’s what he said about that poster,” McNulty told her. “That old bloke over LiquidEarth. When you and I were talking to him. See, first of all that kid on the wave—riding Maverick’s, he said, remember?—couldn’t’ve been Mark Foo. That’s a picture of Jay Moriarty—”

  “Constable, this is all sounding rather too familiar,” Bea cut in. “But wait. Look. Like I said, it’s a picture of Jay Moriarty and it’s famous, least among surfers who ride big waves. Not only was the kid sixteen, but he was the youngest surfer ever to ride Maverick’s at the time. And that picture of him was taken during the same swell that killed Mark Foo.”

  “And this is critically important because…?”

  “Because surfers know. At least surfers who’ve been to Maverick’s know.”

  “Know what, exactly?”

  “The difference between them. Between Jay Moriarty and Mark Foo.” McNulty’s face was alight, as if he’d cracked the case on his own and was waiting for Bea to say “Just call me Lestrade.” When she did not, he continued, perhaps less enthusiastically but certainly no less doggedly. “Don’t you see? That bloke with the Defender—Jago Reeth—he said the poster at LiquidEarth was Mark Foo. Mark Foo on the wave that killed him, he said. But here—right here—” McNulty tapped a few keys, and a photo identical to the poster appeared. “This is the same picture, Guv. And it’s Jay Moriarty, not Mark Foo at all.”

  Bea thought about this. She didn’t like to dismiss anything out of hand, but McNulty appeared to be reaching, his own enthusiasm for surfing taking him into an area that bore no relevance to the case in hand. She said, “All right. So. The poster at LiquidEarth was misidentified by Jago Reeth. Where do we go with that?”

  “To the fact that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” McNulty proclaimed.

  “Just because he’s misidentified a poster he likely didn’t mount on the wall in the first place?”

  “He’s blowing smoke,” McNulty said. “Mark Foo’s last ride is part of surfing history. Jay Moriarty’s wipeout is the same. Someone green to the sport might not know who he was and what happened to him. But a longtime surfer…? Someone who says he’s hung round the scene for decades…? Someone who says he’s been all over the world following waves…? He’s going to know. And this bloke Reeth didn’t. And now we’ve got his car near the spot where Santo Kerne fell. I say he’s our man.”

  Bea thought about this. McNulty was borderline incompetent as a detective, it was true. He would spend his life at the Casvelyn police station, never rising above the level of sergeant and even that advancement would come only if he was extremely lucky and Collins died with his boots on. But there were times when out of the mouths of babes and just as much out of the mouths of the bungling dribbled the truth. She didn’t want to overlook that possibility just because most of the time she wanted to smack the constable on the side of his head.

  She said to Sergeant Collins, “What’ve we got on the prints from the Kerne boy’s car? Are Jago Reeth’s among them?”

  Collins consulted a document, which he unearthed from a pile on Bea’s desk. The boy’s prints were everywhere on the car, as one would expect, he said. William Mendick’s were on the exterior: on the driver’s side. Madlyn Angarrack’s were nearly everywhere Santo’s were: interior, exterior, inside the glove compartment, on the CDs. Others belonged to Dellen and Ben Kerne, and still others remained to be identified: from the CD and the boot of the car.

  “On the climbing equipment?”

  Collins shook his head. “Most of those aren’t any good. Smears, largely. We’ve got a clear one of Santo’s and a partial that hasn’t been identified. But that’s the limit.”

  “Mush,” she said. “Cold porridge. Nothing.” They were back to those cars from
the vicinity of the fall. She spoke more meditatively than directly to anyone present, saying, “We know the boy met Madlyn Angarrack for sex at Sea Dreams, so that takes care of Jago Reeth’s access to his car, prints or not. I’ll give you that, Constable. We know the boy got his surfboard from LiquidEarth, so there you’ve got Lewis Angarrack. For that matter, as he was dating Madlyn Angarrack, he would’ve been at her home one time or another. So Dad could’ve picked up the knowledge of the climbing kit there as well.”

  “There’d be others, though, wouldn’t there?” Havers asked. She was looking at the china board where DS Collins was working on activities. “Anyone who knew the kid—his mates and even his own family, yes?—probably knew where he kept his kit. And wouldn’t they have easier access?”

  “Easier access but perhaps less motive.”

  “No one stands to gain from his death? The sister? Her boyfriend?” Havers turned from the china board and seemed to read something on Bea’s face because she added deferentially, “Devil’s advocate, Guv. Seems like we don’t want to slam any doors.”

  “There’s Adventures Unlimited,” Bea noted.

  “Family business,” Havers pointed out. “Always a nice motive.”

  “Except they haven’t opened yet.”

  “Someone wanting to throw a spanner in, then? Stop them from opening? A rival?”

  Bea shook her head. “Nothing’s as strong as the sex angle, Barbara.”

  “So far,” Havers noted.

  THE VILLAGE OF ZENNOR was bleak at the best of times, a situation arising from its location—tucked into a protective fold of otherwise windswept land perhaps one half mile from the sea—and from its monochromatic appearance, which was unadorned granite occasionally graced by the oddity of a desiccated palm tree. At the worst of times, defined by foul weather, gloom, or the dead of night, it was sinister, surrounded by fields from which boulders erupted like curses rained down by an angry god. It hadn’t changed in one hundred years and likely wouldn’t change in another one hundred. Its past sprang from mining and its present relied on tourism, but there was little enough of that even at the height of summer, as no beach close by was easy to get to and the only attraction even remotely likely to draw the curious into the village was the church. Unless one counted the Tinner’s Arms, of course, and what that pub could provide in the way of food and drink.

  The size of the car park of this establishment did suggest that, in the summer at least, a fair amount of business occurred. Lynley parked there and went inside to enquire about the mermaid’s chair. When he approached the publican, Lynley found him working a sudoku puzzle. He held up a hand in that universal give-me-a-moment gesture, jotted a number in one of the puzzle’s boxes, frowned, and rubbed it out. When he finally allowed himself to be questioned, he removed the possessive from the chair Lynley was seeking.

  “Mermaids not being much inclined to sit, if you think about it,” the publican said.

  Thus Lynley learned it was the Mermaid Chair he was looking for, and he would find it in Zennor Church. This structure sat not far from the pub, as indeed, nothing in Zennor sat far from the pub since the village consisted of two streets, a lane, and a path winding past an odoriferous dairy farm and leading to the cliffs above the sea. The church had been built some centuries earlier on a modest hillock overlooking most of this.

  It was unlocked, as most churches tended to be in the Cornish countryside. Within, silence defined the place, as did the scent of musty stones. Colour came from the kneeling cushions, which lined up precisely at the base of the pews, and from the stained-glass window of the crucifixion above the altar.

  The Mermaid Chair was apparently the church’s main feature, for it had been established in a special spot in the side chapel, and above it hung a sign of explanation, which gave an account of how a symbol of Aphrodite had been appropriated by the Christians of the Middle Ages to symbolise the two natures of Christ, as man and as God. It was a reach as far as Lynley was concerned, but he reckoned the Christians of the Middle Ages had had their work cut out for them in this part of the world.

  The chair was simple and looked more like a one-person pew than an actual chair. It was formed from ancient oak and it featured carvings of the eponymous sea creature holding a quince in one hand and a comb in the other. No one, however, was sitting upon it waiting for Lynley.

  There was nothing for it but to wait himself, so Lynley took a place in the pew closest to the chair. It was frigid in the building and completely silent.

  At this point in his life, Lynley didn’t like churches. He didn’t like the intimations of mortality suggested by their graveyards, and he desired more than anything not to be reminded of mortality at all. Beyond that, he didn’t count himself a believer in anything other than chance and man’s regular inhumanity to man. To him, both churches and the religions they represented made promises they failed to keep: It was easy to guarantee eternal bliss after death since no one came back to report on the outcome of life lived in rigorous acceptance not only of the moral strictures devised by man but also of the horrors man wrought upon his fellows.

  He hadn’t been waiting long when he heard the clank of the church door opening and slamming shut with a disregard for things prayerful. He rose at this and left the pew. A tall figure was striding purposefully forward in the dim light. He walked with vigor, and only when he came into the side chapel did Lynley see him clearly, in a broad shaft of illumination that fell from one of the church’s windows.

  His face alone betrayed his age, for his posture was upright and his body was sturdy. His face, however, was deeply lined, his nose misshapen by rhinophyma, its appearance akin to a floret of cauliflower dipped in beet juice. Ferrell had told Lynley the name of this potential source of information on the Kerne family: David Wilkie, retired detective chief inspector from the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary, once the DI at the head of the investigation into the untimely death of Jamie Parsons.

  “Mr. Wilkie?” Lynley introduced himself. He produced his warrant card, and Wilkie put on a pair of spectacles to examine it.

  “Off your patch, aren’t you?” Wilkie didn’t sound particularly friendly. “Why’re you nosing up the Parsons death?”

  “Was it a murder?” Lynley asked.

  “Never proved as much. Death by misadventure at the inquest, but you and I both know what that means. Could be anything with proof of nothing, so you got to rely on what people say.”

  “That’s why I’ve come to talk to you. I’ve spoken with Eddie Kerne. His son Ben—”

  “Don’t need memory jogging, lad. I’d still be working the job if regulations let me.”

  “May we go somewhere to talk, then?”

  “Not much for the house of God, are you?”

  “Not at present, I’m afraid.”

  “What are you, then? Fair-weather Christian? Lord doesn’t come through for you the way you want so you slam the door on His face. That it? Young people. Bah. You’re all alike.” Wilkie dug deeply into his waxed jacket’s pocket and brought out a handkerchief that he wiped with surprising delicacy beneath his terrible nose. He gestured with it to Lynley and for a moment Lynley thought he was meant to use it as well, a form of bizarre communion with the older man. But Wilkie went on, saying, “Look at that. White as the day I bought it and I do my own laundry. What d’you think of that?”

  “Impressive,” Lynley said. “I couldn’t match you there.”

  “You young cocks, you couldn’t match me anywhere.” Wilkie shoved the handkerchief back to its home. He said, “It’ll be here in God’s house or not at all. ’Sides, I’ve got to dust the pews. You wait here. I’ve got supplies.”

  Wilkie, Lynley thought, was definitely not gaga. He could probably have run circles round DS Ferrell in Newquay. Doing so on his hands, at that.

  When the old man returned, he had a basket from which he took a whisk broom, several rags, and a tin of polish, which he prised open with a house key and roughly swished a rag through. “I
can’t sort out what’s happened to churchgoing,” he revealed. He handed over the whisk broom and gave Lynley detailed instructions as to its use upon and beneath the pews. He’d be following Lynley with the polish rag, so don’t be leaving any spots unseen to, he said. There weren’t enough rags if this lot—here he indicated the basket—got filthy. Did Lynley understand? Lynley did, which apparently gave Wilkie licence to return to his previous line of thought. “My day, the church was filled to capacity. Two, maybe three times on Sunday and then for evensong on Wednesday night. Now, between one Christmas and the next, you won’t see twenty regular goers. Some extras on Easter, but only if the weather is good. I put this down to those Beatles, I do. I remember that one saying he was Jesus way back when. He should’ve been sorted straightaway, you ask me.”

  “Long time ago, though, wasn’t that?” Lynley murmured.

  “Church’s never been the same after that heathen spoke. Never. All those wankers with hair growing down to their arses singing ’bout getting their satisfactions met. And smashing their instruments to nothing. Those things cost money, but do they care? No. It’s all ungodly. No wonder everyone stopped coming to pay the Lord His due respect.”

  Lynley was considering a reassessment of the gaga bit. He also needed Havers with him to sort out the old man when it came to his rock ’n’ roll history. He himself had been a late bloomer when it came to just about everything, and rock ’n’ roll was among the many areas of pop culture from the past upon which he could not wax, eloquently or otherwise. So he didn’t try. He waited until Wilkie had run out of steam on the topic, and in the meantime he became as admirably industrious with the whisk broom as he could manage within the confines of the pews and in the church’s inadequate lighting.