Careless in Red

by Elizabeth George

  “No!” Dellen squirmed beneath her. “You’re mad.”

  “Even Santo can’t stop you. Santo dead can’t stop you. I thought, ‘This will get through to her,’ but it didn’t, did it? Santo dead—my God, Santo murdered—didn’t make a ripple. Not the slightest diversion in what you planned.”

  “No!”

  Dellen began to fight her, clawing at her hands and her fingers now. She kicked and rolled to get away, but Kerra was too strong. So she began to scream.

  “You did this! You! You!” Dellen grabbed at her daughter’s hair and eyes. She pulled Kerra down. They rolled on the bed, seeking purchase among the mass of linens and covers. Their voices shrieked. Their arms flailed. Their legs kicked. Their hands grasped. They found. They lost. They grasped again, punching and pulling as Dellen shrieked, “You. You. You did it.”

  The bedroom door crashed open. Footsteps hurried across the room. Kerra felt herself lifted and heard Alan’s voice in her ear.

  “Easy,” he said. “Easy, easy. Jesus. Kerra, what’re you doing?”

  “Make her tell you,” Dellen cried. She had fallen to her side on the bed. “Make her tell you everything. Make her tell you what she’s done to Santo. Make her tell you about him. Santo!”

  One arm holding Kerra, Alan began moving towards the door.

  “Let me go!” Kerra cried. “Make her tell the truth.”

  “You come with me,” Alan told her instead. “It’s time that you and I had a real talk.”

  BOTH OF THE CARS, similar to those that had been reported in the general area on the day of Santo Kerne’s death, were standing at one side of LiquidEarth when Bea and DS Havers pulled up at the erstwhile Royal Air Station. A quick glance through the window showed that Lew Angarrack’s RAV4 held a surfing kit along with a short board. Jago Reeth’s Defender held nothing as far as they could see. It was pitted with rust on the outside—the salt air was murder on any car in this part of the country—but otherwise it was as clean as was possible, which wasn’t very clean at all, considering the weather and the likelihood that he had to keep it parked outside. It did have floor mats and on both driver’s side and passenger’s side there was plenty of dried mud for their consideration. But mud was a hazard of life on the coast from late autumn through the end of spring, so its presence in the Defender didn’t count for as much as Bea would have liked.

  Daidre Trahair being God-only-knew-where at this point, taking another jaunt over to the surfboard maker’s establishment had seemed the logical next move. Every lead needed to be followed up, and both Jago Reeth and Lewis Angarrack were eventually going to have to explain what they were doing in the general vicinity of Santo Kerne’s fall, no matter that Bea would have vastly preferred to have Daidre Trahair to the station for the thorough grilling she so richly deserved.

  Bea had taken a call from Thomas Lynley on their way out to the old air station. He’d gone from Newquay to Zennor, and he was on his way to Pengelly Cove again. He might have something for her, he said. But that something required additional nosing round the area from which the Kerne family had sprung. He sounded unduly excited.

  “And what about Dr. Trahair?” she had asked him sharply.

  He hadn’t yet seen her, he said. But then, he hadn’t expected to. He hadn’t actually been keeping an eye open for her, as a matter of fact and if he was being honest. His mind had been on other things. This new situation with the Kernes—

  Bea hadn’t wanted to hear about the Kernes, this new situation or otherwise. She didn’t trust Thomas Lynley, and this fact cheesed her off because she wanted to trust him. She needed to trust everyone involved in looking into the death of Santo Kerne, and the fact that she couldn’t made her cut him off abruptly. “Should you see our fair and gamboling Dr. Trahair along the way, you bring her to me,” she said. “Are we clear on that?”

  They were clear on that, Lynley assured her.

  “And if you’re intent on following up on the Kernes, then do keep in mind she’s part of Santo Kerne’s story as well.”

  If the Angarrack girl was to be believed, he noted. Because a woman scorned…

  “Oh yes. How true,” she’d declared impatiently, but Bea knew there was some truth in what he was saying: Madlyn Angarrack wasn’t looking any more unsoiled than the rest of them.

  Inside LiquidEarth, Bea introduced DS Havers to Jago Reeth, who was sanding the rough edge of fiberglass and resin on one rail of a swallowtail board, which he’d stretched between two sawhorses. These were thickly padded to protect the board’s finish, and Jago was taking care to be gentle with his sanding. An enormous cupboard emanating warmth stood open at one side of the room with additional boards loaded within it, apparently awaiting his attention. LiquidEarth seemed to be having a profitable preseason, and business was continuing to boom, if the noise from the shaping room was anything to go by.

  As before, Jago wore a disposable white boiler suit. It masked a lot of the dust that covered his body but none of the dust that covered his hair and his face. Any exposed part of him was white, even his fingers, and his cuticles formed ten Cheshire smiles at the base of his nails.

  Jago Reeth asked Bea if she wanted Lew or himself this time round. She said she wanted them both but her conversation with Mr. Angarrack could wait a bit, so as to allow her to talk to Jago alone.

  The old bloke didn’t appear disconcerted by the idea of the police wanting to talk to him, alone or otherwise. He did say he thought he’d told them all he knew about the Santo-and-Madlyn affair, but Bea informed him pleasantly that she generally liked to make that determination herself. He gave her a look, but he made no comment other than to tell her he would go on with his sanding if that wasn’t a problem.

  It wasn’t, Bea assured him. As she spoke, the noise from the shaping room died. Bea thought Lew Angarrack would join them, then, but he remained within.

  She asked Jago Reeth what he could tell her about his Defender being in the vicinity of Santo Kerne’s fall on the day of his death. As she spoke, DS Havers did her bit with notebook and pencil.

  Jago stopped sanding, glanced at Havers, then cocked his head as if he was evaluating Bea’s question. “Vicinity?” he asked. “Of Polcare Cove? Not hardly, I don’t reckon.”

  “Your car was seen in Alsperyl,” Bea told him.

  “You count that as near? Alsperyl might be near like the crow flies, but it’s miles and miles by car.”

  “A walk along the cliffs would take you from Alsperyl to Polcare Cove easily enough, Mr. Reeth. Even at your age.”

  “Seen on the cliff top, was I?”

  “I’m not saying you were. But the fact of your Defender being even remotely in the area where Santo Kerne met his death…You can understand my curiosity, I hope.”

  “Hedra’s Hut,” he said.

  “Who’s what?” Sergeant Havers asked the question. Her expression said she thought the term was some sort of expletive peculiar to Cornwall.

  “Old wooden shack built into the cliffs,” Jago explained to her. “That’s where I was.”

  “May I ask what you were doing there?” Bea said.

  Jago seemed to consider the propriety either of her questions or of giving an answer. “Private matter,” he finally said. He applied himself to his sanding again.

  “I’ll have to be the one making that decision,” Bea told him.

  The door of the shaping room opened and Lew Angarrack came out. As before, he was attired as Jago was, and he had a breathing mask and eyewear slung round his neck. A circular section of skin round his eyes, mouth, and nose looked oddly pink against the white of the rest of him. He and Jago Reeth exchanged an unreadable look.

  “Ah. You were in the vicinity of Polcare Cove as well, Mr. Angarrack,” Bea noted in a welcoming manner. She clocked the surprise on Jago Reeth’s face.

  “When was this?” Angarrack removed the breathing mask and goggles from round his neck and set them on top of the surfboard that Jago was sanding.

  “On the day of S
anto Kerne’s fall. Or perhaps better stated, on the day of Santo Kerne’s murder. What were you doing there?”

  “I wasn’t there,” he said. “Not in Polcare Cove.”

  “I said in the vicinity.”

  “Then you’re speaking of Buck’s Haven, which I suppose is arguably in the vicinity. I was surfing.”

  A quick look went from Jago to Lew Angarrack. The latter man didn’t seem to notice it.

  Bea said, “Surfing? And if I go back to have a look at those charts you lot use…What do you call them?”

  “Isobar. And yes, if you go back and have a look you’ll see the swells were rubbish, the wind was wrong, and there was no point at all to going out.”

  “So why did you?” DS Havers asked.

  “I wanted to think. The sea’s always been the best place for me to do that. If I caught a few waves as well, that’d be a bonus. But catching waves wasn’t why I was there.”

  “You were thinking about what?”

  “Marriage,” he said.

  “Yours?”

  “I’m divorced. Years ago. The woman I’ve been seeing…” He shifted his weight. He looked like a man who’d had any number of sleepless nights, and Bea wondered how many she could realistically ascribe to a gentleman’s quandary about his marital state. “We’ve been together a few years. She wants to get married. I prefer things as they are. Or with a few changes.”

  “What sort of changes?”

  “What the hell difference does that make to you? It’s a case of been there, done that for both of us but she won’t see it that way.”

  Jago Reeth made a noise, cousin to a snort. It seemed to indicate that he and Lew Angarrack were at one on this topic. He went on with his sanding, and Lew gave a look to what he was doing. He nodded as he ran his fingers along the part of the rail that Jago had already seen to.

  “So you were…what?” Bea asked the surfer. “Bobbing in the waves, trying to decide whether to marry her or not?”

  “No. I’d already decided that.”

  “And your decision was…?”

  He stepped away from the sawhorses and the board that Jago was working on. “I don’t see what that question has to do with anything. So let me get us to the point. If Santo Kerne fell from the cliff, he was either pushed or his climbing gear failed. Since my car was some distance away from Polcare Cove and since I was on the water, I couldn’t have pushed him, which leaves his equipment failing in some way. So I expect what you really want to know is who had access to his equipment. Have I got us there a bit quicker by using the direct route, Inspector Hannaford?”

  “I find there’re usually half a dozen routes to the truth,” Bea told him. “But you can travel this one, if you’ve a mind to.”

  “I had no idea where he kept his equipment,” Angarrack told her. “I still don’t know. I’d assume he kept his climbing kit at home.”

  “It was in his car.”

  “Well, of course it would have been on that day, wouldn’t it?” he demanded. “He’d gone for a bloody climb, woman.”

  “Lew…Just doing her job.” Jago spoke soothingly before he said to Bea, “I had access, if it comes down to it. Knowledge as well. The boy and his father had one run-in too many—”

  “Over what?” Bea interrupted.

  Jago Reeth and Angarrack exchanged a look. Bea saw this and repeated her question.

  “Over anything,” was Jago’s reply. “They didn’t see eye to eye on much, and Santo removed his kit from the premises. Bit of an I’ll-show-you gesture, if you know what I mean.”

  “‘I’ll show you’ what, exactly, Mr. Reeth?”

  “I’ll show you…whatever boys think they got to show their dads.”

  This answer hardly satisfied. Bea said, “If you know something pertinent—either of you—I’ll have it, please.”

  Another look between them, this one longer. Jago said to Lew, “Mate…You know it’s not my place.”

  “He made Madlyn pregnant,” Lew said abruptly. “And he had no intention of doing anything at all about it.”

  Next to her, Bea felt DS Havers stir, itching to get involved but restraining herself. For her part, Bea had to wonder at the information’s being delivered so perfunctorily by the man who’d have had the most reason to do something about it.

  “’Cording to Santo, his dad wanted him to do right by Madlyn,” Jago said. Then he added, “Sorry, Lew. I did still talk to the boy. Seemed the best, what with the baby coming.”

  “Your daughter didn’t terminate the pregnancy, then?” Bea asked Angarrack.

  “She intended to keep it…the child.”

  “Intended?” DS Havers asked. “Past tense meaning…?”

  “Miscarriage.”

  “When did all this happen?” Bea asked.

  “Miscarriage? At the beginning of April.”

  “According to her, she’d already ended their relationship by then. So she’d done that in the midst of her pregnancy.”

  “That would be correct.”

  Bea glanced at Havers. The sergeant’s lips were rounded to an o, which was likely short for oh boy. They were on a most interesting track.

  “How did you feel about this, Mr. Angarrack? And you as well, Mr. Reeth, since you’d taken such care to see the boy was supplied with condoms.”

  “I didn’t feel good,” Angarrack said. “But if doing right by Madlyn was going to mean they’d marry, I was happier they were apart, believe me. I didn’t want her marrying him. They were only eighteen and besides…” He gestured away the rest of what he was going to say.

  “Besides?” Havers prompted him.

  “He’d shown his colours. He was a little sod. I didn’t want the girl involved with him any longer.”

  “D’you mean he wanted her to abort?”

  “I mean he didn’t care one way or another what she did, according to Madlyn. Which, apparently, was his style. Only she didn’t know that at first. Well, none of us did.”

  “Must have made you frantic when you found out.”

  “So did I kill him in my frantic state?” Lew asked. “Hardly. I had no reason to kill him.”

  “Ill use of your daughter being insufficient reason?” Bea asked.

  “It was over and done with. She was…She is recovering.” And he added, with a look at Jago, “Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Slow process,” was Jago’s reply.

  “Made easier if Santo was dead, I daresay,” Bea pointed out.

  “I’ve told you. I didn’t know where he kept his equipment, and had I known—”

  “I knew,” Jago Reeth cut in. “Santo’s dad kept trying to sort him, see, after Madlyn came up pregnant. Like I said before, they rowed. Part of the row was that act-like-a-man-for-once challenge dads give their sons sometimes, and for Santo, it’s easier to apply acting like a man to something other than act-like-the-proper-father-of a-baby-that’s-coming. So he takes his climbing kit to do just that. ’Nstead of, ‘You want me to stand by Madlyn, I’ll stand by Madlyn,’ it was easier to have it, ‘You’d rather I climb cliffs than surf? Then I’ll climb. I’ll show you a real cliff climber, come down to it.’ Then off he went to climb. Now. Then. Whenever. He kept his kit in the boot of his car. I knew it was there.”

  “May I assume that Madlyn knew as well?”

  “She was with me,” Jago said. “The two of us had gone to Asperyl. We made the walk out to Hedra’s Hut. There was something inside she wanted to be rid of. It was the last thing that tied her to Santo Kerne.”

  Aside from Santo himself, Bea thought. She said, “And what would this be?”

  Jago set his sanding block gently on the deck of the surfboard. He said, “Look, she fell dead hard for Santo. He was—pardon, Lew, no dad likes to hear this—he was her first in bed. When things ended with them, she was in a bad way about it. And then came the matter of losing that baby. She was having trouble getting past it all, and who wouldn’t. So I told her to get rid of everything Santo, start to finish. She’d do
ne that but there was this one last bit, so that’s what we were doing there. They’d carved their initials in the hut. Stupid kid stuff, with a heart and everything, if you c’n believe it. We went there to destroy it. Not the hut, mind you. It’s been there…Christ, what? A hundred years? We didn’t want to hurt the hut. Just the initials. We left the heart as it was.”

  “Why not carry all this to the logical end?” Bea asked him.

  “Which would be what?”

  “The obvious, Mr. Reeth,” Havers put in. “Why not give Santo Kerne the chop as well?”

  Lew Angarrack said hotly, “You hang on just a God damn minute—”

  Bea cut him off. “Is she a jealous girl? Has she a history of striking back when she’s hurt? Either of you can answer, by the way.”

  “If you’re trying to say—”

  “I’m trying to get to the truth, Mr. Angarrack. Did Madlyn tell you—or you, Mr. Reeth—that Santo was seeing someone else in the midst of all this? And I do use seeing as a euphemism, by the way. He was shagging one of the older women hereabouts at the same time as he was shagging and impregnating your daughter. She’s told us as much, at least the shagging part. Well, she had to, as we’ve caught her in more than one lie so far and I’m afraid she’d lied herself into a brick wall. As things turn out, she’d followed the boy and there they were in this woman’s home, the virile, energetic, and young white ram enthusiastically tupping the ageing ewe. Did you know about this? Did you, Mr. Reeth?”

  Lew Angarrack said, “No. No.” His drove his hand through his greying hair, dislodging a sand fall of polystyrene dust. “I’ve been caught up in my own affairs…I knew she and the boy were done for, and I thought that with time…Madlyn’s always been edgy. I’ve long thought it was due to her mum and the fact she left us and the fact that Madlyn doesn’t cope well with being left. Well, that seemed natural enough to me, and she always got past it in the end if something died between herself and someone else. I believed she’d get past this as well, even past the loss of the baby. So when she was as…as disturbed as she was, I did what I could, or what I thought I could to help her through it.”