Careless in Red

by Elizabeth George

  “Inspector?” Washoe said at his end of the line. “D’you want—”

  “What you’ve given me is fine,” she told him. “Save the science for your formal report.”

  “Will do.”

  “And…Duke Clarence?” She grimaced at the poor sod’s name.

  “Guv?”

  “Thanks for rushing things with that hair.”

  She could hear that he was pleased with her expression of gratitude as he rang off. She gathered her team, such as it was. They were looking for a machine tool, she told them and gave them the details on the chock stone as Washoe had related them to her. What were their options on finding one? Constable McNulty? she enquired.

  McNulty seemed to be feeling his oats this morning, perhaps as a result of the success he’d had tracking down unhelpful photos of dead surfers. He pointed out that the erstwhile air station was a good possibility. There were any number of businesses set up in the old buildings and doubtless a machine shop was going to be one of them.

  Auto-body shop would do as well, someone else suggested.

  Or a factory of some sort, came another suggestion.

  Then the ideas emerged quickly. Metal worker, iron worker, even a sculptor. What about a blacksmith? Well, that wasn’t likely.

  “My mum-in-law could do it with her teeth,” someone said.

  Guffaws all round. “That’ll do,” Bea said. She gave Sergeant Collins the nod to make the assignments: set out and find the tool. They knew their suspects. Consider them, their homes, and their places of employment. And anyone who might have done work for them at their homes or their places of employment as well.

  Then she said to Havers, “I’d like a word, Sergeant,” and she had that word in the corridor. She said, “Where’s our good superintendent this morning? Having a bit of a lie-in?”

  “No. He was at breakfast. We had it together.” Havers smoothed her hands on the hips of her baggy corduroy trousers. They remained decidedly baggy.

  “Did you indeed? I hope it was delicious and I’m thrilled to know he’s not missing his meals. So where is he?”

  “He was still at the inn when I—”

  “Sergeant? Less smoke and more mirrors, please. Something tells me that if anyone on earth knows exactly where Thomas Lynley is and what he’s doing, you’re going to be that person. Where is he?”

  Havers ran a hand through her hair. The gesture did nothing at all to improve its state. She said, “All right. This is stupid and I’ll wager he’d rather you didn’t know.”

  “What?”

  “His socks were wet.”

  “I beg your pardon? Sergeant, if this is some kind of joke…”

  “It’s not. He hasn’t enough clothes with him. He washed both pairs of his socks last night and they didn’t dry. Probably,” she added with a roll of her eyes, “because he’s never had to personally wash his socks in his life.”

  “And are you telling me…?”

  “That he’s at the hotel drying his socks. Yes. That’s what I’m telling you. He’s using a hair dryer and, knowing him, he’s probably set the building on fire by now. We’re talking about a bloke who doesn’t even make his own toast in the morning, Guv. Like I said, he washed them last night and he didn’t put them on the radiator or wherever. He just left them…wherever he left them. As far as the rest of his kit goes—”

  Bea raised her hand. “Enough information. Believe me. Whatever he may have done with his pantaloons is between him and his God. When can we expect him?”

  Havers’s teeth pulled at the inside of her lower lip in a fashion that suggested discomfort. There was something more going on.

  Bea said, “What is it?” as, from below, a courier’s envelope was brought up the stairs in the hands of one of the team members already heading out on his assignment. It had just come, the constable told her, two blokes having been working with the relevant software for hours. Bea opened the envelope. The contents comprised six pages, not fixed together. She flipped through them as she said, “Where is he, Sergeant, and when can we expect him?”

  Havers said, “Dr. Trahair.”

  “What about her?”

  “She was in the car park when I left this morning. I think she was waiting for him.”

  “Was she indeed?” Bea looked up from the paperwork. “That’s an interesting wrinkle.” She handed the sheets to Havers. “Have a look at these,” she told her.

  “What are they, then?”

  “They’re age progressions. From that photograph Thomas handed over. I think you’re going to find them of interest.”

  DAIDRE TRAHAIR HESITATED JUST outside his door. She could hear the sound of the hair dryer from within, so she knew that Sergeant Havers had been telling her the truth. It hadn’t seemed so. Indeed, when Daidre had confronted the sergeant in the car park of the Salthouse Inn, asking for Thomas Lynley, the idea that he might not be present because he was actually drying his socks had sounded like the lamest sort of excuse for his absence from Sergeant Havers’s side. On the other hand, the DS from London hardly had a reason to invent an activity for Lynley to be engaging in in order to hide the fact that he might instead be spending yet another day scouring through the detritus of Daidre’s past. For it seemed to Daidre at this point that he’d done as much scouring as he’d be able to do without her own participation.

  She knocked on his door sharply. The dryer switched off. The door swung open. “Sorry, Barbara. I’m afraid they’re still not—” He saw it was Daidre. “Hullo,” he said with a smile. “You’re out and about early, aren’t you?”

  “The sergeant told me…I saw her in the car park. She said you were drying your socks.”

  He had a sock in one hand and the dryer in the other, proof of the matter. He said, “I did try to wear them at breakfast, but I found there’s something particularly disturbing about damp socks. Shades of World War I and life in the trenches, I suppose. Would you like to come in?” He stepped back and she passed him, into the room. The bed was unmade. A towel lay in a heap on the floor. A notebook had scribbles of pencil in it, with car keys sitting on its open pages. “I thought they’d dry by morning,” he said. “Foolishly, I washed both pairs. I hung them by the window all night. I even cracked it open for air. It was all for nothing. According to Sergeant Havers, I should have shown some common sense and considered the radiator. You don’t mind…?”

  She shook her head. He began his work with the hair dryer again. She watched him. He’d nicked himself shaving, and he’d apparently not noticed: A thin line of blood traced along his jaw. It was the sort of thing his wife would have seen and told him about as he left the house in the morning.

  She said, “This isn’t the sort of thing I’d expect the lord of the manor to be doing.”

  “What? Drying his own socks?”

  “Doesn’t someone like you have…What do you call them? People?”

  “Well, I can’t see my sister drying my socks. My brother would be as useless as I am, and my mother would likely throw them at me.”

  “I don’t mean family people. I mean people people. Servants. You know.”

  “I suppose it depends on what you think of as servants. We have staff at Howenstow—that’s the family pile, if I’ve not mentioned its name—and I’ve a man who oversees the house in London. But I’d hardly call him a servant and can a single employee actually be called staff? Besides that, Charlie Denton comes and goes fairly at will. He’s a theatre lover with personal aspirations.”

  “Of what sort?”

  “Of the sort involving greasepaint and the crowd. He longs to be onstage but the truth of the matter is that he stands little chance of being discovered as long as he limits his range to what it currently is. He vacillates between Algernon Moncrieff and the porter in Macbeth.”

  Daidre smiled in spite of herself. She wanted to be angry with him and part of her remained so. But he made it difficult.

  She said, “Why did you lie to me, Thomas?”

  “L
ie to you?”

  “You said you hadn’t gone to Falmouth asking questions about me.”

  He clicked off the hair dryer. He set it on the edge of the basin and considered it. “Ah,” he said.

  “Yes. Ah. Strictly speaking, I realise, you were telling me the truth. You didn’t go personally. But you sent her, didn’t you? It wasn’t her plan to go there.”

  “Strictly speaking, no. I’d no idea she was in the area. I thought she was in London. But I did ask her to look into your background, so I suppose…” He made a small gesture with his hand, a European gesture telling her to complete the thought on her own.

  Which she was happy enough to do. “You lied. I don’t appreciate that. You might have asked me a few questions.”

  “I did, actually. You likely didn’t think I’d check on the answers.”

  “To verify them. To make sure—”

  “That you yourself weren’t lying.”

  “I seem so questionable to you. So like a murderer.”

  He shook his head. “You seem as unlike a murderer as anyone I’ve ever come across. But it’s part of the job. And the more I asked, the more I discovered there were areas in your story—”

  “I thought we were getting to know each other. Foolish me.”

  “We were, Daidre. We are. That was part of it. But from the beginning, there were inconsistencies in what you said about yourself, and they couldn’t be ignored.”

  “You mean you couldn’t ignore them.”

  He gazed at her. His expression was frank. “I couldn’t ignore them,” he said. “Someone is dead. And I’m a cop.”

  “I see. D’you want to share what you’ve discovered?”

  “If you like.”

  “I like.”

  “Bristol Zoo.”

  “I work there. Has someone claimed that I don’t?”

  “There is no Paul keeping primates there. And there is no Daidre Trahair born in Falmouth, at home or elsewhere. Do you want to explain?”

  “Are you arresting me?”

  “No.”

  “Then come along. Gather your things. I want to show you something.” She headed for the door but paused there. She offered him a smile that she knew was brittle. “Or d’you want to phone DI Hannaford and Sergeant Havers first, and tell them you’re coming with me? After all, I may send you over a cliff, and they’ll want to know where to find your body.”

  She didn’t wait to hear him reply or to see whether he took her up on the offer. She headed for the stairs and from there out to her car. She assured herself that one way or another it didn’t really matter if he followed or not. She congratulated herself on feeling absolutely nothing. She’d come a long way, she decided.

  LYNLEY DIDN’T PHONE DI Hannaford or Barbara Havers. He was a free agent, after all, not on loan, on duty, or on anything at all. Nonetheless, he took the mobile with him once he’d donned his socks—thankfully far drier than they’d been during breakfast—and gathered up his jacket. He found Daidre in the car park, her Vauxhall idling. She’d gone rather pale during their conversation, but her colour had returned as she’d waited for him to join her.

  He got into the car. In closer proximity to her, he could smell the scent she was wearing. It put him in mind of Helen, not the scent itself but the fact of the scent. Helen had been citrus, the Mediterranean on a sunny day. Daidre was…It seemed like the aftermath of rain, fresh air after a storm. He passed through a fleeting moment in which he missed Helen so much he thought his heart might stop. But it didn’t, of course. He was left with the seat belt, which he fumbled into place.

  “We’re going to Redruth,” Daidre told him. “Do you want to phone DI Hannaford if you’ve not already done so? Just to be safe? Although since I’ve seen your Sergeant Havers already, she’ll be able to tell the authorities I was the last one to see you alive.”

  “I don’t actually think you’re a killer,” he told her. “I’ve never thought that.”

  “Haven’t you.”

  “I haven’t.”

  She changed the car into gear. “Perhaps I can alter all that for you, then.”

  They began with a jerk, bumping over the uneven surface of the car park and from there out into the lane. It was a long drive, but they didn’t speak. She flicked on the radio. They listened to the news, to a tedious interview with a nasally challenged and self-important novelist clearly hoping to be nominated for the Booker Prize, and to a discussion on genetically altered crops. Daidre asked him at last to sort out a CD from the glove compartment, which he did. He chose at random and they ended up with the Chieftains. He put it on and she turned up the volume.

  At Redruth, she avoided the town centre. Instead, she followed the signs for Falmouth. He wasn’t alarmed, but he glanced at her then. She didn’t look his way. Her jaw was set, but her expression seemed resigned, the look of someone who’d come to the endgame. Unexpectedly, he felt a brief stab of regret, although put to the question, he couldn’t have said what it was that he regretted.

  A short distance from Redruth, she turned into a minor road and then into another, which was the sort of narrow lane that connects two or more hamlets. This last was marked for Carnkie, but rather than drive upon it, she stopped at a junction, merely a triangular bit of land where one might pull over and read a map. He expected her to do just that, as it appeared to him that they were in the middle of a nowhere characterised by an earthen hedge, partly reinforced by stone, and beyond it an expanse of open land studded occasionally with enormous boulders. In the distance, an unpainted granite farmhouse stood. Between them and it, ragwort and chickweed along with scrub grass were being seen to by sheep.

  Daidre said, “Tell me about the room you were born in, Thomas.”

  It was, he thought, the oddest sort of question. He said, “Why d’you want to know about that?”

  “I’d like to imagine it, if you don’t mind. You said you were born at home, not in hospital. At the family pile. I’m wondering what sort of family pile it is. Was it your parents’ bedroom you were born in? Did they share a room? Do your kind of people do that, by the way?”

  Your kind of people. A battle line had been drawn. It was an odd moment for him to feel the sort of despair that had come upon him at other moments throughout his life: always reminding him that some things didn’t change in a changing world, most of all these things.

  He unfastened his seat belt and opened the door. He got out. He walked to the hedge. The wind was brisk in this area, as there was nothing to impede it. It carried the bawling of the sheep and the scent of wood smoke. Behind him, he heard Daidre’s door open. In a moment she was at his side.

  He said, “My wife was quite clear about it when we married: Just in case you’re considering it, none of this separate rooms nonsense, she said. None of those coy, thrice-weekly nocturnal conjugal visits, Tommy. We shall do our conjugating when and where we desire and when we fall asleep nightly, we shall do so in each other’s presence.” He smiled. He looked back at the sheep, the expanse of land, the undulations of it as it rolled to the horizon. He said, “It’s quite a large room. Two windows with deep embrasures look down on a rose garden. There’s a fireplace—still used in winter because no matter central heating, these houses are impossible to keep warm—and a seating area in front of it. The bed’s opposite the windows. It, too, is large. It’s heavily carved, Italian. The walls are pale green. There’s a heavy gilt mirror above the fireplace, a collection of miniatures on the wall next to it. Between the windows, a demilune table holds a porcelain urn. On the walls, portraits. And two French landscapes. Family photos on side tables. That’s all.”

  “It sounds very impressive.”

  “It’s more comfortable than impressive. Chatsworth needn’t worry about the competition.”

  “It sounds…suitable for someone of your stature.”

  “It’s just where I was born, Daidre. Why did you want to know?”

  She turned her head. Her gaze took in everything: the earthen h
edge, the stones, the boulders in the field, the tiny junction in which they’d parked. She said, “Because I was born here.”

  “In that farmhouse?”

  “No. Here, Thomas. In this…well, whatever you want to call it. Here.” She walked over to a stone and from beneath it he saw her remove a card. She brought it to him and handed it over. As she did so, she said, “Did you tell me that Howenstow is Jacobean?”

  “It is, in part, yes.”

  “I thought so. Well, what I had was a bit more humble. Do have a look.”

  He saw she’d given him a postcard with the image of a gipsy caravan on it. It was of the type that once embellished the countryside with the flavour of Romany: the wagon bright red, the arched roof green, the wheels’ spokes yellow. He studied it. Since she clearly wasn’t of gipsy birth, her parents must have been on holiday, he thought. Tourists had done that in Cornwall for years: They hired wagons and played at being gipsies.

  Daidre seemed to read his mind, for she said, “No romance to it at all, I’m afraid. No getting caught short on a holiday and no Romanies in my background. My parents are travellers, Thomas. Their parents were travellers as well. My aunts and uncles, such as they are, are travellers also, and this is where our caravan was parked when I was born. Our accommodation was never as picturesque as this one,” with a nod at the card, “as it hadn’t been painted in years, but it was otherwise much the same. Not quite like Howenstow, wouldn’t you say?”

  He wasn’t sure what to say. He wasn’t sure he believed her.

  “Conditions were…I’d have to call them rather cramped, I suppose, although things improved marginally by the time I was eight years old. But for a time there were five of us shoehorned together. Myself, my parents, and the twins.”

  “The twins.”

  “My brother and my sister. Younger than I by three years. And not a single one of us born in Falmouth.”

  “Are you not Daidre Trahair, then?”

  “I am, in a way.”

  “I don’t understand. ‘In a way’? What way?”