Careless In Red (20 page)

Ben Kerne said to Kerra, “Where are you going? I’d like you to stay here.” He sounded exhausted. He looked it, too.

Did you fuck her again? was what Kerra wished to use as reply. Did she slip on her little red negligee and crook her finger and did you melt and not see anything else, not even that Santo is dead? Good way to forget for a few minutes, eh? Works a trick. Always has done.

But she said none of that although she was positively itching to flay him. She said, “I need a ride just now. I’ve got to—”

“You’re needed here.”

Kerra glanced at Alan. He was watching her. Surprisingly, he indicated by cocking his head in the direction of the road that she should ride, no matter her father’s desires. Although she didn’t want to be, she was grateful for this display of understanding. Alan was, in this at least, fully on her side.

“Does she need something from me?” Kerra asked her father.

He looked behind him, up at the windows of the family’s flat. The curtains of the master bedroom were blocking out the daylight. Behind them, Dellen was coping in her Dellen way: on the crushed spines of her near relations.

“She’s in black,” Kerra’s father said.

“That’ll doubtless be a large disappointment to any number of people,” Kerra replied.

Ben Kerne looked at her with eyes so anguished that for a moment Kerra regretted her words. Not his fault came to her. But at the same time there were things that were her father’s fault, not the least of which was that they were even talking about her mother and, in doing so, that they were reduced to using a carefully chosen set of words, like semaphores and they two distant communicators with a secret language all their own.

She sighed, an aggrieved party unwilling to apologise. That he, too, was aggrieved could not be allowed to count. She said, “Do you?”

“What?”

“Need something from me. Because she doesn’t. She’ll be wanting you. And no doubt vice versa.”

Ben made no reply. He went back into the hotel without another word, shouldering past Alan, who looked rather like a man trying to decipher the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Alan said, “A little harsh, that, Kerra. Don’t you think?”

The last thing Kerra wanted to show Alan was gratitude for his previous understanding, so she welcomed the criticism. She said, “If you’ve decided to remain at work here, you need to become a little more familiar with the mechanism of your employment, okay?”

Like her father, he looked struck. She was happy he felt the sting of her words. He said, “I’ve got it that you’re angry. But what I haven’t got is why. Not the anger part of it, but the afraid part of it that’s fueling the anger. I can’t suss that one. I’ve tried. I spent most of last night awake, trying.”

“Poor you,” she said.

“Kerra, none of this is like you. What’re you frightened about?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I’m not frightened at all. You’re trying to talk about subjects you don’t understand.”

“Then help me understand.”

“Not my job,” she said. “I warned you off.”

“You warned me off working here. This—you, what’s happening with you, and what happened to Santo—isn’t part of my employment.”

She smiled briefly. “Stay round, then. If you haven’t already, you’re soon to find out what’s part and parcel of your employment. Now if you’ll excuse me, I want a ride. I doubt you’ll still be here when I return.”

“Are you coming over tonight?”

She raised her eyebrows. “I think that part might be finished between us.”

“What are you saying? Something’s happened since yesterday. Beyond Santo, something’s happened.”

“Oh, I do know that.” She mounted her bike, gearing it to take the rise of the driveway, heading into town.

She coursed along the southeast edge of St. Mevan Down where unmowed grass bent heavily with a weight of raindrops and a few dogs romped, grateful for a respite in the rain. She, too, was grateful, and she decided she’d head roughly in the direction of Polcare Cove. She told herself she had no intention of going to the place where Santo had died, but if she ended up there by chance, she would consider it meant to be. She wouldn’t pay attention to the route. She would merely blast along the lanes as fast as she could, turning when she felt like turning, continuing straight on when she fancied that.

She knew she needed a source of energy to do the sort of ride she had in mind, however, so when she saw Casvelyn of Cornwall (County’s Number One Pasty) to the right on the corner of Burn View Lane, she coasted over to the bakery, a large operation that supplied pasties up and down the coast to restaurants, shops, pubs, and smaller bakeries unable to bake their own. The business comprised an industrial-size kitchen in the back and a shop in the front, with ten bakers working in one area and two shop assistants in the other.

Kerra leaned her bike against the front window, a stunning monument to pasties, bread loaves, pastry, and scones. She ducked inside, deciding in advance that she would have a steak-and-beer pasty and she’d eat it on her way out of town.

At the counter, she placed her order with a girl whose impressive thighs looked like the result of their owner having sampled the products far too often. The requested pasty was being bagged and rung up at the till when the other shop assistant emerged with a tray of fresh goods to go into the display case. Kerra looked up as the kitchen door swung closed. At the same moment as her glance fell on the girl with the tray, that girl’s glance fell upon Kerra. Her steps faltered. She stood expressionless with the tray extended in front of her.

“Madlyn,” Kerra said. It came to her much later how stupid she sounded. “I didn’t know that you worked here.”

Madlyn Angarrack went to one of the display cases and opened it, sliding fresh pasties from the tray she held. She said to the other girl, who was in the process of bagging Kerra’s purchase, “What sort is that, Shar?” Her voice was curt.

“Steak and beer.” Kerra was the one to answer. And then, “Madlyn, I was asking Cadan about you only twenty minutes ago. How long’ve you been—”

“Give her one of these, Shar. They’re fresher.”

Shar looked from Madlyn to Kerra, as if taking a reading off the tension in the air and wondering from which direction it was flowing. But she did as she was told.

Kerra took her pasty over to where Madlyn was lining up display trays neatly. She said to her, “When did you start working here?”

Madlyn glanced her way. “Why d’you want to know?” She shut the lid of the display case with a decisive snap. “Would that make some sort of difference to you?” She used the back of her wrist to move some hair from her face. It was short—her hair—quite dark and curly. At this time of year, the copper that streaked it from exposure to the summer sun was missing. It came to Kerra how remarkably like Cadan his sister looked: the same colour of hair that was thick with curls, the same olive skin, the same dark eyes, the same shape of face. The Angarracks were thus nothing like the Kerne siblings. Physically, as well as in every other way, Kerra and Santo had been nothing alike.

The sudden thought of Santo made Kerra blink, hard. She didn’t want him there: not in her mind and definitely not near her heart. Madlyn seemed to take this as a reaction to her question and to its inimical tone because she went on to say, “I heard about Santo. I’m sorry he fell.”

Yet it seemed pro forma, too much an obligation performed. Because of this, Kerra said more brutally than she otherwise would have done, “He didn’t fall. He was murdered. The police have been to tell us a little while ago. They didn’t know at first, when he was found. They couldn’t tell.”

Madlyn’s mouth opened as if she would speak, her lips clearly forming the first part of murdered, but she did not say it. Instead she said, “Why?”

“Because they had to look at his climbing kit, didn’t they. Under their microscopes or whatever. I expect you can figure out the rest.”

“I mean why would someone murder Santo?”

“I find it hard to believe you, of all people, would even ask that question.”

“Are you saying…” Madlyn balanced the empty tray vertically, against her hip. “We were friends, Kerra.”

“I think you were a lot more than friends.”

“I’m not talking about Santo. I’m talking about you and me. We were friends. Close friends. You might say best friends. So how you can think that I’d ever—”

“You ended our friendship.”

“I started seeing your brother. That was all I did. Full stop.”

“Yes. Well.”

“And you defined everything after that. No one sees my brother and remains my friend. That was your position. Only you didn’t even say that much, did you? You just made the cut with your rusty scissors and that was it. No more friendship when someone does something you don’t want them to do.”

“It was for your own good.”

“Oh really? What? Getting cut off from someone…getting cut off from a sister? Because that’s what you were to me, all right? A sister.”

“You could have…” Kerra didn’t know how to go on. She also couldn’t see how they’d come to this. She’d wanted to talk to Madlyn, it was true. That was why she’d earlier gone to Cadan about his sister. But the conversation she’d been having with Madlyn Angarrack in her brain had not resembled the conversation she was having with Madlyn Angarrack now. That mental conversation had not taken place in the presence of a second shop assistant who was attending their colloquy with the sort of rabid spectator’s interest that precedes a girl fight at a secondary school. Kerra said quietly, “It’s not as if I didn’t warn you.”

“Of what?”

“Of what it would be like for you if you and my brother…” Kerra glanced at Shar. There was a glitter to her eyes that was discomfiting. “You know what I’m talking about. I told you what he was like.”

“But what you didn’t tell me was what you were like. What you are like. Mean and vindictive. Look at you, Kerra. Have you even cried? Your own brother dead and here you are, right as could be, going about on your bike without a care in the world.”

“You seem to be coping well enough yourself,” Kerra pointed out.

“At least I didn’t want him to die.”

“Didn’t you? Why’re you here? What happened to the farm?”

“I quit the farm. All right?” Her face had gone red. Her grip on the tray she’d brought with her from the kitchen had become so tight that her knuckles were white as she went on. “Are you happy now, Kerra? Have you learned what you wanted to know? I sorted out the truth. And do you want to know how I did that, Kerra? He claimed that he’d always be honest with me, of course, but when it came to this…Oh get out of here. Get out.” She raised the tray as if to throw it.

“Hey, Mad…” Shar spoke uneasily. Doubtless, Kerra thought, the other girl had never seen the rage of which Madlyn Angarrack was fully capable. Doubtless Shar had never opened a postal package and discovered within it pictures of herself with her head cut off, pictures of herself with her eyeballs stabbed by the lead of a pencil, handwritten notes and two birthday cards once saved but now smeared with faeces, a newspaper article about the head of instructors at Adventures Unlimited with bollocks and shit written in red pencil across it. No return address, but none had been needed. Nor had been any other sort of message, when the intentions of the sender were so clearly illustrated by the contents of the envelope in which they’d come.

This quality in her former friend comprised another reason that Kerra had wanted to talk to Madlyn Angarrack. Kerra might have hated her brother, but she also loved him. It wasn’t a matter of blood being thicker. But it was still and always a matter of blood.

“I KNOW THIS ISN’T A GOOD TIME TO TALK ABOUT IT,” ALAN Cheston said. “There’s not going to be a good time to talk about anything for a long while to come, and I think we both know that. The thing is, though…These guys have a diary to fill and if we’re going to commit, we need to let them know or we’re going to lose out.”

Ben Kerne nodded numbly. He couldn’t imagine conversing rationally about any subject, let alone about business. All he could imagine was a further walking of the corridors inside the Promontory King George Hotel, one shoulder against the wall and his head aimed down to study the floor. Down one corridor and up another, through a fire door and up the stairs to begin another corridor. On and on, spectral-like, into infinity. Occasionally thinking about how much they had spent on the old hotel’s transformation and wondering what the purpose might be in spending any more. Wondering what the purpose might be in anything at this point, and then trying to stop thinking altogether.

He’d done all that on the previous night. Dellen had pills but he would not take them.

Ben looked at Alan. He saw him through a fog, as if a veil existed between his eyeballs and his brain. He could take in the younger man, but he had no ability to process what he was taking in. So he said, “Go on. I understand,” although he didn’t want the first and didn’t mean the second.

They were in the marketing office, a small former conference room that opened off the erstwhile reception area. It had likely been used for staff meetings when the hotel was in operation. An ancient blackboard still hung on the wall, stained with ghostly copperplate, undoubtedly the work of a manager stirring his troops to action if the excessive underlining was anything to go by. Beneath this writing surface and encircling the room, the walls were covered with gouged wainscoting, above it faded wallpaper featuring hunting scenes. The Kernes had determined to leave all this as it was when they’d taken over the hotel. No one would see it but themselves, they’d decided, and the money could be more profitably spent elsewhere.

Which was the purpose of this meeting with Alan. Ben tuned in to what the young man was talking about and heard “…must consider the cost as an investment towards returns. Additionally, it’s a onetime cost but not a onetime use of the product, so we’d amortise what we spent producing it. If we’re careful to avoid a look that will date the piece, we’ll be fine. You know what I mean: keep away from shots of vehicles, avoid sites likely to demonstrate anachronicity in five years and use sites likely to demonstrate their history. That sort of thing. Here. This sample came the other day. I’ve already shown Dellen, but she probably…well, understandably she probably won’t have mentioned it to you.” Alan rose from the conference table—a pitted and scratched pine affair with countless burns from forgotten cigarettes—and went to the video player. He had coloured in a febrile manner as he spoke, and not for the first time Ben speculated about his daughter’s relationship with this man. He reckoned he knew the reason behind Kerra’s choice of Alan, and he was fairly certain she was wrong about him in more ways than one.