Careless In Red (25 page)

“You’re nervous,” Dellen said. “I’m making you that way. And the bird’s fine. He doesn’t know what he’s saying, after all.”

“Yeah. Well. Sometimes, though, I’d swear he does.”

“Like the remark about shagging?”

He blinked. “What?”

“‘Polly wants a shag,’” she reminded him. “It was the first thing he said when I came into the room. I don’t, actually. Want a shag, that is. But I’m curious why he said that. I expect you use that bird to collect women. Is that why you brought him with you?”

“He goes most everywhere with me.”

“That can’t be convenient.”

“We work things out.”

“Do you?” She observed the bird, but Cadan had the feeling she wasn’t really seeing Pooh. He couldn’t have said what she was seeing but her next remarks gave him at least an idea. “Santo and I were quite close. Are you close to your mother, Cadan?”

“No.” He didn’t add that it was impossible to be close to Wenna Rice Angarrack McCloud Jackson Smythe, aka the Bounder. She had never remained stationary long enough for closeness to be anywhere in the deck of cards she played.

“Santo and I were quite close,” Dellen said again. “We were very like. Sensualists. Do you know what that is?” She gave him no chance to answer, not that he could have given her a definition, anyway. She said, “We live for sensation. For what we can see and hear and smell. For what we can taste. For what we can touch. And for what can touch us. We experience life in all its richness, without guilt and without fear. That’s what Santo was like. That’s what I taught Santo to be.”

“Right.” Cadan thought how he’d like to get out of the room, but he wasn’t certain how to effect a departure that wouldn’t look like running away. He told himself there was no real reason to turn tail and disappear through the doorway, but he had a feeling, nearly animal in nature, that danger was near.

Dellen said to him, “What sort are you, Cadan? Can I touch your bird or will he bite?”

He said, “He likes to be scratched on his head. Where you’d put his ears if birds had ears. I mean ears like ours because they can hear, obviously.”

“Like this?” She came close to Cadan, then. He could smell her scent. Musk, he thought. She used the nail of her index finger, which was painted red. Pooh accepted her ministrations, as he normally did. He purred like a cat, yet another sound he’d learned from a previous owner. Dellen smiled at the bird. She said to Cadan, “You didn’t answer me. What sort are you? Sensualist? Emotionalist? Intellectual?”

“Not bloody likely,” he replied. “Intellectual, I mean. I’m not intellectual.”

“Ah. Are you emotional? Bundle of feelings? Raw to the touch? Inside, I mean.”

He shook his head.

“Then you’re a sensualist, like me. Like Santo. I thought as much. You have that look about you. I expect it’s something your girlfriend appreciates. If you have one. Do you?”

“Not just now.”

“Pity. You’re quite attractive, Cadan. What do you do for sex?”

Cadan felt ever more the need to escape, yet she wasn’t doing a single thing except petting the bird and talking to him. Still, something was very off with the woman.

Then it came to him at a gallop that her son was dead. Not only dead but murdered. He was gone, kaput, given the chop, whatever. When a son died—or a daughter or a husband—wasn’t the mother supposed to rip up her clothes? tear at her hair? shed tears by the bucketful?

She said, “Because you must do something for sex, Cadan. A young virile man like you. You can’t mean me to think you live like a celibate priest.”

“I wait for summer,” he finally told her.

Her finger hesitated, less than an inch from Pooh’s green head. The bird sidestepped to get back within its range. “For summer?” Dellen said.

“Town’s full of girls then. Here on holiday.”

“Ah. You prefer the short-term relationship, then. Sex without strings.”

“Well,” he said. “Yeah. Works for me, that.”

“I expect it does. You scratch them and they scratch you and everyone’s happy with the arrangement. No questions asked. I know exactly what you mean. Although I expect that surprises you. A woman my age. Married, with children. Knowing what it means.”

He offered a half smile. It was insincere, just a way to acknowledge what she was saying without having to acknowledge what she was saying. He gave a look in the direction of the doorway. He said, “Well,” and tried to make his tone decisive, a way of saying, That’s that, then. Nice talking to you.

She said, “Why haven’t we met before this?”

“I just started—”

“No. I understand that. But I can’t sort out why we haven’t met before. You’re roughly Santo’s age—”

“Four years older, actually. He’s my—”

“—and you’re so like him as well. So I can’t sort out why you’ve never come round with him.”

“—sister’s age. Madlyn,” he said. “You probably know Madlyn. My sister. She and Santo were…Well, they were whatever you want to call it.”

“What?” Dellen asked blankly. “What did you call her?”

“Madlyn. Madlyn Angarrack. They—she and Santo—they were together for…I don’t know…Eighteen months? Two years? Whatever. She’s my sister. Madlyn’s my sister.”

Dellen stared at him. Then she stared past him, but she appeared to be looking at nothing at all. She said in a different voice altogether, “How very odd. She’s called Madlyn, you say?”

“Yeah. Madlyn Angarrack.”

“And she and Santo were…what, exactly?”

“Boyfriend and girlfriend. Partners. Lovers. Whatever.”

“You’re joking.”

He shook his head, confused, wondering why she’d think he was joking. “They met when he came to get a board from my dad. Madlyn taught him to surf. Santo, that is. Well, obviously, not my dad. That’s how they got to know each other. And then…well, I s’pose you could say they started hanging about together and things went from there.”

“And you called her Madlyn?” Dellen asked.

“Yeah. Madlyn.”

“Together for eighteen months.”

“Eighteen months or so. Yeah. That’s it.”

“Then why did I never meet her?” she said.

WHEN DI BEA HANNAFORD returned to the police station with Constable McNulty in tow, it was to find that Ray had managed to fulfill her wish for an incident room in Casvelyn and that Sergeant Collins had set the room up with a degree of expertise that surprised her. He’d somehow managed to get the upper-floor conference room in order, and now it was ready, with china boards upon which pictures of Santo Kerne were posted both in death and in life and on which activities could be listed neatly. There were also desks, phones, computers with HOLMES at the ready, printers, a filing cabinet, and supplies. The only thing the incident room didn’t have was, unfortunately, the most vital part of any investigation: the MCIT officers.

The absence of a murder squad was going to leave Bea in the unenviable position of having to conduct the investigation with McNulty and Collins alone until such a time as a murder squad got there. Since that squad should have arrived along with the contents of the incident room, Bea labeled the situation unacceptable. It was also annoying because she knew very well that her former husband could get a murder squad from Land’s End to London in less than three hours if he was pressed to do so.

“Damn,” she muttered. She told McNulty to type up his notes officially and she went to a desk in the corner where she quickly discovered that having a phone within sight did not necessarily mean that it was connected to an actual telephone line. She looked meaningfully at Sergeant Collins, who said apologetically, “BT says another three hours. There’s no hookup up here, so they’re sending someone over from Bodmin to put one in. We have to use mobiles or the phones downstairs till then.”

“Do they know this is a murder enquiry?”

“They know,” he said, but his tone suggested that, murder or not, BT also didn’t much care.

Bea said, “Hell,” and took out her mobile. She walked to a desk in the corner and punched in Ray’s work number.

“There’s been something of a cock-up,” was what she told him when she had him on the phone at last.

He said, “Beatrice. Hullo. You’re welcome for the incident room. Am I having Pete for the night again?”

“I’m not phoning about Pete. Where’re the MCIT blokes?”

“Ah,” he said. “That. Well, we’ve a bit of a problem.” He went on to lower the boom. “Can’t be done, love. There’s no MCIT available at the moment to be sent to Casvelyn. You can ring Dorset or Somerset and try to get one of theirs, of course, or I can do it for you. In the meantime, I do have a TAG team I can send you.”

“A TAG team,” she said. “A TAG team, Ray? This is a murder enquiry. Murder. Major crime. Requiring a Major Crime Investigating Team.”

“Blood from a stone,” he returned. “There’s not much more I can do. I did try to suggest you maintain your incident room in—”

“Are you punishing me?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re the one who—”

“Don’t you dare go there. This is professional.”

“I think I’ll have Pete with me till you’ve got a result,” he said mildly. “You’re going to be quite busy. I don’t want him staying on his own. It’s not a good idea.”

“You don’t want him staying…You don’t…” She was left speechless, a reaction to Ray so rare that its presence now left her even more speechless. What remained was ending the conversation. She should have done so with dignity but all she managed was to punch off the mobile and throw it onto the closest desk.

When it rang a moment later, she thought her former husband was phoning to apologise or, more likely, to lecture her about police procedure, about her propensity for myopic decision making, about perpetually crossing the boundaries of what was allowed while expecting someone to run interference for her. She snatched up the mobile and said, “What? What?”

It was the forensic lab, however. Someone called Duke Clarence Washoe—and was that name bizarre enough…what in God’s name had his parents been thinking?—ringing up with the fingerprint report.

“Got a real stew, mum,” was how he broke the news to her.

“Guv,” she said. “Or DI Hannaford. Not ma’am, madam, mum, or anything suggesting you and I are related or I’ve got royal connections, all right?”

“Oh. Right. Sorry.” A pause. He seemed to need a moment to adjust his approach. “We’ve got dabs from your vic all over the car—”

“Victim,” Bea said, and she thought wearily about what American television had done to normal communications. “Not vic. Victim. Or Santo Kerne, if you prefer. Let’s show a little respect, Mr. Washoe.”

“Duke Clarence,” he said. “You c’n call me Duke Clarence.”

“That delights me no end,” she replied. “Go on.”

“Eleven other different sets of prints as well. This is outside of the car. Inside, we’ve got seven sets. The vic…The dead boy’s. And six others who also left prints on the passenger door, fascia, window handles, and glove box. There’re prints on the CD cases as well. The boy and three others.”

“What about on the climbing equipment?”

“The only decent prints’re on that tape wrapped round it. But they’re Santo Kerne’s.”

“Damn,” Bea said.

“There’s a nice clear set on the boot of the car, though. Fresh ones, I’d guess. But I don’t know what good that’ll do you.”

None at all, Bea thought. Someone crossing the bloody road in town could’ve touched the damn car in passing. She would send forensics the prints gathered from everyone remotely connected to Santo Kerne, but the truth was that identifying whose fingers left dabs on the boy’s car probably wasn’t going to get them anywhere. This was a disappointment.

“Let me know what else you turn up,” she told Duke Clarence Washoe. “There’s got to be something from that car we can use.”

“As to that, we’ve got some hair caught up in the climbing equipment. That might turn up something.”

“Tissue attached?” she asked hopefully.

“Yes, indeed.”

“Keep it safe, then. Carry on, Mr. Washoe.”

“You c’n call me Duke Clarence,” he reminded her.

“Ah yes,” she said. “I’d forgotten that.”

They rang off. Bea sat down at the desk. She watched Constable McNulty across the room attempting to type up his notes, and it came to her that he didn’t actually know how to type. He was hunting for every letter to tap upon with his index fingers, with prodigious pauses between each tap. She knew if she watched him for longer than thirty seconds, she would scream, so she rose and began to head out of the room.

Sergeant Collins met her at the door. He said, “Phone’s below.”

She said fervently, “Thank God. Where are they?”

“Who?”

“BT.”

“BT? They’ve not arrived yet.”

“Then what—”

“The phone. You’ve a call downstairs. It’s an officer from—”

“Middlemore,” she finished. “That would be my former husband. Assistant Chief Constable Hannaford. Head him off for me. I need some time.” Ray, she decided, had tried on her mobile, and now he was trying to get through on the land line. He’d have built up a head of steam at this point. She didn’t particularly want to experience it. She said, “Tell him I’ve just set out to see to some business. Tell him to phone me back tomorrow. Or at home later.” She would give him that much.

“It’s not ACC Hannaford,” Collins said.

“You said an officer…”

“Someone called Sir David—”

“What is it with people?” Bea demanded. “I’ve just got off the phone with a Duke Clarence up in Chepstow and now it’s Sir David?”

“Hillier, he’s called,” Collins said. “Sir David Hillier. Assistant commissioner up at the Met.”

“Scotland Yard?” Bea asked. “Now, isn’t that just what I need.”

BY THE TIME HIS regular drinking hour at the Salthouse Inn had rolled round, Selevan Penrule was in need of one. He also was, at least to his way of thinking, deserving of one. Something strong from the sixteen men of Tain. Or however the hell many there were.

Having to cope with both his granddaughter’s pigheadedness and her mother’s hysteria in a single day would have been too much for any bloke. No wonder David had moved them all off to Rhodesia or whatever it was called these days. He’d probably thought a good bout of heat, cholera, TB, snakes, and tsetse flies—or whatever they had in that god-awful bloody climate of theirs—would sort both of them out. But it hadn’t done so if Tammy’s behaviour and Sally Joy’s voice on the phone were anything to go by.