Careless In Red (60 page)

Alan stared at her, as if she were speaking a language whose words he understood but whose underlying meaning was foreign to him. A wave hit the side of the Sea Pit, and he flinched as if surprised at its strength and proximity. The spray from it hit them both. It was fresh and cold, salty against their lips. He said, “I’m completely lost.”

She said, “You know perfectly well what I’m talking about.”

“As it happens, I don’t. I honestly don’t.”

Now was the moment. There was nothing left but to present him with the evidence she’d gathered and to speak the truth as she understood it. Kerra had left the postcard in her mother’s bedroom, but the fact of the postcard still existed. She said, “I went to the cottage, Alan. I looked through your belongings.”

“I know that.”

“All right. You know that. I found the postcard.”

“What postcard?”

“This is it. That postcard. Pengelly Cove, the sea cave, Dellen’s writing on it in red and an arrow pointing straight to the cave. We both know what that means.”

“We do?”

“Stop it. You’ve been working in that marketing office with her for…how long? I asked you not to. I asked you to take a job some place else. But you wouldn’t, would you. So you sat in the office with her day after day and you can’t tell me…You bloody well cannot claim that she didn’t…You’re a man, for God’s sake. You know the signs. And there were more than just signs, weren’t there?”

He stared at her. She wanted to stomp her feet. He could not possibly be so obtuse. He’d decided this was the way to go: to feign ignorance until she simply threw up her hands in defeat. How clever of him. But she was not a fool.

“Where were you the day that Santo died?” she asked him.

“Christ. You can’t be thinking that I had something to do with—”

“Where were you? You were gone. So was she. And you had that postcard. It was in your room. It said This is it and we both know what she meant. She’d begin with red. The lipstick. A scarf. A pair of shoes. When she did that…When she does that…” Kerra felt as if she would weep, and the very thought of weeping because of this, because of her, because of them, caused all of her anger to come roaring back, swelling within her to such an extreme that she thought it might explode from her mouth, a foul effluent capable of polluting whatever remained between her and this man whom she’d chosen to love. Because she did love him, only love was dangerous. Love put one where her father was, and that she could not begin to bear.

Alan was apparently beginning to track all this because he said, “I see. It’s not Santo at all, is it? It’s your mum. You think that I…with your mum…the day Santo died. And this was supposed to have happened in that cave on the postcard?”

She couldn’t reply. She couldn’t even nod. She was working too hard to get back under control so that if she had to feel something—indeed, if she had to show that she felt something—what that something would be was rage.

Alan said, “Kerra, I told you: We talked about the video, your mum and I. I’d spoken to your dad about it as well. Your mum kept telling me about a spot along the coast that she thought would serve our purposes well because of the sea caves and the atmosphere they provided. She handed me that card and—”

“You are not that stupid. And neither am I.”

He looked away from her, not at the sea but in the direction of the hotel. From the lip of the Sea Pit the old Promontory King George Hotel could not be seen. But the beach huts could, that neat blue and white line of them, the perfect spot for assignations.

Alan sighed. “I knew what she had in mind. She suggested we go to the caves and have a look, and I knew. She’s rather painfully obvious and not very creative when it comes to innuendoes. But then, I don’t expect she’s ever had to be creative. She’s still a beautiful woman, in her way.”

“Don’t,” Kerra said. Finally they’d come to it, and she found she couldn’t bear to hear the details. It was, at heart, the same bloody story with the same bloody plot. Only the leading men altered.

“I will,” Alan said. “And you’ll listen and decide what you want to believe. She claimed the sea caves were perfect for the video. She said we had to go have a look. I told her I’d have to meet her there, and I used as an excuse the fact that I had errands to run, because I had no intention of riding in the same car with her. So we met there and she showed me the cove, the village, and the sea caves. And nothing happened between us because I had no intention of anything other than nothing ever happening between us.” He’d kept his gaze on the beach huts as he spoke, but now he looked back at her. His expression was earnest, but his eyes were wary. Kerra could not make out what that meant. He said, “So now you get to decide, Kerra. You get to choose.”

Then she understood: What would she believe: him or her instincts? What would she select: trust or suspicion? She said hollowly, “They take from me everything that I love.”

He said quietly, “Darling Kerra, that’s not how it works.”

“It’s the way it’s always worked in our family.”

“Perhaps in the past. Perhaps you’ve lost people you didn’t wish to lose. Perhaps you’ve let them go yourself. Perhaps you’ve cut them off. The point is that no one gets taken away who doesn’t want to be taken away in the first place. And if someone’s taken, that’s no reflection on you. How can it possibly be?”

She heard the words, and she sensed their warmth. The warmth made her go quiet inside. It was very strange. It was equally unexpected. With what Alan said, Kerra felt a subtle release within her. Something indefinable was giving way, as if a great internal bulwark were dissolving. She also felt the prick of tears, but she would not allow herself to go that far.

“You, then,” she said.

“Me then? What?”

“I suppose I choose you.”

“Just ‘suppose’?”

“I can’t. More than that just now…I can’t, Alan.”

He nodded gravely. Then he said, “I took a videographer with me. That was the errand I went on before Pengelly Cove. I fetched the videographer. I didn’t go to the sea caves alone.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me? Why didn’t you say…?”

“Because I wanted you to choose. I wanted you to believe. She’s sick, Kerra. Anyone with sense can see that she’s sick.”

“She’s always been so—”

“She’s always been so sick. And spending your life reacting to her sickness is going to make you sick as well. You’ve got to decide if that’s how you want to live. I, for one, do not.”

“She’ll still keep trying to—”

“Very likely she will. Or she’ll get help. She’ll make up her mind or your dad will insist on it or she’ll end up out on the street on her ear and she’ll have to make a change to survive. I don’t know. The point is, I intend to live my life the way I want to live my life regardless of what your mum does with hers. What, exactly, do you want to do? The same? Or something else?”

“The same,” she said. Her lips felt stiff. “But I’m…so afraid.”

“We’re all afraid at the end of the day because there’s no guarantee of a single thing. That’s just how life is.”

She nodded numbly. A wave broke against the Sea Pit. She flinched.

“Alan,” she said, “I didn’t hurt…I wouldn’t have done anything to Santo.”

“Of course you wouldn’t. No more would I.”

BEA WAS ALONE IN the incident room when she logged on to the computer. She’d sent Barbara Havers back to Polcare Cove to haul Daidre Trahair into Casvelyn for a tête-à tête. If she’s not there, wait for an hour, Bea told the detective sergeant. If she doesn’t show up, call it a day and we’ll lasso her tomorrow morning.

The rest of the team she’d sent to their respective homes after a lengthy postmortem on the day’s developments. Have a decent meal and a good night’s sleep, she told them. Things will look different, clearer, and more possible in the morning. Or so she hoped.

She considered logging on to the computer a last resort, a giving way to Constable McNulty’s fanciful approach to detective work. She did it because, before she and DS Havers had left LiquidEarth earlier that day, she’d paused in front of the poster that had so fascinated the young constable—the surfer wiping out on the monstrous wave—and she’d said in reference to it, “So this is the wave that killed him?”

Both men were with her: Lew Angarrack and Jago Reeth. Angarrack was the one who said, “Who?”

“Mark Foo. Isn’t this Mark Foo on the Maverick’s wave that killed him?”

“True enough that Foo died at Maverick’s,” Lew said. “But that’s a younger kid. Jay Moriarty.”

“Jay Moriarty?”

“Yeah.” Angarrack had cocked his head curiously. “Why?”

“Mr. Reeth said this was Mark Foo’s last wave.”

Angarrack glanced at Jago Reeth. “How’d you come up with Foo?” he said. “If nothing else, the board’s all wrong.”

Jago came to the door that separated the work area from the reception area and showroom, where the poster was pinned, among others, to the wall. He leaned against the jamb and nodded at Bea. “Top marks,” he told her and said to Lew, “They’re doing the job they’re meant to be doing, taking note of everything the way they ought. Had to check, didn’t I? Hope you don’t take it personally, Inspector.”

Bea had been irritated. Everyone wanted a piece of a murder investigation if the victim was known to them. But she hated anything that wasted her time, and she disliked being tested in that way. Even more she disliked the way Jago Reeth watched her after this exchange, with that kind of knowing look men often adopted when forced to do business with a female whose position was superior to theirs.

She’d said to him, “Don’t do that again,” and left LiquidEarth with Barbara Havers. But now alone in the incident room, she wondered if Jago Reeth had made the misstatement about the poster because he was in truth testing the strength of the investigation or for another reason entirely. There were only two other possibilities that Bea could see: He’d misstated the surfer’s identity because he hadn’t known it in the first place; or he’d deliberately misstated the surfer’s identity to draw attention to himself. In either case, the question was, why? and she didn’t have a ready answer.

She spent the next ninety minutes floating round the vast chasm of the Internet. She searched out Moriarty and Foo, discovering that both of them were dead. Their names led to other names. So she followed the trail laid down by this list of faceless individuals until she finally had their faces on the computer screen as well. She studied them, hoping for some sort of sign as to what she was meant to do next, but if there was a connection between these big-wave riders and a sea cliff climbing death in Cornwall, she could not find it, and she gave up the effort.

She walked over to the china board. What did they have after these days of effort? Three pieces of equipment damaged, the condition of the body indicating he’d taken a single heavy punch in the face, fingerprints on Santo Kerne’s car, a hair caught up in his climbing equipment, the reputation of the boy himself, two vehicles in the approximate vicinity of his fall, and the fact that he had likely two-timed Madlyn Angarrack with a veterinarian from Bristol. That was it. There was nothing substantial they could work with and certainly nothing upon which they could base an arrest. It was more than seventy-two hours since the boy had died, and there wasn’t a cop alive who didn’t know that every hour that passed without an arrest from the time of a murder made the case that much more difficult to solve.

Bea studied the names of the individuals who were involved, either directly or tangentially, in this murder. It seemed to her that at one time or another, everyone who knew him had had access to Santo Kerne’s climbing equipment, so there was little point to going in that direction. Thus, what Bea appeared to be left with was the motive behind the crime.

Sex, power, money, she thought. Hadn’t they always been the triumvirate of motives? Perhaps they were not generally obvious to the investigator in the initial stages of an enquiry, but didn’t they turn up eventually? Look at jealousy, anger, revenge, and avarice, just as a start. Couldn’t you trace each one of them back to a progenitor of sex, power, or money? And if that was the case, how did those three originating motives apply in this situation?

Bea took the only next step she could think to take. She made a list. On it she wrote the names that seemed probable to her at this juncture, and next to each she logged that individual’s possible motive. She came up with Lew Angarrack avenging a daughter’s broken heart (sex); Jago Reeth avenging a surrogate granddaughter’s broken heart (sex again); Kerra Kerne eliminating her brother in order to inherit all of Adventures Unlimited (power and money); Will Mendick hoping to make an inroad into Madlyn Angarrack’s affections (there was sex once more); Madlyn operating from a hell-hath-no-fury perspective (sex yet again); Alan Cheston desiring a more significant handhold on Adventures Unlimited (power); Daidre Trahair putting an end to being the Other Woman by ridding herself of the man (more sex).

So far, the parents of Santo Kerne didn’t seem to have a motive to do away with their own son, nor did Tammy Penrule. What, then, was she left with? Bea wondered. Motives aplenty, opportunity aplenty, and the means at hand. The sling was cut and then rewrapped with Santo Kerne’s identifying tape. Two chock stones were…

Perhaps the chock stones were the key. Since strands of heavy wire formed the cable that made it, it would require a special tool to cut. Bolt cutters, perhaps. Cable cutters. Find that tool and she would find the killer? It was the best possibility she had.

What was notable, though, was the leisurely nature of the crime. The killer was relying upon the fact that the boy would use the sling or one of the damaged chock stones eventually, but time was not of the essence. Nor was it necessary to the killer that the boy die in an instant since he might have used the sling and the chock stone on a much simpler climb. He might only have fallen and been hurt, requiring the killer to come up with another plan.

Thus they weren’t looking for someone desperate, perpetrator of a crime of passion. They were looking for someone crafty. Craftiness always suggested women. As did the approach that had been used in this crime. Invariably, when women killed, they did not use a hands-on method.