Careless In Red (75 page)

She said, “Madlyn, you must listen to me. I don’t believe you had anything to do with what happened to Santo. There was a time when I might have done and I probably did, but it wasn’t real. Do you understand? What happened to Santo wasn’t your fault.”

“But I said to people—”

“What you said to people. But I doubt you ever said that you wanted him to die.”

Madlyn began to cry. Whether it was from grief too long withheld or from relief, Kerra could not tell. “D’you believe that?” Madlyn asked her.

“I absolutely believe it,” Kerra said.

IN THE INGLENOOK OF the Salthouse Inn’s bar, Selevan waited for Jago Reeth in something of a lather, which was unusual for him. He’d phoned his mate at LiquidEarth and asked could they meet at the Salthouse earlier than normal. He needed to talk to him. Jago was good about the matter. He didn’t ask could they talk on the phone. Instead, he said, ’Course, that’s what makes mates mates, eh? He’d give the word to Lew and set out directly, soon as he could. Lew was a decent bloke about things deemed emergencies. He could be there in…say, half an hour?

Selevan said that would do him fine. It would mean a wait and he didn’t want to wait, but he could hardly expect a miracle from Jago. LiquidEarth was some distance from the Salthouse Inn and Jago couldn’t exactly beam himself there. So Selevan finished his business at Sea Dreams, packed up the car with everything he would need for the coming trip he’d be taking, and set out for the inn.

He knew he’d carried things as far as he could, and it was time to bring it all to a conclusion, so he’d gone into Tammy’s cramped little bedroom, and from the cupboard he’d taken her canvas rucksack, which she’d first brought with her from Africa. She hadn’t needed it then and she certainly didn’t need it now, because her possessions were few and pathetic. So it was the matter of a moment only to remove them from the chest of drawers: a few pairs of knickers of the overlarge sort an old lady might wear, a few pairs of tights, four vests because the girl was so flat in the chest that she didn’t even require a brassiere, two jerseys, and several skirts. There were no trousers. Tammy did not wear trousers. Everything she possessed was black, except the knickers and the vests. These were white.

He’d scooped up her books next. She had more books than clothes and these comprised mostly philosophy and the lives of saints. She had journals as well. Her writing within them was the one thing about her that he hadn’t monitored, and Selevan was rather proud about this since during her stay with him the girl had done nothing to hide them from him. Despite her parents’ wishes in the matter, he hadn’t been able to bring himself to read her girlish thoughts and fantasies.

She had nothing else except a few toiletries, the clothes she was currently wearing, and whatever she had in her shoulder bag. That wouldn’t include her passport, since he’d taken it from her upon her arrival. “And don’t let her keep her bloody passport,” her father had intoned from Africa once he’d put her on the plane. “She’s likely to run off if she has it.”

She could have her passport now, Selevan decided. He went to fetch it from the spot where he’d hidden it, beneath the liner of the dirty clothes bin. It wasn’t there. She must have found it straightaway, he realised. The little vixen had probably been carrying it round for ages. And she had been carrying it on her person as well, since he had regularly gone through her bag for contraband. Well, she’d always been a step ahead of everyone, hadn’t she?

Selevan had made a final stab that day at bringing her parents round. Ignoring the cost and the fact that he could ill afford it, he’d rung Sally Joy and David in Africa and he’d felt them out on the matter of Tammy. He’d said to David, “Listen here, lad, at the end of the day, kids got to follow their own path. Let’s s’pose it was some ruffian she decided she was in love with, eh? More you argue against it, more you forbid her seeing the bloke, more she’s going to want to do it. It’s simple psycho-whachamacallit thingummybob. Nothing more or less’n that.”

“She’s won you over, hasn’t she?” David had demanded. In the background, Selevan could hear Sally Joy wailing, “What? What’s happened? Is that your father? What’s she done?”

“I’m not saying she’s done anything,” Selevan said.

But David went on, as if Selevan hadn’t spoken. “I’d hardly think it was possible for her to do it, all things considered. It’s not as if your own kids were ever able to make you see reason, were they.”

“’Nough of that, son. I admit my mistakes with you lot. Point is, though, you made lives for yourself and they’re good lives, eh? The girl wants nothing less.”

“She doesn’t know what she wants. Look, do you want a relationship with Tammy or not? Because if you don’t oppose her in this, you’ll not have a relationship with her. I can promise you.”

“And if I do oppose her, I’ll have no relationship with her anyway. So what would you have me do, lad?”

“I’d have you show sense, something Tammy’s clearly lost. I’d have you be a model for her.”

“A model? What’re you on about? What sort of model am I meant to be to a girl of seventeen? That’s rubbish, that is.”

They’d gone round and round. But Selevan had failed to convince his son of anything. He couldn’t see that Tammy was resourceful: Being sent to England had hardly put her off her stride. He could send her to the North Pole if he wanted, but when it came down to it, Tammy was going to find a way to live as she wanted to live.

“Pack her on home, then,” had been David’s final remark. Before he’d rung off, Selevan could hear Sally Joy in the background, crying, “But what’ll we do with her, David?” Selevan had said bah to it all. He’d set about packing up Tammy’s belongings.

That was when he’d phoned Jago. He’d be fetching Tammy from Clean Barrel Surf Shop for a final time and he wanted to do so with someone’s goodwill behind him. Jago seemed the likeliest someone.

Selevan hadn’t been happy drawing Jago away from his work. On the other hand, he needed to set out on his journey and he’d told himself that Jago would go to the Salthouse Inn for their regular knees-up later on that day, so one way or another he had to tell him he wouldn’t be there at their regular time. Now he waited and felt the nerves come upon him. He needed someone on his side, and he’d be in a state till he got someone there.

When Jago came in, Selevan waved a hello with no small measure of relief. Jago stopped at the bar to have a word with Brian and came over, still in his jacket with his knitted cap pulled over his long grey hair. He shed both jacket and cap and rubbed his hands together as he drew out the stool that faced Selevan’s bench. The fire hadn’t yet been lit—too early for that as they were the only two drinkers in the bar—and Jago asked could he light it? Brian gave the nod and Jago put match to tinder. He blew on the emergent flames till they caught. Then he returned to the table. He gave a thanks to Brian as his Guinness was brought to him and he took a swig of it.

He said, “What’s the brief, then, mate?” to Selevan. “You look a right state.”

“I’m heading out,” Selevan said. “Few days, a bit more.”

“Are you, then? Where?”

“North. Place not far from the border.”

“What? Wales?”

“Scotland.”

Jago whistled. “Far piece, that. Want me to keep an eye on things, then? Want me to keep a watch on Tammy?”

“Taking Tammy with me,” Selevan said. “I’ve done as much as I can here. Job’s finished. Now we’re off. Time the girl was let to lead the life she wants.”

“Truth to that,” Jago said. “I won’t be here that much longer myself.”

Selevan was surprised to feel the extent of his dismay at hearing this news. “Where you off to, Jago? I thought you meant to stay the season.”

Jago shook his head. He lifted his Guinness and drank of it deeply. “Never stay one place long. That’s how I look at it. I’m thinking South Africa. Capetown, p’rhaps.”

“You won’t go till I’m back, though. Sounds a bit mad, this, but I’ve got used to having you round.”

Jago looked at him and the lenses of his glasses winked in the light. “Best not to do that. Doesn’t pay to get used to anything.”

“’Course, I know that, but—”

The bar door swung open, but not in its usual fashion, with someone swinging it just wide enough to enter. Instead, it opened with a startling bang that would have put an end to all conversation had anyone save Jago and Selevan been within.

Two women came inside. One of them had stand-up hair that looked purple in the light. The other wore a knitted cap pulled low on her face, just to her eyes. The women looked around and Purple Hair settled on the inglenook.

She strode over saying, “Ah. We’d like a word with you, Mr. Reeth.”

THEY DROVE WEST. THEY TALKED VERY LITTLE. WHAT LYNLEY wanted to know was why she had lied about details that could be so easily checked upon. Paul the primate keeper, for instance. It was a matter of a simple phone call to discover there was no Paul caring for primates at the zoo. Did she not see how that looked to the police?

She glanced at him. She’d not worn her contact lenses on this day, and a bit of her sandy hair had fallen across the top of the frames of her glasses. She said, “I suppose I hadn’t thought of you as a cop, Thomas. And the answers to the questions you asked me—and the questions you had in your head but didn’t ask me—were private, weren’t they. They had nothing to do with Santo Kerne’s death.”

“But keeping those answers to yourself made you suspect. You must see that.”

“I was willing to take the risk.”

They drove for a time in silence. The landscape altered as they approached the coast. From rough and rock-studded farmland whose ownership was delineated with irregular drystone walls patchy with grey-green lichen, the undulations of pasture and field gave way to hillside and combe, and a horizon that was marked with the great and derelict engine houses of Cornwall’s disused mines. She took a route into St. Agnes, a slate and granite village that tumbled down a hillside above the sea, its few steep streets twisting appealingly and lined with terrace cottages and with shops, all of them leading inexorably and ultimately, like the course of a river, down to the pebbled stretch of Trevaunance Cove. Here, at low water, tractors pulled skiffs into the sea and, at three-quarters tide, good-size swells from the west and southwest brought surfers from surrounding areas to jostle with each other for a place on ten-foot waves. But instead of ending up at the cove, where Lynley thought she’d been heading, she chose a direction out of town, driving north, following signs that were posted for Wheal Kitty.

He said to her, “I couldn’t ignore the fact that you lied about recognising Santo Kerne when you saw his body. Why did you do that? Don’t you see how that threw suspicion on you?”

“At the moment that couldn’t be important. Saying I knew him would have led to more questions. Answering questions would have left me pointing the finger…” She glanced his way. Her expression was irked, disbelieving. “Have you honestly no idea what it might feel like to be a person who involves people she knows in a police investigation? Surely you must understand how that might feel? You’re not insensate. There were confidential matters…There were things I’d promised to keep to myself. Oh, what am I saying? Your sergeant would have put you into the picture by now. Doubtless you had breakfast with her, if you didn’t speak to her last night. I can’t imagine she’d keep you in the dark about much.”

“There were car tracks in your garage. More than one set.”

“Santo’s. Aldara’s. Your sergeant would have told you about Aldara, I expect. Santo’s lover. The fact that they used my cottage.”

“Why didn’t you just explain that from the first? Had you done so—”

“What? You would have stopped short of looking into my past, sending your sergeant to Falmouth to question the neighbours, phoning the zoo, doing…What else? Have you spoken to Lok as well? Did you track him down? Did you ask him if he’s truly crippled or if I made that up? It does sound fantastic, doesn’t it, a Chinese brother with spinal bifida. Brilliant but bent. What an intriguing story.”

“I know he’s at Oxford.” Lynley was regretful, but there was no help for what he’d done. It was part of the job. “That’s the extent.”

“And you discovered this…how?”

“It’s a small matter, Daidre. There’s cooperation between police agencies all over the world, let alone in our own country. It’s easier now than it ever was.”

“I see.”

“You don’t. You can’t. You’re not a cop.”

“Neither were you. Neither are you. Or has all of that changed?”

He couldn’t answer that question. He didn’t know the answer. Perhaps some things were in the blood and could not be shaken off merely because one desired to do so.

They said nothing more. At one point, in his peripheral vision, he saw her raise a hand to her cheek and his fantasy had her weeping. But when he looked at her directly, he saw that she was merely seeing to the hair that had fallen over the frame of her glasses. She shoved it impatiently behind her ears.

At Wheal Kitty, they did not approach the engine house or the buildings that surrounded it. These sat at a distance and cars were parked in front of some of them. Unlike nearly all of the old engine houses across the county, Wheal Kitty’s had been restored. It was now in use as a place of business and other businesses had sprung up round it, these in long, low buildings looking nothing like the period from which Wheal Kitty had come but still built of the local stone. Lynley was glad to see this. He always felt a twinge of sadness when he looked at the ghostly smokestacks and broken-down engine houses that marked the landscape. It was good to see them put to use again, for round St. Agnes was a veritable graveyard of mining shafts, particularly above Trevaunance Coombe, where a ghost town of engine houses and their accompanying smokestacks marked the landscape like silent witnesses to the land’s recovery from man’s assault upon it. And the land itself was a place of heather and gorse thriving amidst grey, granite outcroppings, providing nesting spots for herring gulls, jackdaws, and carrion crows. There were few trees. The windswept nature of the place did not encourage them.