Careless In Red (76 page)

To the north of Wheal Kitty, the road narrowed. It became a lane first and ultimately a track, coursing downward into a steeply sided gully. Barely the width of Daidre’s Vauxhall, it descended in a series of switchbacks, guarded by boulders to their left and a fast-moving stream to their right. It finally ended at an engine house far more ruined than any they’d seen on the trip from Redruth. It was wildly overgrown with vegetation; just beyond it, a smokestack shot skyward in a similar state.

“Here we are,” Daidre said. But she didn’t get out of the car. Instead, she turned to him and she spoke quietly. “Imagine this,” she said. “A traveller decides he wants to stop travelling because unlike his parents and their parents and the parents before them, he wants something different out of life. He has an idea that’s not very practical because nothing much he’s done has ever been practical, frankly, but he wants to try it. So he comes to this place, convinced, of all things, that there’s a living to be had from mining tin. He reads very poorly, but he’s done what homework he can on the subject, and he knows about streaming. D’you know what tin streaming is, Thomas?”

“Yes.” Lynley looked beyond her, over her shoulder. Some seventy yards from where they were parked, an old caravan stood. Once white, now it was mostly laced the colour of rust, which streaked from its roof and from its windows at which yellow curtains printed with flowers drooped. Accompanying this impermanent structure were a tumbledown shed and a tarpaper-roofed cupboard that looked like an outdoor loo. “It’s drawing tin from small stones in a stream and following that stream to larger stones.”

“Shode stones, yes,” Daidre said. “And then following them to the lode itself but if you can’t find the lode, it’s a small matter really because you still have the tin in the smaller stones and that can be made into…whatever you wish to make it into. Or you can sell it to metalworkers or jewellers, but the point is, you can support yourself—barely—if you work hard enough and you get lucky. So that’s what this traveller decides to do. Of course, it takes a lot more work than he anticipated and it’s not a particularly wholesome kind of life and there are interruptions: town councils, the government, assorted do-gooders coming round to inspect the premises. This causes something of a distraction, so the traveller ends up travelling anyway, in order to find a proper stream in a proper location somewhat hidden away where he can be allowed to look for his tin in peace. But no matter where he goes, there are still problems because he’s got three children and a wife to provide for and since he alone can’t provide what needs to be provided, they all must help. He’s decided he will give the children lessons at home to save time from their having to be gone for hours to school every day. His wife will be their teacher. But life is hard and the instruction doesn’t actually happen and neither does much else in the way of nurturing. Like decent food. Or proper clothing. Jabs for this or that disease. Dentistry. Anything, really. The sorts of things typical children take for granted. When social workers come round, the children hide, and finally, because the family keeps moving, they slip through the cracks, all three of them. For years, actually. When they finally come to light, the eldest girl is thirteen years old and the younger two—the twins, a boy and a girl—are ten. They can’t read, they can’t write, they’re covered in sores, their teeth are quite bad, they’ve never seen a doctor, and the girl—by this I mean the thirteen-year-old—actually has no hair. It hasn’t been shaved. It’s fallen out. They’re removed at once. Large hue and cry. Local newspapers covering the story, complete with pictures. The twins are placed with a family in Plymouth. The thirteen-year-old is sent to Falmouth. There she’s ultimately adopted by the couple who begin as her foster parents. She is so…so filled up by their love for her that she puts her past behind her, completely. She changes her name to something she thinks of as pretty. Of course, she has no idea how to spell it, so she misspells it and her new parents are charmed. Daidre it is, they say. Welcome to your new life, Daidre. And she never goes back to visit who she was. Never. She puts it behind her and she never speaks of it and no one—no one—in her present life knows a thing about it because it is her deepest shame. Can you understand this? No, how could you. But that’s how it is and that’s how it remains until her sister tracks her down and insists—begs—that she come to this place, the very last place on earth that she can bear to come, the one place she has promised herself that no one from her present life will ever learn of.”

“Is that why you lied to DI Hannaford about your route to Cornwall?” Lynley asked her.

Daidre didn’t reply. She opened her door, and Lynley did likewise. They stood for a moment surveying the home she’d left eighteen years earlier. Aside from the caravan—unimaginably once the domicile of five people—there was little else. A ramshackle building seemed to hold the equipment for extracting tin from the stones in which it was found, and leaning up against this were three wheelbarrows of ancient vintage along with two bicycles with rusty panniers hanging from their sides. At one time, someone had planted a few terra-cotta pots with geraniums, but these were languishing, two of them on their sides and cracked, with the plants sprawled out like supplicants begging for a merciful end.

“My name,” Daidre said, “was Edrek Udy. Do you know the meaning of Edrek, Thomas?”

He said that he didn’t. He found that he didn’t want her to go further. He was filled with sadness that he’d unthinkingly invaded a life she’d worked so hard to forget.

“Edrek,” she said, “means regret in Cornish. Come along and meet my family.”

JAGO REETH DIDN’T LOOK the least bit surprised. He also didn’t look worried. He looked as he’d looked the first time Bea had come upon him at LiquidEarth: willing to be helpful. She wondered if they were wrong about him.

He said that they could indeed have a word with him. They could join him and his mate Selevan Penrule there in the inglenook or they could ask for a more private location.

Bea said she reckoned they’d have their conversation at the station in Casvelyn if he didn’t mind.

He said politely, “’Fraid I do mind. ’M I under arrest, madam?”

It was the madam that gave her pause. It was the way he said it: with the tone of someone who believes he’s sitting in the catbird seat.

He went on with, “Because ’less I’m mistaken, I don’t need to accept your hospitality, if you know what I mean.”

“Is there some reason you’d prefer not to talk to us, Mr. Reeth?”

“Not a bit ’f that,” he said. “But if we’re to talk we’ll need to do it where I feel a comfort I’m not likely to feel in a police station, if you know what I mean.” He smiled affably, showing teeth long stained by tea and coffee. “Get all tightened up if I’m indoors too long. Tightened up, I can’t speak much at all. And I know this: Inside a station, I’m likely to be tightened permanently. If you know what I mean.”

Bea narrowed her eyes. “Is that so?”

“Bit of a claustrophobe, I am.”

Reeth’s companion was listening to all this agog, his gaze going from Bea to Jago to Bea. He said, “Wha’s this about then, Jago?”

To which Bea replied, “Would you like to bring your friend into the picture?”

Reeth said, “They want a word about Santo Kerne. ’Nother word. I’ve spoke to them already.” Then to Bea, “And I’m dead chuffed to do it again, eh. Often as you like. Let’s just take ourselves out of the bar…We c’n decide where and when we’ll do our speaking.”

DS Havers was about to say something. She’d opened her mouth when Bea gave her the look. Hold off, it said. They would see what Jago Reeth was up to.

They followed him into the inn’s entry, the bar door closing behind them. They left the barman wiping out glasses and watching curiously. They left Selevan Penrule saying to Jago Reeth, “Have a care, mate.”

When they were alone, Jago Reeth said in a voice altogether different from the one they’d heard him use not only a moment ago but also in their earlier conversations with him, “I’m afraid you didn’t answer my question. Am I under arrest, Inspector?”

“Should you be?” Bea asked. “And thank you for discarding the persona.”

“Inspector, please. Don’t play me for a fool. You’ll find I know my rights better than most. Indeed, you can say I’ve made a study of my rights. So you can arrest me if you like and pray you’ve got enough to hold me at least six hours. Or nine at the most since you yourself would be doing the review after those first six hours, wouldn’t you. But after that…What superintendent on earth will authorise a questioning period of twenty-four hours at this point in your investigation? So you must decide what it is you want from me. If it’s conversation, then I must tell you that conversation isn’t about to happen inside a lockup. And if it’s a lockup that you want, then I’ll have to insist on a solicitor’s presence and I’m likely to employ my primary right at that point, one so often forgotten by those wishing to be helpful.”

“And that is?”

“Don’t please play ignorant with me. You know as well as I that I needn’t say another word to you.”

“Despite how that will look?”

“Frankly, I don’t care how it looks. Now what would you and your assistant here prefer? A frank conversation or my kind and silent gaze resting upon you or the wall or the floor in the police station? And if it’s to be a conversation, then I—and not you—will determine where it happens.”

“Rather sure of yourself, Mr. Reeth. Or should I call you Mr. Parsons?”

“Inspector, you may call me whatever you like.” He rubbed his hands together, the gesture one would use to rid the palms of flour in baking or soil in planting. “So. What’s it to be?”

At least, Bea told herself, she had the answer to wily or ignorant. “As you wish, Mr. Reeth. Shall we ask for a private room here at the inn?”

“I’ve a better location in mind,” he told her. “If you’ll pardon me while I fetch my jacket…? There’s another exit to the bar, by the way, so you’ll want to come with me if you’re concerned I might do a runner.”

Bea nodded to DS Havers. The sergeant looked only too willing to accompany Jago Reeth just about anywhere. The two of them disappeared into the bar for the length of time it took Jago Reeth to fetch his belongings and have whatever word he felt necessary with his friend in the inglenook. They emerged and Jago led the way outside. They’d have to drive to get there, he said. Had either one of them a mobile, by the way? He asked this last with deliberate courtesy. Obviously, he knew they carried mobile phones. Bea expected him to make the requirement that they leave their mobile phones behind, which she was about to tell him was a complete nonstarter. But then he made an unexpected request.

“I’d like Mr. Kerne to be present.”

“That,” Bea told him, “is not about to happen.”

Again the smile. “Oh, I’m afraid it must, Inspector Hannaford. Unless, of course, you wish to arrest me and hold me for those nine hours you have available to you. Now as to Mr. Kerne—”

“No,” Bea said.

“A short drive to Alsperyl. I assure you, he’ll enjoy it.”

“I won’t ask Mr. Kerne—”

“I do think you’ll find that no asking will be necessary. You merely need to make the offer: a conversation about Santo with Jago Reeth. Or with Jonathan Parsons, if you prefer. Mr. Kerne will be happy to have that conversation. Any father who wants to know exactly what happened to his son on the day—or the night—he died would have that conversation. If you know what I mean.”

Sergeant Havers said, “Guv,” in an urgent tone.

Bea knew she wanted a word and that word would doubtless be one of caution. Don’t place this bloke in a position of power. He doesn’t determine the course of affairs. We do. We’re the cops, after all.

But believing that was sophistry at this point. The course was caution, to be sure. But it was going to have to be caution employed in a scenario devised by their suspect. Bea didn’t like this, but she didn’t see another route to take other than to let him go on his way. They could indeed hold him in custody for nine hours, but while nine hours in a cell or even alone in an interview room might unnerve some people and prompt them to talk, she was fairly certain nine hours or ninety were not going to unnerve Jago Reeth.

She said to him, “Lead on, Mr. Reeth. I’ll phone Mr. Kerne from the car.”

ONLY TWO OF THEM were inside the caravan. A woman lay on a narrow banquette, a furry-looking blanket tucked round her and her head on a caseless pillow whose edges were stained from perspiration. She was an older woman, although it was impossible to tell how old because she was emaciated and her hair was thin, grey, and uncombed. Her colour was very bad. Her lips were scaly.

Her companion was a younger woman who could have been any age between twenty-five and forty. With quite short hair of a colour and a condition that peroxide encouraged, she wore a long pleated skirt of a tartan pattern heavily reliant on blue and yellow, red knee socks, and a heavy pullover. She had no shoes on and she wore no makeup. She squinted in their direction as they entered, which suggested she either regularly wore or currently needed glasses.

She said, “Mum, here’s Edrek.” She sounded weary. “Got a man with her as well. Not a doctor, are you? Not brought a doctor, have you, Edrek? I told you we’re finished with doctors.”

The woman on the banquette stirred her legs slightly but did not turn her head. She was gazing at the water stains that hovered above them, on the ceiling of the caravan, like clouds ready to rain down rust. Her breathing was shallow and quick, as evidenced by the rise and fall of her hands, which were clasped in a disturbing corpselike posture high on her chest.

Daidre spoke. “This is Gwynder, Thomas. My younger sister. This is my mother, my mother till I was thirteen, that is. She’s called Jen Udy.”

Lynley glanced at Daidre. She spoke as if he and she were observers of a tableau on a stage. Lynley said to Gwynder, “Thomas Lynley. I’m not a doctor. Just a…friend.”

Gwynder said, “Posh voice,” and continued what she’d been doing when they entered, which was carrying a glass to the woman on the banquette. It contained some sort of milky liquid. She said in reference to it, “Want you drinking this, Mum.”