Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(104)

Not to Santo, Lynley thought. Kerne was speaking of his son, from a well of bitterness and regret and a father’s knowledge that nothing he says or does can change the course of a son who’s made the wrong decision. In this, Kerne reminded Lynley of his own father and the admonitions he’d given throughout Lynley’s childhood about mixing too closely with anyone the elder man deemed common. It had done no good, and Lynley had always considered himself richer for the experience.

“I’d no idea,” he said.

“Well, you wouldn’t, would you, cos he’s not likely to tell anyone. But she gets her claws into him when he’s a lad, and from that point on, he doesn’t see straight. It’s off and on with them for years, and every time me and his mum start thinking he’s rid himself of the cow at last and he sees the light and she’s out of his hair and out of our hair and he can start to live normal like the rest of us, there she is again, filling his head with rubbish ’bout how she needs him and he’s the only one for her and she’s sorry so sorry that she had a shag with someone else but it wasn’t her fault was it cos he wasn’t there to take care of her was he, he wasn’t paying her proper attention…and there she is flashing her knickers at him and he can’t think things through, can’t see what she’s like or what she’s doing or how he’s caught. It leads to ruin, so we send him off. And doesn’t she follow…doesn’t the trollop just pack her bags and follow our Ben…” He set the second badly repaired cup to one side. He was breathing jerkily, a liquid sound in his chest. Lynley wondered if the man ever saw a doctor. “So what we think?me and his mum?is if we say to him, You’re no son of ours if you don’t rid yourself of this bloody cow, he’ll do it. He’s our boy, he’s our oldest, and he’s got his brothers and sisters to think about, and they love him, they do, and they all get on. We reckon he only needs to be gone a few years anyway, till it all blows over, and then he c’n return to where he belongs, which is with us. Only it doesn’t work, does it, because he will not shake himself of her. She’s under his skin and in his blood and there’s an end to the matter.”

“Until what blows over?” Lynley asked.

“Eh?” Kerne turned his head from the workbench to look at Lynley.

“You said your son needed to be gone a few years only, ‘till it all blows over.’ I was wondering what.”

Kerne’s good eye narrowed. He said, “You don’t talk like a cop. Cops talk like the rest of us, but you got a voice that…Where you from?”

Lynley wasn’t about to be diverted with a discussion of his roots. “Mr. Kerne, if you know something?and you obviously do?that might be related to the death of your grandson, I need to know what it is.”

He turned back to his bench. He said, “What happened happened years ago. Benesek’s…what? Seventeen? Eighteen? It’s nothing to do with Santo.”

“Please let me decide that. Tell me what you know.”

After making the imperative, Lynley waited. He hoped the old man’s sorrow?suppressed but so alive in him?would force him to speak.

Kerne finally did so, although it sounded as if he talked more to himself than to Lynley. “They’re all surfing, and someone gets hurt. Everyone points fingers at everyone else and no one takes the blame. But things get nasty, so me and his mum send him off to Truro till he isn’t likely to get no more squinty-eyed looks from people.”

“Who got hurt? How?”

Kerne slapped his palm on the bench. “I’m telling you it’s of no account. What’s it got to do with Santo? It’s Santo who’s dead, not his dad. Some bloody kid gets himself drunk one night and ends up sleeping it off in one of the sea caves down the cove. So what’s that got to do with Santo?”

“Were they surfing at night?” Lynley asked insistently. “What happened?”

“What d’you think bloody happened? They’re not surfing, they’re partying. And he’s partying like the rest of them. He mixes drugs of some sort with whatever else he’s swallowed and when the tide comes in, he’s done for. Tide sweeps into those caves more fast ’n a man can move cos they’re deep, aren’t they, and everyone knows if you go in, you best know where the sea is and what it’s doing cos if you don’t, you aren’t coming out. Oh you might think you are. You might think what the bloody hell does it matter cos I c’n swim, can’t I? But you get battered and turned about and it’s no one’s fault if you’re too bloody stupid to listen when you’re told not to go down to the cove when conditions are dicey.”

“But that’s what happened to someone,” Lynley said.

“That’s what happened.”

“To whom?”

“Lad come here for his summers. His family has money and they take the big cliff house. I don’t know them but Benesek does. All the young ones do cos they’re all down the beach in summers, aren’t they? This lad John or James…Yes, James…He’s the one.”

“The one who drowned?”

“Only his family don’t see it that way. They don’t want to see it’s his own damn fault. They want to blame and they choose our Benesek. Others as well, but Benesek’s at the bottom of what happened, so they say. They bring the cops from Newquay and they don’t let up, not the family and not the cops. You know something and you damn well will tell us, they say. But he don’t know a bleeding thing, does he, which is what he says over and over and the cops finally have to believe him, but at that point the kid’s dad’s built a bloody great stupid memorial to the boy and everyone’s looking at our Ben dead funny, so we send him to his uncle cos he’s got to have a chance in life, and he’s not bloody likely to have one here.”