Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(126)

“I told you it’s got nothing to do…” He seemed to rethink his angry tone?as well as the direction of the conversation?because he sighed and said, “I used to get blind drunk. I had a dustup with this yob, and I don’t know what it was about because when I drank like that I couldn’t remember what set me off or even if something set me off at all. I didn’t remember the fight the next day and I’m damn sorry that bloke ended up like he did, because it wasn’t my intention. I probably just wanted to sort him.”

“Is that your general method of sorting people?”

“When I drank, it was. It’s not something I’m proud of. It’s also over. I did my time. I made my amends. I try to stay clean.”

“Try?”

“Bloody hell.” He climbed up into the wheelie bin. He began a more furious rooting through its contents.

“Santo Kerne took a fairly serious punch sometime before he died,” Bea said. “I wonder if you can tell us anything about that.”

“I can’t,” he said.

“You can’t or you won’t?”

“Why d’you want to pin this on me?”

Because you look so damn guilty, Bea thought. Because you’re lying about something and I can read it in the colour of your skin, which is flaming now, from your cheeks to your ears and even to your scalp. “That’s my job,” Bea told him, “to pin this on someone. If that someone’s not you, I’d like to know why.”

“I had no reason to hurt him. Or to kill him. Or to anything.”

“How’d you come to know him?”

“I worked at Clean Barrel, that surf shop on the corner of the Strand.” Mendick nodded in the general direction. “He came in because he wanted a board. That’s how we met. Few months after he moved to town.”

“But you no longer work at Clean Barrel Surf Shop. Has that something to do with Santo Kerne as well?”

“I sent him to LiquidEarth for a board, and I got found out. I lost my job. I wasn’t supposed to be sending anyone to the competition. Not that LiquidEarth is the competition but there was no telling the boss man that, was there? So I got the sack.”

“Blamed him for that, did you?”

“Sorry to disappoint you, but no. It was the right thing to do, sending Santo to LiquidEarth. He was a beginner. He’d never even been out. He needed a beginner’s board. We didn’t have any decent ones at the time?just shit from China, if you want to know, and we sold that clobber mostly to tourists?so I told him to go see Lew Angarrack, who’d make him a good one that he could learn on. It would cost a bit more but it would be right for him. That’s what I did. That’s all I did. Jesus. From Nigel Coyle’s reaction, you would’ve thought I’d shot someone. Santo brought the board by to show me, Coyle happened to be there, and the rest is history.”

“Santo did you a bad turn, then.”

“So I killed him? Waited two years to kill him? Not likely. He felt bad enough about what happened. He apologised maybe six dozen times.”

“Where?”

“Where what?”

“Where did he apologise? Where did you see him?”

“Wherever,” he said. “The town’s small, like I said.”

“On the beach?”

“I don’t go to the beach.”

“In a surfing town like Casvelyn you don’t go to the beach?”

“I don’t surf.”

“You were selling surfboards but you yourself don’t surf? Why’s that, Mr. Mendick?”

“God damn it!” Mendick rose up. He towered above them in the wheelie bin, but he would have towered above them anyway, for he was tall albeit gangly.

Bea could see the veins throbbing in his temples. She wondered what it took for him to control that nasty temper of his and she also wondered what it took for him to unleash it on someone.

She felt Sergeant Havers tense next to her, and she glanced her way. The DS had a hard expression on her face, and Bea liked her for this, for it told her Havers wasn’t the sort of woman who backed down easily in a confrontation.

“Did you compete with other surfers?” Bea asked. “Did you compete with Santo? Did he compete with you? Did you give it up? What?”

“I don’t like the sea.” He spoke through his teeth. “I don’t like not knowing what’s beneath me in the water because there’re sharks in every part of the world and I don’t care to become acquainted with one. I know about boards and I know about surfing but I don’t surf. All right?”

“I suppose. Do you climb, Mr. Mendick?”

“Climb what? No, I don’t climb.”

“What do you do, then?”

“I hang with my friends.”

“Santo Kerne among them?”

“He wasn’t…” Mendick backed off from the rapidity of their conversation, as if he recognised how easily he could become trapped if he continued the pace. He packed more items into his rubbish bag?a few seriously dented tins, some packages of spinach and other greens, a handful of packaged herbs, a packet of tea cakes?before he climbed out of the bin and made his reply. “Santo didn’t have friends,” Mendick said. “Not in the normal sense. Not like other people do. He had people he associated with when he wanted them for something.”