Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(13)

This woman, who introduced herself as DI Beatrice Hannaford, didn’t fit that mould. She wore an anorak, muddy trainers, and jeans, and her hair?a red so flaming that it very nearly preceded her into the room and shouted, “Dyed and what do you have to say about it?”?stood up in spikes that were second cousins to a mohawk, despite the rain. She saw Daidre examining her and she said, “As soon as someone refers to you as Gran, you rethink the whole growing old gracefully thing.”

Daidre nodded thoughtfully. There was sense to this. “And are you a gran?”

“I am.” The detective made her next remark to Collins. “Get outside and knock me up when the pathologist gets here. Keep everyone else away, not that anyone’s likely to show up in this weather, but you never know. I take it the word’s gone out?” This last she said to Daidre as Collins left them.

“We phoned from the inn, so they’ll know up there.”

“And everywhere else no doubt, by now. You know the dead boy?”

Daidre had considered the possibility that she might be asked this question again. She decided to base her answer on her personal definition of the word know. “I don’t,” she said. “I don’t actually live here, you see. The cottage is mine, but it’s my getaway. I live in Bristol. I come here for breaks when I have time off.”

“What d’you do in Bristol?”

“I’m a doctor. Well, not actually a doctor. I mean, I am a doctor, but it’s…I’m a veterinarian.” Daidre felt Thomas’s eyes on her, and she grew hot. This had nothing to do with shame about being a vet, a fact about which she was inordinately proud, considering how difficult it had been to reach that goal. Rather, it was the fact that she’d led him to believe she was another sort of doctor when she’d first come upon him. She wasn’t quite sure why she had done it, although to tell someone she could help him with his supposed injuries because she was a vet had seemed ludicrous at the time. “I do larger animals mostly.”

DI Hannaford had drawn her eyebrows together. She looked from Daidre to Thomas, and she seemed to be testing the waters between them. Or perhaps she was testing Daidre’s answer for its level of veracity. She looked like someone who was good at that, despite her incongruous hair.

Thomas said, “There was a surfer. I couldn’t tell if it was male or female. I saw him?I’ll call him him?from the cliff top.”

“What? Off Polcare Cove?”

“In the cove before Polcare. Although he could have come from here, I suppose.”

“There was no car, though,” Daidre pointed out. “Not in the car park. So he had to have gone into the water at Buck’s Haven. That’s what it’s called. The cove to the south. Unless you meant the north cove. I’ve not asked you what direction you were walking in.”

“From the south,” he said. And to Hannaford, “The weather didn’t seem right to me. For surfing. The tide was wrong as well. The reefs weren’t covered completely. If a surfer came too close to them…Someone could get hurt.”

“Someone did get hurt,” Hannaford pointed out. “Someone got killed.”

“But not surfing,” Daidre said. Then she wondered why she’d said it because it sounded to her as if she were interceding for Thomas when that hadn’t been her intention.

Hannaford said to both of them, “Like to play detectives, do you? Is it a hobby of yours?” She didn’t seem to expect a response to this. She went on to Thomas, saying, “Constable McNulty tells me you helped him move the body. I’ll want your clothes for forensics. Your outer clothes. Whatever you had on at the time, which I presume is what you have on now.” And to Daidre, “Did you touch the body?”

“I checked for a pulse.”

“Then I’ll want your outer clothing as well.”

“I’ve nothing to change into, I’m afraid,” Thomas said.

“Nothing?” Again, Hannaford looked from the man to Daidre. It came to Daidre that the detective had assumed that she and the stranger were a couple. She supposed there was some logic in this. They’d gone for help together. They were together still. And neither of them had said anything to dissuade her from this conclusion. Hannaford said, “Exactly who might you two be and what brings you to this corner of the world?”

Daidre said, “We’ve given our details to the sergeant.”

“Humour me.”

“I’ve told you. I’m a veterinarian.”

“Your practise?”

“At the zoo in Bristol. I’ve just come down this afternoon for a few days. Well, for a week this time.”

“Odd time of year for a holiday.”

“For some, I suppose. But I prefer my holidays when there are no crowds.”

“What time did you leave Bristol?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t actually look. It was morning. Perhaps nine. Ten. Half past.”

“Stop along the way?”

Daidre tried to work out how much the detective needed to know. She said, “Well…briefly, yes. But it hardly has to do with?”

“Where?”

“What?”

“Where did you stop?”

“For lunch. I’d had no breakfast. I don’t, usually. Eat breakfast, that is. I was hungry, so I stopped.”