Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(131)

“No!”

“?you were long gone. You’d got what you wanted, and what you wanted had nothing to do with getting stuffed and everything to do with getting revenge. And what you reckoned was that?Jamie being Jamie?he’d be the one to make certain I knew he’d had you the very next time he saw me. But what you hadn’t reckoned was the tide would get the better of your plan and?”

“I told!” she screamed. She had nothing more belonging to her to throw onto the floor, so she reached for the bedside table’s lamp and she brandished it. “I talked and I told everything I knew. Are you happy now? Is that what you’ve wanted to hear from me?”

Ben was rendered speechless. He wouldn’t have thought anything could have robbed him of words at this point, but he had none. He wouldn’t have thought there were any surprises left from his past, but that was clearly not going to be the case.

BEA AND DS HAVERS walked from Blue Star Grocery to Casvelyn of Cornwall. The bakery was in full production, preparing for the delivery of goods to the area’s pubs, hotels, cafés, and restaurants. Hence, the heady fragrance of flaky, succulent pastry formed a hypnotic miasma in the air. It became more powerful as they drew closer to the shop, and Bea heard Barbara Havers murmur fervently, “Bloody blooming hell.”

Bea glanced at her. The sergeant was gazing longingly in the direction of Casvelyn of Cornwall’s front window, where the trays of newly baked pasties lay in seductive, eye-popping, and utterly diet-busting ranks of cholesterol, carbohydrates, and calories. “Pleasant, isn’t it?” Bea said to the sergeant.

“It’s got Pop-Tarts beat. I’ll give you that.”

“You must have a pasty while you’re in Cornwall. And if you’re going to do so, these are the best.”

“I’ll make a note of it.” Havers gave a lingering look to them as she followed Bea into the shop.

Madlyn Angarrack was serving a line of customers while Shar heaved trays of the bakery’s products out of the enormous kitchen and into the display cases. It seemed they had more than pasties going on this day, since Shar was currently bringing out loaves of artisan bread, thick of crust and topped with rosemary.

Although Madlyn was busy, Bea had no intention of standing at the end of a queue. She excused herself to the waiting customers by ostentatiously showing her identification and murmuring, “Pardon. Police business,” as she passed them by. At the till, she said at some considerable volume, “A word, Miss Angarrack. Here or in the station, but in either case, now.”

Madlyn didn’t attempt to temporize. She said to her co-worker, “Shar, will you take the till?” although she did add meaningfully, “I won’t be a moment,” to indicate either her cooperation with the police or her intention of immediately demanding a solicitor. She then fetched a jacket and went outside.

“This is DS Havers,” Bea said by way of introduction. “She’s come down from New Scotland Yard to assist in the investigation.”

Madlyn’s eyes flicked to Havers and then back to Bea. In a voice that sounded something between wary and confused she said, “Why’s Scotland Yard?”

“Think about it.” Bea saw that being able to bandy about the term New Scotland Yard was going to have one or two unanticipated uses. It consisted of three words that asked people to sit up and take notice, no matter what they knew or did not know about the Metropolitan police.

Madlyn was silent. She regarded Havers, and if she wondered what a representative from New Scotland Yard was doing dressed like a survivor of Hurricane Katrina, she did not say it. Havers took out a tattered notebook as Madlyn watched her, and she jotted down a note. It was likely a reminder to buy a pasty before leaving Casvelyn for the Salthouse Inn that evening, but that didn’t matter to Bea. It looked official and that was what counted.

“I don’t appreciate being lied to,” Bea told Madlyn. “It wastes my time, it forces me to go over old ground, and it throws me off my stride.”

“I didn’t?”

“Save us all some time during this second round of the boxing match, all right?”

“I don’t see why you think?”

“Need a refresher? Seven and a half weeks ago, Santo Kerne ended your relationship and, according to you, that was that: It was all you knew, full stop, no window dressing included. But as it turns out, you knew a bit more than that, didn’t you? You knew he was seeing someone else and something about that made you sick. Does any of this sound familiar to you, Miss Angarrack?”

Madlyn’s gaze shifted. Her brain was clearly engaged in calculations, and her expression said that the calculations were of the Who’s the bloody grass? variety. The suspects were probably not innumerable, and when Madlyn’s glance took in the Blue Star Grocery, satisfaction played her face like a keyboard. Resolution followed. Will Mendick, Bea Hannaford decided, was likely burnt toast.

“What would you like to tell us?” Bea asked. Sergeant Havers tapped her pencil against her notebook with great meaning. It was a chewed-up pencil, but that was no surprise, as possessing a writing utensil in any other condition would have been wildly out of character in the woman.

Madlyn’s gaze came back to Bea. She didn’t look resigned. She looked avenged, which, to Bea’s way of thinking, was not the way a suspect ought to be looking when it came to murder.