Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(132)

“He broke up with me. I told you that and it was the truth. I didn’t lie, and you can’t make it out that I did. And I wasn’t under oath anyway, so?”

“Save the legal wrangling,” Havers spoke up. “Far as I know, this isn’t an episode of The Bill. You lied, you cheated, or you danced the polka. We don’t much care. Let’s get to the facts. I’ll be happy, the DI’ll be happy, and?trust me?you’ll be happy as well.”

Madlyn didn’t look appreciative of this advice. She made a moue of distaste, but it seemed to be an expression that served the purpose of jockeying for position because when she next spoke, she told a completely different tale from the one she’d told earlier. She said, “All right. I broke up with him. I thought he was cheating, so I followed him. It’s not something I’m proud of, but I had to know. When I knew, I ended it. It hurt to do it because I was stupid and I still loved him, but I ended it anyway. That’s the story. And it’s the truth.”

“So far,” Bea said.

“I just told you?”

“Followed him where?” Havers asked, her pencil poised. “Followed him when? And how? On foot, by car, on bicycle, on a pogo stick?”

“What about his cheating on you made you sick?” Bea asked. “Just the fact of it, or was there something else? I think ‘off ’ was your choice of description.”

“I never said?”

“Not to us, no. You never said. That’s part of the current problem. Your problem, that is. When you say one thing to one person and another thing to the coppers, it all comes back to bite you in the end. So I suggest you consider yourself bitten and do something to get the teeth out of your bum, in a matter of speaking.”

“Rabies being rabies and all,” DS Havers murmured. Bea stifled a smile. She was starting to like the disheveled woman.

Madlyn’s jaw tightened. It seemed that the full reality of her situation was beginning to dawn upon her. She could remain obdurate and accept the threats and the ridicule of the other two women, or she could talk. She chose the option that seemed likeliest to effect their imminent departure.

“I think people should stick to their own,” she said.

“And Santo didn’t stick to his own?” Bea asked. “What’s that mean, exactly?”

“Just what I said.”

“What?” Havers asked impatiently. “He was doing altar boys on the side? Goats? Sheep? The occasional vegetable marrow? What?”

“Stop it!” Madlyn cried. “He was doing other women, all right? Older women. I confronted him when I knew about it. And I knew because I followed him.”

“We’re back to that,” Bea said. “You followed him where?”

“To Polcare Cottage.” Her eyes were bright. “He went to Polcare Cove and I followed him. He went inside and…I waited and waited because I was stupid and I wanted to think that…But no. No. So I went to the door after a bit and I banged upon it and…You can work out the bloody rest, can’t you? And that’s all I have to say to you two, so leave me alone. Leave me bloody well alone.”

That said, she pushed between them and stalked back towards the bakery’s door. She rubbed at her cheeks furiously as she walked.

“What’s Polcare Cottage?” DS Havers asked.

“A very nice place to pay a call on,” Bea said.

LYNLEY DIDN’T APPROACH THE cottage at once because he saw immediately that there was probably going to be no point. She didn’t appear to be at home. Either that or she’d parked her Vauxhall in the larger of the two outbuildings that stood on her property in Polcare Cove. He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel of his hired Ford, and he considered what his next move ought to be. Reporting what he knew to DI Hannaford seemed to top the list, but he didn’t feel settled with that decision. Instead, he wanted to give Daidre Trahair an opportunity to explain herself.

Despite what Barbara Havers might have thought once they parted at the Salthouse Inn, Lynley had taken her comments to heart. He was in a precarious position, and he knew it although he hated to admit or even think about it. He wanted desperately to escape the black pit in which he’d been floundering for weeks upon weeks, and he felt inclined to clutch just about any life rope that would get him out of there. The long walk along the South-West Coastal Path hadn’t provided that escape as he’d hoped it would. So he had to admit that perhaps Daidre Trahair’s company in conjunction with the kindness in her eyes had beguiled him into overlooking details that would otherwise have demanded acknowledgement.

He’d come upon another of those details upon Havers’ departure earlier that morning. Neither pigheaded nor blind when it came down to it, he’d placed another phone call to the zoo in Bristol. This time, however, instead of enquiring about Dr. Trahair, he enquired about the primate keepers. By the time he wended his way through what seemed like half a dozen employees and departments, he was fairly certain what the news would be. There was no Paul the primate keeper at the zoo. Indeed, the primates were kept by a team of women, headed by someone called Mimsie Vance, to whom Lynley did not need to speak.

Another lie chalked up against her, another black mark that needed confrontation.

What he reckoned he ought to do was lay his cards on the table for the vet. He, after all, was the person to whom Daidre Trahair had spoken about Paul the primate keeper and his terminally ill father. Perhaps, he thought, he had misinterpreted or misunderstood what Daidre had said. Certainly, she deserved the chance to clarify. Didn’t anyone in her position deserve as much?