Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(143)

“Anyway, got to dash,” Cilla said, as if reading Daidre’s mind. “Lookit, you best think about having a phone put in, eh? You could keep it in a cupboard or summick. Plug it in when you want it. That sort of thing.”

“Yes. Yes, I will,” Daidre told her. “Thanks so much, Cilla, for coming all this way.”

The girl left her then, and Daidre stood on the front step, watching her expertly kick-start the motorcycle?no electronic ignition for this rider?and turn it in the driveway. In a few more moments and with a wave, the girl was gone. She zoomed up the narrow lane, curved out of sight, and left Daidre to deal with the aftermath of her visit.

Scotland Yard, she thought. Questions being asked. There could be only one reason?only one person?behind this.





Chapter Twenty


KERRA’S NIGHT HAD BEEN SLEEPLESS AND MUCH OF HER FOLLOWING day had been useless. She’d attempted to carry on as well as possible, keeping to a schedule of interviews that she’d set up in the preceding weeks: the search for potential instructors. She’d thought she could, at least, divert herself with the hopeful if unlikely pretence that Adventures Unlimited was actually going to open in the near future. The plan hadn’t worked.

This is it. That simple declaration, that coy little arrow from This is it to the great sea cave depicted on the postcard, the implication that conversations of a nature having nothing to do with business had passed between the writer of those words and the reader of those words, what lay behind, beneath, and beyond those conversations…These disquieting and turbulent thoughts had been the stuff of Kerra’s day and the sleepless night that had preceded it.

The postcard now had for some hours been burning a small rectangular patch against her skin from within the pocket where she’d stowed it. Each time she’d moved, she’d been aware of it, taunting her. She was going to have to do something about it, eventually. That dull burning told her as much.

Kerra hadn’t been able to avoid Alan, as she would have liked to do that day. The marketing office was not far from her own cubbyhole, and while she’d routinely taken prospective instructors to the first-floor lounge for their interviews rather than inside her cubbyhole, she’d greeted them in the vicinity of the marketing office. Alan had popped out more than once to observe her, and she wasn’t long in working out what his silent observation meant.

It was more than disapproval of her choice of candidates, all of them female. He’d made himself clear on that topic earlier, and Alan wasn’t the sort to keep pressing a point when someone was, in his opinion, being bloody-minded. Rather, his mute scrutiny of her told her that Busy Lizzie had mentioned Kerra’s visit to Pink Cottage. She’d likely told Alan about Kerra’s putative need to find a personal possession in Alan’s room, and he’d be wondering why Kerra herself hadn’t mentioned it. She had her answer ready had he cared to ask her, but he hadn’t asked.

She didn’t know where her father was. She’d seen him go out in the direction of St. Mevan Beach some hours ago, and as far as she knew he’d not returned. She’d reckoned at first he’d gone to watch the surfers, for the swells were good and the wind was offshore and she herself had seen a ragtag line of them working their way across the promontory. Had things been wildly different, her brother, Santo, might have been among them, lining up out there in the water to get into position. Her father might have been there as well. Her father and her brother together, as a matter of fact. But things were not different, and they never would be. That appeared to be the family’s curse.

And at the root of that curse: Dellen. It was as if all of them were wandering in a maze, trying to get to its mysterious centre, while all the time at its mysterious centre, Dellen waited, black-widow-like. The only way to elude her was to purge her, but it was far too late for that.

“Want something?”

Alan spoke. Kerra was in her office, where looking through a meagre stack of applicants was proving to be a dispiriting activity. She’d been working on sea kayaking, and she’d spoken to five possible instructors that day. Only two had the background she was looking for and, of them, only one had a physique suggestive of experience in the sea. The other looked like someone who kayaked on the River Avon, where the biggest challenge she faced would be taking care not to brain a cygnet with her paddle.

Kerra closed the last of the manila folders with their paltry bits of information. She wondered how best to answer Alan’s question. She was thinking it over?working on whether irony, sarcasm, or a display of wit was in her best interests?when he spoke again.

“Kerra? Want something? Cup of tea? Coffee? Something to eat? I’m going out for a bit, and I can stop?”

“No. Thanks.” She didn’t want to be beholden to him, even in so small a matter as this.

Instead, she examined him and he examined her. It was one of those moments when two individuals who have been lovers scrutinise each other like cultural anthropologists studying a tract of land for the remains of an ancient civilization long believed to have dwelt there. There should be marks, signs, indications of a passage….

“How does it go?” he asked.

She knew that he was well aware of how it went, but she played the game. “I’ve come up with several strong possibilities. I’m doing additional interviews tomorrow. But the real question is whether we’re actually going to open, isn’t it? We seem rather without direction, especially today. Have you seen my father?”