Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(149)

“Besides?” Havers prompted him.

“He’d shown his colours. He was a little sod. I didn’t want the girl involved with him any longer.”

“D’you mean he wanted her to abort?”

“I mean he didn’t care one way or another what she did, according to Madlyn. Which, apparently, was his style. Only she didn’t know that at first. Well, none of us did.”

“Must have made you frantic when you found out.”

“So did I kill him in my frantic state?” Lew asked. “Hardly. I had no reason to kill him.”

“Ill use of your daughter being insufficient reason?” Bea asked.

“It was over and done with. She was…She is recovering.” And he added, with a look at Jago, “Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Slow process,” was Jago’s reply.

“Made easier if Santo was dead, I daresay,” Bea pointed out.

“I’ve told you. I didn’t know where he kept his equipment, and had I known?”

“I knew,” Jago Reeth cut in. “Santo’s dad kept trying to sort him, see, after Madlyn came up pregnant. Like I said before, they rowed. Part of the row was that act-like-a-man-for-once challenge dads give their sons sometimes, and for Santo, it’s easier to apply acting like a man to something other than act-like-the-proper-father-of a-baby-that’s-coming. So he takes his climbing kit to do just that. ’Nstead of, ‘You want me to stand by Madlyn, I’ll stand by Madlyn,’ it was easier to have it, ‘You’d rather I climb cliffs than surf? Then I’ll climb. I’ll show you a real cliff climber, come down to it.’ Then off he went to climb. Now. Then. Whenever. He kept his kit in the boot of his car. I knew it was there.”

“May I assume that Madlyn knew as well?”

“She was with me,” Jago said. “The two of us had gone to Asperyl. We made the walk out to Hedra’s Hut. There was something inside she wanted to be rid of. It was the last thing that tied her to Santo Kerne.”

Aside from Santo himself, Bea thought. She said, “And what would this be?”

Jago set his sanding block gently on the deck of the surfboard. He said, “Look, she fell dead hard for Santo. He was?pardon, Lew, no dad likes to hear this?he was her first in bed. When things ended with them, she was in a bad way about it. And then came the matter of losing that baby. She was having trouble getting past it all, and who wouldn’t. So I told her to get rid of everything Santo, start to finish. She’d done that but there was this one last bit, so that’s what we were doing there. They’d carved their initials in the hut. Stupid kid stuff, with a heart and everything, if you c’n believe it. We went there to destroy it. Not the hut, mind you. It’s been there…Christ, what? A hundred years? We didn’t want to hurt the hut. Just the initials. We left the heart as it was.”

“Why not carry all this to the logical end?” Bea asked him.

“Which would be what?”

“The obvious, Mr. Reeth,” Havers put in. “Why not give Santo Kerne the chop as well?”

Lew Angarrack said hotly, “You hang on just a God damn minute?”

Bea cut him off. “Is she a jealous girl? Has she a history of striking back when she’s hurt? Either of you can answer, by the way.”

“If you’re trying to say?”

“I’m trying to get to the truth, Mr. Angarrack. Did Madlyn tell you?or you, Mr. Reeth?that Santo was seeing someone else in the midst of all this? And I do use seeing as a euphemism, by the way. He was shagging one of the older women hereabouts at the same time as he was shagging and impregnating your daughter. She’s told us as much, at least the shagging part. Well, she had to, as we’ve caught her in more than one lie so far and I’m afraid she’d lied herself into a brick wall. As things turn out, she’d followed the boy and there they were in this woman’s home, the virile, energetic, and young white ram enthusiastically tupping the ageing ewe. Did you know about this? Did you, Mr. Reeth?”

Lew Angarrack said, “No. No.” His drove his hand through his greying hair, dislodging a sand fall of polystyrene dust. “I’ve been caught up in my own affairs…I knew she and the boy were done for, and I thought that with time…Madlyn’s always been edgy. I’ve long thought it was due to her mum and the fact she left us and the fact that Madlyn doesn’t cope well with being left. Well, that seemed natural enough to me, and she always got past it in the end if something died between herself and someone else. I believed she’d get past this as well, even past the loss of the baby. So when she was as…as disturbed as she was, I did what I could, or what I thought I could to help her through it.”

“Which was?”

“I sacked the boy, and I encouraged her to get back to her surfing. Get back in shape. Get back on the circuit. I told her no one goes through life without getting their heart broken into bits, but people recover.”

“Like you had?” Havers asked.

“If it comes to it, yes.”

“And what did you know of this other woman?” Bea asked him.

“Nothing. Madlyn never said…I knew nothing.”

“You, Mr. Reeth?”

Jago picked up his block and examined it. He nodded slowly. “She told me. She wanted me to have a word with the boy. I s’pose it was to try to set him straight. But I told her it wouldn’t do much good. That age? A boy i’n’t thinking with his brain, and didn’t she see that? I tell her there’s lots of fish in the sea, like they say. I say, Let’s be rid of this sorry piece of business, girl, and get on with our lives. It’s the only way.”