Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(159)

“You, then,” she said.

“Me then? What?”

“I suppose I choose you.”

“Just ‘suppose’?”

“I can’t. More than that just now…I can’t, Alan.”

He nodded gravely. Then he said, “I took a videographer with me. That was the errand I went on before Pengelly Cove. I fetched the videographer. I didn’t go to the sea caves alone.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me? Why didn’t you say…?”

“Because I wanted you to choose. I wanted you to believe. She’s sick, Kerra. Anyone with sense can see that she’s sick.”

“She’s always been so?”

“She’s always been so sick. And spending your life reacting to her sickness is going to make you sick as well. You’ve got to decide if that’s how you want to live. I, for one, do not.”

“She’ll still keep trying to?”

“Very likely she will. Or she’ll get help. She’ll make up her mind or your dad will insist on it or she’ll end up out on the street on her ear and she’ll have to make a change to survive. I don’t know. The point is, I intend to live my life the way I want to live my life regardless of what your mum does with hers. What, exactly, do you want to do? The same? Or something else?”

“The same,” she said. Her lips felt stiff. “But I’m…so afraid.”

“We’re all afraid at the end of the day because there’s no guarantee of a single thing. That’s just how life is.”

She nodded numbly. A wave broke against the Sea Pit. She flinched.

“Alan,” she said, “I didn’t hurt…I wouldn’t have done anything to Santo.”

“Of course you wouldn’t. No more would I.”

BEA WAS ALONE IN the incident room when she logged on to the computer. She’d sent Barbara Havers back to Polcare Cove to haul Daidre Trahair into Casvelyn for a tête-à tête. If she’s not there, wait for an hour, Bea told the detective sergeant. If she doesn’t show up, call it a day and we’ll lasso her tomorrow morning.

The rest of the team she’d sent to their respective homes after a lengthy postmortem on the day’s developments. Have a decent meal and a good night’s sleep, she told them. Things will look different, clearer, and more possible in the morning. Or so she hoped.

She considered logging on to the computer a last resort, a giving way to Constable McNulty’s fanciful approach to detective work. She did it because, before she and DS Havers had left LiquidEarth earlier that day, she’d paused in front of the poster that had so fascinated the young constable?the surfer wiping out on the monstrous wave?and she’d said in reference to it, “So this is the wave that killed him?”

Both men were with her: Lew Angarrack and Jago Reeth. Angarrack was the one who said, “Who?”

“Mark Foo. Isn’t this Mark Foo on the Maverick’s wave that killed him?”

“True enough that Foo died at Maverick’s,” Lew said. “But that’s a younger kid. Jay Moriarty.”

“Jay Moriarty?”

“Yeah.” Angarrack had cocked his head curiously. “Why?”

“Mr. Reeth said this was Mark Foo’s last wave.”

Angarrack glanced at Jago Reeth. “How’d you come up with Foo?” he said. “If nothing else, the board’s all wrong.”

Jago came to the door that separated the work area from the reception area and showroom, where the poster was pinned, among others, to the wall. He leaned against the jamb and nodded at Bea. “Top marks,” he told her and said to Lew, “They’re doing the job they’re meant to be doing, taking note of everything the way they ought. Had to check, didn’t I? Hope you don’t take it personally, Inspector.”

Bea had been irritated. Everyone wanted a piece of a murder investigation if the victim was known to them. But she hated anything that wasted her time, and she disliked being tested in that way. Even more she disliked the way Jago Reeth watched her after this exchange, with that kind of knowing look men often adopted when forced to do business with a female whose position was superior to theirs.

She’d said to him, “Don’t do that again,” and left LiquidEarth with Barbara Havers. But now alone in the incident room, she wondered if Jago Reeth had made the misstatement about the poster because he was in truth testing the strength of the investigation or for another reason entirely. There were only two other possibilities that Bea could see: He’d misstated the surfer’s identity because he hadn’t known it in the first place; or he’d deliberately misstated the surfer’s identity to draw attention to himself. In either case, the question was, why? and she didn’t have a ready answer.

She spent the next ninety minutes floating round the vast chasm of the Internet. She searched out Moriarty and Foo, discovering that both of them were dead. Their names led to other names. So she followed the trail laid down by this list of faceless individuals until she finally had their faces on the computer screen as well. She studied them, hoping for some sort of sign as to what she was meant to do next, but if there was a connection between these big-wave riders and a sea cliff climbing death in Cornwall, she could not find it, and she gave up the effort.