Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(160)
She walked over to the china board. What did they have after these days of effort? Three pieces of equipment damaged, the condition of the body indicating he’d taken a single heavy punch in the face, fingerprints on Santo Kerne’s car, a hair caught up in his climbing equipment, the reputation of the boy himself, two vehicles in the approximate vicinity of his fall, and the fact that he had likely two-timed Madlyn Angarrack with a veterinarian from Bristol. That was it. There was nothing substantial they could work with and certainly nothing upon which they could base an arrest. It was more than seventy-two hours since the boy had died, and there wasn’t a cop alive who didn’t know that every hour that passed without an arrest from the time of a murder made the case that much more difficult to solve.
Bea studied the names of the individuals who were involved, either directly or tangentially, in this murder. It seemed to her that at one time or another, everyone who knew him had had access to Santo Kerne’s climbing equipment, so there was little point to going in that direction. Thus, what Bea appeared to be left with was the motive behind the crime.
Sex, power, money, she thought. Hadn’t they always been the triumvirate of motives? Perhaps they were not generally obvious to the investigator in the initial stages of an enquiry, but didn’t they turn up eventually? Look at jealousy, anger, revenge, and avarice, just as a start. Couldn’t you trace each one of them back to a progenitor of sex, power, or money? And if that was the case, how did those three originating motives apply in this situation?
Bea took the only next step she could think to take. She made a list. On it she wrote the names that seemed probable to her at this juncture, and next to each she logged that individual’s possible motive. She came up with Lew Angarrack avenging a daughter’s broken heart (sex); Jago Reeth avenging a surrogate granddaughter’s broken heart (sex again); Kerra Kerne eliminating her brother in order to inherit all of Adventures Unlimited (power and money); Will Mendick hoping to make an inroad into Madlyn Angarrack’s affections (there was sex once more); Madlyn operating from a hell-hath-no-fury perspective (sex yet again); Alan Cheston desiring a more significant handhold on Adventures Unlimited (power); Daidre Trahair putting an end to being the Other Woman by ridding herself of the man (more sex).
So far, the parents of Santo Kerne didn’t seem to have a motive to do away with their own son, nor did Tammy Penrule. What, then, was she left with? Bea wondered. Motives aplenty, opportunity aplenty, and the means at hand. The sling was cut and then rewrapped with Santo Kerne’s identifying tape. Two chock stones were…
Perhaps the chock stones were the key. Since strands of heavy wire formed the cable that made it, it would require a special tool to cut. Bolt cutters, perhaps. Cable cutters. Find that tool and she would find the killer? It was the best possibility she had.
What was notable, though, was the leisurely nature of the crime. The killer was relying upon the fact that the boy would use the sling or one of the damaged chock stones eventually, but time was not of the essence. Nor was it necessary to the killer that the boy die in an instant since he might have used the sling and the chock stone on a much simpler climb. He might only have fallen and been hurt, requiring the killer to come up with another plan.
Thus they weren’t looking for someone desperate, perpetrator of a crime of passion. They were looking for someone crafty. Craftiness always suggested women. As did the approach that had been used in this crime. Invariably, when women killed, they did not use a hands-on method.
That line of thought shot her directly back to Madlyn Angarrack, to Kerra Kerne, and to Daidre Trahair. Which in turn made her wonder where the bloody hell the vet had taken herself to for the day. That, in turn, led her inevitably to consider Thomas Lynley and his presence at Polcare Cove that morning, which took her over to the telephone to punch in the number of the mobile she’d given him.
“So what do we have?” she asked when her third attempt to get a connection to wherever he was proved successful. “And where in God’s name are you, Detective?”
He was on his way back to Casvelyn, he told her. He’d made a day of Newquay, Zennor, and Pengelly Cove. To her question of how the dickens this got them to Daidre Trahair, whom she still wished to see, by the way, he told her a tale of adolescent surfers, adolescent sex, adolescent drugs, drink, parties, caves on the beach, and death. Rich kids, poor kids, and in-between kids, and the cops failing to solve a case despite someone grassing.
“About Ben Kerne,” Lynley told her. “His friends thought from the first that Dellen was the grass. This is Dellen Kerne. Ben’s father thinks so as well.”
“And this is relevant for what reason?” Bea asked wearily.
“I think the answer to that is in Exeter.”
“Are you heading there now?”
“Tomorrow,” he told her. He paused before saying, “I haven’t run into Dr. Trahair, by the way. Has she turned up?” He sounded far too casual for Bea’s liking. She wasn’t a fool.
“Not a sign of her. And may I tell you how little I like that?”
“It could mean anything. She may have gone back to Bristol.”
“Oh please. I don’t believe that for a moment.”
He was silent. That was enough of a response.
“I’ve sent your Sergeant Havers out there to bring her in if she’s slithered home,” Bea told him.
“She’s not my Sergeant Havers,” Lynley said.