Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(178)

“That would be the dangly bits,” Havers muttered.

Aldara shot her a look.

Bea said, “Perhaps Santo actually felt guilty about what you two were up to. Or perhaps after the scene with Madlyn, he wanted more off you than you were giving and he reckoned this was the way to get it. I don’t know although I’d like to find out and the way to find out is by talking to your other lover: former, cooling, or otherwise. So. We’re at the end point here. You can give us his surname or we can talk to your employees and get it from them because if this other bloke wasn’t your secret lover like Santo was, it stands to reason he didn’t have to come to you under cover of darkness and you didn’t have to slither off to meet him in someone’s wheelie bin. So someone here is going to know who he is, and that someone is likely to give us his surname.”

Aldara thought about this for a moment. From out in the courtyard, a whir of machinery started, suggesting that Rod was having success in his efforts with the mill. Aldara said abruptly, “Max Priestley.”

“Thank you. And where might we find Mr. Priestley?”

“He owns the Watchman, but?”

Bea said to Havers, “The town rag. He’s local, then.”

“?if you think he had anything to do with Santo’s death, you’re wrong. He didn’t, and he wouldn’t.”

“We’ll let him tell us that himself.”

“You can, of course, but you’re being foolish. You’re wasting your time. If Max had known…If Santo had told him despite our agreement…I would have known about it. I would have sensed it. I can tell this sort of thing with men. This…this internal disturbance they have. Any woman can tell if she’s attuned.”

Bea observed her steadily before responding. Interesting, she thought. They’d somehow touched on a tender spot in Aldara: a psychic bruise that the woman herself had not expected to be bothered by. There was a tinge of desperation to her words. Worry about Max? Bea wondered. Worry about herself?

She said to Aldara, “Were you in love with this one? Unexpected for you, I wager.”

“I didn’t say?”

“And you do think Santo told him, don’t you? Because…I believe Santo informed you he was going to tell him. Which itself suggests…?”

“That I did something to stop Santo before he could? Don’t be absurd. I didn’t. And Max didn’t harm him. Neither did anyone I know.”

“Of course. Take that down, Sergeant. No one she knows and all the relevant et ceteras you can manage to wring from that.”

Havers nodded. “Got them in bronze this time.”

Bea said to Aldara, “So now that we’re down to it, let me ask you this. Who’s next on the pitch?”

“What?”

“The excitement-and-secrecy-provoking pitch. If you were ‘cooling off ’ with Max but still bonking Santo, you needed someone else, yes? Or you’d have had only one?only Santo?and that wouldn’t do. So who else have you got, when did he climb onboard, and can we assume that he, too, was supposed to know nothing about Santo?”

Aldara drove her shovel into the earth. She did it easily, without anger or dismay. She said, “I believe this conversation is at an end, Inspector Hannaford.”

“Ah. So you did get someone onboard prior to Santo’s death. Someone closer to your age, I’ll wager. You seem the sort who learns quickly, and I expect Santo and Madlyn gave you a very good lesson about what it means to take up with a teenager, no matter how good he is in bed.”

“What you ‘expect’ does not interest me,” Aldara said.

“Right,” Bea said, “as it doesn’t rob you of a single eyelash.” She said to Havers, “I think we have what we need, Sergeant,” and then to Aldara, “save for your fingerprints, madam. And someone will stop by today to rob you of those.”





Chapter Twenty-five


THEY GOT CAUGHT BEHIND A LUMBERING TOUR COACH, WHICH made their trip from the cider farm back to Casvelyn longer than Bea had expected it would be. At another time, she not only would have been impatient, leaning on the horn in an aggressive display of bad manners, she also likely would have been foolhardy: Little prompting would have urged her to make the attempt to overtake the coach on the narrow lane. As it was, the delay gave her time to think and what she thought about was the unconventional lifestyle of the woman they’d just interviewed. She did more than wonder how that lifestyle related to the case in hand, however. She marveled at it altogether. She also discovered she wasn’t alone in her marveling. DS Havers brought the subject up.

“She’s a piece of work,” Havers said. “I’ll give her that.” The sergeant, Bea saw, was itching for a cigarette after their talk with Aldara Pappas. She’d taken her packet of Players from her shoulder bag and she’d been rolling a fag between her thumb and her fingers as if hoping to absorb the nicotine epidermally. She seemed to know better than to light it, though.

“I rather admire her,” Bea admitted. “Truth to tell? I’d bloody love to be like that.”

“Would you? You’re a deep one, Guv. Got the thing for an eighteen-year-old you’re keeping hidden?”

“It’s the whole bonding issue,” Bea replied. “It’s how she’s managed to avoid it.” She frowned at the coach ahead of them, at the black belch of its exhaust emission. She braked to put some distance between her Land Rover and the other vehicle. “She doesn’t seem to be bothered by bonding. She doesn’t seem to bond at all.”