Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(182)

Jago lent his car to the endeavour. Saying, “Mind how you go, then,” he handed over his keys.

Cadan set off. Without a driving license and mindful of Jago’s display of trust in him, he took supreme care. Hands at two o’clock and ten o’clock, eyes fixed ahead or flicking to the mirrors, the occasional glance at the speedometer.

Widemouth Bay lay to the south of Casvelyn, some five miles down the coast. Flanked by largely friable cliffs of sandstone, it was much as its name suggested: a wide bay accessed from a large car park just off the coastal road. There was no town to speak of. Instead, summer cottages were sprinkled across the down east of the road, and the only businesses that served them, surfers, and tourists to the area were a seasonal restaurant and a shop hiring out body boards, surfboards, and wet suits.

In summer the bay was madness because, unlike so many bays in Cornwall, it was no difficult matter to get to it, so it attracted day-trippers by the hundreds, holiday makers, and locals as well. In the off-season, it was left to surfers who flocked to it when the tide was mid to high, the wind was east, and the waves were breaking on the right-hand reef.

Conditions were superb on this day, with swells that looked to be five feet. So the car park was littered with vehicles, and the lineup of surfers was impressive. Even so, when Cadan pulled in and parked, he could make out his father easily. Lew surfed the way he did most everything else: alone.

It was largely a solitary sport anyway, but Lew managed to make it even more so. His was a figure set apart from the rest, farther out, content to wait for swells that rose only occasionally at this distance from the reefs. To look at him, one would think he knew nothing about the sport because certainly he ought to be waiting with the others, who were getting fairly consistent rides. But that wasn’t his way, and when a wave finally came that he liked, he was on its shoulder effortlessly, paddling with a minimum of effort and the experience of more than thirty years on the water.

The others watched him. He dropped in smoothly, and there he was, angling across the wave’s green face, carving back towards the barrel, looking as if at any moment he’d catch a rail or the falls would take him, but knowing when to carve again so that the wave was his.

Cadan didn’t need to see a scoreboard or hear a commentary to know his father was good. Lew seldom spoke of it, but he’d surfed competitively in his twenties, harbouring a dream of worldwide travel and recognition before the Bounder had left him with two small children to care for. At that point, Lew had been forced to rethink his chosen path. What he’d come up with was LiquidEarth. From shaping his own boards, he’d gone on to shape boards for others. Thus he lived vicariously the peripatetic life of a world-class surfer. It couldn’t have been easy for his father to give up on what he’d hoped to do with his life, Cadan realised, and he wondered why he’d never thought about that before now.

When Lew came out of the water, Cadan was waiting for him. He’d fetched a towel from within the RAV4 and he handed it over. Lew propped his short board against the car and took the towel with a nod. He pulled off his hood and rubbed his hair vigorously. He began to peel off his wet suit. It was still the winter suit, Cadan noted. The water wouldn’t warm up for two more months.

“What’re you doing here, Cade?” Lew asked him. “How’d you get here? Aren’t you meant to be at work?” He stepped out of the wet suit and wrapped the towel round his waist. From within the car, he brought out a T-shirt and then a sweatshirt printed with LiquidEarth’s logo. He donned these and worked on getting out of his swimming suit. He said nothing else until he was dressed and loading his kit into the back of the car. And then it was to repeat, “What are you doing here, Cade? How did you get here?”

“Jago let me use his wheels.”

Lew looked round the car park and spotted the Defender. “Without your driving licence,” he said.

“I didn’t take chances. I drove like a nun.”

“That’s hardly the point. And why aren’t you at work? Have you been sacked?”

Cadan didn’t intend it and didn’t want it, but he felt the quick anger that always seemed to be the outcome of a conversation with his father. He said without considering where it would take them, “I guess you’d think that, wouldn’t you?”

“Past history.” Lew stepped past Cadan and went for his board. There were showers at the far side of the car park, and Lew could have used them to wash the saltwater from his kit, but he didn’t do so as the job he could do at home would be more thorough and consequently more to his liking. And it seemed to Cadan that that was his father’s way about everything. To my liking was the motto Lew lived by.

Cadan said, “As it happens, I haven’t been sacked. I’ve been doing a bloody good job over there.”

“I see. Congratulations. What’re you doing here, then?”

“I came to talk to you. Jago said you were here. And he offered his car, by the way. I didn’t ask.”

“Talk to me about what?” Lew slammed home the back of the RAV4. From the driver’s seat, he rustled through a paper bag and brought out a sandwich encased in a plastic box. He prised open the lid and lifted out half. He offered the other half to Cadan.

A peace offering, Cadan decided. He shook his head but was careful to say thanks. “About coming back to LiquidEarth,” Cadan said. “If you’ll have me.” He added this last as his own form of peace offering. His father had the power in this situation and he knew that his part was to acknowledge that fact.