Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(200)

He said, “What’s the brief, then, mate?” to Selevan. “You look a right state.”

“I’m heading out,” Selevan said. “Few days, a bit more.”

“Are you, then? Where?”

“North. Place not far from the border.”

“What? Wales?”

“Scotland.”

Jago whistled. “Far piece, that. Want me to keep an eye on things, then? Want me to keep a watch on Tammy?”

“Taking Tammy with me,” Selevan said. “I’ve done as much as I can here. Job’s finished. Now we’re off. Time the girl was let to lead the life she wants.”

“Truth to that,” Jago said. “I won’t be here that much longer myself.”

Selevan was surprised to feel the extent of his dismay at hearing this news. “Where you off to, Jago? I thought you meant to stay the season.”

Jago shook his head. He lifted his Guinness and drank of it deeply. “Never stay one place long. That’s how I look at it. I’m thinking South Africa. Capetown, p’rhaps.”

“You won’t go till I’m back, though. Sounds a bit mad, this, but I’ve got used to having you round.”

Jago looked at him and the lenses of his glasses winked in the light. “Best not to do that. Doesn’t pay to get used to anything.”

“’Course, I know that, but?”

The bar door swung open, but not in its usual fashion, with someone swinging it just wide enough to enter. Instead, it opened with a startling bang that would have put an end to all conversation had anyone save Jago and Selevan been within.

Two women came inside. One of them had stand-up hair that looked purple in the light. The other wore a knitted cap pulled low on her face, just to her eyes. The women looked around and Purple Hair settled on the inglenook.

She strode over saying, “Ah. We’d like a word with you, Mr. Reeth.”





Chapter Twenty-eight


THEY DROVE WEST. THEY TALKED VERY LITTLE. WHAT LYNLEY wanted to know was why she had lied about details that could be so easily checked upon. Paul the primate keeper, for instance. It was a matter of a simple phone call to discover there was no Paul caring for primates at the zoo. Did she not see how that looked to the police?

She glanced at him. She’d not worn her contact lenses on this day, and a bit of her sandy hair had fallen across the top of the frames of her glasses. She said, “I suppose I hadn’t thought of you as a cop, Thomas. And the answers to the questions you asked me?and the questions you had in your head but didn’t ask me?were private, weren’t they. They had nothing to do with Santo Kerne’s death.”

“But keeping those answers to yourself made you suspect. You must see that.”

“I was willing to take the risk.”

They drove for a time in silence. The landscape altered as they approached the coast. From rough and rock-studded farmland whose ownership was delineated with irregular drystone walls patchy with grey-green lichen, the undulations of pasture and field gave way to hillside and combe, and a horizon that was marked with the great and derelict engine houses of Cornwall’s disused mines. She took a route into St. Agnes, a slate and granite village that tumbled down a hillside above the sea, its few steep streets twisting appealingly and lined with terrace cottages and with shops, all of them leading inexorably and ultimately, like the course of a river, down to the pebbled stretch of Trevaunance Cove. Here, at low water, tractors pulled skiffs into the sea and, at three-quarters tide, good-size swells from the west and southwest brought surfers from surrounding areas to jostle with each other for a place on ten-foot waves. But instead of ending up at the cove, where Lynley thought she’d been heading, she chose a direction out of town, driving north, following signs that were posted for Wheal Kitty.

He said to her, “I couldn’t ignore the fact that you lied about recognising Santo Kerne when you saw his body. Why did you do that? Don’t you see how that threw suspicion on you?”

“At the moment that couldn’t be important. Saying I knew him would have led to more questions. Answering questions would have left me pointing the finger…” She glanced his way. Her expression was irked, disbelieving. “Have you honestly no idea what it might feel like to be a person who involves people she knows in a police investigation? Surely you must understand how that might feel? You’re not insensate. There were confidential matters…There were things I’d promised to keep to myself. Oh, what am I saying? Your sergeant would have put you into the picture by now. Doubtless you had breakfast with her, if you didn’t speak to her last night. I can’t imagine she’d keep you in the dark about much.”

“There were car tracks in your garage. More than one set.”

“Santo’s. Aldara’s. Your sergeant would have told you about Aldara, I expect. Santo’s lover. The fact that they used my cottage.”

“Why didn’t you just explain that from the first? Had you done so?”

“What? You would have stopped short of looking into my past, sending your sergeant to Falmouth to question the neighbours, phoning the zoo, doing…What else? Have you spoken to Lok as well? Did you track him down? Did you ask him if he’s truly crippled or if I made that up? It does sound fantastic, doesn’t it, a Chinese brother with spinal bifida. Brilliant but bent. What an intriguing story.”