Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(42)

The M5 down to Exeter, she said. Over to Okehampton and northwest from there. There was no completely easy way to get to Polcare Cove, she pointed out. Sometimes she did the Exeter route, but other times she worked her way over from Tiverton.

Hannaford made much of studying the map before she said, “And from Okehampton?”

“What d’you mean?” Daidre asked.

“One can’t leap from Okehampton to Polcare Cove, Dr. Trahair. You didn’t come by helicopter from there, did you? What was the route you took? The exact route, please.”

Lynley saw a flush rise up the vet’s neck. She was lucky that her skin was lightly freckled. Had it not been, she would have coloured to puce.

She said, “Are you asking me this because you think I had something to do with that boy’s death?”

“Did you?”

“I did not.”

“Then you won’t mind showing me your route, will you.”

Daidre pressed her lips together. She pushed an errant lock of hair behind her left ear. Her lobe, Lynley saw, was pierced three times. She wore a hoop, a stud, but nothing else.

She traced the route: A3079, A3072, A39, and then a series of smaller roads until she reached Polcare Cove, which earned barely a speck in the A to Z. As she pointed out the journey she’d made, Hannaford took notes. She nodded thoughtfully and thanked the other woman when Daidre had completed her answer.

Daidre didn’t look pleased to have the detective’s thanks. She looked, if anything, angry and trying to master her anger. This told Lynley that Daidre knew what the detective was up to. What it didn’t tell him was where her anger was being directed, though: at DI Hannaford or herself.

“Are we released now?” Daidre asked.

“You are, Dr. Trahair,” Hannaford said. “But Mr. Lynley and I have further business.”

“You can’t think he?” She stopped. The flush was there again. She looked at Lynley and then away.

“He what?” Hannaford asked politely.

“He’s a stranger round here. How would he have known that boy?”

“Are you saying you yourself knew him, Dr. Trahair? Did you know that boy? He might have been a stranger here as well. Our Mr. Lynley?for all we know?may have come along precisely to toss Santo Kerne?that’s his name, by the way?right down the face of that cliff.”

“That’s ridiculous. He’s said he’s a policeman.”

“He’s said. But I’ve no actual proof of that. Have you?”

“I…Never mind.” She’d placed her shoulder bag on a chair, and she scooped it up. “I’m leaving now, as you said you were finished with me, Inspector.”

“As indeed I am,” Bea Hannaford said pleasantly. “For now.”

THEY EXCHANGED ONLY A brief few remarks in the car afterwards. Lynley asked Hannaford where she was taking him, and she replied that she was taking him with her to Truro, to Royal Cornwall Hospital, to be exact. He then said, “You’re going to check all the pubs on the route, aren’t you?” To which she archly replied, “All the pubs on the route to Truro? Not very likely, my good man.”

He said, “I’m not talking about the route to Truro, Inspector.”

She said, “I knew that. And do you really expect me to answer that question? You found the body. You know the game if you’re who you say you are.” She glanced his way. She’d put on sunglasses although there was no sun and, indeed, it was still raining. He wondered about this and she answered his wonder. “Corrective,” she told him. “For my driving. My others are at home. Or possibly in my son’s rucksack at school. Or one of the dogs could have eaten them, for all I know.”

“You have dogs?”

“Three black Labs. Dogs One, Two, and Three.”

“Interesting names.”

“I like to keep things simple at home. To balance all the ways things are never simple at work.”

That was the extent of what they said. The rest of the drive they made in silence broken by radio chatter and two calls Hannaford took on her mobile phone. One of them apparently asked for her approximate time of arrival in Truro, barring traffic problems, and the other was a brief message from someone to whom she responded with a terse, “I told them to get it to me. What the hell’s it doing with you in bloody Exeter?…And how’m I supposed to…That is not necessary and yes you’re right before you say it: I don’t want to owe you…Oh, grand. Do what you like, Ray.”

At the hospital in Truro, Hannaford guided Lynley to the mortuary, where the air smelled headily of disinfectant and an assistant was hosing off the trolley on which a body had been cut open for inspection. Nearby, the forensic pathologist?thin as an ageing spinster’s marital hopes?was downing a large tomato juice over a stainless sink. The man, Lynley thought, had to have a stomach of iron and the sensitivity of a stone.

“This is Gordie Lisle,” Hannaford said to Lynley. “Fastest Y incision on the planet and you don’t want to know how quick he can shear ribs.”

“You do me too much honour,” Lisle said.

“I know. This is Thomas Lynley,” she told him. “What’ve we got?”

Finishing his juice, Lisle went to a desk and scooped up a document to which he referred as he began his report. This he prefaced with the information that the injuries were consistent with a fall. He went about relating them. Pelvis broken, he said, and right medial malleolus shattered. He added, “That’s ankle to the layman.”