Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(49)
Because reminders of Helen were everywhere at Howenstow, he’d begun his walk. Trudging along the entire South-West Coast Path was the last possible challenge Helen would ever have undertaken (“My God, Tommy, you’ve got to be mad. What would I do for shoes that aren’t utterly appalling in appearance?”), so he knew he could walk the length of it with impunity, should he choose to do so. There would be not a single reminder of her along the way.
But he’d not counted on the memorials he’d come across. Nothing he’d read about the path prior to walking it had prepared him for those. From simple bunches of dying flowers to wooden benches engraved with the names of the departed, death greeted him nearly every day. He’d left the Yard because he could not face another sudden brutal passing of a human being, but there it was: confronting him with a regularity that mocked his every attempt to forget.
And now this. DI Hannaford wasn’t exactly involving him in the murder investigation itself, but she was putting him close to it. He didn’t want that, but at the same time, he didn’t know how he could avoid it because he read the inspector as a woman who was as good as her word: Should he conveniently disappear from the region of Casvelyn, she would happily fetch him back and not rest till she’d done so.
As to what she was asking him to do…Like DI Hannaford, Lynley believed Daidre Trahair was lying about the route she’d taken from Bristol to Polcare Cove on the previous day. Unlike DI Hannaford, Lynley also knew Daidre Trahair had lied more than once about knowing Santo Kerne. There were going to be reasons behind both of these lies?far beyond what the vet had told him when he’d confronted her about her knowledge of the dead boy’s identity?and he didn’t know if he wanted to uncover them. Her reasons for obfuscation were doubtless personal, and the poor woman was hardly a killer.
Yet why did he think that? he asked himself. He knew better than anyone that killers wore a thousand different guises. Killers were men; killers were women. Killers, to his anguish, were children. And victims everywhere?no matter how foul they might actually be?were not meant to be dispatched by anyone, whatever the motive for untimely sending them to their eternal reward or punishment. The whole basis for their society rested upon the idea that murder was wrong, start to finish, and that justice had to be served so that closure?if not satisfaction, not relief, and certainly not an end to grief?might at least be achieved on the entire event. Justice equated to naming and convicting the killer, and justice was what was owed to those the victim summarily left behind.
Part of Lynley cried out that this was not his problem. Part of him knew that now and forever and more than ever, it would always be.
By the time they reached Casvelyn he was, if not reconciled to the matter, then at least in moderate accord with it. Everything needed to be accounted for in an investigation. Daidre Trahair was part of that everything, having made herself so the moment she lied.
Casvelyn’s police station was in Lansdown Road, in the heart of the town, directly at the bottom of Belle Vue’s course up the town’s main acclivity, and it was here in front of the plain, grey two-storey structure that Bea Hannaford parked. Lynley thought at first that she meant to take him inside and introduce him around, but instead she said, “Come with me,” and she put a hand on his elbow and guided him back the way they had come.
At the junction of Lansdown Road and Belle Vue, they crossed a triangle of land where benches, a fountain, and three trees provided Casvelyn with an outdoor gathering place in good weather. From there they headed over to Queen Street, which was lined with shops like those on Belle Vue Lane: everything from purveyors of furniture to pharmacies. There, Bea Hannaford paused and peered in both directions till she apparently saw what she wanted, for she said, “Yes. Over here. I want you to see what we’re dealing with.”
Over here referred to a shop selling sporting goods: both equipment and clothing for outdoor activities. Hannaford did an admirably quick recce of the place, found what she wanted, told the shop assistant they needed no help, and directed Lynley to a wall. Upon it were hung various metallic devices, mostly of steel. It wasn’t rocket science to sort out they were used for climbing.
She chose a package that held three devices constructed of lead, heavy steel cable, and plastic sheathing. The lead was a thick wedge at the end of a cable perhaps one quarter inch thick. This looped through the wedge at one end and also formed another loop at the other end. In the middle was a tough plastic sheath, which wrapped tightly round the cable and thus held the two sides of it closely together. The result was a sturdy cord with a slug of lead at one end and a loop at the other.
“This,” Hannaford said to Lynley, “is a chock stone. D’you know how it’s used?”
Lynley shook his head. Obviously, it was meant for cliff climbing. Equally so, its loop end would be used to connect the chock stone to some other device. But that was as much as he could sort out.
DI Hannaford said, “Hold up your hand, palm towards yourself. Keep your fingers tight. I’ll show you.”
Lynley did as she asked. She slid the cable between his upright index and middle fingers, so that the slug of lead was snug against his palm and the loop at the other end of the cable was on her side of his hand.
She said, “Your fingers are a crack in the cliff face. Or an aperture between two boulders. Your hand is the cliff itself. Or the boulders themselves. Got it?” She waited for his nod. “The lead piece?that’s the chock stone?gets shoved down the crack in the cliff or the aperture between the boulders as far as it can go, with the cable sticking out. In the loop end of the cable”?here she paused to scan the wall of climbing gear till she found what she wanted and scooped it up?“you clip a carabiner. Like this.” She did so. “And you fix your rope to the carabiner with whatever sort of knot you’ve been taught to use. If you’re climbing up, you use chock stones on the way, every few feet or whatever you’re comfortable with. If you’re abseiling, you can use them at the top instead of a sling to fix your rope to whatever you’ve chosen to hold it in place while you descend.”