Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(62)

“Really? It seems a harmless enough sport, compared to cliff climbing.”

“No sport is completely harmless, Inspector. But it wasn’t that.” Kerne seemed to be looking for a way to explain, and he came into the bedroom to do so. He observed the posters. His face was stony.

Bea said, “Do you surf, Mr. Kerne?”

“I wouldn’t prefer Santo not surf if I did it myself, now would I.”

“I don’t know. Would you? I still don’t see why you approved of one sport but not another.”

“It’s the type, all right?” Kerne gave an apologetic glance to Constable McNulty. “I didn’t like him mixing with surfers because for so many of them it’s their only world. I didn’t want him adopting it: the hanging about they do, waiting for the opportunity for a surf, their lives defined by isobar charts and tide tables, driving up and down the coast to find perfect waves. And when they’re not having a surf, they’re talking about it or smoking cannabis while they stand round in their wet suits afterwards, still talking about it. There’re blokes?and lasses as well, I admit it?whose entire worlds revolve round riding waves and traveling the globe to ride more waves. I didn’t want that for Santo. Would you want it for your son or daughter?”

“But if his world revolved round cliff climbing?”

“It didn’t. But at least it’s a sport where one depends upon others. It’s not solitary, the way surfing can be and generally is. A surfer alone on the waves: You see it all the time. I didn’t want him out there alone. I wanted him to be with people. So if something happened to him…” He moved his gaze back to the posters, and what they depicted was?even to an unschooled observer like Bea?absolute danger embodied in an unimaginable tonnage of water: exposure to everything from broken bones to certain drowning. She wondered how many people died each year, coursing a nearly vertical declivity that, unlike the earth with its knowable textures, changed within seconds to trap the unwary.

She said, “Yet Santo was climbing alone when he fell. Just as he might have been had he gone for a surf. And anyway, surfers don’t always do this alone, do they?”

“On the wave itself. The surfer and the wave, alone. There may be others out there, but it’s not about them.”

“With climbing it is, though?”

“You depend on the other climber, and he depends on you. You keep each other safe.” He cleared his throat roughly and added, “What father wouldn’t want safety for his son?”

“And when Santo didn’t agree with your assessment of surfing?”

“What about it?”

“What happened between you? Arguments? Punishment? Do you tend towards violence, Mr. Kerne?”

He faced her, but in doing so he put his back to the window, so she could no longer read his face. He said, “What the hell sort of question is that?”

“One that wants answering. Santo’s eye was blackened by someone recently. What d’you know about that?”

His shoulders dropped. He moved again, but this time out of the light of the window and towards the other side of the room, where a computer and its printer sat on a single plywood sheet across two sawhorses forming a primitive desk. There was a stack of papers facedown on this desk; Ben Kerne reached for them. Bea stopped him before his fingers made contact. She repeated her question.

“He wouldn’t tell me,” Kerne said. “Obviously, I could tell he’d been punched. It was a bad blow. But he wouldn’t explain it, so I was left to think…” He shook his head. He seemed to have information he was loath to part with.

Bea said, “If you know something…if you suspect something…”

“I don’t. It’s just that…the young women liked Santo, and Santo liked the young women. He didn’t discriminate.”

“Between what?”

“Between available and unavailable. Between attached and unattached. Santo was…He was like pure mating instinct given human form. Perhaps an angry father punched him out. Or a furious boyfriend. He wouldn’t say. But he liked the lasses and the lasses liked him. And truth of the matter is that he was easily led where a determined young woman wanted him to go. He was…I’m afraid he was always that way.”

“Anyone in particular?”

“His last was a girl called Madlyn Angarrack. They’d been…what do you call it…an item? For more than a year.”

“Is she also a surfer by any chance?” Bea asked.

“A brilliant one, if Santo was to be believed. National champion in the making. He was quite taken with her.”

“And she with him?”

“It wasn’t a one-way street.”

“How was it for you, watching your son become involved with a surfer, then?”

Ben Kerne answered steadily. “Santo was always involved somewhere, Inspector. I knew it would pass, whatever it was. As I said, he liked the ladies. He wasn’t ready to settle. Not with Madlyn, not with anyone. No matter what.”

Bea thought that last was a strange expression. She said, “You wanted him to settle, though?”

“Like any father, I wanted him to keep his nose clean and stay out of trouble.”

“Not overly ambitious for him, then? Those are fairly limited as expectations go.”