Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(63)

Ben Kerne said nothing. Bea had the impression he was keeping something to himself, and it was her experience that in a murder enquiry, when someone did that, it was generally out of self-interest.

She said, “Did you ever beat Santo, Mr. Kerne?”

His gaze on her didn’t waver. “I’ve answered that question already.”

She let a silence hang there, but this one lacked fecundity. She was forced to move on. She did so by giving her attention to Santo’s computer. They would have to take it with them, she told Kerne. Constable McNulty would unhook it all and carry the components out to their car. Having said this, she reached for the stack of papers that Kerne had been going for on the desk. She flipped them over and spread them out.

They were, she saw, a variation of designs that incorporated the words Adventures Unlimited into each of them. In one the two words themselves formed into a curling wave. In another they made a circular logo in which the Promontory King George Hotel stood centrally. In a third they became the base upon which a variety of athletic feats were being accomplished by buffed-out silhouettes both masculine and feminine. In another they made a climbing apparatus.

“He…Oh God.”

Bea looked up from the designs to see Kerne’s stricken face. “What is it?” she asked.

“He designed T-shirts. On his computer. He was…Obviously, he was working on something for the business. I’d not asked him to do it. Oh God, Santo.”

He said the last like an apology. In reaction, Bea asked him about his son’s climbing equipment. Kerne told her that all of it was missing, every belay device, every chock stone, every rope, every item he would need for any climb he might make.

“Would he have needed all of it to make that climb yesterday?”

No, Kerne told her. He either began keeping it elsewhere without his father’s knowledge or he’d taken it all on the previous day when he set off to make his fatal climb.

“Why?” Bea asked.

“We’d had harsh words. He’d have reacted to them. It would have been an ‘I’ll show you’ sort of statement.”

“One that led to his death? Too much in a state to examine his kit closely? Was he the type to do that?”

“Impulsive, you mean? Impulsive enough to climb without looking over his equipment? Yes,” Kerne said, “he was exactly the type to do that.”

IT WAS, PRAISE GOD or praise whomever one felt like praising when praise was called for, the last radiator. Not the last radiator as in the last radiator of all radiators in the hotel, but the last radiator as in the last radiator he would have to paint for the day. Given a half hour to clean the brushes and seal the paint tins?after years of practise while working for his father, Cadan knew he could stretch out any activity as long as was necessary?it would be time to leave for the day. Halle-f*cking-lujah. His lower back was throbbing and his head was reacting to the fumes once again. Clearly, he wasn’t meant for this type of labour. Well, that was hardly a surprise.

Cadan squatted back on his heels and admired his handiwork. It was dead stupid of them to put down the fitted carpet before they had someone paint the radiators, he thought. But he’d managed to get the most recent spill cleaned up with a bit of industrious rubbing, and what he’d not got up he reckoned the curtains would hide. Besides, it had been his only serious spill of the day, and that was saying something.

He declared, “We are out of here, Poohster.”

The parrot adjusted his balance on Cadan’s shoulder and replied with a squawk followed by, “Loose bolts on the fridge! Call the cops! Call the cops!” yet another of his curious remarks.

The door to the room swung open as Pooh flapped his wings, preparatory either to making a descent to the floor or to performing a less than welcome bodily function on Cadan’s shoulder. Cadan said, “Don’t you bloody dare, mate,” and a female voice said in concerned reply, “Who are you, please? What’re you doing here?”

The speaker turned out to be a woman in black, and Cadan reckoned that she was Santo Kerne’s mother, Dellen. He scrambled to his feet. Pooh said, “Polly wants a shag. Polly wants a shag,” displaying, not for the first time, the level of inapposition to which he was capable of sinking at a moment’s notice.

“What is that?” Dellen Kerne asked, clearly in reference to the bird.

“A parrot.”

She looked annoyed. “I can see it’s a parrot,” she told him. “I’m not stupid or blind. What sort of parrot and what’s he doing here and what’re you doing here, if it comes to that?”

“He’s a Mexican parrot.” Cadan could feel himself getting hot, but he knew the woman wouldn’t twig his discomfiture as his olive skin didn’t blush when blood suffused it. “His name is Pooh.”

“As in Winnie-the?”

“As in what he does best.”

A smile flickered round her lips. “Why don’t I know you? Why’ve I not seen you here before?”

Cadan introduced himself. “Ben…Mr. Kerne hired me yesterday. He probably forgot to tell you about me because of…” He saw the way he was headed too late to avoid heading there. He quirked his mouth and wanted to disappear, since?aside from painting radiators and dreaming about what could be done to the crazy golf course?his day had been spent in avoiding a run-in precisely like this: face-to-face with one of Santo Kerne’s parents in a moment when the magnitude of their loss was going to have to be acknowledged with an appropriate expression of sympathy. He said, “Sorry about Santo.”