Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(65)

Dellen said to him, “What sort are you, Cadan? Can I touch your bird or will he bite?”

He said, “He likes to be scratched on his head. Where you’d put his ears if birds had ears. I mean ears like ours because they can hear, obviously.”

“Like this?” She came close to Cadan, then. He could smell her scent. Musk, he thought. She used the nail of her index finger, which was painted red. Pooh accepted her ministrations, as he normally did. He purred like a cat, yet another sound he’d learned from a previous owner. Dellen smiled at the bird. She said to Cadan, “You didn’t answer me. What sort are you? Sensualist? Emotionalist? Intellectual?”

“Not bloody likely,” he replied. “Intellectual, I mean. I’m not intellectual.”

“Ah. Are you emotional? Bundle of feelings? Raw to the touch? Inside, I mean.”

He shook his head.

“Then you’re a sensualist, like me. Like Santo. I thought as much. You have that look about you. I expect it’s something your girlfriend appreciates. If you have one. Do you?”

“Not just now.”

“Pity. You’re quite attractive, Cadan. What do you do for sex?”

Cadan felt ever more the need to escape, yet she wasn’t doing a single thing except petting the bird and talking to him. Still, something was very off with the woman.

Then it came to him at a gallop that her son was dead. Not only dead but murdered. He was gone, kaput, given the chop, whatever. When a son died?or a daughter or a husband?wasn’t the mother supposed to rip up her clothes? tear at her hair? shed tears by the bucketful?

She said, “Because you must do something for sex, Cadan. A young virile man like you. You can’t mean me to think you live like a celibate priest.”

“I wait for summer,” he finally told her.

Her finger hesitated, less than an inch from Pooh’s green head. The bird sidestepped to get back within its range. “For summer?” Dellen said.

“Town’s full of girls then. Here on holiday.”

“Ah. You prefer the short-term relationship, then. Sex without strings.”

“Well,” he said. “Yeah. Works for me, that.”

“I expect it does. You scratch them and they scratch you and everyone’s happy with the arrangement. No questions asked. I know exactly what you mean. Although I expect that surprises you. A woman my age. Married, with children. Knowing what it means.”

He offered a half smile. It was insincere, just a way to acknowledge what she was saying without having to acknowledge what she was saying. He gave a look in the direction of the doorway. He said, “Well,” and tried to make his tone decisive, a way of saying, That’s that, then. Nice talking to you.

She said, “Why haven’t we met before this?”

“I just started?”

“No. I understand that. But I can’t sort out why we haven’t met before. You’re roughly Santo’s age?”

“Four years older, actually. He’s my?”

“?and you’re so like him as well. So I can’t sort out why you’ve never come round with him.”

“?sister’s age. Madlyn,” he said. “You probably know Madlyn. My sister. She and Santo were…Well, they were whatever you want to call it.”

“What?” Dellen asked blankly. “What did you call her?”

“Madlyn. Madlyn Angarrack. They?she and Santo?they were together for…I don’t know…Eighteen months? Two years? Whatever. She’s my sister. Madlyn’s my sister.”

Dellen stared at him. Then she stared past him, but she appeared to be looking at nothing at all. She said in a different voice altogether, “How very odd. She’s called Madlyn, you say?”

“Yeah. Madlyn Angarrack.”

“And she and Santo were…what, exactly?”

“Boyfriend and girlfriend. Partners. Lovers. Whatever.”

“You’re joking.”

He shook his head, confused, wondering why she’d think he was joking. “They met when he came to get a board from my dad. Madlyn taught him to surf. Santo, that is. Well, obviously, not my dad. That’s how they got to know each other. And then…well, I s’pose you could say they started hanging about together and things went from there.”

“And you called her Madlyn?” Dellen asked.

“Yeah. Madlyn.”

“Together for eighteen months.”

“Eighteen months or so. Yeah. That’s it.”

“Then why did I never meet her?” she said.

WHEN DI BEA HANNAFORD returned to the police station with Constable McNulty in tow, it was to find that Ray had managed to fulfill her wish for an incident room in Casvelyn and that Sergeant Collins had set the room up with a degree of expertise that surprised her. He’d somehow managed to get the upper-floor conference room in order, and now it was ready, with china boards upon which pictures of Santo Kerne were posted both in death and in life and on which activities could be listed neatly. There were also desks, phones, computers with HOLMES at the ready, printers, a filing cabinet, and supplies. The only thing the incident room didn’t have was, unfortunately, the most vital part of any investigation: the MCIT officers.

The absence of a murder squad was going to leave Bea in the unenviable position of having to conduct the investigation with McNulty and Collins alone until such a time as a murder squad got there. Since that squad should have arrived along with the contents of the incident room, Bea labeled the situation unacceptable. It was also annoying because she knew very well that her former husband could get a murder squad from Land’s End to London in less than three hours if he was pressed to do so.