Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(75)

He wondered if, after all these years, he would recognise the moment: that confluence of shape, force, and curl telling the surfer it was time to drop in. But some things ultimately were second nature, and he found that taking a wave was one of them. Understanding and experience coalesced into skill, and the passage of time had not robbed him of that.

The peak built, and he rose with it: paddling first, then up on one knee, and then erect. No deck grip at the tail of the board, holding the back foot in position, because on this board?on his board?such a device had never been placed. He skimmed for a second across the wave’s shoulder. He dropped into its face. He carved, getting high and fast, with his muscles acting on memory alone. Then he was in the barrel and it was clean. Green room, mate, they would have yelled. Sheeee-it! You’re in the green room, Kerne.

He rode until there was only white water, and there he stepped off, thigh deep in the shallows once again, catching the board before it got away from him. He paused with the inside waves breaking against him. His breath came hard, and he stood there till the pounding of his heart grew slower.

Then he walked towards the beach, the seawater pouring off him like a discarded cape. He trudged in the direction of the stairs.

As he did so, a figure?midnight silhouette?came forward to meet him.

KERRA HAD SEEN HIM leave the hotel. At first she hadn’t known it was her father. Indeed, for a mad moment her leaping heart had declared it to be Santo beneath her, striding across the terrace and up the steps towards the promontory and St. Mevan Beach to have a secret surf at night. She’d watched from above, and seeing only the black-garbed figure and knowing that figure had come out of the hotel…There was nothing else for her to think. It had all been a mistake, she’d thought nonsensically. A terrible, ghastly, horrible mistake. There was some other body discovered at the base of that cliff in Polcare Cove, but it was not her brother.

So she’d hurried to the stairs and she’d clattered down them, as the antique lift would have been too slow. She dashed through the dining hall, which, like the equipment room, opened onto the terrace, and she set across this and flew up the stairs. By the time she reached the promontory, the black-garbed figure was down on the beach, squatting next to the surfboard. So she waited there and there she watched. Only as he approached her after riding a single wave did she realise it was her father.

She was filled with questions and then with fury, with the eternal and unanswerable why’s of nearly everything that had defined her childhood. Why did you pretend…? Why did you argue with Santo about…? And beyond that, the who of it all. Who are you, Dad?

But she asked none of these half-formed questions as her father reached her position at the base of the steps. Instead she tried in the semidarkness to read his face.

He paused. His expression seemed to soften and he looked as if he intended to speak. But when he finally opened his mouth, it was only to say, “Kerra, love,” and then he passed her. He climbed the steps to the promontory path, and she followed him. Wordlessly, they approached the hotel, where they descended towards the empty swimming pool. At a hosepipe, her father paused and washed the seawater from his surfboard. Then he went on, into the hotel.

In the equipment room, he stripped off his wet suit. He was wearing his undershorts beneath it, and his skin was pimpled with the cold. But this didn’t seem to bother him because he didn’t shiver. Instead, he carried the wet suit to a large, heavy plastic rubbish bin in the corner of the room, and he dumped it inside without ceremony. The dripping surfboard he carried into another room?an inner room, Kerra saw, a room she had not yet investigated in the hotel?and there he put it into a cupboard. This he locked with a padlock, which he then tested, as if to make sure the cupboard’s contents were safe from prying eyes. From family eyes, she realised. From her eyes and from Santo’s eyes because her mother must have known this secret all along.

Santo, Kerra thought. The sheer hypocrisy of it all. She simply did not understand.

Her father used his T-shirt to dry himself off. He tossed it to one side and donned his pullover. He motioned for her to turn her back, which she did and heard the sound of him removing his undershorts, plopping them onto the floor, and then zipping his trousers. Then he said, “All right.” She turned back to him, and they faced each other. He waited, clearly, for her questions.

She determined to surprise him as he’d surprised her. So what she said was, “It’s because of her, isn’t it?”

“Who?”

“Mum. You couldn’t surf and watch her at the same time, so you stopped surfing. That’s why, isn’t it? I saw you, Dad. How long has it been? Twenty years? More?”

“Yes. Since before you were born.”

“So you put on your wet suit, you went out there, you took the first wave that came along, and that was it. No trouble. It was easy for you. It was child’s play for you. It was nothing. Like walking. Like breathing.”

“Yes. All right. It was.”

“Which means…How long had you surfed when you stopped?”

Her father picked up his T-shirt and folded it neatly, despite its condition, which was damp through. He said, “Most of my life. It’s what we did in those days. There was nothing else. You’ve seen how your grandparents live. We had the beach in the summer and school the rest of the time. There was work at home, trying to keep that bloody house from falling apart, and when there was free time, we surfed. There was no money for holidays. No cheap flights to Spain. It wasn’t like today.”