Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(86)

“I’ve a caravan over in Sea Dreams.”

Bea glanced at Constable McNulty and he nodded. He knew the place. That was good. She said, “We may want to see it.”

“Reckoned as much.” He shook his head. “Young people. What’s consequences to them when they’re young?”

“Yes. Well. In the heat of the moment, who thinks of consequences?” Bea asked.

“But it’s more than consequences, isn’t it?” Jago said. “Just like this.” He was now, apparently, referring to one of the posters on the wall. It depicted a surfboard shooting into the air, its rider in the middle of a massive and memorable wipeout that had him looking crucified against a background of water that was a monstrous wave. “They don’t think of the moment itself, let alone beyond the moment. And look what happens.”

“Who’s that?” McNulty asked, approaching the poster.

“Bloke called Mark Foo. Minute or two before the poor bastard died.”

McNulty’s mouth formed a respectful o and he began to respond. Bea saw him settling in for a proper surfing natter and she could only imagine where a trip down this watery and mournful memory lane was going to lead them.

She said, “That looks a bit more dangerous than sea cliff climbing, doesn’t it? Perhaps Santo’s father had the right idea, discouraging surfing.”

“Trying to keep the boy from what he loved? What kind of idea’s that?”

“Perhaps one that was intended to keep him alive.”

“But it didn’t keep him alive, did it?” Jago Reeth said. “End of the day, that’s not always something we can do for others.”

DAIDRE TRAHAIR USED THE Internet once again in Max Priestley’s office in the Watchman, but she had to pay this time round. Max didn’t ask for money, however. The price was an interview with one of his two reporters. Steve Teller, he said, just happened to be in the office working on the story of the murder of Santo Kerne. She was the missing piece. The crime asked for an eyewitness account.

Daidre said, “Murder?” because, she decided, the response was expected. She’d seen the body and she’d seen the sling, but Max didn’t know that although he might suppose it.

“Cops gave us the word this morning,” Max told her. “Steve’s working in the layout room. As I’m using the computer just now, you’ll have time to have a word with him.”

Daidre didn’t believe that Max was using the computer, but she didn’t argue. She didn’t want to be involved, didn’t want her name, her photo, the location of her cottage or anything else related to her put into the paper, but she saw no way to avoid it that wouldn’t arouse the newsman’s suspicion. So she agreed. She needed the computer and this spot afforded her more time and privacy than the sole computer in the library did. She was being paranoid?and she damn well knew it?but embracing paranoia seemed the course of wisdom.

So she went with Max to the layout room, taking a moment to cast a surreptitious look at him in order to ascertain whatever might lie beneath the surface of his composure. Like her, he walked the coastal path. She’d come across him more than once at the top of one sea cliff or another, his dog his only companion. The fourth or fifth time, they’d joked with each other, saying, “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” and she’d asked him why he walked the path so much. He’d said Lily liked it and, as for him, he liked to be alone. “An only child,” he’d said. “I’m used to solitude.” But she’d never thought that was the truth of the matter.

He wasn’t readable on this day. Not that he ever was, particularly. He was, as ever, put together like a man stepping out of a Country Life fantasy pictorial on daily doings in Cornwall: The collar of a crisp blue shirt rose above a cream-coloured fisherman’s sweater; he was cleanly shaven and his spectacles glinted in the overhead lights, as spotless as the rest of him. A fortysomething man without sin.

“Here’s our quarry, Steve,” he said as they entered the layout room, where the reporter was working at a PC in the corner. “She’s agreed to an interview. Show her no mercy.”

Daidre cast him a look. “You make it sound as if I’m involved somehow.”

“You didn’t appear surprised, not to mention horrified, to hear it was murder,” Max said.

They locked eyes. She weighed potential answers and settled on, “I’d seen the body. You forget.”

“That obvious, was it? Initial knowledge given out was that he’d fallen.”

“I think it was meant to look that way.” She heard Teller typing away at his PC, and she said rather too sharply, “I hadn’t indicated that the interview was beginning.”

Max chuckled. “You’re with a journalist, my dear. Everything is meat, with due respect. Forewarned, et cetera.”

“I see.” She sat and knew she did so primly, perched on the edge of a ladder-back chair that would have had to work hard to be more uncomfortable. She kept her shoulder bag on her knees, her hands folded over the top of it. She knew she looked like a school-marm or a hopeful interviewee. That couldn’t be helped and she didn’t try to help it. She said, “I’m not entirely happy about this.”

“No one ever is, save B-list celebrities.” Max left them then, calling out, “Janna, have we heard about the inquest time, yet?”