“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-fucking-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.”
She looked at him evenly. “Of course you are.”
Whatever that was supposed to mean. Cadan shifted on his feet. He had a paintbrush still in his hand and he wondered suddenly and idiotically what he was meant to do with it. Or with the tin of paint. They’d been brought to him and no one had said where to put them at the end of the workday. He’d not thought to ask.
“Did you know him?” Dellen Kerne said abruptly. “Did you know Santo?”
“A bit. Yeah.”
“And what did you think of him?”
This was rocky ground. Cadan didn’t know how to reply other than to say, “He bought a surfboard from my dad.” He didn’t mention Madlyn, didn’t want to mention Madlyn, and didn’t want to think why he didn’t want to mention Madlyn.
“I see. Yes. But that doesn’t actually answer the question, does it?” Dellen came farther into the room. She went to the fitted clothes cupboard for some reason. She opened it. She looked inside. She spoke, oddly, into the cupboard’s interior. She said, “Santo was a great deal like me. You wouldn’t know that if you didn’t know him. And you didn’t know him, did you? Not actually.”
“Like I said. A bit. I saw him round. More when he was first learning to surf than later on.”
“Because you surf as well?”
“Me? No. Well, I mean I’ve been, of course. But it’s not like it’s the only…I mean, I’ve got other interests.”
She turned from the cupboard. “Do you? What are they? Sport, I expect. You look quite fit. And women as well. Young men your age generally have women as one of their main interests. Are you like other young men?” She frowned. “Can we open that window, Cadan? The smell of paint…”
Cadan wanted to say it was her hotel so she could do whatever she wanted to do, but he set down his paintbrush carefully, went to the window, and wrestled it open, which wasn’t easy. It needed adjusting or greasing or something. Whatever one did to rejuvenate windows.
She said, “Thank you. I’m going to have a cigarette now. Do you smoke? No? That’s a surprise. You have the look of a smoker.”
Cadan knew he was meant to ask what the look of a smoker was, and had she been somewhere between twenty and thirty years old, he would have done so. His attitude would have been that questions like that one, of a potentially metaphoric nature, could lead to interesting answers, which in turn could lead to interesting developments. But in this case, he kept his mouth shut and when she said, “You won’t be bothered if I smoke, will you?” he shook his head. He hoped she didn’t expect him to light her cigarette for her—because she did seem the sort of woman round whom men leapt like jackrabbits—since he had neither matches nor lighter with him. She was correct in her assessment of him, though. He was a smoker but he’d been cutting back recently, inanely telling himself it was tobacco and not drink that was the real root of his problems.
He saw that she’d brought a packet of cigarettes with her and she had matches as well, tucked into the packet. She lit up, drew in, and let smoke drift from her nostrils.
“Whose shit’s on fire?” Pooh remarked.
Cadan winced. “Sorry. He’s heard that from my sister a million times. He mimics her. He mimics everyone. Anyway, she hates smoking.” And then again, “Sorry,” because he didn’t want her to think he was being critical of her.
“You’re nervous,” Dellen said. “I’m making you that way. And the bird’s fine. He doesn’t know what he’s saying, after all.”
“Yeah. Well. Sometimes, though, I’d swear he does.”
“Like the remark about shagging?”
He blinked. “What?”
“‘Polly wants a shag,’” she reminded him. “It was the first thing he said when I came into the room. I don’t, actually. Want a shag, that is. But I’m curious why he said that. I expect you use that bird to collect women. Is that why you brought him with you?”
“He goes most everywhere with me.”
“That can’t be convenient.”
“We work things out.”
“Do you?” She observed the bird, but Cadan had the feeling she wasn’t really seeing Pooh. He couldn’t have said what she was seeing but her next remarks gave him at least an idea. “Santo and I were quite close. Are you close to your mother, Cadan?”
“No.” He didn’t add that it was impossible to be close to Wenna Rice Angarrack McCloud Jackson Smythe, aka the Bounder. She had never remained stationary long enough for closeness to be anywhere in the deck of cards she played.
“Santo and I were quite close,” Dellen said again. “We were very like. Sensualists. Do you know what that
is?” She gave him no chance to answer, not that he could have given her a definition, anyway. She said, “We live for sensation. For what we can see and hear and smell. For what we can taste. For what we can touch. And for what can touch us. We experience life in all its richness, without guilt and without fear. That’s what Santo was like. That’s what I taught Santo to be.”
“Right.” Cadan thought how he’d like to get out of the room, but he wasn’t certain how to effect a departure that wouldn’t look like running away. He told himself there was no real reason to turn tail and disappear through the doorway, but he had a feeling, nearly animal in nature, that danger was near.
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.
“Damn,” she muttered. She told McNulty to type up his notes officially and she went to a desk in the corner where she quickly discovered that having a phone within sight did not necessarily mean that it was connected to an actual telephone line. She looked meaningfully at Sergeant Collins, who said apologetically, “BT says another three hours. There’s no hookup up here, so they’re sending someone over from Bodmin to put one in. We have to use mobiles or the phones downstairs till then.”
“Do they know this is a murder enquiry?”
“They know,” he said, but his tone suggested that, murder or not, BT also didn’t much care.
Bea said, “Hell,” and took out her mobile. She walked to a desk in the corner and punched in Ray’s work number.
“There’s been something of a cock-up,” was what she told him when she had him on the phone at last.
He said, “Beatrice. Hullo. You’re welcome for the incident room. Am I having Pete for the night again?”
“I’m not phoning about Pete. Where’re the MCIT blokes?”
“Ah,” he said. “That. Well, we’ve a bit of a problem.” He went on to lower the boom. “Can’t be done, love. There’s no MCIT available at the moment to be sent to Casvelyn. You can ring Dorset or Somerset and try to get one of theirs, of course, or I can do it for you. In the meantime, I do have a TAG team I can send you.”
“A TAG team,” she said. “A TAG team, Ray? This is a murder enquiry. Murder. Major crime. Requiring a Major Crime Investigating Team.”
“Blood from a stone,” he returned. “There’s not much more I can do. I did try to suggest you maintain your incident room in—”
“Are you punishing me?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re the one who—”
&nb
sp; “Don’t you dare go there. This is professional.”
“I think I’ll have Pete with me till you’ve got a result,” he said mildly. “You’re going to be quite busy. I don’t want him staying on his own. It’s not a good idea.”
“You don’t want him staying…You don’t…” She was left speechless, a reaction to Ray so rare that its presence now left her even more speechless. What remained was ending the conversation. She should have done so with dignity but all she managed was to punch off the mobile and throw it onto the closest desk.
When it rang a moment later, she thought her former husband was phoning to apologise or, more likely, to lecture her about police procedure, about her propensity for myopic decision making, about perpetually crossing the boundaries of what was allowed while expecting someone to run interference for her. She snatched up the mobile and said, “What? What?”
It was the forensic lab, however. Someone called Duke Clarence Washoe—and was that name bizarre enough…what in God’s name had his parents been thinking?—ringing up with the fingerprint report.
“Got a real stew, mum,” was how he broke the news to her.
“Guv,” she said. “Or DI Hannaford. Not ma’am, madam, mum, or anything suggesting you and I are related or I’ve got royal connections, all right?”
“Oh. Right. Sorry.” A pause. He seemed to need a moment to adjust his approach. “We’ve got dabs from your vic all over the car—”
“Victim,” Bea said, and she thought wearily about what American television had done to normal communications. “Not vic. Victim. Or Santo Kerne, if you prefer. Let’s show a little respect, Mr. Washoe.”
“Duke Clarence,” he said. “You c’n call me Duke Clarence.”
“That delights me no end,” she replied. “Go on.”
“Eleven other different sets of prints as well. This is outside of the car. Inside, we’ve got seven sets. The vic…The dead boy’s. And six others who also left prints on the passenger door, fascia, window handles, and glove box. There’re prints on the CD cases as well. The boy and three others.”