“I’ve been told that Santo was embarking on something irregular,” Bea said. “That was the word used. Irregular. I’m wondering if you know what that was.”
She frowned. “What do you mean, ‘irregular’?”
“He told a friend of his, a girl here in town—”
“That would be Tammy Penrule, I expect. She didn’t interest him in the way other girls interested him. If you’ve seen her, you know why.”
“—that he’d met someone, but that the situation was irregular. That was his word. Perhaps he meant unusual or abnormal? We don’t know. But he asked her for advice. Should he tell everyone involved? he asked her.”
Madlyn gave a harsh laugh. “Well, whatever it was, he didn’t tell me. But he was…” She stopped. Her eyes were unnaturally bright. She coughed and gave a little stamp with one foot. “Santo was Santo. I loved him then I hated him. I expect he just met someone else he wanted to fuck. He liked to fuck, you see. He definitely liked to fuck.”
“But if it was ‘irregular’…Why would that be?”
“I don’t bloody know and I don’t bloody care. Maybe he had two girls at once. Maybe he had a girl and another bloke. Maybe he’d decided to fuck his own mum. I don’t know.”
With that, she was gone, inside the building and shedding her anorak. Her face was hard, but Bea had a feeling the girl knew far more than she was saying.
For the moment, however, there was nothing else to gain in standing there on the pavement other than giving in to the temptation to purchase a pasty for dinner, which would certainly do her no good. So she went back to the police station, where she found the TAG officers—those thorns in her side—reporting their actions to Sergeant Collins, who was dutifully noting their completion on the china board.
“Where are we?” Bea asked him.
“We’ve got two cars that were noticed in the area,” Collins said. “A Defender and a RAV4.”
“In the vicinity of the cliff? Near Santo’s car? Where?”
“One of them was in Alsperyl—this is to the north of Polcare Cove—but there’s access to the cliff. It’s a bit of a walk across a paddock, but easy enough to get to the cove once you reach the coastal path. That vehicle would be the Defender. The RAV4 was just to the south of Polcare, up above Buck’s Haven.”
“Which is…?”
“Surfing spot. So that might have been why the car was there.”
“Why ‘might’?”
“Wasn’t a good day for surfing in that spot—”
“Waves were better at Widemouth Bay.” Constable McNulty put this in from Santo’s computer. Bea eyed him and made a mental note to see what he’d been up to in the past few hours.
“Whatever,” Collins said. “We’ve got the DVLA running all the Defenders and all the RAV4s from the area.”
“You have number plates?” Bea asked, feeling a frisson of excitement that was soon enough squashed.
“No luck on that,” Collins said. “But I reckon there are few enough Defenders down here, so we might have some joy seeing a familiar name on the list of owners. Same for the RAV4, although we can expect quite a number of them. We’ll have to go through the list and look for a name.”
All fingerprints from all relevant parties had been taken at this point, Collins continued, and all of them were being run through the PNC and being compared to the prints from Santo Kerne’s vehicle as well. Background checks were continuing. Ben Kerne’s finances were apparently square, and the only insurance on Santo was enough to bury him and nothing else. So far the only person of interest was one William Mendick, the bloke mentioned by Jago Reeth. He had a record, Collins informed her.
“Now that’s lovely,” Bea said. “What sort of record?”
“Went down for assault with intent in Plymouth, and he did time for it as well. He’s only just got out of open conditions.”
“His victim?”
“Some young hooligan called Conrad Nelson he got into a brawl with. Ended up paralysed, he did, and Mendick denied the whole thing…or at least he put it down to drink and asked for mercy. Both of them were drunk, he claimed. But Mendick’s got a real problem with it. His booze-ups led to regular fights in Plymouth, and part of his parole is attendance at AA meetings.”
“Can we check on that?”
“Don’t see how. Unless he’s turning in some sort of document to his parole officer, proving he was there. But what would that mean, anyway? He could be going to meetings regular as a saint and bluffing his way through the whole programme, if you know what I mean.”
She did. But Will Mendick with a drinking problem and Will Mendick with an assault conviction put a useful wrinkle in the blanket. She thought about this, about Santo Kerne’s black eye. As she thought, she wandered over to Constable McNulty’s station. She saw on the monitor of Santo Kerne’s computer exactly what she thought she’d see on the monitor of Santo Kerne’s computer: an enormous wave and a surfer riding it.
Damn the man. She snapped, “Constable, what the bloody hell are you doing?”
“Jay Moriarty,” McNulty said obscurely.
“What?”
“That’s Jay Moriarty,” he said, with a nod at the screen. “He was sixteen years old at the time, Guv. Can you credit that? They said that wave measured fifty feet.”
“Constable.” Bea did her best to restrain herself. “Does the term ‘living on borrowed time’ meaning anything to you?”
“It was Maverick’s. Northern California.”
“Your knowledge astounds me.”
Her sarcasm went unnoticed by the man. “Oh, I don’t know much. A bit is all. I try to follow it, but who really has time, what with the little one at home? But see, the thing is, Guv, this picture of Jay Moriarty was taken the same week that—”
“Constable!”
He blinked. “Guv?”
“Get off that site and get back to work. And if I see you looking at one more wave on that monitor, I’ll boot you from here into next week. You are supposed to be dealing with Santo Kerne’s computer, looking for information relevant to his death. You are not supposed to be using your time to channel his interests. Is that clear?”
“But the thing is that that bloke Mark Foo—”
“Do you understand me, Constable?” She wanted to grab him by the ears.
“Yes. But there’s more to this than his e-mail, Guv. Santo Kerne went to these sites and I’ve gone to these sites, so it stands to reason that anyone—”
“Yes. I see. Anyone else could go to these sites. Thank you very much. I’ll go to them myself on my own time and read up all about Jay Moriarty, Mark Boo, and everyone else.”
“Mark Foo,” he said. “Not Mark Boo.”
“God damn it, McNulty.”
“Guv?” From the doorway, Collins spoke. He nodded towards the corridor, from which direction he’d apparently come as Bea and Constable McNulty had been squabbling.
She said, “What? What, Sergeant?”
“Someone to see you below. A…lady…?” He seemed doubtful of the term.
Bea swore beneath her breath. She said to McNulty, “Get back to work and stay back at work,” before pushing past Collins and clattering down the stairs.
The lady in question was in reception, and when she saw her, Bea assumed it was the woman’s appearance that had made Collins sound hesitant about the reference. She was in the process of reading the notice board, which gave Bea a moment to assess her. A yellow fisherman’s hat sat on her head although it wasn’t raining any longer, and she wore a lint-speckled donkey jacket over mud-coloured corduroy trousers. She had bright red trainers—they appeared to be high-tops—on her feet. She didn’t look like anyone who would have information. Instead, she looked like an orphan of the storm.
“Yes?” Bea said. She was in a hurry and she made no attempt to sound otherwise. “I’m DI Hannaford. How may I help you?”
The woman turned and extended her hand. When she spoke, she showed a chipped front tooth. “DS Barbara
Havers,” she said. “New Scotland Yard.”
CADAN PUMPED HIS BICYCLE like a lost soul fleeing from Lucifer, which was no mean feat considering it was a trick bike not meant for maniacal street riding. Pooh clung to his shoulder and squawked in protest, occasionally shrieking, “Hang bells from the lamppost!,” a non sequitur he used only on occasions when wishing to indicate the level of his concern. The bird had good reason for voicing his trepidation, for it was the time of day when people were returning from some of the more distant places of employment, so the streets were crowded. This was particularly true of Belle Vue, which was part of the main route through town. It was a one-way thoroughfare, and Cadan knew he ought to have gone with the flow of traffic round the circular route long ago laid out to relieve congestion. But that would have meant riding out of his way for part of the journey, and he was in too much of a hurry to do that.
So he went against the flow of traffic, enduring horns honking and a few shouts of protest. They were small enough concerns to him, in comparison with his need for escape.
The truth of the matter was that Dellen Kerne—despite her age, which wasn’t really all that old, was it?—represented exactly the kind of sexual encounter that Cadan always looked for: hot, brief, urgent, and done with, with no regrets and no expectations. But the truth of the matter also was that Cadan was not an idiot. Bonking the wife of the boss? In the family kitchen? Nothing like putting a tombstone on one’s grave.
Not that bonking in the kitchen per se was what Dellen Kerne had had in mind, as things developed. She’d released herself from their embrace—one that had left Cadan’s head swimming and all the important parts of his body rushing with blood—and continued the sensuous dance she’d begun as the Latin music from the radio played on. Within a moment, though, she was back at him. She shimmied against him and walked her fingers up his chest. From there, it required no complicated set of dance steps for them to be hip to hip and groin to groin, and the rhythm of the music provided a primal beat whose intentions were impossible to ignore.
It was the sort of moment when conscious thought absents itself. The big brain stops functioning and the little brain—knowing only the most atavistic of motives—takes over until satisfaction is achieved. So when Dellen’s hand slithered down his chest and her fingers found the most sensitive part of him, he was ready to take her on the kitchen floor if she was ready to allow him the pleasure.
He grabbed her arse with one hand, her breast with the other, caught a nipple tightly between his fingers, and hungrily shoved his tongue into her mouth. This, it seemed, was the signal she needed. She backed away with a breathless laugh and said, “Not here, silly boy. You know where the beach huts are, don’t you?”
He said stupidly, “Beach huts?” because, of course, the big brain was not functioning at all at this point and the little brain knew and cared nothing of huts, beach or otherwise.
“Darling, the beach huts,” Dellen said. “Down below. Just above the beach. Here. Here’s a key,” which she took from a chain she wore deep between her sumptuous breasts. Had she had it on yesterday? Cadan hadn’t noticed, and he didn’t want to think of the implications behind this being a new piece of wearing apparel. “I can be there in ten minutes,” she said. “Can you?” She kissed him as she pressed the key into his palm. In case he’d forgotten what they were about, she reminded him with her fingers again.
When she released him, he looked at the key he was holding. He tried to clear his head. He looked at her. He looked at the key. He looked at her. Then he looked at the doorway. Kerra was standing there, watching them.
“Disturbing you, am I?” Kerra’s face was a sheet. Two spots of colour appeared on her cheeks.
Dellen trilled a laugh. “Oh my God,” she said. “It’s that damn music. It always gets into a young man’s blood. Cadan, you naughty boy. Getting me all silly like that. Goodness, I’m old enough to be your mum.” She turned the radio off. The silence that followed was like an explosion.
Cadan was mute. There was simply nothing in his brain, at least not in the big brain. The little brain hadn’t yet caught up to what was happening, and between big and little existed a maw the size of the English Channel, into which he wished he could fall and drown. He stared at Kerra, knowing if he turned his body her way she would see the huge betraying bulge in his trousers and—what was worse—the damp spot he could feel himself. Beyond that, he was struck dumb by the horror of what she might say to her father about all this. Beyond that, there was the need to escape.
He did so. Later, he would not be able to say how he managed it, but he grabbed up Pooh from the back of the chair he’d been perched upon and he tore out of the kitchen like Mercury on meth, leaving behind their voices—Kerra’s mostly, and she did no speaking in a pleasant tone—and hauling his arse down three flights of stairs and into the afternoon. He made for his bicycle and he took off at a gallop, pushing it till he had the speed he wanted. Then he mounted and away they went, with him pumping like a bloke who’d recently seen the headless horseman and Pooh just trying to stay on his shoulder.
He thought little else other than oh no oh no bloody hell damn fuck wanking idiot. He wasn’t sure what to do or where to go, and by rote, it seemed, his furiously working legs and arms guided the bike towards Binner Down. He needed advice and he needed it quickly. LiquidEarth was the place where he could get it.
He made the turn into Vicarage Road and from there he trundled onto Arundel Lane. It was smooth going and he made good time, but Pooh protested mightily when they got to the erstwhile airfield with its ruts and potholes. It couldn’t be helped. Cadan told the parrot to hold on tight and in less than two minutes, he was dumping the bike on the old concrete ramp just outside the hut where his father made surfboards.
Inside the door, he set Pooh on top of the till behind the counter. He said, “Do not dump, mate,” and he went inside the workshop. There, he found the one person he was looking for. Not his father, who would have undoubtedly greeted Cadan’s forthcoming tale with a lecture about his lifelong stupidity. Instead, he found Jago, who was engaged in the delicate final process of sanding the rough edges of fiberglass and resin from the rails of a swallowtail board.
Jago looked up as Cadan stumbled into the finishing room. He seemed to take a reading of Cadan’s state at once because there was music coming from the dusty radio that sat on an equally dusty shelf just beyond the sawhorses holding the board, and Jago went to this and turned it off. He removed his glasses and wiped them on the thigh of his white boiler suit to little effect.
He said, “What’s happened, Cade? Where’s your dad? He’s all right? Where’s Madlyn?” His left hand moved spasmodically.
Cadan said, “No. No. I don’t know.” What he meant was that he assumed everything was fine with his father and with his sister, but the truth was that he had no clue. He hadn’t seen Madlyn since that morning, and he hadn’t seen his father at all. He didn’t want to consider what that latter detail might mean because it would be one more piece of information to have to cope with, and his head was already bursting. He finally said, “Okay, I s’pose. I expect Madlyn went to work.”
“Good.” Jago gave a sharp nod. He went back to the surfboard. He picked up the sandpaper, but before he applied it, he ran his fingertips along the rails. He said, “You come in here like the devil’s chasing you.”
Cadan said, “Not far from the truth. You got a minute?”
Jago nodded. “Always. Hope you know that.”
Cadan felt as if someone had kindly withdrawn his thumb from the dyke, offering to take over the rescue of the lowlands in his stead. The story came forth. His father’s disgust, Cadan’s dreams of the X Games, Adventures Unlimited, Kerra Kerne, Ben Kerne, Alan Cheston, and Dellen. Last of all, Dellen. It was all a jumble to which Jago listened patiently. He sanded the surfboard’s rails slowly, nodding as Cadan went from point to point.
At the end he homed in on what they both knew was the salient detail: Cadan Angarrack
caught in a delicto that was just about as flagrante as it could have been, short of the two of them—himself and Dellen Kerne—having been caught writhing and moaning on the kitchen floor. Jago said, “Sounds like mother, like son to me. Didn’t think of that when she played with you, Cade?”
“I didn’t expect…I didn’t know her, see. I thought something was a bit off with her when she came upon me yesterday, but I didn’t think…She’s like…Jago, she could be my mum.”
“Not bloody likely. For her faults, your mum stuck to her own kind, yes?”
“What d’ you mean?”
“Way Madlyn tells it—and, mind, she doesn’t think much of your mum—Wenna Angarrack with her list of surnames always sticks to her own age group. From what you say, this one”—and Cadan took from Jago’s tone of aversion that he was referring to Dellen Kerne—“doesn’t appear to mind what age she’s doing it with. ’Spect you had signs when you met her.”
“She asked me about it,” Cadan admitted.
“It?”
“Sex. She asked me what I did for sex.”
“And you didn’t think that was a bit off, Cade? Woman her age making enquiries like that? She was readying you.”
“I didn’t really…” Cadan shifted his uneasy gaze off Jago’s shrewd one. Above the radio hung a poster, a Hawaiian girl inexplicably wearing nothing but a lei round her neck and a wreath of palm leaves on her head as she surfed a good-size wave with casual skill. It came to Cadan as he looked upon her that some people were born with amazing confidence, and he was not one of those people.