Careless in Red

  “You’re very likely the reason he died, for God’s sake.”

  “I very seriously doubt that. Certainly Max has too much pride to kill an adolescent rival and anyway Santo wasn’t his rival, a simple fact that I could not make Max see. Santo was just…Santo.”

  “A boytoy.”

  “A boy, yes. A toy, rather. But that makes it sound cold and calculating and believe me it was neither. We enjoyed each other and that’s what it was between us, only. Enjoyment. Excitement. On both parts, not just on mine. Oh, you know all this, Daidre. You cannot plead ignorance. And you quite understand. You would not have lent your cottage had you not.”

  “You feel no guilt.”

  Aldara waved her hand towards the door, to indicate they were to leave the room and go below once more. As they descended the stairs, she said, “Guilt implies I am somehow involved in this situation, which I am not. We were lovers, full stop. We were bodies meeting in a bed for a few hours. That’s what it was, and if you really think that the mere act of intercourse led to—”

  A knock came on the door. Aldara glanced at her watch. Then she looked at Daidre. Her expression was resigned, which told Daidre later that she should have anticipated what would come next. But, rather stupidly, she had not.

  Aldara opened the door. A man stepped into the room. His eyes only for Aldara, he didn’t see Daidre. He kissed Aldara with the familiarity of a lover: a greeting kiss that became a coaxing kiss, which Aldara did nothing to terminate prematurely. When it did end, she said against his mouth, “You smell all of the sea.”

  “I’ve been for a surf.” Then he saw Daidre. His hands dropped from Aldara’s shoulders to his sides. “I’d no idea you had company.”

  “Daidre’s just on her way,” Aldara said. “D’you know Dr. Trahair, my dear? Daidre, this is Lewis.”

  He looked vaguely familiar to Daidre, but she couldn’t place him. She nodded hello. She’d left her bag on the edge of the sofa, and she went to fetch it. As she did so, Aldara added, “Angarrack. Lewis Angarrack.”

  Which caused Daidre to pause. She saw the resemblance, then, for of course she’d seen Madlyn more than once in the times she herself had been to Cornish Gold cider farm. She looked at Aldara, whose face was placid but whose eyes shone and whose heart was no doubt beating strongly now as anticipation sent her blood hither and yon, to all the proper places.

  Daidre nodded and stepped past Lewis Angarrack, outside onto the narrow porch. Aldara murmured something to the man and followed Daidre out. She said, “You see our little problem, I think.”

  Daidre glanced at her. “Actually, I don’t.”

  “Her boyfriend first and now her father? It’s critical, naturally, that she never know. So as not to upset her further. It’s as Lewis wants it. What a shame, don’t you think?”

  “Hardly. It’s the way you want it as well, after all. Secret. Exciting. Pleasurable.”

  Aldara smiled, that slow, knowing smile that Daidre knew was part of her appeal to men. “Well, if it must be that way, it must be that way.”

  “You’ve no morals, have you?” Daidre asked her friend.

  “My darling. Have you?”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  ULTIMATELY ON THAT MISERABLE DAY, CADAN FOUND HIMSELF in a situation in which the chickens of his machinations had finally come home to roost: caught in the sitting room of the family home in Victoria Road with his sister and Will Mendick. Madlyn, having just returned from work, was still in her Casvelyn of Cornwall getup—all stripes the colour of candy floss and a pinny with ruffles along the edges. She was slouched on the sofa, while Will stood in front of the fireplace with a bunch of daylilies dangling from his fingers. He’d shown good enough sense to buy the flowers and not bring along rejects from the wheelie bin. But that was the limit to the good sense he was showing.

  Cadan himself was perched on a stool near his parrot. He’d left Pooh alone for most of the day, and he’d been intent upon making up for that with an elongated bit of bird massage, just the two of them, with the house—or at least the room—to themselves. But Madlyn had arrived home from work and on her heels had come Will. He’d apparently taken to heart Cadan’s bald-faced lies about his sister and her affections.

  “…so I thought,” Will was saying, with scant encouragement from Madlyn, “that you might like…well, like to go out.”

  “With who?” Madlyn said.

  “With…well, with me.” He’d not presented her with the flowers yet, and Cadan was hoping fervently he’d pretend that he’d not brought them at all.

  “And why would I want to do that, exactly?” Madlyn tapped her fingers on the arm of the sofa. This gesture, Cadan knew, had nothing to do with nervousness.

  Will grew redder in the face—he was already blushing like a bloke with two left feet at a fox-trot lesson—and he shot a look towards Cadan that said, Give us a hand here, mate? Studiously, Cadan averted his eyes.

  Will said, “Just…perhaps to get a meal?”

  “Out of a bin, you mean?”

  “No! God, Madlyn. I wouldn’t ask you to—”

  “Look.” Madlyn had that Expression on her face. Cadan knew what it meant, but he also knew that Will hadn’t the first clue that his sister’s detonator was doing whatever detonators did just before the bomb went from UX to X. She pushed herself to the edge of the sofa and her eyes got narrow. “Just in case you don’t know, Will, which you apparently don’t, I had a talk with the police. A quite recent talk with them. They caught me out in a lie, and they crawled all over me. And guess what they knew?”

  Will said nothing. Cadan urged Pooh onto his fist. He said, “Hey, what you got to say, Pooh?” The bird was usually very good at providing diversions, but Pooh was silent. If he felt the room’s tension, he wasn’t responding to it in his normal vociferous manner.

  “They knew that I followed Santo. They knew what I saw. They knew, Will, that I knew what Santo was doing. Now how do you s’pose the cops knew that? And do you have any idea how that makes me look?”

  “They don’t think that you…You don’t need to worry—”

  “That’s hardly the point! My boyfriend’s having it off with a cow old enough to be his mum and he’s liking it and this particular cow happens to be the cow I work for and all this is going on under my nose with both of them looking like butter wouldn’t melt and he’s calling her Mrs. Pappas, mind you. Mrs. Pappas in front of me and you can bloody well depend on him not calling her Mrs. Pappas when he’s fucking her. And she knows he’s my boyfriend. That’s part of the fun. She’s specially friendly to me because of it. Only I don’t know. I even have a cup of tea with her and she asks me all about myself. ‘I like to get to know my girls,’ she says. Oh, too bloody right.”

  “Don’t you see that’s why—”

  “I do not. So there they are—those cops—and they’re looking at me and I can see what they know and what they think. Poor stupid cow she is. Her boyfriend’d rather do some old witch than be with her. And I didn’t need that, d’you see it, Will? I didn’t need their pity and I didn’t need them knowing because now it all gets written down for the world to see and everyone knows and do you know—have you any idea—what that feels like?”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Madlyn.”

  “That I wasn’t enough for him? So much not enough that he wanted her as well? How could that not be my fault? I loved him. We had something good, or that’s what I thought.”

  Will said, stumbling, “No. Look. It wasn’t you. Why couldn’t you see…He would’ve done the same…He would’ve walked away, no matter who he was with. Why couldn’t you ever see that? Why couldn’t you just let him—”

  “I was going to have his baby. His baby, all right? And I thought that meant…I thought we would…Oh God, forget it.”

  Will’s jaw had dropped with Madlyn’s revelation. Cadan had, of course, heard the expression before—someone’s jaw dropping—but he’d never imagined how lost it made one look till he saw what Will’s
face revealed. Will hadn’t known about this, then. But of course, how could he? It was a private business held within the family, and Will was not a member of the family or even close to becoming one, a fact which he did not appear to understand. Even now. Sounding numb, he said, “You could have come to me.”

  “What?” Madlyn said.

  “To me. I would’ve…I don’t know. Whatever you wanted. I could have—”

  “I loved him.”

  “No,” Will said. “You can’t. You couldn’t. Why won’t you see what he was like? He was no good, but you looked at him and what you saw—”

  “Don’t you say that about him. Don’t you…don’t.”

  Will looked like a man who’s spoken a language that he assumes his listener has understood, only to discover she’s a foreigner in his country and so is he as a matter of fact and there’s nothing to be done about the matter. He said slowly and with dawning knowledge, “You can still defend him. Even after…And what you just told me…Because he wasn’t going to stand by you, was he? That’s not who he was.”

  “I loved him,” she cried.

  “But you said that you hated him. You told me you hated him.”

  “He hurt me, for God’s sake.”

  “But then why did I…” Will looked around as if suddenly waking. His glance went to Cadan, then to the flowers he’d brought to give Madlyn. He tossed these into the fireplace. Cadan rather liked the drama of the gesture, had the fireplace been one that actually worked. But as it didn’t work, the act seemed past its sell-by date, the sort of thing one saw in old films on the telly.

  The room was filled with a hollow silence. Then Will said to Madlyn, “I punched him out. I would have done more if he’d even been willing to fight, but he wasn’t. He didn’t even bother to care. He wouldn’t fight. Not for you. Not because of you. But I did that. I punched him out. For you, Madlyn. Because—”

  “What?” she cried. “What on earth were you thinking?”

  “He hurt you, he was a first-class wanker and he needed to be taught—”

  “Who asked you to be his teacher? I never. I never. Did you…My God. What else did you do to him? Did you kill him as well? Is that it?”

  “You don’t know what it means, do you?” Will asked her. “That I even hit him once. That I…You don’t know.”

  “What? That you’re Sir Bloody Whoever in Sodding Armour? That I’m supposed to be happy about that? Grateful? Thrilled? Your handmaiden forever? What exactly don’t I know?”

  “I could’ve gone back inside,” he said dully.

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “If I so much as tripped some bloke on the street. Even accidentally. I could go back inside. But I was willing to do it, because of you. And I was willing to sort him because he needed sorting. But you didn’t know that and even if you did know—now that you do know—it doesn’t matter. It never mattered. I don’t matter. I never did, did I?”

  “Why the hell did you think…”

  Will looked at Cadan. Madlyn looked at Will. And then she, too, looked at Cadan.

  For his part, Cadan thought it was a very good moment to give little Pooh his walkies for the evening.

  BEA WAS STRETCHING WITH the aid of a kitchen chair, doing her part to keep an ageing back more or less pain free when she heard a key in the front door. The sound of the key was followed by a familiar knock—bim bim BIM boom BOOM—and then Ray’s voice, “You here, Bea?”

  “I’d say the car’s a fairly good indication of that,” she called out. “You used to be a much better detective.”

  She heard him coming in her direction. She was still wearing her pyjamas, but as they comprised a T-shirt and the trousers to her tracksuit, she was not bothered by someone’s coming upon her in her morning deshabille.

  Ray was done up to the nines. She looked at him sourly. “Hoping to impress some bright young thing?”

  “Only you.” He went to the fridge where she had left a jug of orange juice. He held it to the light, gave it a suspicious sniff, found it apparently to his liking, and poured a glass.

  “Do help yourself,” she said sardonically. “There’s always more where that came from.”

  “Cheers,” he replied. “D’you still use it on your cereal?”

  “Some things never change. Ray, why’re you here? And where’s Pete? Not ill, is he? He has school today. I hope you’ve not let him talk you into—”

  “Early day,” he said. “He has something going on in his science course. I got him there and made sure he went inside and wasn’t planning to bunk off and sell weed on the street corner.”

  “Most amusing. Pete doesn’t do drugs.”

  “We are blessed in that.”

  She ignored the plural. “Why’re you here at this hour?”

  “He’s wanting more clothes.”

  “Haven’t you washed them?”

  “I have. But he says he can’t be expected to wear the same thing after school day after day. You sent only two outfits.”

  “He has clothes at your place.”

  “He claims he’s outgrown them.”

  “He wouldn’t notice that. He never gives a toss what he’s wearing anyway. He’d be in his Arsenal sweatshirt all day if he had the option, and you know that very well. So answer me again. Why are you here?”

  He smiled. “Caught me. You’re very good at grilling the suspect, my dear. How’s the investigation faring?”

  “You mean how is it faring despite the fact I’ve no MCIT?”

  He sipped his orange juice and put the glass on the work top, which he leaned against. He was quite a tall man, and he was trim. He’d look good, Bea thought, to whatever bright young thing he was dressing himself for.

  “Despite what you believe, I did do the best I could for you with regard to manpower, Beatrice. Why d’you always think the worst of me?”

  She scowled. She didn’t reply at once. She dipped into a final stretch and then rose from the chair. She sighed and said, “It isn’t going far or fast. I’d like to say we’re closing in on someone, but each time I’ve thought that, either events or information have proved me wrong.”

  “Is Lynley being of any help? God knows he has the experience.”

  “He’s a good man. There’s no doubt of that. And they’ve sent his partner down from London. I daresay she’s here more to keep an eye on him than to help me, but she’s a decent cop, if somewhat unorthodox. She’s rather distracted by him—”

  “In love?”

  “She denies it, but if she is, it’s a real nonstarter. Chalk and cheese doesn’t begin to describe them. No. I think she’s worried about him. They’ve been partnered for years and she cares. They have a history, however bizarre it may be.” Bea pushed away from the table and carried her cereal bowl to the sink. “At any rate, they’re good cops. One can tell that much about them. She’s a pit bull and he’s very quick. I’d like it a bit more if he had fewer ideas of his own, however.”

  “You’ve always liked your men that way,” Ray noted.

  Bea regarded him. A moment passed. A dog barked in the neighbourhood. She said, “That’s rather below the belt.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes. Pete wasn’t an idea. He was—he is—a person.”

  Ray didn’t avoid her gaze or her comment. Bea marked this as the first time he’d actually done neither. “You’re right.” He smiled at her in fond if rueful acknowledgement. “He wasn’t an idea. Can we talk about it, Beatrice?”

  “Not now,” she said. “I’ve work. As you know.” She didn’t add what she wanted to add: that the time to talk was fifteen years gone. Nor did she add that he’d chosen his moment with scant consideration for her situation, which was damn well typical of how he’d always been. She didn’t think what it meant that she let such an opportunity pass, though. Instead, she went into morning mode and got ready for work.

  Nonetheless, on her drive even Radio Four didn’t divert her enough that she failed to realise Ray had ju
st as good as admitted his inadequacy as a husband at long last. She wasn’t sure what to do with that knowledge, so she was grateful when she walked into the incident room to a ringing phone that she scooped up from its receiver before anyone from the team could do likewise. They were milling round, waiting for their assignments. She was hoping that someone on the end of the phone was going to give her an idea of what to tell them to do next.

  It turned out that Duke Clarence Washoe from Chepstow was on hand with the preliminaries about the comparison of hairs she’d provided him. Was she ready for that?

  “Regale me,” she told him.

  “Microscopically, they’re close,” he said.

  “Just close? No match?”

  “Can’t do a match with what we have. We’re talking cuticle, cortex, and medulla. This isn’t a DNA thing.”

  “I’m aware of that. So what can you say?”

  “They’re human. They’re similar. They might be from the same person. Or a member of the same family. But ‘might’ is as far as we go. I’ve got no problem putting myself on record with the microscopic details, mind. But if you want further analysis, it’s going to take time.”

  And money, Bea thought. He wasn’t saying that, but both of them knew it.

  “Shall I carry on, then?” he was asking her.

  “Depends on the chock stone. What d’you have on that?”

  “One cut. It went straight through without hesitation. No multiple efforts involved. No identifying striations, either. You’re looking for a machine, not a hand tool. And its blade is quite new.”

  “Certain about that?” A machine for cutting cable narrowed the field considerably. She felt a mild stirring of excitement.

  “You want chapter and verse?”

  “Chapter will do.”

  “Aside from possibly leaving striations, a hand tool’s going to depress both the upper and the lower parts of the cable, crimping them together. A machine’s going to make a cleaner cut. Resulting ends’ll be shiny as well.” He was, he said, expressing this unscientifically to her. Did she want the proper lingo?

  Bea nodded a good morning to Sergeant Havers as she came into the room. Bea looked for Lynley to walk in behind her, but he didn’t appear. She frowned.