Careless in Red

  “I think that’s enough, Mr. Reeth. Or Mr. Parsons,” Bea said.

  “—horror because the killer walks away now he—or she, of course—has done his business.”

  “I said that’s enough.”

  “And the killer can’t be touched by the cops and all the cops can do is sit there and drink their tea and wait and hope to find something somewhere someday…But they get busy, don’t they? Other things on their plates. They shove you to one side and say don’t ring us every day, man, because when a case goes cold—like this one will—there’s no point to ringing, so we’ll ring you if and when we can make an arrest. But it never comes, does it, that arrest. So you end up with nothing but ashes in an urn and they may as well have burnt your body on the day they burned his because the soul of you is gone anyway.”

  He was finished, it seemed, his recital completed. All that was left was the sound of harsh breathing, which was Jago Reeth’s, and outside, the cry of gulls and the gusting of the wind and the crash of the surf. In a suitably well-rounded television drama, Bea thought, Reeth would rise to his feet now. He would dash for the door and throw himself over the cliff, having at long last achieved the vengeance he’d anticipated and having no further reason to continue living. He’d take the leap and join his dead Jamie. But this, unfortunately, was not a television drama.

  His face seemed lit from within. Spittle had collected at the corners of his mouth. His tremors had worsened. He was waiting, she saw, for Ben Kerne’s reaction to his performance, for Ben Kerne’s embracing of a truth that no one could alter and no one could resolve.

  Ben finally lifted his head and gave the reaction. “Santo,” he said, “was not my son.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  THE CRY OF THE GULLS SEEMED TO GROW LOUDER, AND FROM far below them the slamming of waves on rock indicated that the tide was in. Ben thought what this meant and the irony of it: excellent surfing conditions today.

  The breathing that had been Jago Reeth’s stopped, drawn in and held as perhaps the old man decided whether to believe what Ben had told him. For Ben, it no longer mattered what anyone believed. Nor, finally, did it matter at all that Santo had not been his by blood. For he saw that they had been father and son in the only way that mattered between a man and a boy, which had everything to do with history and experience and nothing to do with a single blindly swimming cell that through sheerest chance makes piercing contact with an egg. Thus his failures were every bit as profound as a blood father’s would have been towards a son. For he’d made every paternal move out of fear and not love, always waiting for Santo to show the colours of his true origins. Since after their adolescence Ben had never known any one of his wife’s lovers, he had waited for Dellen’s least desirable characteristics to surface in her son, and when anything remotely Dellen-like had appeared, that had been Ben’s focus and passion. He as much as moulded Santo into his mother, so great was the emphasis he had placed upon anything in the boy that had seemed like her.

  “He wasn’t,” Ben repeated, “my son.” How pathetically true, he realised now.

  Jago Reeth said, “You’re a bloody liar. You always were.”

  “I only wish that was the case.” Ben saw another detail now. It fell into place neatly and corrected his previous misunderstanding. He said to Reeth, “She talked to you, didn’t she? I thought she meant the police, but she didn’t. She talked to you.”

  DI Hannaford said, “Mr. Kerne, you’ve no need to say anything.”

  Ben said, “He needs to know the truth. I had nothing to do with what happened to Jamie. I wasn’t there.”

  Jago Reeth said abruptly, “Liar. You’d say that, wouldn’t you.”

  “Because it’s the truth. I’d had a scuffle with him. He tossed me out of his party. But I went for a wander and then I went home. What Dellen told you…” He wasn’t sure, then, that he could go on, but he knew that he had to, if only to do the only thing that could be done to avenge Santo’s death. “What Dellen told you, she told you out of jealousy. I’d been with your daughter. A snog. We’d got carried away. Dellen saw us, and she had to get even because that’s what she and I did to each other. Tit for tat, together and apart, in love and in hate, it never mattered. We were bound by something that we couldn’t break free of.”

  “You’re a liar now. As you were then.”

  “So she went to you and she told you I did…whatever she told you I did. But what I know about that night is what you know and that’s what I’ve always known: Jamie—your son—went down to that cave for some reason after that party and that’s where he died.”

  “Don’t you bloody claim that,” Reeth said fiercely. “You ran off. You left Pengelly Cove and you never returned. You had a reason to leave and we both know what it was.”

  “Yes. I had a reason. Because no matter what I told him, my own dad, like you, believed I was guilty.”

  “With damn good cause.”

  “What you will, Mr. Parsons. As you wish. Now and forever, if you like. But I wasn’t there, so I suppose your job isn’t done, is it. Because what she told you…and it was you she told, wasn’t it…? She lied.”

  “Why would she ever…? Why would anyone…?”

  Ben saw it. The reason, the cause. Beyond the tit for tat and the love and hate, beyond the parry and thrust of what had gone for their relationship for nearly thirty years, he saw. “Because that’s who she is,” he said. “Because that’s simply what she does.”

  He left it at that. He got to his feet. At the hut’s doorway, he paused, one small matter left unclear to him. He said to Reeth, “Have you watched me all these years, Mr. Parsons? Has that really been the extent of your life? How you’ve defined yourself? Waiting till I had a boy the very same age as Jamie was when Jamie died and then moving in for the kill?”

  “You don’t know what it’s like,” Reeth said. “But you will, man. You bloody sodding will.”

  “Or did you find me because of…” Ben considered this. “Because of Adventures Unlimited? The purest chance, reading the newspaper somewhere—wherever you were—and seeing that story poor Alan worked so hard to arrange. Was that it? That story in the Mail on Sunday? Then dashing here and establishing yourself and waiting, because you’d got so bloody good at biding your time. Because you thought—you believed—that if you did to me what you were so sure I’d done to you, that would…what? Give you peace? Close the circle? Finish things properly? How can you believe that?”

  “You’re going to know,” Reeth said. “You’re going to see. Because what I’ve said here—every word of it, man—is speculation. I know my rights. I made a study of my rights. So when I walk out of here—”

  “Don’t you see? It doesn’t matter,” Ben replied. “Because I’m walking out of here first.”

  He did so. He closed the door behind him and strode along the path towards the steps. His throat ached with the strain of holding back everything he’d been holding back—even without acknowledging that fact—for so many years. He heard his name called, and he turned.

  DI Hannaford joined him. She said, “He’s made an error somewhere, Mr. Kerne. They always make an error. We’re going to find it. No one thinks of everything. I want you to hang on.”

  Ben shook his head. “It doesn’t matter,” he said again. “Will it bring Santo back?”

  “He’s got to pay. That’s how this works.”

  “He’s already paying. And even if he isn’t, he’s going to see the only thing there is to see: There’s no peace for him in what he’s done. He can’t scrub it from his brain. None of us can do that.”

  “Nonetheless,” Hannaford said. “We’ll be pursuing this.”

  “If you must,” Ben said. “But not for my sake.”

  “For Santo’s sake, then. He’s owed—”

  “He is. God, how he is. He’s just not owed this.”

  Ben walked from her, making his way along the path and up the stone steps to the top of the cliff. There, he followed the South-West Coast
Path the short distance to the pastures they’d crossed, and he returned to his car. They could do with Jago Reeth or Jonathan Parsons what they wished to do or, indeed, what they were able to do within the confines of the law and the rights he said he knew so well. For whatever they did or did not do would not be sufficient to absolve Ben of the burden of responsibility that would always be his. This responsibility, he saw, went far beyond Santo’s death. It was described by the choices he’d made time and again and what those choices had done to mould the very people he’d claimed to love.

  In days to come, he knew he would weep. He couldn’t now. He was numb. But the grief of loss was inescapable, and he accepted that for the first time in his life.

  When he got home, he went in search of her. Alan was at work in his office, on the phone with someone and standing at a bulletin board on which he’d affixed two lines of index cards which Ben recognised as the plan for the video he wished to make about Adventures Unlimited. Kerra was talking to a tall blond youth, a prospective instructor no doubt. Ben didn’t bother either of them.

  He climbed the stairs. She wasn’t in the family quarters, nor did she appear to be anywhere else in the building. He felt a fluttering in his chest at this, and he went to the wardrobe to check, but her clothing was still there and the rest of her belongings were in the chest of drawers. He finally saw her from the window, a figure in black on the beach whom he might have taken as a surfer in a wet suit had he not possessed a lifetime of knowledge about the shape of her and the texture of her hair. She was standing with her back to the hotel. As the tide was high, most of the beach was covered, and the water was lapping round her ankles. It would still be frigid this time of year, but she wore no protection against it.

  He went to join her. He saw when he reached her that she was carrying a bundle of photographs. She was hollow eyed. She looked nearly as numb as he himself felt.

  He said her name. She said, “I hadn’t thought of him in years. But there he was in my mind today, like he’d been waiting to get in all this time.”

  “Who?”

  “Hugo.”

  A name he’d never once heard before and not one he cared about hearing now. He said nothing. Far out in the waves, five surfers formed a lineup. A swell rose behind them and Ben watched to see who would be in position to drop in. None of them were. The wave broke too far ahead of them, leaving them waiting for the next one in the set and another attempt at a ride.

  Dellen continued. “I was his special one. He made a fuss over me and he asked my parents could he take me to the cinema. To the seal sanctuary. To the Christmas panto. He bought me clothes he wanted to see me in because I was his favourite niece. We’ve got something special, he said. I wouldn’t buy you these things and take you to these places if you weren’t especially special to me.”

  Out to sea, one of the surfers was successful, Ben saw. He dropped in and caught the wave and he carved, seeking what every surfer seeks, the racing green room whose shimmering walls rise and curve and endlessly shift, enclosing and then releasing. It was a beautiful ride and when it was over, the surfer dropped down onto the board and made his way out to the others again, accompanied by the yelps of his mates. Jokingly, they barked like dogs. When he reached them, one of them touched fists with him. Ben saw this and felt a sore place in his heart. He forced himself to attend to what Dellen was saying.

  “It felt wrong,” she said, “but Uncle Hugo said it was love. The special part was being singled out. Not my brother, not my cousins, but me. So if he touched me here and asked me to touch him there, was that bad? Or was it just something that I didn’t understand?”

  Ben felt her look at him and he knew he was meant to look at her as well. He was meant to look at her face and read the suffering there, and he was meant to meet her emotion with his own. But he couldn’t do it. For he found that a thousand Uncle Hugos couldn’t change a single one of the facts. If, indeed, there was an Uncle Hugo at all.

  Next to him, he felt her move. He saw she was riffling through the pictures she had with her. He half-expected her to produce Uncle Hugo from within the stack, but she didn’t. Instead, she brought forth a photograph he recognised. Mum and Dad and two kids on summer holiday, a week on the Isle of Wight. Santo had been eight years old, Kerra twelve.

  In the picture they were at a restaurant table, no meal in evidence, so they must have handed the camera to the waiter as they first sat, asking him to snap the happy family. All of them were smiling as required: Look at how we’re enjoying ourselves.

  Pictures were the things of happy memories. They were also the instruments one used retrospectively to avoid the truth. For in Kerra’s small face, Ben could now read the anxiety, that desire to be just good enough to stop the wheel from turning another time. In Santo’s face, he could see the confusion, a child’s awareness of a present hypocrisy without the accompanying comprehension. In his own expression, he could see the gritty determination to make things right. And in Dellen’s face…what was always there: knowledge and anticipation. She was wearing a red scarf twined through her hair.

  They gravitated towards her in the picture, all of them slightly leaning in her direction. His hand was over hers, as if he’d hold her there at the table instead of where she doubtless wished to be.

  She can’t help herself, he’d said time and again. What he’d failed to see was that he could.

  He took the picture from her and said to his wife, “It’s time for you to go.”

  She said, “Where?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “St. Ives. Plymouth. Back to Truro. Pengelly Cove perhaps. Your family’s there still. They’ll help you if you need help. If that’s what you want at this point.”

  She was silent. He looked from the photo to her. Her eyes had darkened. She said, “Ben, how can you…? After what’s happened.”

  “Don’t,” he said. “It’s time for you to go.”

  “Please,” she said. “How will I survive?”

  “You’ll survive,” he told her. “We both know that.”

  “What about you? Kerra? What about the business?”

  “Alan’s here. He’s a very good man. And otherwise, Kerra and I will cope. We’ve learned to do that very well.”

  SELEVAN HAD FOUND THAT his plans altered once the police came to the Salthouse Inn. He told himself that he couldn’t just selfishly head out with Tammy for the Scottish border without knowing what was going on and, more important, without discovering if there was something he could do to assist Jago should assistance be required. He couldn’t imagine why such assistance might be necessary, but he thought it best to remain where he was—more or less—and wait for further information.

  It wasn’t long in coming. He reckoned Jago wouldn’t return to the Salthouse Inn, so he himself didn’t wait there. Instead, he went back to Sea Dreams and paced in the caravan for a while, taking a nip now and then from a flask he’d filled to see him on the trip to the border, and finally he went outside and over to Jago’s caravan.

  He didn’t go within. He had a duplicate key to the place, but it just didn’t feel right, although he reckoned Jago wouldn’t have minded had he entered. Instead he waited on the top of the metal steps, where a wider one played the role of porch and was suitable for his bum.

  Jago rolled into Sea Dreams some ten minutes later. Selevan got creakily to his feet. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket and walked over to Jago’s preferred spot to park the Defender. He said, “You all right, then, mate?” when Jago got out. “They didn’t give you aggro down the station, did they?”

  “Not a bit,” Jago told him. “When it comes to the cops, a small measure of preparation is all that’s needed. Things go your way, then, instead of theirs. Surprises them a bit, but that’s what life is. One bloody surprise after another.”

  “S’pose,” Selevan said. But he felt a twinge of uneasiness, and he couldn’t exactly say why. There was something about Jago’s way of talking, something in the tone, that w
asn’t altogether the Jago he knew. He said warily, “They didn’t rough you up, mate?”

  Jago barked a laugh. “Those two cows? Not likely. We just had a bit of a conversation and that was the end of it. Long time in coming, but it’s over now.”

  “Wha’s going on, then?”

  “Nothing, mate. Something went on long time ago, but that’s all finished. My work here is done.”

  Jago passed Selevan and stepped up to the door of the caravan. He hadn’t locked it, Selevan saw, so there’d been no need for him to wait on the steps in the first place. Jago went inside and Selevan followed. He stood uncertainly just at the door, however, because he wasn’t sure what was going on.

  He said, “You made redundant, Jago?”

  Jago had gone into the bedroom at the end of the caravan. Selevan couldn’t see him, but he could hear the noise of a cupboard opening and of something being dragged from the shelf above the clothing rail. In a moment Jago appeared in the doorway, a large duffel bag drooping from his hand. “What?” he asked.

  “I asked were you made redundant. You said your work was finished. You been sacked or something?”

  Jago looked as if he was thinking about this, which was strange as far as Selevan was concerned. One was made redundant or not. One was sacked or not. Surely the question didn’t need consideration. Finally Jago smiled quite a slow smile that wasn’t much like him. He said, “That’s exactly it, mate. Redundant. I was made redundant…long time ago.” He paused and looked thoughtful and next spoke to himself, “More than a quarter of a century,” he said. “A long time in coming.”

  “What?” Selevan felt a restless urgency to get to the root of the matter because this Jago was different to the Jago he’d been sitting in the inglenook with for the last six or seven months, and he vastly preferred that other Jago, who spoke directly and not in…well, in parables or the like.

  He said, “Mate, has something happened with them cops? Did they do something to…? You don’t sound like yourself.” Selevan could imagine what the cops might do. True, they’d been women, but fact was that Jago was an old codger round the same age as Selevan, and he was in poor condition for his years. Besides that, had they taken him to the station, there’d be blokes there—other cops—who could rough him up. And cops could rough one up in places where no evidence was left. Selevan knew that. He watched telly, especially American films on Sky. He’d seen how it was done. Bit of pressure on the thumbnails. Couple of sewing needles screwed into the skin. It wouldn’t take much on a bloke like Jago. Only…he wasn’t acting like a man who’d suffered some sort of humiliation at the hands of the cops, was he.