Careless in Red

  “Murder,” he said.

  “You investigated murders?”

  “Yes. That’s exactly what I did.” He looked back at the fire.

  “That must have been…difficult. Disheartening.”

  “Seeing man’s inhumanity? It is.”

  “Is that why you quit? I’m sorry. I’m being intrusive. But…Had you had enough trials on your heart?”

  He didn’t reply.

  The front door opened with a thud, and Daidre felt the wind gust into the room. Collins came out of the kitchen with his cup of tea as Detective Inspector Hannaford returned to them. She carried a white boiler suit over her arm. This she thrust at Lynley.

  “Trousers, boots, and jacket,” she said. It was clearly an order. And to Daidre, “Where’re yours, then?”

  Daidre indicated the carrier bag into which she’d deposited her outer clothing when she’d changed into blue jeans and a yellow jumper. She said, “But he’ll have no shoes.”

  “It’s all right,” Lynley said.

  “It isn’t. You can’t go round—”

  “I’ll get another pair.”

  “He won’t need them just yet anyway,” Hannaford said. “Where can he change?”

  “My bedroom. Or the bathroom.”

  “See to it, then.”

  Lynley had already risen when the DI joined them. Less anticipation, this seemed, than years of breeding and good manners. The DI was a woman. One rose politely when a woman came into the room.

  “SOCO’s arrived?” Lynley said to her.

  “And the pathologist. We’ve a photo of the dead boy as well. He’s called Alexander Kerne. A local boy from Casvelyn. D’you know him?” She was speaking to Daidre. Sergeant Collins hovered in the kitchen doorway as if not quite sure he was meant to be having tea while on duty.

  “Kerne? The name’s familiar, but I can’t say why. I don’t think I know him.”

  “Have a vast acquaintance round here, do you?”

  “What d’you mean?” Daidre was pressing her fingernails into her palms, and she made herself stop. She knew the detective was attempting to read her.

  “You say you don’t think you know him. It’s a strange way of putting it. Seems to me, you either know him or you don’t. Are you getting changed?” This last to Lynley, an abrupt shift that was as disconcerting as her steady and inquisitive gaze.

  He cast a quick look at Daidre and then away. He said, “Yes. Of course,” and ducked through the low doorway that separated the sitting room from a passage created by the depth of the fireplace. Beyond it lay a tiny bathroom and a bedroom big enough for a bed and a wardrobe and nothing else. The cottage was small and safe and snug. It was exactly the way Daidre wanted it.

  She said to the detective, “I believe one can know someone by sight—actually have a conversation with him, if it comes down to it—without ever knowing that person’s identity. Their name, their details, anything. I expect your sergeant here can say the same and he’s a local man.”

  Collins was caught, teacup halfway to his mouth. He shrugged. Agreeing or discounting. It was impossible to tell.

  “Takes a bit of exertion, that, wouldn’t you say?” Hannaford asked Daidre shrewdly.

  “I’ve found the exertion worth it.”

  “So you knew Alexander Kerne by sight?”

  “I may have done. But as I said earlier and as I’ve told the other policeman, Sergeant Collins here, and you as well, I didn’t get a good look at the boy when I first saw the body.”

  Thomas Lynley returned to them then, sparing Daidre any further questions as well as any further exposure to DI Hannaford’s penetrating stare. He handed over the clothing the DI had asked for. It was absurd, Dairdre thought. He was going to catch his death if he wandered round like that: no jacket, no shoes, and just a thin white boiler suit of the type worn at crime scenes to ensure that the official investigators did not leave trace evidence behind. It was ridiculous.

  DI Hannaford spoke to him. “I’m going to want to see your identification as well, Mr. Lynley. It’s form, and I’m sorry, but there’s no way round it. Can you get your hands on it?”

  He nodded. “I’ll phone—”

  “Good. Have it sent. You’re not going anywhere for a few days, anyway. This looks like a straightforward accident, but till we know for certain…Well, I expect you know the drill. I’ll want you where I can find you.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll need clothing.”

  “Yes.” He sounded as if he didn’t care one way or the other. He was something windblown, not flesh, bone, and determination, but rather an insubstantial substance, desiccated and helpless against the forces of nature.

  The detective looked round the cottage sitting room, as if assessing its potential to produce a set of clothes for the man as well as to house him. Daidre said hastily, “He’ll be able to get clothing in Casvelyn. Not tonight, of course. Everything’ll be closed. But tomorrow. He can stay there as well. Or at the Salthouse Inn. They’ve rooms. Not many. Nothing special. But they’re adequate. And it’s closer than Casvelyn.”

  “Good,” Hannaford said. And to Lynley, “I’ll want you there at the inn, then. I’ll have more questions. Sergeant Collins can drive you.”

  “I’ll drive him,” Daidre said. “I expect you’ll want everyone you can get your hands on to do whatever it is you do at the scene when someone dies. I know where the Salthouse Inn is, and if they’ve no rooms, he’ll need to be taken to Casvelyn.”

  “Don’t trouble—” Lynley began.

  “It’s no trouble,” Daidre said. What it was was a need to get Sergeant Collins and DI Hannaford out of her cottage, something that she could effect only if she had a reason to get out of the cottage herself.

  After a pause, DI Hannaford said, “Fine,” and handing over her card to Lynley, “Phone me when you’re established somewhere. I’ll want to know where to find you, and I’ll be along directly we have matters sorted out here. It’ll be some time.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “Yes. I expect you do.” She nodded and left them, taking with her their clothing stuffed into bags. Sergeant Collins followed her. Police cars were blocking Daidre’s access to her own Vauxhall. They would have to be moved if she was to be able to get Thomas Lynley to the Salthouse Inn.

  Silence swept into the cottage with the departure of the police. Daidre could feel Thomas Lynley looking at her, but she was finished with being looked at. She went from the sitting room into the entry, saying over her shoulder, “You can’t go out in your stocking feet like that. I have wellies out here.”

  “I doubt they’ll fit,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll take the socks off for now. Put them back on when I get to the inn.”

  She stopped. “That’s sensible of you. I hadn’t thought of it. If you’re ready, then, we can go. Unless you’d like something…? A sandwich? Soup? Brian does meals at the inn, but if you’d rather not have to eat in the dining area…” She didn’t want to make the man a meal, but it seemed the proper thing to do. They were somehow bound together in this matter: partners in suspicion, perhaps. It felt that way to her, because she had secrets and he certainly seemed to have them, too.

  “I expect I can have something sent up to my room,” Lynley said, “providing they have rooms available tonight.”

  “Let’s be off then,” Daidre said.

  They made their second drive to the Salthouse Inn more slowly as there was no rush, and they encountered two more police vehicles and an ambulance on the way. They didn’t speak and when Daidre glanced over at her companion, she saw that his eyes were closed and his hands rested easily on his thighs. He looked asleep, and she didn’t doubt that he was. He’d seemed exhausted. She wondered how long he’d been hiking along the coastal path.

  At the Salthouse Inn, she stopped the Vauxhall in the car park, but Lynley didn’t move. She touched him gently on the shoulder.

  He opened his eyes and blinked slowly, as if clearing his
head of a dream. He said, “Thank you. It was kind—”

  “I didn’t want to leave you in the clutches of the police,” she cut in. Then, “Sorry. I forget you’re one of them.”

  “After a fashion, yes, I am.”

  “Well, anyway…I thought you might like a respite from them. Although from what she said…the inspector…it doesn’t appear you’ve escaped them for long.”

  “No. They’ll want to talk to me at length tonight. The first person on the scene is always suspect. They’ll be intent on gathering as much information as possible as quickly as possible. That’s the way it’s done.”

  They were silent then. A gust of wind—stronger than any other so far—hit the car and rocked it. It stirred Daidre to words once more. She said, “I’ll come round for you tomorrow, then.” She made the declaration without thinking through all the ramifications of what it meant, what it could mean, and what it would look like. This wasn’t like her, and she shook herself mentally. But the words were out there, and she let them lie. “You’ll need to get things from Casvelyn, I mean. I don’t expect you want to walk round in that boiler suit for long. You’ll want shoes as well. And other things. Casvelyn’s the closest place to get them.”

  “That’s good of you,” Lynley told her. “But I don’t want to trouble you.”

  “You said that earlier. But it isn’t and you’re not. It’s very strange, but I feel that we’re in this together although I don’t quite know what this is.”

  “I’ve caused you a problem,” he said. “More than one. The window in your cottage. Now the police. I’m sorry about it.”

  “What else were you to do? You could hardly walk on once you’d found him.”

  “No. I couldn’t walk on, could I?”

  He sat for a moment. He seemed to be watching the wind play with the sign hanging above the inn’s front door.

  He finally said, “May I ask you something?”

  She said, “Certainly.”

  “Why did you lie?”

  She heard an unexpected buzzing in her ears. She repeated the last word, as if she’d misheard him when she’d heard him only too clearly.

  He said, “The first time we came here, you told the publican that the boy in the cove was Santo Kerne. You said his name. Santo Kerne. But when the police asked you…” He gestured, a movement saying finish the rest for yourself.

  The question reminded Daidre that this man, disheveled and filthy though he was, was himself a policeman, and a detective at that. From this moment, she needed to take extraordinary care.

  She said, “Did I say that?”

  “You did. Quietly, but not quietly enough. And now you’ve told the police at least twice that you didn’t recognise the boy. When they’ve said his name, you’ve said you don’t know him. I’m wondering why.”

  He looked at her, and she instantly regretted her offer to take him into Casvelyn for clothing in the morning. He was more than the sum of his parts, and she hadn’t seen that in time.

  She said, “I’ve come for a holiday. At the time it seemed—what I said to the police—the best way of ensuring I have one. A holiday. A rest.”

  He said nothing.

  She added, “Thank you for not betraying me to them. Of course, I can’t stop you from betraying me later when you speak to them again. But I’d appreciate it, if you’d consider…There’re things the police don’t need to know about me. That’s all, Mr. Lynley.”

  He didn’t reply. But he didn’t look away from her and she felt the heat rising up her neck to her cheeks. The door of the inn banged open then. A man and a woman stumbled into the wind. The woman twisted her ankle, and the man put his arm round her waist and then kissed her. She shoved him away. The gesture was playful. He caught her up again and they staggered in the wind towards a line of cars.

  Daidre watched them as Lynley watched her. She finally said, “I’ll come for you at ten, then. Will that do for you, Mr. Lynley?”

  His response was a long time in coming. Daidre thought he must be a good policeman.

  “Thomas,” he said to her. “Please call me Thomas.”

  IT WAS LIKE AN old-time film about the American west, Lynley thought. He ducked into the inn’s public bar, where the local drinkers were gathered, and silence fell. This was a part of the world where you were a visitor until you had become a permanent resident and you were a newcomer until your family had lived in the place for two generations. So he went down as a stranger among them. But he was more than that. He was also a stranger dressed in a white boiler suit and wearing nothing but socks on his feet. He had no coat against the cold, the wind, and the rain, and if that were not enough to make him a novelty, had anyone other than a bride entered this establishment in the past wearing white from shoulder to ankle, it probably hadn’t happened in the living memory of anyone present.

  The ceiling—stained with the soot of fires and the smoke of cigarettes and crossed with black oak beams from which horse brasses were nailed—hung less than twelve inches above Lynley’s head. The walls bore a display of ancient farm implements, given mostly to scythes and pitchforks, and the floor was stone. This last was uneven, pockmarked, scored and scoured. Thresholds made of the same material as the floor were cratered by hundreds of years of entrances and exits, and the room itself that defined the public bar was small and divided into two sections described by fireplaces, one large and one small, which seemed to be doing more to make the air unbreathable than to warm the place. The body heat of the crowd was seeing to that.

  When he’d been at the Salthouse Inn earlier with Daidre Trahair, just a few late-afternoon drinkers had been present. Now, the place’s nighttime crowd had arrived, and Lynley had to work his way through them and through their silence to get to the bar. He knew it was more than his clothing that made him an object of interest. There was the not small matter of his smell: unwashed from head to toe for seven weeks now. Unshaven and unshorn as well.

  The publican—Lynley recalled that Daidre Trahair had referred to him as Brian—apparently remembered him from his earlier visit because he said abruptly into the silence, “Was it Santo Kerne out there on the cliffs?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know who it was. But it was a young man. An adolescent or just older than that. That’s all I can tell you.”

  A murmur rose and fell at this. Lynley heard the name Santo repeated several times. He glanced over his shoulder. Dozens of eyes—young and old and in between—were fixed on him.

  He said to Brian, “The boy—Santo—he was well known?”

  “He lives hereabouts,” was the unhelpful reply. That was the limit of what Brian appeared to be willing to reveal to a stranger. He said, “Are you after a drink, then?”

  When Lynley asked for a room instead, he recognised in Brian a marked reluctance to accommodate him. He put this down to what it likely was: a logical unwillingness to allow an unsavoury stranger such as himself access to the inn’s sheets and pillows. God only knew what vermin might be crawling upon him. But the novelty he represented at the Salthouse Inn was in his favour. His appearance was in direct conflict with his accent and his manner of speaking, and if that were not enough to make him an object of fascination, there was the intriguing matter of his finding the body, which had likely been the subject of conversation inside the inn before he entered.

  “A small room only,” was the publican’s reply. “But that’s the case with all of ’em. Small. Wasn’t like people needed much when the place was built, did they.”

  Lynley said that the size didn’t matter and he’d be happy with whatever the inn could give him. He didn’t know how long he’d actually need the room, he added. It seemed that the police were going to require his presence until matters about the young man in the cove had been decided.

  A murmur rose at this. It was the word decided and everything that the word implied.

  Brian used the toe of his shoe to ease open a door at the far end of the bar, and he spoke a few words into whatever room e
xisted behind it. From this a middle-aged woman emerged, the inn’s cook by her garb of stained white apron, which she was hastily removing. Beneath it she wore a black skirt and white blouse. Sensible shoes as well.

  She would take him up to a room, she said. She was all business, as if there was nothing strange about him. This room, she went on, was above the restaurant, not the bar. He’d find it quiet there. It was a good place to sleep.

  She didn’t wait for his reply. His thoughts likely didn’t interest her anyway. His presence meant custom, which was hard to come by until late spring and summer. When beggars went begging, they couldn’t exactly choose their benefactors, could they?

  She headed for another door at the far side of the public bar. This gave onto an icy stone passage. The inn’s restaurant operated in a room off this passage, although no one was seated within it, while at the far end a stairway the approximate width of a suitcase made the climb to the floor above. It was difficult to imagine how furniture had been worked up the stairs.

  There were three rooms only on the first floor, and Lynley had his choice, although his guide—her name was Siobhan Rourke, she’d told him, and she was Brian’s longtime and apparently long-suffering partner—recommended the smallest of them as it was the one she’d mentioned earlier as being above the restaurant and quiet at this time of year. They all shared the same bathroom, she informed him, but that ought to be of no account as no one else was staying.

  Lynley wasn’t particular about which room he was given so he took the first one whose door Siobhan opened. This would do, he told her. It suited him. Not much larger than a cell, it was furnished with a single bed, a wardrobe, and a dressing table tucked under a tiny casement window with leaded panes. Its only bow to mod cons were a washbowl in a corner and a telephone on the dressing table. This last was a jarring note in a room that could have done for a serving maid two hundred years earlier.

  Only in the centre of the room could Lynley actually stand upright. Seeing this, Siobhan said, “They were shorter in those days, weren’t they? P’rhaps this isn’t the best choice, Mr….?”