Careless In Red (50 page)

BEA AND DS HAVERS walked from Blue Star Grocery to Casvelyn of Cornwall. The bakery was in full production, preparing for the delivery of goods to the area’s pubs, hotels, cafés, and restaurants. Hence, the heady fragrance of flaky, succulent pastry formed a hypnotic miasma in the air. It became more powerful as they drew closer to the shop, and Bea heard Barbara Havers murmur fervently, “Bloody blooming hell.”

Bea glanced at her. The sergeant was gazing longingly in the direction of Casvelyn of Cornwall’s front window, where the trays of newly baked pasties lay in seductive, eye-popping, and utterly diet-busting ranks of cholesterol, carbohydrates, and calories. “Pleasant, isn’t it?” Bea said to the sergeant.

“It’s got Pop-Tarts beat. I’ll give you that.”

“You must have a pasty while you’re in Cornwall. And if you’re going to do so, these are the best.”

“I’ll make a note of it.” Havers gave a lingering look to them as she followed Bea into the shop.

Madlyn Angarrack was serving a line of customers while Shar heaved trays of the bakery’s products out of the enormous kitchen and into the display cases. It seemed they had more than pasties going on this day, since Shar was currently bringing out loaves of artisan bread, thick of crust and topped with rosemary.

Although Madlyn was busy, Bea had no intention of standing at the end of a queue. She excused herself to the waiting customers by ostentatiously showing her identification and murmuring, “Pardon. Police business,” as she passed them by. At the till, she said at some considerable volume, “A word, Miss Angarrack. Here or in the station, but in either case, now.”

Madlyn didn’t attempt to temporize. She said to her co-worker, “Shar, will you take the till?” although she did add meaningfully, “I won’t be a moment,” to indicate either her cooperation with the police or her intention of immediately demanding a solicitor. She then fetched a jacket and went outside.

“This is DS Havers,” Bea said by way of introduction. “She’s come down from New Scotland Yard to assist in the investigation.”

Madlyn’s eyes flicked to Havers and then back to Bea. In a voice that sounded something between wary and confused she said, “Why’s Scotland Yard—”

“Think about it.” Bea saw that being able to bandy about the term New Scotland Yard was going to have one or two unanticipated uses. It consisted of three words that asked people to sit up and take notice, no matter what they knew or did not know about the Metropolitan police.

Madlyn was silent. She regarded Havers, and if she wondered what a representative from New Scotland Yard was doing dressed like a survivor of Hurricane Katrina, she did not say it. Havers took out a tattered notebook as Madlyn watched her, and she jotted down a note. It was likely a reminder to buy a pasty before leaving Casvelyn for the Salthouse Inn that evening, but that didn’t matter to Bea. It looked official and that was what counted.

“I don’t appreciate being lied to,” Bea told Madlyn. “It wastes my time, it forces me to go over old ground, and it throws me off my stride.”

“I didn’t—”

“Save us all some time during this second round of the boxing match, all right?”

“I don’t see why you think—”

“Need a refresher? Seven and a half weeks ago, Santo Kerne ended your relationship and, according to you, that was that: It was all you knew, full stop, no window dressing included. But as it turns out, you knew a bit more than that, didn’t you? You knew he was seeing someone else and something about that made you sick. Does any of this sound familiar to you, Miss Angarrack?”

Madlyn’s gaze shifted. Her brain was clearly engaged in calculations, and her expression said that the calculations were of the Who’s the bloody grass? variety. The suspects were probably not innumerable, and when Madlyn’s glance took in the Blue Star Grocery, satisfaction played her face like a keyboard. Resolution followed. Will Mendick, Bea Hannaford decided, was likely burnt toast.

“What would you like to tell us?” Bea asked. Sergeant Havers tapped her pencil against her notebook with great meaning. It was a chewed-up pencil, but that was no surprise, as possessing a writing utensil in any other condition would have been wildly out of character in the woman.

Madlyn’s gaze came back to Bea. She didn’t look resigned. She looked avenged, which, to Bea’s way of thinking, was not the way a suspect ought to be looking when it came to murder.

“He broke up with me. I told you that and it was the truth. I didn’t lie, and you can’t make it out that I did. And I wasn’t under oath anyway, so—”

“Save the legal wrangling,” Havers spoke up. “Far as I know, this isn’t an episode of The Bill. You lied, you cheated, or you danced the polka. We don’t much care. Let’s get to the facts. I’ll be happy, the DI’ll be happy, and—trust me—you’ll be happy as well.”

Madlyn didn’t look appreciative of this advice. She made a moue of distaste, but it seemed to be an expression that served the purpose of jockeying for position because when she next spoke, she told a completely different tale from the one she’d told earlier. She said, “All right. I broke up with him. I thought he was cheating, so I followed him. It’s not something I’m proud of, but I had to know. When I knew, I ended it. It hurt to do it because I was stupid and I still loved him, but I ended it anyway. That’s the story. And it’s the truth.”

“So far,” Bea said.

“I just told you—”

“Followed him where?” Havers asked, her pencil poised. “Followed him when? And how? On foot, by car, on bicycle, on a pogo stick?”

“What about his cheating on you made you sick?” Bea asked. “Just the fact of it, or was there something else? I think ‘off ’ was your choice of description.”

“I never said—”

“Not to us, no. You never said. That’s part of the current problem. Your problem, that is. When you say one thing to one person and another thing to the coppers, it all comes back to bite you in the end. So I suggest you consider yourself bitten and do something to get the teeth out of your bum, in a matter of speaking.”

“Rabies being rabies and all,” DS Havers murmured. Bea stifled a smile. She was starting to like the disheveled woman.

Madlyn’s jaw tightened. It seemed that the full reality of her situation was beginning to dawn upon her. She could remain obdurate and accept the threats and the ridicule of the other two women, or she could talk. She chose the option that seemed likeliest to effect their imminent departure.

“I think people should stick to their own,” she said.

“And Santo didn’t stick to his own?” Bea asked. “What’s that mean, exactly?”

“Just what I said.”

“What?” Havers asked impatiently. “He was doing altar boys on the side? Goats? Sheep? The occasional vegetable marrow? What?”

“Stop it!” Madlyn cried. “He was doing other women, all right? Older women. I confronted him when I knew about it. And I knew because I followed him.”

“We’re back to that,” Bea said. “You followed him where?”

“To Polcare Cottage.” Her eyes were bright. “He went to Polcare Cove and I followed him. He went inside and…I waited and waited because I was stupid and I wanted to think that…But no. No. So I went to the door after a bit and I banged upon it and…You can work out the bloody rest, can’t you? And that’s all I have to say to you two, so leave me alone. Leave me bloody well alone.”

That said, she pushed between them and stalked back towards the bakery’s door. She rubbed at her cheeks furiously as she walked.

“What’s Polcare Cottage?” DS Havers asked.

“A very nice place to pay a call on,” Bea said.

LYNLEY DIDN’T APPROACH THE cottage at once because he saw immediately that there was probably going to be no point. She didn’t appear to be at home. Either that or she’d parked her Vauxhall in the larger of the two outbuildings that stood on her property in Polcare Cove. He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel of his hired Ford, and he considered what his next move ought to be. Reporting what he knew to DI Hannaford seemed to top the list, but he didn’t feel settled with that decision. Instead, he wanted to give Daidre Trahair an opportunity to explain herself.

Despite what Barbara Havers might have thought once they parted at the Salthouse Inn, Lynley had taken her comments to heart. He was in a precarious position, and he knew it although he hated to admit or even think about it. He wanted desperately to escape the black pit in which he’d been floundering for weeks upon weeks, and he felt inclined to clutch just about any life rope that would get him out of there. The long walk along the South-West Coastal Path hadn’t provided that escape as he’d hoped it would. So he had to admit that perhaps Daidre Trahair’s company in conjunction with the kindness in her eyes had beguiled him into overlooking details that would otherwise have demanded acknowledgement.

He’d come upon another of those details upon Havers’ departure earlier that morning. Neither pigheaded nor blind when it came down to it, he’d placed another phone call to the zoo in Bristol. This time, however, instead of enquiring about Dr. Trahair, he enquired about the primate keepers. By the time he wended his way through what seemed like half a dozen employees and departments, he was fairly certain what the news would be. There was no Paul the primate keeper at the zoo. Indeed, the primates were kept by a team of women, headed by someone called Mimsie Vance, to whom Lynley did not need to speak.

Another lie chalked up against her, another black mark that needed confrontation.

What he reckoned he ought to do was lay his cards on the table for the vet. He, after all, was the person to whom Daidre Trahair had spoken about Paul the primate keeper and his terminally ill father. Perhaps, he thought, he had misinterpreted or misunderstood what Daidre had said. Certainly, she deserved the chance to clarify. Didn’t anyone in her position deserve as much?

He got out of the Ford and approached Daidre’s cottage. He knocked on the blue front door and waited. As he expected, the vet was not at home. But he went to the outbuildings just to make sure.

The larger one was empty of everything, as it would have to be for a car to be accommodated within its narrow confines. It was also largely unfinished inside and the presence of cobwebs and a thick coating of dust indicated that no one used it often. There were tyre tracks across the floor of the building, though. Lynley squatted and examined these. Several cars, he saw, had parked here. It was something to note, although he wasn’t sure what he ought to make of the information.

The smaller building was a garden shed. There were tools within it, all of them well used, testifying to Daidre’s attempts to create something gardenlike out of her little plot of land, no matter its proximity to the sea.

He was studying these for want of studying something when he heard the sound of a car driving up, its tyres crunching on the pebbles along the verge. He was blocking her driveway, so he left the garden shed to move his vehicle out of her way. But he saw it wasn’t Daidre Trahair who’d arrived. Rather it was DI Hannaford. Barbara Havers was with her.

Lynley felt dispirited at the sight of them. He had rather hoped Havers would have said nothing to Bea Hannaford about what she’d uncovered in Falmouth although he’d known how unlikely that was. Barbara was nothing if not a pit bull when it came to an investigation. She’d run over her grandmother with an articulated lorry if she was on the trail of something relevant. The fact that Daidre Trahair’s past wasn’t relevant would not occur to her because anything odd, contradictory, quirky, or suspicious needed to be tracked down and examined from every angle, and Barbara Havers was just the cop to do it.

Their eyes met as she got out of the car, and he tried to keep the disappointment from his face. She paused to shake a cigarette out of a packet of Players. She turned her back to the breeze, sheltering a plastic lighter from the wind.

Bea Hannaford approached him. “She’s not here?”

He shook his head.

“Sure about that, are you?” Hannaford peered at him intently.

“I didn’t look in through the windows,” he replied. “But I can’t imagine why she wouldn’t answer the door if she were at home.”

“I can. And how’re we coming along with our investigation into the good doctor? You’ve spent enough time with her so far. I expect you’ve something to report.”

Lynley looked to Havers, feeling a curious rush of gratitude towards his former partner. He also felt the shame of having misjudged her, and he saw how much the last months had altered him. Havers remained largely expressionless, but she lifted one eyebrow. She was, he saw, putting the ball squarely into his court and he could do with it what he would. For now.

“I don’t know why she lied to you about the route she took from Bristol,” he told Hannaford. “I’ve not got much further than that. She’s very careful with what she reveals about herself.”

“Not careful enough,” the DI said. “She lied about knowing Santo Kerne, as things turn out. The kid was her lover. She was sharing him with his girlfriend without his girlfriend knowing. At first, that is. She—the girlfriend—had some suspicions on that front so she followed Santo and he led her straight here. He seems to have been a bloke who liked them any way he could get them. Older, younger, and in between.”

Although he found that his heart had begun beating quickly as the DI was speaking, Lynley said in an even tone, “I’m not quite tracking this.”

“Not tracking what?”

“His girlfriend following him and the conclusion you’ve drawn: that he and Dr. Trahair were lovers.”

“Sir…” It was Havers’ monitory tone.

“Are you mad?” Hannaford said to Lynley. “The girlfriend confronted him, Thomas.”

“Confronted him or confronted them?”

“Him or them? What difference does it make?”

“All the difference in the world if she didn’t actually see anything.”

“Really? And what’d you expect the girl to do? Jump through the window with a camera while they were doing the deed? So she would have evidence to back herself up if she ever had to talk to the coppers? She saw enough to have words with him and he told her what was going on.”

“He said that Dr. Trahair was his lover?”