Careless In Red (53 page)

“Never proved as much. Death by misadventure at the inquest, but you and I both know what that means. Could be anything with proof of nothing, so you got to rely on what people say.”

“That’s why I’ve come to talk to you. I’ve spoken with Eddie Kerne. His son Ben—”

“Don’t need memory jogging, lad. I’d still be working the job if regulations let me.”

“May we go somewhere to talk, then?”

“Not much for the house of God, are you?”

“Not at present, I’m afraid.”

“What are you, then? Fair-weather Christian? Lord doesn’t come through for you the way you want so you slam the door on His face. That it? Young people. Bah. You’re all alike.” Wilkie dug deeply into his waxed jacket’s pocket and brought out a handkerchief that he wiped with surprising delicacy beneath his terrible nose. He gestured with it to Lynley and for a moment Lynley thought he was meant to use it as well, a form of bizarre communion with the older man. But Wilkie went on, saying, “Look at that. White as the day I bought it and I do my own laundry. What d’you think of that?”

“Impressive,” Lynley said. “I couldn’t match you there.”

“You young cocks, you couldn’t match me anywhere.” Wilkie shoved the handkerchief back to its home. He said, “It’ll be here in God’s house or not at all. ’Sides, I’ve got to dust the pews. You wait here. I’ve got supplies.”

Wilkie, Lynley thought, was definitely not gaga. He could probably have run circles round DS Ferrell in Newquay. Doing so on his hands, at that.

When the old man returned, he had a basket from which he took a whisk broom, several rags, and a tin of polish, which he prised open with a house key and roughly swished a rag through. “I can’t sort out what’s happened to churchgoing,” he revealed. He handed over the whisk broom and gave Lynley detailed instructions as to its use upon and beneath the pews. He’d be following Lynley with the polish rag, so don’t be leaving any spots unseen to, he said. There weren’t enough rags if this lot—here he indicated the basket—got filthy. Did Lynley understand? Lynley did, which apparently gave Wilkie licence to return to his previous line of thought. “My day, the church was filled to capacity. Two, maybe three times on Sunday and then for evensong on Wednesday night. Now, between one Christmas and the next, you won’t see twenty regular goers. Some extras on Easter, but only if the weather is good. I put this down to those Beatles, I do. I remember that one saying he was Jesus way back when. He should’ve been sorted straightaway, you ask me.”

“Long time ago, though, wasn’t that?” Lynley murmured.

“Church’s never been the same after that heathen spoke. Never. All those wankers with hair growing down to their arses singing ’bout getting their satisfactions met. And smashing their instruments to nothing. Those things cost money, but do they care? No. It’s all ungodly. No wonder everyone stopped coming to pay the Lord His due respect.”

Lynley was considering a reassessment of the gaga bit. He also needed Havers with him to sort out the old man when it came to his rock ’n’ roll history. He himself had been a late bloomer when it came to just about everything, and rock ’n’ roll was among the many areas of pop culture from the past upon which he could not wax, eloquently or otherwise. So he didn’t try. He waited until Wilkie had run out of steam on the topic, and in the meantime he became as admirably industrious with the whisk broom as he could manage within the confines of the pews and in the church’s inadequate lighting.

Presently, as he’d hoped, Wilkie concluded with, “World’s going to hell in a shopping trolley, you ask me,” an assessment with which Lynley did not disagree.

“Was the parents wanted to see that lad go down for the death.” The old man spoke suddenly, some minutes later as they worked their way along another row of pews. “Benesek Kerne. Parents got their jaws round him and they wouldn’t let go.”

“That would be the parents of the dead boy?”

“Dad especially went off his nut when that lad died. Was the apple of his eye, was Jamie, and Jon Parsons—that’s the dad—he never made bones about it to me. Man’s s’posed to have a favourite child, he said, and the others’re supposed to em’late him to get into the dad’s good graces.”

“There were other children in the family, then?”

“Four in all. Three young girls—one just a wee toddler—and that boy which died. Parents waited for the verdict from the inquest and when the verdict was death by misadventure, Dad came to me. Few weeks later, this was. Dead crazed, poor bloke. Told me he knew for certain the Kerne boy was responsible. I ask him why he waits to tell me this—’cause I’m discounting what he’s saying as the ravings of a man going mad with grief—and he tells me someone grassed. After the fact of the inquest, this was. He’s been doing his own nosing round, he tells me. He’s brought in his own investigator. And what they came up with was the grass.”

“Did you think he was telling you the truth?”

“Isn’t that the question? Who bloody knows?”

“This person—the grass—never spoke to you?”

“Just to Parsons. So he claimed. Which as you and I know is damn meaningless since what he wants more’n anything is an arrest of someone. He needs someone to blame. So does the wife. They need anyone to blame because they think that accusing, arresting, putting on trial, and imprisoning is going to make them feel better, which of course it isn’t. But Dad doesn’t want to hear that. What dad would? Running his own investigation is the only thing keeping him from sliding over the edge. So I’m willing to cooperate with him, help him out, help him through the bloody mess his life’s become. And I ask him to tell me who the grass is. I can’t ecksackly make an arrest on some tittle-tattle I didn’t even hear firsthand.”

“Of course,” Lynley noted.

“But he won’t tell me, so what can I do that I hadn’t already done, eh? We’d investigated the death of that lad left, right, and centre, and believe me, there was sod all to go on. The Kerne boy didn’t have an alibi, aside from ‘walking the long way home to clear my head,’ but you don’t hang a man for that, do you? Still, I wanted to help. So we had the Kerne boy into the station one more time, four more times, eighteen more times…Who the bloody hell remembers. We nosed round every aspect of his life and all of his friends’ lives as well. Benesek didn’t like the Parsons boy—we uncovered that much straightaway—but as things turned out, no one else liked the blighter neither.”

“Did they have alibis? His friends?”

“All told the same story. Home and to bed. Those stories stayed the same and no one broke ranks. Couldn’t get a drop of blood out of them even by using a leech. They were either sworn to each other or they were telling the truth. Now, in my experience, when a group of lads gets up to no good, one of them breaks eventually if you keep pressing. But no one ever did.”

“Which led you to conclude they were telling the truth?”

“Nothing else to conclude.”

“What did they tell you about their relationship with the dead boy? What was their story?”

“Simple one. Kerne boy and Parsons had words that night, a bit of a dustup about something during a party at the Parsons home. Kerne left the scene and his mates did the same. And, ’cording to them all, no one went back later to coax the Parsons boy to his end. He must’ve gone to the beach on his own, they said. End of story.”

“I’ve learned he died in a sea cave.”

“Went down there at night, the tide came in, he got caught up in it, and he couldn’t get out. Toxicology showed he was pissed to oblivion and he’d done some doping on top of that. Common thought at first was that he’d met a girl in the cave for a poke and passed out either before or after.”

“‘Common thought at first’?”

“The body was well banged up from the cave, see—being slung round for six hours while the tide came in and went out—but pathologist pointed out marks that couldn’t be accounted for and these happened to be round the wrists and ankles.”

“Tied up, then. But no other evidence?”

“Faeces in the ears and wasn’t that a bit peculiar, eh? But that was it. And there wasn’t a witness to anything. Start to finish, it was a case of he said, she said, we said, they said. Finger-pointing, gossiping, and that was that. Without hard evidence, without a witness to a thing, without even a scrap of circumstantial evidence…All we could hope for was someone to break and that might’ve happened had the Parsons kid not been the Parsons kid.”

“Which means?”

“Bit of a wanker, sad to say. Family had money, so he thought he was better’n the rest of ’em and he liked to show it. Not the sort of thing going to make him popular with the local youngsters, you know what I mean.”

“But they went to his party?”

“Free booze, free dope, no parents at home, a chance to snog with the girl of your choice. Not a lot to do in Pengelly Cove at the best of times. They wouldn’t’ve turned down a chance for some fun.”

“What happened to them, then?”

“The other boys? The Kerne boy’s mates? They’re still round Pengelly Cove, for all I know.”

“And the Parsons family?”

“Never went back to Pengelly Cove as such. They were from Exeter, and they went back there and there they stayed. Dad had a property-management business in town. Called Parsons and…someone else. Can’t recall. He himself went back to Pengelly regular for a bit, weekends and holidays, trying to get some full stop put to the case, but it never happened. He hired more ’n one investigator to take up the pieces as well. Spent a fortune on the whole situation. But if Benesek Kerne and those boys were behind what happened to Jamie Parsons, they’d learned from the first investigation into his death: If there’s no hard evidence, and no witness to anything, keep the mug plugged and no one can touch you.”

“I understand he built something of a monument to him,” Lynley noted.

“Who? Parsons?” And when Lynley nodded, “Well, the family had the funds to do it, and if it gave them some peace, more power to the whole idea.” Wilkie had been working his way along the pews, and now he straightened and stretched his back. Lynley did likewise. For a moment, they stood there in silence in the centre of the church, studying the stained-glass window above the altar. Wilkie sounded thoughtful when he next spoke, as if he’d given the matter considerable thought over the years that had passed. “I didn’t like to leave things unsettled,” he said. “I had a feeling that the dead boy’s dad wouldn’t be able to get a moment’s peace if we didn’t have someone called to account for what happened. But I think…” He paused and scratched the back of his neck. His expression said that his body was present but his mind had gone to another time and place. “I think those boys—if they were involved—didn’t mean the Parsons lad to die. They weren’t that sort. Not a one of them.”

“If they didn’t intend him to die, what did they intend?”

He rubbed his face. The sound of rough skin on rough whiskers sandpapered the air. “Sort him out. Give him a bit of a scare. Like I said before, from what I learned, the boy was full of himself and he didn’t mind making clear what he did and what he had that they didn’t and hadn’t.”

“But to tie him up. To leave him…”

“Drunk, the lot of them. Doped up as well. They get him down there to the cave—p’rhaps they tell him they’ve more dope to sell—and they jump him. They tie him at the wrists and ankles and give him some discipline. A talking to. A bit of a roughing up. Smear some poo on him for good measure. Then they untie him and leave him there and they think he’ll make his own way home. Only they don’t account for how drunk he is and how doped up he is and he passes out and…that’s the end of it. See, thing is, like I said, there really wasn’t a truly bad one ’mongst those boys. Not one of ’em ever been in a spot of trouble. And I told the parents that. But it wasn’t something they wanted to hear.”

“Who found the body?”

“That was the worst bit,” Wilkie said. “Parsons phoned up the cops morning after that party to say his boy’d gone missing. Cops said the usual: He probably got into a local girl’s knickers and he’s sleeping off the aftermath in her bed or under it, so phone us again if he doesn’t turn up in a day or two because otherwise we can’t be bothered. Meantime, one of his own girls—this is one of the boy’s sisters—tells him about the scuffle Jamie’d had with the Kerne lad, and Parsons thinks there’s more here than meets the eye. So he sets off to have a look round for the boy. And he’s the one who finds him.” Wilkie shook his head. “Can’t imagine what that would be like, but I expect it could drive a man to madness. Favourite child. Only son. No one ever called to answer for what happened. And the one name associated with the hours leading up to the death: Benesek Kerne. You can see how he fixed on him.”

“D’you know Benesek Kerne’s own son has died?” Lynley asked. “He was killed in a fall from one of the sea cliffs. His equipment had been tampered with. It’s a murder.”

Wilkie shook his head. “Didn’t know,” he said. “That’s bloody unfortunate. How old’s the boy?”

“Eighteen.”

“Same as the Parsons lad. Now, that’s a bloody shame.”

DAIDRE WAS SHAKEN. WHAT she wanted was the peace she’d had a week earlier, when all that her life had asked of her was that she look after herself and meet the obligations of her career. She might have been alone as a result of this, but that was her preference. Her small existence was safer that way, and safety was paramount. That had been the case for years.

Now, however, the smooth-moving vehicle that had been her life had developed serious engine troubles. What to do about them was the issue that intruded upon her serenity.

So on her return to Polcare Cove, she’d left her car at the cottage and walked the remainder of the distance down the lane to the sea. There, she’d made for the path and picked her way along its stony ascent.

It was windy on the path and windier still on the cliff top. Daidre’s hair whipped round her face and flicked its ends into her eyes, which smarted. When going out onto the cliffs, she usually removed her contact lenses and wore her glasses instead. But she hadn’t taken her glasses when she’d set out in the morning, which had been a matter of vanity. She should have stopped into the cottage to get her glasses, but at the end of her day’s journey, it had seemed that only a vigorous climb to the cliff top could keep her fixed in present time.