Careless in Red

“I’ve heard the boy was…” Lynley sought a word. “I’ve heard he was rather difficult for the local children in Pengelly Cove.”

Larson drew his eyebrows together. They were thin brows, rather womanly. Lynley wondered if the man had them waxed. “I don’t know about that. He was essentially a good kid. Oh, perhaps he was a bit full of himself, considering the family probably had a good deal more money than the village children’s families, and considering the preferential treatment he got from his dad. But what boy that age isn’t full of himself anyway?”

Larson went on to complete the story, one that took a turn that was sad but not unusual, given what Lynley knew about families who faced the anguish of a child’s untimely death. Not long after Parsons lost the business, his wife divorced him. She returned to university as a mature student, completed her education, and ultimately became head teacher at the local comprehensive. Larson thought she’d remarried as well, somewhere along the line, but he wasn’t certain. Someone at the comprehensive would likely be able to tell him.

“What became of Jonathan Parsons?” Lynley asked.

He was still in Pengelly Cove, as far as Larson knew.

“And the daughters?” Lynley asked.

Larson hadn’t a clue.

DAIDRE HAD SPENT PART of her early morning thinking about allegiance. She knew that some people firmly believed in the principle of every man for himself. Her problem had always been an inability to adhere to that principle.

She considered the idea of what she owed other people versus what she owed herself. She thought about duty, but she also thought about vengeance. She considered the ways in which “getting even” was merely a questionable euphemism for “learning nothing.” She tried to decide whether there actually were life lessons to be learned or whether life was all a mindless tumble through the years without rhyme or reason.

She ultimately faced the truth that she had no answer to any of the larger philosophical questions about life. So she decided to take the action that was directly in front of her, and she went into Casvelyn to fulfill DI Ha

The inspector fetched her personally from reception. Ha

It was clear that not a lot of interviewing went on in Casvelyn. Past a wall of what seemed to be boxes of toilet tissue and kitchen towels, a disabled card table of three straight legs and one with a bulbous elbow held a small cassette recorder that looked dusty enough to seed vegetables on. There were no chairs to speak of, just a three-step ladder, although an angry shout from Ha

Daidre wanted to ask the purpose of making a recording of their conversation, but she knew the question would be taken as disingenuous. So she sat and waited for what would happen next, which was DS Havers’s digging a small spiral notebook from the pocket of her donkey jacket, which, for some reason, she had not removed despite the uncomfortable tropical temperature in the building.

DI Ha

There seemed only one ma

“I’d think that was rather obvious,” Ha

“Actually, it’s not obvious at all.”

“Then it will be, soon enough, my dear.” Ha

“What about him?”

“Whatever you know.”

This was all routine: the first few moves in the cat-and-mouse of an interrogation. Daidre answered as simply as she could. “I know that he died in a fall from the north cliff at Polcare Cove.”

Ha

DS Havers wrote with a pencil, Daidre saw. It scritched against the notebook paper and the sound-normally i

Daidre said, “I hadn’t got a good look at him. There wasn’t time.”

“But you checked for vital signs, didn’t you? You were first on the scene. How could you check for signs of life without looking at him?”

“One doesn’t need to look at the victim’s face to check for signs of life, Inspector.”

“That’s a coy reply. How realistic is it to check for vital signs without looking at someone? As the first person on the scene and even in the fading daylight-”

“I was second on the scene,” Daidre interrupted. “Thomas Lynley was first.”

“But you wanted to see the body. You asked to see the body. You insisted. You didn’t take Superintendent Lynley’s word for it that the boy was dead.”

“I didn’t know he was Superintendent Lynley,” Daidre told her. “I arrived at the cottage and found him inside. He might have been a housebreaker for all I knew. He was a total stranger, completely unkempt, as you saw for yourself, looking rather wild and claiming there was a body in the cove and he needed to be taken somewhere to make a phone call about it. It hardly made sense to me to agree to drive him anywhere without checking first to make sure he was telling me the truth.”

“Or checking yourself to discover who the boy was. Did you think it might be Santo?”

“I had no idea who it was going to be. How would I have? I wanted to see if I could help in some way.”

“In what way?”

“If he was injured-”

“You’re a veterinarian, Dr. Trahair. You’re not an emergency physician. How did you expect to help him?”

“Injuries are injuries. Bones are bones. If I could help-”

“And when you saw him, you knew who he was. You were quite familiar with the boy, weren’t you.”

“I knew who Santo Kerne was, if that’s what you mean. This isn’t a heavily populated area. Most people know each other eventually, if only by sight.”

“But I expect you knew him a little bit more intimately than by sight.”

“Then you’d expect incorrectly.”

“That’s not what’s been reported, Dr. Trahair. Indeed, I have to tell you that’s not what’s been witnessed.”

Daidre swallowed. She realised that DS Havers had ceased writing, and she wasn’t sure when that had occurred. This told her she’d been less aware than she needed to be, and she wanted to get back on the footing she’d begun with. She said to DS Havers, past the heavy pounding of her own heart, “New Scotland Yard. Are you the only officer from London here to work on this case? Aside from Superintendent Lynley, I mean.”