Careless in Red

Her explanation apparently seemed reasonable to the newsman. He tilted his head towards his computer terminal. “Have at it, then. Print up what you find, because we may well use it. I’ve work to do. Lily’ll keep you company.” He started to leave the room but paused at the door, one hand on the jamb. “You haven’t seen me,” he said.

She’d moved to the terminal. She looked up, frowning. “What?”

“You haven’t seen me, should anyone ask. Are we clear on that?”

“You do know what that sounds like, don’t you?”

“Frankly, I don’t care what it sounds like.”

He left her, then, and she mulled over what he’d said. Only animals, she concluded, were safe for one’s devotion.

She logged onto the Internet and then a search engine. She typed in Thomas Lynley’s name.

DAIDRE FOUND HIM WAITING at the bottom of Belle Vue Lane. He looked completely different from the bearded stranger she’d driven into town, but she had no trouble recognising him since she’d spent over an hour gazing on a dozen or more news photos of him, generated by the investigation of a serial killing in London and by the tragedy that had supervened in his life. She now knew why she had seen him as an injured man carrying a tremendous burden. She merely didn’t know what to do with her knowledge. Nor with the rest of it: who he actually was, what comprised his background, the title, the money, the trappings of a world so far different from her own that they might have come from different planets and not merely from different circumstances in different parts of the very same county.

He’d had his hair cut, and he’d had a shave. He wore a rain jacket over a collarless shirt and pullover. He’d bought sturdy shoes and corduroy trousers. He carried a waxed rain hat in his hand. Not, she thought grimly, exactly the getup one expected to see on a belted earl. But that’s what he was. Lord Whoever with a murdered wife, done in on the street by a twelve-year-old boy. She’d been pregnant as well. It was little wonder to Daidre that Lynley was among the injured. The real miracle was that the man was actually capable of functioning at all.

When she pulled to the kerb, he got into the car. He’d bought a few items from the pharmacy as well, he told her, indicating a bag he brought forth from the capacious i

“You’ve no need to account to me,” she told him. “I’m only glad you had enough funds.”

He gestured to his clothes. “On sale. End of the season. A real bargain. I’ve even managed”-he reached into the pocket of his trousers and brought forth a few notes and a handful of coins-“to bring you change,” he said. “I never thought I’d…” He drifted off.

“What?” She stuffed the notes and coins into the unused ashtray. “Shop for yourself?”

He looked at her, clearly assessing her words. “No,” he said. “I never thought I’d enjoy it.”

“Ah. Well. It’s retail therapy. Absolutely guaranteed to lift one’s spirits. Women know this at birth, somehow. Men have to learn it.”

He was quiet for a moment, and she caught him doing it another time, looking out of the car, through the windscreen, at the street. In a different place and a different time. She heard her words again and bit the inside of her lip. She hastened to add, “Shall we top off your experience with a coffee somewhere?”

He considered this. He answered slowly. “Yes. I think I’d like a coffee.”

DETECTIVE INSPECTOR HANNAFORD WAS waiting for them at the Salthouse I

She knocked on Daidre’s window and, when it was lowered, said, “I’d like a word. Both of you, please.” And then directly to Lynley, “You’re looking more human today. It’s an improvement.” She turned and headed back into the i

Lynley and Daidre followed. They found Ha

She spoke expansively to Lynley, which made him immediately suspicious about her motives. When cops were friendly, as he well knew, they were friendly for a reason and it wasn’t necessarily a good one. Where, she asked him, had he begun his coastal walk on the previous day? Would he show her on the map? See, the path’s well marked with a green dotted line, and if he’d be so kind as to point out the spot…It was all a matter of tying up the loose ends of his story, she said. He would know the dance, of course.

Lynley brought out his reading spectacles and leaned over the road atlas. The truth of the matter was that he hadn’t the slightest idea where he’d begun his walk on the South-West Coast Path on the previous day. If there had been a landmark, he hadn’t taken note of it. He remembered the names of several villages and hamlets he’d come upon along the coast, but as to when on his walk he’d passed through them, he couldn’t say. He also didn’t see that it mattered, although DI Ha

Ha

The vet stirred next to Lynley. “I did tell you I came down from Bristol.”

“You did indeed. Mind showing me the route? C’n I assume you follow the same route each time, by the way? Straightforward matter and all that?”

“Not necessarily.”

Lynley noted how Daidre drew out the final word, and he knew that Ha

Lynley took a moment to evaluate the two women. From head to toe, they couldn’t have been more dissimilar: Ha

She wasn’t acting motherly now. She was waiting for an answer to her question as Daidre looked at the atlas to explain the route she’d followed from Bristol to Polcare Cove. Lynley knew why the cop was asking. He wondered if Daidre was working that out as well before she replied.

The M5 down to Exeter, she said. Over to Okehampton and northwest from there. There was no completely easy way to get to Polcare Cove, she pointed out. Sometimes she did the Exeter route, but other times she worked her way over from Tiverton.

Ha

“What d’you mean?” Daidre asked.

“One can’t leap from Okehampton to Polcare Cove, Dr. Trahair. You didn’t come by helicopter from there, did you? What was the route you took? The exact route, please.”

Lynley saw a flush rise up the vet’s neck. She was lucky that her skin was lightly freckled. Had it not been, she would have coloured to puce.