“The same,” she said. Her lips felt stiff. “But I’m…so afraid.”
“We’re all afraid at the end of the day because there’s no guarantee of a single thing. That’s just how life is.”
She nodded numbly. A wave broke against the Sea Pit. She flinched.
“Alan,” she said, “I didn’t hurt…I wouldn’t have done anything to Santo.”
“Of course you wouldn’t. No more would I.”
BEA WAS ALONE IN the incident room when she logged on to the computer. She’d sent Barbara Havers back to Polcare Cove to haul Daidre Trahair into Casvelyn for a tête-à tête. If she’s not there, wait for an hour, Bea told the detective sergeant. If she doesn’t show up, call it a day and we’ll lasso her tomorrow morning.
The rest of the team she’d sent to their respective homes after a lengthy postmortem on the day’s developments. Have a decent meal and a good night’s sleep, she told them. Things will look different, clearer, and more possible in the morning. Or so she hoped.
She considered logging on to the computer a last resort, a giving way to Constable McNulty’s fanciful approach to detective work. She did it because, before she and DS Havers had left LiquidEarth earlier that day, she’d paused in front of the poster that had so fascinated the young constable-the surfer wiping out on the monstrous wave-and she’d said in reference to it, “So this is the wave that killed him?”
Both men were with her: Lew Angarrack and Jago Reeth. Angarrack was the one who said, “Who?”
“Mark Foo. Isn’t this Mark Foo on the Maverick’s wave that killed him?”
“True enough that Foo died at Maverick’s,” Lew said. “But that’s a younger kid. Jay Moriarty.”
“Jay Moriarty?”
“Yeah.” Angarrack had cocked his head curiously. “Why?”
“Mr. Reeth said this was Mark Foo’s last wave.”
Angarrack glanced at Jago Reeth. “How’d you come up with Foo?” he said. “If nothing else, the board’s all wrong.”
Jago came to the door that separated the work area from the reception area and showroom, where the poster was pinned, among others, to the wall. He leaned against the jamb and nodded at Bea. “Top marks,” he told her and said to Lew, “They’re doing the job they’re meant to be doing, taking note of everything the way they ought. Had to check, didn’t I? Hope you don’t take it personally, Inspector.”
Bea had been irritated. Everyone wanted a piece of a murder investigation if the victim was known to them. But she hated anything that wasted her time, and she disliked being tested in that way. Even more she disliked the way Jago Reeth watched her after this exchange, with that kind of knowing look men often adopted when forced to do business with a female whose position was superior to theirs.
She’d said to him, “Don’t do that again,” and left LiquidEarth with Barbara Havers. But now alone in the incident room, she wondered if Jago Reeth had made the misstatement about the poster because he was in truth testing the strength of the investigation or for another reason entirely. There were only two other possibilities that Bea could see: He’d misstated the surfer’s identity because he hadn’t known it in the first place; or he’d deliberately misstated the surfer’s identity to draw attention to himself. In either case, the question was, why? and she didn’t have a ready answer.
She spent the next ninety minutes floating round the vast chasm of the Internet. She searched out Moriarty and Foo, discovering that both of them were dead. Their names led to other names. So she followed the trail laid down by this list of faceless individuals until she finally had their faces on the computer screen as well. She studied them, hoping for some sort of sign as to what she was meant to do next, but if there was a connection between these big-wave riders and a sea cliff climbing death in Cornwall, she could not find it, and she gave up the effort.
She walked over to the china board. What did they have after these days of effort? Three pieces of equipment damaged, the condition of the body indicating he’d taken a single heavy punch in the face, fingerprints on Santo Kerne’s car, a hair caught up in his climbing equipment, the reputation of the boy himself, two vehicles in the approximate vicinity of his fall, and the fact that he had likely two-timed Madlyn Angarrack with a veterinarian from Bristol. That was it. There was nothing substantial they could work with and certainly nothing upon which they could base an arrest. It was more than seventy-two hours since the boy had died, and there wasn’t a cop alive who didn’t know that every hour that passed without an arrest from the time of a murder made the case that much more difficult to solve.
Bea studied the names of the individuals who were involved, either directly or tangentially, in this murder. It seemed to her that at one time or another, everyone who knew him had had access to Santo Kerne’s climbing equipment, so there was little point to going in that direction. Thus, what Bea appeared to be left with was the motive behind the crime.
Sex, power, money, she thought. Hadn’t they always been the triumvirate of motives? Perhaps they were not generally obvious to the investigator in the initial stages of an enquiry, but didn’t they turn up eventually? Look at jealousy, anger, revenge, and avarice, just as a start. Couldn’t you trace each one of them back to a progenitor of sex, power, or money? And if that was the case, how did those three originating motives apply in this situation?
Bea took the only next step she could think to take. She made a list. On it she wrote the names that seemed probable to her at this juncture, and next to each she logged that individual’s possible motive. She came up with Lew Angarrack avenging a daughter’s broken heart (sex); Jago Reeth avenging a surrogate granddaughter’s broken heart (sex again); Kerra Kerne eliminating her brother in order to inherit all of Adventures Unlimited (power and money); Will Mendick hoping to make an inroad into Madlyn Angarrack’s affections (there was sex once more); Madlyn operating from a hell-hath-no-fury perspective (sex yet again); Alan Cheston desiring a more significant handhold on Adventures Unlimited (power); Daidre Trahair putting an end to being the Other Woman by ridding herself of the man (more sex).
So far, the parents of Santo Kerne didn’t seem to have a motive to do away with their own son, nor did Tammy Penrule. What, then, was she left with? Bea wondered. Motives aplenty, opportunity aplenty, and the means at hand. The sling was cut and then rewrapped with Santo Kerne’s identifying tape. Two chock stones were…
Perhaps the chock stones were the key. Since strands of heavy wire formed the cable that made it, it would require a special tool to cut. Bolt cutters, perhaps. Cable cutters. Find that tool and she would find the killer? It was the best possibility she had.
What was notable, though, was the leisurely nature of the crime. The killer was relying upon the fact that the boy would use the sling or one of the damaged chock stones eventually, but time was not of the essence. Nor was it necessary to the killer that the boy die in an instant since he might have used the sling and the chock stone on a much simpler climb. He might only have fallen and been hurt, requiring the killer to come up with another plan.
Thus they weren’t looking for someone desperate, perpetrator of a crime of passion. They were looking for someone crafty. Craftiness always suggested women. As did the approach that had been used in this crime. Invariably, when women killed, they did not use a hands-on method.
That line of thought shot her directly back to Madlyn Angarrack, to Kerra Kerne, and to Daidre Trahair. Which in turn made her wonder where the bloody hell the vet had taken herself to for the day. That, in turn, led her inevitably to consider Thomas Lynley and his presence at Polcare Cove that morning, which took her over to the telephone to punch in the number of the mobile she’d given him.