“Then let’s carry on.”
THE REACTION TO THE day’s events that stayed with Bea Hannaford the longest was the one that led her towards looking for someone to blame. She began with Ray. He seemed the most logical source of the difficulties that had resulted in a killer’s being able to walk blithely away from a murder charge. She told herself that had Ray only sent her the MCIT blokes she’d needed from the very beginning, she would not have had to rely on the TAG team he had sent her, men whose expertise was limited to heavy lifting and not to the finer points of a homicide investigation. She also would not have had to rely on Constable McNulty as part of that team, a man whose mad release of critical information to the dead boy’s family had put the police in a position of having virtually nothing that was known only to the killer and to themselves. Sergeant Collins, at least, she could live with, as he’d never left the station long enough to cause trouble. And as for DS Havers and Thomas Lynley…Bea wanted to blame them for something as well, if only for their infuriating loyalty to each other, but she didn’t have the heart to do so. Aside from withholding information about Daidre Trahair, which hadn’t turned out to be germane to the case anyway despite her own stubborn beliefs in the matter, they’d only done as she’d requested, more or less.
What she didn’t really want to consider was how everything came down to her in the end because she was, after all, in charge of the investigation and she had maintained a pigheaded position on more than one topic, from Daidre Trahair’s culpability to her own insistence upon an incident room here in the town and not where Ray had told her it should be, which was where incident rooms generally were, which was also where more adequate personnel were stationed. And she’d held firm to that desire to work in Casvelyn and not elsewhere simply because Ray had told her she was wrong to do so.
So while it all came down to Ray in the end, it also came down to her. This sort of thing put her future on the line.
No case to present. Were there four worse words? Oh, perhaps, our marriage is over were equally bad and God knew enough coppers heard those words spoken by a spouse who couldn’t take the life of a cop’s partner any longer. But no case to present meant leaving a bereaved family in the lurch, with no one brought to justice. It meant despite the long hours, the slog, the sifting through data, the forensics reports, the interviews, the discussions, the arranging of this piece that way and that piece this way, there was nothing left to do save begin the entire process again and hope for a different result or to leave the case open and declare it cold. Only how could it be cold, really, when they knew very well who the killer was and he was going to walk away? That was hardly a cold case. A cold case still shone with a glimmer of hope should something more turn up, whereas this case shone not in the slightest. The regional force might well ask her what she needed to make things right in Casvelyn, but that was more or less in her dreams because what the regional force were far more likely to ask was how she’d cocked this up so badly.
Ray was how, she told herself. Ray had no interest in her success. He was out to get her for almost fifteen years of estrangement, no matter that he’d brought them about himself.
For want of another direction, she told the team to start sifting through the data again, to see what they could come up with to pin Jago Reeth, aka Jonathan Parsons, to the wall of murder charge. What, she asked them, did they have that could be handed to the CPS, that could light the fire beneath those Crown prosecutors and set them off? There had to be something. So they’d begin this process on the following day and in the meantime they should all go home and get a decent night’s rest because they’d not be sleeping much till they had this matter sorted. Then she followed her own prescription.
When she got to Holsworthy, she opened the cupboard in which she kept her brooms, her mops, and also her wines. She chose a bottle at random and carried it to the kitchen. Red, she discovered. Shiraz. Something from South Africa called Old Goats Roam in Villages. That sounded interesting. She couldn’t recall when or where she’d bought it, but she was fairly certain she’d made the purchase solely because of the name and the label.
She opened it, poured herself a brimming mug, and she sat at the table where her position forced her to contemplate her calendar. This proved to be as depressing as thinking about the last six days, once she considered her most recent Internet date, which had occurred nearly four weeks previously. An architect. He’d looked good on the screen and he’d sounded good on the phone. A bit of chit and a bit of chat and nervous laughter and all that rubbish but that was to be expected, right? After all, this wasn’t the normal way men and women met, whatever went for normal these days, because she didn’t know any longer. A cup of coffee, perhaps? they’d asked each other. A drink somewhere? Certainly, fine. He’d showed up with photos of his holiday home, more photos of his holiday boat, extra photos of his holiday on skis, and additional photos of his car, which may or may not have been a vintage Mercedes, because by the time they’d got to it, Bea hadn’t cared. Me, me, me, his conversation had declared. All me, baby, and all the time. She’d wanted either to weep or to sleep. By the end of the evening, she’d had two martinis and she shouldn’t have driven herself anywhere, but the desire to flee had overcome her sense, so she’d puttered carefully along the road and prayed she’d not get stopped. He’d said to her with an affable smile, “Hell. Talked only about myself, didn’t I? Well, next time…,” and she’d thought, Won’t be a next time, darling. Which was what she’d thought of all of them.
God, how wretched. This couldn’t be how life was meant to be lived. And now…she couldn’t even dredge up his name, just the moniker she’d given him, Boat Wanker, which distinguished him from all the other wankers. Was there a way, she wondered, to find a man in her age group without baggage, or a man who might be a person first and a profession leading up to the acquisition of countless possessions second? She was beginning to think not, unless that man was one of a score of divorcés she’d also met, blokes with nothing to their names but a heap of a car, a bed-sit, and a mountain of credit card bills. Yet there had to be something in between those two extremes of male availability. Or was this how one’s remaining years were intended to go when an unmarried woman reached what had once been coyly referred to as “a certain age”?
Bea downed her wine. She ought to eat, she thought. She wasn’t sure if there was anything in the fridge, but certainly she could rustle up a tin of soup. Or perhaps a few of those beef sticks Pete liked for snacks? An apple? Perhaps. A jar of peanut butter? Well, certainly there was Marmite to spread on mouldy bread. This was England, after all.
She dragged herself to her feet. She opened the fridge. She stared into its cold and heartless depths. There was sticky toffee sponge, she discovered, so she could check pudding off her menu list. And far in the back was an old minced beef and onion roll. This could do as a main course. Now for the starter…? Perhaps Pot Noodle? In the veg department, there had to be a tin of something…Chickpeas? Carrots and turnips? Bea wondered what she’d been thinking when she’d last done the shopping. Probably nothing, she decided. She’d likely been pushing the trolley along the aisles without an idea in her head as to what she might cook. The thought of proper nutrition for Pete had probably prompted a spontaneous visit to the market, but once there, she’d got distracted by something like a call on her mobile and the end result was…this.