Fiancé? Kerra had thought. Kerra’s fiancé? Where was that coming from?

Before she’d been able to correct him, the cop had given them the information. Murder. Several pieces of Santo’s kit had been tampered with. The sling and two chock stones as well. The police were going to want to interview the family first.

Alan had said the expected: “You aren’t supposing one of the family…?” and managed to sound perplexed and outraged simultaneously.

Everyone who knew Santo would be interviewed, Constable McNulty told them. He appeared rather excited about this, and it had come to Kerra how tediously boring the policeman’s life must be in Casvelyn in the off-season, with three-quarters of the summer population gone and those who remained either in their houses huddling against the Atlantic storms or committing only the occasional minor traffic violation to break the monotony of a constable’s life. All of Santo’s belongings would need to be examined, the constable told them. A family history would be constructed, and-

That had been enough for Kerra. Family history? That would certainly be illuminating. A family history would show it all: bats in the belfry and skeletons in the closet, people who were permanently estranged and people who were just permanently strange.

All of this gave her another reason to ride. And then came Cadan and the conversation with Cadan, which left her feeling blamed.

After her words with him, she fetched her bike. Her father met her outside, Alan coming out behind him with an expression that said he’d passed along the information about Santo. So Alan didn’t need to mouth the words he knows although that’s what he did. Kerra wanted to tell him he’d had no right to tell her father anything. Alan wasn’t a member of the family.

Ben Kerne said to Kerra, “Where are you going? I’d like you to stay here.” He sounded exhausted. He looked it, too.

Did you fuck her again? was what Kerra wished to use as reply. Did she slip on her little red negligee and crook her finger and did you melt and not see anything else, not even that Santo is dead? Good way to forget for a few minutes, eh? Works a trick. Always has done.

But she said none of that although she was positively itching to flay him. She said, “I need a ride just now. I’ve got to-”

“You’re needed here.”

Kerra glanced at Alan. He was watching her. Surprisingly, he indicated by cocking his head in the direction of the road that she should ride, no matter her father’s desires. Although she didn’t want to be, she was grateful for this display of understanding. Alan was, in this at least, fully on her side.

“Does she need something from me?” Kerra asked her father.

He looked behind him, up at the windows of the family’s flat. The curtains of the master bedroom were blocking out the daylight. Behind them, Dellen was coping in her Dellen way: on the crushed spines of her near relations.

“She’s in black,” Kerra’s father said.

“That’ll doubtless be a large disappointment to any number of people,” Kerra replied.

Ben Kerne looked at her with eyes so anguished that for a moment Kerra regretted her words. Not his fault came to her. But at the same time there were things that were her father’s fault, not the least of which was that they were even talking about her mother and, in doing so, that they were reduced to using a carefully chosen set of words, like semaphores and they two distant communicators with a secret language all their own.

She sighed, an aggrieved party unwilling to apologise. That he, too, was aggrieved could not be allowed to count. She said, “Do you?”

“What?”

“Need something from me. Because she doesn’t. She’ll be wanting you. And no doubt vice versa.”

Ben made no reply. He went back into the hotel without another word, shouldering past Alan, who looked rather like a man trying to decipher the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Alan said, “A little harsh, that, Kerra. Don’t you think?”

The last thing Kerra wanted to show Alan was gratitude for his previous understanding, so she welcomed the criticism. She said, “If you’ve decided to remain at work here, you need to become a little more familiar with the mechanism of your employment, okay?”

Like her father, he looked struck. She was happy he felt the sting of her words. He said, “I’ve got it that you’re angry. But what I haven’t got is why. Not the anger part of it, but the afraid part of it that’s fueling the anger. I can’t suss that one. I’ve tried. I spent most of last night awake, trying.”

“Poor you,” she said.

“Kerra, none of this is like you. What’re you frightened about?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I’m not frightened at all. You’re trying to talk about subjects you don’t understand.”

“Then help me understand.”

“Not my job,” she said. “I warned you off.”

“You warned me off working here. This-you, what’s happening with you, and what happened to Santo-isn’t part of my employment.”

She smiled briefly. “Stay round, then. If you haven’t already, you’re soon to find out what’s part and parcel of your employment. Now if you’ll excuse me, I want a ride. I doubt you’ll still be here when I return.”

“Are you coming over tonight?”

She raised her eyebrows. “I think that part might be finished between us.”

“What are you saying? Something’s happened since yesterday. Beyond Santo, something’s happened.”

“Oh, I do know that.” She mounted her bike, gearing it to take the rise of the driveway, heading into town.

She coursed along the southeast edge of St. Mevan Down where unmowed grass bent heavily with a weight of raindrops and a few dogs romped, grateful for a respite in the rain. She, too, was grateful, and she decided she’d head roughly in the direction of Polcare Cove. She told herself she had no intention of going to the place where Santo had died, but if she ended up there by chance, she would consider it meant to be. She wouldn’t pay attention to the route. She would merely blast along the lanes as fast as she could, turning when she felt like turning, continuing straight on when she fancied that.

She knew she needed a source of energy to do the sort of ride she had in mind, however, so when she saw Casvelyn of Cornwall (County’s Number One Pasty) to the right on the corner of Burn View Lane, she coasted over to the bakery, a large operation that supplied pasties up and down the coast to restaurants, shops, pubs, and smaller bakeries unable to bake their own. The business comprised an industrial-size kitchen in the back and a shop in the front, with ten bakers working in one area and two shop assistants in the other.

Kerra leaned her bike against the front window, a stunning monument to pasties, bread loaves, pastry, and scones. She ducked inside, deciding in advance that she would have a steak-and-beer pasty and she’d eat it on her way out of town.

At the counter, she placed her order with a girl whose impressive thighs looked like the result of their owner having sampled the products far too often. The requested pasty was being bagged and rung up at the till when the other shop assistant emerged with a tray of fresh goods to go into the display case. Kerra looked up as the kitchen door swung closed. At the same moment as her glance fell on the girl with the tray, that girl’s glance fell upon Kerra. Her steps faltered. She stood expressionless with the tray extended in front of her.

“Madlyn,” Kerra said. It came to her much later how stupid she sounded. “I didn’t know that you worked here.”

Madlyn Angarrack went to one of the display cases and opened it, sliding fresh pasties from the tray she held. She said to the other girl, who was in the process of bagging Kerra’s purchase, “What sort is that, Shar?” Her voice was curt.

“Steak and beer.” Kerra was the one to answer. And then, “Madlyn, I was asking Cadan about you only twenty minutes ago. How long’ve you been-”