Elizabeth George: Careless in Red

“New Scotland Yard?”

Thomas Lynley hesitated once again. Then he swallowed. “Until recently,” he said. “Yes. New Scotland Yard.”

“OF COURSE I KNOW who he is,” Bea Hannaford said tersely to her former husband. “I don’t live under a stone.” It was just like Ray to make the pronouncement as if from on high. Impressed with himself, he was. Devon and Cornwall Constabulary. Middlemore. Mr. Assistant Chief Constable. A pencil pusher, really, as far as Bea was concerned. Never had a promotion affected anyone’s demeanour so maddeningly. “The only question is, what the hell is he doing here, of all places?” she went on. “Collins tells me he isn’t even carrying identification with him. So he could be anyone, couldn’t he?”

“Could be. But he isn’t.”

“How d’you know? Have you met him?”

“I don’t need to have met him.”

Another indication of self-satisfaction. Had he always been like this and had she never seen it? Had she been so blinded by love or whatever it had been that had propelled her into marriage with this man? She hadn’t been ageing and Ray her only chance at having a home and family. She’d been twenty-one. And they had been happy, hadn’t they? Until Pete, they’d had their lives in order: one child only-a daughter-and that had been something of a disappointment, but Ginny had given them a grandchild soon enough into her own marriage and she was at this moment on her way to giving them more. Retirement had been beckoning them from the future and all the things they planned to do with retirement had been beckoning as well… And then there was Pete, a complete surprise. Pleasant to her, unpleasant to Ray. The rest was history.

“Actually,” Ray said in that way he had of outing himself, which had always made her forgive him in the end for his worst displays of self-importance, “I saw in the paper that he comes from round here. His family are in Cornwall. The Penzance area.”

“So he’s come home.”

“Hmm. Yes. Well, after what happened, who can blame him for wanting to be done with London?”

“Bit far from Penzance, here, though.”

“Perhaps home and family didn’t give him what he needed. Poor sod.”

Bea glanced at Ray. They were walking from the cottage to the car park, skirting his Porsche, which he’d left-foolishly, she thought, but what did it matter since she wasn’t responsible for the vehicle-half on and half off the lane. His voice was moody and his face was moody. She could see that in the dying light of the day.

“It touched you, all that, didn’t it?” she said.

“I’m not made of stone, Beatrice.”

He wasn’t, that. The problem for her was that his all too compelling humanity made hating him an impossibility. And she would have vastly preferred to hate Ray Hannaford. Understanding him was far too painful.

“Ah,” Ray said. “I think we’ve located our missing child.” He indicated the cliff rising ahead of them to their right, beyond the Polcare Cove car park. The coastal path climbed in a narrow stripe sliced into the rising land, and descending from the top of the cliff were two figures. The one in front was lighting the way through the rain and the gloom with a torch. Behind him a smaller figure picked out a route among the rain-slicked stones that jutted from the ground where the path had been inadequately cleared.

“That bloody child,” Bea said. “He’s going to be the death of me.” She shouted, “Get the hell down from there, Peter Hannaford. I told you to stay in the car and I damn well meant it and you bloody well know it. And you, Constable. What the hell are you doing, letting a child-”

“They can’t hear you, love,” Ray said. “Let me.” He bellowed Pete’s name. He gave an order only a fool would have failed to obey. Pete scurried down the remainder of the path and had his excuse ready by the time he joined them.

“I didn’t go near the body,” he said. “You said I wasn’t meant to go near and I didn’t. Mick c’n tell you that. All I did was go up the path with him. He was-”

“Stop splitting hairs with your mother,” Ray told him.

Bea said, “You know how I feel when you do that, Pete. Now say hello to your father and get out of here before I wallop you the way you need to be walloped.”

“Hullo,” Pete said. He stuck out his hand for a shake. Ray accommodated him. Bea looked away. She wouldn’t have allowed a handshake. She would have grabbed the boy and kissed him.

Mick McNulty came up behind them. “Sorry, Guv,” he said. “I didn’t know-”

“No harm done.” Ray put his hands on Pete’s shoulders and firmly turned him in the direction of the Porsche. “I thought we’d do Thai food,” he said to his son.

Pete hated Thai food, but Bea left them to sort that out for themselves. She shot Pete a look that he could not fail to read: Not here, it said. He made a face.

Ray kissed Bea on the cheek and said, “Take care of yourself.”

She said, “Mind how you go, then. Roads’re slick.” And then because she couldn’t help herself, “I didn’t say before. You’re looking well, Ray.”

He replied, “Lot of good it’s doing me,” and walked off with their son. Pete stopped at Bea’s car. He brought forth his football shoes. Bea didn’t call out to tell him to let them be.

Instead she said to Constable McNulty, “So. What’ve we got?”

McNulty gestured towards the top of the cliff. “Rucksack up there for SOCO to bag. I expect it’s the kid’s.”

“Anything else?”

“Evidence of how the poor sod went down. I left it for SOCO as well.”

“What is it?”

“There’s a stile up top, some ten feet or so back from the edge of the cliff. Marks the far west end of a cow pasture up there. He’d put a sling round it, which was supposed to be what his carabiner and rope were fixed to for the abseil down the cliff.”

“What sort of sling?”

“Made of nylon webbing. Looks like fishing net if you don’t know what you’re looking at. It’s supposed to be a long loop. You drape it round a fixed object and each end is fastened with the carabiner, making the loop into a circle. You attach your rope to the carabiner and off you go.”

“Sounds straightforward.”

“Should have been. But the sling’s been taped together-presumably over a weak spot to strengthen it-and that’s exactly where it’s failed.” McNulty gazed back the way he’d come. “Bloody idiot. I can’t think why anyone’d just not get himself another sling.”

“What kind of tape was used for the repair?”

McNulty looked at her as if surprised by the question. “Electrical tape, this was.”

“Kept your digits off it?”

“’Course.”

“And the rucksack?”

“It was canvas.”

“I reckoned as much,” Bea said patiently. “Where was it? Why do you presume it was his? Did you have a look inside?”

“Next to the stile, so I reckon it was his all right. He probably carried his kit in it. Nothing in it now but a set of keys.”

“Car?”

“I reckon.”

“Did you have a look for it?”

“Thought it best to report back to you.”

“Think another time, Constable. Get back up there and find me the car.”

He looked towards the cliff. His expression told her how little he wanted to make a second climb up there in the rain. Well, that couldn’t be helped. “Up you go,” she told him pleasantly. “The exercise will do you a world of good.”

“Thought p’rhaps I ought to go by way of the road. It’s a few miles, but-”

“Up you go,” she repeated. “Keep an eye out along the trail as well. There may be footprints not already destroyed by the rain.” Or by you, she thought.