He looked anguished, an opportunity ripped from his hands. “I just wanted to know?”
“Where might we find your daughter?” she asked Lew Angarrack, waving McNulty impatiently to silence.
Lew finished his coffee and placed his mug on the card table. He said, “Why do you want Madlyn?”
“I should think that’s rather obvious.”
“As it happens, it’s not.”
“Former and potentially discarded lover of Santo Kerne, Mr. Angarrack? She’s got to be interviewed like everyone else.”
It was clear that Angarrack didn’t like the direction in which Bea intended to head, but he told her where she could find his daughter at her place of employment. Bea gave him her card, circling her mobile number. If he thought of anything else…
He nodded and returned to his work, shutting the door to the shaping room behind him. A moment later, the sound of an electric tool shrieked in the building again.
Jago Reeth remained with Bea and the constable. He said, casting a look over his shoulder, “One more thing…I got a conscious on this, so if you have a moment for ’nother word…” And when Bea nodded, he said, “I’d be chuffed if Lew didn’t know this, got me? The way things turned out, he’ll be dead cheesed off if he knows.”
“What?”
Jago shifted his weight. “Was me giving them the place. I know I prob’ly shouldn’t’ve. I saw that afterwards, but by then the bloody milk was spilt. Couldn’t exactly pour it back into the bottle when it was spread all over the floor, could I?”
“While I admire your adherence to your metaphor,” Bea told him, “perhaps you could make it more clear?”
“Santo and Madlyn. I go to the Salthouse Inn regular, in the afternoons. Have a mate I meet over there most days. Santo and Madlyn, they used my place then.”
“For sex?”
He didn’t look happy about making the admission. “Could have left them to sort things out on their own, but it seemed…I wanted them to be safe, see. Not in the backseat of a car somewhere. Not in…I don’t know.”
“Yet as his father owns a hotel…,” Bea pointed out.
Jago wiped his mouth on the back of his wrist. “All right. Yeah. There’s the rooms at the old Promontory King George, for what they’re worth. But that didn’t mean…the two of them there…I just…Oh hell. I couldn’t be sure he’d use what he needed to use to keep her safe, so I left them for him. Right by the bed.”
“Condoms.”
He looked moderately embarrassed, an old bloke unused to having such a frank conversation with someone he might otherwise have deemed a lady. One of the fairer sex, Bea thought. She could see this thought playing across his face. “He used ’em, but not every time, see.”
“And you know he used them because…?” Bea prompted.
He looked horrified. “Good God, woman.”
“I’m not sure God had much to do with this, Mr. Reeth. If you’d answer the question. Did you count them up before and after? Search them out in the rubbish? What?”
He looked miserable. “Both,” he said. “Bloody hell. I care about that girl. She’s got a good heart. Bit of a temper but a good heart. Way I saw it, it was going to happen between them anyways, so I might as well make certain it happened right.”
“Where would this be? Your house, I mean.”
“I’ve a caravan over in Sea Dreams.”
Bea glanced at Constable McNulty and he nodded. He knew the place. That was good. She said, “We may want to see it.”
“Reckoned as much.” He shook his head. “Young people. What’s consequences to them when they’re young?”