“They exaggerate, I’m afraid.”
“Do they? What other secrets are you keeping?”
“Roller Derby,” she told him. “Are you familiar with that? It’s an American sport featuring frightening women bashing one another about on in-line skates.”
“Good Lord.”
“We’ve a fledging team in Bristol and I’m absolute hell on wheels as a jammer. Far more ruthless on my blades than I am with my darts. We’re Boudica’s Broads, by the way, and I’m Kick-arse Electra. We all have suitably threatening monikers.”
“You never cease to surprise, Dr. Trahair.”
“I like to consider that part of my charm. What have you got, then?” with a nod at his package.
“Ah. You’re very well met as things turn out. May I stow this in your car? It’s the replacement glass for the window I broke at your cottage. And the tools to fix it as well.”
“However did you know the size?”
“I’ve been out there to measure.” He cocked his head in the vague direction of her cottage, far north of the town. “I had to go inside again, finding you gone,” he admitted. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“I trust you didn’t break another window to do so.”
“Didn’t have to with the first one broken. Best to get it repaired before someone else discovers the damage and avails himself of…whatever you’ve got cached away within.”
“Little enough,” she said, “unless someone wants to nick my dartboard.”
“Would they only,” he replied, fervently, at which she chuckled. He said, “So now that we’ve met, may I stow this in your car?”
She led him to it. She’d left the Vauxhall in the same spot where she’d left it on the previous day, in the car park across from Toes on the Nose, which was hosting another gathering of surfers, although this time they stood about outside, gazing vaguely towards St. Mevan Beach. From the vantage point of the car park, the Promontory King George Hotel squared off some three hundred yards away. She pointed the structure out to Lynley. That was where Santo Kerne came from, she told him. Then she said, “You didn’t mention murder, Thomas. You must have known last night, but you said nothing.”
“Why do you assume I knew?”
“You went off with that detective in the afternoon. You’re one yourself. A detective, that is. I can’t think she didn’t tell you. Brotherhood of police and all that.”
“She told me,” he admitted.
“Am I a suspect?”
“We all are, myself included.”
“And did you tell her…?”
“What?”
“That I knew?or at least recognised?Santo Kerne?”
He took his time about answering and she wondered why. “No,” he said at last. “I didn’t tell her.”
“Why?”
He didn’t reply to this. Instead he said, “Ah. Your car,” as they reached it.
She wanted to press him for an answer, but she also didn’t much want the answer because she wasn’t sure what she’d do with it when she got it. She fumbled in her bag for her keys. The paperwork she was carrying from the Watchman slipped from her grasp and slid onto the tarmac. She said, “Damn,” as it soaked up rainwater. She started to squat to gather it up.
Lynley said, “Let me,” and ever the gentleman, he set down his package and bent to retrieve it.
Ever the cop as well, he glanced at it and then at her. She felt herself colouring.
He said, “Hoping for a miracle, are you?”
“My social life has been rather bleak for the past few years. Everything helps, I find. May I ask why you didn’t tell me, Thomas?”
“Tell you what?”
“That Santo Kerne had been murdered. It can’t have been privileged information. Max Priestley knew it.”
He handed her the printouts she’d made from the Internet and picked up his own package as she unlocked the Vauxhall’s boot. “And Max Priestley is?”