“Not for that.” He indicated Hannaford with a nod towards the cottage. “For not giving her the information from Falmouth. You could have done. You ought to have done. Both of us know that. Thank you.”
“I like to stay consistent.” She drew in deeply on her cigarette before she tossed it to the ground. She removed a bit of tobacco from her tongue. “Why develop a respect for authority at the eleventh hour, if you know what I mean?”
He smiled. “So you see?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t see. At least I don’t see what you want me to see. She’s a liar, sir. That makes her dirty. We came here to take her in for questioning. More, if we need to.”
“More? An arrest? For what? It seems to me that if she was having an affair with this boy, the motive to kill him sits squarely on someone else.”
“Not necessarily. And please don’t tell me you don’t know that.” She glanced at the cottage. Hannaford was gone from view, now at the seaside windows on the west end of the building. Havers drew a deep breath. She coughed a smoker’s cough.
“You’ve got to give up tobacco,” he told her.
“Right. Tomorrow. In the meantime, we have a bit of a problem.”
“Come with me to Newquay.”
“What? Why?”
“Because I’ve got a lead on this case and that’s where it is. Santo Kerne’s father was involved in a death some thirty years ago. I think it needs to be checked into.”
“Santo Kerne’s father? Sir, you’re avoiding.”
“Avoiding what?”
“You know.” She cocked her head at the cottage.
“Havers, I’m not. Come with me to Newquay.” The plan sounded so sensible to him. It even had the flavour of old times: the two of them doing some digging around, talking about leads, tossing round possibilities. Suddenly, he wanted the sergeant with him.
“I can’t do that, sir,” Havers said.
“Why not?”
“First of all, because I’m here on loan to DI Hannaford. And second…” She drove her hand through her sandy hair, badly cut as always, and straight as the route of a martyr’s path to heaven. It was filled, as usual, with static electricity. Much of it stood on end. “Sir, how do I say this to you?”
“What?”
“This. You’ve been through the worst.”
“Barbara?”
“No. You’ve bloody well got to listen to me. You lost your wife to murder. You lost your child. For God’s sake, you had to shut off their life support.”
He closed his eyes. Her hand grabbed his arm and held it firmly.
“I know this is hard. I know it’s horrible.”
“No,” he murmured, “you don’t. You can’t.”
“All right. I don’t, and I can’t. But what happened to Helen ripped your world apart and no one?bloody no one, sir?walks away from something like that with his head on straight.”
He looked at her then. “You’re saying I’m mad? Have we come to that?”
She released his arm. “I’m saying you’re badly wounded. You’re not coming at this from a position of strength because you can’t and to expect anything else of yourself is just bloody wrong. I don’t know who this woman is or why she’s here or if she’s Daidre Trahair or someone who’s claiming to be Daidre Trahair. But the fact remains that when someone lies in the middle of a murder investigation, that’s what the cops look at. So the question is, Why don’t you want to? I think we both know the answer to that.”
“What would that be?”
“You’re using your lordship voice. I know what that means: You want distance, and you usually get it. Well, I’m not giving it to you, sir. I’m here, standing directly in your face, and you have to look at what you’re doing and why. And if you can’t cope with the thought of doing it, you have to look at that as well.”