“May I ask what you were doing there?” Bea said.
Jago seemed to consider the propriety either of her questions or of giving an answer. “Private matter,” he finally said. He applied himself to his sanding again.
“I’ll have to be the one making that decision,” Bea told him.
The door of the shaping room opened and Lew Angarrack came out. As before, he was attired as Jago was, and he had a breathing mask and eyewear slung round his neck. A circular section of skin round his eyes, mouth, and nose looked oddly pink against the white of the rest of him. He and Jago Reeth exchanged an unreadable look.
“Ah. You were in the vicinity of Polcare Cove as well, Mr. Angarrack,” Bea noted in a welcoming manner. She clocked the surprise on Jago Reeth’s face.
“When was this?” Angarrack removed the breathing mask and goggles from round his neck and set them on top of the surfboard that Jago was sanding.
“On the day of Santo Kerne’s fall. Or perhaps better stated, on the day of Santo Kerne’s murder. What were you doing there?”
“I wasn’t there,” he said. “Not in Polcare Cove.”
“I said in the vicinity.”
“Then you’re speaking of Buck’s Haven, which I suppose is arguably in the vicinity. I was surfing.”
A quick look went from Jago to Lew Angarrack. The latter man didn’t seem to notice it.
Bea said, “Surfing? And if I go back to have a look at those charts you lot use…What do you call them?”
“Isobar. And yes, if you go back and have a look you’ll see the swells were rubbish, the wind was wrong, and there was no point at all to going out.”
“So why did you?” DS Havers asked.
“I wanted to think. The sea’s always been the best place for me to do that. If I caught a few waves as well, that’d be a bonus. But catching waves wasn’t why I was there.”
“You were thinking about what?”
“Marriage,” he said.
“Yours?”
“I’m divorced. Years ago. The woman I’ve been seeing…” He shifted his weight. He looked like a man who’d had any number of sleepless nights, and Bea wondered how many she could realistically ascribe to a gentleman’s quandary about his marital state. “We’ve been together a few years. She wants to get married. I prefer things as they are. Or with a few changes.”
“What sort of changes?”
“What the hell difference does that make to you? It’s a case of been there, done that for both of us but she won’t see it that way.”
Jago Reeth made a noise, cousin to a snort. It seemed to indicate that he and Lew Angarrack were at one on this topic. He went on with his sanding, and Lew gave a look to what he was doing. He nodded as he ran his fingers along the part of the rail that Jago had already seen to.
“So you were…what?” Bea asked the surfer. “Bobbing in the waves, trying to decide whether to marry her or not?”
“No. I’d already decided that.”
“And your decision was…?”
He stepped away from the sawhorses and the board that Jago was working on. “I don’t see what that question has to do with anything. So let me get us to the point. If Santo Kerne fell from the cliff, he was either pushed or his climbing gear failed. Since my car was some distance away from Polcare Cove and since I was on the water, I couldn’t have pushed him, which leaves his equipment failing in some way. So I expect what you really want to know is who had access to his equipment. Have I got us there a bit quicker by using the direct route, Inspector Hannaford?”
“I find there’re usually half a dozen routes to the truth,” Bea told him. “But you can travel this one, if you’ve a mind to.”
“I had no idea where he kept his equipment,” Angarrack told her. “I still don’t know. I’d assume he kept his climbing kit at home.”
“It was in his car.”