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?”