He was on his way back to Casvelyn, he told her. He’d made a day of Newquay, Zennor, and Pengelly Cove. To her question of how the dickens this got them to Daidre Trahair, whom she still wished to see, by the way, he told her a tale of adolescent surfers, adolescent sex, adolescent drugs, drink, parties, caves on the beach, and death. Rich kids, poor kids, and in-between kids, and the cops failing to solve a case despite someone grassing.
“About Ben Kerne,” Lynley told her. “His friends thought from the first that Dellen was the grass. This is Dellen Kerne. Ben’s father thinks so as well.”
“And this is relevant for what reason?” Bea asked wearily.
“I think the answer to that is in Exeter.”
“Are you heading there now?”
“Tomorrow,” he told her. He paused before saying, “I haven’t run into Dr. Trahair, by the way. Has she turned up?” He sounded far too casual for Bea’s liking. She wasn’t a fool.
“Not a sign of her. And may I tell you how little I like that?”
“It could mean anything. She may have gone back to Bristol.”
“Oh please. I don’t believe that for a moment.”
He was silent. That was enough of a response.
“I’ve sent your Sergeant Havers out there to bring her in if she’s slithered home,” Bea told him.
“She’s not my Sergeant Havers,” Lynley said.
“I’d not be so quick about saying that,” Bea said.
She’d not rung off from him for five minutes when her mobile chimed with Sergeant Havers herself ringing.
“Nothing,” was her brief report, mostly broken up by a terrible connection. “Sh’ll I wait longer? Can do, if you want. Not often that I get to smoke in peace and listen to the surf.”
“You’ve done your bit,” Bea said. “Shove off home, then. Your Superintendent Lynley’s heading towards the inn as well.”
“He’s not my Superintendent Lynley,” Havers told her.
“What is it with you two?” Bea asked and rang off before the sergeant could work up an answer.
She decided her last task before leaving for the day was to phone Pete and make mother noises about his clothing, his eating, his schoolwork, and football. She’d enquire about the dogs as well. And if by chance Ray answered the phone, she’d be polite.
Pete answered, though, saving her the trouble. He was all afire about Arsenal’s acquisition of a new player, someone with an indecipherable name from…Had he actually said the South Pole? No. He had to have said S?o Paolo.
Bea made the appropriate noises of enthusiasm and ticked football off her list of topics. She went though eating and schoolwork and was about to go on to clothing?he hated to be asked about his underwear, but the fact of the matter was that he would wear the same pair of undershorts for a week if she didn’t stay on top of him about it?when he said, “Dad wants you to tell him when the next Sports Day is at school, Mum.”
“I always tell him when the next Sports Day at school is,” she replied.
“Yeah, but I mean he wants to go with you, not come on his own.”
“He wants or you want?” Bea asked shrewdly.
“Well, it’d be nice, wouldn’t it? Dad’s all right.”
Ray was making further inroads, Bea thought. Well, she could do nothing about that just now. She said they would see, and she told Pete she loved him. He returned the sentiment and they rang off.
But his remarks about Ray sent Bea back to the computer, where this time she went to her dating site. Pete needed a permanent man about the house, and she believed she was ready for something more defined than dating and the occasional bonk when Pete was staying the night at Ray’s.