“Yes,” Lynley said. “I know. He apparently believed he knew who’d left his son in the sea cave.”
“Right. But he couldn’t get the police to move on the killer. No evidence, they told him. No evidence, no witness, and no one talking no matter how much pressure was applied wherever…There was literally nothing they could do. So he hired his own team, and when they failed, he hired another, and when they failed, he hired another and then another. He finally moved to the cove permanently…” Larson considered a photo on the wall?an aerial view of Exeter?as if this would take him back in time. “I think it must have been two years after Jamie’s death. Perhaps three? He said he wanted to be there to remind people that the murder?he always called it a murder, no matter what?had gone unpunished. He accused the police of botching the matter from start to finish. He was…obsessed, frankly. But I can’t fault him for that. I didn’t then and I don’t now. Still, he wasn’t bringing in any money to the business and while I could have carried him for a time, he began to…Well, he called it ‘borrowing.’ He was maintaining a house and a family?there are three other children, all of them daughters?here in Exeter, he was maintaining a house in Pengelly Cove, and he was orchestrating a series of investigations with people wanting to be paid for their time and effort. Things got too much for him. He needed money and he took it.” Behind his desk, Larson steepled the fingers of his hands. “I felt awful,” he said, “but my choices were clear: to let Jon run us into the ground or to call him on what he was doing. I chose. It’s not pretty, but I didn’t see I had a choice.”
“Embezzlement.”
Larson held up a hand. “I couldn’t go that far. Couldn’t and wouldn’t, not after what had happened to the poor sod. But I told him he’d have to hand over the business, as it was the only way I could see to save it. He wasn’t going to stop.”
“Stop?”
“Trying to get the killer brought to justice.”
“The police thought it was a prank gone very bad, not a premeditated murder. Not a murder at all.”
“It certainly could have been, but Jon didn’t see it that way. He adored that boy. He was devoted enough to all the children, but he was particularly mad about Jamie. He was the sort of dad we all want to be and we all wish we had, if you know what I mean. They deep-sea-fished, they skied, they surfed, they backpacked in Asia. When Jon said the boy’s name, he just blazed with pride.”
“I’ve heard the boy was…” Lynley sought a word. “I’ve heard he was rather difficult for the local children in Pengelly Cove.”
Larson drew his eyebrows together. They were thin brows, rather womanly. Lynley wondered if the man had them waxed. “I don’t know about that. He was essentially a good kid. Oh, perhaps he was a bit full of himself, considering the family probably had a good deal more money than the village children’s families, and considering the preferential treatment he got from his dad. But what boy that age isn’t full of himself anyway?”
Larson went on to complete the story, one that took a turn that was sad but not unusual, given what Lynley knew about families who faced the anguish of a child’s untimely death. Not long after Parsons lost the business, his wife divorced him. She returned to university as a mature student, completed her education, and ultimately became head teacher at the local comprehensive. Larson thought she’d remarried as well, somewhere along the line, but he wasn’t certain. Someone at the comprehensive would likely be able to tell him.
“What became of Jonathan Parsons?” Lynley asked.
He was still in Pengelly Cove, as far as Larson knew.
“And the daughters?” Lynley asked.
Larson hadn’t a clue.