“I expect it’s you who went to Falmouth asking about me,” Daidre said to Havers.
Havers looked at her blankly, a good poker face. But Hannaford, surprisingly, gave away the game. She directed her attention suddenly, if briefly, to Havers, and there was something of speculation in her look. Daidre took this for surprise, and she drew a logical conclusion from it.
“And I expect Thomas Lynley?and not DI Hannaford?told you to do it.” She stated this flatly. She didn’t want to dwell on how she felt about the fact, and she had no need of a reply because she knew she was right.
What she did have a need for, on the other hand, was getting the police out of her life. Unfortunately, there was only one way to do this and it had to do with information: naming a name that would take them in a different direction. She found that she was willing to do that.
She turned to Hannaford. “You want Aldara Pappas,” she said. “You’ll find her at a place called Cornish Gold. It’s a cider farm.”
FINDING JONATHAN PARSONS’ FORMER wife ate up another ninety minutes of his time once Lynley left Rock Larson’s office. He began at the comprehensive, where he learned that Niamh Parsons had long ago become Niamh Triglia and had also, more recently, taken her pension. She’d lived for years not far from the school, but whether she was still at that location upon her retirement from education…Who could say? That was the limit to what they were able to tell him.
From there, he went to an address he unearthed through the simple means of browsing in the public library. As he’d suspected, the Triglias no longer resided in Exeter, but this was not a dead end. Showing his identification and questioning a few neighbours turned up their new place of abode. Like many others before them, they had headed for sunnier climes. Thankfully, this did not turn out to be the coast of Spain but rather the coast of Cornwall, which, while not atmospherically Mediterranean in climate, was the best the mainland of England had to offer in conditions that might be deemed temperate by those who were determinedly sanguine. The Triglias had been among these types. They lived in Boscastle.
This meant another long drive, but the day was pleasant and the time of year had not yet turned Cornwall into an elongated car park with occasional visual diversions. He made relatively good time to Boscastle, and soon enough he was hiking towards a steep lane of cottages which wound up from the ancient fishing harbour, an inlet protected by vast cliffs of slate and volcanic lava. What went for the high street came first in his climb?a few shops of unpainted stone that were dedicated to the tourist trade and a few more to meet the needs of the village residents?and after it came Old Street, the location of the Triglias’ home. This was nestled not far from an obelisk dedicated to the dead of two world wars. It was called Lark Cottage, and it was whitewashed like a Santorini hut, with thick mounds of heather growing in front and healthy-looking primroses planted in window boxes. Crisp white curtains hung at the windows, and green paint glimmered on the front door. He crossed a tiny bridge of slate that spanned a deep gutter in front of the building, and when he knocked, it was only a moment before an apron-wearing woman answered, her spectacles splattered with what seemed to be grease and her grey hair scraped back from her face and springing up from the crown of her head like a hirsute fountain.
“I’m doing crab cakes,” she said, seemingly apropos of her general appearance and her more specific harried demeanour. “Sorry, but I can’t be away from them for more than a moment.”
He said, “Mrs. Triglia?”