“Is that your ego speaking, Mr. Priestley?”
Priestley guffawed. “Believe me, Inspector, I’ve not much ego left.”
“We’ll need your fingerprints. Are you willing to give them?”
“Fingerprints, toe prints, and anything else you want. I’ve nothing to hide from anyone.”
“That’s wise of you.” Bea nodded to Havers, who flipped her notebook closed. She told the newsman to come to the station, where his prints would be taken. Then she said to him, “As a point of curiosity, did you favour Santo Kerne with a black eye prior to his death?”
“I would have loved to,” he said. “But, frankly, I didn’t think he was worth the effort.”
JAGO’S APPROACH, WHEN HE revealed it to Cadan, was to employ the man-to-man talk: If Cadan wanted to put distance between himself and Dellen Kerne, there was only one way to do it and that was by facing Lew Angarrack. There was plenty of work at LiquidEarth, so there was no need for Jago to take Cadan’s part with his father. All that was necessary, he said, was an honest conversation in which mistakes were admitted, apologies extended, and amends promised.
Jago made it all sound simple. Cadan was hot to do it at once. The only problem here was that Lew had gone for a surf?“Big swells in Widemouth Bay today,” Jago informed him?so Cadan was going to have to wait until his father’s return. Or he was going to have to go out to Widemouth Bay to meet him as he finished up his surf. This second proposal sounded like an excellent idea since, after a surf, Lew’s spirits would be high, which would likely translate to Lew’s amenability to Cadan’s plans.
Jago lent his car to the endeavour. Saying, “Mind how you go, then,” he handed over his keys.
Cadan set off. Without a driving license and mindful of Jago’s display of trust in him, he took supreme care. Hands at two o’clock and ten o’clock, eyes fixed ahead or flicking to the mirrors, the occasional glance at the speedometer.
Widemouth Bay lay to the south of Casvelyn, some five miles down the coast. Flanked by largely friable cliffs of sandstone, it was much as its name suggested: a wide bay accessed from a large car park just off the coastal road. There was no town to speak of. Instead, summer cottages were sprinkled across the down east of the road, and the only businesses that served them, surfers, and tourists to the area were a seasonal restaurant and a shop hiring out body boards, surfboards, and wet suits.
In summer the bay was madness because, unlike so many bays in Cornwall, it was no difficult matter to get to it, so it attracted day-trippers by the hundreds, holiday makers, and locals as well. In the off-season, it was left to surfers who flocked to it when the tide was mid to high, the wind was east, and the waves were breaking on the right-hand reef.
Conditions were superb on this day, with swells that looked to be five feet. So the car park was littered with vehicles, and the lineup of surfers was impressive. Even so, when Cadan pulled in and parked, he could make out his father easily. Lew surfed the way he did most everything else: alone.
It was largely a solitary sport anyway, but Lew managed to make it even more so. His was a figure set apart from the rest, farther out, content to wait for swells that rose only occasionally at this distance from the reefs. To look at him, one would think he knew nothing about the sport because certainly he ought to be waiting with the others, who were getting fairly consistent rides. But that wasn’t his way, and when a wave finally came that he liked, he was on its shoulder effortlessly, paddling with a minimum of effort and the experience of more than thirty years on the water.