“I’m not blind,” he replied. “I haven’t lost my wits.”
“You’ve lost your wife,” Hannaford said. “How do you expect to think straight, see straight, or do anything else straight after what’s happened to you?”
Lynley backed away, one step only. He wanted an end to the conversation and this seemed as good a start to that conclusion as any he could come up with. He made no reply. Havers, he saw, was watching him. He knew he had to make an answer of some sort or she’d answer for him, which he would find unbearable.
He said, “I wasn’t hiding facts from you, Inspector. I wanted time.”
“For what?”
“For something like this, I suppose.” He’d been carrying a manila envelope and from it he brought out the photo he’d taken away from Lark Cottage in Boscastle. He handed it over.
Hannaford studied it. “Who are these people?”
“They’re a family called Parsons. Their son?the boy in the picture?died in a sea cave in Pengelly Cove some thirty years ago. This picture was taken round that time, perhaps a year or two earlier. Niamh the mum, Jonathan the dad. The boy is Jamie and the girls are his younger sisters. I’d like to do an age progression on the picture. Do we have someone who could do it for us quickly?”
“An age progression on who?” DI Hannaford asked.
“On everyone,” Lynley replied.
DAIDRE HAD PARKED ON Lansdown Road. She knew her proximity to the police station didn’t look good, but she had to see and, in equal measure, she needed a sign that would tell her what she was meant to do next. Truth meant trust and a leap of faith, but that leap could land her directly in the deadly mire of betrayal, and she’d had quite enough of betrayal at this point in her life.
In the rearview mirror, she saw them come out of the police station. Had Lynley been alone, she might have approached him for the conversation they needed to have, but as he was with both Sergeant Havers and Inspector Hannaford, Daidre used this as a sign that the time wasn’t right. She was parked some way up the street, and when the three police officers paused in the station’s car park for a few words together, she started her car and pulled away from the kerb. Intent upon their conversation, none of them looked in her direction. Daidre took that as a sign as well. There were those, she knew, who would call her a coward for running just then. There were others, however, who would congratulate her on having sound instincts towards self-preservation.
She drove out of Casvelyn. She headed inland, first towards Stratton and then across the countryside. She got out of her car at long last at the cider farm in the fast-fading daylight.
Circumstances, she decided, were asking her to forgive. But forgiveness ran in both directions, in every direction if it came down to it. She needed to ask as well as to give, and both of these activities were going to require practise.
Stamos the orchard pig was snuffling round his pen in the centre of the courtyard. Daidre went past him and round the corner of the jam kitchen, where inside and under bright lights two of the jam cooks were cleaning their huge copper pots for the day. She opened the gate beneath the arbour and entered the private part of the grounds. As before, she could hear guitar music. But this time more than one guitar was playing.