“I was willing to take the risk.”
They drove for a time in silence. The landscape altered as they approached the coast. From rough and rock-studded farmland whose ownership was delineated with irregular drystone walls patchy with grey-green lichen, the undulations of pasture and field gave way to hillside and combe, and a horizon that was marked with the great and derelict engine houses of Cornwall’s disused mines. She took a route into St. Agnes, a slate and granite village that tumbled down a hillside above the sea, its few steep streets twisting appealingly and lined with terrace cottages and with shops, all of them leading inexorably and ultimately, like the course of a river, down to the pebbled stretch of Trevaunance Cove. Here, at low water, tractors pulled skiffs into the sea and, at three-quarters tide, good-size swells from the west and southwest brought surfers from surrounding areas to jostle with each other for a place on ten-foot waves. But instead of ending up at the cove, where Lynley thought she’d been heading, she chose a direction out of town, driving north, following signs that were posted for Wheal Kitty.
He said to her, “I couldn’t ignore the fact that you lied about recognising Santo Kerne when you saw his body. Why did you do that? Don’t you see how that threw suspicion on you?”
“At the moment that couldn’t be important. Saying I knew him would have led to more questions. Answering questions would have left me pointing the finger…” She glanced his way. Her expression was irked, disbelieving. “Have you honestly no idea what it might feel like to be a person who involves people she knows in a police investigation? Surely you must understand how that might feel? You’re not insensate. There were confidential matters…There were things I’d promised to keep to myself. Oh, what am I saying? Your sergeant would have put you into the picture by now. Doubtless you had breakfast with her, if you didn’t speak to her last night. I can’t imagine she’d keep you in the dark about much.”
“There were car tracks in your garage. More than one set.”
“Santo’s. Aldara’s. Your sergeant would have told you about Aldara, I expect. Santo’s lover. The fact that they used my cottage.”
“Why didn’t you just explain that from the first? Had you done so?”
“What? You would have stopped short of looking into my past, sending your sergeant to Falmouth to question the neighbours, phoning the zoo, doing…What else? Have you spoken to Lok as well? Did you track him down? Did you ask him if he’s truly crippled or if I made that up? It does sound fantastic, doesn’t it, a Chinese brother with spinal bifida. Brilliant but bent. What an intriguing story.”
“I know he’s at Oxford.” Lynley was regretful, but there was no help for what he’d done. It was part of the job. “That’s the extent.”
“And you discovered this…how?”
“It’s a small matter, Daidre. There’s cooperation between police agencies all over the world, let alone in our own country. It’s easier now than it ever was.”
“I see.”
“You don’t. You can’t. You’re not a cop.”
“Neither were you. Neither are you. Or has all of that changed?”
He couldn’t answer that question. He didn’t know the answer. Perhaps some things were in the blood and could not be shaken off merely because one desired to do so.