“There’s always something, Mr. Reeth,” Bea said.
Jago looked at her in a kindly way. “Fingerprints on the boot of the car? In the interior? On the keys to the car? Inside the boot? The Confessor and the boy spent hours together, perhaps they even worked together at…let’s say it was at his dad’s business. They each rode in the other’s car, they were mates, they were pals, they were surrogate father and surrogate son, they were surrogate mother and surrogate son, they were surrogate brothers, they were lovers, they were…anything. It doesn’t matter, you see, because it all can be explained away. Hair inside the boot of the car? The Confessor’s? Someone else’s? Same thing, really. The Confessor planted someone else’s or even his own or her own because it can be a woman, we’ve already seen that. What about fibres? Clothing fibres…perhaps on the tape that marked the equipment. Wouldn’t that be lovely? But the Confessor helped wrap that equipment or he or she touched that equipment because…why? Because the boot was used for other things as well?a surfing kit, perhaps??and things would get moved round here and there and in and out. What about access to the equipment? Everyone had that. Every single person in the poor lad’s life. What about motive? Well, nearly everyone, it seems, had that as well. So at the end of the day, there is no answer. There is only speculation but no case to present. Which the killer probably considers the beauty of the crime but which you and I know, Mr. Kerne, is any crime’s biggest horror: that the killer simply walks away. Everyone knows who did it. Everyone admits it. Everyone shakes a head and says, What a tragedy. What a useless, senseless, maddening?”
“I think that’s enough, Mr. Reeth. Or Mr. Parsons,” Bea said.
“?horror because the killer walks away now he?or she, of course?has done his business.”
“I said that’s enough.”
“And the killer can’t be touched by the cops and all the cops can do is sit there and drink their tea and wait and hope to find something somewhere someday…But they get busy, don’t they? Other things on their plates. They shove you to one side and say don’t ring us every day, man, because when a case goes cold?like this one will?there’s no point to ringing, so we’ll ring you if and when we can make an arrest. But it never comes, does it, that arrest. So you end up with nothing but ashes in an urn and they may as well have burnt your body on the day they burned his because the soul of you is gone anyway.”
He was finished, it seemed, his recital completed. All that was left was the sound of harsh breathing, which was Jago Reeth’s, and outside, the cry of gulls and the gusting of the wind and the crash of the surf. In a suitably well-rounded television drama, Bea thought, Reeth would rise to his feet now. He would dash for the door and throw himself over the cliff, having at long last achieved the vengeance he’d anticipated and having no further reason to continue living. He’d take the leap and join his dead Jamie. But this, unfortunately, was not a television drama.
His face seemed lit from within. Spittle had collected at the corners of his mouth. His tremors had worsened. He was waiting, she saw, for Ben Kerne’s reaction to his performance, for Ben Kerne’s embracing of a truth that no one could alter and no one could resolve.
Ben finally lifted his head and gave the reaction. “Santo,” he said, “was not my son.”
Chapter Twenty-nine