“He comes by that honestly.”
She returned to the kitchen rather than reply. He followed her there. He had a carrier bag in his hand, and he placed this on the table. It comprised the reason for his call upon her: Pete’s football shoes. She didn’t want him leaving the shoes at his dad’s house, did she? Nor did she want him to take them to school, yes? So his father had brought them by.
She’d sipped her coffee and offered him one if he wanted. He knew where the mugs were, she told him.
But she’d made the offer before she thought about it. The coffeemaker squatted next to her calendar and what was on this calendar was not only Pete’s schedule, but also her own. Given, her own was cryptic enough, but Ray was no fool.
He’d read a few of the notations inside the boxed dates. She knew what he was seeing: “Motormouth Wanker,” “Big Trouble Wanker.” There were others as well, as he would note if he flipped back to the previous three months. Thirteen weeks of Internet dating: There might be millions of fish in the sea, but Bea Hannaford kept hooking crab pots and seaweed.
It was largely to forestall a conversation about her decision to reenter the world of dating yet another ludicrous time that prompted Bea to bring up having the incident room in Casvelyn. It should, of course, have been in Bodmin where the setup would be minimal, but Bodmin was miles and miles from Casvelyn, with only tediously slow-moving two-lane country roads between them. She wanted, she explained to him, an incident room that was nearer to the crime scene.
He made his point once again. “You don’t know it’s a crime scene. It might be the scene of a tragic accident. What makes you think it’s a crime? This isn’t one of your ‘feelings,’ is it?”
She wanted to say, I don’t have feelings, as you recall, but she didn’t. Over the years she’d become so much better at letting go of matters over which she had no control, one of which was her former husband’s assessment of her. She said, “The body’s a bit marked up. His eye was blackened?healing now, so I’d guess he got into it with someone last week or earlier. Then there was the sling, that webbing thing they use for slinging round a tree or some other stationary object.”
“Hence the name of it,” Ray murmured.
“Bear with me, Ray, as I know nothing about cliff climbing.” Bea kept her voice patient.
He said, “Sorry.”
“Anyway, the sling broke, which was how he fell, but I think it may have been nobbled. Constable McNulty?who, by the way, has absolutely no future in criminal investigations?pointed out that the sling was being held together with electrical tape over a tear and is it any wonder the poor lad took a fatal tumble as a result. But every single piece of the boy’s equipment had electrical tape wrapped round it at some point, and I think the tape’s used to identify the equipment for some reason. If that’s the case, how difficult would it have been for someone to remove the tape, weaken the sling however it was weakened, and then replace the tape without the boy ever knowing it?”
“Have you had a look at the rest of the equipment?”
“Every piece is with forensics, and I have a fairly good idea what they’re going to tell me. And what they tell me is why I’ll need an incident room.”
“But not why you need one in Casvelyn.”
Bea downed the rest of her coffee and placed the mug in the sink with the bowl. She neither rinsed nor washed it and she realised this was yet another benefit to life-without-husband. If she didn’t feel up to doing the washing up, she didn’t have to do the washing up just to soothe the savage breast of the compulsive personality.
She said, “The principals are there, Ray, in Casvelyn. Not in Bodmin, not even here in Holsworthy. They have a police station, small but adequate, and it’s got a conference room on the first floor that’s perfectly adequate as well.”