“Sounds like you’re cheesed off at him.”
She didn’t take up the remark. “Is she at home and just not answering the phone? I can go over there but I don’t want to take the trouble if she’s not there anyway. So d’you mind telling me that much?”
“I expect she’s still with Jago,” he said.
“Who’s Jago?”
“Jago Reeth. Bloke that works for my dad. She was with him all night. She’s still with him, for all I know.”
Kerra laughed shortly, without amusement. “Well, she’s moved on, hasn’t she? That was quick. Miraculous recovery from complete heartbreak. How very nice for her.”
Cadan wanted to ask what it was to her, whether his sister moved on to another man or not. But instead he said, “Jago Reeth’s like…I don’t know. Maybe he’s seventy or something. He’s like a granddad to her, okay?”
“What’s he do for your dad, then, some seventy-year-old?”
She was definitely annoying him. She was being the boss’s daughter and you-better-treat-me-as-I’m-meant-to-be-treated, and that rubbed Cadan wrong. He said, “Kerra, does that matter, exactly? Why the hell d’you want to know?”
And just like that, she altered. She gave a weird little cough and he saw the glitter of tears in her eyes. That glitter reminded him that her brother was dead, that he’d died only on the previous day, and that she’d just learned he’d been murdered.
He said, “A glasser.” When she looked at him in confusion, he added, “Jago Reeth. He does the fiberglass on the boards. He’s an old surfer my dad picked up…I don’t know…six months ago maybe? He’s a detail man like Dad. And, what’s important, not like me.”
“She spent the night with a seventy-year-old bloke?”
“Jago phoned and said she was there.”
“What time?”
“Kerra…”
“This is important, Cadan.”
“Why? D’you think she gave your brother the bump? How was she supposed to do that? Shove him over the cliff?”
“His equipment was messed with. That’s what the cop told us.”
Cadan widened his eyes. “Hang on, Kerra. No way…And I mean no way. She may have been off her nut with everything that happened between them, but my sister is not?” He stopped himself. Not because of what he’d intended to say about Madlyn but because as he’d been speaking, his gaze had moved from Kerra to the beach below them and across that beach a surfer was jogging, his board under his arm and its leash trailing behind him in the sand. He was fully garbed, as he would be at this time of year, for the water was still quite cold. Head to toe in neoprene. Head to toe in black. You couldn’t, in fact, actually tell if the surfer was male or female from this distance.
“What?” Kerra said.
Cadan shuddered. He said quietly, “Madlyn may have been all over the map with how she reacted after what happened between her and Santo. I give you that.”
“That and then some,” Kerra remarked.
“But killing off her ex-boyfriend wouldn’t be part of her repertoire, okay? Jesus, Kerra, she kept thinking he was just going through a stage, you know.”
“At first,” Kerra clarified.
“Okay. Maybe only at first she thought that. But it doesn’t mean she’d finally get to the point of understanding how things really were and deciding the only reasonable thing to do was to kill him. Does that make sense to you?”
“Love,” Kerra said, “never makes sense to me. People do all sorts of mad things when they’re in love with someone.”
“Yeah?” Cadan said. “Is that the truth? So, what about you?”
She made no reply.
“I rest my case,” he told her. And then he added, “Sea Dreams, if you have to know.”
“What’s that?”
“Where she is. Jago’s got a caravan at that holiday park where the dairy used to be. Out beyond Sawsneck Down. If you want to grill her, grill her there. For what it’s worth, though, you’ll be wasting your time.”
“What makes you think I want to grill her?”