But he’d not counted on the memorials he’d come across. Nothing he’d read about the path prior to walking it had prepared him for those. From simple bunches of dying flowers to wooden benches engraved with the names of the departed, death greeted him nearly every day. He’d left the Yard because he could not face another sudden brutal passing of a human being, but there it was: confronting him with a regularity that mocked his every attempt to forget.
And now this. DI Hannaford wasn’t exactly involving him in the murder investigation itself, but she was putting him close to it. He didn’t want that, but at the same time, he didn’t know how he could avoid it because he read the inspector as a woman who was as good as her word: Should he conveniently disappear from the region of Casvelyn, she would happily fetch him back and not rest till she’d done so.
As to what she was asking him to do…Like DI Hannaford, Lynley believed Daidre Trahair was lying about the route she’d taken from Bristol to Polcare Cove on the previous day. Unlike DI Hannaford, Lynley also knew Daidre Trahair had lied more than once about knowing Santo Kerne. There were going to be reasons behind both of these lies?far beyond what the vet had told him when he’d confronted her about her knowledge of the dead boy’s identity?and he didn’t know if he wanted to uncover them. Her reasons for obfuscation were doubtless personal, and the poor woman was hardly a killer.
Yet why did he think that? he asked himself. He knew better than anyone that killers wore a thousand different guises. Killers were men; killers were women. Killers, to his anguish, were children. And victims everywhere?no matter how foul they might actually be?were not meant to be dispatched by anyone, whatever the motive for untimely sending them to their eternal reward or punishment. The whole basis for their society rested upon the idea that murder was wrong, start to finish, and that justice had to be served so that closure?if not satisfaction, not relief, and certainly not an end to grief?might at least be achieved on the entire event. Justice equated to naming and convicting the killer, and justice was what was owed to those the victim summarily left behind.
Part of Lynley cried out that this was not his problem. Part of him knew that now and forever and more than ever, it would always be.
By the time they reached Casvelyn he was, if not reconciled to the matter, then at least in moderate accord with it. Everything needed to be accounted for in an investigation. Daidre Trahair was part of that everything, having made herself so the moment she lied.
Casvelyn’s police station was in Lansdown Road, in the heart of the town, directly at the bottom of Belle Vue’s course up the town’s main acclivity, and it was here in front of the plain, grey two-storey structure that Bea Hannaford parked. Lynley thought at first that she meant to take him inside and introduce him around, but instead she said, “Come with me,” and she put a hand on his elbow and guided him back the way they had come.
At the junction of Lansdown Road and Belle Vue, they crossed a triangle of land where benches, a fountain, and three trees provided Casvelyn with an outdoor gathering place in good weather. From there they headed over to Queen Street, which was lined with shops like those on Belle Vue Lane: everything from purveyors of furniture to pharmacies. There, Bea Hannaford paused and peered in both directions till she apparently saw what she wanted, for she said, “Yes. Over here. I want you to see what we’re dealing with.”
Over here referred to a shop selling sporting goods: both equipment and clothing for outdoor activities. Hannaford did an admirably quick recce of the place, found what she wanted, told the shop assistant they needed no help, and directed Lynley to a wall. Upon it were hung various metallic devices, mostly of steel. It wasn’t rocket science to sort out they were used for climbing.