He hesitated at this, for some reason. He looked to Dellen as if considering how best to phrase his answer. Bea wondered which of the questions was giving him pause: the growing up in Truro part or the childhood sweethearts part.
“Not in Truro, no,” he finally answered. “But as to being childhood sweethearts…” He looked at his wife again, and there was no doubt that his expression was fond. “We’ve been together more or less since we were teenagers: sixteen and fifteen, wasn’t it, Dell?” He didn’t wait for his wife to reply. “We were like most kids, though. Together for a bit, broken up for a bit. Then forgiveness and getting back together. We did that for six or seven years before we got married, didn’t we, Dell?”
Dellen said, “I don’t know. I’ve forgotten all that.” She had a husky voice, a smoker’s voice. It suited her. Anything else would have been wildly out of character.
“Have you?” He turned from her to Bea. “It seemed to go on forever: the drama of our teenage years. As these things do, when you care for someone.”
“What sort of drama?” Bea asked as next to her Constable McNulty kept up a gratifying scribbling against his pad.
“I slept around,” Dellen said bluntly.
“Dell…”
“She’ll likely find out the truth, so we may as well tell it,” Dellen said. “I was the village tart, Inspector.” And then to her husband, “C’n you make me another coffee, Ben? And hotter, if you will. The last was rather lukewarm.”
Ben’s face had altered to granite as she’d spoken. After a fractional hestitation, he rose from the sofa where he’d placed himself and his wife, and he went back to the cappuccino maker. Bea let the silence continue, and when Constable McNulty cleared his throat as if to speak, she knocked her foot against his to keep him quiet. She liked tension during an interview, especially if one of the suspects was inadvertently providing it to the other.
Dellen finally spoke again, but she looked at Ben, as if what she said comprised a hidden message for him. “We lived down the coast, Ben and I, but not in a place like Newquay, where there’re at least a few diversions. We were from a village where there was nothing to do besides the beach in summer and sex in winter. And sometimes sex in summer as well if the weather wasn’t good enough for the beach. We ran in packs then?a gang of kids?and we mixed it up with each other. Pairing off this way for a bit, pairing off that way for a bit. Till we got to Truro, that is. Ben went first and I?clever girl?followed him directly. And that made all the difference. Things changed for us in Truro.”
Ben returned with her drink. He also brought with him a packet of cigarettes that he’d taken from somewhere in the kitchenette, and he lit one for her and handed it over. He sat next to her, quite close.
Dellen downed the second coffee much as she’d done the first, as if her mouth were lined with asbestos. She took the cigarette from him and drew in on it expertly, doing what Bea always thought of as that double-inhaling bit: drawing smoke in, letting a bit out, drawing it all back in again. Dellen Kerne made the act look unique. Bea tried to get a bead on the woman. Dellen’s hands were unsteady.
“Bright lights, big city?” she asked the Kernes. “Is that what took you to Truro?”