“He likely suspected I’d do something with it.”
“Ah. Constable…?” Bea was gratified to see that Mick McNulty took the hint and once more attended to his note taking, although Ben Kerne couldn’t say, when asked, where Santo had indeed kept his gear. Bea said to him, “Why would Santo think you might do something with his kit, Mr. Kerne? Or do you mean to his kit?” And she thought, If the surfing kit, why not the cliff-climbing kit?
“Because he knew I didn’t particularly want him to like surfing.”
“Really? It seems a harmless enough sport, compared to cliff climbing.”
“No sport is completely harmless, Inspector. But it wasn’t that.” Kerne seemed to be looking for a way to explain, and he came into the bedroom to do so. He observed the posters. His face was stony.
Bea said, “Do you surf, Mr. Kerne?”
“I wouldn’t prefer Santo not surf if I did it myself, now would I.”
“I don’t know. Would you? I still don’t see why you approved of one sport but not another.”
“It’s the type, all right?” Kerne gave an apologetic glance to Constable McNulty. “I didn’t like him mixing with surfers because for so many of them it’s their only world. I didn’t want him adopting it: the hanging about they do, waiting for the opportunity for a surf, their lives defined by isobar charts and tide tables, driving up and down the coast to find perfect waves. And when they’re not having a surf, they’re talking about it or smoking cannabis while they stand round in their wet suits afterwards, still talking about it. There’re blokes?and lasses as well, I admit it?whose entire worlds revolve round riding waves and traveling the globe to ride more waves. I didn’t want that for Santo. Would you want it for your son or daughter?”
“But if his world revolved round cliff climbing?”
“It didn’t. But at least it’s a sport where one depends upon others. It’s not solitary, the way surfing can be and generally is. A surfer alone on the waves: You see it all the time. I didn’t want him out there alone. I wanted him to be with people. So if something happened to him…” He moved his gaze back to the posters, and what they depicted was?even to an unschooled observer like Bea?absolute danger embodied in an unimaginable tonnage of water: exposure to everything from broken bones to certain drowning. She wondered how many people died each year, coursing a nearly vertical declivity that, unlike the earth with its knowable textures, changed within seconds to trap the unwary.
She said, “Yet Santo was climbing alone when he fell. Just as he might have been had he gone for a surf. And anyway, surfers don’t always do this alone, do they?”
“On the wave itself. The surfer and the wave, alone. There may be others out there, but it’s not about them.”
“With climbing it is, though?”
“You depend on the other climber, and he depends on you. You keep each other safe.” He cleared his throat roughly and added, “What father wouldn’t want safety for his son?”
“And when Santo didn’t agree with your assessment of surfing?”
“What about it?”
“What happened between you? Arguments? Punishment? Do you tend towards violence, Mr. Kerne?”
He faced her, but in doing so he put his back to the window, so she could no longer read his face. He said, “What the hell sort of question is that?”
“One that wants answering. Santo’s eye was blackened by someone recently. What d’you know about that?”