“Four years older, actually. He’s my?”
“?and you’re so like him as well. So I can’t sort out why you’ve never come round with him.”
“?sister’s age. Madlyn,” he said. “You probably know Madlyn. My sister. She and Santo were…Well, they were whatever you want to call it.”
“What?” Dellen asked blankly. “What did you call her?”
“Madlyn. Madlyn Angarrack. They?she and Santo?they were together for…I don’t know…Eighteen months? Two years? Whatever. She’s my sister. Madlyn’s my sister.”
Dellen stared at him. Then she stared past him, but she appeared to be looking at nothing at all. She said in a different voice altogether, “How very odd. She’s called Madlyn, you say?”
“Yeah. Madlyn Angarrack.”
“And she and Santo were…what, exactly?”
“Boyfriend and girlfriend. Partners. Lovers. Whatever.”
“You’re joking.”
He shook his head, confused, wondering why she’d think he was joking. “They met when he came to get a board from my dad. Madlyn taught him to surf. Santo, that is. Well, obviously, not my dad. That’s how they got to know each other. And then…well, I s’pose you could say they started hanging about together and things went from there.”
“And you called her Madlyn?” Dellen asked.
“Yeah. Madlyn.”
“Together for eighteen months.”
“Eighteen months or so. Yeah. That’s it.”
“Then why did I never meet her?” she said.
WHEN DI BEA HANNAFORD returned to the police station with Constable McNulty in tow, it was to find that Ray had managed to fulfill her wish for an incident room in Casvelyn and that Sergeant Collins had set the room up with a degree of expertise that surprised her. He’d somehow managed to get the upper-floor conference room in order, and now it was ready, with china boards upon which pictures of Santo Kerne were posted both in death and in life and on which activities could be listed neatly. There were also desks, phones, computers with HOLMES at the ready, printers, a filing cabinet, and supplies. The only thing the incident room didn’t have was, unfortunately, the most vital part of any investigation: the MCIT officers.
The absence of a murder squad was going to leave Bea in the unenviable position of having to conduct the investigation with McNulty and Collins alone until such a time as a murder squad got there. Since that squad should have arrived along with the contents of the incident room, Bea labeled the situation unacceptable. It was also annoying because she knew very well that her former husband could get a murder squad from Land’s End to London in less than three hours if he was pressed to do so.
“Damn,” she muttered. She told McNulty to type up his notes officially and she went to a desk in the corner where she quickly discovered that having a phone within sight did not necessarily mean that it was connected to an actual telephone line. She looked meaningfully at Sergeant Collins, who said apologetically, “BT says another three hours. There’s no hookup up here, so they’re sending someone over from Bodmin to put one in. We have to use mobiles or the phones downstairs till then.”
“Do they know this is a murder enquiry?”
“They know,” he said, but his tone suggested that, murder or not, BT also didn’t much care.
Bea said, “Hell,” and took out her mobile. She walked to a desk in the corner and punched in Ray’s work number.
“There’s been something of a cock-up,” was what she told him when she had him on the phone at last.
He said, “Beatrice. Hullo. You’re welcome for the incident room. Am I having Pete for the night again?”
“I’m not phoning about Pete. Where’re the MCIT blokes?”