It was windy on the down, and Max Priestley was the only person there. He was calling encouragement to his dog, who seemed to need little enough of it although she was panting rather more heartily than might have been good for an animal her age and in her condition.
Bea began to hike in Priestley’s direction, Havers trudging behind her. There were no paths as such on the down, just beaten trails through the grass and standing pools of rainwater where depressions in the land marked the ground. Neither of them had the proper shoes for a walk in the place, but Sergeant Havers’ high-top trainers were at least preferable to Bea’s street shoes. She cursed as her foot sank into a hidden puddle.
“Mr. Priestley?” she called as soon as they were within hearing distance. “Could we have a word please?” She began to reach for her identification.
He seemed to focus on her fiery hair. “You’d be DI Hannaford, I presume,” he said. “My reporter’s been getting all the pertinent details from your Sergeant Collins. He apparently holds you in some considerable respect. And this is Scotland Yard?” in reference to Havers.
“Correct on both fronts,” Bea told him. “DS Havers.”
“I’ll need to keep Lily moving as we talk. We’re working on her weight. Getting it off, that is. Putting it on hasn’t been a problem, as she shows up at mealtimes as regular as a ne’er-do-well brother, and I’ve never been able to resist those eyes.”
“I’m a dog owner myself,” Bea said.
“Then you know what I mean.” He batted the ball some fifty yards and Lily went after it with a yelp. He said, “I expect you’ve come to talk about Santo Kerne. I reckoned someone would be here eventually. Who gave you my name?”
“Is that an important detail?”
“It could only be Aldara or Daidre. No one else knew, according to Santo. The world’s general ignorance of the arrangement, he was very good to point out, would prevent damage to my ego should my ego be inclined towards damage. Kind of him, wouldn’t you say?”
“Tammy Penrule knew, as things turn out,” Bea told him. “At least she knew part of it.”
“Did she indeed? So Santo lied to me. Unbelievable. Who would have expected dishonesty from such a sterling bloke? Did Tammy Penrule give you my name?”
“No. Not Tammy.”
“Daidre or Aldara then. And of the two of them, I’d think Aldara. Daidre plays her cards quite close.”
He was so casual about the entire situation that Bea found herself taken aback for a moment. She’d learned over time to have no expectations of how an interview might or might not go, but she was unprepared for Max Priestley’s apparent indifference to being made a cuckold by an adolescent boy. She glanced at Sergeant Havers. The DS was making a study of Priestley. She’d taken the opportunity to apply the flame of a plastic lighter to her cigarette, and she narrowed her eyes against its smoke and directed her gaze to the man’s face.
It seemed open enough, its expression pleasant. But there was no mistaking the sardonic quality of what Priestley was saying. To Bea’s way of thinking, his type of frankness generally meant that either his wounds ran deep or he’d found himself placed on the receiving end of what he himself had once dished out. Of course, in this current situation, there was the third alternative one had to consider, a killer’s attempt to cover his tracks through a show of indifference. But that alternative didn’t seem likely to her at the moment, and Bea couldn’t say why although she hoped it had nothing to do with his overall magnetism. He was, regrettably, quite a dish.
“We’d like to talk to you about your relationship with Aldara,” Bea acknowledged. “She’s given us bits and pieces. We’re interested in your side of the affair.”
“Did I kill Santo when I discovered he was having it off with my woman?” he enquired. “The answer’s no. You’d expect me to say that, though, wouldn’t you? Your average killer’s hardly going to admit to being one.”
“I do find that’s generally the case.”
“Come on, Lil!” Priestley shouted suddenly, frowning into the distance. Another dog walker had appeared at the far edge of the down. Priestley’s retriever had noticed and was bounding off in that direction. “Bloody dog,” he said. “Lily! Come!” The dog happily ignored him. He chuckled ruefully and looked back to Bea and Havers. “And to think I used to have such a magic touch with women.”
It was as good a segue as any. Bea said, “It didn’t work with Aldara?”
“It did at first. Right up till the time I discovered her magic was stronger than mine. And then…” He offered them a quirky smile. “I got a taste of my own medicine, as they say, and the flavour wasn’t something I liked.”
At this indication that more was forthcoming, Sergeant Havers did her bit with her notebook and pencil, her cigarette dangling from her lips. Priestley noted this, nodded, said, “What the hell, then,” and began to complete the picture of his relationship with Aldara Pappas.
They’d become acquainted at a meeting of business owners from Casvelyn and the surrounding area. He was there to do a story on the meeting; the business owners were there to glean ideas for increasing tourism during the off-season. Aldara was a cut above the other proprietors of this surf shop and that restaurant or hotel. It was, he said, a tough job not to take notice of her.
“Her history was intriguing,” Priestley said. “A divorced woman taking on a derelict apple farm and building it into a decent tourist attraction. I wanted to do a story on her.”
“Just a story?”
“At first. I’m a newspaperman. I look for stories.”
They talked both at the meeting and after the meeting. Plans were laid. Although he could have sent one of the Watchman’s two reporters to gather the facts, he did it himself instead. Admittedly, he was attracted to her.
“So the newspaper story was an excuse?” Bea said.
“I intended to do it. It got written eventually.”
“Once you were in her knickers?” Havers asked.
“One can only do a single thing at a time,” Priestley replied.
“Which means…?” Bea hesitated and then saw the light. “Ah. You bedded her at once. That very day, when you went for the interview. Is that your usual MO, Mr. Priestley, or was this something special for you?”
“It was mutual attraction,” Priestley said. “Very intense. Impossible to ignore.”
A romantic, he said, would have called what happened between Aldara Pappas and him love at first sight. An analyst of love would have called it cathexis.
“And what did you call it?” Bea asked the newspaperman.
“Love at first sight.”
“So you’re a romantic?”
“Looks like I turned out to be.”
His golden retriever bounded up to him. Her exploration of the other dog’s pertinent orifices complete, Lily was ready for another throw of the tennis ball. Priestley whacked it to the far edge of the down.
“Something you didn’t expect?”
“Never.” He watched the dog for a moment before turning back to them. “Prior to Aldara, I’d been a player all my life. I had no intention of getting hooked into anyone, and to prevent that-”
“What? Marriage and babies?”
“-I always had more than one woman on a string.”
“Just like her,” Havers noted.
“With a serious exception. I had two or three. Once I had four, but they always knew. I was honest with them from the start.”
Havers said to Bea, “There you are, Guv. It happens sometimes. He brought them the dead whatever.”
Priestley looked confused. Bea said to him, “But in the case of Mrs. Pappas?”
“She was like no one else I’d had. It wasn’t just the sex thing. It was the whole package of her. Her intensity, her intelligence, her drive, her confidence, her sense of purpose. There’s nothing simpering, soft, or weak about her. There’s no manipulation. No subtle manouevring. No double message and no mixed or confusing signals. There’s nothing at all to be read or interpreted in her behaviour. Aldara’s like a man in the body of a woman.”