Free Careless In Red by Elizabeth George

Santo who had got himself into trouble, no doubt arrested for trespassing, which Ben had warned him about time and again. He said, “What’s he done, then?”
    “He’s had an accident,” the constable said. “I’m sorry to tell you that a body’s been found that appears to be Alexander’s. If you have a photo of him…”
    Ben heard the word body but did not allow it to penetrate. He said, “Is he in hospital, then? Which one? What happened?” He thought of how he would have to tell Dellen, of what route the news would send her down.
    “…awfully sorry,” the constable was saying. “If you’ve a photo, we—”
    “What did you say?”
    Constable McNulty looked flustered. He said, “He’s dead, I’m afraid. The body. The one we found.”
    “Santo? Dead? But where? How?” Ben looked out at the roiling sea just as a gust of wind hit the windows and rattled them against their sills. He said, “Good Christ, he went out in this. He was surfing.”
    “Not surfing,” McNulty said.
    “Then what happened?” Ben asked. “Please. What happened to Santo?”
    “He’s had a cliff-climbing accident. Equipment failure. On the cliffs at Polcare Cove.”
    “He was climbing?” Ben said stupidly. “Santo was climbing? Who was with him? Where—”
    “No one, as it seems at the moment.”
    “No one? He was climbing alone? At Polcare Cove? In this weather?” It seemed to Ben that all he could do was repeat the information like an automaton being programmed to speak. To do more than that meant he would have to embrace it, and he couldn’t bear that because he knew what embracing it was going to mean. “Answer me,” he said to the constable. “Bloody answer me, man.”
    “Have you a picture of Alexander?”
    “I want to see him. I must. It might not be—”
    “That’s not possible just now. That’s why I need the photo. The body…He’s been taken to hospital in Truro.”
    Ben leapt at the word. “So he’s not dead, then.”
    “Mr. Kerne, I’m sorry. He’s dead. The body—”
    “You said hospital.”
    “To the mortuary, for the postmortem,” McNulty said. “I’m very sorry.”
    “Oh my God.”
    The front door opened below. Ben went to the lounge doorway and called out, “Dellen?” Footsteps came in the direction of the stairs. But then it was Kerra and not Ben’s wife who appeared in the doorway. She dripped rainwater onto the floor, and she’d removed her bicycle helmet. The very top of her head was the only part of her that appeared to be dry.
    She looked at the constable, then said to Ben, “Has something happened?”
    “Santo.” Ben’s voice was hoarse. “Santo’s been killed.”
    “Santo.” Then, “Santo?” Kerra looked round the room in a kind of panic. “Where’s Alan? Where’s Mum?”
    Ben found he couldn’t meet her eyes. “Your mother’s not here.”
    “What’s happened, then?”
    Ben told her what little he knew.
    She said, as he had, “Santo was climbing?” and she looked at him with an expression that said what he himself was thinking: If Santo had gone climbing, he’d likely done so because of his father.
    “Yes,” Ben said. “I know. I know. You don’t need to tell me.”
    “Know what, sir?” It was the constable speaking.
    It came to Ben that these initial moments were critical ones in the eyes of the police. They would always be critical because the police didn’t yet know what they were dealing with. They had a body and they reckoned having a body equated an accident, but on the chance that it wasn’t an accident, they had to be ready to point the finger and ask relevant questions and for the love of God, where was Dellen?
    Ben rubbed his forehead. He thought, uselessly, that all of this was down to the sea, coming back to the sea, never feeling completely at ease unless the sound of the sea was not far off and yet being forced into feeling at ease for years and years while all the time longing for it and the great open heaving mass of it and the