“You didn’t ask.”
“Don’t ask, don’t get?”
“More like don’t ask, don’t tell around here.”
There is mischief in her eyes, and it makes me wonder if she knows I’ve slept with her brother. From what Carter said earlier, it sounds as though they’ve always been close.
“He said that your parents used to run this pub.”
“That’s right. For over thirty years.”
“Must have been a fun childhood.”
“Sometimes. We lived upstairs, and the place was so busy during the summer that Mum and Dad rarely had much time for us. It used to be busy in winter too back then,” she says, looking around the empty pub now. “But that was before half the houses in the village became holiday homes. We didn’t have a lot of money but we had a lot of love, and it broke my mother’s heart when the old witch who owned the freehold decided to sell this pub.”
“Why didn’t your parents try to buy it?”
“They did try, and for a fair price too, using every penny of their savings. Owning this place had always been their dream, so we could keep it in the family. But they were outbid by the brewery and that was that. Luke and I were devasted too; this place was our home. There used to be marks on this wall showing our heights every year when we were kids, but the new owners painted over our lives and turned our home into a gastro pub. Profit was more important to them than people.”
“I’m sorry, that must have been hard.”
She shrugs. “Life is hard. It was worse for my brother. Luke was born here, it was the only home he’d ever known. He was in his early twenties when Mum and Dad ran off to Spain—just a big kid really—and family has always been important to him. There’s a bit of an age gap between me and him—seven years—so it felt like it was up to me to keep an eye on him when they left. I like to think I did a good job. He completed his police training, stayed in Hope Falls when most people his age couldn’t wait to get away, then he took over running the police station when Nick retired. He’s doing pretty well for a twenty-eight-year-old.”
“Carter is twenty-eight?”
I had told myself he was a baby-faced thirtysomething.
She nods. “I know. He looks even younger. It’s the sea air!”
“Tell me about Carter. What was he like when he was a boy?”
“I don’t think he’d like me—”
“I won’t tell him if you won’t. Don’t ask, don’t tell, like you said.”
She grins. “Well, in some ways my brother never really grew up. He spent a lot of his childhood in this pub, dreaming about smugglers, and inventing stories about secret tunnels in the cellar. He was convinced there were tunnels dug into the cliffs all the way from here to Blackwater Bay. If there are, he never found them, but despite all the lies he told as a child he grew into an honest man. A good man. The whole village loves him.”
“That’s nice.”
“He is.”
As though on cue Carter bursts through the door of the pub closely followed by Sunday.
“Everything okay?” I ask.
Carter shakes his head. “No. There’s a body on the beach.”
37CARTER
“Sorry, it sounded like you said there was a body on the beach?” Bird says.
I nod, but they both stare at me as though they don’t understand.
As if I’m speaking a foreign language.
DCI Bird surprises me by looking surprised; she never has before.
Maddy doesn’t behave how I would have expected her to either. She stands perfectly still behind the bar and gives me the look she used as kids when I was about to get us both in trouble. She almost looks… guilty.
