lightly clenched fist to her skinny chest. -I've tried to listen to the voice from inside myself. It's a quiet voice. It's the voice of what's right. You know when you hear it, Grandie."
-Hear it a lot, do you?"
-When I get quiet I do. But now I can't."
-I've seen you quiet day and night."
-But not inside."
-How's that?" He looked over at her. She was concentrating on the rain-streaked day, hedgerows dripping as the car skimmed past them, a magpie taking to the sky.
-My head's full of chatter," she said. -If my head won't be silent, I can't hear God."
Chatter? he thought. What was the maddening girl on about? One moment he thought he had her sorted, the next he was flummoxed again. -What d'you got up there, then?" he asked, and he poked her head. -Goblins and ghoulies?"
-Don't make fun," she told him. -I'm trying to tell you...But there's nothing and there's no one that I can ask, you see. So I'm asking you, as it's the only thing left that I can think to do. I s'pose I'm asking for help, Grandie."
Now, he thought, they were down to it. This was the moment the girl's parents had hoped for, time with her granddad paying off. He waited for more. He made a hmph noise to indicate his willingness to listen. The moments ticked by as they approached Casvelyn. She said nothing more till they were in town.
Then it was brief. He'd pulled to the kerb in front of Clean Barrel Surf Shop before she finally spoke. -If I know something," she said to him, her eyes fixed on the shop's front door, -and if what I know might cause someone trouble...What should I do, Grandie? That's what I've been asking God, but he hasn't answered. What should I do? I could keep asking because when something bad happens to someone you care about, it seems like - "
-The Kerne boy," he interrupted. -D'you know something about the Kerne boy, Tammy? Look at me square, girl, not out of the window."
She did. He could see she was troubled beyond what he had thought. So there was only one answer, and despite the irritations it might cause in his own life, he owed it to her to give it.
-You know something, you tell the police," he said. -Nothing else to it. You do it today."
Chapter Twelve
SHE EXCELLED AT DARTS. LYNLEY HAD LEARNED THAT QUICKLY enough on the previous evening, and he'd added the information to what little he knew about Daidre Trahair. She had a dartboard mounted on the back of the sitting room door, something he'd not noticed before because she kept the door open instead of closing it against the cold wind, which could sweep into the building from the tiny vestibule when someone entered the cottage.
He should have known he was in trouble when she used a tape measure to create a distance of exactly seven feet, nine and one-quarter inches from the back of the closed door. Here she placed the fireplace poker on a parallel, calling it their oche. When he said, -Okkey?" and she'd said,
-The oche marks where the player has to stand, Thomas," he'd had his first real clue that he was probably in over his head. But he'd thought, How difficult can it possibly be? and he'd gone like a lamb to the metaphorical slaughter, agreeing to a match called 501 about which he knew nothing at all.
He said, -Are there rules?"
She'd looked at him askance. -Of course there are rules. It's a game, Thomas." And she'd gone about explaining them to him. She began with the dartboard itself, losing him almost immediately when she referred to treble and double rings and what it meant to one's score to land in one of them. He'd never thought of himself as an idiot - it had always seemed to him that knowing how to identify a bull's-eye was the limit of what one needed to embrace when it came to darts - but within moments, he was entirely lost.
It was simple, she told him. -We each start with a score of 501, and the object is to reduce that to nought. We each throw three darts. A bull's-eye scores fifty, the outer ring twenty-five and anything in the double or treble ring is double or treble the segment score. Yes?"
He nodded. He was almost altogether uncertain what she was talking about, but confidence, he reckoned, was the key to success.
-Good. Now, the caveat