suitable for one of the holidaying families upon whom he'd bet his economic future.
The time had seemed right to Ben for this, his biggest venture ever. His children were older and at least one of them - Kerra - was self-sufficient and completely capable of obtaining gainful employment elsewhere should this venture go under. Santo was a different matter, for more than one reason that Ben preferred not to consider, but he had become more dependable of late, thank God, as if he finally understood the weighty nature of their undertaking. So Ben had felt the family was with him. It wouldn't be just himself upon whose shoulders the responsibility rested.
They were fully two years into it now: the conversion complete save for the exterior painting and a few final interior details. By the middle of June, they would be up and running. The bookings had been coming in for several months.
Ben was looking through these when the police arrived. Although the bookings represented the fruits of his family's labours, he hadn't been thinking of this or really even thinking of them at all: the bookings. Instead he'd been thinking of red. Not red as being in the red, which he certainly was and would be for any number of years until the business earned back what he'd spent upon it, but red as in the colour of nail varnish or lipstick, of a scarf or a blouse, of a dress that hugged the body.
Dellen had been wearing red for five days. First had come the nail varnish. Lipstick had followed. Then a jaunty beret over her blond hair when she went out. Soon, he expected a red sweater would top snug black trousers as it also revealed just a bit of cleavage. Ultimately, she would wear the dress, which would show more cleavage as well as her thighs, and by that time, she'd be in full sail and his children would be looking at him as they had looked at him forever: waiting for him to do something in a situation in which he could do nothing at all. Despite their ages - eighteen and twenty-two - Santo and Kerra still persisted in thinking that he was capable of changing their mother. When he did not do so, having failed at the effort when he was even younger than they were now, he saw the why in their eyes, or at least in Kerra's eyes. Why do you put up with her?
When Ben heard the slam of a car door, then, he thought of Dellen. When he went to the window and saw it was a police car below and not his wife's old BMW, he still thought of Dellen. Later, he realised that thinking of Kerra would have been more logical since she'd been gone for hours on her bicycle in weather that had been growing ever worse since two o'clock. But Dellen had been the centre of his thoughts for twenty-eight years and since Dellen had gone off at noon and had not yet returned, he assumed she'd got herself into trouble.
He left his office and went to the ground floor. When he got to reception, a uniformed constable was standing there, looking about for someone and no doubt surprised to find the front door unlocked and the place virtually deserted. The constable was male, young, and vaguely familiar.
He'd be from the town, then. Ben was getting to know who lived in Casvelyn and who was from the outlying area.
The constable introduced himself: Mick McNulty, he said. And you are, sir...?
Benesek Kerne, Ben told him. Was something wrong? Ben switched on more lights. The automatic ones had come on with the end of daylight, but they cast shadows everywhere, and Ben found he wanted to dispel those shadows.
Ah, McNulty said. Could he speak to Mr. Kerne, then?
Ben realised the constable meant could they go somewhere that was not the reception area, so he took him one floor above, to the lounge. This overlooked St. Mevan Beach, where the swells were of a decent size and the waves were breaking on the sand bars in rapid sets. They were coming in from the southwest, but the wind made them rubbish. No one was out there, not even the most desperate of the local surfers.
Between the beach and the hotel, the landscape was much changed from what it had been during the heyday of the Promontory King George. The pool was still there, but in place of the bar