Staying Fit
Illustration by Stan Fellows
Chapter Forty-Six
MATTHEW VENN HAD COMPLETED HIS SEARCH of the attics when he heard footsteps echoing on the steps below him. The Woodyard still felt industrial here, ramshackle and bare, all exposed pipes and untreated timbers. At the same time, he must have come back into phone reception because his phone started to ping.
There was a text from Ross. Nobody at home in the Prior house. What would you like me to do?
Venn didn’t answer immediately; he wanted to think about that. At almost the same time Jen arrived, red hair falling over her face, cheeks flushed with the exertion, so they were practically the same colour. They were on a narrow landing with a long window looking down over the town, just where there was a twist in the stairs. Jen was breathless. She could hardly speak and, at first, he struggled to make out what she was saying.
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‘I think I know where Eve might be. I’m sorry. It’s crazy, I should have realized before,’ she told him, words spilling out like the rainwater pouring down the gutters and the drains.
‘You and I will go and check it out.’ Matthew paused. ‘Phone Ross and tell him to stay at the station until we get back to him with instructions. We’ll need someone there.’
They were on their way out of the Woodyard, pausing for a moment to look out at the rain, when Ross phoned again. This time his voice was triumphant. ‘Steve’s just called and he’s got the name of the Crow. It was really well hidden, but he finally dug it out.’
‘Well? Is it someone connected to the investigation?’
‘Yeah. It’s the boss of the health trust. Roger Prior.’
That stopped Matthew in his tracks. He felt all his preconceptions shifting. He’d set aside Prior as a potential suspect, worried that his judgement had been clouded by his antipathy to the man. But after all, Prior could have been the cause of two young men’s deaths, not through negligence, but through a cruel and active provocation. Matthew saw his participation in the Suicide Club as an addiction. Prior had become as much of a gambler as John Grieve, punting on who would live and who would die. He pictured the man in his grand office at home, cruel and entitled, with his sleek black hair and his sharp nose, and thought that the nickname Crow suited him well. They would find out later how he became involved in the group. Perhaps his humiliation following the Luke Wallace affair had caused him to claw back power in the only way open to him. Now, they just needed to track down Eve and to make sure she was safe.
‘Find Prior,’ Matthew said. ‘Top priority.’
‘You’ll be coming back to the station?’
Matthew had a moment of indecision before answering. ‘No. You’re in charge there.’ They had to find Eve Yeo before there was another tragedy, and that was worth a gamble too.
He was just about to run out to the car when he heard Jonathan calling his name. Matthew stopped and turned.
‘What’s happening?’ Jonathan was shouting above the sound of the rain.
‘We’ve got a possible lead on Eve.’
‘I want to come.’
For a brief moment Matthew hesitated. ‘Sorry. Not possible.’ He followed Jen into the storm without looking back to see Jonathan’s reaction.
***
Matthew drove because he said he knew the way better. He’d grown up with the country lanes, wasn’t thrown by the tall hedges or the grass growing in the middle of the road. It would have been quite dark now, even without the rain, but still the water came, running in streams across the roads, filling ditches, causing ponds where there had been none before. Flash floods spilled out from drains that had been clogged with dry vegetation and blown sand. He drove as quickly as he dared, but had to slow down when he turned off the road and onto a sandy track.
‘We’re nearly there,’ Jen said. ‘I think we should walk from here. Even if they can’t hear the engine over the sound of the rain, they might see the headlights.’
Matthew reached into the back seat and pulled out two waterproofs and passed one to Jen. ‘This is Jonathan’s. It might be a tad too big, but better than nothing.’
‘Certainly, it’s better than nothing. I was expecting to be drowned before we got anywhere close.’
‘You know me, I’m like the Scouts. Always prepared.’ He said it lightly, as a joke, but he was thinking that he’d never been as poorly prepared as this in a case. This was all guesswork and intuition, and he hated it.
A minute out of the car, his legs and feet were soaking and rain was seeping into the gap between the collar and his neck. Jen was walking ahead of him, using a torch. Her coat had a large hood and something of the shape it formed reminded him of a monk’s habit. They were walking down a narrow path through dunes, which seemed to tower on either side, and he fancied it was like a religious procession in a monastery or priory. Occasionally a flash of lightning would illuminate the scene with a sharp, white light, then everything would be black again. The sand beneath their feet was sticky, and in places deep puddles had formed.
With a flashback to his childhood, which was as clear as the lightning strikes, he remembered playing with children from another family on one of their outings to the beach. One of those random chance acquaintances that kids form when they’re playing close to each other. The children were building an obstacle course for their parents, with pits dug deep in the sand and bridges made from driftwood, and when it was completed the adults played along, allowing themselves to be blindfolded and led through. The trips into the holes and the falling off the rickety bridges were accompanied by good humour and laughter. His own parents had sat in their old-fashioned deckchairs looking on, his father with interest and his mother with horror.
Now, he thought, this was a similar obstacle course. They were blindfolded too, and he had no idea where or how it would end. They were at Seal Bay, in the dunes behind the wide sweep of beach, not far from where his parents had brought him to picnic, and the boy and the man seemed to collide, to become one person.
Jen broke into his thoughts. ‘I must have got this all wrong. The place is all shuttered and there’s no light inside. When I saw the poster at the Woodyard, I was convinced that this was where they’d be. The theatre group put on the same play at the Sandpiper and, according to Ross, the Mackenzies support them all over the county. So, I thought, members of the family could have been at the Woodyard at the same time as Eve. But maybe I got that wrong, and it was just another coincidence.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t think you’re wrong.’ He’d seen the glint of a brass numbered keypad on the door. It had been installed instead of a padlock or a bolt. He pointed his own torch at the ground, saw that it had been churned up with tyre tracks. ‘Someone’s been here relatively recently.’
‘I was here earlier this week with Janey,’ Jen said.
He shook his head. ‘I think these are more recent. Let’s see what’s inside.’ He banged on the door; there was no reply but he hadn’t expected one. If anyone was there, they’d be silent, hiding. They wouldn’t expect a stranger to be able to get in.
‘It shouldn’t be hard to break down that door.’
‘No need for that.’ Matthew had the numbers he’d found in Nigel Yeo’s diary firmly fixed in his head. He’d been carrying them round for nearly a week, knowing that eventually they’d be useful. ‘Yeo had a classic doctor’s handwriting, so I’m not sure which combination is the right one, but let’s try this one first.’ He punched the numbers 8531 into the brass keypad on the door. Nothing happened. He tried again: 8537. This time there was a click and the door opened.
‘Eve!’ He stood outside and shouted in. The noise seemed to echo around the space. No reply and he moved inside. It was dark and hot. No air. If someone had been in the shack recently, they hadn’t opened a window. But there was a lot of noise. The rain beating on the plank roof battered his nerves and seemed to drum into his skull. Without thinking, Matthew felt for a light switch, but of course, the chalet had no mains electricity. In the torch beam, he saw matches and a paraffin lamp. He put a match to the lamp, hung it from a hook in the ceiling, which seemed to be there for that purpose, and the room was lit by a gentle glow, which in any other circumstance would have been warm, comforting.
Matthew saw that there were two rooms. They were standing in the living room furnished by a couple of sagging armchairs, with a folding scrubbed pine table against one wall. On it a camping stove and a small Calor gas fridge. Against another, a dresser, with a cupboard underneath and shelves above. On the shelves a selection of tattered paperback novels and a pile of notebooks and files. Matthew was tempted to look at them, but that could wait. There was no sign of Eve.
Jen had already moved into the second room, which was furnished with a small double bed and two bunks against the wall. Matthew stood in the doorway and looked in. There was no space to join her. For the Mackenzies, this must have been more like camping than staying in a real holiday home.
There was no Eve and no possible place where she could have been hidden. It seemed that this drive through the rain had been a wild goose chase. He should have been more cautious, thought things through more steadily. He should be looking for Prior, and what would he be doing here? They’d have to start from the beginning and search for the man elsewhere.
Matthew tried to bring his thoughts into some kind of order. Nigel had found the code to the door. It had been written in his diary on the Friday before he’d been killed. It made sense to believe that this was where he’d spent that afternoon, and that something he’d found here had made him very angry. So perhaps this wasn’t an entirely wasted trip after all. When Eve had been found, they would come back here and they’d check all the files. But now they had to find the woman.
‘Boss.’ Jen’s voice broke through his thoughts. ‘She’s been here. And today.’ She leaned across the bed and picked up a silver earring shaped like a fish. ‘Eve was wearing these when I saw her yesterday.’
‘So, where is she then?’ The words came out like a scream.
‘When Janey brought me here, she took me up the coast path, onto the cliff. Apparently, that was where Mack jumped off and killed himself.’
‘But there’s no car here.’
‘I don’t think Eve was brought here by just one person.’
In the end, Matthew thought, perhaps it all comes back to the family.
***
They were out in the storm again. Biblical rain and distant thunder, but fewer flashes of lightning and those that appeared seemed further away. Matthew couldn’t see the beach from here because of the mountainous dunes, but he could hear the waves breaking on the shore. He wondered if Jonathan was home yet, sheltering, anxious. Angry about being excluded again. He’d be listening to the breakers too. He paused for a moment to send Ross a text, explaining where they were and sending instructions — a force-wide alert to stop that vehicle – holding the phone under his jacket in an attempt to keep it dry. He was tempted to send one to Jonathan too, something apologetic — and meaningful and sentimental — but that had never really been Jonathan’s style, and Jen was moving ahead of him so he had to walk quickly to catch up. She, at least, seemed to know where they were going.
Then there was a view of the beach, lit briefly by lightning well out to sea. They’d left the lunar landscape of the dunes behind them. The path rose more steeply. In places it was like walking on the bed of a stream, as the water flowed over his shoes, rattling with loose pebbles, thick with eroded soil. The rain was easing, though. He could tell that the worst of the storm had passed.
Jen stopped. ‘Look.’ There was no longer any need to shout against the weather and the word came out as a whisper.
Ahead, so far above them that he could scarcely believe they were on the same path, was a moving pinprick of light.
‘That must be them,’ she said. ‘Who else would be so crazy to go out on a night like this?’
‘We need to be as quiet as we can. At least until we can see what’s happening up there.’ Matthew thought the path was so slippery, so close to the edge of the cliff, that a sudden movement, a shout, would spook the people ahead of them, might send them over. Even if a murder wasn’t committed tonight, there could be a terrible accident.
‘Okay.’ Jen pointed the torch down to the path, so there was less chance of it being seen from above, and he followed.
The rain had stopped altogether now and he pushed back his hood, feeling the force of the wind, and the noise of the sea more strongly.
They climbed slowly. Neither of them was fit. Ross would have run up like a mountain goat, and stood at the top looking back at them, despising them for their slowness. Smug and triumphant. Matthew thought he’d be glad of that speed now.
But because he and Jen moved cautiously, there was no sound. They could choose to put their feet on the cropped grass at the side of the path, to avoid the bare rock and the loose rocks. The small point of light ahead of them came closer. The cloud started to lift and Matthew could make out the Lundy lighthouse beams, even a faint occasional moon, full and pale.
Jen switched off her torch and got very close to him so she could whisper in his ear. He felt her damp hair on his cheek.
‘Let’s go that way, so we’re above them and we can surprise them.’ In the glimmer of moonlight, she nodded away from the cliff edge. It didn’t look like much of a path.
He nodded back. There was no path. They scrambled through the gorse and bramble until they were higher than the people below them. From here, he and Jen could look down on them. Still, the figures below were only shapes, shadows, but they were speaking. Matthew slid down the bank until he was close enough to listen in. One woman and one man, so close to the cliff edge that one step would take them over. A push could send one of them flying. He’d have the other to arrest then, but Eve Yeo would be dead.
He lay on his belly, so if they should look up, there’d be no silhouette on the horizon. The cloud thinned and the moon glinted for a moment on an object in the man’s hands. A shard of glass. He could see the colour — as yellow as butter — even in this pale, monochrome light. Then the cloud covered the moon again and everything was still and dark. But in that moment, he’d seen enough to identify George Mackenzie, holding the glass like a dagger against Eve Yeo’s neck. The other arm was curved around the young woman’s waist, holding her fast. George’s face was in profile and his head looked as if it had been carved from hard wood, magnificent and proud.
Matthew slid closer. George was talking. ‘Why did you have to meddle?’ He sounded very sad, almost heartbroken. It was as if this situation was all Eve’s fault and he was just an unfortunate bystander. ‘Bad enough that your father had to stick his nose into our business. Really, it didn’t need to come to this.’
Matthew weighed up his chances of jumping the man, of taking the glass from him, without both of the people close to the cliff edge falling to their deaths. He’d never been physically competent; he was so clumsy that perhaps he’d fall too. In a moment of black humour, he wondered if he should have written that last sentimental message to Jonathan after all.
He might not be any kind of action man, but he could persuade and he could listen. Those were the skills he was prepared to own.
He eased himself into a sitting position, aware of Jen, very tense, behind him.
The people on the cliff edge seemed not to notice.
‘George, please let Eve go.’ He kept his voice boring, ordinary. He could be in one of those planning meetings he so detested.
There was a movement below him, but now it was dark again and he couldn’t see exactly what was going on.
‘George, this is Matthew Venn. You remember me, don’t you? We spoke after Nigel’s death. And, of course, you will know my husband Jonathan. He’s a regular at the Sandpiper and he runs the Woodyard. You were there this evening, helping out with the Beckett. A very fine production, by the way, so I understand. That was how we knew where to find you. I’m going to use my torch so we can all see what’s going on. I hope that’s all right with you.’
Still no response. He shone the torch, not directly at Eve and George so it would blind them, but to one side. He saw them in muted monochrome, shadowy, like an early photograph. George was still holding the glass to Eve’s neck.
‘Please drop the glass, George. You can see that this isn’t helping. Another young person dead. Where’s the sense in that?’
‘I would have done anything to protect my family.’ In the strange shadowy light, Matthew saw the man’s mouth open in a scream.
‘I know,’ Matthew said. ‘I know. You loved the bones of them both. I could tell that when we were talking that day behind the bar. There are no monsters in this story. We imagined some kind of evil genius provoking the vulnerable to their deaths, but it wasn’t like that at all.’ Out of his line of vision, he was aware of a movement, but he continued: ‘Why don’t you tell me what happened, George? Why don’t you put down the glass and let Eve come here to me, and then you’ll have a chance to explain?’
He moved his torch a little, so it was shining almost directly onto the man’s face. He saw the tears streaming down his cheeks, as he blinked against the light.
‘Please, George.’
And perhaps the man would have taken the chance to explain, but at that moment, Jen was behind him, grabbing George round the neck, forcing the glass from his hand. Matthew saw the shard fly over the cliff and imagined he could hear the sound of it reaching the water. He slid down to the path and took Eve into his arms. She was shaking like a tiny bird, fallen from the nest, cold and scared. She was still in a cotton blouse, a yellow and white skirt and sandals.
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