‘The Raging Storm’ Chapters 13-18

‘It’s really just background,’ Ross said. ‘We know very little about Mr Rosco’s personal life and it would be useful to speak to his friends.’

‘Ah.’ Lawson was looking out into the darkness. His face was reflected as a shadow in the glass. ‘Everyone here thought they were Jem’s friend. Once he became famous, at least.’

‘Not so much before that?’

Lawson turned back into the room. The hand holding the glass trembled a little. Ross thought the man was already drunk, in that contained, unobtrusive way of the seasoned alcoholic. It was the cloudy eyes and the effort to concentrate. Venn’s superior, Joe Oldham, could get that way at times, more often recently, though Ross was reluctant to admit it.

‘Well, he was quite an irritating oik as a boy. He never really fitted in.’ There was a pause. ‘This place was always a second home for me. My grandfather raised the cash to build it and my father was in charge until he died.’

‘And then you took over.’

‘Voted in!’ The man bridled a little. ‘We don’t believe in nepotism here.’ There was a pause, while he seemed to reconsider. ‘Having said that, I probably got a sympathy vote. Poor Papa committed suicide.’

Ross was saved from answering by a young barmaid who brought his coffee on a little silver tray – milk on the side and a biscuit – and another large whisky for Lawson.

‘So, what was Rosco like as a youngster?’

‘Cocky,’ Lawson said. ‘And he took too many risks when he was out on the water. We didn’t mind him drowning himself, but there were times when he put other people in danger.’

‘I don’t understand how he could afford it.’ Ross sipped the coffee, which was weak and much too hot. ‘Sailing’s an expensive hobby.’

‘He started off crewing for older members, working his passage as it were. Cleaning here and working behind the bar when he was older. But he was never really happy playing second fiddle. He always wanted a boat of his own.’ A pause. ‘He was good, but not as good as he thought he was. Not then.’

‘There was talk of him sailing for Team GB in the Olympics.’

‘Ah.’ The fresh glass in front of Lawson was already almost empty. ‘He was very good at talk.’

‘How did he get the money to buy a boat good enough to sail single-handed round the world?’ It was time, Ross thought, to be more direct. Otherwise, Lawson would lose it altogether. The man was at that stage of drunkenness when he was unguarded, but still relatively coherent. One more drink and he’d be over the edge.

‘That was what we all wanted to know. Jem Rosco left here to seek his fortune. That was what he said when he resigned from the club. As if he was bloody Dick Whittington. It seemed fortune found him, and a bit closer to home.’ Lawson stared at his reflection in the glass. He seemed lost in thought.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘He had a sudden windfall.’ The man’s voice was ragged, bitter. ‘A year later he was sailing out of the marina, with the country’s press here to watch him set off.’

‘Where did he get his money from? To buy the boat?’

‘Oh, we all wondered that. There were stories, of course. Most of them made up by Rosco himself. But we all wanted to know who paid for the Nelly Wren.’

‘Of course,’ Ross said. ‘That was the boat he broke the round-the-world record in. A strange name. Was it called that after anyone special?’

The girl he lost his heart to when he first learned to sail?

Lawson looked up at him, bleary-eyed. ‘Oh yes! It was named for the woman who went on to be my wife. Who was already my girlfriend. Eleanor. Bloody cheek.’ He turned round to catch the eye of the barmaid. ‘Nell, he called her. Then Nelly Wren. He said the Wren was because she was so dainty.’

‘Is she still your wife?’

‘Yes, she bloody well is.’ He’d raised his voice and there were disapproving looks from the other members. Nobody seemed very surprised, though. Perhaps Lawson regularly turned from affable to aggressive at this time of the evening.

‘She’s not here this evening?’

Lawson shook his head. ‘She doesn’t get out much these days. Not with me, at least. These days, she’s a bit of a home bird. Not even her good works take her out any more.’ It took him a moment to realize what he’d said. ‘But not a wren. Not to me. To me, she’s always been Eleanor. Eleanor Lawson.’ The emphasis on the surname. His voice was loud again: ‘My wife.’ He could have been a child claiming possession of a fought-over toy.

‘Does Rosco have any surviving relatives locally?’

‘Not as far as I know. No siblings certainly. I seem to remember his mother died when he was out on one of his adventures.’ Lawson waved his fingers in the air to suggest quotation marks around the last word. There was a moment of silence. ‘Eleanor might know.’

‘Perhaps you should go home to her,’ Ross said. ‘I have to leave now. You’ve been very helpful.’ He felt sorry for the man, embarrassed on his behalf and wanted to get him away before the audience had anything further to roll their eyes at.

He was thinking he should check that Lawson didn’t have his car with him when the older woman appeared from behind the bar.

‘Your taxi’s here, sir. Downstairs and waiting for you.’ She winked at Ross and whispered as Lawson stumbled off to find his coat. ‘I get his keys from him as soon as he comes in. We don’t want him losing his licence, do we? Not when he’s a magistrate and all.’

They walked together down the stairs. At one point Ross took the older man’s arm to stop him falling.

‘I might want to talk to your wife,’ he said, just before they went outside. ‘As you suggested. Is there a good time to call at your house?’

‘Come anytime!’ The man was suddenly jovial again, the melancholy gone. ‘Always open house at the Lawsons’!’

Ross held the door open to let the man go ahead of him. A dark car was waiting. A man got out and opened the back door of the vehicle. ‘Come on, Barty. Let’s get you home to your missis.’ His voice warm and friendly. Almost affectionate.

Ross recognized him from a photo Venn had shared to the team. Davy Gregory, taxi driver and former farmer. And minder, it seemed, to the rich and entitled.

 

Chapter Fifteen

JEN PHONED ROSCO’S EX-WIFE before setting out from Greystone. The woman sounded distant, a little bored by the idea that she should give up part of her evening to discuss her dead former husband. ‘I suppose I can stay in, but I don’t know how I can possibly help.’

‘We’re just looking for background,’ Jen said. ‘I won’t take up any more of your time than we need.’

It occurred to Jen that she too would hardly be heartbroken if she got a call saying that her ex had died. She’d be curious, of course, but there’d surely be a moment of relief, a sense of lightness, of a burden being shed, because she would no longer have to worry about what poison Robbie might be feeding her children when they went on their increasingly infrequent visits. Perhaps, too, there’d be no more of the nightmare memories. The man screaming at her that she was an unfit mother. Slapping her. Punching her in the gut. No, she thought. Her first response to learning of Robbie’s passing wouldn’t be one of relief. It would be of joy, of total delight.

Selina Vickery lived in a large, detached modern house on a hill at the edge of Barnstaple. It was a part of a small new estate of executive homes, and stood on the largest plot, with a view of farmland at the back and over the town at the front. It was just getting dark when Jen arrived. She’d parked in the street and stood for a moment looking in. There were lights on in the large kitchen, but the blinds hadn’t been lowered. Selina and a man in his sixties were sitting at a breakfast bar drinking tea.

This must be Terry, the new husband.

Jen rang the bell and the woman slid from a tall stool to answer the door.

‘You must be Sergeant Rafferty.’ She wore jeans and a silk blouse and looked good for her age. Well-cut hair and subtle make-up, which, Jen thought, hadn’t been put on just for her benefit. This was a woman who cared about her appearance and wouldn’t meet anyone without it. ‘You don’t mind sitting in the kitchen? I’ve just made tea.’ She led Jen into the room and now she did pull down the blinds at the long windows. Everything was very clean, very shiny.

Jen took a stool, accepted the offer of tea.

‘As I said on the phone, I don’t know how I can help you. Jem and I divorced twenty years ago. Terry and I have been married for fifteen.’

‘I’m just after background information,’ Jen said. ‘We haven’t worked out what he was doing in Greystone. Did he have any contacts there? Relatives? Friends?’

‘There might have been schoolfriends. Kids from the village went to Morrisham High, I think, but I didn’t know Jeremy then.’

‘How did you meet?’

‘I was working for my father. He had his own business, a shop, in Morrisham. The town had a different feel then, before the smart set moved to Croyde and Woolacombe. It was more fashionable. The tourist board called it North Devon’s answer to Nice, and it did have a glamorous feel. There were fancy bars and clubs. We sold quality clothes, not just for the twinset and pearls brigade who visit now, but for the younger crowd. Men and women. We had regular customers but the tourists came too. And the grand sailing fraternity. Dad had an eye for fashion and design.’

‘Which you’ve inherited.’ Her husband spoke for the first time, his voice proud. He was stocky, grey-haired. ‘Selina has her own textile company. She sells worldwide.’

The woman smiled at him, with real affection, before continuing her story. ‘Jem came in looking for an outfit for some awards dinner and I served him. I recognized him at once, of course. He was a local hero in those days, not long back from sailing round the world. Still in his mid-twenties. Very cool, in a wind-blown, boho sort of way. He asked me out for a drink that night. We had several drinks and I was still there for breakfast. A month later I’d moved into his flat. I was younger than him. Dazzled, I suppose, by his celebrity.’

‘Where was the flat?’

‘It was in one of the newly built apartment blocks looking out over the promenade in Morrisham. All white and clean, and pretending to look like somewhere on the French Riviera, with palm trees in the communal garden at the front, a sleek wine bar on the ground floor. His place had a balcony and we’d sit there in the evenings to watch the sun set over the sea. I thought it was so cool. Dad’s business was in Morrisham, but I’d grown up here in Barnstaple. This is quite different, ordinary, real.’

Jen thought that probably tied in with the address that Vicky had found. Rosco might still own the flat. ‘How could he afford a place like that?’

Selina thought for a moment. ‘I’m not sure he could afford it. Jem was a charmer, and very plausible, but everything was precarious. He might get what seemed like a ridiculous sum to endorse new sailing gear, or open a restaurant, or give a team-building speech, but then he’d splash out on a holiday in the Maldives and it would all disappear. I understood business. It’s what I’d grown up with. At first I just enjoyed the ride – the big wedding and the honeymoon in St Lucia – but then I started to worry about whether or not he was paying his VAT or filling in his tax form.’

‘Is that why you divorced?’

Selina didn’t answer immediately. ‘No, not entirely, though his reluctance to take anything seriously made me uneasy. As I said, he was a charmer. He told me he didn’t need to worry about the financial detail, that he had an accountant to deal with the tedious stuff, and a lawyer to get him out of bother. But by then, I’d stopped quite believing him.’ She looked up at Jen. ‘I’m not saying he was a liar, but he made up all these stories in his head. Real life bored him and he was like a kid living in his own daydreams. He had to play the lead role in his made-up adventure stories. I’m sure he believed in the fantasy. As I said, he wasn’t a liar. But for Jem, everything had to be romantic, exciting.’

‘I don’t suppose you remember the name of the accountant or lawyer?’

‘Not the accountant. The lawyer had a weird name. I think that was why Jem had picked him. We used to laugh at it. Bottle! He was called Rodney Bottle.’ She looked at Jen. ‘He was already middle-aged then. I’m not sure he’ll still be practising.’

Jen’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She apologized, took it out and looked at it. A text from Ross.

Ask her about Eleanor. Known to him as Nell. The girl Rosco fell for when he was still at school. The girl he named his boat for.

She switched it off and stuck it in her bag. Selina and Terry were staring at her, obviously curious.

‘Did you ever meet a woman called Eleanor? Nell. Apparently, he named his boat after her. The first boat that he sailed round the world in.’

‘Ah,’ Selina said. ‘Nelly Wren. She was another of Jeremy’s make-believes.’

‘She didn’t exist?’

‘Oh, I think she existed, but nobody could have been as pretty, as innocent or as good as Jem made her out to be. She was his first girlfriend. The love of his life at least. I’m not even sure he actually went out with her.’

‘But he married you!’

‘Nell was unattainable. Engaged to someone else. I’m not sure why he married me. To distract himself perhaps. We did have a lot of fun together and I adored him, in the beginning at least. He would have loved the adoration. Then the gloss wore off. I’m sure the same would have happened if he’d been married to the perfect Eleanor. His passions were only fleeting. Soon, he’d move on to the next thing: the trip up the Amazon or walking to the North Pole.’ A pause. ‘Or a younger and more glamorous lover.’

‘Is that why you divorced then? He’d found someone else?’ ‘No,’ she said. ‘I left him before it happened, but I could tell he’d decided I wasn’t really what he needed. I’d never be able to live up to Nell. When he was drunk, he’d tell me about her, about how lovely she was. There’s only so much of that a girl can take.’ There was a pause. ‘You know what Diana said about Charles and Camilla – that there were always three people in her marriage. That was how it felt with Jem. In a way it was worse because I wasn’t even sure that he’d ever made love to her. She was inside his head. The ideal woman. I was real and so I’d never match up.’ She smiled at her husband. ‘And then I met Terry, who’s very real too. He’s a builder. Practical like me. This is his development. We married as soon as my divorce came through. Two teenage sons, and we’ve never looked back.’

‘Jeremy had already done his round-the-world trip when you first met him?’

‘Yeah, he was still living off the glory of that.’

‘Do you know how he raised the money for that first trip? He didn’t have a wealthy family, and at that point he wasn’t well known outside local sailing circles.’

Selina shrugged. ‘I suppose he found some rich backer who’d been taken in by his charms.’

Jen thought about that. Wouldn’t a backer want something in return? A company name splashed all over the boat? ‘Did Jeremy ever mention anyone specific?’

Selina thought for a moment. ‘No. He always said that first trip was down to luck.’ A pause and then she grinned. ‘Perhaps he’d won the premium bonds!’

The suggestion was meant as a joke, but Jen wondered if it was worth checking out. There was something of the fairy tale about Jem Rosco’s background, and a lucky premium bond number didn’t seem as outrageous as it might otherwise do.

The contemporary equivalent of five magic beans in Jack and the Beanstalk.

‘When was the last time you saw your ex-husband?’

‘Not very long ago – at the beginning of the summer – and it was quite by chance. I’d been out with some friends in Morrisham, and Terry offered to pick me up after the meal. For some reason the evening ended earlier than I’d expected, and I had forty minutes to wait before we’d arranged for him to collect me. I walked along the prom to kill time. It was one of those beautiful June evenings, when the sun is low over the horizon and seems to send a path of gold across the water.’ Selina paused and pulled a face, mocking herself for the poetic thought, before she continued. ‘It was midweek and there weren’t many people about. That’s when I saw Jem. He was sitting on a bench, hardly more than a silhouette in that odd light, but I recognized him. I sat beside him. We hadn’t ended on bad terms and I was interested to find out how he was.’

She paused again, caught up, it seemed, in the memory. ‘It took him a while to realize who I was, and then he became the old Jem, full of life and chatter, telling funny stories about his last expedition, asking for my news. We were very at ease with each other and I was nearly late meeting Terry. But when I first saw him, from a distance in that dying light, he’d seemed rather old and sad.’ Selina looked across the breakfast bar at Jen. ‘I’m sure he’d been crying.’

 

Chapter Sixteen

THE BAR HAD OPENED again when Jonathan arrived and Matthew heard his husband before he saw him, calling across the room to Harry. ‘Hello, mate, lovely to see you again!’ His theatre group must have stayed in the Maiden’s when they were on their tour.

‘Your bloke’s in the back.’ Harry’s reply was warm, welcoming. Of course. Jonathan made friends wherever he went.

Venn was alone in the snug, his makeshift office. He thought the team would be here in Greystone for a while, unless there was a sudden break in the case. More storms were forecast for later in the week. There were flood warnings, and the tides were high. If they left Greystone now, there was no guarantee that they’d get back.

There was still a little light left in the day and the couple went for a walk, through the village and along the jetty. They sat there for a while, their backs to the wall, watching the dying sun catch the waves as they broke on the shingle.

‘Thanks for bringing my stuff.’ Matthew could never quite put into words what Jonathan meant to him. It always came out like this: boring and banal.

‘I wanted to see you,’ Jonathan said. ‘I miss you when you’re not there.’ A pause. ‘Besides, it’s good to get away for a while. There’s something I need to decide.’

‘Would it help to talk?’

‘Not yet. My shit. My decision.’

Matthew felt a sting of rejection, but said nothing, and Jonathan went on speaking. ‘I’m meeting an old friend tomorrow. He’s a teacher at the high school in Morrisham, so we’re catching up for an early lunch.’

‘How old is he, your teacher friend?’

‘Mid-sixties, just about to retire. He arrived there in his early twenties as a newly qualified teacher, and has been there for the whole of his career. He teaches art and brings a group of sixth-formers to the Woodyard to most of our exhibitions. We run workshops for them.’ Jonathan squeezed Matthew’s arm. ‘There’s no competition, I promise! He’s grey and wrinkled and very unfit.’

‘He could have taught Rosco,’ Venn said. ‘And Davy Gregory and Harry Carter here.’

‘You’re surely not asking me to interfere in your work?’ His voice was still teasing but it had an edge. Matthew had accused him of doing that once before and he still hadn’t forgotten the hurt of it.

‘No,’ Matthew said. ‘Of course not.’ He stood up and held out a hand to pull Jonathan to his feet. The only light now came from street lamps in the village and a flashing buoy marking the entrance to the harbour.

Ross had returned to the Maiden’s Prayer when they got back. Jonathan stayed in the bar, chatting to Harry, drinking the local cider, joining in a game of darts. Venn caught up with Ross in the snug.

‘So, at least we know a bit more now about Jeremy Rosco.’ Venn was drinking coffee, his elbows on the table. He needed a sharp mind for this. At the moment, everything seemed woolly and blurred at the edges. There was little that was concrete to get hold of. Even Ross, usually so fixated with facts, was speaking of impressions and feelings.

‘Bartholomew Lawson,’ Ross said. ‘Commodore of the sailing club, husband of Nelly Wren and general pisshead. He really didn’t like our victim. He called him a little oik.’ A pause. ‘I think he was jealous. Really, really jealous. There was this boy from a single-parent home who swanned into the yacht club and was a better sailor, and who then had the nerve to fall for Lawson’s girl.’

‘Jealous enough to kill him after all this time?’ Venn was sceptical. But envy was corrosive. If he were still religious, he’d say that it ate away at the soul. He’d seen colleagues, brooding, desperate, because someone else had been given the promotion they’d thought should be theirs.

‘To be honest, I don’t think he’d be upright in the early hours of the morning, never mind competent enough to organize that sort of murder.’ Ross paused. ‘He has a taxi to take him home every night. The guy got out to help him into the car. I recognized him from the photo you circulated.’

‘Davy Gregory?’

Ross nodded.

‘Did they seem friendly?’

‘Not what you’d call friendly. Even drunk, Lawson still thought he was boss, but they knew each other well enough. Gregory appeared to be acting like some sort of minder.’

‘I’ve heard back from Jen,’ Matthew said. ‘It sounds as if Rosco was obsessed by Lawson’s wife. She was a part of his life, in his imagination at least, even when he was married to someone else.’

‘I suppose,’ Ross said, ‘that would be a kind of motive for Lawson, but I still can’t see him as a killer. And why now, after all this time?’

‘I’ll go and see Eleanor Lawson tomorrow.’ This woman seemed to have haunted the dead man’s dreams since he was a boy.

‘Want me to come along?’ There was little enthusiasm behind the offer. Middle-aged women didn’t quite catch Ross May’s interest.

‘No.’ Matthew’s voice sounded sharper than he’d intended. He realized that he’d caught something of Rosco’s obsession with the woman. Now, he wanted to form his own impression of her, and it would be easier to do that alone.

‘I still need to get those soil samples from Sammy Barton.’

Venn thought that should already have been done, but said nothing. He was learning to pick his battles with Ross. ‘Then, can you see if Rosco still owned an apartment on the Morrisham seafront? Selina, his ex, saw him there at the beginning of the summer.’ He paused for a moment. ‘And, through Selina, Jen has tracked down his lawyer, the guy who once was his lawyer at least. He went by the name of Rodney Bottle. I’m sure you’ll be able to find out if he’s still working in the town, or if someone has taken over from him.’

‘If Rosco owned a place locally, why come to stay in Greystone?’ Ross said. ‘Especially if Eleanor was his mystery woman.’

Venn thought for a moment. ‘I think when we know that, we’ll know who killed him.’

He stood up. He wanted to speak to Jonathan. He felt homesick for the long, low house by the estuary. He wished they were there, alone.

 

Chapter Seventeen

THEY WOKE EARLY AGAIN. Jonathan was immediately out of bed, making tea, planning a swim; sea swimming was a recent passion, a daily ritual when they were at home. From the bedroom window, Matthew watched him walk across the street and into the shadowy water, and stayed watching until Jonathan strode back onto the shore, laughing and shaking the water from his hair like a dog. Matthew ran downstairs to his car then and drove off, before Jonathan came back and saw him. He felt like a voyeur, as if Jonathan was a stranger and he had no right to be staring.

Driving inland, there was mist on the low ground and a strange diffuse light filtering the rising sun. The Lawson house was some way inland of Morrisham, surrounded by woodland and a high stone wall. Matthew left his car on the road and walked up a twisting drive through trees. He hadn’t expected the grounds to be so extensive. There was a small pool, almost a lake, with a jetty rising out of it. Everything was untamed, a little overgrown, as if the place had seen better days.

A wooden swing on long ropes hung from a huge tree on the lawn. Ross hadn’t mentioned the Lawsons ever having had children, but perhaps it had been left there by former owners. Matthew had a brief moment of temptation. What would it be like to swing in long arcs under the tree? The whole place had a dreamlike, ghostly quality. He imagined a grand Edwardian party, children playing, jumping from the jetty into the lake, adults dressed in white sitting on blankets on the grass, enjoying an elaborate picnic as they watched.

Only then did he remember that he had been in this garden before, and that he had briefly been on the swing. The memory returned with a force that stopped him in his tracks. He shut his eyes and he was on the swing, his head tilted back, the sun filtering through the leaves onto his face as he moved. It was the height of summer. It had been one of the Greystone Brethren outings and he’d been very young. Four? Five? His mother had been wearing a pretty yellow dress with a white belt. He had a picture of her laughing, obviously relaxed, eating an ice cream cone. The lawn had been crowded with people.

A cockerel had been crowing since he’d left the car, and now it brought Venn back to the present, to the chilly autumn morning. He turned a curve in the drive, and he saw a woman walking ahead of him, carrying a basket of eggs, most of them brown with muck. She could almost have stepped out of his daydream, but she must have heard his footsteps on the gravel, because she stopped and turned.

‘Hello.’ She sounded surprised, but friendly enough.

Venn could see how she’d got her nickname. She was small, a little round, and dressed all in brown apart from black wellington boots: long brown mackintosh over a skirt and jersey, the colour of the earth, the coat unbuttoned.

‘My name’s Matthew Venn,’ he said. ‘I’m a detective, investigating the death of Jeremy Rosco.’ A pause. ‘You must be Eleanor Lawson. I wondered if I could talk to you?’

‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Poor Jeremy. I always thought he’d meet a dramatic end, but I didn’t imagine anything like this.’

They walked on side by side up the drive. There were bushes and shrubs on either side, everything covered in cobwebs, lacy and sparkling with dew. They turned another bend in the track and then the house became visible. It was large and grey, a Victorian Gothic pile with a turret in one corner and stone steps leading to a grand front door. Another jolt of memory, although Venn thought he’d never been inside. Through a first-floor window, he saw a face. A rocking horse, paint faded, which seemed to be staring out at him. Eleanor saw him looking up and laughed.

‘That’s Dobbin, mine when I was a girl here. I haven’t had the heart to get rid of him, although we never had children of our own.’ Sadness in her voice.

‘I think I’ve been here before. Some sort of garden party. It would have been about thirty years ago.’

‘Ah, my parents would have been running the place then. They threw the gardens open every midsummer’s eve in aid of the lifeboat.’ A pause. ‘It’s all become rather run-down since then. I don’t think anyone would consider it worth paying for a visit now.’

‘You grew up here?’

‘I did! It’s been in the family since it was built. My great-grandfather came over from Ireland and made his fortune. He founded the Greystone quarry on the coast and owned most of the village there at one time. Now this house is all that is left.’

Another connection, Venn thought. Another complication.

She led him round the side of the house and in through a small door to a stone-flagged room, smelling of dogs and mud, where she took off her boots and hung up her coat. He hesitated for a moment, wondering if he should take off his shoes, and she noticed his awkwardness.

‘No, no, they’re perfectly clean. Cleaner than anything else in this place. We don’t have any help in the house these days.’ The kitchen was big and cluttered, but actually not dirty. The windows were clear and there was no grease on the work surfaces. Venn thought that little would have changed since the place had been built. A retriever lay on a mat in front of a giant range. Eleanor moved him gently with her foot, to slide a kettle onto the hot plate.

‘This is Frankie. He’s so very old, and he spends most of his time asleep. There’s always been a Frankie in the house, but I suspect we won’t replace him when he dies.’

For a moment she seemed so sad again that Venn had the urge to comfort her, but she turned to him, her voice bright. ‘Tea or coffee? And will you have some breakfast? All these eggs need to be used, and Barty rarely emerges until lunchtime after an evening at the sailing club. Some days I seem to live on eggs, and what I can scavenge from the garden.’ A pause and a grin. ‘It’s a wonder I can shit at all!’

That shocked and amused him at the same time, which is what, he suspected, she intended.

‘No need for breakfast,’ he said. ‘I had some at the Maiden’s Prayer before I set out. But I’d love some tea.’

‘Is that where you’re staying? Well, I hear it’s a lot more comfortable than it used to be.’ She looked across at him. ‘But then, Greystone has never been a particularly comfortable place for us. They still blame my father for selling the quarry to a national company, and besides, we’re a Catholic family. You know that most of the village is Barum Brethren?’

Venn nodded.

‘We’re considered worse than heathen.’

It was leaf tea, made in a cream china pot. She brought out mugs and a strainer, and poured milk from a carton in the fridge into a jug. ‘I still have some standards.’ Another grin.

They sat opposite each other at a table covered by an oilskin cloth, patterned with small red flowers.

‘So,’ she said. ‘What do you want to know about Jeremy?’

‘He named his first boat after you.’

‘So he did.’

‘You were very close?’

‘Very close,’ she agreed, ‘when we were young.’

‘According to his wife, you were always the love of his life.’

She bent to stroke the dog’s head, so Matthew couldn’t see her face. ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Perhaps he was always the love of mine.’

‘So, what happened?’ What kept you apart?

‘I was young when we first met. Easily influenced. My family didn’t take to him. They thought it was all this that he wanted. Not me.’ She made a sweeping gesture to include the house and the land outside. ‘I knew that wasn’t the case. He was a romantic soul. But restless. I realized I’d never keep him at home.’ She sat upright again. ‘I suppose I went for the safer option.’

‘Bartholomew Lawson?’

She nodded. ‘Barty and I had been pals since we were toddlers. Our families were friends and we went to the same church, took our first communion on the same day. He got sent away to boarding school; I was a day pupil at the convent school in Bideford. We met up in the holidays.’

‘You joined the sailing club?’

She nodded. ‘Where his father was commodore.’

And he, Matthew thought, was the man for whom Matilda Gregory’s father had worked. A coincidence? Probably. In these small communities, everyone was linked in one way or another. Eleanor was still speaking: ‘Jem became a junior member on the same day.’

‘And fell for you.’

‘Fell for the thought of me. The idea of me.’

‘You were already going out with Barty at that point?’

‘I suppose I was. We’d snogged certainly, and he’d taken me to the pictures. He felt a certain kind of ownership.’ For the first time, her voice was hard.

‘Do you know how Rosco got the money to buy his first boat?’

She laughed and Venn saw her as the girl she once had been. ‘That was pure luck! Classic Jem. You couldn’t make it up.’

Venn said nothing and waited for her to tell the story.

‘He and a couple of friends were beachcombing,’ she said. ‘He found a piece of jewellery on the tideline, mixed with the sea glass, the shells and the weed. A locket. Gold. The catch was broken and it must have dropped from the owner’s neck. There’d been a picture inside. The saltwater had rotted that away, but there was an inscription on the back. My darling Grace. He could have sold it for the value of the gold, but as I told you, he had a romantic nature. He wanted to trace the woman who’d owned it. He asked me to help him.’

‘And you found her?’ Venn thought Eleanor was a great storyteller. He was already caught up with the narrative.

‘We did! He was like a terrier when he set his mind to something. She was an elderly woman called Grace Fanshaw, and she lived in one of those stately Georgian houses in Morrisham High Street.’

‘How did he track her down?’

‘There aren’t that many women of the right vintage who regularly walked the beach. Jem and I asked around. It seemed that Grace’s lover had given the locket to her when she was a girl. It was old, already an antique, when the man bought it, but he had the inscription done. He was a naval officer and there was an accident in the Atlantic just after the war. He drowned. She never married and seemed haunted by the sea.’ Eleanor looked up at Venn. She seemed close to tears, but Matthew wasn’t convinced by the tale. It seemed like something a man like Rosco might make up from fragments of other stories, scraps from films and popular television dramas. Rosco had been the hero of his own adventure story.

Eleanor must have sensed his scepticism. ‘I met her,’ she said. ‘She and Jem became friends of a kind. He visited her regularly, did her shopping and kept her company. She was very frail by the end. She stopped her daily walks on the beach, but he pushed her along the prom in a wheelchair. He was kind to her. She had no family.’

Matthew was starting to guess what was coming. ‘Grace remembered Jeremy in her will.’

Eleanor nodded. ‘She left him everything. The house and all her savings. It was enough for him to get the Nelly Wren and to plan his trip.’

‘There was definitely no family?’

She shrugged. ‘Nobody local. I think there was a nephew. I remember Jem was contacted by some lawyer in London, who queried the will, but though Grace was frail in body, she was in sound mind. There was nothing they could do.’

‘You and Jem must have been close at that time,’ Venn said, ‘if you went with him to visit Grace.’

‘We were friends. Close friends.’ She sounded a little defensive.

‘You were still going out with Barty?’ Pleasing the family. Keeping your options open. ‘He told one of my detectives that he didn’t know how Jeremy got the money for his round-the-world adventure.’

‘I was young! I couldn’t take anything too seriously. And Barty was away, first at school and then at university. I always stayed at home.’

‘It was serious for Jeremy, though, wasn’t it?’

Silence. ‘He was heading out on his trip,’ Eleanor said at last, ‘and his head was full of his boat and the sea. Of becoming the youngest man to sail single-handed round the world. When we met up, the talk was all about that. It seemed as if I was his audience. Nothing more.’

‘Did he ask you to wait for him?’ Venn thought that was the kind of romantic gesture the man might have made.

She was as still as the stone her grandfather had cut from the quarry. Outside the kitchen window a robin was singing. ‘He did. But he was drunk, that night before he set off, wild with excitement. I thought it would be forgotten by morning.’

‘But he’d meant it. And when he came home, you were engaged to Bartholomew Lawson?’

Another silence.

‘I was,’ she said at last. ‘I’ve regretted it every day since.’ She looked at him. ‘Jem turned up here, the day before the wedding, asking me to run away with him. He’d proved what sort of man he was, he said.’ There was a long silence. ‘I didn’t have the courage to do it.’

‘Had you heard from him recently? We know he was expecting a visitor at the place he was renting at Greystone.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I knew that he wouldn’t ask again. Jem had too much pride. It would have been different if I’d gone to him, and I wish I’d contacted him years ago. But I wasn’t brave enough, and, by then, I could tell that Barty needed me. I’d made my choice and I had a duty to live with it. If I’d left, there’d be nothing remaining of him. It would have been easier if we’d had children. He’d have been a different man then.’ A pause. ‘But that was down to me too. It was my body that let us down. I suppose I felt we had to rattle along together.’

There was another, longer silence. She was stroking the dog and Venn thought the conversation might be over. He was about to get to his feet to leave, when she started speaking again, her voice flat and sad.

‘Jem was always in my head. In my dreams, he was a potential escape from a meaningless relationship. I thought that if I really couldn’t stand it any more, I’d get in touch with him and he’d gallop to the rescue. No judgement. No recrimination. We’d sail away into the sunset. We’d have fun. The possibility kept me going through the dark times. Now the hope is gone and everything seems rather bleak.’ She looked up and gave a wry smile. ‘But of course, I’ll survive. I love this house and I have a better life than most. Besides, I can’t complain because, as I’ve explained, it was my choice. How do the young describe it? My bad.’

Now, Matthew Venn did get to his feet to go. Eleanor walked with him to the back door. The sun was up and the dew on the cobwebs had disappeared. The long swing hung still from the tree in the middle of the lawn. Before he reached the bend in the drive, Matthew stopped to look back at the house. There was a face at an upstairs window – human, not a wooden horse. Bartholomew Lawson, staring down at him.

 

Chapter Eighteen

ROSS WAS STILL IN the Maiden’s Prayer when Venn arrived back there from the Lawsons’ house. Gwen Gregory had cleared the table of the remnants of his late breakfast and he was working at his laptop. ‘I went to see Barton first thing. I met Brian there and he got the soil samples you were after.’

The boss nodded. ‘How was Barton? Any resistance?’

Ross thought about that. ‘Not really. He was polite enough. He said the weather’s due to break again tomorrow night.’

Venn seemed preoccupied. ‘Have you seen Jonathan?’

‘Yeah,’ Ross said, ‘we had breakfast together when he came back from his swim. He said he was going into Morrisham. Jen’s on her way. She won’t be long. She called into Appledore to see how the CSIs were getting on with the dinghy. Nothing useful so far.’

Venn nodded. Ross thought it was always impossible to tell what he was thinking. What was the word? Inscrutable. That was the boss to a tee.

‘So, I’ve been to see Eleanor Lawson,’ Venn said. ‘I know now how Rosco got the cash to buy his first boat.’

Ross listened to the story of Grace Fanshaw and the finding of the gold locket. It all seemed very unlikely to him. It could have been a kids’ fairy tale, or something out of the women’s magazines Mel read when they were on holiday.

‘Did you believe it?’

‘There’s something so weird about this investigation that I’d believe almost anything.’

That didn’t sound like Venn, who was rational and always instilled in them that the facts mattered more than guesswork, or any notion of gut feeling.

Matthew was still talking. ‘We can check, though. There’ll be a record of the will. A distant relative contested it.’ He paused. ‘If Rosco was waiting for a mysterious woman, surely it must have been Eleanor Lawson. She was obviously the love of his life. But she looks nothing like the woman Alan Ford described as getting out of the car on the night of the murder, and she denies being there, or even having heard from Rosco recently. Why would she lie?’

May thought this was obvious. He wondered if the boss was losing his grip. ‘Because she killed him?’

‘Why would she do that? After all this time. And she came across to me as rather a gentle soul.’

Ross was tempted to remind Venn about the importance of sticking to the facts, not relying on superficial impressions of character or personality, but at the last minute he held his tongue. Probably best not to provoke him while he was in such a strange mood. ‘Rosco’s solicitor, Rodney Bottle, is still alive and willing to talk to us. His son runs his business now, but Rodney remembers Rosco. He sounds as if he has stories to tell. I’ve said we’d see him at his place in Morrisham.’

‘Great. It seems we’re finally getting some real information on our man.’

‘And I’ve tracked down the freeholder of the flat Rosco still owned in Morrisham. The concierge has a key and will let us in. They can’t remember the man using it for ages.’

‘Why did he pay to stay here in Greystone when he could have stayed in his own flat in Morrisham?’ The same question again, but this time Venn seemed not to expect an answer. He hadn’t taken a seat when he came into the room, and now he was pacing, walking backwards and forwards in front of the unlit fire.

Ross May answered all the same. ‘Perhaps the flat’s a dump. There might not even be any furniture in there.’

Venn came to a rest. ‘You might be right. Let’s go and find out, shall we?’

+++

From the outside, Rosco’s Morrisham home was definitely more an apartment than a flat, and was far from being a dump. The individual blocks must recently have been painted, because they were startling white in the autumn sunshine. The apartments were arranged in wide steps, each looking out at the sea, giving the impression of a cliff sloping away from the shore. On the ground floor, there was a bar, sleek and stylish. Rosco’s apartment was on the top floor of the five-storey building, and would surely have a spectacular view of the coast.

Inside, the communal areas were spacious. There was a discreetly positioned lift, but a grand staircase also led up to each floor. Glossy-leaved pot plants were as tall as small trees. It felt more like a hotel than an apartment block. The building might have been built relatively recently, but there was a sense of an older, more gracious age. The idea that a concierge was available on site to provide a service to residents seemed odd, anachronistic. Ross couldn’t imagine what a place here would cost.

The man who met them in the lobby was small and dapper. Elderly but well-preserved. His bald head shone as if it had been polished. He’d worked there since the flats had been built, he said, and remembered Mr Rosco as an early resident.

‘He’d just come back from the round-the-world race, and he was famous. The developer felt it was a coup that he’d chosen to take up residence here. There was a lot of local publicity about his homecoming. I suspect he got rather a good discount. Having Jem Rosco here certainly attracted other people to buy.’

‘Had he stayed recently?’

The bald head shook. ‘I haven’t seen him for a number of years. I suspect he regarded the apartment as an investment these days.’

‘He could have let it out,’ Ross said. ‘Airbnb or a holiday rental. A site like this, he’d make a fortune.’

The head shook again, and the voice sounded disapproving. ‘That’s not allowed within the original purchase contract, though we suspect that occasionally the rules are broken.’ Despite his age, he’d not bothered with the lift and was walking ahead of them up the carpeted stairs. His movement was sprightly. He was almost dancing. ‘Many of our residents are elderly now, and I’ve had complaints about rowdy gatherings. When I’ve checked, the people inside always claim to be relatives of the residents.’ He paused, not, Ross thought, because he needed to draw breath but to emphasize his disapproval. ‘The stories are so similar that I suspect some sort of agreed fabrication.’

‘A cover story suggested by the owners?’

‘Indeed.’ He continued bounding ahead of them up the stairs.

They came out into a wide hallway, where, ahead of them, was a huge window looking out over the bay. In the evening, the sunshine would be flooding in, but even now, in late morning, the space was airy, filled with light. There were two doors, one to the left and one to the right. The man turned left. ‘This is Mr Rosco’s apartment.’ He pulled out a bunch of keys.

‘That’s fine.’ Venn had managed to position himself between the man and the door, but still sounded polite. ‘If you can let us have the key, we can take it from here.’

Ross half expected an objection, but the man only nodded, slipped a key off the ring and handed it to Venn. He smiled. ‘If you need me, I’ll be waiting downstairs.’ And he’d gone.

Venn unlocked the door. They moved straight into a large living room, with double glass doors leading onto a balcony formed by one of the steps of the building. While the lower floors were two apartments wide, and the back one would have no view, this one covered the whole width of the block. It was, Ross thought, like the top of a pyramid, self-contained and glorious. There were two white leather sofas and a glass coffee table, all a little dated, but substantial, expensive pieces. Through an open door, they saw a kitchen, with marble worktops and upmarket appliances. Also in white. There were two bedrooms, each with its own bathroom.

Venn pulled a gloved finger across a pale chest of drawers in the largest bedroom. ‘No dust. If Rosco really hasn’t stayed here for years, there must be a cleaner.’

Ross was again reminded of being in a plush hotel. A rich relative of Mel’s had bought them a night in a flash place in London as a wedding present before they jetted off to the Canaries on honeymoon, and this had the same vibe. Great for one night, but not very homely. He wasn’t sure that he’d want to live here.

‘Why wouldn’t he wait here for his mysterious visitor?’ Ross couldn’t understand it. It might not be very cosy, but this was a palace in comparison to the cold, damp cottage in Greystone. ‘It’s so much more comfortable than where he was staying when he died.’

Venn considered the question seriously. ‘Because he didn’t want people to know he was back in the area? I imagine word would soon get out if he was staying here. Especially if, as the concierge said, most of them were of the same vintage as him. He’d be recognized.’

‘He was in hiding?’

‘Well, that seems a little melodramatic, but perhaps. Not for any sinister reason, but because he didn’t want the hassle. Maybe he had things to do that made it necessary for him to go under the radar, and not play the role of great adventurer for a week or two.’ Venn had walked back into the living room and was staring out at the sea. ‘Of course, there might be another reason.’ The boss seemed to be talking to himself, and not to Ross at all. ‘Perhaps the mysterious visitor was a fiction, made up by Rosco to explain his presence in the village. Perhaps, all along, he was there to meet a local.’ He turned so he was looking back at Ross. ‘I think that’s where our focus should be.’

Ross thought this meant they were about to head back to Greystone, but the boss continued prowling around the room. He landed in front of three small photos, framed and propped on a shelf. He stood staring at them, searching, it seemed, for some link to their investigation.

‘That must have been Eleanor with Rosco when they first met.’

May looked too. Two young people stood on a shingle beach next to a wooden dinghy. Both had their jeans rolled up to their knees and the water washed over their feet. The girl was small, with pixie-cut hair. The boy wasn’t much taller, and was obviously Rosco. Both wore sweatshirts with MYC embroidered on the chest.

‘Morrisham Yacht Club, don’t you think?’ Again, Venn didn’t seem to expect a response. ‘But that’s not the beach here in Morrisham. It could be Greystone. Eleanor’s grandfather owned the quarry there at one point, so there would have been a connection.’ A pause. ‘This would have been long before selfies became popular. I wonder who took the photo?’

The next picture was of three young people, aged fifteen or sixteen. This could have been taken on Greystone beach too. Certainly, there was a grey backdrop, shingle in the foreground and cliffs behind them. The light was poor. It was almost dusk and they were sitting around a makeshift firepit, dug out of the pebbles, driftwood was burning and they had cans in their hands. May thought it was some sort of beach party. He recognized Rosco, right at the centre, because of his small stature, but the photo was so blurred that his features meant nothing. He couldn’t tell the others from each other.

The third picture was of an elderly lady. She was sitting in a wheelchair. The young Rosco was standing behind her. The woman had turned her face towards him and was smiling with great affection.

‘That must be Grace Fanshaw,’ Venn said. ‘She does seem very fond of him. You can believe, looking at this, that she might have left him her fortune.’ He looked back at Ross. ‘Let’s bag them. I’m not sure if it would be technically possible, but it’d be great if we can improve the quality in some way. I’d like to know if that really is Greystone, and it would be good to ID the three kids round the fire. I’m pretty sure that one of them is Rosco and he might have kept in touch with the others.’

The concierge was waiting for them in the lobby as he’d promised. He was chatting to a frail older woman, who seemed likely to be a resident. He took her arm and helped her into the lift before turning back to them. Ross thought the owners would miss him when he finally retired. Perhaps he was the reason why some stayed so long.

‘All done?’ The voice was cheery. Rosco’s death seemed not to have affected him personally.

‘For now,’ Venn said. ‘Did Mr Rosco employ a cleaner?’

‘Not exactly. It’s a service the freeholder provides for an extra service fee. Lynn goes in once a month to air the place and keep it clean. She’s here today if you’d like to speak to her.’

Ross waited for his boss to make a positive reply, but Venn shook his head. ‘I’ll take her contact details, though, in case we need them.’

Then they were back outside in the bright autumn sunshine.