'The Raging Storm' Chapters 7-12

‘The tender would usually be tucked under there too.’ Barton’s voice was loud and bleak. ‘You can’t think I had anything to do with Rosco’s death? I wouldn’t be daft enough to use something that could be traced back to me.’

May didn’t answer that. ‘When was the last time you saw the tender?’

‘When I brought Moon Crest in at the beginning of September.’

Suddenly, the cloud thinned. The storm still raged but the scene was lit by an odd milky light. It caught Barton’s face as he tilted his head towards Ross. The man wasn’t playing the hard man any more. He was almost pleading.

‘Look, man, you can see that anyone could have come in and stolen the thing. The yard isn’t locked. You need to get this sorted. Not for me. But for our Jane. Word gets out, people start talking.You know how it is in a place like this.’

Ross nodded, but really, he had no idea what it must be like. He had friends on the shiny new estate where he lived with his wife Mel. But there was no real intimacy. He hadn’t grown up with them, been to school with them. Most of them were incomers, looking for the good life in the West Country.

They walked back to the front of the house and paused on the pavement. The strange light had cast a sheen of copper on the boiling water.

‘It couldn’t have been done by one person,’ Barton said suddenly. ‘Think about it.You’d row the tender out to the point and drop the anchor. How would you get back ashore? Someone else would have to come and get you. Unless it was towed out by a bigger vessel. You saw my Moon Crest. It’s bone dry, not been anywhere for weeks. Besides, it’d be hard to get a boat that size into the water quietly. Someone would have noticed.’

‘Even at that time of the morning? We know the wind had dropped in the early hours. It would have been possible to get out then.’

‘I don’t reckon you’d want to take the risk. And the wind might have dropped but the sea was crazy.’

‘What are you suggesting?’

‘I don’t know,’ Barton said. ‘I just know it had nothing to do with me.’

They stood for a moment on the pavement at the front of the house.

‘Thank Mrs Barton for the tea.’

The man nodded and went inside. All the way back to the pub, Ross was wondering why Barton’s tender had been chosen as a last resting place for Jem Rosco’s body. If the man wasn’t the killer, who had disliked him enough to implicate him?

Chapter Nine

IT SEEMED THAT MUCH of the village had gathered in the Maiden’s Prayer that night. They’d fought their way through the gale to get there and weren’t going to leave until they were thrown out. The fire roared as the wind blew down the chimney, and Carter had lit paraffin lamps and candles that flickered in the draught. Gwen Gregory provided food for the detectives in the snug, a feast of local produce.

‘We use propane gas for cooking here, my dears. We don’t depend on the electricity.’ She cleared their plates and returned with blackberry and apple pie. ‘The brambles were early this year. And I was out and up the cliff path before the others. Bags of them in the freezer, so let’s hope the power’s back on before they’re all ruined. And the apples came from Davy’s orchard.’

Davy the taxi driver who, according to Ross, drove Jem Rosco here in the first place and who, according to Mary Ford’s father, could also have brought in the mysterious woman who walked up the hill towards Rosco’s cottage and then disappeared.

‘I’ll go to see Gregory in the morning,’ Matthew said, once they were alone again. ‘According to Carter, the road’s clear that far.’ He listened as his colleagues continued to sum up the case. He was trying to make sense of the complicated, twisted threads and tangled relationships. It was always like this at the beginning of a case. There was too much information, and it was impossible to tell what was important. He wondered if Peter Smale might make a good ally. He was part of the community, but he’d lived away for a while during his medical training, so could have a clearer perspective. Matthew had sensed an ambiguity in his relationship with the Brethren. He might give an honest opinion.

‘And we need more information on the woman who was seen late last night. Ross, go and talk to the witness tomorrow. Alan Ford, the helm’s dad. Take a statement. Let’s pin him down.’

‘There’s one other potential witness,’ Jen said. ‘A truck driver. A guy called Billy Brennan. His wife said he might be in the pub tonight.’

Venn thought everyone was in the pub tonight. They’d gathered not just for warmth and food, but as a kind of wake for the dead man who’d livened life up in the weeks before his death, and who still provided excitement; an object for gossip and speculation. No one really knew him after all.

In the end, they moved into the public bar too. Harry said they were serving coffee in there, and Venn took the hint: his detectives couldn’t justify a light and a fire all to themselves. As they moved to join the others, the details of the case were still swimming around his brain. He thought the whole murder was meticulously planned. A show. Almost a performance. And the people from the village, laughing and joking now in the bar, were the audience. Perhaps by listening in on their conversations, the team would learn more than they would here, in lonely isolation, poring over the details. The room was hot and packed. The noise of voices almost drowned out the sound of the weather. Venn found himself sitting next to a frail old man with a wispy grey beard, squashed into a corner, in shadow. Harry brought Matthew a mug of tepid coffee, in thanks perhaps for their abandoning the snug. Jen and Ross were at a table close to the bar, and they already had pints in front of them.

The old man gripped Harry’s arm. ‘What’s all this about? The village gone dark.’

‘It’s the weather, Norm. It’s brought down the lines and blocked the roads.’ The landlord’s voice was kind.

‘Nothing to do with the body they found at Scully, then?’

‘Nah, nothing to do with that.’ He turned to Venn. ‘Take no notice of Norman here. He gets a bit confused and superstitious at times. Lives in a world of his own.’

The pub door flew open, banging violently. The lantern hanging on a beam in the middle of the room swung and the candles blew out. A big man walked in and shut the door behind him, pulling it against the force of the wind. The room had been shocked by the noise, and stared towards the newcomer. Even when the conversation started up again, Venn sensed a wariness. The man took off his Barbour jacket and hung it up before making his way to the bar. He was wearing pressed jeans and a shirt and looked too smart for an evening like this.

Venn turned to Norman. ‘Who’s that?’

‘Billy Brennan.’ The mouth clamped shut. No further information was forthcoming.

Brennan bought a pint and stood at the bar. Venn approached him. This wasn’t the best place for an interview but he needed to speak to the man.

‘Mr Brennan?’

‘Who wants to know?’

Venn introduced himself. ‘We’re investigating the death of Jeremy Rosco. Your wife said you were late home from work last night. We wondered if you saw anything unusual in your street.’

‘I was tired. It’s mad busy at the moment at work, and the weather was a nightmare all day. No chance to relax when you’re driving a truck through it. Then nobody to help me unload when I got to the end of it. I was dead on my feet.’

He seemed not to realize what he’d said.

‘You’d have noticed, though, if anyone was about that late? In that weather.’

‘Maybe. I don’t remember seeing anyone, though.’ He looked straight at Venn, challenging him to dispute it.

‘What time, exactly, did you get home?’

‘Half past midnight. Almost exactly. I was in my own car and had the radio on.’

So perhaps a little too early, Matthew thought, to have seen the woman climbing out of the dark car, and making her way up to the top of Quarry Bank.

‘Did you go straight to bed when you got in?’

The man looked at him as if the question was daft. ‘I made myself a cup of tea and watched a bit of telly. It takes me a while to wind down after a day like that.’

‘It would have been about one in the morning before you went upstairs then?’

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘something like that.’ He paused. ‘I went outside for a fag before I went up. Katie doesn’t like me smoking in the house. Not since the kiddie was born. Even when the weather’s as bad as it was last night.’ There was a niggle of resentment.

‘You didn’t see anyone walking up Quarry Bank while you were there?’

There was a brief moment of hesitation. ‘Why? What have people been saying?’

‘Nothing.’ Venn’s voice was bland. ‘I’m just asking the question.’

‘I didn’t see anything. The wind had dropped a bit, but nobody would have been bonkers enough to be wandering around at that time of night.’

‘Thanks, Mr Brennan, that’s helpful.’

‘That’s it?’ He seemed surprised. What else was he expecting? Venn wondered briefly if the woman in the long coat had been visiting him, not Rosco. But the man surely wouldn’t have entertained a woman in the house when his wife and child were asleep upstairs?

‘Yes, that’s it.’ Matthew left a pause. ‘For now.’

The man turned away and found a seat as far from Venn as he could. Matthew joined Jen and Ross. They were onto their second pint and were talking to one of the lifeboat crew, laughing at a joke he’d made. They seemed to find it so easy, fitting in. Suddenly, he felt as if he were drowning here in the heat and the noise, that he couldn’t breathe.

He nodded across to the truck driver, and bent close to Jen so he wouldn’t be overheard. ‘That’s Brennan. He claimed not to see anything last night. See if you can dig up any info about him from the locals. I’m heading to bed.’ Even those words took an effort.

She nodded, and stuck up her thumb to show she’d understood.

He used the torch on his phone to find his way upstairs. The room felt damp and cold. He stood at the window. No street lights or light spilling through curtains in neighbouring houses. He thought Greystone would have been just like this a hundred years ago. He considered phoning Jonathan, but at the last minute decided against it. There was no hot water so he threw some cold over his face before climbing into bed. He was still awake when the drinkers spilled out of the pub, laughing and shouting, at midnight. The wind seemed less noisy then. Perhaps the storm was moving through.

Chapter Ten

VENN WOKE EARLY TO stillness and quiet. It was a very different day. He opened the curtains to a grey and pink dawn. The sea was still ferocious, breaking in huge, relentless waves over the jetty, but there was no wind and no rain. He tried the light switch. No power.

Downstairs, Carter was clearing up the mess of the night before, whistling. Venn supposed takings would have been remarkable and would easily have made up for the cost of free coffee.

‘Road should be clear in an hour or so,’ Carter said. ‘A couple of the boys are heading up now with a chainsaw. They reckon the power should be back in time for the school to open too.’ He put a tray on the bar. ‘Coffee? Breakfast? Gwen won’t be in yet, but I can do some toast on the grill.’

‘Perfect.’

He took the coffee and toast to his room and phoned Jonathan. The sense of dread that had overwhelmed him the night before had dissipated altogether.

‘You survived the night then?’ His husband’s voice was cheery. ‘It looked pretty horrendous there on the news.’

‘I don’t suppose you could bring some overnight things for me?’ Venn hated asking for favours, but he couldn’t see that this investigation would be over quickly. ‘The road should be clear later this morning. We could have dinner?’

‘Why don’t I stay the night? I’ve got a couple of days owing. There’s Wi-Fi. I can get some emails cleared.’ There was a pause while he waited for a response from Matthew. ‘That is okay? I won’t be in the way? I promise I won’t interfere in your investigation.’ Because he knew that had been a problem in the Nigel Yeo case. Work and friendships had tangled, and caused tension between them.

‘It’s not a very exciting place to be!’

‘I don’t need exciting. I might walk the coastal path tomorrow and there’s a mate in Morrisham I could look up.’

‘Sure,’ Matthew said. ‘Why not?’ But although he’d booked the room, thinking that Jonathan might join him, he was thrown by his husband’s decision to stay, by the reality of it. He was happier with boundaries. Work and the personal completely separate. Still, Jonathan wanted to spend time with him and nobody else had, once he’d left his parents and gone out into the world. And the thought of the man here, waiting for him at the end of the working day, made him feel lighter. There was something to look forward to.

+++

Matthew had looked at the Ordnance Survey map before setting out for the Gregory farmhouse. He’d never travelled much, but he’d always loved maps. They’d been a vicarious escape when he was growing up. They gave a glimpse of another, more exciting, world.

This was a back lane to Morrisham. Not a shortcut by any means, but a diversion of a road, single-tracked, surely, linking hamlets and settlements, curving round hills, following valley bottoms, approaching the coast in places, then heading back inland. Venn saw that he would pass through Willington, where the doctor, Peter Smale, lived.

He had the map on the passenger seat beside him, but he didn’t need to look at it. He had an internal compass, an instinctive sense of the landscape. Besides, a signpost showed the way from the main Morrisham road to ‘Willington’ and ‘Ravenscroft’. The hedges were high and splashed with colour, red like blood spatter: hips and haws. He had occasional views of hills in one direction, and the sea in others, through gaps and five-bar gates. In places there were signs of the previous night’s storm: the debris of snapped branches, berries scattered on the road, crushed by traffic, pools of standing water in the fields.

Willington was tiny. No pub, no shop, no post office. A farm right in the middle of the village, with a sign saying there was a field for camping. A lovely squat church, very old, was surrounded by a graveyard, the stones covered in a golden lichen, and next to it the rectory, almost as big as the church itself. Venn slowed as he drove past. A woman, presumably Smale’s wife Ruth, was in the garden, pegging washing on a line, fighting with the sheets.

Ravenscroft was an even smaller hamlet. A terrace of three cottages and the farmhouse where Davy Gregory and his wife lived. Venn came to it almost as soon as he left Willington. He wondered if the two families – the Smales and the Gregorys – were friends. There was a difference in their ages, but there were few other neighbours, and out here you’d need to find company where you could.

He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting at the Gregory farm, but it wasn’t this. It wasn’t this solid house built of mellow stone, nestled in a gentle curve in the hill, and a garden, the grass mowed short and already prepared for autumn. A fuchsia hedge, the blooms a deep red still, leading to the front door. A neat orchard at the back, the trees in rows, loaded with apples. He’d expected someone who had to supplement his income by driving a taxi to live in a place a little less attractive, and possibly in need of some care. The terraced house where Davy’s father had lived was modest and spartan. But, Matthew thought, he of all people should know not to make assumptions.

The wind had dropped completely and it was a clear day. Up on Exmoor, there might even be a touch of ground frost. Perhaps it was the sunlight that made the place so appealing, and the view down the valley towards the sea.

Davy Gregory appeared while Matthew was still on the path leading to the house, having stopped to look back down the combe.

‘Lovely spot, isn’t it?’ The man had been walking on the grass and Matthew hadn’t heard him approach.

‘Glorious.’

He was tall, grey-haired, younger than his sister, or at least better preserved. Good-looking if you went for older men. A bit of extra weight around the stomach, but concealed by the knitted navy sweater. Leather shoes despite the damp grass. ‘The house has been in the family for generations. We lost the land, but we kept the view.’ His voice was neutral. It was impossible to tell whether the loss of land rankled, or if the view made up for it. ‘You’re the detective, aren’t you? Gwen said you might be stopping by; she pointed you out in the snug at the Maiden’s last night.’

‘I wondered if I might talk to you.’

‘Of course. Come in.’

They walked round the side of the house, past a walled vegetable garden where autumn vegetables – leeks, sprouts, cabbages – grew in neat rows.

‘Are you the gardener?’ Venn asked.

‘Yeah.’ The word came out as a deep growl. ‘As close to farming as I can get these days.’

So, Matthew thought, the loss of land did still rankle.

‘Who owns the land now?’ he asked. ‘If the quarry decided not to expand, what did they do with it?’

‘They hung on to it as an investment. Grazing is rented out to a local chap.’

‘You weren’t interested?’

Gregory stopped and turned back to face Venn. ‘In paying rent for what should have been my inheritance? Where I’d been working ever since I was a boy? No, I couldn’t stomach it.’ A pause. ‘I offered to buy it back, but I couldn’t raise what they wanted. I think they’re hanging on to it in the hope of development.’

The inside of the house was another revelation. Venn couldn’t believe that it had been like this when Colin Gregory lived here. Davy and his wife must have knocked down walls to let in the light. They went into a kitchen the width of the house, with wide glass doors leading into the garden, one wall painted deep red. Jonathan would have loved it.

‘Coffee? We’ve still got power here.’

Please!’

‘I hope you don’t mind instant. Tilly, my wife, likes the fancy stuff, but I can never see the point of all the faff.’

‘Of course,’ Matthew said. ‘Instant’s fine.’ Though he too would have preferred the fancy stuff, given the choice.

He waited until a mug was in front of him, a packet of digestives still in the wrapper on the table.

‘You work as a taxi driver?’ He tried to keep the surprise from his voice. Again, he thought he was making assumptions. Why shouldn’t someone who drove taxis live in this beautiful house?

There was a pause. ‘I always thought I’d be a farmer. It was what I wanted, what I grew up believing I’d be.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘I thought it was my destiny, if that doesn’t sound too grand. Then I found I had no choice but to look for something else. I was never much good at anything academic at school, but I like driving. I bought myself a smart car, a Merc, for the business people and the rich tourists who like the idea of something fancy. I dress up for them. Not quite a chauffeur’s hat, but a shirt and tie. The Honda is for the locals, and for the short hops to the supermarket or the dentist in town.’ Another pause. ‘Most of my smart work is contract. Some of the posh hotels up the coast provide station or airport pickups for a price. I quite often go up to Bristol or down to Exeter for the airports.’

‘Why did your father sell the land?’

Silence.

‘He’d got into debt,’ Gregory said at last. He looked sharply at Venn. ‘Gwen doesn’t know. You mustn’t tell her. We fed her a line about poor land and sheep prices, but there’s nothing wrong with this land. And I had such plans to make a go of it.’ Just in that sentence, Venn could hear the dreams, and the disappointment.

‘Gwen said that you had ideas for the place,’ Matthew agreed. ‘How did your father get into debt?’

For the first time during their conversation Gregory seemed uncomfortable. ‘Is all this relevant to poor Jem Rosco’s murder?’

Venn smiled. ‘Probably not. But I’m curious. About everything. It’s what makes me a good detective.’

There was another silence and Venn thought that the man would refuse to answer, but, in the end, he shrugged.

‘It was after my mother died. He was conned into making a foolish investment. If he’d asked one of us, we’d have advised against it, but he thought he was being so clever.’

‘What was the investment?’

‘Someone had the bright idea of opening a restaurant down by the quay. It’d be a destination venue, they said. Tourists would come if the food was good and they served local fish, straight from the harbour.’

‘But it didn’t work out?’

‘It was never going to work out. It was never going to happen at all. It was just a scam to con a load of money from a grieving elderly man.’ His voice was hard, bitter.

‘Were they ever charged, the fraudsters?’

‘Nah, Dad would never even go to the police. It was just a mistake, he said. Just bad luck. He made me promise not to tell anyone. He was scared of looking foolish. Worried what people would say, think. He had a position in the village.’

‘Is he a member of the Brethren?’

Gregory was surprised by the question, but he nodded. ‘An elder. Until dementia took away his dignity.’ He was looking out of the window. ‘The sisters still looked after him, though. Someone came in twice a day to keep him company when he was living at home, to do the things that the official carers didn’t have time for. And they still visit him in that place in Morrisham, though he won’t recognize who they are. They’re good people.’

Some of them are.

‘And you?’ Venn asked. ‘Are you a member?’

Gregory shook his head. ‘Not in my heart. I still go to meetings for Tilly’s sake, but I can’t believe it all. The Rapture for us and damnation for the rest. What sort of God is that?’

‘Your wife believes?’ This was,Venn realized, an odd conversation, but that was why he loved his work. The curiosity satisfied. He could ask the questions that nobody else had the right to ask.

‘That was what brought her to Greystone. The fact that there’s a thriving community of the Barum Brethren here. She grew up in Bideford, in the community there, and then her folks moved to Barnstaple.’ He looked at Venn. ‘You a member, then?’

Matthew shook his head and there was another moment of silence.

‘Who conned your dad out of the money?’ Venn thought if the fraudster were Jem Rosco, they’d have a motive for the killing, and a prime suspect.

‘Harry Carter, who owns the pub.’ Gregory spat out the words. ‘I can’t believe Gwen works for him. Cleans for him.’ A pause. ‘But then I still go there, buy myself a pint and laugh at his jokes. That’s Tilly’s doing. She says I shouldn’t harbour a grudge and that we’re luckier than most. I suppose she’s right. She usually is.’

Perhaps the windfall from Colin Gregory provided the new en-suite bathrooms and light wood furniture. Perhaps the rest kept the pub ticking over.

‘You drove Jeremy Rosco into the village on the night that he arrived?’

‘Of course! Only natural that I should get him.’

‘You were friends?’

‘We were at school together,’ Gregory said, which didn’t quite answer the question. ‘Both into sailing. Both wild boys. He was a year younger, but always part of the gang.’

‘Where did you pick him up from?’

‘Tiverton Parkway station. He was on the Manchester train. The seven o’clock.’

That made sense, Venn thought. There was no direct train from Liverpool. The man must have changed at Manchester.

‘Did he have a suitcase with him?’

‘Not a suitcase, but a big canvas duffle bag. Old-fashioned. Like sailors used to have in the old days.’

‘How big?’

‘Huge! I dunno what he had in it. Most of his worldly goods.’

Venn wondered if it had been big enough to carry a small man, wrapped in a shower curtain. And where was it now? Not in the house where he’d died, and not in the Moon Crest tender.

‘Gwen thought he’d booked the cottage through an accommodation website, by chance.’

‘He did! That was how it started. But I recognized the name and got in touch with him, offered him a lift in. He said I shouldn’t tell anyone he was coming. He wanted it to be a surprise.’

‘Did he tell you why he’d come? You must have had a conversation in the car. It’s a good long way.’

‘Nah, I asked, of course, but he wouldn’t tell me. He just tapped the side of his nose. “You’ll find out soon enough, Davy boy.” Mostly we talked about the old days. We had a lot to catch up on.’ Gregory paused. ‘The last time I saw him, I hadn’t even met Tilly. Never even thought I’d marry!’ He looked across the table at Venn. ‘I sowed my wild oats well into middle age. Then along came Matilda Mead, twenty years younger than me, looking like something out of a fairy story – long golden hair and skin like cream – to be teacher in the primary school here, and she changed my life.’

Just as Jonathan changed mine. Although I wouldn’t have used such poetic language.

‘Was Mr Rosco married?’ He hadn’t got as far as being able to find that out the day before, but Davy might have knowledge of a partner. ‘Apparently he had an agent, who’ll be able to help with that sort of information, but we’re still trying to track them down.’

‘Yeah, Jem did marry once,’ Davy said. ‘It didn’t last long. He had plenty of women, though. Never short of a beauty on his arm, not even when he was still living round here, and hardly more than a boy.’

‘Had you kept in touch with him over the years?’

‘On and off.’ Gregory’s voice was breezy, making Venn think it was more off than on. The man might like to claim intimacy with a famous man, but there seemed to have been no real friendship there.

‘Did he mention a partner when you were driving him back?’

Davy thought for a moment. ‘No, but like I said, we were mostly talking about the old days. I suppose school was what we really had in common.We were always the boys at the back of the class causing mischief.’

‘When was the last time you saw him before he arrived back here?’

‘That was a reunion at the school ten years ago. He was guest of honour, but he remembered me and we hung out together all evening. Since then, we’ve been keeping in touch. Mostly emails, but that’s how it is these days, isn’t it?’ He sounded a little sad.

‘You had another fare,’ Venn said, ‘the night before they found Mr Rosco’s body. Or rather in the early hours of the same morning. Yesterday morning. Can you tell me about that?’

Gregory shook his head. ‘I didn’t have any calls that night. I was here all evening.’

‘Are you sure? A car was seen dropping a woman off at the bottom of the terrace where your sister lives, at about one o’clock.’

‘I don’t get call-outs at that time. Certainly not midweek. Weekends sometimes, some of the lads go into Bideford or Morrisham for a few beers and a meal, and I get a shout to bring them home. Occasionally I’ll do an airport run at odd hours, but very rarely for Greystone residents.’

Venn wondered if this explanation was too detailed. Too complicated. He couldn’t understand, though, why Gregory would lie about giving a customer a lift.

‘Might they have used a different taxi service?’

‘Depends where they came from. Not if it was a short distance and local. I’m all there is within five miles of here. Next nearest is based in Morrisham.’

So, how did the mysterious woman seen by Mary Ford’s father get to Greystone? If she was implicated in the murder, did her accomplice bring her? Or was Ross right? Had Mary Ford’s father imagined the whole thing?

Venn could think of nothing specific to ask Davy Gregory now, but still he sat in the beautiful kitchen. He wanted to know more about the equally beautiful wife, who seemed to have blown in, just like Jem Rosco. In the end, Davy answered the unasked question.

‘The inside of the house is all my Tilly’s work. She’s the one with style.’

‘How long have you been married?’

‘Eight years. She arrived at the school just before Dad sold off the land. I was a wreck. Bitter, angry, depressed. She brought me back.’ He looked up at Venn. ‘She saved me.’ He got to his feet and brought a framed photograph to the table. Matilda Gregory was indeed beautiful. She looked like a figure in a Pre-Raphaelite painting. Long hair and deep blue eyes. She was sitting in a white wrought-iron chair in the garden, smiling.

‘We were never blessed with children,’ Gregory said. Another unasked question answered. ‘Tilly would have liked them but she accepted it. She says she’s got a family of her own at the school.’

Of course! As my mother accepted my father’s lingering illness and death as the Lord’s work.

‘Where was your wife last night?’

‘She was at our neighbour’s house. She was babysitting for them and then she stayed over. You’d think she’d have enough of kids during the day, but she’s kind.’

‘Would that be the Smales?’

‘That’s right. She and Ruth Smale have become good friends.’

Venn nodded. Of course. Sisters in the Lord together.

He got to his feet. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘You’ve been very helpful.’

Gregory walked with him out to the car. He was still standing, looking down at the valley, as Matthew drove away.

Chapter Eleven

MARY WAS WOKEN EARLY, before it was light, and very suddenly, as if by a noise or flash of light. But the room was quiet, and there was no sound in the street outside. The storm had blown out. Until Arthur’s diagnosis, she’d slept deeply and nothing would wake her until the alarm rang very loudly from the small clock on the bedside table. Now, there were these sudden starts of wakefulness, moments of panic as she remembered anew that her son was dying. Occasionally, the boy called out in the night. There was a monitor in his room. Last night in the storm it hadn’t been working and because of that, she’d stayed awake, anxiously listening out for him, until the early hours when she’d fallen into a fitful sleep.

Today, she’d escaped from a different sort of nightmare. In her head, she saw the shrivelled man, who’d once been her hero, curled into the small boat, and realized that she’d been dreaming about him, that she’d floated to consciousness to avoid having to take him into her arms again.

She thought perhaps she should get up and work, before the domestic routine of breakfast and walking the kids to school. A couple of hours in the studio in the attic might settle her. But, in the end, she walked downstairs, to the kitchen, and she sat in the cold, still house, thinking about the future, until the power and the heating came on, the children started to stir, and she could put the kettle on for tea.

Her father was still in bed when she took the kids to school. She pushed the boy in his wheelchair, bitter again at the disease that was limiting her son’s life, knowing she’d give anything – her own life, of course – to make him well. They sang and joked all the way there – Mary had always been good at putting on a show – with Isla walking beside the chair, chatting to him about the autumn fayre that would be happening in the school later that day. Arthur was already starting to lose his vision. They’d been told that there’d be seizures, a loss of cognitive facility, before he died in his teens. Her father, scouring the internet in the hope of more information, and some hope, had come across the hospital in Illinois where there was a clinical trial into Jasper Lineham’s, some form of gene therapy. He’d emailed the doctor and started the fundraising that morning, tears running down his face.

Look, my love! We can get him well again!

She’d wanted that to be true. Of course she had. But in her heart, she’d known it would take a miracle to cure her son and she was too rational to believe in miracles. She couldn’t under- stand how her father, who’d been trained as a scientist and had brought her up to believe in facts, could be taken in by an obvious con. She thought the community fundraising, the knitting, the sponsored walks and cake sales, were about making Greystone feel good about itself, not helping her boy. Greystone kids had been quick enough to mock Artie’s clumsiness when he was first ill, before the diagnosis. Perhaps there was some guilt in there too.

Arriving back at the house after the school run, she took her father a mug of tea. Seeing him propped up against the pillows, she thought for the first time how old he was looking. His face seemed to have shrunk a little, so his teeth seemed too big, and his neck was becoming wrinkled and leathery like a tortoise’s. She’d always seen him as a strong man. Her rock, when her rat of a husband walked out on her, then caring for her mother through her illness and comforting Mary when the woman had slipped away in a morphine haze. Now, because Mary had been so close to another death the previous day, she saw her father as vulnerable and felt suddenly anxious on his behalf. She couldn’t bear it if he disappeared too.

‘Why don’t you have a bit of a lie-in?’ she said.

‘Don’t be daft! I’ll get up when I’ve had this! I’ll get some coffee on the go.’

And there he was fifteen minutes later, in the kitchen, his hair damp from the shower. Fully dressed, he didn’t look frail at all, and his smile hadn’t changed since she was a toddler.

The chat in the playground had all been about Jeremy Rosco’s murder, and the investigation, the tone gossipy and excited, even when the children were still around to hear. Mary had wanted to shout at them: Show some respect! Someone died and it was horrible! And do we really need our kids to listen to this?

She’d talked to Isla and Arthur about Rosco’s death when they’d come in the day before, keeping her tone calm and impersonal. ‘A man died. That shout this morning – I had to bring back his body.The police are in the village trying to find out exactly what happened.’ Then they’d moved on to other topics. Isla’s weekend sleepover with a friend who lived at the edge of the village. Artie’s project on tadpoles and frogs. He’d inherited his grandfather’s love of the natural world.

After the kids had chased in to class, and on her way out through the school gates, Mary had heard two older women, grandmothers, talking about one of the detectives.

‘I recognized the name. His mother was Sister Dorothy. Do you remember her? Dennis brought them over sometimes for meetings.’ A pause. ‘The boy broke her heart.’

Mary had thought immediately that they must be talking about the inspector, the person who’d first come to the lifeboat station. There was something reserved, contained about him. He had the air of a man who had struggled. But surely he couldn’t belong to the Brethren? A detective would need to be ruled by logic, not superstition. There was enough of that already in Greystone.

Now, back in her house, with its smell of coffee and paint, she thought how good it was to be here. This house defined her: Mary Ford, daughter, mother, artist and lifeboat helm. The unease that had hit her since Rosco’s death would pass. His killer would be caught and she would no longer be troubled by nightmares of a shrivelled body in a small boat, curled tight like a walnut in its shell. The old life would return, and, perhaps, with it, a glimpse of hope. If they could get Artie to the clinic in Illinois, maybe her father was right and she was wrong, and the boy would reclaim his health and his strength.

+++

There was a knock on the front door, just as she was settling in her studio to work. Her father answered it and she could hear voices in the hall at the bottom of the stairs. She made her way down and found her father pouring coffee for a young, fit man, with gelled hair and a local accent.

‘I told the detective that you were working and that we shouldn’t disturb you.’ Her father sounded irritated, a little put out.

‘No worries, I hadn’t quite started.’ She turned to the young man. ‘How can I help you? I’ve already spoken to Inspector Venn at the lifeboat station, and Sergeant Rafferty was here yesterday.’ She disliked the fact that the killing had intruded once more into her home, her life, but of course it wasn’t this young man’s fault. There was something engaging about him, an innocent enthusiasm. He had the pent-up energy of an overactive child.

‘I really wanted to speak to Mr Ford.’ His voice was confident. He liked the authority of being a police officer and all that went with it. He wouldn’t be easily intimidated. ‘But it would be great if you could spare a bit of time for me too.’ As if her father wasn’t quite competent to speak for himself, as if she were some kind of minder. Although it was Alan who was really holding the whole family together, who’d found a new energy in his search for a cure for her boy.

‘Of course,’ she said, because now, after all, she was rather reluctant to leave her father to the mercy of this man.

They sat at the kitchen table. Ross May took the chair at the head, where her father usually sat, and she felt a stab of resentment. She was left to sit on the kids’ bench.

‘How can we help you?’

May turned to the older man. ‘This woman you thought you saw on the morning of Mr Rosco’s disappearance . . . We need a statement, if that’s okay. You’re an important witness.’

‘I didn’t think I saw her. I did see her.’

‘However, nobody else did,’ the detective said, ‘so we need as good a description as you can give. Another witness was out on Quarry Bank, but he didn’t see anyone.’

‘I’ve already given the description. I spoke to Sergeant Rafferty.’

Mary was pleased that her father was keeping his cool. If anything, this arrogant young detective was amusing rather than irritating him.

‘If you wouldn’t mind going through it again, and I’ll record the conversation. If that’s okay with you, of course. Then we’ll have a record.’

‘I don’t mind at all.’ Alan turned to her and slightly rolled his eyes. Mary suppressed a smile. ‘I suffer from insomnia and I was still awake at one o’clock. The wind had dropped, and I heard a car driving down the hill from the main road. My bed is close to the window and I pulled back the curtain to see who was out at that hour. An old man’s nosiness. The car stopped at the bottom of the terrace, just outside the house, and a woman got out. Because of the angle I couldn’t really see her face, but she was wearing a long coat, and boots. There’s a street light there, but it’s hard to make out colour. I think she had fair hair. Long fair hair. She moved out of my line of sight and, really, the only way she could have been going was up the hill towards Rosco’s place. She could have stopped at any of the houses between here and there, though.’

Mary could tell that the officer was impressed by the clarity of her father’s statement.

So, stop being such a patronizing young git.

‘Can you tell me anything about the car?’ the detective asked. ‘You thought it might have been a taxi?’

‘That was an assumption,’ Alan said. ‘Because it just stopped and dropped her off. I didn’t see any sign on it. Nothing to identify it as a taxi, and of course I didn’t think to make a note of the registration. I was just being a curious old man looking out of the window.’

Again, Mary suppressed a smile. Her father never usually described himself as old. And he wasn’t, of course! That was for the detective and the recording. A kind of mockery of young people’s attitudes to older people.

‘That’s very helpful. What colour was the car?’

‘I’ve been thinking about that. Dark certainly. Black probably, but it could have been dark green or grey. The street light seems to drain away the colour.’

‘Yet you saw the woman’s hair?’

‘Yes,’ Alan said. ‘I did, just as she started walking away, and the light wasn’t quite so harsh.’

There was a silence, broken again by her father.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t think I can help you with anything else.’

Mary waited until Ross had stopped recording on his phone. She didn’t want to make this official, but she couldn’t let it go either, although it would be awkward if word got out that she’d made any sort of accusation. Not against a woman who was such a stalwart of the community.

‘Dad, could the woman you saw have been Tilly Gregory? She has long blonde hair.’

‘Tilly Gregory?’ Ross May turned to her, eager again. Immediately, Mary regretted that she’d spoken in front of him. She should have waited until he’d gone before asking her father. Then they could have gone back and spoken to the police. Perhaps to Jen Rafferty. Mary liked the teacher. This man would be like a terrier with a bone.

‘Her real name’s Matilda. She’s one of the teachers in the primary school,’ Mary said. ‘Her husband, Davy, is a taxi driver.’

‘Well?’ Ross May turned to her father. ‘Could she have been the woman you saw?’

Alan shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, it could possibly have been her – I’ve seen her, of course, when I’ve taken the children to school for Mary – but I didn’t see the woman well enough to say more than that.’

Mary saw that the detective would push the point, would worry away at it, so that finally her father would become irritated. ‘I don’t think we can help you any further. Not now at least. Do contact us again if anything else comes up.’ She stood up to make it clear that she wanted him to go. He looked at her, surprised – perhaps he wasn’t used to assertive women – and for a moment she thought he’d refuse to leave the house, but finally he got to his feet.

She walked with the constable to the door. She was worried that he would continue pestering her father on the pavement if Alan saw him out. But in the end, he directed more questions to her, pleased, it seemed, to have got her alone.

‘This Tilly Gregory, what sort of woman is she?’

Mary wasn’t quite sure what he meant, but answered anyway, sounding, she realized, as if she were providing a reference for a job. ‘She’s a great teacher, devoted to the kids, very well liked.’ A pause, needing to add more, to make the comment more personal. ‘She’s a good woman.’ Because Tilly Gregory had always treated Arthur with such tenderness that when Mary saw them together, she wanted to cry.

‘Happily married?’

‘Oh yes!’ Mary paused then, because how could she comment on another couple’s marriage? Outsiders had probably seen her and Tom as an ideal partnership until he’d run off with another woman. ‘She’s a lot younger than Davy, of course, but they seem very close, very loving.’

She expected the man to walk away then, towards the village, but still he hovered on the pavement. She was aware that her whole morning’s work had been disturbed – she would struggle now to concentrate – and, hoping to end the conversation once and for all, she said:

‘She’s very religious, you know. Quite a number of people here belong to the Barum Brethren and she’s a part of that community. Really, she’s the last person you could suspect of wrong-doing.’

She thought that might convince the detective and send him on his way, but if anything, he was more excited.

‘Who should I talk to then? About this cult?’

‘They don’t see themselves as members of a cult.’ Mary was quite irritated by now, and she let it show. She wanted to be back in her studio with more of her father’s good coffee. Even if she couldn’t focus on her work, there were emails to answer, a tax return to complete. ‘And I’m not a member, so really I’m not the right person to ask.’

He nodded as if he accepted the justice of the remark, as if he might even have his own source of information, and, at last, he turned away and made his way back towards the centre of the village. Mary watched him go, worried that at the last moment he might turn back.

Chapter Twelve

JEN’S WAS ONE OF the first cars out of Greystone through the newly cleared road. The men from the village hadn’t waited for the council to clear it. They’d cut the huge tree into manageable chunks with a chainsaw and towed them onto the verge using a tractor. She recognized some of the men from the night before. Ollie, the young guy from the lifeboat who’d been flirting with her. Definitely flirting, despite the difference in their age. And Brennan, the truck driver, strong enough to lift huge pieces of wood himself. There was a gap in the hedge where the tree had stood, a hole like a pit and the enormous roots lying on their side. She wondered how long the oak had stood there since it had first started growing.

Jen had a hangover. Not the sort of hangover that made you throw up, with the need to lie in a darkened room for most of a day, but that faint heady queasiness that made it hard to think clearly.

The Barnstaple schools weren’t opening until midday, so she could be there to see the kids before setting off for the post-mortem, which had been scheduled for later in the day. She felt the usual recurring guilt that she couldn’t be there for them every morning. She knew that her children didn’t get enough of her time or her attention; that they’d become independent through neglect, not through her care. Ella had eaten and stacked her plate in the dishwasher before Jen had arrived home.

‘I’d thought we could all have breakfast together.’ Jen knew she sounded needy. ‘I got pastries in Lidl on the way through. A treat.’

‘Sorry, coding club before lessons start.’ Ella was already out of the door. She’d meet her equally geeky boyfriend on the way and they’d talk about their twin obsessions of science and fantasy gaming. Jen supposed she should be delighted that she’d never caught Ella drunk or smelling of weed, that she was in a stable relationship with a young man who was an academic high achiever, but it didn’t seem as if El had much fun. Jen had married too young, had children too young, had waited too long in an abusive marriage before cutting her losses, and now, fun seemed important.

She let Ben sleep in. He was a growing boy and needed his rest. But eventually she stood at the bottom of the steep stairs, in her narrow, terraced cottage, and shouted to him that he’d be late.

He clattered down half an hour later. She hadn’t heard the water running and suspected he hadn’t showered. How often did he shower when she wasn’t here to check? Or change his clothes? But it was too late to send him back now. He grabbed a pain au chocolat from the plate on the kitchen table and opened the door to leave. At the last moment, he came back into the room. She thought he’d forgotten a piece of coursework, or his games kit, but he kissed her on the cheek. ‘Bye. Thanks.’ Then he really was gone, leaving the house quiet, and Jen with a strange sense that was close to bereavement.

+++

Sally Pengelly was already in the hospital mortuary, gowned and masked, when Jen arrived, and waved at her. The body on the table looked very small, very old.

‘I don’t think I need to keep you for long,’ Pengelly said. ‘The cause of death is obvious. There are multiple stab wounds. He’d have bled out very quickly.’

‘Would he still have been bleeding when he was carried from the scene?’

‘It depends how soon the killer moved him.’

‘He must have been moved before rigor, mustn’t he? To have been curled into the dinghy?’

‘The blood spatter is in a bathroom. He could have been placed in the bath, don’t you think? In the same foetal position? Then there’d have been no rush to move him.’

Jen thought about that. The rage implied in the repeated stabbing seemed at odds with the meticulously planned removal of the body, the staging of the boat anchored just offshore. Why bother with that? Why not just leave Rosco where he’d been killed? Had he been put in the boat as a mark of respect – he’d spent his life on the water after all – or, as Venn had suggested, was this a kind of mockery? It certainly wasn’t an attempt to mislead the investigators. The killer would know there was no way this could be put down as an accident.

She was still going over the details in her mind on her way to Appledore, to hook up with Brian Branscombe’s team. She waited outside the lifeboat station for one of the CSIs to come out to speak to her.

The young woman removed her mask and they sat together on the sea wall. The autumn sun bounced off the water and they were surrounded by gulls. Jen was tempted by the thought of a Hockings ice cream or a bag of chips. It almost felt like being on holiday.

‘We’re nearly finished. There’s not much there to help you, I’m afraid. One set of fingerprints, but we’ve checked against the owner, and they belong to him.’

Sammy Barton. Which didn’t mean he wasn’t the killer.

‘I’d guess whoever placed the body in the boat was wearing gloves,’ the investigator went on. ‘There’s some soil at the bottom of the dinghy. Still damp, so maybe it’s relatively recent. The body would have shielded it from the worst of the weather that night. It could have come off the boots of the person who placed him there. They probably had to step inside the dinghy to position him properly. We’ll get an analysis, but again, it’s most likely to have come from the owner. It was raining hard and the water could have seeped in under the victim.’ A pause. ‘Brian is heading up the scene at the house in Greystone. It would be interesting if he found similar soil traces in the bath- room there. That really would be significant.’

Jen nodded. That, at least, would be a crumb to hand over to Venn; something concrete. So far, all they had were stories and speculation.

She used the satnav on her phone to get from Appledore to Greystone. Venn always used a paper map, studied before setting off. Ross seemed to find this amusing, but Venn said it was important to understand the region’s geography, physical and human. ‘We’re all a product of the place where we were born, where we grew up, and where we live.’ That made sense to Jen. She’d always be a Scouser at heart.

The route took her inland across farmland separated by tangled hedges, bent by the westerly winds. Then there was a glimpse of the sea between the curve of two hills, and she was starting the descent into the village. It seemed slightly less grim now the rain had stopped, but still the road was in shadow, enclosed by the narrow valley. After the open landscape, she felt hemmed in by the terraced houses, and the grey cliffs of the worked-out quarry behind.

She parked on the main street and, looking up the hill towards the house where Rosco had been killed, she saw a team of officers, searching the tiny front gardens, emptying bins. It seemed that the knife that had stabbed the man still hadn’t been found. She walked towards them to see what was going on, felt the pull on her calves as she climbed the hill, and found Venn and Ross watching the action too.

‘Nothing yet,’ Venn said. He turned away and they all started back down the slope towards the village.

The salt air seemed to be doing wonders for Jen’s headache. She turned to Ross. ‘What did you make of Alan Ford then? A reliable witness?’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘You were right. Very sharp and not the sort of person to make anything up. He thought the woman he saw in the early hours had long blonde hair.’

‘Davy Gregory’s wife has long fair hair,’ Venn said. ‘I saw a photo of her.’

‘Mary Ford said the same,’ Ross said. ‘She suggested the woman might be Matilda Gregory, school teacher and leading light within the Brethren here.’

‘It’s hard to think why a religious woman would be wandering the streets in the early hours of a stormy morning.’ Jen pictured the scene. There was something romantic about the image of a woman walking on her own through the gloomy village. It was the stuff of films, a period melodrama. ‘It sounds as if she was desperate.’

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‘Davy Gregory claims that he didn’t work that night,’ Venn said. ‘He can’t give his wife an alibi because she wasn’t at home. Apparently, she was babysitting for a friend. Ruth Smale, wife of the doctor who was in the lifeboat station when we first got there.’

Jen nodded. She could picture the man, who’d formally pronounced Rosco dead, standing a little to one side. ‘She wouldn’t still be there at one in the morning, would she?’

‘According to Gregory, she stayed over.’

‘A bit odd, isn’t it, for a school night? You wouldn’t be up drinking with a mate after their night out if you had to face a class of kids the next day.’

‘From what I hear,’ Venn said, ‘Matilda Gregory isn’t the partying sort. Like Ruth Smale, she’s a member of the Brethren.’

‘That’s two more witnesses we need to talk to then.’ Jen couldn’t imagine a woman stabbing Rosco in his bath and carrying his body through the village to the quay, but she was curious to meet them. Sisters of the Brethren. Women who lived such different lives from her own.

They’d almost reached the Maiden’s Prayer when there was a noise behind them. Heavy footsteps. A shout. It was Jimmy Rainston, one of the first officers to arrive at the lifeboat when Rosco’s body had been brought ashore. He’d obviously been running: he was beetroot red and heaving for breath.

‘Sorry, sir, we’d have called but there was no mobile signal.’

‘So,’ Venn said. ‘What have you got for us?’

‘A knife.’ A pause. Rainston was enjoying the moment of glory. ‘We reckon we’ve found the murder weapon.’