by Ann Cleeves
‘I’m caffeined out, thanks.’
She seemed a different woman in this space. The flip, easy-going Gaby of Hope Street was gone. She showed him the painting on the easel. A seascape, with a shimmering promontory of land. Crow Point, not where they’d found Walden, but seen from the other side of the marsh. There were bare patches of canvas.
‘It wasn’t going well,’ she said, ‘so I went back to do some sketches. I didn’t go through the toll road. I parked by the marsh and walked from there.’ She got out her sketchbook and held it out for him to see. Rapid pencil drawings that captured the movement of waves, the wingbeat of gulls. He recognized the shape of Crow Point in the distance.
‘These are very good.’ The words came out without thought.
‘That’s why I’m at the Woodyard. Because it gives me the time and the space to paint. The work is mostly mind-numbingly dull, like the class you just saw. A bunch of bored middle-aged and middle-class people, who think they have talent or that they understand art.’
‘Why did you accept the residency if you feel like that?’
‘Because it pays.’ She spoke as if the answer was obvious. ‘I don’t have a rich daddy like Caz – my mother brought me up on her own – and I don’t make any money from my painting yet, so I do this. It’s better than stacking supermarket shelves or pulling pints. Just.’
He nodded back at the sketches. ‘Of course, this doesn’t prove anything. You could have done them anytime.’
‘But I didn’t.’ Her frustration was obvious.
‘Why did you dislike Simon Walden so much?’
‘I didn’t dislike him.’ She turned away. ‘I just didn’t see the point of him. If you don’t mind stepping over the needles in the morning or being harassed by the neighbourhood drunk, Hope Street is a pretty cool place to be. It’s the best house I’ve ever lived in. And I don’t mind those things. I didn’t need a man to protect me.’
‘Did Caroline?’ Matthew was surprised. He’d had them both down as strong, independent women.
‘Nah, but that was one of the excuses she gave for letting him stay. That we’d be safer with a man in the house. Which was pretty daft. We could have been letting in a maniac.’
‘Was he a maniac?’
Gaby didn’t answer immediately. ‘He was pretty screwed up. Especially at first. Depressed, I suppose, but no, I didn’t think he was dangerous. I just found him unsettling.’ She looked away for a moment and when she turned back the words sounded like a confession. ‘I painted him.’
‘Can I see?’
She shrugged and pulled a canvas from the stack by the wall and propped it on the easel. Matthew looked. He thought he should say something intelligent but he was embarrassed again. What did he know about art? The embarrassment got in the way of an honest response this time, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the painting. It was just of Walden’s head. The likeness was there at first glance, then everything seemed to shift under Matthew’s gaze. There were blocks of colour that he had never seen in human skin. Matthew took a few steps back and looked again. Walden was staring into the distance, frowning.
‘Did you do this from a sketch too?’ Again, Matthew felt the ignorance seep into his face like a blush. Growing up with the Brethren, he’d learned so little of the world that his brief time at university had been an act, a performance. He’d pretended to understand the references to bands he’d never heard of and films he’d never seen. At school, he’d considered himself an intellectual, but every day since there’d been the fear of being found out as a fraud. It had taken him a while to be open with Jonathan. There were still times when he felt the need to pretend.
Gaby didn’t seem to think this was a stupid question. ‘No, I did this from a photograph.’
‘Why? I mean, why did you want to paint him? Did he have an unusual face?’
‘No, not at first glance, at least. You wouldn’t look at him twice in the street. I suppose I wanted to understand why he’d got under my skin.’
‘Did you find him attractive?’ Matthew thought this was one of the oddest interviews he’d ever conducted. Gaby had pushed to have Walden excluded from the house but there was something about her obsession that felt like a teenage passion.
He’d expected an angry response to the question. No, of course not. He was a creep. But she was thinking about it, deciding how much she wanted to tell him.
‘Perhaps,’ she said at last. ‘Perhaps I did. There was something about him, despite the moodiness and the occasional bouts of anger when he’d had too much to drink. Something compelling. I’d never thought about it until I started painting him.’ She stared at Matthew. ‘Crazy, huh?’
‘Did he ever talk to you about his life before he ended up at the hotel in Ilfracombe?’
There was a pause and again he thought she was choosing how much to say. ‘Once. Indirectly. It was after one of the Friday meals. Simon always cooked for us on Fridays. He said he was keeping his hand in. He’d throw us out of the kitchen early in the evening and tell us only to come back when he was ready. Usually we went to the pub. It was the one night of the week that Caz was prepared to let her hair down. Sometimes Ed was there, though I was always glad when he wasn’t. I can be a bit of a potty mouth and I could sense disapproval oozing from every pore whenever I spoke. We’d rock back to number twenty after a couple of beers and the table would be laid and there’d be the most amazing food. It was what Simon was born for, cooking. Like painting is what I was born for.’
She stopped for a moment. The coffee must have been cold but she sipped it to provide a pause in the story, a beat. ‘That night it was paella. The most amazing seafood.We were drinking something light and white that slipped down like lemonade. Caz and Ed decamped to the sitting room. Usually Simon did all the clearing up himself, but I’d had enough of playing gooseberry and I stayed behind to help. We’d both had a lot to drink and we started to talk.’
She stopped again, but Matthew didn’t prompt her. He sensed this was worth waiting for.
‘He asked out of the blue if I wanted kids. I said I was too selfish. Nothing mattered more than my work. I made some crap joke, like That’s why I’m still single. He said he’d always wanted to be a dad, but that would never happen now. He didn’t deserve a happy family. He’d had a wife that he’d loved but he’d let her go. By that point we’d loaded the dishwasher and he was washing the pans that were too big to go in. He turned away from the sink with a scourer in his hand. Sometimes I think I’d be much better dead. I said something crap again. Something like But you can’t kill yourself. We’d miss the Friday night feasts. He said suicide wasn’t an option. Not yet. He still had work to do.’
‘What sort of work?’
‘I don’t know. I was pretty pissed by then, but he was seriously weirding me out. Like he had some kind of Messiah complex. Like there was something he was meant to achieve and nobody else could do it. I left him to the pans and went to bed. The living room door was open and I could tell Caz and Ed were having a deep and meaningful and I didn’t want to intrude.’ She set down her mug. ‘But I could almost believe it, you know. That he was special. He had a kind of charisma, a lack of bullshit and compromise. I could imagine him as one of those gurus that gullible people follow without question. I could really believe that he had a mission in life and he didn’t care what other people thought; nobody was going to get in the way.’
Matthew suddenly pictured Walden as a very different man from the helpless, hopeless rough sleeper described by Caroline Preece. He wondered which view was the more accurate. ‘I don’t suppose you saw Simon at all on your travels yesterday afternoon?’ His voice was light.
There was a brief hesitation, hardly noticeable. ‘Of course not. I think I might have mentioned it, don’t you, if I’d seen him just before he died?’ She’d turned away before speaking to look out of the long window, so he couldn’t see her face.
Chapter Ten
WHEN JEN LEFT HOPE STREET, she tried phoning
Matthew but there was no reply. The sharp sunshine and the daffs blowing in the little garden next to the car park made her think of new beginnings. Spring. They also made her remember that time was passing and she wanted a man in her life before it was too late. Sometimes Ella brought a lad home and although the pair were well behaved when Jen was around, she sensed their adolescent lust. The touching and the easy intimacy provoked an envy that shocked her. She thought she could kill for that: a good man to hold her hand when they were out walking, to stroke her neck when she’d had a bad day, to lie next to her at night and screw her senseless as the dawn came. She knew she tried too hard with the men she met, was too desperate and she scared them off. And she still hadn’t met a good man, at least not one who was right for her, who could keep her interest after a couple of nights.
She sighed and phoned Ross. ‘I’ve just finished with Caroline Preece.’
‘Anything?’
‘Only that Walden liked yoga and meditation. He volunteered in the caff at the Woodyard. In Caroline’s eyes that made him next best thing to a saint.’ Jen hoped that Matthew Venn had made better progress in Barnstaple than she had here in Ilfracombe. ‘But it also seems that he liked a pint or five to keep him going. What about you? I’ve tried phoning the boss, but he’s not answering.’
‘Seems Walden took a bus trip to Lovacott, that village up the Taw Valley, every afternoon for the couple of weeks before he was killed. Something, at least.’ Ross paused. ‘I’ve been digging around a bit. I’m trying to prise Walden’s army records out of the MOD.’ Jen heard the trace of a whine in his voice. Sitting in the office and working the phone wasn’t his idea of fun.
‘Perhaps the boss will let you out to play tomorrow.’ Or you could go to your best mate Joe Oldham and pull a few strings.
‘You could come back now and take over, at least help shift some of the calls that came through after the broadcast on breakfast TV.’
Ross would think that was women’s work, sifting through the recorded messages, phoning back the callers. And she would be better at it than him, more patient, more sympathetic, but she knew better than to start giving in to a man’s blackmail or flattery. She’d been caught that way before.
‘Sorry,’ she said. Sharp and tight. She needed to keep her temper. ‘I’m off to the Kingsley House Hotel to talk to Walden’s former employer. I’ll see you at the briefing tonight.’ She clicked the phone off before he could answer, before she allowed herself to be persuaded.
She sat for a moment in the car and told herself she shouldn’t let Ross bug her. He was young and brash and it wasn’t his fault that he reminded her of her bastard ex-husband. As far as she knew, he’d never punched a pregnant woman in the stomach. It probably wasn’t even his fault that he was the son of Oldham’s best buddy and the DCI had taken him under his wing.
Kingsley House was on the edge of the town, a grand Victorian pile, with gothic turrets and steep terraced gardens leading down to a small private beach. Jen drove down a shingle drive through trees just coming into leaf. In the distance, the island of Lundy looked improbably large on the horizon. The sun was high and the sea glittered. If you were forced to move away from your family and friends, Jen thought, there were worst places to be exiled.
The hotel had a reputation for understated luxury and the best food on the coast. Once it had been the holiday home of a minor royal and its marketing talked of its still having the atmosphere of a country house party. The entrance hall seemed dark and cool after the sunlight. There was a stag’s head on one wall and three huge leather armchairs were gathered around a low mahogany table. No reception desk, but a grey-haired woman in black appeared as if by magic through a door. No name badge and no uniform. Nothing as tasteless as a credit card machine in sight.
‘Yes? Can I help you?’ A flash of a smile. She wasn’t rude, because Jen could have been an eccentric guest. Most people staying here didn’t look like Jen, but the hotel might entertain a few ageing rock chicks. Wealthy ageing rock chicks.
Jen dropped her bag on the marble floor. ‘Could I speak to someone in HR, please?’
‘If you’re applying for employment, we ask you to enter your contact details and CV online.’ The woman’s voice was still kind but a little patronizing; her judgement had been spoton. This was some chancer looking for work.
‘I already have a job, thank you.’ Jen dipped into her bag, opened her warrant card and laid it on the table.
The woman only lost her poise for a moment and Jen couldn’t blame her for the brief lapse. Police officers weren’t supposed to look as she did. ‘Just a moment, Sergeant, I’ll fetch Mr Sutherland.’ She went back through the door and returned almost immediately with a tall young man in a suit.
‘Please.’ He held out his hand for her to shake. ‘Peter Sutherland. I look after staffing here. Come into my office.’ The voice was educated Brummie, the accent well-hidden. A young fogie with pretensions.
She thought of the sunshine, the smell of newly cut grass that had followed her in on her walk from the car. ‘Perhaps we could talk in the garden.’
He seemed surprised but maybe he’d been inside all day too. Or perhaps he’d been trained to please. ‘Of course. That’s a splendid idea.’ Out in the light she realized he was even younger than she’d thought.
He led her away from the building down a narrow path to one of the terraces and a pond, sheltered by laurels and rhododendrons. The shiny leaves reflected the light, but the water was in shadow. They sat on a white wrought-iron bench with their backs to the sun, looking down at the sea. This was miles away from the grey houses in Hope Street, youths lurking at the end of the road, the Big Issue sellers and the homeless guy blank-eyed in his tatty sleeping bag. This was like a secret paradise.
‘How we can help?’
‘Have you seen the local TV news today?’
He shook his head. ‘We’re gearing up for the new season. I’m afraid I haven’t stopped since I came on shift at seven.’
‘A former employee of the hotel was found dead yesterday afternoon. We’re treating his death as suspicious.’ Jen couldn’t believe that word hadn’t got out through social media, through other colleagues.
‘Oh God! Who was it?’
‘A man called Simon Walden. He worked in the kitchen.’ She turned towards him but couldn’t read anything from his face. ‘Do you remember him?’
‘Simon. Yes.’
‘Well? Can you tell me anything about him? Like why someone might have wanted to kill him.’
He didn’t speak for a moment. Jen could hear waves breaking on the sand below them.
When he did speak, the old-fashioned politeness and gentility had disappeared. ‘There were times when I would have gladly killed him myself.’
‘Why?’
‘He was moody and people took against him.’ Another pause. ‘Managing the guests here is easy compared to managing the staff. When we took Walden on, I thought he’d fit in well. He’d been in the forces and people are thrown together in the army, aren’t they? It’s all about being part of a team.’
‘But Walden wasn’t a team player?’
Sutherland gave her a brief smile. ‘Unfortunately not. Some days he’d never speak. He seemed to suck the energy out of the kitchen.’ A pause. ‘And he was a drinker. That’s not unusual in this business. Your body clock gets thrown by the strange shifts, so it doesn’t seem wrong to keep drinking when everyone else is just about to wake up. He functioned, still turned up for work every day, but there was no attempt to get on with his colleagues.’
‘Did anyone specific take against him?’ In the distance, Jen heard a child laughing. She thought next time she had a free weekend she’d drag the kids away from their screens and their school work and bring them down here for a picnic.
Sutherland didn’t speak for a moment. He’d be reluctant to point suspicion towards an individual employee. She didn’t blame him. He was relatively young to hold a position of such responsibility. Some of the
kitchen staff would be older, intimidating. Not the sort you’d want to offend when the hotel’s reputation depended largely on the quality of the food.
‘I could come in, demand to see all your staff records.’ She kept her voice reasonable. ‘That would be time-consuming just as you’re preparing for the season. Or I could check through Revenue and Customs … That would go down well with your employees.’
Sutherland shrugged. He knew when resistance was no longer an option. ‘It’s the chef. Danny Clarkson.’ He paused as if Jen should know the name. ‘He’s a celebrity if you know anything about this business; gets reviews that some people would die for. He’s the reason the restaurant is fully booked, even in the winter when we have fewer guests. Walden wound him up. Clarkson’s got a temper. He’s one of those quiet men who suddenly lose control if things aren’t right or what they expect. A genius but close to the edge. It’s Clarkson’s kitchen and he’s boss there. Maybe they were too similar to work together happily.’ Sutherland got to his feet. ‘I’ll take you through.’
‘Just one more question first. If Walden was such a nightmare, why did you agree to employ him again this season?’
Sutherland shuddered as if the idea was anathema. ‘But we didn’t. There was no way we would have had him back.’
* * *
Clarkson was small, wiry, a head shaved so closely that he looked almost bald, the skull obvious beneath the stubbled skin, gingery eyelashes. Chef’s whites that seemed as crisp as when they’d come out of the laundry. He was bent over a pan, intense as a priest at communion. The kitchen was all stainless steel and gleaming, unexpectedly quiet. The lunchtime service had yet to begin. In the background, acolytes moved swiftly and silently about their work.
Sutherland approached him warily. ‘This is a detective, chef. She’d like a few words.’
‘Not now.’
‘Yes,’ Jen said. ‘Now.’
The man looked up. His eyes were blue and hard. He took the pan off the heat. ‘What do you want?’