The Long Call

by Ann Cleeves

  ‘I doubt if I’ll be able to get away.’ Matthew realized that sounded churlish. ‘But I’ll try. It’s a lovely idea.’

  ‘So I’m forgiven then?’ He sounded anxious, as though these were more than trite words. The adopted boy, worried about being disowned, searching for a real place to belong.

  ‘Of course.’ Because Matthew always forgave him. He thought he’d forgive Jonathan anything.

  * * *

  The police station was quiet. Ross was already in and staring at his computer screen. Matthew had just settled at his desk when there was a phone call from Jen asking if it would be okay if she came in a bit later.

  ‘I really need to spend a bit of time with the kids. Ella and Ben will forget what I look like soon and if I don’t do some food shopping, they’ll start eating each other.’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’ Matthew hoped this wasn’t an excuse, that she hadn’t had a wild night out and just staggered home, too rough to work.

  ‘You got my message about Jonathan’s conversation with Christine Shapland and the meeting with Caroline and the St Cuthbert’s clients? I didn’t get anything useful. Sorry.’ Jen sounded sober enough.

  ‘Yes.’ Matthew had hoped to discuss Woodyard affairs with Jonathan the night before, to ask his opinion and share ideas. Matthew thought he should have done that instead of rushing out to Lovacott to talk to the Salters. Now he saw that had been a wasted trip. He hadn’t thought it through sufficiently before challenging Grace and it had left him only frustrated and angry. And Salter had been warned that Matthew knew about his domestic life. He’d become even more closed and secretive.

  ‘Thanks,’ Jen said. ‘I’ll be in later. If anything important turns up, just give me a ring.’

  Matthew replaced the receiver and wandered over to Ross’s desk. ‘Have we got anything from the CSIs after the sweep on Walden’s flat in Braunton?’

  If there were fingerprints not on the system, he’d be interested to know if there were any not yet identified. He’d love to find evidence that Salter had been in the flat. He pictured asking the man in to the station to have his prints taken, the powder on his fingers like a mark of shame. Salter wasn’t a stupid man, though. If he’d carried out the search of the flat, he would surely have worn gloves. And Matthew needed to be careful – his antipathy towards the man was clouding his judgement. He had no real evidence that Salter had been abusive or that he was involved in any way in Walden’s death.

  ‘I was just about to chase it up.’

  Matthew left it at that. He still felt guilty about losing patience with Ross in front of other officers; he hated losing control. Feeling trapped and restless, he went back to his glass corner of the open-plan space. He wished he could find a more tangible link between Dennis Salter and Simon Walden. There was no evidence even that the men had met. Salter’s sly insinuation that Jonathan might be involved somehow with the investigation, that Matthew was in a position to protect his husband, made him think again that he should withdraw from the case. But it also made him angry. He knew, with a certainty that was almost religious, that Jonathan could not be involved in murder or kidnap.

  I’ll give it until the end of the weekend. If we haven’t cracked it by then, I’ll take it upstairs. I’ll tell Joe Oldham that Jen Rafferty is perfectly able to manage this on her own.

  Through the glass partition, he watched Ross making his phone calls. There was a sudden, silent mime of excitement, a fist in the air. Ross waved over to him and once more, Matthew paced across the space between the desks and computer terminals.

  ‘What is it? Have you won the lottery?’

  ‘Better than that!’

  ‘Go on then, tell me.’ Matthew wasn’t a violent man but there were times when Ross provoked him so much that he wanted to slap him, and he was in a mood to lash out.

  ‘The CSIs have come back with their first report on Walden’s Braunton flat and they’ve found a couple of fingerprint matches. We have confirmation that Christine Shapland was there.’

  ‘Ah, I think we already guessed that was the case.’

  ‘There was another match, though.’

  ‘Give me a name, Ross. Stop messing about.’

  ‘You know they took the prints of the women from Hope Street for elimination?’

  ‘I didn’t know that but it makes sense. A good decision.’

  ‘It seems that Gaby Henry had been in the Braunton flat. There’s no mistake. They found her prints in the bathroom and on the chest of drawers in the bedroom.’

  Matthew thought about that and wondered why he wasn’t more surprised.

  Back in his cubby hole, he phoned the landline in Hope Street. He thought nobody was in, or they were all in bed, and it would just go to answerphone but it was picked up. ‘Caroline Preece.’ She sounded tired and unwell.

  ‘This is Matthew Venn. Could I speak to Gaby?’

  ‘She’s not here, Inspector. Gaby runs a watercolour class for the U3A in the Woodyard at lunchtime on a Saturday. Not her favourite thing but needs must. She left half an hour ago. She said she wanted to do some of her own work – there’s a painting she was hoping to finish – before the students turned up.’

  * * *

  Matthew found Gaby alone in her studio at the Woodyard. She was working on the painting of Crow Point. ‘Is it almost finished?’ He couldn’t see how she could make it any better. It had a luminous quality. Light behind cloud. He lost himself in the image for a moment.

  ‘Yes.’ She lowered her brush, but she couldn’t stop looking at the painting. He still didn’t have her full attention.

  ‘You met Simon for coffee that morning, didn’t you? At least, he had coffee and a bacon sandwich and you had herbal tea.’

  She set her brush on the shelf at the bottom of the easel and now she did turn to face him.

  ‘How did you find out?’

  He shrugged. ‘Routine policing.’ Only then did he see the green jacket, hanging on a hook on the back of the door. ‘A witness saw you together in the cafe in Braunton and described what you were wearing.’ She didn’t reply and he continued: ‘Were you in a relationship?’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s what you’d call it.’

  ‘But you visited his flat in Braunton. You knew he had somewhere else to live.’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘We know that you went there,’ he said. ‘We found your fingerprints.’

  Still she stared back at Matthew in silence.

  ‘Did you kill him?’

  ‘No!’ she said, provoked at last to respond. ‘No! Of course not!’

  ‘Well, you’ve done a pretty good job of hindering our investigation, and you admit to being in the area at the time.’ A pause. ‘You must see how it looks, Gaby. You lied.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I didn’t lie. But I didn’t tell you everything I knew.’

  They stood, still staring at each other. ‘I should take you to the police station,’ he said, ‘caution you, question you with a solicitor present.’

  She pushed her hair away from her face. He saw she had a small smudge of paint on her cheek. It was green, the same shade as her coat.

  ‘Please don’t. I need this residency. I know I whine about it, but without it I’d never survive.’

  ‘They can’t sack you for helping the police with their enquiries.’

  ‘We’re not talking about Jonathan here! He’s cool. We’re talking the board of trustees. Local business people, mostly men, and politicians, again mostly men. They don’t see the point of art. They’d rather rent out this space as a craft workshop to someone who wants to make cheap tat for the tourists. That way they could charge a fee. They’re just looking for an excuse to get rid of me. They have been since I first arrived.’

  Matthew pulled out a chair and took a seat. ‘How long have you got before your students turn up?’

  ‘An hour.’

  ‘Make me some coffee then and we’ll talk.’

  They sat, the smell of the coffee ov
erlaid with the smell of paint, turps and chalk dust.

  ‘Why did you lie about Walden? Why pretend that you disliked him?’

  ‘I told you, I didn’t lie. I did dislike him at first. That wasn’t a pretence. I hated him in the house. His disturbing presence. His brooding.’ She rubbed paint-stained fingers around the rim of her mug.

  ‘But you found him attractive? You admitted that the last time we talked.’

  ‘I found him interesting,’ she conceded.

  ‘Why hide your relationship from me? From your friends?’

  She took a while to find the words. ‘I was embarrassed. I’d been so opposed to him staying in the house and then, there I was, dreaming about him. Thinking about him. A former soldier and alcoholic, who knew nothing about art.’ She paused again. ‘And it was exciting, you know, keeping it secret.’ Matthew understood embarrassment. The fear of looking foolish had haunted him all his adult life. It had taken Jonathan to start curing him of that.

  ‘All the same, you should have told us. This is a murder inquiry. Your embarrassment isn’t important. Finding the killer is.’

  ‘Once I started lying, I couldn’t stop. I was worried you’d think I’d murdered him.’

  Matthew looked at her over the rim of his mug. ‘Did you?’

  ‘No! I just kept the relationship secret. From you and from my friends.’

  ‘What did Simon think about that? It might have seemed as if you were ashamed of getting together with him.’ Surely, Matthew thought, that would make a man resentful.

  ‘Nah.’ She gave a fond smile. ‘Simon preferred it that way. He said he had so many secrets, what was one more?’

  ‘What do you think he meant by that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Gaby paused for a moment and seemed lost in thought. ‘One day, when we were in the Braunton flat a couple of weeks ago, he started talking about secrets. I already knew he’d been married, but this was something else, something different. He seemed preoccupied and I could tell something was troubling him. I asked what was wrong. I thought for a moment that he was going to tell me; I had the sense that he wanted to share whatever was on his mind. But then he just laughed. He said if he told me everything, there would be no secrets any more. And he didn’t know what that would feel like. It was the secrets which defined him. He wouldn’t feel the same man. It would be like having no guilt.’

  Matthew thought about that. ‘And he gave you no idea at all what was troubling him?’

  ‘No. He said he’d have to sort it out. He seemed almost pleased about that. He said it was his responsibility. His chance to make amends.’

  Matthew drank the rest of his coffee. It was clear that there’d been some drama in the last weeks of Simon Walden’s life. He’d made a discovery that would lead to his death. In that time, he’d started travelling to Lovacott, he’d sent his money to the solicitor in Exeter and pressed for a meeting with him. Walden’s life at the time had been centred around St Cuthbert’s, the Woodyard and the Ilfracombe house. It seemed as if he only used the Braunton flat to meet Gaby.

  ‘And you have no idea what he meant by that?’

  Gaby shook her head. ‘I confided a lot in him, but he still wasn’t ready to share personal stuff with me. Or perhaps he liked being mysterious.’

  ‘How did the relationship start?’ Matthew still couldn’t quite imagine these two individuals as lovers. But then, who would have ever imagined him and Jonathan together?

  ‘It was that night that I told you about, the Friday when he’d been cooking. When Caz went to bed I knocked at his bedroom door and went into his room. I’d been drinking. I wanted to run my fingers over his cheekbones, the muscles in his back.’ She looked up at him and grinned. ‘That was what I told myself. That it was all about understanding the bone structure, for my art, to inform the painting I was making.’

  ‘You became lovers.’

  ‘Not that night. That night we just lay on his bed and talked.’

  ‘But he didn’t share his secrets?’ Matthew could picture them on the narrow bed, whispering, until noises in the street told them it was nearly morning and that Gaby should leave for her own room.

  ‘No. Like I said, I did most of the talking. About the places I’d lived in London, about my mother and her bullying, bastard men, about never feeling I quite belonged. Simon listened. He was a brilliant listener.’

  ‘When did he take you to his flat in Braunton?’

  ‘Not until recently. About three weeks ago. Then we went a few times.’ Gaby smiled, challenging him to disapprove. ‘Making love in the afternoon when he didn’t have a session at the Woodyard and I wasn’t teaching.’

  ‘Did Simon explain why he had the place, why he’d felt the need to keep it secret from the rest of you, from the people, like Caroline at St Cuthbert’s, who’d helped him?’

  ‘No, though I did ask him why he’d come to live with us when he had his own place.’ Gaby seemed pleased to talk now. It must have been hard, Matthew thought, to grieve for Walden in private. In secret. Even if she’d been the one to stab him in a rage of jealousy or rejection. Because though Matthew liked the woman, he couldn’t rule her out as the killer.

  She continued:

  ‘He said that isolation had been killing him. He brooded. Felt as if he was drowning in guilt. If he’d stayed on his own much longer, he’d have drunk himself to death. He needed the support of the St Cuthbert’s group therapy and he didn’t think Caroline would be so sympathetic if he had his own place and a bit of money behind him.’ She gave another crooked smile. ‘I told him I wouldn’t have been very sympathetic either.’

  ‘Did he ever talk about his finances? We’ve discovered that he had considerable savings, but he seems to have distrusted the building society where he kept his cash. Or it’s possible that he had plans for it.’

  She shook her head. ‘We weren’t on those sorts of terms. We were never going to be sharing bank accounts or dragging each other round IKEA. It was fleeting, intense and we both knew it wouldn’t last. Neither of us would have suited domestic bliss. Soon, it would burn itself out.’

  ‘Do you know why he took the bus to Lovacott the last couple of weeks before he died? We think he was planning to meet someone there. Was that you?’

  ‘No! Are you saying he had another woman?’

  ‘There’s no evidence of that.Would you have been surprised?’

  She gave a sad, little laugh. ‘I’d have been hurt, jealous, but no, not surprised. I don’t think anything he did would have surprised me.’

  ‘Can you talk me through the day of his death?’

  She leaned back in her chair, so the light from the long window caught her face and he saw how tired she looked, how much older. ‘As you said, we met for coffee. I was free that morning and I knew he wasn’t planning to go in to the Woodyard, so I thought we’d go back to his flat and I’d get to spend some more time with him.’

  Matthew interrupted. ‘Did you travel together to Braunton?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, he got an early bus and I came in later. He said he had things to see to. Besides…’ Her voice tailed away.

  He completed the sentence. ‘Besides, you had to keep up the pretence that you hated each other. It was all part of the drama.’

  ‘Yeah, something like that. Now, it seems like a kind of madness. Pointless. We wasted time we could have had together.’

  ‘So, what happened that day after you met for coffee?’ Matthew was aware of time passing. Soon eager middle-aged students would be knocking on the studio door demanding Gaby’s time.

  ‘I drove out to the coast and spent time looking for the right landscape to paint. I did some drawings and took photos, lost track of time. I had a group at the Woodyard in the evening and only just got back in time to meet Caz in the cafe for an early supper before the students turned up.’ She looked up. ‘I didn’t see Simon again after that meeting in the cafe. I didn’t drive with him to Crow Point and I didn’t kill him.’

&nb
sp; Matthew wanted to believe her. He thought Marston would have seen her car if she’d driven Walden to the point. Which didn’t mean she hadn’t parked elsewhere and walked around the shore to meet her lover. She could have killed him then. ‘What about Simon? What were his plans?’

  ‘Oh, he was going to save the world. That was the impression he gave. At last the big project, the stuff that had been troubling him, was coming to a climax. Perhaps at last I’ll be able to get rid of this albatross round my neck, Gabs. At last, I’ll be able to face the world again. But he didn’t say anything specific. Nothing useful.’

  There was a silence, and when she spoke, her words came out as a confession. ‘I loved him, you know. It was crazy and it would never have worked, but I really loved him.’

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  MAURICE BRADDICK LIKED SATURDAYS. Often, he and Lucy went into Barnstaple and did a bit of shopping, had coffee in one of the cafes that had sprung up all over the place, and sometimes they walked along the river to the park. They’d sit in the sun there, eating ice cream, watching the kiddies in the playground. They’d done the same when Maggie was alive, but Maggie had always been more energetic than him and sometimes she’d taken Lucy swimming. Maurice would sit on the raked seats, watching the pool, breathing in the heat and the chlorine, while the two women splashed. It had been their time and they’d loved it.

  Lucy was in her bedroom getting ready and he went to call her, to tell her it was time to go. He stood on the landing and heard her chuntering to herself. Sometimes she did that. The social worker called it self-talk, but Lucy just said she was speaking to her pretend friends, making up a story. This sounded like an exciting story and Maurice could tell that Luce had made herself the centre of the action. She always liked a bit of drama; she’d loved being in the school plays when she was a kiddie. He and Maggie had sat in the front row cheering, not caring what the other parents made of it.