by Ann Cleeves
The detectives walked back towards the toll gate in silence, using the torches they’d brought from the station until their eyes got used to the gloom. An owl, flying low over the marsh, was caught in the beam. At the cottage, Matthew sent Ross to the back door and then rang the bell. No reply. There was a crack in the curtains and he looked into the front room. It was much as it had been when they’d visited on the day of Walden’s death. A bit cluttered. Books and files on the shelves. A couple of dirty mugs on the low table. Nobody inside this time, though. He rang the bell again, but harder, leaning on the button. There was still no reply and, leaving Jen at the front door, he walked around the rest of the house, trying to look inside whenever he came to a window. Ross was still waiting at the back door.
‘This frame is completely rotten.’ His voice was so low that Matthew had to bend towards him to hear. ‘We’ll have no problem forcing an entrance if we need to.’
All the other curtains were shut tight and Matthew made his way back to Jen. She was peering through into the living room and waved him towards the gap in the curtains. ‘Look. Wasn’t Lucy wearing that when she went missing?’
Across the threadbare armchair was thrown a purple cardigan.
He led her to the back of the house and to Ross, who was still waiting for them, pacing, impatient for action.
‘She’s definitely been in there.’ Jen’s voice was high-pitched, panicky.
Ross put his shoulder to the door. There was the creak of splintered wood and it fell inside, almost intact.
Matthew pulled the door out of the way.
‘Hello! Police!’
The back door led straight into the kitchen. The kettle was warm but not hot. Dirty plates on the draining board. In the bin the remains of takeaway fish and chips.
Jen had moved through to the living room and was looking at the cardigan. She showed Matthew the label of the cheap high street chain where Susan had said they’d been shopping in Plymouth. ‘I’m sure this is Lucy’s.’
On the hall table there was a phone, a landline. Matthew pressed the redial button and got through to emergency services. ‘That confirms that she made the call from here.’ He shouted up the stairs: ‘Hello, Lucy.’ Silence.
Matthew went up. He told the others to stay where they were; he’d already be contaminating any possible scene. There was a narrow landing, with a bathroom ahead. A stained enamel bath. Surely a man who’d been a lawyer would be able to afford better accommodation than this. Perhaps Marston had conned them all, including the Woodyard board, and lied about his qualifications and experience. Or had the pull of the wildlife on the marsh really been the big draw?
Every muscle felt tense, and his heart was racing. He wondered if this was the onset of an anxiety attack. He’d suffered from them when he first went to Bristol as a student but hadn’t had one for years. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting to find in the upstairs rooms. Another stabbing perhaps. Blood. He thought he wouldn’t know how to tell Maurice if anything had happened to his daughter, found himself groping already for the words to explain. For a story. The bathroom was empty. A search team would come in later, but now he just wanted to find Lucy, to get her back to her father.
He pushed open one of the bedroom doors. A spare room, barely furnished with a single bed and clothes rail. Still no sign of the woman. Nowhere to hide a body. The last bedroom obviously belonged to the Marstons – Colin’s clothes were neatly folded on a chair, Hilary’s thrown on the floor. He pulled back the duvet, but there was no blood-soaked mattress, no Lucy. He was hit by relief and an overwhelming sense of anticlimax. In the ceiling of the landing, there was a small plyboard hatch that would lead into the loft, but Matthew could tell that Lucy was too big and too physically unfit to get through it. He shouted down to the others:
‘She’s not here.’
They gathered in the cramped hall.
‘What do we think?’ This was Jen. ‘That they caught her ringing out to the emergency services and realized they had to get her out of the house? They’d know we’d be on our way. Their car’s here, so how did they move her? Taxi? Did they get someone to come and give them a lift?’
‘Maybe.’ But Matthew wasn’t sure the Marstons would have waited for someone to drive from the town. They were city people and they’d expect an immediate police response. ‘Or maybe they just walked her out. They hoped we’d find nobody at home. They might not have realized she’d given her name or the call-handler would be bright enough to pass the message on to us. They could be hiding, waiting for us to go away again, so they can bring her back. Marston knows the marsh and the shore. He’d be aware of the places to hide her.’
* * *
They separated. Jen and Ross went inland, following the road that ran along the marsh. That was the more likely place for the couple to have taken Lucy. She would find it hard to walk quickly over soft sand, and they’d want her to move quickly. Matthew headed to the shore towards Crow Point. That was his territory. He thought he’d know it as well as Marston. It was where Simon Walden had been found dead.
There was a half-moon, covered most of the time by cloud, misty, hardly giving any light. Matthew climbed the bank of dunes. Home lay to his right, brightly lit. He thought he could smell woodsmoke. Jonathan would have lit the log burner, would be waiting, restless and anxious. On the far bank of the river, a string of lights marked Instow, and beyond the mouth of the Torridge more lights: Bideford and Appledore. The map of his patch.
The tide had been low when they’d left Barnstaple but it had turned now and was on its way in, the water inching its way up the shore. He could make out the thin line of foam, white against a grey beach, where the waves were breaking, but little else. He checked his phone to make sure he had signal, that Jen and Ross would be able to call as soon as they had news.
He was starting to think that this was fruitless and he should already have called in more officers through headquarters and the coastguard rescue team. This search was going to take more than three people. Behind him, he heard a rustle in the dunes. Shifting sand. Some small animal sliding home with its prey. Then a heavier step. Ross and Jen had already walked all the way to the road perhaps, and had come to join him here on the shore. Or maybe they’d found Lucy, but there was no phone signal where they were, so they’d come to tell him. He turned to call to them, though he thought they should be able to see his silhouette on the ridge of the dunes, even in this light. But before he could shout there was another sound, then a sharp pain. Then everything went black.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
JEN MOVED ALONG THE DARK LANE, only aware of Ross because she could hear his footsteps. She’d never lived in a place without street lights, without the background white noise of traffic, and wondered how Matthew and Jonathan could bear the silence. It made her panicky, so stressed that she could feel her heart racing. She’d hated playing hide-and-seek as a child, the tension of waiting in some dark corner to be caught, and now her imagination was running wild; she pictured Lucy in the dark, terrified, at the mercy of strangers.
To hold on to a shred of control, she let fire at Ross. ‘What is it about you and Oldham? Why do you end up doing his dirty work?’
They were walking each side of the narrow road away from the toll gate towards Braunton, occasionally shining the light from the torches into the ditches. Shouting Lucy’s name. Hearing their voices echo away into the empty space.
‘My dad worked with him. They both joined the force as cadets.’
‘Your dad was a cop?’ Jen had never heard about that. Ross didn’t speak much about his family. Only about the gorgeous Melanie.
‘He didn’t stick it out for long. He couldn’t hack it, ended up working for Routledge. You know, the store in town? He ran the menswear department.’ Ross spoke as if that was something to be ashamed of.
Jen nodded. Routledge had been still running, just, when she’d moved to Barnstaple, but times had been hard for retail since the recession, and it had long gone.
‘Joe Oldham was still a mate, though, even after Dad left the force, still around. I think he bailed them out when Dad lost his job at Routledge. He was more like an uncle. When I was a kid, we went on holiday with him and his wife Maureen every year. They couldn’t have children.’ He stopped to shout for Lucy. Still no reply. No sound at all. Jen wanted to fill the silence, but she knew there was more to come. ‘I had more in common with Joe than I did with my dad – he encouraged me to apply for the police, joined me up to the rugby club – and there were times when I wished I was his son. I thought there was more I could be proud of.’
‘So, when he asked for favours you didn’t think you could refuse?’ Jen felt almost sorry for him.
‘Yeah, something like that.’ A pause. ‘Now I don’t know how to get out of it.’
Jen thought of Oldham, red-faced, smelling of booze from his drinking the night before, starting to lose it. ‘I don’t think he’ll be in the force for very much longer.’
There was the sound of an engine behind them. The noise split the silence, shocking, making the panic return. A car must have been parked right off the road, hidden by a spinney of trees, and now it tore down the lane behind them, going so fast that they had to scramble out of the way. In the dark and at that speed, she had no idea of the colour, let alone the make, of the vehicle.
Jen pressed her phone to call Matthew. She had signal but there was no reply. ‘I think we should go back. See if the boss is okay. That wasn’t some courting couple.’
She started running back along the track. They’d gone further than she’d thought and she soon got out of breath and needed to walk. Ross overtook her and she heard his running footsteps disappear into the distance until they faded to silence. She had another moment of panic, felt smothered by the dark so she could hardly breathe. Then she must have turned a slight bend in the road because there were lights ahead of her, a long way off, but providing somewhere to head for. Comfort. Spindrift, Matthew’s home. She passed the toll keeper’s cottage and continued towards the dunes and the beach, more confident now that she knew where she was. She’d be able to navigate her way from here.
There was no sign of Ross. He must have left the road already, taken the same path as Matthew over the sandhills towards the shore. Just as well that one of them was fit. She turned off the road and began the scramble to the ridge of dunes, needing to stop again when she reached the top to catch her breath. Looking down at the beach, all she could see was a flashing buoy somewhere in the distance. Then the brown cloud cleared and briefly the beach was flooded with moonlight. She saw something far below the high-water mark, close to the incoming tide. No colour. The light wasn’t sufficiently strong to make out more than a shape. A heap of discarded clothes, perhaps, or some washed-up debris from a passing ship. It could be a weird sculpture. Something Gaby Henry might have put together from found objects, a twisted piece of driftwood covered by seaweed. Ross was standing there and he was shouting.
She wasn’t a sporty woman. She’d never seen the appeal of Lycra and the gym, but now she ran. The strong moonlight had disappeared again, and the object she’d seen from the dunes was no more than a grey shadow, marginally darker than the flat sand that surrounded it. Ross was still shouting and she could hear the desperation in his voice.
Chapter Forty
MATTHEW WOKE TO A BRIGHT LIGHT, pain and cold. He couldn’t scream because his mouth wouldn’t open. Later he thought that had, at least, provided him with a tatter of dignity. He couldn’t yell with pain or whimper like a child. It gave him time to pull himself together. There was noise too. Somebody shouting. A voice he recognized. Ross. Then the tape was pulled from his mouth. More pain. Ross shouted again and Matthew had recovered enough by then to realize the man was shouting to Jen. ‘It’s the boss!’
Ross put his arm around Matthew’s back and pulled him into a sitting position, cut the tape that was binding his hands.
‘Lucy?’ Matthew could hear Maurice Braddick’s voice in his head, recriminating. So, they managed to save you. What about my girl?
‘Alive.’
‘Where?’
‘Here, on the beach. Not far from you.’
‘For God’s sake, see to her first.’ Matthew was pleased that he’d managed to shout.
‘Jen’s already with her. She wasn’t far behind me. And you were unconscious. I thought you might be dead.’ Ross sounded very young, as if he’d been crying. He repeated the words. ‘I thought you were dead.’ He cut the tape that had been tied around Matthew’s ankles and at the same time the clouds parted again. Matthew held on to Ross and pulled himself onto his feet. For a moment he stood with his hand on the DC’s arm. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Great work.’
He saw that he’d been lying on the sand, and about two metres away Lucy was being helped by Jen. The woman had been gagged and tied too. Matthew walked unsteadily towards her, and in the spotlight of Jen’s torch, saw her in small glimpses: a trainer, turned on one side, covered in sand. An arm, soft and fleshy, very white against the shadowy shore. An eye, open, then blinking in the torchlight, alive. Lucy had been lying helpless on her side. Even a fit person would be unable to move in that position, and she was unfit, cold and scared. Jen was pulling away the parcel tape that was wound around her mouth and her head. Lucy winced at the pain as strands of her hair caught in it.
He shone the torch onto his own face so she could see who he was. There were tears rolling down her cheeks, but she gave a grin, defiant and brave. The water was only metres from them now, sliding up the beach, a gentle and secret killer. If she’d been there an hour longer, Matthew thought, Lucy Braddick would have drowned. And if Ross hadn’t found us, I would have drowned too.
Jen untied Lucy’s hands and feet. Ross took off his coat and wrapped it around her. Together they helped her walk a little way up the beach, until she was safely away from the tide. Her legs gave way again and she collapsed onto the sand.
‘You’ll need to call an ambulance.’ Matthew had the worst headache in his life but his mind felt sharp and clear. Focussed. As if he’d OD’d on caffeine and could take on the world. ‘Tell them exactly what happened and they’ll need a chair or a stretcher to move her. Someone will stay with her and wait for the crew.’
While Ross was making the call, he phoned Jonathan.
‘We’ve found her. On the shore near the house. She’s cold and she’s been tied up and I want her checked out medically before we start talking to her. Can you come? Stay with her until the ambulance crew gets here? Ross and Jen are here, but I don’t want to leave her with strangers. We’ve moved her up the beach a bit out of the way of the tide, but we’ll need help to get her over the bank. I don’t want Maurice to see her like this.’
He could hear that Jonathan was already moving. Matthew imagined him grabbing his coat and hurrying out. While he was waiting he made the call to Maurice. The phone was answered immediately. ‘Yes?’ Hopeful and fearful all at the same time.
‘It’s all right, Maurice. She’s fine.’ This wasn’t the time to give him any details. ‘We’re getting her taken to the North Devon District Hospital just to be checked over if you want to meet her there. Jonathan will be with her, and my sergeant Jen Rafferty, so you don’t need to worry.’ He looked at Lucy, who was sitting on the sand, shivering with shock and cold. ‘Can you talk to your dad?’
She stuck up two thumbs and gave him the same defiant smile. The words came slowly. It was a struggle for her to get them out. Each syllable a small triumph. ‘Hello, Dad! Yes, I’m okay. I’ll tell you all about it when I see you.’ There was a pause. ‘Can you buy some chocolate? A Twix and a Kitkat. I’m starving.’ She handed the phone back to Matthew. The effort to be brave seemed to have exhausted her and she started crying again.
There was a torchlight in the distance now, coming closer: it would be Jonathan doing the characteristic fast walk that was almost a run. He arrived more quickly than Matthew could have hoped, his arms full, throwing him off
balance. There was a waterproof coat, which he put on the sand for them to sit on and a blanket, a flask. ‘I had coffee already made.’ He was sitting beside Lucy, wrapping the blanket around her on top of Ross’s coat.
‘I don’t like coffee,’ she said. She turned her head. Matthew could tell it was painful for her to twist her neck. ‘Have you got any biscuits?’
‘It just so happens…’ And Jonathan pulled a packet from his pocket, like a conjuror.
She munched, almost content, almost enjoying the adventure and the attention now Jonathan was here.
Jonathan looked up, spoke in a whisper to Matthew. ‘Who did this? And what happened to you?’
Matthew didn’t answer that. ‘I’ll leave Jen with you. If Lucy speaks about it, will you both make notes? Or even better, take a recording. But no questions yet. An interview on a beach in the middle of the night with a woman in shock wouldn’t be admissible in court and I don’t want this cocked up.’
They nodded. Matthew looked out again towards the water that still crept slowly up the sand towards them. He thought that with the strength of the tide here, Lucy’s body might never have been found. He too might have been dragged out into the channel, still alive, but unable to save himself. Drowning in the dark water, sucked under by the currents. The stuff of his nightmares. ‘The ambulance will be here soon. I need to go.’ Matthew was already walking away and if Jonathan replied, he didn’t hear.
It was Ross who shouted after him. ‘Wait! You had concussion. You need to go to the hospital too.’
Matthew stopped and looked back at him. ‘No time for that and I’m fine.’
A silence. He thought Ross was going to insist, but he said, ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Take the car. I’ll pick up Jonathan’s from the house. Find the Marstons and the Salters. Bring them into the station as soon as you track them down. Tonight. Don’t wait until the morning. Jen was right. This is all about conspiracy. Entitled people more worried about their own reputations than the people in their care, losing any sense of humanity along the way. A kind of collective madness. They’re all involved to some degree.’ He’d reached the top of the bank and could see the flashing lights of the ambulance.