by Ann Cleeves
In the office she googled the Writers’ House and found it at once. It seemed there was nothing sinister about the place. Unless you found poets and novelists sinister. This was a retreat for writers of all sorts, and throughout the year it hosted a number of residential courses for writers with different levels of experience. What had she been expecting? A Gothic tower, where Joanna had been trapped by a madman who’d persuaded her to fall in love with him? The pictures on the website showed a large whitewashed farmhouse. Part of it was very old, according to the advertising pitch, and fortified against the Scots who had raided across the border. One view did show a bare-stone outside wall with crenellations. And there was a small, dark chapel. But inside it was all very tasteful and not Gothic at all. Flagstones on the kitchen floor, bare beams, stripped wooden doors. Low sofas and easy chairs, with only the occasional flipchart to indicate it wasn’t a private home. The place was run, apparently, by a company of the same name, headed by someone called Miranda Barton.
There were pictures of the tutors, and even Vera recognized a couple of names: a poet who appeared on television occasionally, talking about the decline of British culture; a playwright. The fees seemed to her to be exorbitant, and certainly well beyond Joanna’s pocket. Unless Joanna had a secret fund left over from her marriage. In large red letters it said that bursaries were available to writers who showed talent, and it occurred to Vera that Joanna’s disappearance was no more disturbing than that: she fancied herself as a writer. Perhaps she’d been awarded one of the bursaries, but had been embarrassed to tell Jack what she was up to. Perhaps she wanted to wait until she’d finished a piece of work before telling him.
A course had started the day Joanna took herself off from Myers Farm: ‘Short Cuts. The art of the contemporary crime short story.’ Cuts, Vera thought. Very witty. You could tell they’d be good with words. She had just clicked onto the link when she heard footsteps outside her office: her sergeant, Joe Ashworth, dead on time for their daily morning meeting. She turned off the PC, feeling faintly guilty without really understanding why.
Mid-afternoon, she wandered through to the open-plan office where Joe was filling in his overtime form.
‘I’m off,’ she said. ‘Taking back some of the time I’m owed from the Lister case.’
‘Going to the gym?’ A sly little grin. He knew she’d been told to lose weight.
‘Piss off!’ But there was no animosity in it. After a week of strategy meetings and appraisals she was looking forward to being away from the office. It was still clear and bright and, driving east past the newly ploughed fields, where the low sun threw long shadows from the trees lining the road ahead of her, she felt more optimistic than she had for ages. Since the last major inquiry.
She’d printed out a map from the Writers’ House website and had to stop every now and then to check directions. This wasn’t work, not really, so she was back in Hector’s Land Rover. No satnav. She felt the wonderful liberation of the truant. Rounding the brow of a hill, she had a view of Alnmouth, with its pretty painted houses, and the bay, and turned north past the masts and domes of RAF Boulmer. Then after a series of missed turns and narrow lanes, she could see the house. It was in a steep valley that led to the coast, sheltered on the landward side by trees. The old fortified farmstead with a newer extension leading away from the sea. The chapel forming one side of a courtyard. She pulled into a farm gate to get her bearings and decide what tack to take with Joanna. Now she was here, she wasn’t sure how she should play the situation. What if the group was in the middle of some intense discussion on the meaning of literature and life? Vera pictured them seated round the room she’d seen on the Internet, writing pads on their knees, brows furrowed in concentration. She was sure everyone would enjoy the drama of the interruption: Vera walking in demanding to talk to Joanna. Everyone except Joanna, who’d be mortified. Time for a bit of tact, girl.
There must be, Vera thought, staff. An office manager, a cook, someone to make the beds and clean the toilets. People she could talk to and get a feel for the place. If the punters paid that much for a week in the wilds, they would expect to be looked after. She decided she’d leave the vehicle where it was and go in on foot, get the lie of the land, wait until any group activity or workshop was over and she could get Joanna on her own.
The light was fading quickly now and the temperature had dropped. Walking east down the lane into the valley, she was entirely in shadow. In the morning the house would be filled with light, but now the place had a gloomy air. The trees in the copse had dropped their leaves and the lane was covered with them. Once she almost slipped. She arrived at the gate to the Writers’ House. There was a professionally painted sign and the logo of a quill pen that she recognized from the website, and beyond, a large garden. After the house the lane petered into a track that was no more than a footpath. It led steeply down to the small shingle beach that she’d seen from the car. There were no other buildings within sight. If you wanted a place to write without distraction, this would suit the bill. But it occurred to Vera that it would be a long trek to the pub.
Approaching the house, she felt nervous. Here she was well out of her comfort zone. She couldn’t flash her warrant card and demand respect and attention. No crime had been committed. And she’d never really got on with arty types: people who used words with ideas behind them, but had nothing real to say. She was more comfortable with the villains she brought to court.
Now she could see the place in more detail: a big house and then some old outbuildings, stables perhaps, that had been turned into a cottage. Both faced into a paved area that must once have been a farmyard. To her right the tiny chapel that must once have served the extended family that had lived here. In the house they’d switched the lights on, but they hadn’t drawn the curtains. This was Vera’s favourite time of day. She’d always been curious, loved the glimpses of other folks’ domestic existence as she walked down the street. And what was it to be a detective, after all, but to pry into other people’s lives? There was a big front door, but she avoided that. It looked as if it locked automatically from inside, and she didn’t want to ring the brass bell that hung outside. Not until she knew Joanna was still there and she had some idea of what was going on.
She walked round the side of the big house, avoiding the shingle path, keeping to the grass border that ran right up to the wall. She made no sound. Arriving at the first window, she stopped with her back to the house. It came to her suddenly that she must look completely ridiculous. If there were someone further up the bank looking down – a couple of birdwatchers, for example, with binoculars – they’d take her for a madwoman, or an inept burglar. Still standing close to the wall of the house, so that she couldn’t be seen from inside, she looked in. The kitchen. A young man in chef’s whites stood with his back to her, stirring a pan. There was a teapot on the table and two blue mugs. An older woman sat at the table, reading a typed manuscript. She was rather glamorous, with dyed blonde hair. The finger that turned the page had red nails. Was that Miranda Barton? At any rate, there was no sign of Joanna and, crouching so that she was lower than the windowsill, Vera moved on.
The next room was empty. It looked like a library, the walls lined with bookshelves. There were a couple of small tables and leather-seated, upright chairs. Now Vera had turned another corner and was on a paved veranda that looked out over the sea. On the grass below was a bird table and a set of elaborate feeders filled with nuts and seed. She could see the lighthouse at the Farne Islands to the north and Coquet Island to the south. In the summer this would be a magnificent place to sit. Vera pictured them here after a day’s writing, drinking fancy wine and sharing their ideas. Posing. Why did she feel the need to sneer? Because people who talked about books or pictures or films made her feel ignorant and out of her depth.
She’d stopped right on the corner, because most of the wall facing out to sea was made of glass. There were two long windows, almost floor-to-ceiling, and between them double glass doors. A long, l
ight room. The place featured on the website, with the sofas and the easy chairs. And there were people inside. It seemed to Vera that the group had just broken up. They were standing and chatting. Tea must have been served, because they were holding cups and saucers, balancing scones on paper napkins. Now it was almost dark outside, and Vera thought there was little danger of her being seen. The people in the room were preoccupied with their own concerns. Their faces were animated. There were six of them, but the door leading further into the house was open, so it was possible that some people had already left. Certainly there was no sign of Joanna.
Vera stood for a moment and wondered how Joanna might fit into this group. Joanna, with her big hands and feet, her loud laugh and her dirty fingernails. Her brightly coloured home-made clothes. If she was here, had she escaped already to the privacy of her own room, daunted by the confidence of her companions?
Vera had decided that it was time to go back to the front door, ring the bell and ask to speak to Joanna. She had a cover story prepared. There would be a domestic crisis: a relative’s illness, which Joanna should know about. That was when Vera heard a sound that shocked the people on the other side of the glass from their self-indulgent conversation. A scream. It seemed hardly human and was without age or gender: loud and piercing and terrifying.
Chapter Three
Vera couldn’t tell where the noise was coming from. Inside the house? If so, why did it seem so loud, even out here? The sound seemed to surround her, almost to swallow her up. Perhaps it was the pitch, but it was as if she was feeling it through her bones, rather than hearing it with her ears. There was no escape from it. She took a few steps back and looked up. At the top of the house, double glass doors, mirroring the ones here out onto the terrace, led onto a stone balcony. The woman from the kitchen was there, lit from behind, leaning over, emptying the noise from her lungs into the cold air. Vera was reminded of a drunk spewing. Suddenly the noise stopped.
It seemed to take Vera hours to get into the house. The struggle to be heard, to get inside, reminded her of one of her recurring nightmares: she was a child, locked out of a house where her mother was dying, and she could never find a way in to save her. Now the adult Vera banged on the patio doors, where moments before the guests had been drinking tea. Nobody responded. They must all have rushed away to find the source of the screaming. She retraced her path round the house to the front door. Now the light had gone and she stumbled from the path, losing her way in the thick vegetation of the shrubbery. She pushed through the bushes, struggling to fight off the panic, and decided she must be walking in the wrong direction because there was still no path. The branches scratched her face and pulled at her clothes. She forced herself to stand still. She was no longer a child and she wasn’t lost.
In the distance she heard the faint sound of waves on shingle. As she turned away from the sound, the solid shape of the building became clear against the sky above the shrubs. Vera climbed back to the path and walked round the house to the front door. There was no sound from inside. Checking her watch, she saw that she’d been wandering round in the garden for nearly twenty minutes. She ran her fingers through her hair and pulled a dead leaf from her jacket, then rang the brass bell by swinging the rope, which was attached to a heavy clapper. There was no response. There was a light in the cottage on the other side of the yard and she considered going over. Then the door of the main house opened and she saw the young chef, who had been working in the kitchen. He was still wearing his whites.
‘This way,’ he said. Then he added distractedly, ‘How did you get here so quickly?’
Vera thought for a moment that she felt like a very fat Alice in a strange Wonderland. The chef darted away from her down a narrow corridor, leaving her to follow. He was thin and very dark. As he’d opened the door she’d seen black hairs on the backs of his hands and his lower arms. A wolf in chef’s clothing. She glimpsed the guests through a half-open door, but he was walking so quickly that she couldn’t make out individuals as she hurried to keep up. If Joanna was in there, Vera didn’t see her. The house was much bigger inside than she’d have guessed, a warren of passages and small rooms. He led her up a short flight of stairs. By now Vera was completely disorientated; she must have seen just the outside of the newer extension, and now there were no windows to help her make out which way they were going.
‘I was in the area anyway.’ Finally she got close enough to him to answer the question. The speed of their progress had left her a little breathless.
‘I phoned for an ambulance too. I don’t know where that is.’
‘Ah,’ she said. ‘They might take a while to get here. They’ll be coming from Alnwick, most likely.’
‘Actually . . .’ The young man paused. ‘I don’t think there’s much rush. They won’t be able to do anything, after all.’ He stopped at the end of a corridor and opened the door.
It was not at all what she had been expecting. She’d thought she’d be stepping into a bedroom, a grand bedroom because of the balcony. But this was another Alice moment. Another contradiction. It was as if an outside space had been brought indoors. Everything was green and alive. She stood at the threshold and looked in.
The room was a first-floor conservatory. It was tall and narrow and glass doors led onto the balcony, but there was glass too in the sloping ceiling. From the terrace below she hadn’t seen that. And glass walls on each side. There was a tiled floor and painted wicker chairs. Pots of enormous plants with shiny dark leaves formed a mini tropical jungle. All the plants were fat and fleshy and one had a tall spike of pink flowers. The smell was of compost and damp vegetation. In the daylight there would be a magnificent view over the sea. A large mirror in a green frame hung on the one solid wall. The glass must be old with flaws in it, because the reflection was slightly distorted and, glancing into it, Vera felt the queasiness of seasickness. The room was very warm.
‘So what am I here to look at?’ She shook her head in an attempt to clear her mind.
‘Didn’t they tell you? They made me repeat the details.’ The young man walked past the plants and the garden furniture and opened the glass door to the balcony. There was a rush of cold air, and in the distance the sound of the tide sucking on shingle. The balcony was wider than the glass doors and each end was in semi-darkness. He turned to Vera impatiently. ‘Out here!’
She followed him outside and in the faint light from the room saw a man crouched in the corner of the stone parapet, his knees almost up to his chin. The pose seemed strange because his cropped hair was grey; he was in late middle age. Older men didn’t sit on floors because they found it hard to get up again. Their joints creaked. And nobody would sit on a stone floor in late October. The angle of the lights from inside the room threw odd shadows onto his face. He looked angry. Outraged.
He was wearing a pale-coloured shirt under a black jacket. In this light it was hard to make out the exact colour of the shirt. Most of it was covered in blood. And there was blood on the stone floor and on the wall. Looking closer, Vera saw that there was spatter on the glass door. It seemed that he’d been stabbed, but there was no immediate sign of the knife.
‘Who is he?’
‘I told them when I phoned 999.’ The young man was beginning to get suspicious. ‘Who are you anyway?’
‘Aye, well, not everything gets through.’ Vera showed him her warrant card, pleased that she could find it on the first trawl of her bag; tilted it so that the light caught the photo. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Stanhope. What’s your name?’
‘Alex Barton.’
‘Your mother runs this place?’ She’d had him down as the hired help and couldn’t keep the surprise from her voice.
‘We run it together. I’m a partner. Though sometimes you wouldn’t think so.’ The tone was resentful and it was obvious that Alex regretted the comment as soon as it was made. He realized this wasn’t the right time to air family grievances. ‘Don’t you want to know what’s happened here? Shouldn’t you
be speaking to—’
‘Of course, pet. First of all, tell me about the victim.’ Vera had never liked being told how to do her job. She took his arm and led him back through the strangely shaped glass room and into the corridor. ‘But out here, eh? We don’t want to muck up the crime scene more than we already have.’
On her way to the room she’d noticed a small sitting area where two corridors formed a crossroads. There was a chaise longue and a low coffee table, covered with upmarket newspapers and literary magazines. There was still no window and the only light came from a dim wall lamp covered by a red shade. Vera thought you’d struggle to read anything much here, and that the whole house was more like a stage-set than a place for practical activity. She lowered herself carefully onto the seat and Alex followed.
‘Where’s everyone else?’ she asked. An event like this, there were always spectators.
‘I told them to wait in the drawing room.’
‘And they always do what you say, do they, pet?’ He didn’t answer and she continued. ‘What do you know about the chap on the balcony?’
‘Didn’t you recognize him?’ There was something supercilious about the question. Vera had got the same reaction when she asked for chips in a posh restaurant.
‘Famous, is he?’
‘He’s called Tony Ferdinand. Professor Tony Ferdinand. Academic, reviewer and arts guru. You must have seen him on The Culture Show. And he did that series on BBC4 about the contemporary novel.’ The man didn’t wait for a response. Perhaps he’d already worked out that Vera wasn’t a natural BBC4 viewer. ‘Oh, God, this’ll be a nightmare. We’ll never get any of the professionals from London up after this. Imagine the publicity! Lunatic students cutting the lecturers’ throats! It’s hard enough to prise the sods away from London as it is.’
‘So he was working for you?’ But not much liked, Vera thought, if Alex’s first thought was for the business rather than the man.