by Ann Cleeves
He’d started walking down one of the steep roads leading to the high street when his phone buzzed. An unfamiliar number.
‘Inspector Venn. It’s Fiona Radley.’
The head of PR, who was so protective of Roger Prior.
‘I’ve checked with my colleagues here. Nigel had a meeting with the end-of-life team last Friday. It started at four p.m., though he was a little late arriving. It was all perfectly routine. They were talking about the transition between hospital and social care. Something we’re determined to improve here at North Devon.’ Still sending out the corporate message, even in a call to the police.
Matthew continued down the steep street. It was empty apart from a cat sleeping on one of the doorsteps. Tourists didn’t wander this far from the harbour. He found the office in a converted domestic house, part of an Edwardian terrace. On one side was a dentist’s surgery, on the other a family home. A brass plaque on the door announced its presence and told visitors to walk in. Matthew hadn’t made an appointment and wasn’t even sure if anyone would be there, but a plump woman in her forties, wearing a sleeveless yellow top and a yellow skirt, was sitting at a desk, fanning herself with a manila file. On the desk was a woman’s magazine, which from the front cover had the sole purpose of celebrating the scandals of celebrities. The room was very warm. She seemed surprised to see him. He introduced himself.
‘You’ll be here about poor Nigel.’ She wore large, heavy-rimmed specs, took them off and wiped her eyes. Matthew could see no tears. ‘I wasn’t sure what I should do this morning, but I thought I should come in anyway. I phoned one of the board members and he said to keep things ticking over until they find a new boss.’
‘What’s your role, Ms…?’ Matthew paused.
‘Bull. Steph Bull. Admin officer, they call me. But really general dogsbody. I answer the phone, man reception, do the filing and printing, make sure everyone’s diaries are up to date, take minutes at meetings.’
‘How many other people are employed here?’
‘Three more. Julie, Tony and Lauren. They’re all part-time, and nobody else is in on a Monday. Julie and Tony work mostly with community groups. Lauren does the fundraising and finance, but she seems to have become Nigel’s right-hand woman, working with him on his pet projects.’ From her tone, Matthew guessed that Steph and Lauren Miller were not best friends.
‘I’m not entirely sure what the NDPT does.’ Matthew sat in the chair on the public side of the desk. ‘Perhaps you could explain.’
‘We’re here to represent the patients’ views to the medical institutions.’ A pause. ‘We work with local authorities and patient groups, as a kind of co-ordinating body, and feed our findings back to the hospitals and primary health trusts.’
‘And does investigation into individual negligence cases usually form a part of your work?’
‘Not until Nigel arrived.’ She snapped her lips shut as if frightened she might reveal too much. Perhaps she didn’t want to appear to be speaking ill of the dead. ‘Before he retired, Philip was in charge. A lovely man. He saw his role as different, more supportive to the medical trusts, providing information to improve their services. His style was more…’ – she paused again – ‘… collaborative.’
‘And Nigel wasn’t collaborative?’
Matthew thought he knew what was going on here. The previous boss had been after a quiet life in the run-up to retirement. He’d disliked confrontation. Then along came Nigel, with his medical training. More energy and more confidence. Generating more work for the staff, who’d had a very easy life under the old regime.
‘He said our role was to shake things up. Look at better ways of doing things, represent the patients more actively. He left Julie and Tony doing the routine community engagement, and took on the more active inquiries.’
‘What about Lauren Miller?’
‘Oh, she was brought in by Nigel and she was a true believer. I suppose she said all the right things to get the job. Before her, we had Millie. She took redundancy after the first month. She’d been here for years and couldn’t adapt to the new ways.’ Steph looked over her glasses. ‘I did say she should stick it out, because she only had a year to retirement, but she couldn’t face the pressure. She said the stress was getting her down.’
‘And the stress was about Nigel suggesting the organization take on a more challenging role?’
‘No, Millie wouldn’t have had much to do with that, except making sure we had the funds to cover it. No, it was Nigel getting an auditor in to look at the books. A legal requirement apparently, though Philip hadn’t seemed to see the need.’
Matthew nodded. He suspected that Millie had been incompetent rather than fraudulent, but it wouldn’t hurt to talk to Lauren again. ‘If you could let me have the other staff’s contact details…’
Steph looked at her phone and rattled off mobile numbers and email addresses. ‘Julie and Tony live locally, but Lauren’s out in Appledore.’ From her tone, the town could have been at the other end of the country. ‘She uses it as an excuse to work from home one day a week.’ This was obviously another niggling resentment.
Matthew wondered how Nigel had survived the poisonous atmosphere of the NDPT office. He found it tricky enough to manage his own team: Ross May with his allegiance to Superintendent Joe Oldham, and impulsive Jen Rafferty with her flashes of temper. Steph turned her attention back to the magazine and to fan herself again with the file. The flab beneath her upper arm wobbled as it moved. He found himself fascin- ated by it and forced himself to turn away.
‘We came across a number in Nigel’s diary,’ Matthew said. ‘8531 or 8537. Does that mean anything to you? Could it be a reference for a case? A file?’
She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t mean anything to me.’ She’d given the matter very little thought.
Matthew persisted. ‘On Friday morning Nigel had a meeting in the hospital. He was there later in the day. I understand it was a routine session.’
‘Oh yeah. That was another of his particular interests. End-of-life care. I suppose it was personal because of the way his wife died. Tragic.’ There was no evidence in her voice that she’d shared Yeo’s sadness or his interest in the subject. ‘He’d started looking into care homes too. As if we didn’t have enough to do.’
So, that confirms Radley’s phone call. The later meeting had nothing to do with Alexander Mackenzie. Nigel had bumped into Ratna Joshi by chance in the hospital, just as she said.
‘And what was he doing between those meetings?’
‘No idea.’ She shrugged. ‘We were expecting him back in the office but he never turned up. He didn’t even bother ringing in.’
Matthew stood up. All the other people in Yeo’s life had been devastated by his death, but this woman seemed not to care. He’d reached the door when she spoke again. ‘He wasn’t a saint, you know. Not the man everyone thought he was. It’s all very well having principles, but not everyone’s as bright or driven as him. We got the impression that he cared more about his ideals than he did about us.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
ON HIS WAY BACK TO THE police station, Matthew stopped at the Woodyard. The back of the building was still taped off and a constable stood there, red-faced and bored, but the centre was just opening after a morning of shutdown. Matthew went in with the elderly ladies carrying yoga mats. He overheard gossip about the killing:
‘Liz said it was Wesley Curnow that got killed. Such a gentle soul. I bought some art from him at the Christmas craft fair.’
‘Makes you think, though. Maureen cancelled this morning. Just in case.’
‘I doubt if a killer’s going to come into the yoga class.’ There was a ripple of laughter.
‘Well, you never know. I thought twice about coming.’ This voice was anxious, almost panicky. ‘And after what happened here earlier in the year. It’s a strange sort of coincidence, isn’t it?’
The women moved on through the building and then the entrance hall was almost
empty. Emptier than it should have been on a weekday morning. That was something else for Jonathan to worry about, Matthew thought. He ran the Woodyard on a shoestring, and couldn’t afford for freelance classes to cancel. It had been hard enough recently to keep the place going.
He found his husband in the cafe, chatting to the staff. The night before there’d still been a tension between them, but now Jonathan looked up and gave one of his wide, wonderful smiles. Lucy Braddick was there. She’d been wiping tables and there was still a cloth in her hand. She was anxious, agitated and Jonathan was trying to calm her. ‘Nothing bad will happen to you, Luce. I promise. It’s not like last time.’
‘Wesley was my friend,’ she said. ‘I’m sad. Not worried about me.’
‘When did you last see him?’ Matthew knew Lucy well and they too were friends.
‘Yesterday. He was in here yesterday, waiting for someone.’ She looked at Bob, the cafe manager. ‘Wasn’t he?’
Bob shrugged. ‘I didn’t notice him, but it was manic busy until mid-afternoon.’
‘Did you see him with anyone else, Luce?’ Jonathan asked.
She shook her head. ‘He went off on his own.’
‘How do you know he was waiting for someone?’
Lucy thought about that. ‘He often met people in here. He’d sit and wait with the free newspaper and sometimes he’d get a coffee, and then someone would come and buy him lunch.’ A pause. ‘Or a cake. He liked Bob’s cakes.’
Matthew smiled. ‘And these people he met, were they all women?’
She nodded, as if the idea was new to her. ‘Yeah! All women!’
‘Did you recognize any of them?’
Lucy frowned. ‘Some of them were regulars, but I don’t know their names.’
‘If I show you a photo, would you recognize them?’
‘I don’t know.’ Matthew saw that the anxiety was setting in again.
‘It wouldn’t be like a test,’ he said. ‘More like a game.’ He paused. ‘You could have your dad with you, if that would help.’
‘I don’t live with my dad now.’ She gave a beam; for a moment the anxiety was forgotten. ‘I’ve got my own place.’
Jonathan smiled. ‘It’s in River Bank, isn’t it, Luce? Supported living.’
‘Home, sweet home.’ Another big smile.
‘I bet your dad misses you.’ Matthew had come to know Maurice Braddick too. He was in his eighties, a widower, and he loved the bones of his learning-disabled daughter. Loved her enough, Matthew thought now, to let her go.
‘I sometimes go and stay at his house at weekends,’ Lucy conceded. ‘He likes the company.’
‘So, I might bring in some pictures for you to look at.’
‘You can come to my flat if you like,’ she said. ‘I’ll make you a cup of tea.’
* * *
After leaving the Woodyard, Matthew drove on to Westacombe. He felt unable to settle, and hated the thought of going back to his overheated office in the police station before he needed to be there for the evening briefing. It was late afternoon now and the roads were quiet, everything washed with sunlight. The fields were so dry after weeks of drought that they were white, as if they’d been treated with lime. Matthew thought of Frank Ley. When Matthew had broken the news of Wesley’s death, he hadn’t told Ley that they suspected the murder weapon was a piece of glass, which, only the day before, had stood in the comfortable living room in Westacombe House. Perhaps now, it was time to do that.
As he drove into the farmyard, he saw the Grieves twins. They were playing on a swing hanging from a tree beside the family’s cottage. One girl was sitting on the swing and the other was standing behind her, rocking, so it jerked from side to side. They were shrieking with laughter. He thought how idyllic their childhood seemed. He’d been an only child, growing up in a family where laughter was in short supply. His mother had usually disapproved of his friends, so he’d grown up with the notion that he was different, even superior in some way. No wonder the other kids in the class had disliked him and stayed clear.
He moved round the house to Ley’s front door and knocked but there was no answer. Matthew had asked him to stay in Westacombe for a few days, rather than going to his London home, but of course, that had been a request, not some form of house arrest. The man could be working, visiting one of his other businesses. But his absence made Matthew uneasy, jittery. Again, he couldn’t face going back to the police station in Barnstaple, especially while he was so anxious, so jumpy. He thought he’d wait for a while to see if Ley returned.
He walked towards the end of Ley’s land. Jonathan would have been able to name the shrubs, the swathes of blooms in the beds, but they were mysterious to Matthew and he felt that he’d wandered into some strange and secret garden. Like the Grieves’ cottage, it was the stuff of fiction. The sweet smell of the flowers and the sound of insects had a dreamlike quality and Matthew thought that the police officers in the farmyard seemed to belong to a different narrative altogether. If this was Alexander Mackenzie’s work, the young man had been a skilled gardener. Beyond the more formal borders, Matthew came to a wild flower meadow. It was past its best now, but still covered with buttercups, clover and tall, white daisies. There was a path through the middle, where the grass had been flattened. In the distance was the sea, impossibly blue.
He followed the track to a patch of heathland, separated from the meadow by a low dry-stone wall. Matthew assumed that this marked the edge of Ley’s land. There was a stile over the wall and he stood for a moment with his foot on the wooden bar, feeling a sense of freedom and adventure that he’d never experienced as a child. The closest he’d got had been the memory he’d shared with his mother of the picnics on the beach, but he’d been closely supervised then and called back if he wandered too far into the rockpools at the side of the bay. He imagined that the two girls on the swing would be allowed at least as far as the meadow by themselves. He pictured them picking armfuls of flowers and taking them home for their mother.
Beyond the wall there was rough open land, covered with huge clumps of gorse, startingly yellow, but the path led on and was easy to follow. It came eventually to a five-bar gate which opened onto the main road on the outskirts of Instow. A hundred yards away Matthew could see the unmarked turning into the paved track, which led back to the farm. The road was busier with traffic than it had been; it was the end of the working day.
Matthew thought it would be perfectly possible for any of the Westacombe residents to have taken this shortcut the day before. They would have avoided the notice of the police officer at the farm entrance. They’d have needed a lift into Barnstaple or to have borrowed a car to get to the Woodyard to stab Wesley Curnow, but perhaps the killer had an accomplice, knowing or unknowing.
Walking back through the garden to Westacombe Farm, Matthew wondered what he’d do if Frank was still absent from the place and considered the implication of such a disappearance. Might Ley be the murderer? Or a third victim? He knew that planning ahead was his skill and his weakness. He spent too much of his time responding to disasters that never happened. Jonathan said that he had a vivid imagination: That’s why you’re such a brilliant detective, but you could be an artist. Or a writer.
When he emerged from the formal garden and onto the lawn, he saw that Ley was there, and he felt relieved and shocked at the same time. It was almost as if Ley was part of the mirage the garden had created in Matthew’s mind, a fantasy figure from a piece of fiction. The man was sitting close to the house on a sun lounger, with a glass in his hand. He wore a straw hat, which had the look of a boater: Billy Bunter in summer issue uniform. He lifted the glass in greeting to Matthew, and didn’t seem surprised to see him.
‘I hope I wasn’t trespassing,’ Matthew said. ‘I called earlier but you were out.’
‘Yes, a meeting with the team in the Golden Fleece in Lovacott; it’s one of my businesses. They’ve just won an award for their hospitality and I wanted to share the good news with the staf
f.’ Despite the celebratory nature of his visit to the pub, his tone was reflective, a little sad. ‘It was good to get away from all that’s happened here.’
‘You’re still hands-on then.’
‘Well…’ Ley gave a little laugh. ‘I share the glory and they do all the hard work. You know how it is.’
‘I’ve been exploring,’ Matthew said. ‘I found the shortcut down to Instow. Is it a public right of way?’
‘Not across the garden, though I don’t mind if any of the Westacombe residents use it. Beyond the wall and the stile, it’s common land and free to anyone.’ He looked at Matthew. ‘Do you think an outsider came in that way and attacked Nigel Yeo?’
Matthew didn’t like to say he was more concerned that one of the residents had left by the path to kill Wesley. ‘I’m not sure what I think yet,’ he said.
Ley swivelled his body so he was more upright and his feet were on the ground. ‘Do you have any news, Inspector?’
Venn sat on the low wall which surrounded the terrace. At least now he wasn’t looking down on the man and they could have a proper conversation.
‘When Eve found Wesley’s body, she identified the weapon that killed him.’ He paused. ‘It was a shard of glass from the vase she’d given you. The large blue vase that held the flowers which were standing in your fireplace when I first came to visit you. Of course, she might be mistaken. You might be able to find the vase for me.’
‘I can look,’ Ley said, ‘but I’m sure I won’t find it if Eve has identified it. She’s an artist. Each piece of glass is individual. It holds her signature.’
‘You said that Sarah might have come in to tidy the house this morning, but she said she wasn’t here.’
‘Really? I must have been mistaken then.’ He gave another little smile. ‘I’m getting very absent-minded in my old age.’
‘Would you have any idea how the glass came to be in Wesley Curnow’s workshop at the Woodyard?’
‘Do you think I killed him?’ Ley’s mood was quite changed now. He was suddenly sharper, more alert.