The Heron's Cry

by Ann Cleeves

  ‘Let’s go that way, so we’re above them and we can surprise them.’ In the glimmer of moonlight, she nodded away from the cliff edge. It didn’t look like much of a path.

  He nodded back. There was no path. They scrambled through the gorse and bramble until they were higher than the people below them. From here, he and Jen could look down on them. Still, the figures below were only shapes, shadows, but they were speaking. Matthew slid down the bank until he was close enough to listen in. One woman and one man, so close to the cliff edge that one step would take them over. A push could send one of them flying. He’d have the other to arrest then, but Eve Yeo would be dead.

  He lay on his belly, so if they should look up, there’d be no silhouette on the horizon. The cloud thinned and the moon glinted for a moment on an object in the man’s hands. A shard of glass. He could see the colour – as yellow as butter – even in this pale, monochrome light. Then the cloud covered the moon again and everything was still and dark. But in that moment, he’d seen enough to identify George Mackenzie, holding the glass like a dagger against Eve Yeo’s neck. The other arm was curved around the young woman’s waist, holding her fast. George’s face was in profile and his head looked as if it had been carved from hard wood, magnificent and proud.

  Matthew slid closer. George was talking. ‘Why did you have to meddle?’ He sounded very sad, almost heartbroken. It was as if this situation was all Eve’s fault and he was just an unfortunate bystander. ‘Bad enough that your father had to stick his nose into our business. Really, it didn’t need to come to this.’

  Matthew weighed up his chances of jumping the man, of taking the glass from him, without both of the people close to the cliff edge falling to their deaths. He’d never been physically competent; he was so clumsy that perhaps he’d fall too. In a moment of black humour, he wondered if he should have written that last sentimental message to Jonathan after all.

  He might not be any kind of action man, but he could persuade and he could listen. Those were the skills he was prepared to own.

  He eased himself into a sitting position, aware of Jen, very tense, behind him.

  The people on the cliff edge seemed not to notice.

  ‘George, please let Eve go.’ He kept his voice boring, ordin- ary. He could be in one of those planning meetings he so detested.

  There was a movement below him, but now it was dark again and he couldn’t see exactly what was going on.

  ‘George, this is Matthew Venn. You remember me, don’t you? We spoke after Nigel’s death. And, of course, you will know my husband Jonathan. He’s a regular at the Sandpiper and he runs the Woodyard. You were there this evening, helping out with the Beckett. A very fine production, by the way, so I understand. That was how we knew where to find you. I’m going to use my torch so we can all see what’s going on. I hope that’s all right with you.’

  Still no response. He shone the torch, not directly at Eve and George so it would blind them, but to one side. He saw them in muted monochrome, shadowy, like an early photograph. George was still holding the glass to Eve’s neck.

  ‘Please drop the glass, George. You can see that this isn’t helping. Another young person dead. Where’s the sense in that?’

  ‘I would have done anything to protect my family.’ In the strange shadowy light, Matthew saw the man’s mouth open in a scream.

  ‘I know,’ Matthew said. ‘I know. You loved the bones of them both. I could tell that when we were talking that day behind the bar. There are no monsters in this story. We imagined some kind of evil genius provoking the vulnerable to their deaths, but it wasn’t like that at all.’ Out of his line of vision, he was aware of a movement, but he continued: ‘Why don’t you tell me what happened, George? Why don’t you put down the glass and let Eve come here to me, and then you’ll have a chance to explain?’

  He moved his torch a little, so it was shining almost directly onto the man’s face. He saw the tears streaming down his cheeks, as he blinked against the light.

  ‘Please, George.’

  And perhaps the man would have taken the chance to explain, but at that moment, Jen was behind him, grabbing George round the neck, forcing the glass from his hand. Matthew saw the shard fly over the cliff and imagined he could hear the sound of it reaching the water. He slid down to the path and took Eve into his arms. She was shaking like a tiny bird, fallen from the nest, cold and scared. She was still in a cotton blouse, a yellow and white skirt and sandals.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘It’s over.’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘it’ll never be over.’

  And he could tell that for her that was true.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  VENN PHONED ROSS AS THEY WERE walking back down from the cliff, and by the time they reached the chalet, he was there to meet them. Jen knew that once she was alone with the boss, she’d get a bollocking from Venn for jumping the gun and tackling George Mackenzie without authorization. What could she say? Tell the truth: that she was cold and wet and she needed a piss and she didn’t want to stay all night on the top of a cliff catching her death while he tried to have a civilized conversation with the man? Or lie and say she’d sensed that George was about to jump and take Eve with him?

  Ross got George into his car and stood for a moment. Jen thought she and Matthew must look an odd couple, in their oversized waterproofs, Venn still with his suit underneath, his highly polished work shoes covered in sand. Eve was already in Matthew’s car, wrapped in a blanket they’d taken from the chalet, the heating on. Before joining her, Matthew made a call. Jen heard a brief explanation. No real details, just that Eve was in a bad way.

  ‘I don’t think she should be on her own tonight. I wonder if you could meet us in the station, take her home with you. I’m not sure who else to ask.’

  He must have been pleased with the answer because he nodded and smiled.

  ‘They’ve been to the Woodyard and they’ve got the vehicle,’ Ross said, impatient to pass on the news, to prove, Jen thought, how clever he was. She could tell that he was disappointed not to have been in on the clifftop action. He’d have loved that, playing the hero. ‘They’re bringing it in.’

  ‘And the driver?’

  ‘Oh yes, the driver too.’

  * * *

  When they reached the police station, a tall, elegant, white-haired woman was waiting for them. Jen recognized her from photos on the board in the ops room as Lauren Miller. For a moment, Jen wondered if she’d got things wrong and this was the other person Ross had arranged to be brought in for questioning, but it seemed that she was the woman the boss had phoned to take care of Eve.

  ‘You know Lauren, don’t you?’ Matthew said to Eve when they got into the station. The younger woman was still wrapped in her blanket, looking like a victim from some natural disaster – a tsunami or a hurricane – profiled on the television news. She was blank with shock. How could she not be? She’d been hit by so many tragedies in the last week. Perhaps, Jen thought, the friendship of this calm older woman would help her pull through.

  Matthew was still talking to Eve. ‘Lauren’s going to take you home this evening. We don’t think you should be on your own and I’ll come and see you tomorrow to explain everything.’

  ‘That is all right with you, Eve?’ Lauren didn’t touch Eve, or talk down to her, and Jen warmed to the older woman immediately. ‘We can go back to your flat if you’d prefer. Or there might be someone else I could call?’

  ‘No.’ Eve reached out and touched the woman’s arm. ‘No, I’d like to stay with you.’

  * * *

  They met in the ops room to make plans. Jen had phoned home and talked to Ella. It had taken her a while to answer.

  ‘Mum, I was asleep!’ Doing the classic disgruntled teenager impersonation. ‘Yeah, duh, we guessed you were at work.’

  It was only then that Jen realized that it had gone midnight, a week after she’d wandered home after Cynthia’s party. She wondered how their friendship w
ould survive Jen’s knowledge that Roger had been sitting in his grand office in his respectable house, scheming the death of vulnerable young people, watching them die.

  Matthew had made coffee and they were sitting round one table. Ross had magicked a packet of chocolate biscuits from his desk drawer. Jen thought she’d need the sugar to keep her going through the interview. The interviews.

  ‘So, it was the Scotsman all the time,’ Ross said. ‘With his high and mighty wife, playing the star in their tinpot cafe. He made out he was so friendly, so concerned about Nigel, and all the time he was a murderer.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Matthew said. ‘George Mackenzie didn’t kill anyone. And really, I don’t think he’d have been able to bring himself to kill Eve. That show on the cliffs was all guilt and desperation. And performance. He’d become a better actor than Martha.’

  He left it to Jen to explain to Ross, to take the glory.

  * * *

  Matthew chose Jen to be with him on the interview. The woman who sat opposite them in the interview room looked very young and frail. Twitchy and nervy, but still somehow confident. The precocious child, who thought her cuteness would help her get away with anything. Even murder. Who had never grown up, never developed any self-control, who saw life as a kind of game to be played and won. The duty solicitor sitting next to her looked equally young, and as if he’d just been woken from a deep sleep, and hadn’t had time to shave. Jen remembered the conversation on the cliff. Matthew had told George that there’d been no monsters in this case, but Jen wasn’t sure that was true. Venn might want to believe that was true, but this fragile young woman had killed three people and had been very happy to implicate others.

  Matthew went through the formalities and switched on the recorder.

  ‘Miss Mackenzie.’ He paused. ‘Janey, perhaps you can explain what happened the night you killed your brother.’

  Jen thought Venn had the knack of sounding interested and the use of the woman’s first name made him come across as fatherly, not in the least bit intimidating. He gave the impression that he wasn’t there to progress the case, but because he genuinely wanted to understand.

  Janey looked up, surprised. It wasn’t the question she’d been expecting.

  ‘Sergeant Rafferty here explained it rather well,’ Matthew went on. ‘She was interviewing an individual with an addiction, a mental illness and she said that suddenly she wanted to slap him. She knew he wasn’t well, but that didn’t matter. He was so infuriatingly self-absorbed that she was almost provoked to violence. This is a professional police officer, used to controlling her feelings, and the interviewee wasn’t even very ill, certainly not psychotic like Mack.’ Matthew paused. ‘So, I can see how, after weeks of being sympathetic, something might have snapped. Cracked. Shattered like glass.’

  He looked at Janey across the table. ‘It all happened the day that Mack was released from hospital, didn’t it? He went to Westacombe because he wanted to spend some time with Wesley, but Wesley was selfish, a little weak, and he couldn’t deal with your brother’s restlessness and depression. You were called to go to the farm and bring Mack home. Frank Ley was there too that afternoon. I’m sure you must remember it clearly.’

  Janey looked up. ‘My brother was very ill. The hospital should never have let him come out.’

  ‘Your family said that later that night, Mack drove himself to your chalet in the dunes, then went up on the cliff path and jumped. He’d left a note in a plastic bag, weighed down by a stone on the cliff path, and a walker found it the following morning. But of course, that wasn’t what happened. I could never accept that a man in such distress would be able to drive. Why don’t you talk us through it?’

  ‘I drove him to the coast,’ Janey Mackenzie said, ‘in his own car. I thought he would find it more peaceful in the chalet; we’d both loved it there when we were children. And at least it would give my parents a break. They were asleep by then. But he couldn’t settle.’

  ‘The drive didn’t calm him?’

  She shook her head. ‘He had this pent-up anger. Nothing would calm him. I’d planned that we’d both stay in the chalet, but he spat out the pills we’d been given to help him sleep. It was cold, but a very clear night. A full moon. Rather beautiful. He wanted to walk, so I went with him.’ She paused. ‘You don’t know how draining it can be. Those constant demands on your sympathy. You can’t see any end to it. You can’t believe that the person you love will ever be well again. It’s like living with a stranger.’

  ‘What happened when you got to the top?’

  ‘It was so beautiful there. Still and clear, and that sky full of stars and an enormous moon. But Mack couldn’t enjoy it. He couldn’t see the beauty. He was crying and talking, rambling, telling the same crazy stories about a suicide club and, as you say, something cracked.’ She paused and stared up at Venn. ‘I pushed him.’ Another moment of silence. ‘I’m not even sure that I intended to kill him. I just wanted the noise to stop. For him to stop sucking all the life from me. From us all.’

  ‘You were sure he’d fallen to his death?’

  ‘The cliff was in shadow, but it was sheer there. I knew he wouldn’t have survived.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘I drove home. My parents were still asleep.’ She looked up. ‘Mack was always saying he wanted to die. He’d hooked up with those crazies online. He even wrote suicide notes. A number of them, practising the words, trying, I suppose, to explain his despair. He probably shared them with his online mates, like teenagers sharing their crap poetry. I took one from his bedroom and drove back to the chalet and left the car outside. I put his note, wrapped in the clear plastic bag, on the cliff path, weighed down with a stone. I knew it would be found there. Then I walked back to the village and called a minicab from outside the pub. It was late but the pub was famous for its lock-ins. I knew the taxi driver wouldn’t think twice about it. Then I went home and to bed.’

  Matthew nodded. ‘And the next day, you reported Mack missing and the police found his car at the chalet. A few days later, his body was washed up on Lundy.’

  Janey didn’t need to reply.

  At that point, Jen asked a question herself. ‘What I don’t understand is why you didn’t just explain what had happened that night. You could have phoned the police and the coastguard. People would have understood the strain you’d been under. A court would have been sympathetic. Why all this pretence? Two more murders!’

  You could even have said that he’d slipped, Jen thought. He was erratic, unstable, nobody would have questioned it. Why the elaborate planning? Did you need the drama, the control, the lying? Did you even enjoy it?

  Jen had always been less sympathetic than Venn, and now she thought this sad little girl pose was all an act. Janey might be immature like Mack, but she wasn’t sad. She’d gloried in the drama and the violence. Throughout their childhood, Mack had been the centre of attention, had sapped her parents’ energy and demanded their love. And they’d both been in their mother’s shadow. This series of killings had put her in control.

  ‘That night I thought my parents had been through enough. Imagine the fuss, the press interest! Martha Mackenzie’s daughter charged with murder! You don’t know how Mack’s illness had worn them down. It nearly broke their marriage. I thought now he was dead we’d all begin to live again.’

  But you didn’t begin to live. You’ve all been stuck in the roles you had when your brother died.

  Janey stopped short and when she spoke again, her tone had changed, had become bitter and angry. ‘And besides, there would have been no more murders if Nigel Yeo hadn’t started to pry.’

  ‘Frank Ley asked him to investigate the NHS’s role in Mack’s suicide.’

  She nodded. ‘My father encouraged the inquiry. And, at first, I was pleased. After all, the trust was to blame really. They deserved to have their negligence made public. Mack wouldn’t be dead if he’d been properly looked after. We wouldn’t have been put under that
stress.’

  ‘But Dr Yeo took the investigation seriously,’ Venn said. ‘How did he come to suspect that Mack hadn’t killed himself after all?’

  Janey closed her eyes. Jen thought she was exhausted, but wired. Perhaps she hadn’t slept for days. ‘Nigel was just so bloody thorough. So persistent. He’d found out about the chatroom Mack was using and he asked my father if he could look in the chalet in case Mack had left anything there; any clue as to who might be moderating it. My parents never used the place. They couldn’t bear to after my brother died, so it had become my hideaway, my safe space, just as it had been Mack’s. I wrote stuff there, trying to get rid of my guilt. Trying to explain to myself how I felt about it all. Turning it into a kind of Gothic fiction. After all, who would ever go there to find it?’

  ‘But Nigel came across it,’ Jen said. ‘On that Friday afternoon.’

  ‘He cancelled a meeting in Spennicott,’ Venn said. ‘He must have phoned from the chalet when he saw your writing.’

  Janey nodded. ‘My father gave him the door code. I didn’t know!’

  ‘Until the night of Cynthia’s party?’

  ‘I should never have been there!’ Now she sounded again like a petulant child, screaming to the wind that life was unfair. ‘I only went as a favour to Wesley.’

  ‘What happened at the party, Janey?’ Jen thought again that she could have prevented all this. If she’d been sober, if she’d noticed the conversation between the two, if she’d persuaded Nigel to speak to her.

  ‘Nigel said he needed to talk to me. I’d never seen him like that before. So stern. He said he’d go round to Westacombe, and wait for me in Eve’s studio. If I didn’t turn up, he’d go to the police in the morning. He’d give me a chance to explain.’ She looked at Jen. ‘I’d seen him chatting to you so I knew he was serious, that he meant what he said. An hour after he left, I told Wesley I wanted to go home. I dropped him at the bottom of the lane, left my car there and walked to Westacombe, taking the shortcut over the common and through Frank’s garden to the farmyard. I knew I’d get there before Wes, going that way.’