Chapter One
THE CALL CAME EARLY ON MONDAY morning. Jonathan was out for his morning swim in the sea.
It was so hot that Matthew Venn had been tempted to join his husband, but he was fastidious, risk-averse, and the talk of sewage overspills into the estuary turned his stomach.
Let Jonathan enjoy the exercise and claim that wild swimming set him up for his day at the Woodyard, the community arts centre that was his pride and joy.
Matthew was happy with a tepid shower and a clean shirt.
If the heat continued, he might do without the jacket and tie.
His phone rang when he was just out of the shower, and he didn’t bother with a towel, still exhilarated, proud that he could walk naked from the bathroom to the bedroom in an empty house, with only a trace of awkwardness.
Nakedness had never been tolerated when he was growing up, and he was still secretly ashamed of his body.
It was Jen Rafferty, his sergeant, the duty detective, on the phone.
‘We have a body, and a missing young woman.’ Jen had lived in Barnstaple for years and had brought up her kids there. Ella was away at university now. Ben walked every morning to the sixth-form college, up the hill in Sticklepath. But Jen had kept the Scouse accent and the chip on her shoulder.
‘Suspicious death?’
‘Unexplained, at least.’
‘Where?’
‘A fancy holiday home out at Millscombe.’ A pause. ‘The owner’s a bit of a celebrity.’
‘Oh?’ North Devon attracted celebrities. Actors, artists, chefs from the television. Most of them from London. Locals couldn’t afford the expensive houses they bought up and treated the newcomers with a mixture of awe and resentment.
‘Yeah, a politician. Even I’d heard of him.
A guy called Armstrong. Paul Armstrong. He turned up very early this morning with his wife and two young sons.
His daughter and her friend came down on Thursday night, arriving Friday morning.
Armstrong found the friend drowned in the pool and the daughter disappeared. ’
‘An accidental death?’
Matthew thought a drowning could be accidental, especially if a young person had been drinking, taking drugs. Though the disappearance of the other girl made it suspicious.
‘Unlikely according to Armstrong. The dead lass was a strong swimmer. She’d represented the country in school competitions.’ Jen took a breath. ‘Not given, he thought, to excess, because she hoped for a place in the next Olympics.’
‘How old was she?’
‘They were both seventeen, nearly eighteen. They’d just finished A levels. They came down to celebrate in the sun before the parents arrived with the young boys.’
‘Are you at the scene?’
‘On my way. Ross is with me. He’s driving. I’ve contacted Sal Pengelly.’
Sal was the forensic pathologist.
Jen gave him the postcode. ‘Apparently it’s not very easy to find. There’s a track just past the pub, the Fisherman’s Arms.’ The call ended. Matthew wasn’t sure if that was because Jen was too impatient to sign off properly or because of the dodgy mobile reception that tourists complained about.
He dressed, drank some of the coffee he’d made before showering and left a note for Jonathan. Outside, it was already hot and still.
On the drive, he thought about Paul Armstrong.
Jonathan’s secret, guilty pleasure was a particular glossy photo magazine that showed intimate pictures of famous people – the interiors of their immaculately designed houses, their weddings and exotic holidays.
Occasionally, when he had nothing better to read, Matthew would glance through it.
Once, he was certain, Armstrong had featured on the front cover.
He was, as Jen had said, something of a celebrity.
His rise to power had been meteoric. A doctor before being elected to parliament, he was a publicist’s dream.
Charming, good-looking, self-deprecating.
He must have had his eldest child early, while he was a student, because he was still in his late thirties.
Forty at the most. Already a junior minister and tipped for stardom, perhaps the highest office in the land.
On the left of the party, but not too far to the left to cause problems for the leadership.
Loyal, tactful and not given to public expressions of dissent.
Happily married to a childhood sweetheart as far as anyone knew.
The cover photo came into Matthew’s head.
A family shot. The parents, a teenage daughter and two younger sons, standing together and smiling into the camera.
Too good, Matthew had thought even then, to be true.
Why had they let the magazine into their home? What had they wanted to prove?
Then, there were implications for the ongoing investigation. The disappearance of a minister’s child would trigger a special protocol. Venn had already phoned Christopher Appleyard, the Chief Constable.
‘Wouldn’t there have been security?’ he’d asked. ‘For a minister’s daughter?’
‘I wouldn’t have thought so. He’s not made the cabinet.’ A pause. ‘Not yet. He’s an ambitious bugger from all I hear.’
Venn thought Appleyard moved in the kind of circles where he might hear.
The chief would have to inform the Home Office, and the Prime Minister would be told.
Venn thought that his immediate boss, Superintendent Oldham, would become more ineffective than usual.
He wasn’t a man who could cope with pressure and his response would be all panic and bluster.
The involvement of the Home Office might release extra resources, though, and they’d need those if a wide-scale search for the politician’s missing daughter became necessary.
Venn was so wrapped up in the bureaucratic details, the hoops he’d have to jump through, a strategy for managing Oldham, that he was driving almost on automatic pilot. He realized with a start that he was approaching his destination.
Millscombe was a hamlet, not a village. No school.
No church. A few scattered houses on each side of the narrow road and a pub that must cater for tourists rather than locals.
A beer garden and a menu celebrating freshly caught fish, with prices that would send a farm labourer or hotel worker into cardiac shock.
As Jen had described, there was a narrow lane just past the pub car park.
He spotted a ‘No Through Road’ post and attached to it was a hand-painted sign saying ‘MILLSFEST’ and a finger pointing down the track.
Matthew took the turning carefully. Trees brushed the car on either side.
He passed a turning to the right, with a cattle grid, the gate propped open.
In the distance a house and outbuildings.
There was a banner in the field next to the farm entrance: ‘MILLSFEST’, accompanied by a painted logo.
The logo – a cow with musical notes coming out of its mouth – triggered the memory of a conversation with Jonathan.
He’d come home a week before with a flyer he’d picked up from work, full of enthusiasm and plans.
‘There’s a new festival just along the coast. A few regulars from the Woodyard are involved. I know you hate anything loud, but it’s mostly folk and acoustic. You’ll love it. I thought I’d get tickets.’
But it seemed that camping would be involved, and Jonathan’s arty friends still intimidated him, so Matthew had said he’d be duty inspector that weekend and would need to stay at home.
Jonathan had grinned, knowing perfectly well that this was an excuse, that roughing it really wasn’t Matthew’s thing, but forgiving the lie.
Easy and laidback, as he was about everything.
The festival had just happened. Matthew hadn’t remembered the name, but this must be the place.
In the end, Jonathan hadn’t been enthusiastic about camping either and had settled for a Saturday day pass.
He’d arrived home late on Saturday night, smelling of woodsmoke and beer, after a lift with a non-drinking friend.
The friend had come in for coffee. Matthew had already been in bed, not asleep but still irritated by the loud voices and snatches of singing.
They’d had, it seemed, a very good time.
Jonathan was still raving about it on Sunday morning.
Surely this must be worth exploring? Matthew thought now. The teenagers would have been attracted by a festival within walking distance. Was that why they’d come to North Devon a couple of days before the adults?
Beyond the farm entrance, the lane continued widening a little, and the view opened up, so Matthew could glimpse the sea on the horizon, caught between two headlands.
And then, at the end of the track, there was a gate, open now, with a uniformed officer standing next to it.
A wooden sign with Tide House burned into it.
Then the house itself, built, Matthew guessed, in the 1930s, a whitewashed bungalow, with slightly curved walls, surrounded by a curved crazy-paved terrace.
Lots of glass. Art deco? Art nouveau? Jonathan would know.
Matthew parked next to Ross May’s car and followed the sound of voices to the seaward side of the building.
Passing the house, he came to the swimming pool.
It was tiled blue, but the water seemed an even deeper colour now because it reflected the cloudless sky.
The land dropped away quickly beyond it.
A wooded valley must lead down to the sea.
Unless there was a public footpath through the garden, the cove at the bottom would be inaccessible to anyone but the homeowner.
It was, Matthew thought, as close to paradise as it could be.
In this weather at least. Not so much fun in a winter westerly gale with lashing rain and the track turned into a mud bath.
The young woman’s body had been pulled out of the pool and was lying on the terrace.
Venn stood for a moment, unnoticed, looking in at the scene. The couple stood to one side with a uniformed officer. They looked up when he approached.