Chapter One #2
‘We needed to be sure that she was dead.’ Armstrong seemed horrified.
They’d covered the body with a large towel, but his eyes kept straying towards it.
He must have seen dead bodies when he was a junior doctor, but he’d known this person, and his daughter was still missing.
Of course he’d be distraught. His accent was different from what Matthew had been expecting.
There was definitely a northern edge, flat vowels.
Matthew thought he’d heard the man speak before.
There’d been radio interviews, television appearances, not just on news broadcasts.
He’d first come to public notice, appearing on television, speaking about fitness and well-being, implying that anyone could be as healthy as him with just a little effort.
Perhaps he modified his voice when he was speaking in public. All politicians were actors.
His wife was standing a short distance away from the group and was on her phone.
She was as Matthew had remembered her from the photo, a bit boho for an MP’s wife.
No make-up, cropped jeans, a cheesecloth top that might have come straight from the seventies, red leather sandals.
Sandy hair that looked tousled and untidy, but which could have been some sort of fashion statement.
‘Cath’s trying to get through to Lottie’s mother,’ Armstrong said. ‘A horrible job, but of course she needs to know. She might want to come down. She’s a single mother and Lottie was an only child. They must have meant everything to each other.’
‘Lottie’s the dead girl?’ Matthew worried briefly about the language.
Was a seventeen-year-old still a girl? A woman?
Of course, it hardly mattered. Lottie was dead and her friends and family wouldn’t be concerned about semantics.
But these things made him ridiculously anxious.
He’d grown up in an enclosed evangelical community, cut off, separate, and he still felt that he was apart, that the social world was a minefield, just waiting for him to set off an explosion.
‘Yes. Charlotte. Charlotte Cauldwell. Known to everyone as Lottie. She and Hannah have been friends for a while. They were at the same school.’ He looked up. ‘I don’t understand. Where is Hannah? She must have been taken. She wouldn’t run away if Lottie was in trouble.’
Matthew had already thought of kidnap as a possibility.
Perhaps the friend had just got in the way.
What did politicians call it? Collateral damage.
Armstrong must have money to have been able to afford this place.
More money even than a minister’s salary.
So why, he thought again, expose your family to the publicity of a magazine like Home Interiors?
A sort of hubris or a desire for validation?
Cath Armstrong finished her call. Just of that generation when women in public life still routinely took their husbands’ names, she was known as Armstrong. She was crying. Fat tears were rolling down her cheeks.
‘Elaine can’t believe it. She’s organizing a car to bring her down.’
Someone else with money. The thought came unbidden.
It seemed to Venn that he’d inherited a tricky relationship with money from his religious parents.
He’d grown up within the Barum Brethren, a small West Country sect, certain and implacable.
Despite having been cast out, ‘unfellowshipped’ when he lost his faith, he’d not been able to shake off entirely their strict morality.
He still felt a little guilt about the lifestyle that he and Jonathan had achieved.
The Brethren had always had an ambiguous attitude to wealth.
They took the Bible literally, so saw it as a bar to paradise.
In theory. In reality, rich people had been given status and power, a kind of reverence.
‘We’re organizing a search for your daughter,’ Matthew said.
Jen and Ross were already in the house. They’d asked for permission to go into the building as soon as they’d arrived.
They’d bring in the specialist team to widen the search.
Maybe the coastguard and the Exmoor rescue group.
It would be a logistical nightmare. All those people would need feeding.
Accommodation if the search wasn’t quickly over, and at the start of the busiest holiday season that would be almost impossible.
He turned to Cath. ‘I assume you’ve already tried calling your daughter’s mobile? ’
‘Of course! We started calling when we were almost here. Not before that, because we thought they’d both be asleep.
It just went through to voicemail. I’ve been trying ever since.
The same thing.’ She was restless and fidgety.
He knew she was thinking she should be doing more to find her daughter.
That Matthew should be doing more. It would take time to bring the search team in, but she wouldn’t be interested in the detail.
Matthew understood her need to see action.
‘If you give my colleague the number,’ he said gently, ‘we should be able to find out where and when it was last used.’
‘Oh yes! Of course!’
‘When did you last hear from her?’
‘She texted on Friday morning to say they’d arrived safely. Nothing since then, but we weren’t really expecting it.’ Cath paused. ‘Teenagers, they’re so wrapped up in their own world. Why would they?’
‘There was a music festival at the farm over the weekend. Were the girls planning to go to that?’
The parents looked at each other. ‘I don’t remember Hannah mentioning it, but if it was at the farm, I’m sure she’d want to be there,’ Cath said in the end. ‘Did she talk about it to you, Paul?’
He shook his head, as if the question had little meaning. Matthew supposed a minister would have his head full of other things and family issues would come at the bottom of the heap.
‘Have there been any specific threats to you?’ The question was directed to the husband. ‘Anything we should know about?’
The man shook his head. Frustration more than denial. ‘The usual bile on social media. I stopped reading the stuff. It’s all mostly pathetic and sad. Ignorant, left-behind folk letting out their frustration on the wrong people.’
‘We’ll have to check.’ Another job for the specialists, Matthew thought. The digital team. The Home Office would probably get involved again. Or the security services. ‘Is it general knowledge that you own this house?’
‘It’s hard to keep anything secret these days, isn’t it?
We were hoping to have it as a bolthole.
An escape from the world. But we employ a gardener to keep on top of things over the spring and summer.
A cleaner to tidy up when we leave. We were seen on the beach once – there’s a public path down through the woods from the pub if you know where to find it – and of course everyone can take a photo with their mobile.
Word got out, first here in North Devon, then more widely.
There’s resentment about second homes. Apparently, I’m betraying my working-class roots.
I can understand it, but this place cost a bloody fortune, and I can’t imagine that many locals would have been able to afford it. ’
Cath had been growing more and more impatient. Matthew thought the conversation had skimmed over her head, like a flat pebble skimming over water, only touching down occasionally. He’d talk to her again when she was feeling a little less fraught.
‘I can’t stand this.’ Her voice was shrill and loud. She’d obviously made an effort to be calm when she’d been talking to Lottie’s mother. ‘Just standing here chatting. I’m going to look for Hannah.’
She ran off, very quick and light on her feet, disappearing towards the sea before Matthew could stop her.