Chapter Thirty-Three
IT WAS SATURDAY AND OCCASIONALLY JONATHAN allowed himself a lie-in at the weekend. Today, though, he was up with Venn, excited and wired because of the two mugs of coffee he’d already drunk. And because of the meeting with his mother. He was heading out for his swim as Matthew left just before six.
‘And you’ll be back? I mean, I’ll understand if you have to cancel, because you’re crazy at work, but just let me know if you can’t make it. Yeah?’
‘I’ll be back. I’ve told the team I won’t be around after lunchtime. That’s why I’m going to do this interview so early.’
Only then did Jonathan seem reassured, and he headed out towards the beach in his shorts and his flip-flops, a towel under his arm.
The cottage where the Kinzalows had been hiding out was in the Taw Valley, not very far from where Appleyard had taken Matthew for lunch.
It was, as Karen had said, tiny. One room up and one down with a kitchen and bathroom in the extension.
Once, apparently, it had provided storage for fishing gear and a kayak.
The owner, who had a house at the other end of the garden, had converted it into living space for a teenage son who’d since left home.
The river was low now, but Venn thought that if it were in flood, it would be possible to fish from the living room window.
Venn saw that their hire car was parked outside and felt a moment of relief. He’d believed Karen when she’d said that they wouldn’t try to escape, but he didn’t know Geoff, didn’t understand how desperate the man might be.
They were waiting for him, packed and ready to go. There was coffee on the hob.
‘Only black, I’m afraid,’ Karen said. ‘We’ve used up all the milk.’
Venn assured her that he only ever drank black coffee. Geoff sat in a corner on an upright kitchen chair, silent.
‘Why don’t you both take it outside?’ she went on.
‘Leave me to finish tidying up here.’ It was same trilling tone that she’d used when Matthew had first met them.
Now that she’d spoken to Venn, perhaps she felt a little more relaxed, not quite so anxious after the deaths of her daughter’s friends.
Not so desperate to know what had happened to cause Elizabeth to fall that night in London.
For a moment, however, her change in mood made him mistrust his judgement that the Americans were harmless.
Had the woman conned him after all and was relaxed because he’d believed her story?
It seemed a huge coincidence that the two dead young women were involved in the accident that had left their daughter with life-changing injuries.
He said nothing. Geoff got to his feet, his mug in his hand, and led Matthew outside.
Later, it would be very hot again, but this early, there was still shade from the trees that hid the little cottage from the rest of the property. A giant weeping willow’s branches trailed in the water. They sat on a bench, facing the river.
‘How did you find this place?’ Venn was genuinely curious.
‘We stopped at the tea shop in the village after we left Millscombe and there was a notice in the window. We found the owner at home and moved in that day.’
‘It’s a bit of a stretch to Torr.’ That, after all, was where most of the sightings of the couple had been.
The man gave a little laugh that crumpled his face. He was crumpled all over, Venn thought. He wore a creased, faded shirt and thin walkers’ trousers. Everything faded brown or green, as if he were a photographer or hunter and needed the camouflage.
‘I grew up on a farm in Maine. I’m used to driving long distances. That was like a trip to the store.’
A heron flew very low over the water, hardly flapping its wide wings.
‘Karen told me what happened to your daughter,’ Venn said. ‘I don’t have children. I can’t imagine. But I’m very, very sorry.’
Geoff stared ahead of him. ‘It would help if we knew the truth.’
‘So, tell me all you know. If the girls’ deaths are linked, I’ll find out what happened. And I’ll tell you. I promise.’
The man was quite still for a moment. At last, he nodded. ‘Karen told you most of it. I’m not sure I can add much.’
‘Did you know what was going on with the three girls? The drinking. The dangerous games they were playing. The strange secret society. The Furies.’
He shook his head. ‘Karen was left with the family stuff. I was working on my book. Head down. Making it clear I needed no distraction. I had a deadline and I’m like that.
Focused.’ He turned and Venn saw that the man’s eyes glistened, either with tears or anger.
‘It was my fault, you see. If I’d not been so obsessed with my work, I would have seen what was going on.
I would have persuaded Karen that we needed to rein Lizzie in.
She thought the girl needed freedom. I believed she needed more boundaries. It was the one thing we disagreed on.’
‘Whose idea was it to come to North Devon to see the girls, to get your answers?’
The question seemed to surprise him. ‘Mine, I guess. It was eating away at me. Karen thought it might stop me brooding so she agreed to the plan.’
‘Elaine Cauldwell came down to meet you both before Hannah and Lottie arrived. You had dinner in the Fisherman’s Arms?’
‘Yeah.’ A pause. ‘I think she just came to warn us off. She threatened us with some sort of restraining order. It just made us more certain that she knows what happened the night Elizabeth fell, that the incident was more suspicious than the police have let on.’ He paused again, and when he spoke a moment later, his voice was more intense.
‘Why would she come all the way to North Devon if she had nothing to hide? I knew then that it was worth our staying and trying to speak to the girls.’
Venn was starting to realize the depth of the man’s obsession. He was a fanatic about his writing and about finding out the details of his daughter’s accident.
‘You spoke to Lottie at the Millscombe festival?’
‘I did. She called me a dirty old man and told me to leave her alone. Otherwise, she’d scream.’ He turned, so for the first time he was facing Venn. ‘She meant it. So, what could I do but walk away?’
‘It must have made you angry, though.’
‘Sure, I was angry. But I didn’t kill her. I was mad enough to do it, but I was with Karen all that Sunday evening and all Monday morning. We’d only just got up when you came along to talk to Jake.’
You could have got up when Karen was still sleeping.
You could have caught Lottie having an early morning swim and hit her when she climbed out of the pool.
Hannah could have turned up then from the farm, determined to send Lottie back to London.
You could have chased her into the combe and killed her to stop her talking.
All that was possible, Venn thought. It fitted in with the facts, and there was something so tight and hard about the man that he could imagine him killing.
Guilt needing a scapegoat, someone else to blame.
But he had no proof. No evidence to stop a pair of prominent American citizens from leaving the country.
It came to him then that they might never get a resolution to this investigation.
The Kinzalows might disappear to the States, and he’d be left with the same sense of unfinished business that seemed to have haunted Karen.
‘There’s something you should know.’ Geoff paused. His attention seemed quite caught by the dipper that broke the water’s surface and came to rest on a rock.
‘Yes?’
‘Before I started writing my book on British up-and-coming politicians, I researched all the individuals. I mean, a deep dive. That’s my USP. Research, it’s what I’m famous for. I need my readers to trust me in an age of fake news and invented social media.’ He paused again.
‘You researched Armstrong’s background?’
‘Of course. I spent a week in Newcastle, getting a feel for the place, walking the streets, drinking in the pubs where he’d drunk. Talking to former colleagues. You know he was on the city council before he was an MP?’
Venn shook his head.
‘Yeah, when he was a student and then briefly as a junior doctor working at one of the hospitals there. The man must have had some energy.’
This time Venn didn’t prompt him. He sensed that Geoff wasn’t given to talking much and he had his own timing, his own rhythm.
‘There were rumours,’ Geoff said. ‘There’d been one of those elections when voters just want change, and the council was finely balanced afterwards.
One man could swing things. Occasionally, Armstrong voted against his party, pushed through measures that he might not otherwise be expected to support.
’ The journalist allowed himself a dramatic pause.
‘The development of a big retail park on a green field site, for example.’
‘Rumours of corruption? Backhanders?’
‘Yeah. I never found any proof, though. And nobody would go on the record. So, it never went in the book. But I believed it.’
‘Did you ask Armstrong about the rumours?’
‘I tried to get him to talk to me. I emailed and contacted his office. In the end I gave up. Of course, he’d deny it and, as I say, I had no proof.’
Venn considered how this might be relevant to the current investigation.
This could be Kinzalow throwing up a smokescreen, a distraction.
Matthew could see how Armstrong might have been tempted to take cash in return for supporting the development.
Not just because it took money to fund a good election campaign, and he’d have had ambitions to be an MP by then.
But because he was obviously a man who loved the good things in life.
It was clear that he still wasn’t prepared to live off his MP’s salary alone – there was the podcast, the magazine articles, the public speaking.
Matthew couldn’t see, though, how this could have any bearing on Hannah’s murder.
And if Kinzalow were right, wouldn’t Appleyard’s friends in Whitehall know about the rumours too?