Chapter Four #2
‘I can’t discuss any details at this point, you’ll understand.’
‘But not an accident?’
Matthew shook his head. ‘We’re treating it as suspicious.’
‘I’ll have to go and tell Jake,’ Tessa said. ‘We can’t have him finding out some other way.’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Brennan, I need to do that. But I’ll send him back to the house to you when I’ve spoken to him. You can look after him then.’
‘There’ll be no speaking to him.’ Tessa was talking to herself, the anxiety tight in her throat. ‘He’ll close down and hide away. He started out at uni, but he couldn’t cope, and when he came home, it was weeks before we could get him out of his room. We had to get him to the doctor in the end.’
So perhaps, Matthew thought, Jake Brennan had been an angst-ridden teenager after all, and his room hadn’t told the full story. ‘I’ll be gentle,’ he said, then looked directly at her. ‘I’ve suffered from depression in the past. And I dropped out of university too.’
She looked up, surprised, then nodded, giving him permission to go.
Matthew walked over the meadow towards the woodland that had been lost in the heat haze.
The sun was high in the sky now and it was very hot.
He rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. Everything seemed very sharp and glaring.
Here, in the middle of the large field, there was no shade.
The line of trees around the holidaymakers’ structures gave that corner a patch of shadow and the air of an oasis.
As he approached, he saw that each pod was different, and that they’d been built around an oxbow in the stream, which was wider and slower here, almost a river.
The buildings were eclectic, built in very different styles.
There was a yurt and a shepherd’s hut, a gypsy caravan and a wooden building that was almost a treehouse.
Each site had its own outdoor kitchen, open on one side, and its own smaller hut with a shower and composting toilet.
Hammocks were strung between the trees, and there were wood-fired hot tubs next to the river.
Matthew thought that Jonathan would love it, but it would still be too basic for him.
Jacob was outside the yurt, sitting with the Kinzalows on chairs that looked as if they were built from driftwood, surrounding an unlit fire pit.
The Americans were middle-aged and cheerful.
The woman had been watching Matthew crossing the field.
The men had their backs to him and didn’t look round until she shouted out.
‘Look, we’ve got a visitor. It must be for you, Jake. We’re strangers here after all. Will you join us in a cold drink, sir? We have our creature comforts. Even a fridge.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Matthew said. ‘I’ll have to drag Jake away from you for a while.’ Then: ‘Are you staying long?’
‘Oh yes!’ Her voice was melodic, and she sang out the words. ‘We have another three days.’
‘Then perhaps I’ll take you up on that drink later. I’d be grateful if you could stick around until I’ve spoken to you.’
Geoff Kinzalow looked up sharply. ‘Oh? Why should we do that?’ Not exactly hostile but making it clear that he wouldn’t be ordered around by a stranger.
‘I’m a police officer,’ Venn said. ‘There’s been an incident, and you might be able to help us. We’ll try to get to you as quickly as we can.’
‘No worries at all,’ the woman sang out. ‘We were planning a lazy day.’
If she was curious, she gave no sign of it. Venn was grateful for that, but it seemed a little strange that the pair had no questions for him.
Jake waited until they were out of earshot of the Americans, then he put his hand on Matthew’s arm. He seemed desperate. ‘Where is she? Why did she go like that without telling me?’
‘Is there somewhere cooler we could talk?’ Because Matthew felt exposed here, the field scorched, almost white because of the drought, and in the late morning sun it felt as though the two of them were visible for miles.
They could have been walking across a desert, and he sensed the eyes of the Americans on his back through a gap in the trees.
Jake turned sharply and led Matthew diagonally towards another edge of the field. The land sloped more steeply here and soon they were out of sight from the farmhouse. They came to a wide muddy patch, edged with reeds. In the middle of it there was some brown shallow water.
‘In the winter, it’s a pool, but it’s all dried out. Dad gets an environmental subsidy for keeping it wild. At the right time of year, it attracts wading birds. Some of the glampers and campers are birders, and Dad wants to attract them too.’
Jake walked on. He asked no more direct questions yet.
Perhaps he didn’t want to hear the answers.
He was making for a hide on the far side of the pond.
He opened the door and stood aside for Matthew to walk in.
Inside, there was a smell of wood and creosote.
It was dark and cool. Jake opened a hinged flap, so the light came in and there was a view of a pair of lapwings on the grass close to the hide.
The men sat on a bench and looked out at where the water had once been.
‘What’s happened?’ Jake’s voice was shrill. ‘Why didn’t you bring Hannah with you?’
‘Because she’s dead,’ Matthew said. He paused briefly. ‘We think she was murdered.’
For a moment Jake sat, frozen and silent, and then the tears ran down his cheeks, and he was sobbing like a small, confused boy. ‘You’re sure? You’re sure it’s her? I told you that she was with me all night.’
‘We’re sure. Her mother has confirmed it.’
‘I want to see her!’
Matthew shook his head. ‘That won’t be possible. Not now. You understand, it’s a crime scene.’ Another pause. ‘Shall we go back to the house?’
There was a violent shake of the head. ‘Not now. I can’t face my parents yet. They’ll be all sympathy and pity, but they didn’t really understand. They thought it was some sort of teenage fling. They were worried that she’d hurt me in the end and make me ill again.’
‘Why don’t you tell me about her and how you met?’
Matthew was still staring at the muddy patch ahead of him.
He’d found it was always easier to talk if there was no eye contact, side by side in a car perhaps, or together staring into a fire.
He and Jonathan had been sitting like that when his husband, who’d been adopted as a baby, had announced his intention to search for his birth mother.
Matthew had been glad Jonathan hadn’t seen his reaction, his distress.
Matthew still wasn’t sure why he was so upset by the idea.
Perhaps because his present happiness seemed so fragile.
He felt a stab of guilt. How could he be thinking about something so personal when he should be focused on work, on this young man’s pain?
The lapwings flew off and Jake started to speak.
‘We met properly last year. The run-up to Christmas. There’s a public footpath across Long Meadow to this hide.
Anyone can use it. I used to escape to sit in here if nobody else was about.
Trying to sort myself out. I’d had a kind of breakdown at university.
It was all too much. A new place and all those people and I felt like a failure because I couldn’t keep up with the work.
I only lasted a couple of months and then came running back here. ’
‘There are worse places to run back to.’