Chapter Fifteen
MATTHEW VENN WAS SITTING ON THE terrace outside Tide House when his phone rang. It was Vicki.
‘Keith Cauldwell has been in touch. He wants to talk to someone about the investigation. I said you’d call him. That is okay? He said he’ll be free for the next hour but tied up after that.’
Too tied up, Venn wondered, to mourn his only daughter? But perhaps work was an essential distraction. It always was for him at times of stress.
He rang the man; the call was picked up immediately. He introduced himself, and when Cauldwell responded, his voice was clear, as if he were sitting next to Venn, an invisible ghost. He’d picked up a vague transatlantic accent that ebbed and flowed throughout the conversation.
‘I need to know what happened,’ he said, not demanding or bullying, but with a kind of desperation. ‘I wish I could be there, but I can’t. This is the very worst time in a shoot for me to leave. So many people depend on me. Besides, what good would I do? I’d just be in the way.’
‘When did you last hear from Lottie?’
‘I had a few texts over the weekend. A link to some videos she’d made.’
‘How did she seem?’
‘Fine! A little bored maybe. She was always easily bored. Honestly, more of a city girl. She was looking forward to coming out to LA.’
‘Have you ever had any concerns for your daughter’s welfare?’
‘What do you mean?’ Cauldwell seemed confused.
‘Anxiety that she might be mixing with the wrong people. A stalker. A kidnap threat even. You’re in the public eye.’
‘Not as much as Paul Armstrong! I’m a behind-the-scenes kind of guy. No, nothing like that.’ He paused for a moment. ‘What exactly happened out there? All I know is that the two girls died. Elaine’s a wreck and hasn’t told me anything useful.’
Venn gave an outline of the case. ‘We’ve got a great team working on the investigation. I have your number now and I promise I’ll tell you when we have an outcome.’
At the other end of the phone, Venn heard noises. Someone shouting Cauldwell’s name. The sound of a car revving.
‘If you think of anything useful,’ Matthew said, ‘please get in touch.’
‘Sure.’ But Cauldwell seemed to be back in work mode, no longer engaged. ‘Sure.’ The call ended.
Matthew looked through the clear plastic folder at the scrap of paper he’d retrieved from the wood burner in the Kinzalows’ glamping pod.
Around him, there was still the activity surrounding a murder scene.
Hannah’s body would be taken to the mortuary in Barnstaple later that afternoon, but the Armstrongs wouldn’t be allowed back into the house until the search team had finished in the grounds. That would take days.
There wasn’t much to see on the retrieved piece of paper.
This wasn’t a magic clue to point to the identity of the killer, like the plotline of a Golden Age novel.
It was unlined and stiff, more like card than paper, which perhaps was why it hadn’t completely burned.
Bevelled edges. An invitation of some kind?
To a wedding or a party. In the bottom right-hand corner, he thought he could see the letters VP.
The end of a request to RSVP, perhaps. Why would the Kinzalows go to the bother of lighting a fire to burn something like this?
Why not throw it with other rubbish into the recycling bin at the edge of their plot?
He wished he knew what else had been burned.
It was possible that this had been thrown onto the fire as an afterthought, a piece of random waste, when more important documents had been destroyed.
His phone rang. It was Sal Pengelly, the pathologist.
‘What have you got for me?’ Venn knew she wouldn’t have phoned if it weren’t urgent.
‘I need to wait for tests to come back to be sure,’ she said.
‘But?’
‘The idea that Lottie Cauldwell was a clean-living girl, not given to excess because she had an eye on the next Olympics, is nonsense. She’d consumed a lot of alcohol in the hours before she died.
Way above the legal level for driving. I’ve asked for tox reports on drug use.
’ A pause. ‘We found a trace of cocaine in one nostril. Too far up to have been washed away by the water in the pool.’
‘Are you saying her death could have been accidental?’
‘I’m saying that it’s a possibility. She was still alive when she went into the pool.
But there’s a head wound too. She could have slipped and hit her head before sliding into the water.
Or hit it on the side of the pool after she went in.
It’s still more likely a blunt force trauma; someone knocked her out before she went in. ’
‘And she was pushed into the water when she was unconscious?’
‘That’s certainly a possibility. The cause of death was drowning.’
From his seat on the Tide House terrace, Venn looked out at the empty pool.
It had been drained and filtered by the CSIs looking for traces of a possible killer, but nothing had been found to explain Lottie’s death.
He tried to recreate the scenario that had run up to the girl’s drowning.
Everything about her death was confusing.
There was no question that Hannah had been murdered, but this was ambiguous, and Venn hated uncertainty.
In the end, he gave up trying to unravel the puzzle. He had too little information. Instead, he sent a text to Jen and Ross, letting them know about the Kinzalows’ sudden disappearance from the farm.
He decided he’d be more useful now if he drove back to Barnstaple to set in motion a search for the American couple.
He looked once more at the empty shell of the pool – a symbol, he thought, of the tragedy at Tide House – and made his way to his car.
When he’d parked, the vehicle had been in shadow, but the sun had moved, and the heat had been trapped inside.
The steering wheel almost burned his hand when he touched it.
He put the charred card from the Kinzalows’ pod into the glove compartment and started the engine, the air conditioning blasting.
He had to force his way through a horde of journos after one of the officers protecting the house opened the gate to him.
He found the crowd unsettling. What could they hope to achieve?
He was on his way past the pub when he saw a large man propping a blackboard onto one of the windowsills.
On it was written the special lunches of the day.
The place must do food on a Tuesday then.
He pulled into the car park. The man turned.
‘Sorry, mate, we don’t open for another half hour. Just getting ready.’ The tone was professional enough but there was obviously no possibility of flexibility. This must be Jim Hooper. Jen had described him perfectly.
Venn introduced himself. ‘Could I have a few words?’
‘It’s not the best time. And we spoke to the redheaded woman yesterday.’
‘Sergeant Rafferty. Yes, I know. And we’re very grateful for the delicious lunch you provided.
I’m sorry if it’s inconvenient but we’re investigating the deaths of two young women right on your doorstep.
I don’t imagine that would be very good for business.
’ Venn wondered if he’d be so irritable if it wasn’t quite so hot. ‘Honestly, this won’t take long.’
The man shrugged and went inside. Venn followed.
There was a small public bar, a lounge with tables set for food and a bigger, more formal dining room.
Hooper stood behind the bar in the lounge, keeping a distance between them, bristling with hostility.
Venn found these circumstances hard to judge.
Was the man a homophobe who’d picked up that he was gay?
Someone who’d had dealings with the police and disliked them on principle?
Or was he really stressed because he was busy, and this interrupted his pre-service routine?
‘There were a couple of Americans staying with Tessa and Bob at the farm.’
‘Yeah,’ Hooper said. ‘They were at the party afterwards.’
‘Did they come in here to eat during their stay?’ Because they would, surely, Matthew thought. Even if they were happy campers who loved an al fresco barbecue, if there were an award-winning pub on the doorstep, they’d try it out at least once.
Hooper shrugged again. It seemed one of his few methods of communication. ‘I’m not front of house. I wouldn’t know.’
Venn didn’t react. He sensed that Jim was winding himself up for some sort of confrontation. Hoping for it. But perhaps, Venn thought, he was being oversensitive, reading too much into the situation. The heat might be making the man irritable too.
‘Perhaps there’s someone who might know. Your wife? Your barman Daniel?’
‘Mag might know. Daniel’s not in until this evening.’ Hooper pushed his way through a swing door and Venn heard him shouting for his wife.
She appeared almost immediately, smiling, conciliatory. ‘Inspector. How can I help?’
He repeated his question about the Kinzalows.
‘Oh yes, I remember them!’ She seemed pleased that she could give him what he needed.
‘They came in twice and ate in the lounge both times. Lots of customers prefer that because it’s not quite so formal.
Big tippers. Daniel was serving that night, and he was delighted.
’ A pause. Venn was about to jump in when she continued speaking.
‘The first time, they were with a guest, the second time it was just the two of them.’
‘Can you describe the guest? Were they staying at the farm too?’
‘Oh my goodness, no. I couldn’t imagine her as a camping sort. Not even in those glamping pods at Bob and Tessa’s place. Far too glamorous for that.’
‘Oh?’
‘She looked as if she’d stepped off a red carpet. Like some film star or pop singer. Blonde hair and bright red lipstick. Old-fashioned, you know, but able to carry it off. She didn’t eat much. A starter and a pudding, and she only picked at those.’
‘You didn’t get her name?’
Mag shook her head. ‘Sometimes, I get a chance to go out and chat to the guests, make them feel welcome. But it was so busy, it wasn’t possible that night. A big group of locals had booked in the restaurant for a special anniversary.’
‘What night was it?’
‘Tuesday, a week ago today. I remember because it’s unusual to get quite so hectic that early in the week.’
Venn nodded. ‘And the second time? When the Kinzalows were on their own?’
‘That would be Thursday,’ Mags said. ‘And I did have a chance to chat to them then.’ She paused for a moment. ‘They were quite cagey, though. I asked them about the woman who’d dined with them a couple of days before – really, I thought she might be famous – but they weren’t giving anything away.’
‘Did they tell you what had brought them to Millscombe?’
‘I think it was a break and a chance to see a bit more of the country. They live in the States, but they’ve kept a flat in north London. They just wanted a holiday to escape the heat of the city.’
Oh, I think it was a lot more than that.
Venn smiled and thanked her and left the cool of the pub to go back to his car. All the way back to Barnstaple, he was thinking about the Kinzalows and their mysterious guest, and how that could in any way be relevant to the murder of two young women.