Chapter Thirty
IT WAS COMPLETELY DARK WHEN MATTHEW drove past Braunton Great Field and down the narrow toll road towards home.
It had been a long day. Hard to believe it was still only Thursday.
Less than a week since the girls had arrived for their holiday in the sun.
A barn owl, sitting on a fence post, was caught in his headlights, its full-moon face very white.
The sound of the car disturbed it, and it floated slowly away.
Jonathan was still up. He was sitting at the kitchen table working.
It would be some funding application for the Woodyard or a report for the trustees.
He rarely worked on admin when he was at the arts centre.
There, he was always out in the vast, rambling building, meeting the people with learning difficulties who relied on the day centre for company, the artists who rented studio space, the cooks and waiting staff in the cafe.
Checking in specially with Lucy Braddick, who worked there.
Listening. Venn thought he’d make a great detective because he listened so well.
Jonathan heard Matthew come in, stood up and opened his arms to him. ‘What a time you’ve had!’
‘I’ve just come from the hospital. Jen’s okay. A broken arm and a headache but she’ll be fine.’
‘Want a drink? A glass of wine?’
Matthew shook his head. ‘Tea,’ he said. ‘I’d love some tea.’ It was later than he usually slept, and he liked a routine, but he knew if he went to bed now, he’d be restless. Sleepless. He needed to decompress. ‘Camomile, please.’
Jonathan switched off his laptop and they sat together in the living room, the curtains still open, letting in moonlight. It must be high tide, because Matthew could hear the rhythm of the waves on the shore.
‘It’s Maurice Braddick’s funeral tomorrow morning,’ Jonathan said. ‘Will you make it? Lucy would like you to come. I called in to see her in her flat today. She hasn’t been at work, but she’s being well supported by the staff there.’
‘How is she?’
‘Sad obviously but coping. I think she sees the funeral as a bit of an ordeal. Something unfamiliar as well as saying goodbye to her dad.’
‘I’ll try to get there.’
These weren’t idle words, and Jonathan would realize that he would try.
Matthew couldn’t promise because in his work something could always turn up, but he’d be there if he could.
He wasn’t sure he’d have solved the first murder he’d had to investigate without Lucy.
Now, she almost felt like family. Matthew always checked in with her when he visited the Woodyard cafe where she worked.
Maurice, her father, had been a good and gentle man and Matthew wanted to be at his funeral to pay his respects, not just to be there for Lucy.
His thoughts returned to the investigation, to Daniel and Lottie.
‘I got those young people all wrong,’ he said.
In truth, he knew nothing about young people.
He felt that he’d hardly been young at all.
He’d gone from a priggish schoolboy to a depressed and anxious man, already middle-aged in his twenties.
‘I judged them as superficial, greedy and entitled. Perhaps they were lost and unhappy, putting on a brave face to the world. It was easier for Hannah to be kind. Her parents were stressed and in the public eye, but they cared about her. And then she found Jake, who adored her. She knew she was loved.’
Jonathan was drinking wine. He was on the floor, his back against the sofa where Matthew was sitting.
‘People can be greedy and entitled as well as lost,’ he said. ‘There’s no excuse for Lottie sticking those toxic videos on her socials or Daniel being sneering and rude. They were asking to be judged.’
Matthew was surprised. Usually, Jonathan was the most sympathetic of men. He tried to understand and not judge.
‘After listening to Daniel’s interview with Ross, I find it hard to believe that he’s our killer. He was our prime suspect. He was at the house where the girls had died, he had a made-up alibi, and then he ran away. It all seemed so simple. Now, I’m lost too. Back at the beginning. I have nothing.’
Apart from the Kinzalows, Venn thought. I need to find out what’s going on with them. At the moment, they’re all we have.
That was the message Venn passed on to the team at the morning’s briefing.
‘I can’t believe that they’ve just disappeared, but being involved in Jen’s accident has probably freaked them out.
We have the car registration now. They hired it from a rental company in Barnstaple and had to show their driving licences and paid by credit card.
Let’s put out an APR. It’ll be hard to track them down if they stick to the small rural roads, but they must be somewhere.
If we don’t find them by lunchtime today, we’ll call a press conference and go public.
They’re people of interest, and we need to find them. ’
Venn was feeling the pressure of time. Not just because of the Kinzalows’ flight home and because it was already four days since the girls’ bodies had been found, and they needed some movement in the investigation.
Not just because he was getting pressure from the press and Home Office officials.
Not even because there were grieving parents who were waiting for answers.
But he’d promised to go the following day to Cornwall with Jonathan, while he met his birth mother.
He owed Jonathan that support at least. He had a good excuse to stay at work and send Jonathan off by himself – although Jen would be out of hospital later today, she wouldn’t be fully in action – but that would feel shabby.
Besides, occasionally he needed to delegate, to prove to the team that they could cope fine without him. That he trusted them.
Rationally, he knew all that was true. He’d be on the end of a phone, and only a couple of hours away if he was needed.
He’d hoped, though, to have everything wrapped up by Saturday.
He didn’t cope well with deadlines, even self-induced ones, and found them stressful.
All morning, he felt tense and ill at ease. He sent Ross back to Torr.
‘That seems to be the Kinzalows’ base. We have the vehicle registration now.
Even if they’re sleeping in the car, and haven’t checked into any formal accommodation, they have to be parked somewhere.
’ He remembered what Daniel had said about having paid for parking on Baggy Point on the Monday morning.
‘There’s nowhere free any more. There must be a record.
Vicki, can you check with the council and with the National Trust. At the moment, the Americans are our most important lead. ’
Our only lead.
Venn stayed in the police station. The most likely chance to find the Kinzalows would come from Vicki Robb’s trawling through CCTV and parking data.
Ross might chance upon something in Torr, but the couple had evaded the physical search until now.
Venn thought they could be moving, changing locations, losing themselves among the crowds of holidaymakers.
Yet, Karen had come out of hiding to visit the hotel where the Armstrongs were staying.
What was that about? None of it made sense.
Vicki had been checking Lottie’s socials looking for a potential stalker. Some guy who was obsessed with the girl, or a former fan she’d been particularly mean to. So far, she’d found nothing.
Venn had asked if there’d been any online connection with Jim Hooper before the argument in the pub.
‘She’s just the sort of young woman to wind him up. Beautiful, wealthy, overconfident, at least superficially. He might pretend to despise her, but I can see him being drawn to her too, attracted in an obsessive way, checking her posts every night, following her every move.’
Vicki was still working on that.
Maurice Braddick’s funeral was at eleven.
The service was held in the small church in the village where he’d lived for most of his life.
Jonathan was giving Lucy a lift and had arranged to meet Matthew there.
Matthew still found funerals unsettling.
They reminded him of his father’s death, the fact that he’d been excluded from the funeral because he’d been banished from the Brethren and not considered worthy to be there.
‘Just in case something comes up and you can’t make it,’ Jonathan had said when he made the arrangement, not because he was aware of Matthew’s unease and not being snide. Just practical.
Standing at the gate into the churchyard, always an observer, Matthew was astonished to see that his mother, Dorothy, was there, standing in the sunshine, awkward. She was wearing a washed-out dress more grey than black and a hat that hardly covered wispy, unruly hair.
This would be very different from Dorothy’s usual place of worship, the shabby hall where the Barum Brethren held their meetings.
Matthew was suddenly taken back to those Sundays, listening to the elders speaking, to one particular elder who had become his hero.
Then, like his parents, he’d believed that when the day of rapture came, only the people who shared their narrow faith would be saved.
He’d been convinced that he was special.
Rosa, one of Lucy’s friends from the Woodyard day centre, was a member of the Brethren, and her mother was Dorothy’s closest friend. Matthew supposed that Dorothy was there to support them. He saw now that Rosa and her mother were there too. The three women stood slightly apart. Anxious.
He watched Jonathan emerge from the church porch.
His husband went first to Rosa. He gave her a little hug, and they exchanged a few words.
Rosa smiled. Then he turned to Dorothy and took her hand.
From their first meeting he’d always disarmed the woman with his warmth and charm.
Now, despite her hostility to the idea of gay marriage, Matthew’s mother had almost come to terms with the reality of the relationship.