Chapter Thirty-Five
VENN ARRIVED HOME IN PLENTY OF time to set off for Cornwall.
He could tell that Jonathan was grateful to see him.
His husband, usually so chilled and relaxed, had been looking out for him from the kitchen window.
Matthew had seen his face as he drove in, though the man moved away as soon as the car came into view, not wanting Matthew to notice his anxiety.
Jonathan had already packed overnight bags for them both and Matthew almost fell over them when he opened the front door.
Jonathan was there in the hall, fidgety and excited.
‘We could set off now and stop for lunch on the way.’
Matthew would have preferred to stay home a little longer, in case he was needed or something broke in the investigation, but he could tell that waiting would be torture for Jonathan.
He wanted to feel that he was moving. He’d be happier once they’d arrived at the hotel they’d booked for their overnight stay.
It was only a couple of miles from the village where he’d arranged to meet his mother.
Matthew tried to remember that he wasn’t indispensable at work.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Let’s go now and take our time.’
They took his car, and he drove. Braunton was clogged with traffic and the ring road round Barnstaple took longer than usual.
All the way, Matthew could sense Jonathan’s tension. The man fiddled with the radio to find music he liked, then turned it off altogether, so they sat for most of the journey in silence. Until today, Venn hadn’t realized quite how much this meeting would mean to him.
When they were out of the town, the traffic eased, but Matthew was still driving slowly.
They took roads that were just inland from the coast, down lanes with high hedges, threaded with red fuchsia, bent by the prevailing westerly winds.
They stopped for lunch in a pretty village, in an old-fashioned tea shop, where the waitresses wore lace aprons, and the sandwiches were cut into triangles with the crusts removed.
Usually, Jonathan would have enjoyed it, mocking the kitsch design, devouring the scones and cream.
Today, he ate quickly and insisted that they set off again at once.
They arrived too early at the smart, boutique hotel he’d chosen, before the check-in time, and that only added to his impatience. He was almost rude to the older woman at reception, and Matthew had never before known Jonathan to be rude to anyone.
‘There’s no rush at all,’ Matthew said. ‘We’re only five minutes from where you arranged to meet the woman.’
‘My mother!’ Jonathan snapped back. ‘Where I arranged to meet my mother.’
Matthew felt as if he’d been slapped. He didn’t recognize this man at all.
He couldn’t work out the best way to deal with him.
They’d walked out into the hotel garden, with its view down a narrow valley to the sea, while they were waiting for their room to be ready.
Matthew was reminded of the combe below Tide House but tried to push the image from his mind.
The garden was beautiful. They were walking down a path, between lavender hedges that hummed with insects and smelled of elderly women.
Matthew’s grandmother had made lavender bags that lived in the tall chest of drawers in the room where he’d stayed occasionally as a small boy.
He was lost in that memory, of prayers before bedtime and watery hot chocolate, when Jonathan stopped suddenly and held Matthew tight.
‘Oh God, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to be such a dick.’ A pause. ‘I’m just so scared.’
Again, they left before they needed to meet Jonathan’s mother. He’d changed into a linen shirt and smart trousers, clothes he’d bought to wear to a fancy wedding before Matthew had known him. At the last minute he changed back into his habitual shorts and T-shirt.
‘She needs to see me as I really am, doesn’t she?’ A kind of plea. ‘I can’t pretend.’
‘Honestly, I don’t think she’ll care what you’re wearing.
’ Matthew had been on the phone checking on news of the case while Jonathan was in the bathroom changing.
There was nothing that could bring about any sort of breakthrough.
No message from Appleyard yet on information about Jim Hooper, and Venn didn’t want to press him.
Jonathan’s mother was called Ellen. They’d agreed by email to meet her in a pub in Sentock, the village where she lived.
It was a few miles inland, so not flooded with tourists, but attractive enough, built around a river.
A brooding country pile stood on a hill looking down on the place.
Once, Matthew thought, the big house, with its Georgian splendour, would have owned it all – the village and the surrounding farms. Now it would be invaded every weekend by National Trust members with a taste for history and a decent cafe.
In the village, there was a narrow stone bridge, a church, a couple of streets of grey stone houses, with a general store and a gift shop to pander to any visitors who might make their way in.
On its edge, a little 1930s council estate, the homes now presumably all in private ownership.
In the main street there were two pubs. One was rather grand, a clone of the Fisherman’s Arms in Millscombe.
The other was small, shabby, with windows so dirty that they could hardly see inside, and peeling paint.
This was where Jonathan’s mother had suggested that they meet.
Matthew wondered if she worked there and hoped that she would find time to give her full attention to her son.
Again, they were far too early, and they took a footpath up the hill towards the big house, through an established beech wood.
It seemed that the grounds surrounding the house were open to the public, and when they emerged into the open, there was a wide sweep of parkland running towards the building.
Behind them, a view across the village and the estuary to the sea.
Jonathan spoke in quick bursts and then had moments of silence.
They sat on a bench looking down at the village, passed occasionally by dog-walkers.
‘Tell me about the Armstrong investigation,’ Jonathan said. ‘I need distracting.’
So, Matthew told him, ordering his thoughts as best he could, looking for a pattern that might make some sense. He thought that Jonathan was so preoccupied with the forthcoming meeting that he wasn’t even listening, but at one point the man interrupted.
‘You’re saying that Paul Armstrong’s corrupt?’
‘I’m saying that he was accused of corrupt dealings that might have taken place years ago.’
‘And Lottie Cauldwell was aware of the accusation?’
‘She might have been. It’s all pretty tenuous.’ Matthew paused for a moment. ‘Besides, Armstrong can’t be the killer. He was driving down the M5 with his wife and kids when the girls were murdered.’
‘Someone that powerful can always find someone else to do their dirty work.’
For a moment, Matthew thought his husband was joking – Jonathan had always despised conspiracy theories – but he seemed quite serious.
The idea took root in Matthew’s brain and a few what ifs started growing from it.
It was unimaginable that Armstrong would have arranged for his daughter to be murdered, but nobody knew that Hannah would turn up at Tide House early that morning.
She could have disturbed the killer. Was it at all possible that Armstrong had arranged for a local contact to intimidate Lottie, even to stop her talking for ever?
Because Matthew still thought that the murderer was a local.
He couldn’t quite believe in Appleyard’s idea of an outsider.
There was something ruthless about Armstrong that didn’t make the notion entirely ridiculous. Matthew would have liked the time to concentrate, to discuss his ideas with his husband, but Jonathan looked at his watch.
‘Come on. It’s almost time.’ He jumped up and they walked in silence back through the wood, their feet crunching on the fallen beech nuts.
When they got back to the pub, the door was open, and music was spilling out into the street.
Matthew stood on the pavement and looked in.
They’d already decided that Jonathan would go to the meeting alone, but the man hesitated now.
The place was exactly what Matthew had been expecting from the venue: a village bar for locals.
Tables with dominos and cribbage, a dart board.
It tied in with the image he’d created of Jonathan’s mother – one of the hapless hippies who drifted to Cornwall looking for casual jobs in hospitality, or one of the rural working poor.
He imagined she’d either be behind the bar serving the regulars, or a regular herself, there for the company.
The music came from a shanty band, a small group perched on stools in one corner.
The other drinkers joined in with the song’s chorus.
The drinkers were loud and tuneless, but the band themselves were competent.
There was an elderly man playing a guitar and a younger guy with an accordion.
The female singer had long grey hair, clipped back with tortoiseshell slides.
Her face was hardly lined, almost youthful.
Although the room was gloomy, the open door let in a shaft of sunlight, and it caught her face.
Matthew could tell at once that this was Ellen, Jonathan’s mother.
She had Jonathan’s startling blue eyes and there was something familiar in the shape of the face, the slightly crooked smile when she nodded to the drinkers to join in the chorus.
Jonathan took a deep breath. He must have recognized the likeness too, because he couldn’t stop staring at the singer. This woman looked very different from his adoptive parents, the couple who’d looked after him since he was a tiny baby. She looked much more like him.
‘I’ll wait for you,’ Matthew said. ‘At the bench up the hill where we were sitting earlier.’