Chapter Thirty-Five #2
Jonathan nodded and stepped inside. Matthew stood for a moment, watching.
The woman had obviously been looking out for him. Any stranger would be noticed walking into the pub, but there was the same start of recognition on her face as on Jonathan’s. She finished the song and then whispered to the band members, before speaking to the room.
‘We’re going to take a break now,’ she said. ‘We’ll be back later for more tunes.’
The voice shocked Matthew. He’d thought that a woman who’d give her child up for adoption must be feckless or unhappy, without family to support her.
When they’d walked into the pub, he’d revised his assumption about her, just because she was a shanty singer.
She wouldn’t be an incomer, someone who’d drifted in, she must be Cornish, loyal to the place and its traditions, still based where she’d been born.
This woman’s voice was educated, though, clear and confident, without a trace of a Cornish accent. Once again, he thought, he’d jumped to judgement without sufficient evidence. He needed to keep an open mind.
He stood for a moment longer to catch the encounter between the two people.
Jonathan was still standing not far from the door and Ellen pushed her way through the busy room to meet him.
They stood, a little apart. Jonathan had his back to Matthew, but Matthew could see Ellen’s face – open and welcoming.
She was entirely in control of herself and the situation.
He wasn’t sure what he felt about having this woman in their lives.
He’d prepared himself for someone who might need to be taken care of, not someone who seemed quite able to take care of herself and of her son.
Despite the grey hair, she was younger than he’d been expecting, much younger certainly than his own mother.
She wore green dungarees and Doc Marten boots and didn’t look at all ridiculous in them.
She led Jonathan to a small table in a corner.
Matthew didn’t want to stand there, watching the exchange, watching the pair become closer.
The worm of jealousy was growing, feeding the anxiety that he would be shut out, excluded, no longer needed.
He remembered his mother’s words and haunted face and he hated himself for thinking that way.
He turned and walked away down the street, back through the woods to the bench with the view. From here, he’d be able to see Jonathan leaving the pub. He’d go down to meet him, and hold him, and offer him his support.
He took out his phone, glad to focus on something other than the conversation that was happening in the bar.
There were missed calls from Christopher Appleyard and Jen Rafferty. He called Appleyard first.
The Chief Constable picked up his phone immediately. It seemed he was outdoors. At some sort of family garden party perhaps. Venn could hear the summer sound of wood pigeons and far-off teenage voices.
‘I’m sorry to have missed your call, sir.’
‘You asked me to dig into the background on Jim Hooper.’
‘Anything?’
‘As you said, no criminal record since he was a boy.’ Appleyard broke off. It sounded as if one of the party was asking if he’d like a Pimms. ‘God, no, dreadful stuff. I’ll have a beer.’ Then he continued his conversation with Venn. ‘But he’s been on their radar for a while.’
‘Oh?’
‘He was a horrible youth. One of those unhappy kids who hate the world because they think they’re not getting what they’re entitled to.
Bright enough, but he definitely had anger management problems. He got excluded from school for fighting other kids and abusing the teaching staff.
Seems to have slipped out of the education system when he was about fourteen.
He grew up in Plymouth with civilian dockyard parents who were embarrassed by him.
These days he might be diagnosed with autism or ADHD, but then there was no real intervention.
As he got older, he blamed the usual suspects for his unhappiness – immigrants, liberal lefties, any woman who wouldn’t sleep with him.
’ A dramatic pause. ‘Then he discovered cooking. That was his salvation.’
Appleyard spoke the last sentence as one of Matthew’s mother’s friends would have described religious conversion. Venn was tempted for a moment to respond with Hallelujah but managed to hold his tongue.
Appleyard was still talking. ‘He went off to catering college, got an apprenticeship in some fancy fish restaurant on the Cornish coast, met his wife Marigold who lived in the same town, and apparently he’s been a good boy ever since.’
‘Apparently?’
‘Our chaps lost interest in him when he seemed to straighten himself out, but I asked them to dig around in his more recent online adventures.’
‘And?’ Matthew felt like a stooge in an old-fashioned comedy double act.
‘He’s mixing with some rather unpleasant online groups. He shares misinformation whenever he gets a chance, if it fits in with his world view. It seems that he’s pretty tech-savvy.’ Appleyard paused, and again Venn felt the need to prompt him.
‘What sort of groups?’
‘The sort that play at planning revolt and revolution. Any shooting or knife attack with even the rumour that an immigrant might be the perpetrator, and they think they can mobilize a militia force onto the streets.’
‘Dangerous,’ Venn said. He was wondering how this might be relevant.
How many stabbings or shootings occurred in Devon or Cornwall?
Then he decided that it must be relevant, because Hannah was the daughter of a liberal politician.
They’d assumed that Hooper had disliked Lottie because of the way she’d disrespected him, but perhaps Hannah had been the real target of his anger.
‘Pathetic.’ Appleyard spat out the word.
‘Any reference to Armstrong in any of his postings? I wondered if he’d come across the rumours of corruption when he was a councillor in the North East and spread them around his groups. More ammunition for his antipathy.’
‘Nothing like that. But it makes it clear that Armstrong isn’t his favourite person.’
Matthew remembered the words the politician had used about the people who posted online bile against him: Ignorant, left-behind folk letting out their frustration on the wrong people.
Hooper, with his fancy gastropub and his warm and friendly wife, had hardly been left behind.
This felt more political. More radical. Perhaps Hooper enjoyed manipulating the left-behinds and it was the power that he enjoyed.