The Heron's Cry Read online

  Matthew and Ross were standing in the yard, suited and booted like the CSIs, but recognizable, even in their paper suits and masks. Matthew was upright, almost military in stature, and his eyes were as grey as granite. Ross May was as skinny as a whippet and fidgeted like a child. She joined them, took a suit for herself, and while she was climbing into it, spoke to Venn.

  ‘Male or female? I’ve been here before and know one of the guys who lives here. Or who used to live here. He might have moved on. It was a couple of years ago.’ It was best to let Venn know how things stood before the investigation developed.

  ‘Male,’ Matthew said. ‘What was your friend’s name?’

  Jen was going to say that he wasn’t a friend, not really, but that would have been protesting too much. Besides, Matthew liked straight answers.

  ‘Wes,’ she said. ‘Wesley Curnow.’ She hesitated for a moment. ‘Actually, I saw him last night.’

  Matthew shook his head. ‘That’s not the name.’ He looked at her. ‘What do you know about this place?’

  Jen shrugged. ‘I only came here once.’ The morning after hooking up with Wes, he’d made her breakfast in a large, untidy communal kitchen on the ground floor. Flagstones on the floor and an Aga pockmarked with grease. Another hangover. More coffee and bacon sandwiches on fresh white bread, dripping with fat. A couple of other people had drifted through, but she’d not taken much notice of them. Wes had been the focus of her attention. He’d been barefoot, in tatty jeans and a loose T-shirt. Even with the hangover, she’d been smitten. He’d been a kind and thoughtful lover, and that had been a novelty for her. Even now, she found a smile drifting across her face as she remembered the night. ‘It’s a kind of artists’ commune. The owner lives in most of the house, but he rents out a couple of flats in the attic to crafts people and they have their workshops here too.’

  Ross sneered, seemed about to say something cutting about artists or communes, then thought better of it in front of the boss. He was learning.

  Jen went on: ‘The guy I know makes recycled furniture, driftwood sculpture, that sort of thing. He’s a musician too. Jonathan will probably have come across him.’

  Matthew nodded. Jonathan, his husband, managed the Woodyard, a large and successful community arts centre in Barnstaple. He mixed in such Bohemian circles. The Woodyard wasn’t Matthew’s natural home, but he was learning too, and making more of an effort to get on with Jonathan’s friends. Perhaps because of his evangelical upbringing, Matthew found it hard to consider an activity that was fun, creative or exciting as real work. He’d joined the police service because it provided the sense of duty and community that he’d missed when he left the Brethren. Jonathan sometimes mocked him because he took himself so seriously. He turned his attention back to his colleagues. ‘Shall we see what we’ve got, then?’

  Jen tucked her hair inside the paper hood, pulled on her mask and followed him. A row of farm buildings had been turned into studios and workshops.

  ‘Who found our victim?’

  ‘His daughter, Eve. She lives and works here. She’s a glass blower. She found him in her studio at eight thirty this morning.’ Matthew paused. ‘The cause of death is obvious enough apparently, but Doctor Pengelly is on her way.’

  There was a stable door leading directly from the yard into one of the outbuildings, a long, low room. Jen was expecting the space to be dark and claustrophobic, but much of the roof had been replaced by a skylight and sunshine was flooding in. It was almost unbearably hot. The heat seemed to be coming from a furnace in the corner. Jen wondered why nobody had thought to switch it off, but of course, nothing could be touched until the CSIs had finished their work. Getting closer, she realized that the furnace wasn’t lit, but must still be hot from the day before. On the wall there were racks from which a series of long metal pipes, a steel shovel with a square, box-like end, and a flat-bladed shovel dangled. There were shelves containing devices and objects which could be instruments of torture: pincers and tongs, and a couple of blowtorches.

  The whole place had the air of a torture chamber. Jen thought it resembled an image of hell, as described by one of the more imaginative nuns who’d taught her. A man was lying on his back in front of a polished workbench, caught in the sun’s rays. He was surrounded by shattered glass and a shard, as long and sharp as a knife, had pierced his neck. There was blood. A lot of blood, spread all over the floor and spattered on one of the walls.

  ‘So, it seems that he was killed where he was found,’ Matthew Venn said.

  Jen hardly heard her boss speaking. ‘I know him,’ she said. ‘At least, I’ve met him. Last night. I was at a party at Cynthia Prior’s place and he was there. His name’s Nigel Yeo.’ She paused. ‘He works for an organization that monitors the health authority. Something to do with investigations. He wanted to talk to me, but said it could wait.’

  ‘He wanted to talk to you professionally?’ The workshop door was still open and they were standing just inside. Matthew had turned towards Jen.

  She shrugged. ‘That’s what I thought he meant. But it was a party. I’d had a few drinks. You know what it’s like…’

  But Matthew wouldn’t know what it was like. He drank very little and certainly would never lose control. Jen tried to imagine him going to bed, too drunk to take off his clothes, but the idea was ridiculous. She looked again at the body, remembered the heavy smell of honeysuckle in Cynthia’s garden, the kind smile, and found herself feeling a little faint. ‘He seemed like a kind man.’

  ‘His daughter, Eve, is in the kitchen. If you’ve been here before, you’ll know where it is. Go and take an initial statement, while things are still fresh in her mind.’

  Jen nodded and went out into the yard. She stood for a moment taking deep breaths. The sun was already hot. The kitchen was cooler, though. There were still stone flags on the floor but the range she remembered from her previous visit had been left to go out. A new electric cooker stood in one corner, and the room seemed cleaner, tidier; otherwise, little had changed. A woman in her late twenties or early thirties sat at the table. She was wearing dungarees and a striped T-shirt, red sandshoes. To Jen’s relief she was alone. There was no sign of Wes.

  ‘Eve?’

  The woman turned around. She was still crying. Jen thought she’d been crying for hours, since she’d found her father.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Jen said. ‘I met him. Only once – last night, in fact – but he seemed lovely.’

  ‘He was the best.’

  ‘I’m a detective. I need to ask some questions. Is that okay?’

  Eve nodded.

  ‘Can I get you something before we start? Tea? Coffee?’ Jen thought she could do with a coffee herself. There was still a dull ache in her forehead.

  ‘Just some water, please.’

  Jen filled two glasses. Even straight from the tap it was clear and cold.

  ‘It comes from a borehole.’ Eve looked up. ‘Dad said it was the best water in the county.’

  ‘Did he live here?’ Jen found it hard to imagine. Nigel had been tidy; he’d stuck out at Cynthia’s party because he was so straight, so obviously respectable. And she was certain Cynthia had introduced him as a neighbour, but it was as well to be sure.

  Despite her grief, Eve gave a little laugh. ‘No way! He had a house in Barnstaple. It was where I grew up. But he visited me lots.’

  ‘Does your mother live there?’ Jen had assumed the man was single when they’d met, but it seemed more likely that there would be a wife. Someone competent and caring. She knew Matthew would have asked, that the woman would have been notified of Yeo’s death and that someone would be with her.

  ‘Mum had early onset Alzheimer’s,’ Eve said. ‘She died two years ago.’ The words were flat, hard. Don’t ask me about that. I can’t bear it. Not now.

  Jen wanted to reach out and take the woman in her arms. ‘Do you have siblings?’

  Eve shook her head. ‘Just Dad and me. We were so close.’ A pause for
a beat. ‘And now I’m on my own.’ She was speaking quietly, but still it sounded like a cry of desperation.

  Jen was going to ask about friends, a partner, but she could tell that friends wouldn’t be any comfort yet. ‘It was quite late last night when I met your father. Were you expecting a visit?’

  ‘Not last night. We’d planned to meet this morning. Dad helped me to make the glass. You need an assistant for most of the work I do. It’s skilled and it takes practice, but before Mum died, he asked for an unpaid sabbatical from the hospital and took a course just so he could help out. And have more time to care for her. That’s the sort of father he was. The idea was that we’d be at it all day. I’ve got a commission from a gallery in London, someone Frank put me in touch with, but the deadline’s very tight.’

  Jen wanted to ask who Frank might be, but thought that could wait.

  ‘He didn’t work at the hospital now, though?’

  ‘No, he headed up North Devon Patients Together. It’s a kind of watchdog, monitoring the NHS trusts locally, representing users.’ She paused. ‘He’d been thinking of leaving medicine for a while. The shifts didn’t fit with him wanting to spend more time with Mum. But the NDPT is usually nine to five, and more flexible. He could pretty well set his own hours.’ She paused. ‘Mum died just as he was appointed, but he decided to leave the hospital all the same. A new challenge, he said.’

  ‘You have no idea why he might have come to Westacombe last night? Why he would be in your studio without telling you?’

  Eve shook her head. ‘None at all. We had planned quite an early start. Seven thirty. I came in at seven to get everything set up.’

  A moment of silence. From outside there came rural sounds, still unusual for Jen: birdsong and sheep.

  ‘You live here as well as work here?’ Jen asked.

  ‘Yes, I’ve got a flat in the attic. Small. Two bedrooms – though one’s so tiny I’m not sure you’d be able to sleep there – a bathroom and a living room with a little fridge and a hob in the corner. I share this big kitchen with Wes, the other artist on site. But the views are beautiful and it’s good to be so close to the workshop.’

  ‘Who else lives here?’

  ‘There are four of us tenants, plus a couple of kids. Wes Curnow has a flat in the attic too. It’s even smaller than mine.’ Jen gave no sign that she knew the name. ‘And then there are Sarah and John Grieve, and their twins, who live in the cottage on the other side of the yard. John manages the farm and Sarah’s uncle owns the place. He lives in the rest of the house.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Francis Ley.’ Eve looked up. ‘You might have heard of him. The economist. We all call him Frank.’

  So that’s the Frank who arranged the commission. Jen nodded. She recognized the name. Ley had been all over the news at one time. Not courting the limelight himself – he was notoriously shy – but celebrated by journalists and commentators. He’d predicted the financial crash before it happened, had somehow survived it and made a fortune. Out of other people’s misery, Jen thought. Somehow the bankers and money-makers came out unscathed. She’d never lost the politics of her childhood.

  ‘How did you come to be here?’

  ‘Through Sarah, who lives in the cottage. We grew up in the same street in Barnstaple and when the workshop and the flat became available, she suggested I meet up with Frank. He seemed to like me and my work, so I moved in.’ She paused for a moment. ‘He was actually here yesterday evening. He travels a bit, but when he comes to stay, he invites us all in for drinks. A ritual.’

  ‘This isn’t his permanent home?’

  ‘He still has a place in London, but he’s talking of selling up. He likes it here best.’ Eve’s voice was warm, affectionate. She could have been talking about her own favourite uncle.

  ‘Is he still here?’ If so, Jen thought Matthew could do that interview. He was good at being polite, even to people he disliked. She’d never got the knack.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I presume so. He didn’t say anything about leaving when we talked to him last night.’

  ‘You haven’t seen him this morning?’ Jen thought the man must surely have been aware of the fuss in the yard, the cars, the white-suited CSIs.

  ‘No,’ Eve said. ‘He doesn’t come into the yard much. He doesn’t need to. He uses the main entrance to the house, looking out over the estuary, and his garage has a separate exit straight onto the lane. Wes and I get to our flats through the back door here and through the kitchen.’

  Jen excused herself. ‘I’ll be back in a moment. We’ve not finished, I’m afraid.’ Outside, Sally Pengelly, the pathologist, was making her way to the workshop. She was short, plump, red-cheeked. Jen had once heard a fancy barrister describe her sneeringly as ‘that pathologist who looks as if she works on a farm’. But while Sally Pengelly might look like a farmer’s daughter, she was sharp and brave enough to stick her neck out on occasion. The team liked her. Matthew was standing in the yard, checking his phone. He looked up to greet them both.

  ‘One man owns all this.’ Jen waited for Sally to move inside the studio before she continued speaking, then waved her arm to take in the yard and all the buildings. ‘He lives in the big house but he’s not a permanent resident.’ She paused again. ‘It’s Francis Ley.’

  Matthew raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

  ‘I thought you might want to catch him in case he decides to disappear,’ Jen said. ‘He has his own front door on the other side of the building.’

  ‘Have you done talking to the daughter?’

  ‘Nah, she’s deeply upset. They were very close and her mum died a couple of years ago. I’m taking it gently.’ Another pause. ‘She wasn’t expecting to see her dad until seven thirty this morning – apparently he acted as a kind of assistant when she was making glass – and she can’t explain why he might have been here earlier this morning or late last night.’

  Venn nodded. ‘I suppose he could have been here to see one of the other tenants. We need to check possible relationships. Or he could have arranged to meet Ley. I’ll find out what the man has to say. If you’re still tied up, I’m happy to see him on my own.’

  As she turned back towards the kitchen, Jen smiled. That was just the response she’d hoped for.

  Chapter Three

  WHEN JEN LEFT HIM, MATTHEW STOOD for a moment, thinking. He wasn’t a man for rushing into encounters without a plan. He liked to be in control of an investigation, in control of himself. His husband, Jonathan, was creative, impulsive, but Jonathan could read people and situations easily; Matthew didn’t have that skill. His face to the sun, he trawled through his memory for information about Francis Ley. At one time, the economist had been featured in all the newspapers, set apart from most financiers by his West Country accent, the fact of being an outsider. Ten years after the crash, there’d been a television documentary about him, but he hadn’t appeared himself. Former friends and colleagues had appeared, speaking of the prophesies that had been ridiculed, the warnings that had been ignored.

  ‘If he’d been to a different school, a first-class university, people might have taken notice of his warnings,’ one had said. ‘We might have avoided the worst of the crash altogether. But he was never really a City person. He never fitted in.’

  The impression was given that Ley was now rather eccentric, a recluse, disenchanted by the world that had made him a fortune. He’d inherited his father’s farm – this farmhouse presumably – and returned to his roots, then set about regenerating the surrounding villages, buying up failing businesses and working his magic behind the scenes. There were a couple of pubs, now thriving and famous for their food; a fish restaur- ant in Instow with a Michelin star; a handful of village shops, saved from extinction, along with their post offices, but transformed into delis, artisan bakers or potteries and galleries. Not all the changes had been popular. Gentrification, as Jonathan, who’d grown up on a farm on the edge of Exmoor, was fond of saying, especially aft
er a few glasses of wine, wasn’t only a problem of the cities. Locals could feel alienated in the countryside too.

  Matthew Venn couldn’t think what connection Nigel Yeo, who’d worked for an obscure organization linked to the NHS, might have with Francis Ley, but Eve, Yeo’s daughter, lived and worked on Ley’s property and her father was a regular visitor. Matthew would have liked more time to explore possibilities, to do some research. But Ley was here now, and, as Jen had pointed out, he might leave at any time. Matthew left the row of workshops and walked round the house to find the man.

  The door into Ley’s part of the building was reached by a gravel path leading around the house, and it faced not inland, but out to the estuary. There was a garden – a lawn with old-fashioned herbaceous borders – and a view of the Taw all the way to Crow Point, and of the Torridge and the towns of Appledore and Bideford. To the far side of the house stood a newly built garage, from which a paved drive led to the lane, avoiding the yard.

  Matthew stood for a moment to look at the house and thought the building was strangely schizophrenic. This side was well proportioned, classic Georgian, with the original sash windows, symmetrical on each side of the door. The brick glowed in the morning sunlight. Once it must have been the home of a gentleman farmer, and it had been restored here to its former glory, the door freshly painted black, the brass knocker gleaming. It seemed very different from the buildings which looked out at the yard, and the flats in the attic. Jen would have put the difference down to class: the cottage and the scruffy outhouses for the workers, and the grand facade, looking out over the estuary, for the owner. Matthew saw it rather differently. He saw one portion as arty and slightly disreputable; this side of the house, from the outside at least, seemed the height of respectability. It was hard to see how the two groups might co-exist. He knocked at the door.