The Long Call (Two Rivers #1) - Ann Cleeves Page 0,26

that made me think he was worth the effort, I suppose. A kind of intensity. A charisma. I probably should have asked Gaby first, but it is my house.’

‘He moved in, but he hadn’t stopped drinking?’

‘He hasn’t been drunk like that first time. Besides, I’m not the booze police. I can’t take responsibility for all the people I work with.

‘How did he pay the rent? If he was volunteering so much, he wouldn’t be eligible for job-seekers allowance.’

Caroline shook her head. ‘I don’t know. He said he could pay. And he did pay, every month.’

‘So, if he had access to cash, why was he homeless?’

‘Accommodation’s not that easy to find round here. Not reasonably priced accommodation.’ But the woman sounded uneasy, defensive, as if she too had been worried about the source of Walden’s money. She looked at her watch. ‘Is there anything else? I should be going soon.’

‘Was Simon close to anyone? Friends he might have made at work in the hotel? Any of the other service users?’

Caroline answered immediately. ‘No. He was a loner.’

‘Did you know that he’d killed a child?’

‘You know about that?’ Caroline’s eyes looked very large behind the glasses. ‘It was an accident. It haunted him. Really haunted him. He still had nightmares about it and it ruined his marriage.’

‘Did Gaby know about that? Your father?’

‘Dad wasn’t at St Cuthbert’s the night Simon turned up. I told you: he’s not hands-on these days. He gives more of his time and energy to the Woodyard. He even dragged Edward along there to help at one time.’ Her mouth snapped shut. Again, Jen thought her relationship with her father was more complicated than she was letting on. ‘That night, it was just me and Ed. That was when Simon let it all spill out, about the child and his guilt. Simon spoke about it in group therapy, but Dad never attended those sessions. And I don’t think Simon ever talked to Gaby about anything important.’

‘We’ll need your fingerprints,’ Jen said. ‘The CSIs will organize that. Can you let Gaby know?’

‘You think one of us might have killed him?’

‘From what you’ve said, Simon Walden didn’t know anyone else.’ Jen realized she’d been too sharp. She couldn’t understand why she found the woman so hard to like. Caroline was compassionate, doing good work. They believed in the same causes: social justice, equality. ‘But no, it’s about elimination. We’ll try to trace any stranger who might have visited the house.’

‘The house is often full of people – musicians, artists. Gaby sings too and she’s always bringing people back.’

‘All the same,’ Jen said, ‘we’ll be asking for your fingerprints. Do you have any problem with that?’ There seemed something odd about the woman’s reluctance to co-operate.

‘Of course not.’ Caroline marched towards the door, expecting Jen to follow her.

Chapter Nine

THE WOODYARD WAS A MONUMENT TO Jonathan’s confidence and competence and Matthew regarded it with a mixture of pride and envy. He was a good detective, but he’d never achieved anything quite as great as this. This place would still be a derelict timber yard with a decaying warehouse at its heart if it weren’t for his husband. After his travels, Jonathan had returned home to Exmoor, taken a low-paid job as carer of a man with learning disabilities and loved it. He had the right mix of humour and compassion and worked his way through the system, without really meaning to, no end goal in sight, until he was managing a day centre. He’d loved that too and that was when Matthew had met him.

Matthew had been policing in Bristol then, the big city, only two hours from where he’d grown up but a world away: culturally diverse, buzzing, alive. He’d felt as alien there as he had in Barnstaple, but anonymous. Nobody cared that his family were religious bigots who’d disowned him because he could no longer believe in their God, or that he’d dropped out of university, because the academic pressure had stressed him almost to madness. He was good at his job and that was all that counted. He’d met Jonathan at a conference about working with vulnerable adults. There’d been a three-line whip from management that someone should attend and nobody else in Matthew’s team had been interested. It had been his fortieth birthday and Jonathan had been his present.

They’d kept in touch, spent weekends together, mostly in Barnstaple, quietly, under the radar. Not a real couple, Matthew had told himself. He couldn’t be that lucky. This was