The Long Call (Two Rivers #1) - Ann Cleeves Page 0,34

a pan, intense as a priest at communion. The kitchen was all stainless steel and gleaming, unexpectedly quiet. The lunchtime service had yet to begin. In the background, acolytes moved swiftly and silently about their work.

Sutherland approached him warily. ‘This is a detective, chef. She’d like a few words.’

‘Not now.’

‘Yes,’ Jen said. ‘Now.’

The man looked up. His eyes were blue and hard. He took the pan off the heat. ‘What do you want?’

‘Simon Walden,’ she said. ‘He’s dead. He was murdered.’

‘He stopped working here in the autumn.’ The voice was unexpectedly pleasant, a light tenor.

‘I know that.’

‘So why are you bothering me?’

‘You worked with him all season. I was hoping you’d be able to tell me something about him. Something that might help us find his killer.’

‘We weren’t friends. I didn’t know anything about him and I wasn’t interested. He was a decent baker. Reliable enough, but no real attention to detail or presentation. And he couldn’t take instruction.’

‘He didn’t like being bossed around.’ Jen thought she’d struggle to take instruction from this man.

‘He had an attitude problem. Passive aggressive. He thought I didn’t trust him. This is my kitchen. I don’t trust anyone. It caused a negative atmosphere and it affected my work. I couldn’t have that.’ Clarkson’s attention was pulled back to the pan. ‘When did he die?’

‘Yesterday. Sometime in the afternoon.’

‘I was here all day. From mid-morning. We were catering for a wedding. You’ll have to look elsewhere for your killer.’ He moved the pan onto the heat again and turned his back to Jen.

* * *

Jen stood outside the hotel. In a large conservatory with a view of the sea, well-dressed women sat drinking coffee. Through the glass she couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the painted nails and occasional flashes of silver as the sunlight caught bangles and earrings made them seem exotic, glamorous. Brightly coloured birds in an aviary. It was hard to imagine Simon Walden working here. She thought he’d probably hated it, and wouldn’t have come back, even if he’d been offered the chance again.

So, who had lied? Simon or Caroline? Caroline had said that his stay was temporary and soon he’d be moving out of Hope Street. It was one thing to have a strange lodger for a few months, quite another to have him lurking there indefinitely, a reminder that not everyone was as lucky as they’d been. Haunting them, like the albatross he’d had tattooed on his neck.

Jen thought he’d been unlucky at the hotel. The chef was obviously a sociopath. She couldn’t imagine getting on with him either; she’d have clashed with him as Walden had done. She was beginning to feel some sympathy for the man. She walked back to her car.

She phoned Matthew again. There was still no answer, but there was a voicemail from Ross asking her to go back to Hope Street to check the recorded messages on the landline there. By the time she arrived at number twenty, it was mid-afternoon and school chucking out time. Groups of school kids wandered down the high street at the bottom of the road. She let herself into the house with the spare key she’d been given. The CSIs were still working in Walden’s bedroom, and she shouted up to them to let them know she was there. She could tell by the powder on the handset that the phone had already been fingerprinted; she lifted it and dialled 1571 to pick up the message.

It seemed the messages hadn’t been checked recently. There was a list of cold calls: charities seeking donations, insurance companies, one from a dentist reminding Ms Preece that her appointment with the hygienist was due. Nothing personal. The women at number twenty were of the generation when texts were more common than phone calls, certainly more common than phone calls to landlines.

Then there came the message that Matthew had been most interested in. It had been left fifteen days before. First the usual pause that came once the caller realized he wasn’t speaking to a real person. Then a male voice, jaunty, friendly. Jen thought she could catch an undertone of threat, but that could be her imagination; after all, she was looking out for it.

‘How’s this as a blast from the past? Bet you never thought I’d track you down. I told you I would, didn’t I? You can’t escape your old buddies after all.’

She got out her phone and set it to record, then replayed the message. The boss