The Long Call (Two Rivers #1) - Ann Cleeves Page 0,6

been installed because the couple had retired. Or one of them had died. It seemed all he was thinking about today was death. The woman led them into a living room and the man followed. The room was cluttered, a little untidy. Uncared for. It was as if they were camping out here. Matthew wondered what had brought them to the house. They all sat awkwardly for a moment, staring at each other across an orange pine coffee table.

It was Jen Rafferty who spoke first while he was still taking in the surroundings. ‘If you could just repeat your names for our notes.’

‘Hilary,’ the woman said. ‘Hilary Marston, and this is my husband Colin.’ Then she started speaking again and Matthew’s curiosity about the couple’s background was answered without need for any questions. ‘Colin took early retirement, redundancy really. He worked in the legal team for a car manufacturer; that’s all changed of course. Everything’s outsourced these days, nobody has any pride in British industry now. And our area had changed – people from outside moving in. One time, you knew all your neighbours. Not any more.’

Matthew broke in. Jen leaned so far to the left that she’d only recently become reconciled to the Labour Party. She couldn’t cope with intolerance, and he could tell that she was already a bit prickly. ‘What brought you to North Devon?’

‘We’d been here on holiday,’ Hilary Marston said. ‘Loads of times. We thought: That’s the place for us to end our days. We never had any kids to think about and we loved it to bits. So quiet and so clean.’ A pause. ‘No foreigners.’

‘Well, it’s certainly very quiet here.’ Jen had an edge to her voice that only Matthew picked up.

‘Yeah, well,’ Hilary said. She shot a look at her husband. ‘Sometimes you can have too much of a good thing. We’re only renting here – it certainly wouldn’t be our choice of furniture – and it wasn’t the best decision we ever made. Maybe we saw the cottage through rose-coloured glasses when we viewed it in the summer. Colin’s a birdwatcher. The marsh is his idea of heaven. It’s not mine. We won’t be staying. We’ve put an offer in on a house in Barnstaple, where there’s a bit more life.’ She paused. ‘A bit more culture. And it’ll be closer to work for me.’

‘What is your work?’

‘I’m a mortgage advisor with a bank in town. I was planning to retire too, but this job came up. Only part-time, but the extra cash is always useful.’

Matthew turned to Colin Marston. ‘Were you out on the marsh birdwatching today?’

The woman, her resentment palpable, didn’t give her husband the chance to answer. ‘He’s out there every day.’

Colin Marston ignored her. Perhaps her sniping was so common that it had become no more than background noise for him. ‘I do a daily census.’ He spoke with a quiet pride. ‘Real ornithological research is about regular counts of common birds. I’m not just a lister, interested in rarities.’ The last sentence was spoken with a sneer.

‘Does your research take you onto the beach too?’

‘That’s part of my census walk. I end up there. I count the gulls on the shore and come inland at Spindrift, then back along the toll road home.’

Spindrift. Our house. Matthew thought now he might have seen the man walking past, anonymous in the waxed jacket and wellingtons they’d seen in the hall, binoculars round his neck. Out in all weathers.

‘What time were you there today?’ Jen asked.

Colin Marston left the room. Through the open door, Matthew saw him take a soft-back notebook from an inside pocket of the jacket. He sat down again and opened it.

‘Twelve thirty-five.’ He looked up. ‘I note the time at every watch point. My own way of working. Citizen science in action.’

In an armchair in the corner Hilary rolled her eyes. Matthew thought it must be a strange marriage if they had so little in common, if she could be so dismissive of her husband’s passion.

‘Did you see anything unusual while you were walking today?’ He was aware of a silence and stillness in the room. An awareness of danger or, more likely, excitement. Perhaps it was a shared passive voyeurism that kept the couple together.

‘I didn’t see a body on the beach,’ Marston said. ‘I asked your constable where it was and I know that I’d walked that way. I would have seen it.’

‘But did you notice any strangers? You’d know the regulars if