The Long Call (Two Rivers #1) - Ann Cleeves Page 0,73

tried to keep his thinking slow and methodical, but the senseless mess jangled his nerves and made it hard for him to think straight.

He walked through to the bedroom, aware of Ross and Jen following. It suddenly hit Matthew that Walden would have hated this. The intrusion. The disorder. He hoped the man hadn’t seen it before he was killed. That led on to the question of when the place had been ransacked. Surely after Walden’s death, Matthew thought. There’d been no sign of a break-in. Perhaps the key found in Walden’s laundry had been a spare and one had been stolen from his body, along with the phone, wallet and credit cards they’d never found. Unless the women in number twenty had been involved and were very, very clever, and Gaby had pretended to find the key in the washing machine after they’d already used it.

Walden had kept all his photographs in his bedroom, but they’d been left untouched. It seemed the searcher had been looking for something bigger than a slip of paper that could be hidden behind an image. The glass hadn’t been smashed. Another indication, Matthew decided, that this was a search, not an act of revenge or hatred. There were pictures of a woman, in various stages of maturity, growing from a schoolgirl to a smart businesswoman, standing proudly in front of a restaurant. ‘His wife?’

Jen nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s her. Seems as if he was still a little bit in love.’

There were only two other photographs: one of an older couple and another of Walden in uniform surrounded by a group of soldier friends. They had their arms around each other’s shoulders and they were laughing.

Jen pointed to one of the men in the picture. ‘That’s Alan Springer, the guy we spoke to in Bristol. The one who claims Walden owed him money.’

The rest of the room was a heap of clothing and bedding. In the small bathroom, the bath panel had been ripped off and the lid of the cistern had been removed. There wasn’t much else to damage there.

‘We’ll lock it again and get the CSIs in.’ Matthew thought there was little point adding to the confusion by doing a search of their own. ‘I doubt that the person who did this left their fingerprints behind, but it would be interesting to see if anyone else involved in the investigation has been in here.’

They stood outside while Ross called it in. It was proper rain now, not a downpour but deceptive, insidious. Matthew felt it seeping into his skin down the neck of his shirt. He pushed open the door of the bookmaker’s and went inside. A middle-aged woman was behind the counter. A couple of men stood in front of the machines and another was glued to a television showing a horse race. All glanced at him briefly then turned back to what they were doing. Except the woman at the counter. She turned towards him. ‘Hiya!’

He felt as if he’d wandered into a different and seductive world. Of course the Brethren had been hot on the sin of gambling, a vice on a par with adultery, sodomy. And not wearing hats to meetings. It was warm in here and welcoming. As a child, he’d scuttled past the doors of betting shops, anxious that he might be drawn into temptation. Even now, he experienced something of the thrill of a guilty pleasure, just by being inside.

The manager had a badge that named her as Marion. He introduced himself but didn’t explain his true interest in the flat. The last thing he needed was her talking to the press. ‘It looks as if there’s been a break-in upstairs. I wonder if you heard anything.’

‘No!’ She was interested but he thought she hadn’t linked the tenant to the dead man at Crow Point. ‘You’re not safe anywhere these days, are you? Did they take much?’

‘It’s hard to say.’ He paused while the horse race came to an end and the punter tore up his slip in disgust. ‘So, you didn’t hear anything?’

She shook her head. ‘I wasn’t even sure if anyone was still renting. You never see anyone going up. I just thought they must be out at work all day.’

‘And no one hanging around outside?’

She laughed. ‘Anyone hanging around outside would be my punters having a fag.’

He smiled back and was about to leave when she called him back. ‘Hang on, there was a letter for him. It arrived a couple of days