The Long Call (Two Rivers #1) - Ann Cleeves Page 0,79

Walden and left at the bookmaker’s shop below his flat. It was from a firm of solicitors in Exeter. Ross, you were going to check that out.’

Ross stood up. Matthew hadn’t had a chance to discuss this with him beforehand, so he waited with interest like the others.

‘Walden first contacted the lawyers to make a will,’ Ross said, ‘but apparently he got in touch again wanting advice about something else. They wouldn’t give me the details over the phone but apparently one of the partners will be in North Devon tomorrow and is prepared to “fit us in”.’ He waved his fingers in the air to indicate the quotation marks. ‘Honestly, they’re the most pompous bunch of arses I’ve ever dealt with. It took me more than an hour to get past the receptionist.’

‘What time can he see us?’

‘He’s coming here to the station at three.’ Ross paused. ‘You’d better see him, boss. I doubt he’ll be prepared to talk to a lowly constable.’

Matthew nodded in agreement, not because he was prepared to pander to the lawyer’s prejudices, but because he wanted to hear what the man had to say. ‘So tomorrow we need to focus on the financial aspect of Walden’s life. We’ll go back to St Cuthbert’s and see if one of their clients has suddenly come into money. Ross, you need to really have a go at the banks and see what was going on there. And we’ll leave Jen to work with Christine Shapland. There might still have been a crime committed: abduction or abuse. I can’t believe she’d been wandering around that pool for three days. It’s much more likely that she was being held somewhere and then dumped in a place where she’d be unlikely to be found for a while. We’ll meet again the same time tomorrow evening.’

They moved away to their homes and families; a group of younger, single officers got together to go to the pub. They asked Matthew if he’d like to go along, but he knew they weren’t really expecting him to say yes. They found him a little upright and proper and they couldn’t quite relax when he was there.

When he arrived home, he was pleased to see that Jonathan’s car was already parked outside the house. Matthew doubted his prompting had made a difference, but he liked to think that it had. The rain of earlier in the day had quite gone and there was moonlight on the river. Inside, Jonathan seemed restless. He wasn’t good at sitting still all day; the pile of papers and accounts and the anxiety about Christine Shapland had taken its toll. Matthew knew how it would be. The man would stay up late switching TV channels, drinking too much whisky.

‘Do you fancy a walk? It’s light enough.’ Matthew thought that might help and he wasn’t fit for bed yet either. And anyway, he wouldn’t sleep until Jonathan did.

They went through the gate in the wall at the edge of the garden and that took them straight onto the beach. It was impossible here to tell where the river ended and the sea began. Arm in arm they walked, the shadow thrown by the moonlight turning them into one person, misshapen and weird.

Chapter Twenty-Four

GABY WAS WORKING IN HER STUDIO when she heard that Christine Shapland had been found. Jonathan Church had come all the way up to her eyrie to tell her. She resented the interruption briefly; she’d been entirely focussed on one piece of sky in the Crow Point painting and it was always hard to get back the concentration once she was pulled away from her work. But he seemed so joyful, so sure that she would share his excitement that it was impossible not to smile.

‘How is she?’ Gaby cleaned her brush. The moment was lost and anyway, it was probably time to finish. She sang in an amateur kind of way – at one point in her life she’d dreamed of performing, of wealth and celebrity – but art had always come first. Each month there was an evening of jazz in the Woodyard cafe and she’d been invited to sing with a band she admired. She needed to change, to chat to the musicians. It wasn’t a big deal, but most of her friends were coming along to watch. Caz and Ed would be there. Even Simon had said that he’d come; she hadn’t quite known what to make of that. Now, she wondered for a moment