The Heron's Cry

by Ann Cleeves

  Where and when?

  The reply came straight back.

  The Dog and Ferret at one. You can buy me lunch.

  The Dog and Ferret was classic Steve Barton. Eccentric. An old man’s pub where the customers sat with their pints of mild reading yesterday’s free newspaper and grousing about the young. Pasties were the only food on offer. Steve had always haunted bizarre places, making friends with people Ross would never be seen dead with.

  He was already there when Ross arrived, at a table in a dusty corner. The pub was almost empty. Two elderly women were sitting in the window, drinking big glasses of white wine. One had her little finger raised, a mockery of a posh person drinking tea. They stared through the smeared window into the street, and for all the time Ross was there, neither of the women spoke.

  Steve could have been a surfer. His blond hair was too long and he needed a shave. He wore a loose T-shirt so well washed that any logo had faded, and frayed jeans. He had a friendship bracelet on his wrist and sandals on his feet. Anywhere else, Ross would have been embarrassed to be seen in his company, but nobody he knew drank in the Dog and Ferret.

  ‘What have you got for me?’

  ‘At least you can buy me lunch. I’ll have a pasty and another pint of the bitter.’

  ‘I thought you were snowed under.’

  ‘Hey! A man’s got to eat.’

  Ross came back with the pint, an orange juice and two pasties.

  Steve started talking while his mouth was still full. ‘Your guy never saved much on his system and he deleted everything before he topped himself.’ He wiped a spray of pastry from the front of his shirt. ‘I suppose you would, wouldn’t you? I mean, you wouldn’t want your family seeing all the dodgy porn sites you’d been on.’

  ‘It’s not the porn sites I’m interested in. Are you saying you can’t access his accounts?’

  ‘Course not.’ Steve beamed. ‘These days we can access anything. Last month I destroyed a defendant’s alibi by showing he’d used a smart app to start his washing machine remotely. His neighbour had said he must have been in that evening because she could hear the machine going, but in fact, he was thirty miles away.’ He paused, a stand-up waiting for applause that never came. ‘Digging around on your guy’s laptop was a piece of piss.’

  ‘So, let’s hear what you got.’ Steve had always been a smart- arse. ‘I’m in the middle of a murder investigation. I’m not like you. I can’t spend all day in the pub.’

  ‘You said you were interested in the few weeks before Mackenzie died. The man had a Gmail account and from that he sent stuff to his close family and did routine transactions. Pretty boring: happy birthday to his gran, some purchases from Amazon. The day before he went missing, he’d sent a photo of himself in a garden to his mum and his sister.’ Steve paused. ‘The wider Google account’s a bit thin, to be honest, but then most of the family communications would get sent by text these days.’ He looked up. ‘I could check out his phone if you have it?’

  Ross shook his head. ‘We think it drowned with him.’

  ‘That’s more difficult then. His service provider will be able to give you contacts and the length of calls, but I don’t think you’ll get much else. Not the content of texts, for example, and he’d probably be sending photos by WhatsApp and that’s encrypted end-to-end.’ He paused. ‘Are you sure the phone is gone?’

  ‘It wasn’t at the top of the cliff where he left his note, and the family say it’s not in the house. I suppose a passing walker could have nicked it, but more likely, I think, that he had it with him when he jumped.’

  ‘Because I might be able to track it down otherwise.’ Steve had already almost finished his second beer. ‘I could use cell site analysis. If you give me the details, it should be possible

  to map any journey the phone’s taken too. At least then you’d know the guy’s movements on the night he disappeared.’

  ‘Cool.’ But Ross thought they already knew that, because they’d found the man’s outer clothes and his note, and Venn, a stickler for detail, had had the handwriting analysed. It had definitely been written by Mack Mackenzie. Ross thought about the emailed photo sent to Janey and Martha. ‘The picture of the garden in the email attachment. Has it got a house in the background? A red-brick farmhouse?’

  ‘Yeah, that sounds about right. He’s standing there with an older guy. Fat. I’ll send it across with the report.’

  Ross thought about the pictures of Nigel Yeo’s contacts, the ones posted on the board in the ops room. It sounded as if Mack had been standing next to Frank Ley. ‘When was that photo sent?’

  Steve fished in his jeans pocket and pulled out an envelope with some scribbled notes on the back. ‘The day before you told me he’d died. It was a selfie. The two guys standing together.’

  ‘Is that it?’ Ross was disappointed. When he’d got the call from Steve, he’d hoped for more than that, for revolutionary news to break open the case. They already knew that Mack had worked for Ley as a jobbing gardener and that he’d visited Westacombe to see Wesley Curnow in the days before his suicide.

  ‘No! What do you take me for?’ Steve made out he was hurt. ‘I told you, I’m the best. Mackenzie had a separate email account, one that he used for a completely different set of contacts. People that he’d met in a chatroom. That was harder to track down. Even for me.’

  ‘A group promoting suicide?’

  ‘Well, supporting people considering it. They use the hashtag PeaceAtLast and that’s the name of the chat group.’ Steve looked up. ‘But within the Peace at Last forum, there seems to be a core group who call themselves the Suicide Club. Pretty sick, if you ask me. Images of people who look as if they’re about to do the deed. One picture of a woman, a noose round her neck, claiming she’s only minutes from hanging herself. Another giving a list of over-the-counter meds and the amount you’d need to take to finish yourself off. It could all be fantasy. Like, if you’re sharing all that stuff, maybe that’s enough, you know. You’re telling the world, or the members of the Suicide Club at least, how much you’re hurting and getting the sympathy in return, so you don’t actually need to do it.’

  ‘Alexander Mackenzie did it,’ Ross said. ‘Late at night or early one morning, he jumped off a cliff into the sea and drowned. His body was washed up on Lundy a week later.’

  ‘Shit. Of course he did.’

  They sat for a moment in silence. One of the women by the window went to the bar and ordered two more large glasses of wine. Ross wondered if they were as miserable as Mack, and were killing themselves slowly. Perhaps the booze was giving them Peace at Last.

  ‘Can you send over a list of contacts? The other individuals who were in the same group?’

  ‘Sure.’ Steve’s mood had suddenly switched, become sombre. He finished his drink and stood up. ‘Sure. I’ll get onto it now.’

  * * *

  Walking back to the station, Ross phoned Mel. He wanted to tell her that life was too short for misunderstandings, that they needed to spend more quality time together, and to get back to how they’d been when they were first married. That he was sorry. But she didn’t answer, and all he heard was a recorded message of her voice.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  JEN RAFFERTY GOT PERMISSION FROM VENN to go back to Westacombe to visit Eve Yeo. ‘I just want to check she’s okay. I know a family liaison officer has kept in touch, but she’s had such a tough time.’

  ‘Good plan.’ Matthew was sitting at his desk, shirtsleeves rolled up, tie slightly loosened. Jen knew Jonathan teased him about the tie. Eventually, Jonathan had told her, he would persuade Matthew to come to work without it, but she couldn’t imagine it happening anytime soon. Matthew looked up. ‘Talk to the Grieves too. It’d be interesting to know if they were friendly with Mack. As we’re following the line of inquiry that Yeo was threatening to expose the suicide chatroom, it’d be good to check out all Mack’s contacts’ browsing histories.’

  ‘Sarah doesn’t strike me as
suicidal!’

  ‘Nor me. But belt and braces. You know how I like to work.’

  Oh yes, she thought. I know.

  ‘Her husband seems less straightforward, though,’ Venn went on. ‘And talk to Frank Ley. I’m the only person he’s had contact with so far. I’d like your opinion of him.’ Venn paused. ‘He might find you less intimidating than me, easier to talk to.’

  Jen smiled. She thought there were few people less intimidating than Matthew Venn. It was one of the reasons he was such a good interviewer. Witnesses felt they could confide in him. But he was the boss. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Sure.’

  * * *

  The farmyard had been opened again. No tape. No officer on the gate. Jen squeezed her car past the milk tanker and parked by the workshops. Wesley’s studio was shut and padlocked, but the door to Eve’s was open. Jen knew that Sarah Grieve had been in to scrub the floor and the walls, a sign of real friendship, and Jen could smell a faint trace of disinfectant. Eve was working with her back to Jen, twisting a metal pipe with a globe of molten green glass at one end, shaping it with a gloved hand. Jen could feel the heat of the furnace from where she was standing by the door.

  ‘Hiya!’

  ‘Who is it?’ Eve didn’t turn around. ‘Sorry, this is almost impossible to do on my own. I need to concentrate.’

  ‘Jen Rafferty. I can come back in a bit. Or help?’

  ‘Give me twenty minutes then I’m all yours.’

  Jen went back into the yard and walked round to the front of the big house. She knocked at the door. No answer. Ley’s garage was open and she saw his flashy Range Rover inside; he couldn’t have gone far. The vehicle was black, like the car Janey had noticed racing through Instow. Jen made a mental note to tell Venn in case he hadn’t noticed the vehicle’s colour, waited a moment then knocked at the front door again. There was still no response, so she walked to the long window and looked in. She’d always been nosy, always loved these glimpses into other people’s lives. Her favourite time of year was early autumn, when people put their lights on, but forgot to draw their curtains. She’d walk down a street and each window held a moment of domestic drama. There was still no sign of Ley. Jen thought she’d talk to the Grieves and come back later.

  Sarah was working in the long, low building she used as a dairy. She shouted out as soon as Jen opened the door. ‘You can’t come in! You’re not properly dressed for food prep.’ She was wearing a white overall and hairnet, and looked very like one of the CSIs in their scene suits. Jen had a glimpse of stainless-steel counters and bowls.

  ‘Sorry!’ Again, it seemed that she was intruding, interrupting the useful activities of others. This might be a wasted morning. She took a step back into the yard and raised her voice. ‘Have you seen Mr Ley?’

  ‘Not since yesterday evening. He had us all in for drinks. A sort of belated wake for Wesley and Nigel. He invited the Mac- kenzies along too, because he wanted us to remember Mack at the same time. He said the negligent treatment that Mack had received made his death a kind of unlawful killing too. Look, can you come to the cottage in a bit? I’ll be stopping for coffee in half an hour or so.’

  ‘Cool.’ Jen thought she might just sit in the sun for a while to catch a few rays, because she hadn’t stopped working for days, and anyway, who would know? She was looking in her bag for her sunglasses when Eve stuck her head out of the workshop.

  ‘I’m all yours.’

  A low wooden bench stretched along the front of the workshops, and Eve sat there, with her back to the wall. She tapped the top of the bench with her hand.

  ‘This is one of Wes’s creations. I helped him carry the plank up from Instow. It was driftwood, washed up on the beach. He found it early one morning and called me down to bring it back.’

  Jen sat beside her. ‘I just wanted to see how you are.’

  ‘Better now that I can get back into the studio. The work I’m making’s crap, but it’s an escape. You have to concentrate so hard, especially if you’re working solo, that there’s no space in your head for anything else.’

  ‘You’re okay working there?’ Meaning: where you found your father’s body.

  ‘There was a moment of silence. ‘Yeah,’ Eve said. ‘In a way, it’s comforting. There are so many happy memories of us here together. That last image just feels like a nightmare, not real.’

  ‘And you don’t mind staying at Westacombe on your own?’

  ‘I’m not on my own, though. Not really. Sarah’s like a mother hen and the twins are very sweet. She lends them to me for company and cuddles. Then Frank had us all in to his place last night.’

  ‘Sarah said. A kind of wake. Were you all right with that?’ Jen thought it must have been weird, a repeat of the evening before she’d found her father dead in her workshop.

  Eve shrugged. ‘He did ask me first. And yeah, I was in the mood to get pissed. I thought it was probably better to do it in company than on my own. I wish he hadn’t asked the Mackenzies along, but it would have been churlish to object or to stay away. In the end, they were okay, really supportive.’

  ‘Do you know where Mr Ley is now? I need to speak to him.’

  ‘Probably sleeping off a hangover. He had even more to drink than me.’ Eve paused, squinted into the sun. ‘And that wasn’t really like him. It was quite sweet really. He got a bit emotional, made a little speech about the three dead men.’

  There was a moment of silence. Sarah came out of the dairy and looked as if she was about to approach them, then thought better of interrupting and headed for her cottage.

  ‘I have nightmares,’ Eve said, ‘about finding them both. Every night it’s the same. The glass and the blood. And do you know, it’s not the bodies that upsets me – in the dream, I mean, of course, not when I wake up. It’s the broken glass. The wasted art.’

  ‘We can help you find someone to talk to. Someone who’s used to working with victims, people who’ve been through trauma.’

  ‘I know, the family liaison officer said. And I will take up the offer, but I’m not ready yet.’ She nodded towards the workshop. ‘At the moment, this is all the therapy I need.’

  Jen stood up. ‘How well did you know Alexander Mackenzie, the lad who killed himself?’

  ‘He did Frank’s garden, so I saw him around and I got to know him quite well over the years. Sometimes I’d take him out a coffee or a cold drink, and we’d chat while he took a break. I liked him. He was a gentle soul. Open. Like a child but in a good way. Wesley knew the rest of the family better than I did, though.’

  Something about her voice made Jen ask, ‘You don’t like them? The others? You said you weren’t happy that Frank had invited them to the do last night.’

  ‘I just don’t think they were as happy as they all made out. They present this image: the devoted couple, arty and a bit glamorous, then there’s Janey who went off to Oxford, the perfect daughter, brainy and beautiful. But underneath, it feels a bit rotten. Like the image is all that matters to them, and there’s something festering that nobody’s willing to talk about.’ She paused. ‘I’ve always had a vivid imagination, though.’ She gave a little smile. ‘Perhaps it isn’t like that at all.’ There was another moment of silence. ‘Besides, I shouldn’t be so unkind. They’ve lost a son, a brother.’

  * * *

  In the cottage, Sarah had already made coffee. She slid a mug over to Jen. She was sitting back in her chair with her hands on her belly and Jen felt a moment of envy. She’d loved being pregnant, and the early months of being a mother. It was only as the kids had grown into toddlers, demanding and impossible to keep still, that life had become difficult. Robbie had hated the mess and the disruption to his routine, the fact that he could no longer be the centre of her attention. He’d grown tense and angry and her life had become a battle to keep him happy, to prevent the increasingly frequent outbursts of temper. She wondered for a moment what it would be like to have a child with somebody calmer. Robbie had always called her a crap mother and she�
�d believed him, but perhaps it could be different. Then she remembered the teething and the screaming, the sore nipples and having absolutely no time to herself and she set the idea aside.

  ‘When are you due?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve got a couple of months yet. I’m just a fat cow.’

  ‘You’re not having twins again?’

  ‘Oh God, no! Imagine!’ But she didn’t seem so horrified by the idea, and gave a little complacent laugh. Jen thought Sarah would never consider herself a crap mother.

  ‘Did you know Alexander Mackenzie, the young Instow man who killed himself?’

  ‘Handsome Mack? When he started working for Frank, I had a few fantasies about him. Of the Lady Chatterley variety. But he was hardly more than a boy and really a very troubled soul. Frank was so fond of him, and desperately upset when he killed himself. I guess that’s why he asked the family up last night.’ She paused. ‘He did kill himself? You’re not linking his death with these murders?’

  ‘No, nothing like that. But Nigel Yeo was investigating a complaint from the family, who think he was let down by the health service. We’ve found out that Mack was using a suicide forum on the internet. You don’t know anything about that?’

  Sarah shook her head. ‘We certainly never discussed anything personal; we weren’t on those sorts of terms. He seemed very shy to me. Cut off from the real world. He only came alive when he was talking about plants and the garden. He might have talked more to Eve. He seemed to treat her almost as a big sister.’ She paused. ‘He was really poorly the last time I saw him. He’d come up to talk to Wesley and he was in such a state. Tears running down his face. He was banging on the door of Wesley’s workshop, but Wes was in his flat. Wes did come into the yard to see what was going on, but he was never very good with dramas like that, and in the end, it was Frank who calmed Mack down. They sent for Janey and she took him home.’ Another pause. ‘It was a terrible tragedy, but I wasn’t surprised when he killed himself. He was let down by the service which should have been there to protect him.’