The Long Call (Two Rivers #1) - Ann Cleeves Page 0,3

back on the sand, and Matthew could see the stab wound in the chest, the bloodstained clothing.

‘How did anyone think this was an accident?’

‘When the woman found him, he was lying face down,’ Ross said. ‘The uniform turned him over.’ He rolled his eyes, but Matthew could understand how that might happen. From the back it would look like an accident, and community officers wouldn’t have much experience of dealing with unexplained death.

The man wore faded jeans, a short denim jacket over a black sweatshirt, boots that had seen better days, the tread gone, worn almost to a hole at the heel. His hair so covered in sand that it was hard to tell the colour. On his neck a tattoo of a bird. Matthew was no expert, but the bird had long wings. A gannet perhaps or an albatross, subtly drawn in shades of grey. The victim was slight, not an old man, Matthew thought, but beyond that it was impossible to guess from this distance. Ross was fidgeting like a hyperactive child. He found inactivity torture. Tough, Matthew thought. It’s about time you learned to live with it. There was something of the indulged schoolboy about Ross. It was the gelled hair and designer shirts, the inability to understand a different world view. He seemed a man of certainty. His marriage to Melanie, whom Jen had once described as the perfect fashion accessory, hadn’t changed him. If anything, Melanie’s admiration only confirmed his inflated opinion of himself.

‘I’m going to talk to the people who live in the toll keeper’s cottage. The gate’s automatic these days – you just throw money into the basket – but they’ll know the regulars and might have seen something unusual.’ Matthew had already turned to walk back along the shore to his car and threw the next comment over his shoulder. ‘Jen, you’re with me. Ross, you wait for the pathologist. Give me a shout when she arrives.’

Glancing to see the disappointment in Ross’s face, he felt a ridiculous, childish moment of glee.

Chapter Two

MAURICE BRADDICK WAS WORRIED about his daughter. The social worker at the day centre had come up with this notion to make Luce more independent. Let her get the bus back from town by herself. We’ll make sure she’s at the stop on time and you live at the end of the route. No danger of Lucy missing her stop. She can walk up the street to the house. She knows the way.

Maurice knew what that was all about. Lucy was thirty now and he was eighty. Getting on. Lucy had been a late child; a bit of a miracle, Maggie had said. But now Maggie was dead and he wasn’t as strong as he once was. He’d always thought he’d go first, because he’d been ten years older. It had never occurred to him that he’d be the one left behind, having to make decisions, holding things together. The social worker thought he wouldn’t be able to cope much longer with his lovely great lump of a daughter, because she had a learning disability. The social worker thought Maurice should be making arrangements for after he was gone. That might be sensible enough but he thought they were less concerned about Lucy’s independence than saving the council the taxi fare.

Every day since the new regime, he’d waited at his window to watch for his daughter walking up the lane. They lived in a little house on the edge of Lovacott village. He and Maggie had been there since they were married. It had been council then, but they’d bought it when the rules changed, thought it’d be a bit of an investment for Lucy. It was a semi at the end of a row of eight, curved around a patch of grass, where kids sometimes kicked a ball about. There was a long garden at the back looking out on a valley, with a view of Exmoor in the distance. These days, Maurice spent most of his time in the garden; he grew all their own veg and they had a run with half a dozen hens. He’d grown up on a farm and worked as a butcher in a shop in Barnstaple, knew about livestock dead and alive. Lucy wasn’t much into healthy eating, but she could sometimes be persuaded if she picked a few salad leaves herself or fetched the eggs. He paused for a moment to regret the passing of Barnstaple as he’d known it. Butchers’