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Detective Inspector Matthew Venn walked along the track from his house, and onto the beach. The tide was low and the sand seemed to stretch almost to the opposite bank of the estuary.
From his kitchen window, he’d seen two young girls standing in the middle distance. They were holding hands and had their backs to him, staring, it seemed, towards Instow or Appledore. This was where the two North Devon rivers met and the towns stood, oddly majestic in the early morning light, marking the Torridge entrance on the opposite shore. The River Taw ran just below his house.
This wasn’t a tourist beach, and it wasn’t the time of year for children to be playing. It was January. Cold and clear, a different sort of day for this coast where the westerly winds usually blew rain and cloud. He’d woken to a grass frost, ice on the puddles on the drive, a bright orange sun when at last it rose behind the house.
Matthew had met few children. His sergeant, Jen Rafferty, had a boy and a girl, but they were almost grown up and he only knew of them second hand. These girls looked younger and this was a school day. Matthew’s husband, Jonathan, had already left for work, but Matthew had time owing and the police station was going through a quiet phase, so he’d taken the morning off.
The children weren’t dressed for the beach. Both wore plaid skirts, old-fashioned, long grey socks, blazers and patent leather shoes. A school uniform that he didn’t recognize. He imagined that their knees would be red with the cold, that the salt damp of the shore would be seeping through the soles of the shoes. He looked all the way along the beach, but saw no adults. Surrounded by all the space, the clear sky and the light reflecting from the wet sand, they could have been sculptures. Representing isolation or loneliness. Or mutual support.
He’d pulled on wellington boots before setting out. His work shoes were of good quality and he didn’t want to ruin them. The boots made sucking and splashing noises as he crossed the pools left by the tide, but the girls didn’t turn to see who was coming. As he got closer, he saw that each had her hair plaited in one long braid down her back. When he was ten metres away, the children did turn and they stared at him. Their knees were red, their eyes watery with the cold, and wary. They seemed a little older than he’d first thought. One could be a teenager, almost on the brink of womanhood, but stranded in childhood by the uniform and the hairstyle.
‘Hello,’ he said. He wished Jonathan were here. Jonathan ran clubs for kids in the arts centre he managed. Drama workshops and pottery sessions.
The Woodyard hired out rooms for birthday parties and Jonathan often played the jovial uncle, dressing up as Santa at Christmas. He would know how best to deal with this pair. Though it seemed to Matthew that these girls needed more than a jovial uncle now that they were, somehow, lost.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Is it private?’ The older girl asked the question. No accent, but that didn’t mean they weren’t local. Lots of members of the educated middle-classes had moved to North Devon in search of the good life, and there were many of the home-grown variety too. ‘Shouldn’t we be here?’
‘No, it’s not private.’ He found her stare disconcerting. ‘You have every right to be here.’ A pause. ‘Why are you on your own? Where are your parents?’
The girls looked at each other.
‘We don’t know,’ the younger child said. He thought she seemed on the verge of tears and he couldn’t bear the thought of her crying. ‘And there’s only our mother at home now.’
‘Daddy’s working away.’ The older child’s voice was firm, reproving.
He hesitated for a moment. He was reluctant to ask two young girls to come with him when he was on his own, but he could hardly leave them here. He looked at his phone. No reception.
‘Why don’t we go indoors? That’s my house over there,’ he said, pointing.
‘It’ll be warmer there and we can find out what’s happened to them.’
‘You’re a stranger. We know not to go anywhere with strangers.’
‘Quite right. But I happen to be a stranger who’s a police officer.’ He fished in his jacket pocket for a warrant card and was relieved when he found it. He didn’t have much use for it these days, now that he spent most of his time stuck behind a desk.
He showed it to the older girl. She took it in her hand and studied it carefully.
‘Let’s get you warmed up. I could make some hot chocolate.’
There was a moment’s hesitation and then they nodded in tandem.
Inside the house, the two girls thawed out, literally and metaphorically. Their names were Olivia and Imogen Sellers, and they were thirteen and nine respectively. They lived in the smartest street in Barnstaple. Their mother was called Elizabeth. There was no mention of their father. They sat at the kitchen table, with mugs of hot chocolate in front of them. Even the elder girl had a faint, milky moustache after drinking a little.
‘So, tell me how you came to be on the beach this morning?’
Olivia took a time to answer, but it was already clear that she would be the one to tell the story.
‘We were on our way to school.’
‘Which school?’
‘Brookes. It’s private. For girls. Mummy said we’d do better at a girls’ school.’ A pause. ‘She said we’re very lucky to be there.’
‘And where is the school?’ Matthew had never heard of it, but then why should he have done? Jen Rafferty’s kids went to the local comp; she would have considered a private school a betrayal of all she believed in.
Imogen stared at him with astonishment. It seemed that the school was the centre of her world.
‘So,’ he said, ‘you were on your way to school ...’ He’d be able to find the place soon enough.
‘Mummy had a phone call,’ Olivia said, before adding quickly, ‘She pulled into the side of the road to take it. She’d never drive while she was using her mobile.’
‘Quite right.’
‘Then she drove us here to the beach. She left us in the car and said she’d only be five minutes. But she was gone ages, so we went down onto the sand to look for her. In case anything had happened to her.’
From the tone of the girl’s voice, Matthew thought perhaps things had happened to mummy in the past.
‘Perhaps we should look for the car then,’ he said. ‘In case she’s back there and waiting for you.’
‘We did try,’ Olivia said, ‘but we couldn’t find it so we came back to the beach.’
‘Mummy loves the beach.’ Imogen looked up at him. The chocolate moustache gave the younger girl the look of an animal with fur or whiskers. A dormouse with big grey eyes. ‘We thought she’d be there.’
‘Do either of you have a mobile?’ Matthew was torn. He wasn’t sure whether he should leave the girls here on their own, but he didn’t want to take them out into the cold again. The red knees and the eyes streaming in the icy air had deeply affected him. Besides, he was a detective, and in his work, he came across dreadful sights. The previous spring there’d been a body here on Crow Point, where the rivers met the sea.
The girls shook their heads. ‘Mummy doesn’t approve of screens at school.’
He came to a decision. ‘Why don’t you stay here? No point everyone getting cold. I’ll have a quick look and come back to let you know what’s going on.’ He looked at them. They were serious. Anxious, but perhaps not anxious enough. Maybe it wasn’t unusual for mummy suddenly to disappear.
This time they nodded their agreement.
‘Can you describe your mother’s car?’
Again, it was Olivia who answered. ‘It’s a black Golf.’
‘Daddy took the Lexus,’ Imogen said.
Olivia shot her a look of warning. Matthew thought this family was full of secrets.
+++
Outside, the sun was stronger, but it felt no warmer. He found the car quite quickly, hidden in one of the more obscure parking spots, surrounded by dunes. He could see how the girls might have missed it. They had left the doors unlocked when they’d gone out looking for their mother and he looked inside. No sign of the missing Elizabeth Sellers.
More From Ann Cleeves
‘The Long Call’
Book 1 in the Two Rivers series available free online
‘The Heron's Cry’
Book 2 in the Two Rivers series available free online
‘The Raging Storm’
AARP members can read or listen to the third novel in Ann Cleeves' Two Rivers series
A Chat With the Author
The best-selling British crime writer shares how ‘The Raging Storm’ differs from the first two books in the series