‘Ah, yes, sorry about that. Spartan Rescue seem a bit jumpy about not having found the Hind girl. False alarm. Pretty obvious the minute we hooked him out. We did try and call you. You’re welcome to have a look but I’d say you guys are not needed. He’s a jumper, if you ask me. We’ll get an ID from fingerprints, I should imagine. Coroner can take it from there.’
Manon looks past Mackeith, and the throng of frogmen and uniformed officers has parted to reveal the body: muddied, discoloured, and vastly distended. A blue, marbled Buddha.
‘How long ago – any idea?’ she asks.
‘This time of year, water’s quite cold. There’s only moderate decomposition. Two to three weeks, I’d say.’
‘Did you find a wallet, phone?’ she says to the representative of Spartan Rescue, who has rustled towards them in his expensive windcheater. Navy, with pink fleecy trim.
‘No, ma’am, nothing. Just the clothes he was wearing – jeans and a hoodie and some rather expensive trainers, which would’ve helped him sink to the bottom. If you’ve nothing further, we’ll get him to the mortuary.’
They stand on the doorstep of a sawdust-coloured barn, brash new timbers bordered by prissy hedges. But when Manon and Davy walk inside, to interview the dog walker who found the body, they both look up in silent awe at the double-height atrium, thick oak beams criss-crossing the vaulted roof and cathedral-size windows.
‘We’ll try not to take up too much of your time,’ says Manon.
‘No, please. Come and sit down. Can I make you coffee?’ His voice is deep and slow. He walks with a slight stoop in his voluminous corduroys. His bowed head is gentle and apologetic.
‘Coffee would be lovely, thanks,’ says Manon. ‘It’s freezing out there.’
‘This place is amazing,’ says Davy, who has approached the window. The sky has turned pink, striated yellow; a radioactive lozenge at its centre, reflected in the river. Along its banks, leafless trees are silhouetted. The pink of the sunset – so fleshy and garish – has stretched its arm into the room, giving them all a Californian tan.
In front of the wall of windows is a refectory table with two benches, its surface strewn with newspapers. On the other side of the room, a wood-burning stove and russet-coloured dog in front of it in a basket. It raised its head when they entered but lowers it again now, un-fussed.
‘She’s very elderly,’ explains Alan Prenderghast (Davy has whispered his name in Manon’s ear), who is now at the open-plan kitchen area, turning levers on a complex silver coffee machine. The kitchen is a dark U-shape with slate-grey cupboards and black worktop.
‘Lovely view,’ Manon says, joining Davy at the windows and watching the sun squat on the horizon, peppered with birds. She looks to her right and sees a frayed armchair and a pair of binoculars on a table beside it. Silence for a while, which Davy would normally try to fill, but they are both hypnotised by the stillness and scale of the house and its view.
At last, Mr Prenderghast comes to stand next to her and is handing her a cup of coffee, froth covering its surface.
‘It’s my favourite thing about this house,’ he says, looking out with her.
Her cup’s roasted smell drifts up like smoke.
‘You see that field opposite – on the other bank of the river? Every winter it’s allowed to flood and it fills up with literally thousands of birds. Ducks, geese, swans. Teeming with life. Great skeins of them fly in from Scandinavia. I could watch it all day, the landing and the flying off. It’s a very sad view, somehow.’
His voice is calm. It is as if he is selecting every word. The ruffled sleeve of care – his voice could un-ruffle it. She looks at the view, the sunset colours like a bruise, and the bare trees. He’s right – it is the saddest view she has ever seen. She wants to stay in this kitchen, which is so warm and yet so quietly morbid – silent and slow and away from the town – even though she has never been one of those people for whom the countryside is an idyll.
‘It must’ve been a shock, finding the body,’ she says.
‘It wasn’t what I was expecting, no,’ he says. ‘I’ve never seen one before and it was much worse than I imagined, actually. Who was it?’
‘We don’t know yet. A young man. We’ll have an ID by close of play today.’
‘Not the girl, then,’ he says. ‘The one who went missing before Christmas.’
‘No. Not the girl.’
He nods, stooping to sip his coffee while his free hand digs into his trouser pocket.
Davy is sitting at the refectory table with his notepad out. ‘Can I ask what you do for a living?’ he says.
Manon has strolled over to the bookshelves, which are to one side of the stove. They are tall and crammed, with a library ladder propped against one section. Tender is the Night. American Pastoral. Far from the Madding Crowd. Birthday Letters. Jane Austen and the War of Ideas.
‘Yes, of course,’ Mr Prenderghast says to Davy. ‘I’m a systems analyst at Cambs Biotech.’
Freud. John le Carré. A history of Labour foreign policy in the post-war years.
‘What’s a systems analyst, if you don’t mind me asking?’ says Davy.