Ann Cleeves: The Glass Room

‘I don’t know exactly. She had to direct me. In the middle of nowhere. She didn’t have the postcode, so I couldn’t get it on the satnav. Nightmare!’ He paused. ‘She called it the Writers’ House. Strange name.’ He paused. ‘What do you want her for anyway?’

But Vera didn’t answer. She’d replaced the phone and her mouth was full of pie.

The next morning Jack was lurking in the yard waiting to catch her on her way to Kimmerston. She was earlier than usual and she’d thought she might miss him. How long had he been out there? He was pretending to work on his old tractor, but Vera knew fine well he was waiting to check up on her. She went up to him and stood, legs apart, hands on hips, and put on the fierce voice she used occasionally to show her team she meant business.

‘I’ve promised I’ll look for her. But I’ll do it in my way and in my time. I’ll tell you as soon as there’s any news.’

He nodded, but said nothing, and Jack – who was all words, flowery and flowing, whose life was a series of stories – made this silence speak volumes. She got into the Land Rover and drove away, aware of him watching her all the way down the lane.

In the office she googled the Writers’ House and found it at once. It seemed there was nothing sinister about the place. Unless you found poets and novelists sinister. This was a retreat for writers of all sorts, and throughout the year it hosted a number of residential courses for writers with different levels of experience. What had she been expecting? A Gothic tower, where Joanna had been trapped by a madman who’d persuaded her to fall in love with him? The pictures on the website showed a large whitewashed farmhouse. Part of it was very old, according to the advertising pitch, and fortified against the Scots who had raided across the border. One view did show a bare-stone outside wall with crenellations. And there was a small, dark chapel. But inside it was all very tasteful and not Gothic at all. Flagstones on the kitchen floor, bare beams, stripped wooden doors. Low sofas and easy chairs, with only the occasional flipchart to indicate it wasn’t a private home. The place was run, apparently, by a company of the same name, headed by someone called Miranda Barton.

There were pictures of the tutors, and even Vera recognized a couple of names: a poet who appeared on television occasionally, talking about the decline of British culture; a playwright. The fees seemed to her to be exorbitant, and certainly well beyond Joanna’s pocket. Unless Joanna had a secret fund left over from her marriage. In large red letters it said that bursaries were available to writers who showed talent, and it occurred to Vera that Joanna’s disappearance was no more disturbing than that: she fancied herself as a writer. Perhaps she’d been awarded one of the bursaries, but had been embarrassed to tell Jack what she was up to. Perhaps she wanted to wait until she’d finished a piece of work before telling him.

A course had started the day Joanna took herself off from Myers Farm: ‘Short Cuts. The art of the contemporary crime short story.’ Cuts , Vera thought. Very witty. You could tell they’d be good with words. She had just clicked onto the link when she heard footsteps outside her office: her sergeant, Joe Ashworth, dead on time for their daily morning meeting. She turned off the PC, feeling faintly guilty without really understanding why.

Mid-afternoon, she wandered through to the open-plan office where Joe was filling in his overtime form.

‘I’m off,’ she said. ‘Taking back some of the time I’m owed from the Lister case.’

‘Going to the gym?’ A sly little grin. He knew she’d been told to lose weight.

‘Piss off!’ But there was no animosity in it. After a week of strategy meetings and appraisals she was looking forward to being away from the office. It was still clear and bright and, driving east past the newly ploughed fields, where the low sun threw long shadows from the trees lining the road ahead of her, she felt more optimistic than she had for ages. Since the last major inquiry.

She’d printed out a map from the Writers’ House website and had to stop every now and then to check directions. This wasn’t work, not really, so she was back in Hector’s Land Rover. No satnav. She felt the wonderful liberation of the truant. Rounding the brow of a hill, she had a view of Alnmouth, with its pretty painted houses, and the bay, and turned north past the masts and domes of RAF Boulmer. Then after a series of missed turns and narrow lanes, she could see the house. It was in a steep valley that led to the coast, sheltered on the landward side by trees. The old fortified farmstead with a newer extension leading away from the sea. The chapel forming one side of a courtyard. She pulled into a farm gate to get her bearings and decide what tack to take with Joanna. Now she was here, she wasn’t sure how she should play the situation. What if the group was in the middle of some intense discussion on the meaning of literature and life? Vera pictured them seated round the room she’d seen on the Internet, writing pads on their knees, brows furrowed in concentration. She was sure everyone would enjoy the drama of the interruption: Vera walking in demanding to talk to Joanna. Everyone except Joanna, who’d be mortified. Time for a bit of tact, girl.

There must be, Vera thought, staff. An office manager, a cook, someone to make the beds and clean the toilets. People she could talk to and get a feel for the place. If the punters paid that much for a week in the wilds, they would expect to be looked after. She decided she’d leave the vehicle where it was and go in on foot, get the lie of the land, wait until any group activity or workshop was over and she could get Joanna on her own.

The light was fading quickly now and the temperature had dropped. Walking east down the lane into the valley, she was entirely in shadow. In the morning the house would be filled with light, but now the place had a gloomy air. The trees in the copse had dropped their leaves and the lane was covered with them. Once she almost slipped. She arrived at the gate to the Writers’ House. There was a professionally painted sign and the logo of a quill pen that she recognized from the website, and beyond, a large garden. After the house the lane petered into a track that was no more than a footpath. It led steeply down to the small shingle beach that she’d seen from the car. There were no other buildings within sight. If you wanted a place to write without distraction, this would suit the bill. But it occurred to Vera that it would be a long trek to the pub.

Approaching the house, she felt nervous. Here she was well out of her comfort zone. She couldn’t flash her warrant card and demand respect and attention. No crime had been committed. And she’d never really got on with arty types: people who used words with ideas behind them, but had nothing real to say. She was more comfortable with the villains she brought to court.

Now she could see the place in more detail: a big house and then some old outbuildings, stables perhaps, that had been turned into a cottage. Both faced into a paved area that must once have been a farmyard. To her right the tiny chapel that must once have served the extended family that had lived here. In the house they’d switched the lights on, but they hadn’t drawn the curtains. This was Vera’s favourite time of day. She’d always been curious, loved the glimpses of other folks’ domestic existence as she walked down the street. And what was it to be a detective, after all, but to pry into other people’s lives? There was a big front door, but she avoided that. It looked as if it locked automatically from inside, and she didn’t want to ring the brass bell that hung outside. Not until she knew Joanna was still there and she had some idea of what was going on.