Crook's Hollow

by Rob Parker

The drystone wall below the back corner, on which the van was half-perched…

  The flow of water had all been too much. With a sickening tilt, the caravan began to roll back towards Roisin and Barry as the wall outside finally gave way. Thor was thrown towards the kitchenette as the world began to tumble, the lone candle flying off the table, spraying hot pink wax. Everything went black, and Thor’s body was battered from top to bottom as he bounced from this to that surface, before their fall was abruptly slowed by a huge crash and the rush of freezing water.

  The caravan had fallen from the valley wall right down into the flowing flood of the Hollow. Thor could just about make out the roof (or was it the floor?) bending like a cardboard box as water flushed in through the front door. He couldn’t see Roisin or Barry; couldn’t see anything clearly.

  He crawled to the front door and shut it in an attempt to stop the caravan from sinking, but water was spraying in icy fountains from cracks in the window frames.

  For now, the caravan was just about afloat, but Thor could feel its movement. The flow had them, and was funneling them downstream at a quickening pace.

  Suddenly, the struggle started up again in what remained of the living room. Thumping and scrabbling. Thor couldn’t get his bearings to get to them, nor did he know what he would do if he could. The sounds of struggle seemed to slow, and Barry hissed the word bitch with bile-flecked venom.

  Then another impact rocked them, a scraping, shunting, sideways impact. The caravan had started to pinball through the trees at the bottom of the hollow, picking up speed and cannoning this way and that. Thor couldn’t even try to stay upright, so he curled up on the floor, covered his head, and hoped it would please, please, for God’s sake end.

  And somewhere out there, beyond the swell, sirens started wailing.

  46

  As Thor later found out, the police arrived just in time to see the caravan disappear over the edge of the Hollow, and eventually lost sight of it as it clattered through the first rank of trees.

  At some point, Thor had taken a heavy knock—in a series of them. He couldn’t remember any of what had happened until he was awoken by the intrusive light of a paramedic’s torch as the man checked his pupils. He was still in the caravan, and it was daylight. And when they eventually pulled him from the wreckage of the caravan, he saw that its roof was missing, and that it had come to rest on its side in the primary school playground, right in the centre of Crook’s Hollow, and he was being rescued by a team in boats.

  He remembered seeing Jason, vaguely recalled high-fiving him weakly while flat on a stretcher, and he remembered DCI Okpara overseeing the scene from the bow of one of the boats, like an admiral in a three-piece suit.

  In hospital, in a private room this time, he went over everything with Okpara. He held nothing back, told him everything, starting with the envelope his father had left him. His dad’s one last attempt at explaining himself, at coming clean and trying to make amends. The deeds to his property, the fake will created by Rue and Barry… and Roisin’s birth certificate, proving beyond doubt her parents were Wilkes Loxley Sr. and Millicent Crook, the lost daughter of the Crooks. He told him what Rue and Roisin had told him, that they had concocted a plot to kill him out of desperation and revenge—and for money.

  Okpara in turn told him that Barry and Rue’s bodies had been recovered, each with near identical neck wounds that corroborated Thor’s story. The envelope was nowhere to be found, just like Roisin, who, dead or alive, was still missing, but Crook’s Hollow was still mostly underwater. The village was in shambles, and would take time to heal and settle. Just like Thor.

  A few days later, Okpara came back with more news. The Crooks had been stopped trying to get their trailer onto a ferry into Europe, and after a few days of questioning, using evidence gathered from Crook’s Farm, they eventually buckled and confessed to Ward’s murder of Wilkes Sr., the circumstances surrounding Millicent’s apparent suicide at twenty, and the subsequent systematic abuse of Roisin, who had become a living symbol of everything they despised.

  Thor hated what Roisin had done to him, and was completely repulsed by it, but he nevertheless felt an uneasy, if genuine, sympathy for her. She was his sister, after all, a fact that he was slowly coming to terms with.

  Thor also got word that the local council had come to their senses. After the natural disaster that had occurred in Crook’s Hollow, no development plans would be approved in the area for the foreseeable future. All deals were off. Clyne and COMUDEV had slunk away.

  As things got back to normal, and the waters of Crook’s Hollow gradually receded, things began to make sense to Thor: the ‘runt’ of the litter, the afterthought. He was an apology, his very existence was a ‘sorry.’ No wonder he had struggled to bond with his mother—he was a living reminder to her of his father’s infidelity.

  And that was what he resolved to fix. He had wrongs he needed to right, and his mother was where he wanted to start.

  And that’s what he was now doing. Three weeks after the night that saw her husband murdered, Thor was sitting with his mother, Bunny, in her small living room at the council-provided retirement community in Windle Heath.

  She was inundated with visitors since moving in, her children and their children. The loss of Rue and Wilkes Sr. was a sore blow to them

  all, and while the family would remain shell-shocked for some time, the crimes that had been revealed muddied the extent of their grief, rendering it unclear. Like Crook’s Hollow, life for them would never be the same again. But life had to go on some way.

  ‘I don’t know how you stayed with him, Mum,’ said Thor, as he brought his mother a cup of tea through from the kitchen into the living room. Christmas was coming, but that didn’t stop a little winter sun splashing through the bay window by Bunny Loxley’s chair. The tea sloshed in the china cup, one of the few things salvaged from the shambles of Loxley Farm.

  ‘Love makes you do funny things,’ she replied. The profound simplicity of the statement took Thor aback. He had been so dismissive, so wrong. So blind to the strengths of his mother, who had done anything she could to keep her family together. Yes, she hadn’t been perfect, but she had tried. He owed her that same effort.

  ‘My brothers and sisters OK?’ he asked after a moment. He knew they had rented a house together on the outskirts of the village, seemingly unable to break tradition just yet. Rue’s children were with them, swallowed up by love and concern and routine, as were Wilkes Jr.’s. Thor thought it sounded rather happy, but he couldn’t bring himself to join them. He was his own man, and always had been.

  ‘Yes, they are, by all accounts. Mercy is looking after Rue’s children. It’ll take time, but I think the end of the farm will be good for them.’ She glanced around the room, taking it in, and her eyes settled out of the window. ‘This change will be good for us all, in the end. Living life in a bubble can blind you to all sorts.’

  The doorbell rang and Thor got up and answered it. It was DCI Okpara. He held out his hand to shake Thor’s but on seeing the plaster cast on Thor’s right wrist and hand, quickly dropped it.

  ‘Forgive the intrusion. I thought you’d be here,’ he said. ‘It’s OK. Do you need to come in?’

  ‘No, just a quick word with yourself is all I’m after.’ ‘Go for it.’

  ‘First, I wanted to apologise to you again for not getting to the bottom of things sooner—’

  Thor interrupted him. ‘You don’t need to say that again. Nobody could have seen where it would end up. You were doing your job, and anyone would have done the same.’

  Okpara nodded slightly in thanks. ‘Be that as it may, my authority would have been better placed following your lead.’

  ‘You’re a good bloke, Okpara. Don’t worry about it.’ Okpara smiled, but the smile quickly faded.

  ‘There’s more… The flood water has all but receded, and… we found her. Roisin Crook.’

  Thor didn’t know how to react to this news.

  ‘Her
body was found stuck in the roots of a leylandii hedge at one of the more well-to-do properties on the southern side of the village.’

  After a moment, Thor said: ‘Thank you for letting me know.’

  The sun threatened to push through high above them, but the stubborn winter clouds were holding firm. Okpara made no move to leave, but stood looking at Thor.

  ‘What happened to you was terrible, Thor. But what happened to her was very bad too, what her family, what those twin uncles of hers did to her… She would have gone to jail for a very long time for her crimes. But nobody should have gone through what she did.’

  ‘I understand.’

  Okpara patted his sides. there was nothing else for him to say. Now Roisin had been found, everything would be turned over to the Crown Prosecution Services. It was their problem now.

  ‘Take care of yourself,’ Okpara said. ‘See you round.’

  Thor shut the door and leaned against it. He held himself still and had a silent moment for his sister, who had suffered so much—and had done terrible things. But Okpara was more than right: none of it should have happened. He tried to ignore the repulsive reality of what happened and the grim sordid history that had made her who she was.

  Thor tried to imagine an alternate universe where he had a sister who was a similar age to him, who he had grown up happily with, in the right way. He didn’t know whether he would ever get comfortable with the thought of thinking of Roisin as his sister, but like everything else, he would try. And he was a trier—he knew that much.

  He went back through to his Mum.

  END

  Acknowledgements

  All my gratitude to the following:

  Thank you to everyone at Endeavour Media, who I simply love working with - James Faktor, Rebecca Souster, Rufus Cuthbert, Alice Rees, Imogen Streater, Hannah Groves, Amy Burgwin, Sophy and Matthew Lynn - You are all brilliant!

  Thank you to Reagan Rothe, David King, and Justin Weeks.

  Thanks to Ted Gilley for his excellent editorial work on the book, that really set it on the right path.

  To early readers: Mum, Dad, Tom Pickup and James Stuart. Your thoughts and feedback were always invaluable and kept the show on the road.

  To Danielle Ramsay, Steph Post, Torquil MacLeod, David Joy, and Adrian McKinty - for being constant inspirations, and for reading this book and lending your words.

  To Linda MacFadyen, for always putting me and my books in the right place at the right time.

  To Linda Langton. Eternal thanks to yourself and everyone at Langtons International Agency.

  To my wife Becky, and my amazing children Avalyn, Sylvia and Robin. No words get close. Love you all.

  To Mum and Dad, Jonny, Susie, Charlotte and Abigail, and Lauren, Matt and Max - love you all and thank you for always supporting me. What a family…

  To all my friends and family. Thank you for pushing me on and always having my back.

  And simply - to every reader. Thank you.