The Darkest Evening

by Cleeves, Ann

  ‘Hang on.’ Vera scrabbled in her pocket and found a scrap of paper and a pencil. ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Constance Browne. Aged sixty-seven. Address in Kirkhill.’

  That was the last thing Vera had been expecting. Not the address. Kirkhill was just over the hill. But the age. Was this kid, eyelids drooping now, almost back to sleep, a grandchild? And was an older woman wandering around in the snow? Surely someone of that age would have been more cautious about driving in bad weather. More sensible. ‘I don’t suppose the car has been reported stolen?’

  ‘No record of that.’

  ‘Have you got a phone number for her?’

  ‘Just a minute.’ Holly rattled off a landline number and Vera scribbled it down.

  ‘Are you OK to hang on in the station for a while? I don’t know what the weather’s like there, but it’s a nightmare here and I don’t like the idea of an elderly woman out in it alone. We might need to get some sort of search under way. Mountain rescue maybe. People who know the area.’

  There was a pause. Holly always thought she was taken for granted within the team, that Vera made allowances for the others when it came to putting in extra hours, because Joe had his family and Charlie had experienced problems with depression in the past. Holly felt hard done by.

  ‘If you’ve got anything planned for tonight,’ Vera said, ‘I’ll get the duty team on to it.’ She knew this was playing dirty. Holly very rarely had anything planned. The job was her life.

  Another pause. Holly wasn’t daft. She knew she was being played. But she was like Vera. A natural detective. Curious. She’d regret leaving with the story still untold, and if it did develop into a more interesting case, she’d want to be in at the beginning.

  ‘Nothing special,’ Holly said. ‘I can stay for a bit. The snow’s not so bad down here and the ploughs are already out keeping the main roads clear.’

  ‘Let me just give this woman a ring. If she’s made her way home, you’d think she’d be on to us about the baby. She’d want to know it was safe. I’ll give you a bell when I’ve called her.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s fine. Want me to do anything while I’m here?’

  If Dorothy hadn’t been listening, Vera might have asked Holly to find out about her and her partner. In fact, everything that there was to know about this branch of the Stanhopes. Arriving at Brockburn had been like wandering into a world that was alien – apart from those occasional visits with Hector she’d had nothing to do with this branch of the family – yet it was part of her own history, and she was intrigued. Fascinated. Instead, she said, ‘Give the hospitals a call. See if anyone’s been brought in with hypothermia, anyone at all, not just our Constance.’ She still couldn’t rid herself of the notion that the baby’s mother had been in the car.

  She’d just replaced the receiver when the waitresses came in. Now they were wrapped up in thick duvet jackets and looked like ordinary young women. Solid. At the door they pulled on boots.

  ‘Your dad should be here any minute,’ Dorothy said. ‘He said he’d come around to the back door, so just keep an eye out for him here. No point freezing outside.’ She dried her hands on a towel that was hanging over the range and pulled an envelope of cash for each of them from a drawer. ‘If there are any tips, I’ll give you a shout.’

  Vera was on the phone again. She dialled the number Holly had given her for Constance Browne. The snow had piled onto the outside window ledge, but the top panes were clear and she could see headlights; the tractor must be on its way.

  At the other end of the line a voice gave the number Vera had dialled. An older voice, a little prim but firm, confident, with the hint of a question when she added, ‘Hello.’

  ‘Is that Constance Browne?’

  ‘Who’s calling?’

  ‘Vera Stanhope. Northumbria Police.’

  A moment’s pause. ‘Yes, this is Miss Browne.’ Another pause. ‘Is anything wrong?’

  ‘It’s about your car, Miss Browne. It was found abandoned near Brockburn. It had come off the road.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Has it been stolen?’ Vera wished she was in the same room as the woman. She always found it hard to judge a person’s reaction on the phone. ‘Or have you lent it to someone?’

  There was no reply and Vera continued. ‘There was a child in the car. A little boy. A toddler. He’s quite well. I have him with me now in the big house at Brockburn. But I’m anxious about the safety of the driver, who seems to have left the car to get help. There was no phone signal out there, you see.’

  There was another pause and then Constance Browne spoke. ‘I let Lorna use my car sometimes. Lorna Falstone. She assured me she was insured to drive it.’ This seemed to trouble the woman. ‘I’m sorry. Perhaps I should have checked.’

  ‘You’re not in any trouble, Miss Browne, and neither is Lorna. We’re just anxious about her. Does she have a baby?’

  ‘Yes. Thomas. A lovely little thing. But Lorna didn’t ask to borrow the car today and she would never take it without my permission.’

  ‘Is there some way you can check if your car is there, Miss Browne?’ Vera was starting to lose patience. Her colleague Joe Ashworth was much better with witnesses like this.

  ‘Just a moment.’ The woman returned almost immediately. ‘I’ve just looked out of the window. You’re right, Inspector. The car isn’t where I parked it.’

  ‘Who is Lorna?’

  ‘She’s a neighbour. Her parents are farmers. I taught her in the village first school here and I’ve known the family for years.’

  ‘Is there a husband? A partner? Someone we should contact about Thomas?’

  The question was followed by a silence that stretched so long that Vera wondered if Constance Browne had hung up.

  Eventually she spoke. ‘Lorna has been very unfortunate in her choice of men, Inspector. She’s a very gentle soul.’

  ‘Could you give me a name of her most recent partner? An address?’ Vera wondered if, after all, somebody else had been in the car with Lorna. This might turn out to be more than an unfortunate accident. She still couldn’t believe that a caring mother would leave her child with the vehicle door wide open to let in the cold.

  It seemed that this question was too direct for the woman on the other end of the line. ‘This is very difficult over the telephone. But no, I’m afraid I can’t give you any contact details for her child’s father.’

  ‘What are the roads like there?’ Vera said. ‘If it’s possible to drive I could ask one of my officers to talk to you in person.’

  ‘Oh, no! That wouldn’t be sensible at all. We’ve all been advised to stay indoors.’

  ‘If Lorna was in trouble,’ Vera asked, ‘is there anyone she might go to? Her parents? Could she have been making her way to them?’

  Another moment of silence, but now Constance seemed to have appreciated the need for frankness. ‘Really, I don’t think so, Inspector. They had very little in common. Robert Falstone is a rather unforgiving man and it seems his wife hasn’t the courage to stand up for herself. I like to think that if Lorna was in trouble, she would have come to me.’

  ‘She didn’t, though. Not today.’

  ‘But I was out all afternoon! The old folks’ lunch club was holding their Christmas tea in the church hall. I’m on the committee and of course I was there to help out. Perhaps she did try to come and I wasn’t there for her.’ Now, Constance sounded distraught.

  Vera’s attention was caught by the tractor headlights, right outside the window. She expected the girls in black to run out to their father and disappear into the night, but before they could move, the door opened and a man in overalls and a heavy jacket came in. He banged his boots on the floor and took off a balaclava so Vera could see his face. It was red with cold. He filled the room with the outside chill, so the warmth from the range and the girls’ cheerful chatter seemed overwhelmed by it. The conversation fizzled out like hot coals doused with water. They looked at him as if h
e was a stranger. Usually, she could see, he didn’t behave like this. He stared at Vera. ‘I need to use that phone.’

  ‘Sorry, pet. This is important.’

  ‘There’s a woman out there. A dead woman. I doubt what you have to say is more important than that. The police need to know.’

  Vera returned her attention to the woman on the other end of the line. ‘Constance? Sorry about this. I’ll have to get back to you.’ She ended the call. Then she turned to the man. ‘I am the police.’ She saw his incredulity, allowed herself to enjoy it just for a moment, then introduced herself properly.

  Vera pulled on her coat and followed him out into the night. He’d parked the tractor so the headlights shone out into the garden. This was a competent man who thought things through. A practical man, not given to shock, though she could tell this had shaken him. ‘I wouldn’t have seen her if I hadn’t nearly driven over her. She was almost covered in snow. But the wind must have blown some of it away, because I could see her face.’

  They were at the back of the house. Vera wouldn’t have seen her when she was walking from the Land Rover to the impressive front door. There was a track from the Kirkhill road, which the tractor must have taken, nowhere near as grand as the front drive. As Vera remembered, there was nothing to mark the turning but two cottages, owned by the estate, once let to workers. Vera supposed Dorothy and her partner lived in one. Perhaps the other had been sold off, or was rented out to provide income. Had the dead woman walked that way? If so, she must know the house, the lie of the land.

  The snow was fine and powdery. She could see how the wind might have caught the tiny flakes. It was deep enough to trickle into her boots. Thank God for fat legs so there wasn’t much of a gap. The man in front of her stopped.

  ‘Sorry,’ Vera said. ‘I don’t know your name.’

  ‘Neil Heslop.’ It came out as a mutter. His focus was on the mound of snow ahead of him.

  ‘Can you just move away now? Let me see what we’ve got.’

  He nodded and backed away, stood to the side so he wasn’t blocking the light.

  ‘Did you get down from the tractor to look?’

  ‘Aye. I couldn’t believe it and I had to check she wasn’t still alive.’

  ‘You did check?’

  ‘I’m a voluntary first responder. We’ve had training. To check for a pulse. And you’ll see the wound on the side of her head. She’ll have had no chance.’

  Vera didn’t get any closer to the body. She’d do that when she was on her own. There was no sign of the man’s boot prints. The wind and the snow had cleared any mark that he’d made. Any marks that had been here before. There was no way to tell if the woman had walked here with the person who’d killed her or if she’d been dragged.

  ‘Did you recognize her?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Hard to tell when I could only see part of her face, but it could be Robert Falstone’s girl.’

  Of course. We’re not going to have two young women disappearing into the night. Vera wondered how she’d let Constance Browne know. The woman was already guilty and distressed, and now it seemed that her neighbour, the ‘gentle soul’, was dead. She turned to Heslop. ‘Go back into the warm and wait with your girls. It’s time for me to take over. But if you could leave the engine running and the lights on? So I can see what I’m about?’

  He nodded and turned away. The flurry of snow had passed and the night was clear again. So icy that Vera struggled to breathe. She walked towards the woman, then moved beyond her, so the tractor headlights wouldn’t throw her shadow on the body. As Heslop had explained, the face was only partly clear; a layer of hoar frost gleamed on the woman’s forehead and chin.

  She reminded Vera of a child, buried in sand, but a beach scene would have been vivid and noisy and this image was monochrome, drained of colour and sound. Vera took photos on her camera. Heslop had said there was a gash on her head, and it was as he’d described, just above her left ear. It was more brutal than she’d expected: the bone and the brain exposed. Blood. Vera wondered if they’d find blood spatter under the top layer of snow to indicate that the woman had been killed here. She was glad that wouldn’t be a job for her. She needed Paul Keating, the pathologist, and Billy Cartwright, the crime-scene manager, here before the evidence melted away, and the difficulties of getting them to Brockburn preoccupied her for a moment.

  From the house came the faint sound of music. A heavy bass line. The guests were partying, maybe they’d be dancing until dawn. The notion seemed disrespectful, obscene, but how could they know that a dead woman was lying here? Unless one of them was a killer.

  Chapter Five

  JOE ASHWORTH WAS AT HOME when the call came. They’d got the younger kids to bed and Jess was in her room on her phone. She spent more and more time hidden away from them these days. Sal said Jess was nearly a teenager now, only a few weeks to her birthday, so what could they expect? Sal said it was the age that caused the attitude too: the rolled eyes, the sullen silences, the slammed doors. ‘It’s all raging hormones. She’ll come through it.’ Joe missed the old Jess, though. The daughter who held his hand and giggled a lot, and lost herself in Harry Potter.

  They’d decided to have a late supper on their own and to open a bottle of wine. He’d just poured the first glass. Sal had made a casserole that had been in the slow cooker all day, but they were relaxing for half an hour before she dished it out. There was a movie they wanted to catch on the television. When his work mobile rang, he didn’t recognize the number.

  ‘If that’s bloody Vera . . .’ Sal didn’t finish the sentence.

  He shook his head. ‘It’s a landline I don’t recognize. Best answer it.’

  Only of course it was Vera, shouting as if the phone had never been invented and she needed to yell to make herself heard. So Sal, stretched in front of the fire in the same room, could pick up every word.

  ‘We’ve got a body. I need you here. Brockburn House, just outside Kirkhill.’

  He wondered what Vera was doing already at the crime scene, but looked at Sal’s face and knew better than to ask. ‘I’m not on duty tonight.’

  The boss pretended she hadn’t heard that.

  ‘You might have a bit of trouble getting here with the weather, so I’ve arranged for a tractor to pick you up from Kirkhill. You and Holly.’ A pause. ‘Paul Keating reckons he’ll be able to get through with his fancy four-wheel drive and winter wheels and he’ll bring Billy Cartwright with him.’

  Joe began to speak but Vera ignored him. ‘So, you’ll sort out the details with Holly? She’s got the contacts and knows what’s happening.’

  And before he could say anything else, the line went dead.

  Joe knew he should be angry at the way Vera treated him, but deep down he thought she was doing him a favour. She knew what she was doing. If she’d asked him if he minded putting in the extra shift, he’d have had to say, yes, he did mind, with the food almost ready and Sal already angry with the hours he’d put in this month. This way he had no choice and Vera would be considered the villain, not him. In his heart, he’d rather be out in the freezing night investigating a murder, than here in his comfortable suburban home with his family. The notion scared him – what sort of monster did that make him – and he pushed it away while he dug his wellington boots from the cupboard under the stairs and placated his wife. ‘I’m sorry, but you know what she’s like.’

  ‘It’s time you moved from that team,’ Sal said, mouth in a straight line, sullen as her nearly teenage daughter, ‘find a boss who appreciates you.’

  But Joe knew he would never move while Vera Stanhope was in charge of his team. Because she did appreciate him and that’s why he’d been summoned in this way, with Vera putting herself in the firing line. And, anyway, she needed him; she’d go ape without him to talk sense to her. She’d never really understood the difference between her own morality and the constraints of the law. He walked to the end of the street to the main road where the snow had already b
een cleared, to wait for Holly, feeling shit for abandoning Sal when she’d been planning the evening for days, but experiencing too the thrill of excitement and exhilaration that compensated for the boredom of family life, and made it possible for him to be a reasonable husband and father at home.

  When they arrived, it was midnight. The last couple of miles had been weird and disorientating. No street lights. A scattering of stars, hidden when the cloud blew across them again, or by a flurry of snow. The only sound the crunch of the tractor’s giant tyres flattening the snow beneath them. The cab was open on either side. Holly was crouched on the seat next to the driver and he was perched on the wheel arch. The cold had seeped through his down jacket and gloves. It seemed to find any gap where there was bare skin: his wrists, his neck. Holly was wearing a ski suit and hat. He’d teased her when he’d first seen her getting into it. ‘You about to climb Everest?’ Now he envied her.

  They swung around a corner and suddenly there were lights reflected in the snow. The downstairs rooms of the big house still seemed to be lit. The tractor stopped. ‘That’s the kitchen door. Your boss is waiting for you in there.’ They climbed down and Joe pushed his way in. The tractor drove away.

  Inside there was a wall of heat and noise. Voices talking and a child crying. That high-pitched scream that gets under your skin and makes you want to yell back. Or do anything to stop the noise. Joe was confused by the sudden contrast with the dark world outside. A stylish, slender woman in a black dress and heels scooped up the baby from a high chair. On the tray there was an empty pot of yoghurt and a plastic spoon, a couple of toast fingers. ‘I’ll take him upstairs, try and get him settled.’ When she left the room, the other voices faded and everyone was looking at the arrivals.

  Now he’d adjusted to the new environment, Joe realized that he knew most of the people there. Keating the pathologist and Cartwright the crime-scene manager were sitting at the table, hands clasped around mugs of steaming coffee. Joe could smell it. And there was Vera, in her element and her stockinged feet, at the head of the scrubbed pine table, beaming. The only stranger was a woman, angular and tall, of indeterminate age. She moved a large kettle back onto the hotplate of the range, scooped more coffee into a jug and poured on the hot water. It was as if she’d guessed what Joe was dreaming of. She pulled a tin from one of the shelves and lifted pieces of flapjack onto a plate. They oozed syrup and the pieces stuck to each other. She set the jug and the plate in the centre of the table.