The Darkest Evening

by Cleeves, Ann

  At the centre of the circle sat Lorna Falstone, the lost little girl who seemed to be growing in confidence, taking tentative steps out into the world, exploring her feelings through art. Making new friends. But just as life was getting better, as she was getting stronger, she was killed. Vera wondered if there was any significance in that. Had the shrinking, cowed Lorna been allowed to live, while the more confident Lorna posed a danger and had to die? But why then, in a blizzard in the grounds of Brockburn? Could it be so the Stanhopes would be implicated? Were they implicated? Surely, that was a ridiculous idea.

  Vera got to her feet and tipped more coal onto the fire. She poured herself a glass of whisky and raised a silent toast to the young woman she’d never known, but with whom she felt an unlikely affinity, the woman who would haunt her thoughts and dreams until the investigation was over.

  Chapter Nineteen

  MONDAY MORNING AND JOE WAS ON his way to the private hospital where Lorna had been treated as an inpatient for anorexia. The website said Halstead House was the only place specifically treating inpatient adolescents with eating disorders in the UK. The medics specialized in the physical and psychiatric effects of the illness and there were counsellors and complementary therapists. Joe supposed Sophie Blackstock had been involved with that group. As far as he could tell, the place wasn’t part of a large private health organization, but had been founded by a psychiatrist whose daughter had died from anorexia and the bereaved doctor had made treatment and research into the disease her life’s work.

  The website showed a beautiful country house bathed in sunshine. Joe found this suspicious: the place was just over the border in Cumbria and whenever he’d been to the county it had been raining. The photos showed smiling staff, but few patients. The fees listed made his eyes water. A month’s stay would cost almost as much as the deposit on his house.

  His phone call the day before had been answered by a Scottish woman, who had been polite and professional, even friendly, but had managed to give him no information at all about Lorna. She’d said that there was nobody else he could talk to: ‘Many of our patients have family visits on Sunday, or they’re out on a day’s home leave. Because of that, there are routinely few clinical staff on site. No, I’m sorry, I really can’t pass on our colleagues’ home phone numbers.’

  Joe had supposed she must be used to dealing with tense and anxious parents. He’d fumed gently and made an appointment to visit the following day.

  He’d set out early. The weather had changed again; the wind was back from the north, but the sky was cloudless. He’d woken to a frost, ice on the windscreen. When he’d checked his phone before setting off, there’d been an email from Vera, with details about her trip to the Heslops’ farm. We need to check out the arty boy. The royal ‘we’. Still giving her orders, even at a distance and in the middle of the night. Vera having Wi-Fi installed at the cottage had been a very mixed blessing. He’d messaged her back to remind her that he’d be at the clinic for most of the day and received no reply. The sun came up behind him just as he crossed the Northumberland border.

  There was a discreet sign by the gate: Halstead House Private Hospital. The building was hidden from the road by a line of poplars and came into view as he drove round a curve in the drive. The place was built of weathered red brick, large but not grand or imposing like Brockburn, more domestic in scale. Joe thought it might have been built by a Victorian mine owner who’d wanted an escape from the grime of the Northumberland coalfields. A veranda ran around the front of the house, looking down over the gardens and a tarn in the distance. It was pretty now; in the spring and summer it would be spectacular. There was a visitors’ car park at the back of the house and he left his car there. Beyond it, there was a new building, all glass and pale wood, but with the same grey slate roof. Another sign, with the same lettering style as by the front gate: Well-being Centre. Joe thought it was possible to explain how those extortionate fees had been spent. This looked like an upmarket spa.

  A double door into the older building led to a reception area: country-house scruffy, scratched wooden floors, with a boot rack and coat hooks then a couple of ancient sofas. An open door in the opposite wall showed an office beyond. A middle-aged woman stuck out her head. ‘Can I help?’ She was Scottish, the implacable woman on the phone. Around her neck a lanyard and a pass with a name. Elspeth.

  Joe showed his warrant card. ‘We spoke yesterday.’

  ‘Of course. Joanne is expecting you.’ A couple of teenage girls came through the door. They were dressed in jackets, hats and scarves and they were laughing. It was only when they took off their coats that Joe saw how thin they were, bony and gaunt. He tried not to stare. Elspeth gave them a wave and continued talking. ‘You’re a little early and Mrs Simmons Wright is still tied up with the patients. Can I get you some coffee?’

  He was still drinking the coffee when Joanne Simmons Wright came in, bursting through the door so it banged on the wall behind. ‘I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting.’ She was skinny too, but tall and fit. The same age as the receptionist but ungainly, like a tall kid with too much energy. She had short hair streaked with grey. No make-up. She could be a runner and was dressed like one in Lycra leggings and a long sweatshirt. ‘I take the yoga class on a Monday morning, over in the well-being centre.’

  ‘Yoga can cure anorexia?’

  She recognized the scepticism but wasn’t offended. ‘Well, not on its own, but anything that helps patients feel more relaxed and more at ease with their bodies is going to help. Shall we go to my office? It’ll get a bit crowded here when they all come through.’

  The office was on the first floor at the front of the house, looking down over the garden to the tarn beyond. There was a desk against one wall, three easy chairs. Joe took one. Joanne was leaning with her back to the windowsill, drinking from a water bottle.

  ‘You were Lorna Falstone’s doctor?’

  ‘I’m not a doctor. I’m a psychologist, but I was her key worker.’ Joanne took a seat opposite to him. ‘Poor Lorna. How did it happen? Did she get ill again? Suicide?’

  ‘No.’ He looked at her face. ‘It was murder.’

  There was a stunned silence. He waited for the psychologist to speak, but she turned her head away. ‘You do remember her then?’ he said at last. ‘It was four years ago and you must get a lot of kids through here.’

  ‘Of course I remember. This isn’t a place where people come for a few days. Some of them stay for months. We have to make sure they’re physically stable, build their weight up slowly, insist on bed rest, before we make a start on any psychological problems. We form relationships here. It’s important. Most anorexics feel entirely alone.’ Still, she saw he was sceptical. ‘This illness has real and distressing physical symptoms. The girls’ periods stop, patients’ hair falls out, such weight loss can even trigger a heart attack. This is more than the self-indulgence of teenagers who want to look fashionable.’

  ‘And Lorna needed that? The bed rest? The feeding?’

  ‘She was very ill when she came here. She weighed less than six stone.’

  ‘Hadn’t her parents noticed?’ Joe was horrified. ‘Why didn’t they do something before?’

  ‘Anorexia is a sly disease. It creeps up on the sufferer. In the beginning, the parents might have encouraged the exercise, the decision of their child to cut out apparently unhealthy food. Weight can seem to drop away slowly at first. The sufferers are sly too. They hide. Throw away food when nobody’s looking. Exercise in secret. You have to know that this is all about control. Control and compulsion. In chaotic and uncertain relationships, food is the one thing over which sufferers feel they have any power.’

  ‘You’re saying she was in a chaotic and uncertain relationship?’

  ‘I’m saying that her relationship with the world was uncertain. She felt friendless at school. I have the sense that her parents’ marriage was shaky. I’m pretty sure she’d never had a boyfriend if that’s what you’re asking.
’

  ‘Why did she need to come here? What was wrong with the NHS?’ Joe’s grandfather had been a miner, a union man. He and Sal might live in a smart house on an executive estate now, but this still felt all wrong. Whatever Joanne might say, he thought these were rich kids who just needed to pull themselves together and stop agonizing over their appearance.

  ‘I worked in the NHS for ten years. I’d still be there if it had given me the resources to do my job properly. But it didn’t and this is work that can’t be rushed.’ She looked up at him. ‘I still feel bad about leaving. I still feel that I’ve deserted a sinking ship.’ She paused and when she continued her voice was more even. ‘Some health authorities pay for patients to come here. They recognize that ultimately, we provide good value for money. It’s not cheap to keep an adolescent as a long-term inpatient in any hospital and we have a decent rate of success.’

  ‘Tell me about Lorna,’ Joe said. He wasn’t here to argue politics with a woman who was cleverer than him and knew more about the issues.

  ‘She was bright. Painfully quiet at first. Her refusal to speak was about control again, I think, like her refusal to eat. She was confused. But she did eat and she did put on weight slowly – then we could start the real work.’

  ‘Which was?’ Out of the window Joe saw a young man in a wheelchair being pushed down the path by a carer.

  ‘Building her confidence and self-esteem. Giving her choices about her treatment and her future.’

  ‘She went from here into her own place, not back to her parents. Was that her choice?’

  ‘Yes. By the time she left us, she was eighteen. Officially an adult. We worked with social services locally to find her somewhere suitable.’

  Joe was impressed again that the woman could remember the details so clearly. He forgot most of the cases he’d worked as soon as they went to court. ‘Do you know why her relationship with her father had broken down so dramatically? Her parents are looking after Lorna’s son now. Is there something we should know? Any possibility of safeguarding issues?’

  Joanne looked up sharply. ‘You’re asking if there’s any possibility that the father abused her as a child?’

  Joe nodded.

  ‘No,’ Joanne said. ‘I didn’t pick up anything of that kind. There was more a coldness from the father, I think. A lack of communication. At least once Lorna had passed early childhood.’

  Joe felt frustrated. He’d already gained that information from Jill Falstone. He’d driven all this way and he felt as if he’d come away with nothing to help him explain the young woman’s death. No little gem to carry back to Vera as a gift.

  ‘I didn’t know she’d had a child,’ Joanne said. ‘She kept in contact with me for a while – the odd text or call – but I’ve not heard from her for a couple of years. Pregnancy could have come as a surprise. Former anorexics often struggle to conceive.’ She paused and professional curiosity seemed to take over. ‘Was she depressed after the birth? That sometimes happens.’

  ‘I don’t think so. She seemed to be getting on with her life. She saw her mother regularly. I don’t think they were particularly close, but at least they kept in touch.’ Joe paused for a moment. ‘There was a patient called Nat Blackstock here at the same time. Were he and Lorna friends?’

  Joanne seemed confused by the question. ‘Yes, close friends. I was Nat’s key worker too. But he can’t have anything to do with Lorna’s murder. He died several years ago.’

  ‘Do you remember his brother, Paul?’

  ‘He was an older brother. Very protective.’ She shut her eyes briefly in an attempt to recall the details. ‘He spent a lot of time here. Too much time, I sometimes thought. Nat needed to be allowed to make his own decisions.’

  But in the end, Joe thought, Nat decided to die.

  ‘Would Paul have met Lorna?’

  ‘I’m sure he did. As I said, she and Nat were very close friends.’

  ‘Paul went on to marry someone working here,’ Joe said. ‘A drama therapist called Sophie. Do you remember her?’

  ‘I do! We’ve had a number of artistic residencies over the years. I hadn’t realized the two of them knew each other.’

  ‘They say that this is where they met.’

  There was a silence. Joe looked out over the tarn. Still, he was reluctant to leave without some gem to pass on to Vera. ‘You say that Nat Blackstock’s brother came here often. Did Lorna have any frequent visitors? Apart from her parents?’

  ‘Her parents didn’t come often. Lorna’s choice, not theirs. A couple of pupils from her school turned up once, driven by their parents. I had the sense they were there out of duty – or guilt – rather than because they really wanted to be. And there was an older man, a relative I presume.’

  ‘Would you have kept a record of their names?’

  She shook her head. ‘This is a hospital, Sergeant, not a prison.’

  At last, Joe did get to his feet. ‘Is there anything else you can tell me?’

  Joanne considered for a moment. ‘This is about Lorna as a woman, not a patient. She was hugely creative. She painted and she wrote. Stories and poetry as part of occupational therapy, but she kept a diary too. She said that one day she’d turn it into a book. To help other kids on the verge of anorexia.’

  Joe made a note about that. He wondered if she’d continued writing the diary and where it was now. The CSIs hadn’t mentioned finding anything like that in Lorna’s house and they’d have been looking.

  He was at the door, looking forward to heading east again, and back to proper policing. This was all too close to home. His Jess wasn’t much younger than Lorna had been when she’d started starving herself and Jess was always complaining that she was too fat; she could get faddy with her food too. He’d talk to Sal and make sure she was keeping an eye. He turned back to Joanne. ‘Was Lorna one of the patients who had their care paid for by their health authority?’

  Joanne shook her head. ‘We don’t have a partnership agreement with Northumbria. It must have been self-funded.’

  ‘You would keep a record of that, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Of course. It’ll be in the office. Ask Elspeth to help you.’

  And the efficient Elspeth, tapping on the computer, found the answer he needed very quickly. ‘Lorna Falstone’s fees were paid by a third party.’ A pause. She’d been working on a laptop and turned it so Joe could see the screen. A pro-forma bill, the name at the top: Crispin Stanhope. ‘Shall I print out the address?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ Joe said. ‘I already have it.’ His soul was singing. After all, he did have a little something to take back to Vera.

  Chapter Twenty

  TEN IN THE MORNING, AND VERA was back in Kirkhill, walking the streets, drinking Gloria’s coffee, listening to gossip. The village hall was on the edge of the settlement on the road that led to Brockburn. It was wooden, and looked to Vera like a Scout hut, as if a strong puff of wind would blow it over. She got there before the art class arrived, but the building was already unlocked, the door on the latch. Inside it was cosier. The electric heaters on the wall must have been on for some time and a well-preserved blonde woman was filling a giant urn in the tiny kitchen. She turned when she saw Vera.

  ‘Have you come to join us? It’s only three quid a session and you get tea and biscuits for that as well as the tuition.’

  This must be Veronica, Holly’s informant.

  ‘Ah, pet, I haven’t got an artistic bone in my body. I’m Vera Stanhope, Detective Inspector. You spoke to one of my colleagues in the pub yesterday.’

  ‘You’re a Stanhope?’ The woman was more curious about any relationship with the family in Brockburn than about Lorna’s murder.

  Vera waved her hand. She wondered how often she’d have to explain. ‘A very distant relation to your Stanhopes. I understand that Lorna was a member of your group.’

  ‘She came occasionally if she could persuade Thomas to time his nap to coincide with the sessions. Then she’d wheel him
across in the buggy and join us.’

  ‘Constance Browne is one of your members?’

  ‘Oh, Connie’s our leading light,’ Veronica said. ‘The group was her idea. She’s usually here by now to help set things up.’

  ‘What needs doing?’

  ‘It’s just a case of putting out the furniture. Some of us have our own easels, but everyone else uses the folding tables and they’re stored under the stage. We could set up in our sleep now.’ Veronica hadn’t stopped moving while she was talking to Vera. Now she plugged in the urn and began to root in a cupboard for cups.

  ‘And Josh Heslop? I suppose he gets here early too?’ Vera had been hoping to speak to the tutor before the session started. Overnight, she’d formed the questions she’d have been unable to ask in front of his family.

  ‘Nah, he rocks up just before we start. I don’t think he takes us very seriously. It’s not the most glamorous of gigs, is it, for an up-and-coming artist? Or maybe he thinks shifting tables is beneath him. I suspect he only does the class because Connie twisted his arm. And for the cash, I suppose.’

  The other members of the art group started drifting in. Vera realized that her presence had lowered the average age in the room considerably. Most were in their sixties and seventies; a few were much older. No wonder Lorna only wandered in on occasions. What could she have in common with these elderly people with their chat of bargain cruises and brilliant grandchildren? Why had she attended at all? Perhaps she had felt some form of obligation to Constance Browne. Or, if Josh Heslop was her lover, it provided an excuse to see him without the rumour machine firing into action. Then Vera thought this gentle group of people probably provided her with the kind of warmth that her parents had seemed unable to give.

  Josh Heslop came in, just as a couple of the students were starting to mutter disapproval about his being late. He was flustered, apologetic, full of excuses about his car not starting. Vera thought the group had probably heard it before, but they were indulgent. Really this was a social, rather than an educational, activity. A few of them were already working on a painting and he encouraged them to continue. ‘I’ll come around and take a look.’ He set an earthenware jug, containing bare twigs and a spray of holly, on the table in front of him. ‘Shall the rest of us start on this?’