The Darkest Evening

by Cleeves, Ann

  Her thoughts turned to Juliet. The letter from Crispin only told them what they’d already suspected. It was good to have the confirmation, but it didn’t do much to move the investigation on. What really interested Vera was Juliet’s motivation. Why bring the letter to Vera’s attention? She can’t have been so stupid as to believe that Vera wouldn’t follow it up. She was still thinking that over when she came to the Falstones’ place. She was close to the fence Robert had been mending on her previous visit, but there was no sign of him now.

  On impulse she took the track to the farm. Jill must have been at the kitchen window and had seen her coming, because the door was opened before Vera could knock. The woman stood there with the boy on her hip, looking better than when Vera had seen her before, less worn down and worn out.

  ‘Come away in.’ A smile.

  Even since her visit on the previous day, the kitchen looked different. A colourful rug on the floor had replaced the brown mucky one, and a painting made from a child’s handprints was stuck on the fridge.

  Jill saw Vera looking at it. ‘We’ve started going to the parent-and-toddler group in the village. I’m not the only gran going along with the bairns. It’s been a chance to meet up with old friends.’

  ‘Did Crispin promise that he’d look after Lorna? Even after he’d died.’

  Now Jill looked wary. ‘He said we weren’t to worry.’

  ‘Were you surprised that there was nothing in his will?’

  Jill gave a little laugh and shook her head. ‘Nah, the rich always look after their own. And we never really belonged to him. Besides, I wouldn’t have wanted it.’

  ‘It might come in handy now, with little Thomas to care for.’

  ‘I suppose it might. But we can manage.’

  Jill set the child down on the rug and offered coffee, but Vera shook her head. She hadn’t finished thinking. There was more walking to do.

  She was tempted to make her way back to Kirkhill, to her car and then on to a pile of ham, eggs and chips in Gloria’s. Her legs were aching. She’d walked further during this investigation than she had for years, since long before Hector had died. When she’d been looking after him, there’d been no time for walking for pleasure. It was all work and then thankless grind at home. But her brain was firing on all cylinders now and she had the sense that if she went further, she might make the links that would bring her close to a solution.

  In the distance, she could see the high wall that surrounded Brockburn. Before that, there was the Home Farm where the Heslops lived, almost in the shadow of the Stanhopes’ palace. Away from the roads, the three houses were closer than she’d realized before. Broom Farm, Home Farm and Brockburn, all linked through history and obligation. Vera thought she’d go as far as the entrance to Home Farm and then turn back. As she approached, she saw the two girls, Nettie and Cath, sloping down the lane towards the house. They were dressed again in black: skinny black jeans and Kimmerston High School hoodies. Both skinny themselves, and they must be freezing. No real coats and not an ounce of flesh on either of them. Vera met them just by the gate that led to the farm.

  ‘Why aren’t you two at school? It’s only lunchtime.’

  ‘Last day of term.’ That was Nettie, the older one. ‘They let us high school kids out early.’

  ‘Did the bus drop you up by the cottages?’ Vera thought she should place Dorothy and Karan’s cottage on her mental map too. They were part of the Brockburn estate.

  ‘Yeah. Josh was going to pick us up but he’s having car trouble again.’

  ‘Do either of you drive?’

  ‘I was too young until my birthday.’ Cath sounded resentful, then smiled. ‘But I’ve got my test booked now. I’ve been driving round the farm for years.’

  ‘I passed my test a month after I was seventeen,’ Nettie said, ‘but the parents are making me wait until my next birthday until I can get a car.’ A pause. ‘That’s so mean. I only need an old banger.’

  Vera leaned against the gate to catch her breath, her mind still fluttering with ideas. ‘Did you hear about Miss Browne?’

  ‘Of course.’ Cath this time. ‘It’s all over social media. A serial killer on the loose in Kirkhill. We were warned at school not to wander about on our own.’ She didn’t sound scared. Excited, if anything. The invulnerability of the young.

  Vera thought that when she made it back to the Land Rover, she’d get Holly to check social media and see what was being said.

  ‘You still doing extra classes with Karan Pabla?’

  ‘Yeah, no real holiday for me.’ Cath didn’t appear upset, though.

  Vera looked up the track towards the farmhouse. ‘Is your brother at home?’

  ‘I guess,’ Nettie said, ‘unless he could con Dad into lending him a vehicle. He’s stranded without his car.’

  Vera followed the girls up the track in the hope of talking to Josh Heslop, but when they got there, it was Neil with his head inside the bonnet of the car, looking at the engine.

  ‘Shouldn’t that be Josh’s job?’

  The girls had sloped off into the house. Neil emerged, wiping his hands on a bit of rag.

  ‘Ah, well, he’s not exactly practical, my lad. Which is why he let his vehicle get into this state.’

  ‘Is he around?’

  The man shook his head. ‘He’s gone into Newcastle on the bus to catch up with some of his mates.’

  ‘Did you know he was friendlier with Lorna than he first let on?’

  ‘She was a bonny lass,’ Neil said lightly. ‘No doubt there were a few lads in the village had their eye on her.’

  ‘Do you think Josh could be the baby’s father?’

  ‘No.’ Now the man was definite. ‘My son’s a good man. If he was the father there’d be no need to be secret about it. He’s single and free. He’d have taken responsibility for the bairn and we’d have supported him, welcomed Lorna and the boy into the family if that was what they all wanted.’ He closed the bonnet. ‘That’s patched up for now. It’ll last a while longer. I’m heading into the house for a bite and you’d be welcome to join us.’

  Vera hesitated for a moment. No doubt there’d be home-made cakes, maybe a pan of soup. Rosemary, Neil the Viking and the two girls would be sitting round the table together for lunch. But she decided she wasn’t in the mood for happy families and her brain was still whirring with ideas. The walk back to Kirkhill might clear it.

  She’d almost reached the village when her phone rang. The sound startled her. There was so little mobile reception here that it was the last thing she was expecting. She didn’t recognize the number but answered anyway.

  ‘Vera, it’s Ernie. You’re a tricky person to get hold of.’

  Ernie was the retired Wildlife Liaison Officer. She remembered she’d sent him the photo of Lorna’s painting. ‘You know where that cottage is?’

  ‘Of course.’ His voice was smug. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t recognize it yourself. It was close to one of your father’s old haunts.’

  Cocky bastard.

  ‘Well, don’t keep me in suspense.’

  ‘It’s on the Brockburn estate. Only a couple of miles from the big house, but you’d not find it if you didn’t know it was there. I’ll send you the grid reference.’

  Vera thought she had no map with her and the GPS on her phone wouldn’t work out here, even if she knew how to follow it. ‘Why don’t you meet me in Gloria’s? I’ll buy you lunch and then you can show me yourself.’

  He pretended to think about it before answering. ‘Could do,’ he said at last. ‘There’s nothing on this afternoon that won’t wait for another day.’ She could tell, though, that he was delighted to be asked.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  ERNIE WAS WEARING A WAXED JACKET, corduroy trousers and leather boots, and until he opened his mouth, he could have been a member of the gentry he claimed to despise. He was a small man, slightly hunched with a rat-like face and thin hair. Vera thought he had a wife at home, but couldn’t rem
ember her name and Ernie had never mentioned her.

  Once they’d finished eating, he spread an ordnance survey map over the table. The lunchtime rush was over and they had Gloria’s cafe to themselves.

  ‘It’s down here by the burn.’ He pointed with a thin finger. ‘It was a water mill once. Jinny’s Mill, the locals call it. But only the shell of the miller’s cottage is left. When I was a lad, walkers used it as a bothy, but then the forest grew up around it and nobody goes there any more.’

  Lorna went there. Over a long period of time if she painted it in the winter and also in midsummer when the flowers were in bloom.

  ‘So how do we get there, Ernie? We’d best be quick or the light will have gone.’ Vera didn’t fancy another walk in the dark and the cold. Thoughts of the night she’d spent keeping vigil with Constance Browne still gave her the creeps, still appeared on the edge of her consciousness.

  ‘We can drive to the back lane that leads down to Brockburn and take it on foot from there.’

  They went in the Land Rover and parked not far from Dorothy and Karan’s cottage. Vera thought again how compact the area of the investigation was and how connected the leading players were to each other. They made their way towards the big house, but before they reached it, Ernie turned off down a grassy path. Vera noticed tyre tracks had flattened the grass in places and remembered her meeting with Nettie Heslop the day after Lorna’s murder. Perhaps the girl had come this way on the quad bike, and hadn’t been driving from the big house or to feed sheep as Vera had thought then. Perhaps all the young people of Kirkhill used the cottage as a meeting place, but Vera couldn’t imagine that Lorna would have been part of that group.

  The track narrowed to a footpath. The forest here wasn’t formed of the ubiquitous Sitka spruce; this was a patch of deciduous woodland, bare enough now to let in the afternoon light. It didn’t feel as sinister as the dark pines of the Forestry Commission plantation. Vera thought Lorna had captured the magic of the place in her painting. In the spring, it would be beautiful, a pool of bluebells. The path led downhill and at last opened into a clearing very different from the one where Constance Browne’s body had been found. The sun was very low now and slanted through the bare trunks onto a meadow. The almost derelict cottage faced them with its back to the water. They stopped for a moment to look at it. The stone walls were crumbling and covered in lichen. Most of the windows were cracked and covered in cobwebs, and ivy grew out of the chimney. The corrugated-iron roof was as rusty and multicoloured as Lorna had painted it.

  Vera walked across the grass towards the house. Ernie reverted to his role as subordinate officer and followed at a distance. If it had ever been possible to lock the cottage, that time had long passed. The door was sagging on large metal hinges and propped shut with a stone that might once have been part of an outbuilding. Vera moved the rock, pulled open the door and looked inside.

  The building was surprisingly watertight. The roof hadn’t rusted to the extent that the metal had worn through into holes. Vera had been expecting a dump – piles of beer cans, evidence of drug use, the occasional used condom – a place where the bored young of the community might gather to pass their spare time. But as her eyes grew used to the gloom, she saw that it was tidy, more adults’ den than teenagers’ hangout.

  There were two rooms. This must once have been where the family lived and ate. There was still a small cast-iron range against one wall. The floor was of cracked stone flags, but had been recently brushed. In one corner, a pile of sheepskins provided a makeshift day bed. Someone must have carried them here, unless there was another way into the clearing, because there was no access for a vehicle; not even a quad bike could have made it down the narrow path through the trees. The scrubbed pine table, with the drawer in one side, the settle and two chairs might have belonged to the place, been used by the miller or whoever else had lived here, but they’d been cleaned and mended. There was nothing but the paintings to link the cottage to Lorna, but Vera was convinced that this was where the young woman had met her lover.

  She turned to Ernie. ‘Do you know the place where we found Connie Browne’s body?’

  ‘Aye. I met Les Robson, the forester, in the Stanhope yesterday. He was talking about it. He and I go back a way.’

  Of course you do.

  ‘How far is this place from there? As the crow flies.’

  ‘Be more likely the buzzard round here.’ Ernie must have realized she wasn’t in the mood for that kind of comment, because he continued speaking immediately. ‘A mile at the most, but you’d probably have to fight your way through the trees. And know where you were going. Quickest would be back along the path, then the road and the forest track.’ A pause. ‘What are you saying? That she could have been killed here?’

  ‘No reason for thinking that.’ But Vera did think it. ‘I’ll get Billy Cartwright and his team to take a look, though. Just in case.’ She was itching to look through the sheepskins, in the table drawer, to explore the further room she could only glimpse at from here, which had probably once been a bedroom, to search for Lorna’s diary, love letters, any scraps of information which might be hidden, but she didn’t want to contaminate the scene.

  She looked at her watch. The light was fading now and she had an appointment at the big house. Then she got out her phone and saw there was a bit of reception.

  ‘Are you okay to stay here until the cavalry arrives, Ernie?’ It was against all the rules but Ernie had been wedded to the job and was more reliable than most young PCs she knew. Anyway, there was no evidence that this was a crime scene. Just a feeling in her gut that the place was significant.

  He grinned. ‘It’ll cost you a pint or three.’

  She nodded her agreement to the deal. ‘Cheap at the price, Ernie.’ Then she got Joe Ashworth on the phone.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  WAITING FOR VERA TO TURN UP, Juliet was feeling rattled and indecisive. She hadn’t felt able to confide in Mark, though he was back in Brockburn, still giddy with the triumph of his play. He’d arrived earlier than Juliet had expected. She’d hoped to talk to Harriet before he got home, to prepare her for Vera’s visit, but the afternoon had passed without Juliet quite finding the courage for the confrontation. Then Mark was there, elated and beaming. Usually she’d have been happy for him. She enjoyed basking in the reflected glory of his professional successes. She’d never been very good at anything and admired his confidence, felt somehow that his competence rubbed off on her. Today, though, his first words on coming through the door seemed to strike the wrong note:

  ‘It’s a sell-out all week. The website crashed this morning because so many people were after tickets. We got a review in the Guardian and it went crazy after that.’

  Nothing about the killings. No anxiety about Juliet, knocking around in this house with a murderer not yet caught, out of her mind with worry. He’d heard about Connie, though:

  ‘I saw about it on Twitter and then the phone calls started.’ A little chuckle. ‘Perhaps we should start running Murder Mystery weekends before we get the theatre project up and running. With all this interest we could make a bomb.’

  ‘I really don’t think this is something to joke about.’ Tension made Juliet’s reply sharper than she’d intended. Part of her suspected he wasn’t joking at all. Perhaps he did see the killings as a money-making opportunity, a chance to get even more publicity for his projects.

  Mark looked immediately chastened, a schoolboy reprimanded by a favourite teacher.

  ‘You’re right, of course.’ He took her into his arms and held her for a moment. ‘That’s in very poor taste. Constance was a sweet old thing and I know you were very fond of her. It’s so sad and we’ll all miss her. Do the police have any idea what might have happened?’

  ‘They’re still trying to discover the identity of Thomas’s father.’ Juliet paused, looked at Mark for a reaction but there was none. She pushed away the moment of suspicion. Of course Mark couldn’t be the boy’s fa
ther. ‘Vera will be here in half an hour. She might have more information then.’

  ‘Vera’s some sort of relative, right? The one who looks like a bag lady. Do they really think she’s competent to run the investigation?’

  Why do you think she might not be? Because she’s a middle-aged woman who doesn’t dress to please men?

  But Juliet said nothing. She didn’t have Vera’s courage to be herself. ‘I need to speak to Mother before Vera arrives. I’ll be down in a moment. Dorothy’s gone home but she’s left a casserole in the Aga for dinner.’

  Mark seemed not to hear. He was looking at his phone, smiling as he scrolled through the admiring tweets and messages from his theatrical friends.

  Juliet knew that Harriet was in her room. She knocked on the door and went in, was hit by a blast of heat.

  ‘It’s very cosy in here.’ Resentment made Juliet braver than she might have been.

  ‘Darling, you know I’m not like you. I can’t do the cold.’

  ‘Vera will be here soon and I need to speak to you before she gets here.’

  ‘Oh, Vera!’ Harriet dismissed the woman with a wave of her hand. ‘She reminds me of dreadful Hector every time I see her. One of her subordinates was here this morning. Rather brighter than her boss, I thought.’

  ‘She’s a clever detective, Mother, and you need to listen.’ Juliet sat on the other comfortable chair in the room. Mark must have switched on the lights on the cedar. She saw them through a gap in the curtains, thought they made the tree look ridiculously inappropriate, almost flighty, like a flashily dressed woman at a funeral. She took a breath. ‘I know about the letter Father wrote to you about Lorna Falstone.’