The Slay of the Land (The Heathervale Mysteries Book 1)

by Matilda Swift

  Two other police officers got out of the back seat of the police car. They were struggling to move beneath their bulletproof vests and utility belts; they looked like students in fancy dress. Arrina felt a pang of worry for them as they headed into the college to secure the scene—they’d probably never handled anything more serious than neighbours squabbling over land boundaries or teenagers sneaking underage drinks.

  ‘Arrina,’ said a fourth officer, nodding his head sharply as he got out of the driver’s side and walked towards her.

  This officer’s name was Ian. For a while, Arrina had known him well from nights in the pub with Tony. Ian’s button-straining belly and the way he tried to hide his bald spot by lifting his chin called up memories of his bad puns and beer mat tricks.

  Arrina, Tony, and Ian all stood in silence. Then Ian, the senior officer of the group, looked at Tony and pointed towards the front entrance of the college.

  ‘Report in,’ Ian said. Tony walked to the door a few metres away and spoke into his heavy-duty walkie-talkie.

  Arrina forced herself not to look over at Tony. Not to even listen to his voice. She focused her full attention on Ian.

  ‘I understand there’s been an attack,’ Ian said.

  Arrina cleared her throat. Tucked her hair behind her ears. ‘It’s Hugo Hayes,’ she said, uncertain whether she’d given his name on the phone. ‘He’s in the bathroom, and there’s... a lot of blood.’

  Ian nodded again and looked down at his black notepad. Arrina took the unobserved moment to rapidly blink her watery eyes. Then she tucked her hair behind her ears again. She could handle this.

  ‘Inspector!’ The shrill voice of Gillian DeViers cut through the air. Arrina winced at the sound.

  Just a minute ago, Gillian’s face had been ghostly pale. But now, it was bright red with anger. Gillian’s feeble shaking also seemed to have cleared up quickly. Her jewel-laden hands were planted firmly on her hips as she stood at the front entrance of the college.

  One of the young police officers ran out of the building after Gillian. The officer was a blonde woman, who Arrina now recognised as the leader of the local Scout group. Some of Arrina’s students had volunteered with the group’s camping trip just a few months earlier.

  ‘Inspector!’ Gillian repeated, fixing her attention on Ian. ‘This girl here is trying to detain me against my will, and I will not be told what I can and can’t do by someone I’ve known since she was in knee socks and pigtails.’

  ‘We’re still securing the scene,’ the young Scout leader said, clearly repeating something she’d told Gillian several times already. ‘I just wanted you to remain in a room that we’d cleared.’

  ‘Mrs DeViers—’ Ian said as he jogged over to where Gillian stood at the front of the college building—moving faster than he probably had done in years. Arrina followed him slowly.

  ‘It is Ms DeViers,’ Gillian corrected.

  ‘My apologies. Now if we can just—’

  ‘You can stop right there with whatever pandering nonsense you are about to propose.’ She held a hand up in front of his face. ‘What is going to happen next is that you personally will escort me away from here then ensure the safety of my abode.’

  Gillian strode towards the police car, forcing Ian to hurry back the way he’d just come. His large stomach bounced with the movement.

  ‘The safety of your—’ he started, sounding confused.

  ‘Heaven only knows if I’ll ever truly feel safe again.’ Gillian glared at Arrina as she passed her on the driveway, as though she herself had arranged the events of the day with the aim of inconveniencing Gillian. ‘Not with a madman in the village. And who’s to say that I wasn’t the intended target?’

  Gillian walked around the car, stood by the passenger door, and folded her arms. Then she sighed with exasperation when Ian did not immediately understand that she was waiting to be helped in.

  Gillian’s role as Chair of the Parish Council gave her a certain amount of influence with the local police. Tony had complained about it to Arrina on more than one occasion when they’d been together. But the Parish Council paid the salary of one of the officers in the very small local police force, and so the higher-ups had commanded that Gillian was to be treated with the utmost respect.

  Ian jogged over and opened Gillian’s door. Then, as he came back around to the driver’s side door, he barked out quick instructions. ‘You,’ he said to the young female officer, ‘get back inside! Never leave your partner alone at an unsecured crime scene.’ The young woman turned to dash back in. ‘And chase up with the medical examiner’s office while you’re at it. We need them down here ASAP.’

  The woman nodded then hesitated on the doorstep, unsure whether she could go. A sharp ‘Now!’ from Ian sent her running through the doors into the college.

  Then he looked between Tony and Arrina, who were standing several feet away from each other at the entrance to the building.

  It was then that he noticed something which Arrina had been praying nobody would ask her about that day.

  ‘What’s happened to your CCTV?’ asked Ian.

  Arrina’s stomach clenched into a ball of hot iron.

  Above the front door was one of the college’s two security cameras. Or at least, what remained of it. This one and the one at the back of the building had both been smashed to pieces sometime last night.

  Just kids, she’d thought when she came in first thing to find the cameras were broken—the ground in front of each encircled by a halo of rocks and glass. Just kids messing around.

  She hadn’t even considered reporting it to the police. Instead, she’d sent Sampson Morgan, the college’s security guard, out to buy replacements. It was a breach of protocol to leave the college without a security guard when the building was open. But it hadn’t seemed to matter much since it was the school holidays. On any other day, it wouldn’t have meant a thing. But this was not any other day.

  ‘They’re being replaced,’ Arrina said, knowing that this didn’t really answer Ian’s question. ‘Sampson’s out sorting new ones right now, so—’

  A loud knocking from inside the police car interrupted Arrina. Gillian DeViers was leaning over to the driver’s side and rapping hard on the window.

  Ian looked like he was considering a murder of his own. He opened the door and climbed in.

  Before closing the door, he said, ‘Tony, find out the story behind the CCTV cameras, then take down Arrina’s statement.’ He hesitated, looking sorry to put the two of them in an uncomfortable situation. But then Gillian cleared her throat loudly and tapped her hand twice on the dashboard, and he shifted his sympathy back to himself.

  ‘I’ll track down Sampson,’ Ian said, looking relieved to have an errand that would limit the time he would need to spend with Gillian. ‘Then I’ll head back over here.’

  As Ian drove away, Arrina turned around to face the college. There was an unmistakable stillness about the place—one which clearly said, There’s no coming back from this.

  5

  Arrina and Tony stood at the entrance of the college until the car engine faded into silence.

  They had broken up eight months earlier. When walking through the village, Arrina could pretend not to feel a painful twinge at the sight of Tony. But right there, outside the college, with her emotions already raw from the tragedy inside, she was struggling to fight the prickle of tears.

  But she couldn’t collapse. Not here. Not in front of Tony.

  ‘Let’s head to my office,’ Arrina said. Then she strode into the building without waiting for Tony’s reply. Inside the room, she hesitated beside her comfy red sofa. But no, she and Tony had sat there together—cosied up cross-legged with takeaways when Arrina was too busy to get away for a date.

  She sat at her desk instead. He took the chair opposite.

  ‘The CCTV was broken when I arrived this morning,’ Arrina said. ‘I haven’t had time to review the footage yet, but I’ve seen no evidence of anythi
ng else being broken or stolen.’

  She glanced over at Tony, who had said nothing since sitting down. He held his notepad in his hand but didn’t open it.

  ‘Arrina,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry to have to put you in this position.’

  I’m sorry. That’s what he’d said when he’d broken up with her as well. He hadn’t explained or even given Arrina a chance to sort out whatever mix-up had made him want to end things. He’d just apologised and walked away.

  ‘I arrived at the college at around half past seven,’ Arrina said with a slight waver in her voice that she hoped Tony wouldn’t notice. ‘That’s a little later than I usually get here, but this morning I ran out of coffee, so I detoured via Do-Re-Mi.’

  Arrina tried not to picture Tony sitting in her kitchen, sipping coffee while running his fingers through her sleep-mussed hair. She failed entirely.

  ‘Maybe I should get one of the others to take your statement,’ he said.

  ‘Then I sorted through emails and post in here,’ Arrina continued. ‘That took thirty minutes to an hour, I suppose. After that, I spent the morning tending to various issues around the college, such as hunting down the specifications of the CCTV cameras and checking on the updates to the computer lab that were done over the summer.’

  Tony opened his notebook and silently began to take down the details of what Arrina was saying. Or perhaps he was scribbling nonsense just to avoid looking at her. Arrina couldn’t tell.

  ‘I didn’t go down the corridor that the... where Hugo was found until Gillian discovered...’ Arrina took a deep breath. ‘The first person to go down there this morning was Gillian DeViers, who, as far as I know, touched nothing. We both returned to this office, from where I rang 999. And that brings us about to here.’

  Tony wrote a few more notes.

  ‘Thank you,’ Tony said. ‘I think that’s—’

  A knock on the door interrupted him.

  ‘Come in,’ Arrina and Tony said in unison. Arrina glared at Tony as he turned to see who was outside.

  A head popped around the door—bouncy blonde curls tumbled down around large blue eyes and bright-red lips. Tony stood up with a speed that made Arrina’s heart wrench.

  ‘I hear you’ve got a body for me,’ the blonde said. Then she noticed Arrina. ‘Sorry. I didn’t realise you were with someone.’

  ‘Oh,’ Tony said, looking quickly between Arrina and the other woman, who now stepped into the room and revealed a tall, curvy body, which bore out the full promise of her beautiful face. ‘Lissie, this is Arrina, I mean Ms Fenn, the head of the college.’

  Arrina attempted a smile but felt her lips twist into something more like a grimace.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Lissie said. ‘Just point me in the right direction.’

  ‘Head straight down the corridor and take the first left. I’ll join you there.’ Then he turned to Arrina but did not look directly at her. ‘Do you need to collect anything from other rooms in the building or just this one?’

  ‘Collect things?’ Arrina asked. She stood up behind her desk.

  ‘For work,’ he said.

  Arrina was trying her best to remain her most professional self. But her brain felt like it had been stirred with a spoon.

  ‘I... what things?’ she asked.

  ‘Arrina,’ he said, ‘this is a crime scene. When I get back from talking to the medical examiner, I need to take your keys and escort you from the building.’

  Arrina felt the air rush from her chest. She slowly pulled her next breath in. ‘Until when?’ she asked. ‘When can I come back?’

  Tony shifted his weight slightly between his feet. Glanced towards the doorway. ‘At this present moment in time, it’s not possible to say.’

  ‘Classes start on Monday. One thousand and forty-three students will be showing up for the first day of term, and I have a list as long as my arm to get through before they arrive.’

  ‘Given the complexity of the situation,’ Tony said, making Arrina’s stomach churn at the thought of the broken CCTV cameras, ‘and the severity of the crime, this is looking to be a significant operation.’

  ‘I understand that,’ Arrina said with purposefully measured words. ‘But perhaps you could suggest a likely timeline.’

  ‘The entire building is a potential crime scene. We’ll need to bring in several teams of SOCOs to process it for evidence.’

  Arrina’s heart sank. That sounded like it might take days to complete. She wondered if she could offer up some of her staff or students to help. That might speed things along a little.

  ‘Right,’ Arrina said. ‘But we can open up sections as soon as they’re cleared, can’t we? Perhaps I can suggest an order that would be—’

  ‘I don’t think you’re really understanding this,’ Tony said. ‘The college is closed. Completely shut down until further notice.’

  He took a step towards her. Paused. Then walked quickly from the room.

  Arrina wanted to chase after him, but her legs suddenly disappeared beneath her. She collapsed into her chair.

  The college is closed.

  The words repeated over and over in her head.

  The room swam before Arrina’s eyes. She wished that her cat, Tinsel, were there to leap into her lap—he always knew when she needed him. Fat teardrops splashed onto the polished wood of her desk. Several more quickly followed.

  Arrina stared at the ragged edges of the tears.

  No. Arrina shook herself. She couldn’t sit there, sobbing until Tony returned. She quickly leaned down to grab her handbag from under the desk, fished out her college keys, and threw them down on the desk.

  Then she walked to the door of her office, listened for voices to make sure the coast was clear, and headed straight to the car park at the back of the building, not stopping until she leapt into the front seat of her silver-blue XJ6.

  She almost kissed the steering wheel when the car started on only the third try. Then she zoomed down the driveway and onto the quiet lane at the front of the college.

  She paused when she saw the mess of broken branches and leaves spread across the rough tarmac there. The privet hedge, which lined the drive, was mangled on one side. Twisted branches marked the place where a chunk had been taken out of it. On any other day, Arrina would have stopped to take a photo of the mess. Vehicles often clipped the side of the tiny road there. That’s why she was petitioning the Parish Council for a proper access road to be built to the bypass.

  But that was no longer her biggest problem. Not by a long way.

  So instead, Arrina continued down the webbed network of hedge-lined roads, which led to the centre of the village. She parked her distinctive car on a back road and walked around to the simply named High Street. She headed quickly to Do-Re-Mi, the café run by her best friend, Julie Wen.

  Arrina hugged herself tightly to the front of the small, old building. She held her finger down on the buzzer by the front door and prayed that Julie was still at work.

  Hugo was dead. Her college was closed. She’d spent the day being interrogated by a man who’d broken her heart. Right then, Arrina needed Julie more than anything.

  6

  The lights inside the café were off. The chairs were upturned on the tables. Arrina couldn’t hear any sound other than the buzzer she pressed.

  It was six o’clock. The café technically closed at five, but Julie often stayed late. Surely, she would have done so that day. She was busy perfecting a new line of seasonal biscuits and cakes. She’ll have stayed, Arrina hoped. She whispered it to herself. ‘She’ll have stayed.’

  ‘There’s no such thing as a cake emergency,’ came a loud voice from the back of the building.

  Arrina released the buzzer and let her forehead rest on the door of the café. Her eyes watched the Closed sign vibrate against the glass with the force of Julie’s pounding footsteps. Arrina heard her friend jog over quickly when she saw who it was.

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ Julie said. ‘Didn’t mean t
o shout. I’ve just had a bad day.’

  Julie had a white streak of icing smudged through her glossy black hair. Her lips were red with mushy, uneven berry stains. Her dark eyes were bloodshot.

  As Julie opened the door, Arrina stepped through and went to embrace her friend’s comforting curves. Julie leapt back.

  ‘I’ve just had a chocolate explosion,’ she said, waving her hands in front of her apron. Julie talked a mile a minute as she dashed back to the kitchen. ‘And that’s probably been the high point of my day, aside from being lucky enough to get two visits from you, of course.’

  Arrina followed her.

  ‘Biscuits, biscuits,’ Julie said in alarm as she grabbed a tea towel and pulled a tray of pumpkin-shaped ones from the industrial oven that took up one whole wall of the kitchen. Julie gave the biscuits a long, hard stare. She wrinkled her nose and tilted the tray towards Arrina. ‘Look!’

  ‘They seem fine to me,’ Arrina said. Then she realised that she should have just stayed there that morning. When she’d come for her coffee, she should have sat down on the wobbly stool in the corner by the sink and refused to move. She dropped down onto the chair.

  ‘They look like clown faces,’ Julie said, looking sadly at the freshly baked biscuits. She dumped the tray onto a countertop with a heavy clang. The aromas of pumpkin, cinnamon, and nutmeg drifted over to Arrina. Her stomach rumbled. She tried to remember if she’d eaten anything since a muffin in her car that morning. Almost certainly not.

  ‘They smell lovely,’ Arrina said. Yes, she should have just stayed in here and talked about biscuits and cake all day. No dead body, no ex-boyfriend, no closed college. Just the gentle worry of pumpkins that had spread in the oven to become clowns. Just the sweet, spiced air that made it feel like Christmas was near.

  ‘That new place in Grindleford has got row after row of neatly piped biscuits,’ Julie grumbled. ‘Even those fiddly cross-stitch-patterned ones that make my eyes hurt, but which everyone seems to love taking selfies with. And I can’t even get cookie cutters to work for me today.’