The Darkest Evening

by Cleeves, Ann

  ‘She wasn’t fit to be a mother. The anorexia proved that, and the way she treated me wasn’t rational. I told her I was going to apply for custody of the boy. Rosemary would have understood, she loves kids and would have taken him in. He’d have been part of a loving family. Happy. When I picked Lorna up in Kimmerston the day before, I told her access might be enough for me. If she met me that night, we could discuss it. Maybe we could come to some arrangement . . .’

  At that, Vera forgot all sense of caution. ‘She was a much better parent to Thomas than you’d ever be.’ The words came out strong and slow and as soon as they were spoken, she knew she’d pushed him too far. Still she went on: ‘And it wasn’t an arrangement you wanted, but some crazy idea of revenge.’

  He turned slowly towards her. The blue Viking eyes were piercing and a little mad. There was ice on his beard. He got up onto his knees, pulled off his big mittens and put his hands round her throat and began to squeeze. Vera tried to fight back by tugging at the giant fists and kicking out. But she was still sitting and her movement was restricted. He was strong and used to handling struggling beasts. As Vera began to lose consciousness, she thought this was her fault. She should have kept Heslop sweet until she’d got him to the station. She thought it was her pride again, making her think she was indestructible. Some words from the poem Holly had read out at an earlier briefing repeated themselves in her head.

  But I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep.

  Then the world went black.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  HOLLY RAN THROUGH THE FOREST, HER pace even, jumping across the roots that occasionally blocked her way, ducking to avoid branches. She was following a line of boot prints. She told herself she couldn’t possibly recognize them as those she’d found in the Falstones’ house, not in this light, but she was certain that they belonged to the person who had abducted Thomas. She’d picked up the trail close to the cottage and by now the snow had stopped and the sky had cleared, so the marks were uncovered and intact, frozen. There was no sign of Vera’s prints, but if she found the killer, she’d find Vera too. Holly understood Vera; the boss had acted as a decoy, leading the abductor away from Thomas, so the child would be safe in the cottage for them to find. No thought for her own safety or for that of her colleagues who might need to come to her rescue.

  Holly’s breath was coming in puffs of white mist, but she hadn’t reached the point of exhaustion yet. She’d run the Kielder Dark Skies marathon in October and it seemed to her now that the race had been training her just for this moment.

  When she came to the edge of the clearing, she recognized it at once. This was where they’d found Constance Browne. The blue-and-white police tape remained, though the woman’s body had been taken away. Holly stood, silent, and watched the scene playing out in front of her.

  She saw the man first. Neil Heslop. So, Vera had been right all along and it had been a man who’d killed Lorna and the teacher. He was kneeling, his back to Holly. She couldn’t see what he was doing.

  ‘Move away!’

  He got to his feet but he didn’t move. He was as still as the dead branches that littered the clearing. She saw a pile of clothes at his feet. No, not a pile of clothes, Holly thought. That was Vera, lying in the snow, looking smaller than Holly would have thought possible.

  She ran towards them. ‘Move away from her!’

  No response. Heslop seemed barely to register Holly’s presence. All his focus was on the woman. Holly continued, her voice sharp and fierce. ‘Move away. You’re surrounded. There are armed officers with their weapons trained on you.’

  Now Heslop did turn. He walked a couple of steps in Holly’s direction. ‘On your knees,’ Holly shouted. ‘Put your hands on your head.’ She fixed him in the light of her torch, willing him to obey. He was bigger and stronger than she was and she knew she wouldn’t be able to take him on. The bluff about the armed officers would only work for so long. He hesitated for a moment and she thought he might run. She hoped he might run so she could give her full attention to Vera. They knew who he was now and he wouldn’t get far. But all the fight seemed to leave him. He crumpled back to his knees in the snow and when she got to him, he followed her instructions in silence. She tied his hands behind his back with the plastic restraints she had in her pocket. ‘Stay where you are.’

  He still didn’t speak. He seemed lost in a world of his own.

  Holly ran to Vera. The woman seemed lifeless and cold. There were livid marks on her neck where the man had tried to strangle her, just as there’d been on Constance Browne’s body. For the first time since leaving the Falstones’ farm, Holly was frightened. From the moment she’d joined Northumbria Police, this woman had ruled her life, and Holly wasn’t sure, now, how she’d manage without her. Joe would never forgive her if she didn’t take Vera back to him, alive and well. She tried to remember all she knew about CPR, but her thoughts were scrambled and she realized that tears were running down her face. She lay Vera on her back and unbuttoned her thick jacket so she could start pressure on the chest. All the time desperately trying to remember all that she’d been taught on the first-aid course, knowing that she was too late.

  ‘What on earth are you doing, hinnie? I’ll catch my death.’ The words were very faint, scratchy, as if it hurt the woman to talk. As if she was learning to speak again after years of silence. It was the voice of a ghost. The shock of the sound sent a rush of adrenaline through Holly’s body. She began to shake uncontrollably.

  ‘I thought you were dead.’

  ‘Well, so did I.’ Holly helped her into a sitting position and Vera continued, her voice still strained. ‘I lost consciousness for a bit and only came to when I heard you shouting. He’d have finished me off, though, if he’d realized.’ She looked across at Heslop who was still kneeling in the snow. ‘Two women dead, he’d have nothing to lose.’

  ‘I need to call it in.’ Holly’s hands were still trembling as she reached for a phone. ‘Get you an ambulance.’

  ‘Where’s the cavalry then?’

  ‘Still halfway between Kimmerston and Kirkhill, as far as I know.’

  Vera nodded towards Heslop. ‘So you were bluffing then.’ There was a strange choking sound, which made Holly anxious again. Then she looked at the woman more closely and understood that Vera was laughing.

  ‘Eh, lass,’ she said, ‘I didn’t train you so badly after all.’

  Chapter Forty-Three

  VERA WOKE UP IN HOSPITAL AND saw Joe sitting by her bed. She was glad it was him and not Holly. Holly had saved her life, and Vera had never enjoyed feeling obliged to anyone. Besides, Joe was her lad. Her man. She was pleased to see him. She’d been dozing on and off all day. Now it was mid-afternoon and she was itching to be sent home.

  ‘How’s the boy?’ It was still painful to talk, but nothing that honey and lemon with a good slug of Scotch wouldn’t heal. They’d kept her in because of the hypothermia rather than the attempted strangulation. In the ambulance they’d wrapped her up in a foil blanket so she’d looked like a turkey ready for Christmas.

  ‘He’s absolutely fine. Back with the Falstones.’

  ‘And Heslop?’

  ‘Holly and I interviewed him this morning.’ A pause. ‘He didn’t give much away, but he’ll plead guilty. Save his family the trauma of a trial.’

  Vera nodded her approval. ‘You okay to drive me home? I can get a taxi if Sal wants you back.’

  ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I’ve told Sal it’ll be a late one and I promised I’ll take a few days off once this is all over. As long as I’m there for the kids’ nativity tomorrow afternoon . . .’ He paused. ‘I’ve got your Land Rover outside.’

  ‘Champion.’ The words of the poem of Holly’s rattled round her brain again, as much of an ear worm as some trashy pop song. But I have promises to keep. ‘We’ll make sure you keep your promise and get back in time for that play.’

  He insisted on driving and she di
dn’t put up too much of a fight. When they arrived at the cottage, she took a key from her pocket. ‘You’ve not seen the place since I rebuilt after the fire.’ She opened the door. ‘Ta da!’

  Joe followed her in. ‘You didn’t bother getting central heating when you refurbished? It’s bloody freezing in here.’

  ‘Nah,’ she said. ‘It’d have meant oil-fired up here and I’m doing my bit for global warming. Besides, I told you, I’d forgotten to renew the insurance so it all had to come out of my own pocket.’ She bent over the fire, which had already been laid, and set a match to it. ‘It’ll soon heat up.’ She stood up, felt her head swim a bit and grabbed hold of the back of a chair.

  Joe left his coat on. ‘The place doesn’t look very different. I thought you might have added a few mod cons.’ He looked at her. ‘You sit down. The hospital said you should be resting. I’ll stick the kettle on.’

  She decided not to insist and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, he was there with tea in her old black pot, milk in a bottle and two mugs. A packet of chocolate digestives. She saw him sniff the milk and decide it would do.

  ‘I’m staying tonight,’ he said. ‘The hospital would have kept you in until tomorrow if you’d been on your own. I’ve taken a casserole out of the freezer. Joanna said I’d find something there.’ He paused. ‘She wanted you to go and stay with them.’

  Joanna was her hippy neighbour. She was as kind as it was possible to be, but Vera needed her own bed tonight. ‘Joe Ashworth, you’re a lifesaver.’ She looked at him over the rim of her mug. ‘Did Heslop explain why he took the lad?’

  ‘Not in any way that made sense.’

  Vera thought sense hadn’t come into it at all, not by then. After killing Lorna, Heslop had sat in Home Farm, pretending at happy families, and brooding. His wife and kiddies must have known he was losing it, but they’d put his strange mood down to the shock of finding Lorna’s body.

  ‘Heslop saw Thomas as his link to Lorna,’ Vera said. ‘The lass wouldn’t let Heslop own her, but he decided he could possess his son.’ She paused. ‘I was scared he might attempt to kill the boy too. You’ve read those stories about jealous men who kill their wives and kids and then themselves.’

  Joe shook his head as if it was beyond his understanding. ‘If he’d just sat tight and let the boy be, he could have got away with two murders.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so.’ Vera couldn’t let that go. ‘He’d already given too much of himself away. I was already on to him. I’ve never believed in happy families.’

  They sat for a moment in silence.

  ‘There’s a bottle of Scotch in that dresser behind you,’ Vera said. ‘Dig it out and I’ll tell you how I knew Heslop was our man. Give you the benefit of my wisdom. Listen and learn, Joe Ashworth. Listen and learn.’

  She poured out the whisky – she knew his measures would be pathetically small – before she started speaking again. ‘I wasn’t sure until after Constance Browne died, but in the end Heslop was the only one with means and opportunity. When I found Lorna’s car, that night in the blizzard, it had been left by a gate leading into a Home Farm field. We know now that Heslop had arranged to meet the lass there with his tractor. He’d just be the other side of the wall, waiting for her. It was his land, anyone seeing him would think he had every right to be on it and a good reason to be there.’

  Vera thought that image would haunt her for the rest of her career: the young woman in the cold, the child in the car. She didn’t want to dwell on it and started talking again:

  ‘That’s why Lorna didn’t bang on the door at Karan and Dorothy’s cottage and call for help. That bothered me right from the start. The road from the abandoned car to where her body was found would have taken her right past their house. So, either Karan was lying – and I did have my doubts about him for a while – or Lorna got to Brockburn over the field. She wouldn’t have done that on foot. Not in the pitch dark and leaving the bairn behind. So that set me thinking about the bunch at Home Farm.’

  She beamed at him. ‘Just common sense really. And a bit of logic. Of course, Heslop had to go back to Brockburn to pick up his lasses later in the evening, so even if the snow hadn’t covered his tracks, he’d have had an explanation for them being there.’

  ‘But he left Thomas in the car with the door open.’

  Vera could tell that in his head, Joe was back on the narrow road, the forest behind him, in the blizzard and the dark. This case would haunt him too.

  ‘I think Lorna left the door open,’ Vera said. ‘She would have been anxious about the meeting and ready to make a quick getaway. Heslop didn’t check the car. Besides, he always planned to come back for the boy. Jinny’s Mill was waiting for them, all snug and tidy. His and Lorna’s special place.’

  ‘But then you came along,’ Joe said.

  ‘Then I came along, out of the snow, to play the Good Samaritan,’ Vera said. ‘I left my business card in the car. It must have been a shock to the system to see that the police had come along to spoil all his plans.’

  ‘You know we found Lorna’s devices in Heslop’s office? We’ve been checking her texts and emails.’

  Vera nodded.

  ‘In the beginning, Lorna was infatuated with Heslop,’ Joe said. ‘He was her first real love. Then she started to be less dependent and things got nasty. The relationship might have started out as consensual but it’s clear the man was harassing her big style. He was cyber stalking in the last few months when she was trying to break free from him, and some of the messages suggest that he was following her physically too.’

  ‘Bastard.’ Vera reached out for the bottle and topped up the glasses. She took a sip before continuing. She was warm and content. She’d sleep well tonight; she was already drowsy. ‘The poor lass must have felt entirely alone when Heslop threatened custody proceedings to take the boy off her. No wonder she panicked. Because she was so screwed up about her own parents – she still believed that Crispin was her natural father – she didn’t feel she could talk to Robert and Jill. And while she dropped a few hints to Constance, she was so scared of Heslop by this point that she couldn’t even confide properly in her.’

  They sat for a moment. Vera felt her eyes closing. If she’d been here on her own, she’d have fallen asleep in the chair, warm as toast until morning, but she couldn’t do that with Joe in the house. She had a position to maintain.

  ‘Are you going to heat up that casserole then? I told you, I’m supposed to rest.’ Now she did lie back in the chair and allow herself to nap.

  She woke to Joe’s voice, almost shouting into his mobile because phone reception was so bad. He was talking to his wife, making his excuses for another night away. Sal was giving him a hard time. Vera kept her eyes shut until the call was over, then she stretched.

  ‘Are we ready to eat? I’m clamming.’

  They sat at the table she’d picked up for a tenner in a charity shop to replace the one she’d lost in the fire. Vera pointed Joe to the sideboard where there was the good bottle of red she’d been saving to take to her neighbours on Christmas Day. ‘We can’t eat one of Joanna’s casseroles without a decent glass of wine.’

  ‘So,’ Joe said. ‘Let’s hear why Constance Browne had to die.’ His role had always been to act as her stooge, to feed her the lines.

  Vera settled back in her chair. ‘I think Connie must have guessed that Neil Heslop was Thomas’s father. She struck me as a perceptive woman. Curious too. And willing to meddle. Constance had been to warn Robert Falstone that his daughter was seeing someone inappropriate, but he’d just thought she was an interfering cow and took no notice.’

  ‘Why didn’t Constance speak to us?’ Joe asked. ‘To you when you went to interview her?’

  ‘She wanted to talk to Heslop before accusing him of murder. In a close community like Kirkhill, you don’t go to the police unless you’re sure of your facts and she’d known Heslop since he was a boy. Holly found out from his phone records that Const
ance spoke to him on the Sunday evening. I think they arranged to meet before the Monday morning art class, but he turned up earlier than she was expecting.’

  ‘How could she just go off with a man she suspected could be a killer?’

  ‘Because she really didn’t believe that a man she thought she knew well could act like that. Because she was a strong woman of a certain age and she thought she was indestructible.’ Vera gave a strange little smile. ‘She’d taught all the bairns in Kirkhill and Brockburn and sorted their problems. She probably thought she could sort this out too. She might have realized Heslop was desperate, depressed, suicidal even, but she was arrogant enough to think she could deal with the situation, maybe persuade him to hand himself in. I’m sure she went willingly.’ That smile again. ‘Pride and curiosity. A dangerous mix.’

  ‘I still don’t understand how you could have been so sure that Neil Heslop had taken her.’

  Vera took a large mouthful of wine, and thought it was better than any of the painkillers they’d given her in the hospital. ‘It was Josh turning up late for the art class that clinched it. He said his car had broken down and he’d had to wait for his father to get in, so he could borrow his van. There was no explanation for where his father could have been on a dark winter’s morning.’

  ‘Do you know where Connie was killed? Heslop wouldn’t say when we talked to him yesterday.’

  ‘I’m sure it would have been in Jinny’s Mill. They probably walked in from the back drive close to Dorothy’s cottage. Nobody would have taken any notice of his van parked near Brockburn. It was often there.’

  ‘And after dumping her body in the clearing, he drove back to the farm,’ Joe said, ‘just in time for Josh to borrow his van to get into Kirkhill to teach the oldies’ art class.’

  Vera nodded. ‘Heslop kept a cool head. There he was, playing the fiddle and the proud father at his daughter’s birthday celebration on the Sunday night, only two days after killing the mother of his child. But it was all on the surface – the strain must have been taking its toll.’ She shook a little more coal onto the fire. The embers still showed through, glowing red.