Crow Trap

by Ann Cleeves

  ‘Did he know about the little boy?’ Anne asked.

  ‘He never even guessed.’ Vera poured more wine. ‘So Barbara put the boy’s death at the back of her mind. Buried it like she’d buried the body. Sometimes she visited the mine, brought flowers, but I think she’d convinced herself by then that she wasn’t responsible for his dying. Perhaps she confused him with her own son. She took flowers to his grave too. And so things would have continued if her husband hadn’t decided to develop the site as a quarry. Because then there would be a risk that the grave would be discovered. The unpleasantness which she’d tidily hidden away under the engine-house floor could be brought to light. She wouldn’t be able to pretend any more that it wasn’t her fault. So what could she do?

  ‘At first she encouraged the opposition. She spread rumours that her husband had come under the evil influence of Neville Furness and Olivia Fulwell. She thought that if the public inquiry came out against the quarry everything could continue as before. She wound up her old friend Edmund Fulwell about the project. He was an easy target. She played on his love of his ancestral estate and he played on Grace’s affection for him to rig her otter counts.

  ‘She put pressure on Bella too. The three of them kept in touch. Bella was in a difficult position. The farm was verging on bankruptcy. She’d hoped to get money from her brother to save it but that never materialized. Her only hope was to do a deal with the development company over access to the site. She wouldn’t have liked the idea but it would have been better than losing the farm. She arranged for Peter Kemp to come to Black Law to discuss possible ways forward.’

  ‘Someone else was there that afternoon,’ Rachael said. ‘Dougie heard someone.’

  ‘Barbara. Godfrey had told her what was going on and she came to turn the screw. Blackmail. She knew what had happened when Bella’s father had died, knew it had all been planned. That had come out at one of the group therapy sessions. She threatened to make the whole thing public. Bella was under so much pressure that she couldn’t see straight. She told Peter she couldn’t make a deal and she committed suicide.

  ‘For a while it looked as if Barbara was safe. She thought the report would come out in her favour. After all, she’d become chummy with Anne and had indirectly nobbled Grace. Then she heard from Edmund that Grace was having cold feet. She was talking about seeing a shrink or a social worker. She couldn’t face lying any more. She knew it was making her ill. I’m not sure yet if Barbara planned to kill Grace to stop her telling the truth about the otters. She says not. She says she went to the engine room as she did on Friday night to try to move the remains of the little boy’s body and Grace surprised her.

  ‘When he first heard about his daughter’s death Edmund was too shocked to work out what might have happened. He stayed at his flat, carried on helping in the restaurant. Then I think he probably remembered a story Barbara had told to the group, a story nobody believed because she was mad at the time and full of fantasies. This one was about a boy she had found on the hill. A boy she’d taken for her own. Her baby.

  ‘He panicked. It had always been his style to run away. He went into hiding. First with Nancy Deakin and then in the house on the estate. How did Barbara know he was there? A guess perhaps. He’d probably told her that he’d lived in one of those houses before he got married.

  ‘The phone number and the back door key she got from Neville. Not directly . . .’ as Rachael was about to object. ‘She had access to the Slateburn offices through her husband and I think she regularly went through both their desks looking for anything which would help in her fight against the quarry. She phoned Edmund to check that he was there. And to frighten him. She knew him well enough to realize that if he was scared he’d probably start drinking. On the afternoon of the birthday party when the estate was overrun with strangers she let herself into the house. Edmund had already drunk himself into oblivion. It was easy enough.’

  Rachael stretched her hands towards the fire. ‘Did Barbara ram my car on the track that night?’

  ‘Oh, yes. She was desperate. She was trying to frighten you away.’ Vera paused, pulled a face. ‘And one of our people stopped her. Can you believe it? She told him she was visiting her sick mother and he was taken in. The fight to stop the quarry was an obsession. Perhaps she was just trying to save herself but I think it was more than that. She saw it as a desecration of the little boy’s grave.’

  Vera sighed, leant back, took a deep draught of wine. Ashworth shuffled restlessly. He’d heard all this before and he had his lass to get back to and a warm bed, and at last the baby had started to sleep through the night.

  Anne asked suddenly, ‘What’ll happen to the quarry now?’

  Vera shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t have thought Godfrey would have much stomach for it. But you’ll have to talk to him about that.’

  She left the three women talking about it, so engrossed that they hardly noticed her leaving.

  Ashworth drove carefully up the track and through the ford towards the forest.

  Praise for Ann Cleeves

  RAVEN BLACK

  ‘Raven Black breaks the conventional mould of British crime-writing, while retaining the traditional virtues of strong narrative and careful plotting’

  Independent

  ‘Beautifully constructed . . . a lively and surprising addition to a genre that once seemed moribund’

  Times Literary Supplement

  ‘Raven Black shows what a fine writer Cleeves is . . . an accomplished and thoughtful book’

  Sunday Telegraph

  ‘Ann’s characterization is worthy of the best writers in the field . . . Rarely has a sense of place been so evocatively conveyed in a crime novel’

  Daily Express

  WHITE NIGHTS

  ‘White Nights is a pleasure to read. Interesting characters, great setting, intriguing plot, and nothing to turn the sensitive stomach! And the bonus when we finish it is that we know we’ve got two more to look forward to’

  Reginald Hill

  ‘In true Agatha Christie style, Cleeves once again pulls the wool over our eyes with cunning and conviction’

  Colin Dexter

  ‘A most satisfying mystery set in an isolated and intriguing location. Jimmy Perez is a fine creation, and I hope Ann Cleeves’ Shetland series will be with us for a long time to come’

  Peter Robinson

  A carefully constructed, atmospheric and interesting mystery’

  Literary Review

  ‘Cleeves deftly paints in the personalities and their relationships, as the police inquiries disrupt the close-knit community. It’s a good, character-led mystery, which displays the art of storytelling without recourse to slash and grab’

  Sunday Telegraph

  RED BONES

  ‘Like a smoky Shetland peat fire, this elegantly written, slow-burning intrigue shrouds you in mystery and crackles with inner heat’

  Peter James

  ‘Cunning character play and deception play their part in this satisfying tale, bringing about a denouement that turns everything in the plot neatly and bewilderingly on its head’

  Scotsman

  ‘On an island shrouded in mist, amid a community with secrets, a visiting archaeologist uncovers mysterious human remains . . . This award-winning writer weaves an intriguing, chilling web’

  Best

  ‘Ann Cleeves’ fellow crime fiction practitioners (from Colin Dexter to Peter Robinson) have been lining up to sing her praises, and it’s unlikely that there will be any blip in that chorus of praise on the evidence of Red Bones, which is quite as assured and entertaining as its predecessors’

  Barry Forshaw

  BLUE LIGHTNING

  ‘This is a real, page-turning thriller. It is beautifully crafted, belonging to the golden age of well-fashioned detective fiction. Clues, red herrings, isolation, birds, wings, feathers, unusual passions made understood. I simply could not put it down . . . a terrific, atmospheric novel’

  Franc
es Fyfield

  ‘Cleeves is excellent not just on the mystery, but on the atmosphere of Fair Isle, and the effect of its strange character on the human population’

  Independent

  ‘The fourth and last instalment of Cleeves’ Shetland quartet finds detective Jimmy Perez battling Fair Isles prejudice and ferocious autumn storms, not to mention a brutal and calculating killer. Great atmospheric suspense’

  Mirror

  ‘Blue Lightning, the final book in Ann Cleeves’ Shetland quartet, is also the best and the darkest. The setting is Fair Isle, full of birds and beauty, but, in Cleeves’ hands, deeply sinister’

  The Times

  ‘The definitive detective thriller . . . The pace quickens and rises steadily to a thrilling and violent crescendo. The is end is completely unpredictable and shocking . . . Beautifully crafted and exciting with a gripping storyline, this is a must for those who like their fiction mature and thoughtful and their authors intelligent and imaginative’

  Sunday Express

  HIDDEN DEPTHS

  ‘Nobody does unsettling undercurrents better than Ann Cleeves’

  Val McDermid

  ‘Cleeves sets a good scene, this time in Northumberland during a heatwave, and she brings a large cast to life, shifting points of view between bereaved relatives, victims and suspects in a straightforward, satisfyingly traditional detective novel’

  Literary Review

  ‘Ann Cleeves, winner of last year’s inaugural Duncan Lawrie Dagger, is another fine author with a strong, credible female protagonist . . . It’s a dark, interesting novel with considerable emotional force behind it’

  Spectator

  ‘Vera is one of the new fictional detectives who seems not only like a real person, but one capable of conducting a murder inquiry. Ann Cleeves brings the same skill to all her characterizations in this highly impressive story’

  Saturday Telegraph

  THE CROW TRAP

  Ann Cleeves worked as a probation officer, bird observatory cook and auxiliary coastguard before she started writing. She is a member of ‘Murder Squad’, working with other northern writers to promote crime fiction. In 2006 Ann was awarded the Duncan Lawrie Dagger for Best Crime Novel, for Raven Black. Ann lives in North Tyneside.

  The novels in Ann Cleeves’ Vera Stanhope series, The Crow Trap, Telling Tales and Hidden Depths are available now and are forthcoming major ITV productions.

  Visit the author’s website at

  www.anncleeves.com

  By Ann Cleeves

  A Bird in the Hand Come Death and High Water

  Murder in Paradise A Prey to Murder

  A Lesson in Dying Murder in My Back Yard

  A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy

  Another Man’s Poison Killjoy

  The Mill on the Shore Sea Fever

  The Healers High Island Blues

  The Baby-Snatcher The Sleeping and the Dead

  Burial of Ghosts

  The Vera Stanhope series

  The Crow Trap Telling Tales Hidden Depths

  The Shetland series

  Raven Black White Nights Red Bones

  Blue Lightning

  First published 1999 by Macmillan

  This edition published 2010 by Pan Books

  This electronic edition published 2014 by Pan Books

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

  Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Basingstoke and Oxford

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-0-330-54048-3 PDF

  ISBN 978-0-330-54047-6 EPUB

  Copyright © Ann Cleeves 1999

  The right of Ann Cleeves to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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