ON DEVIL'S BRAE (A Psychological Suspense Thriller) (Dark Minds Mystery Suspense)

by Faith Mortimer

  Lochend Farm was about a hundred yards further up the road. She passed the house belonging to Elizabeth and Lorna Blackmore. The only other house in this direction was the one occupied by a couple, whom she assumed were unmarried—Donald and Fiona. In the other direction, the last cottage in Inverdarroch belonged to Angus, who, according to Elizabeth, was a composer of some sort. Cassandra had spoken to him once when she was out walking. She had climbed the highest hill and was lying on the ground, setting her camera. Because she was in the lee of a rocky outcrop when he suddenly appeared, she hadn’t heard him approach. After her initial fright and as her heart calmed down, she realised who he was when he explained they were neighbours. Angus had been pleasant and friendly and took time to point out and name the hills surrounding their valley.

  “I’ll never remember all those names,” she said, laughing. “They sound very romantic and roll off your tongue so easily.” As she looked at the tall dark-haired man properly, she found she was mesmerised by his eyes. They were deep blue, with black irises and lashes and a fair sprinkling of crow’s feet in the corners. Angus was much taller than Cassandra, and when he held her gaze, she bathed in his warm smile.

  “Give it time. You’ve only just arrived. In a month, you’ll be talking about them like a native. If you enjoy walking, like me, you’ll find there’s something about this place that captures your heart. It isn’t just the beauty or the peace of the place…it’s something I’ve never fathomed out. It pulls at you, somehow.”

  Struck dumb with sudden shyness, Cassandra nodded. There was something about him that made her completely breathless. He was gorgeous. Cassandra wished she had spent time on her hair that morning, aware that, in all probability, she looked like she had been dragged through a hedge backwards. She had a sneaking suspicion she had mud on her face, too. She wondered whether there was a Mrs Angus back home. Knowing her luck, there was a very good chance.

  “Well, I mustn’t keep you from your ramble. It’s been charming meeting you, and I hope you enjoy living here.” Angus reached out to shake her hand, and as their fingers touched, she felt a spark between them. She caught her breath and wasn’t aware of what she mumbled in reply as he left and resumed his walk back down into the valley. She wished she had the nerve to say she would go with him, but his overall maleness made her tongue-tied, and when she had recovered, it was too late.

  Sighing at her daydream, Cassandra returned to the present and studied the route. Although, the snowfall had been light, the road was icy underfoot, and Cassandra unsteadily followed the lane leading to the farm. Nobody appeared to be out and about, and she hadn’t heard any traffic so far. The farm was set back from the road, and the main entrance door was at the side of the building. Cassandra knocked and waited. When no one appeared, she thought she should try round the back. Farming folk were known to rise early, and the whole family might have been involved with the routine of morning milking.

  She picked her way over the path, into the back yard. She saw there was a high wall along one side, with an L-shaped thatched barn adjoining it. There were lower walls with inset gates, which she thought were livestock holding pens. All around her was a strong smell of cattle dung. As with farms the world over, a collection of aged implements lay scattered, unused, and rusting away on the ground. Somehow they looked all the more forlorn due to the soft coating of snow.

  Cassandra slithered towards the barn, which she saw was suffused with a dim light, when she heard the bolts being drawn back from the door behind her.

  “Hello. Sorry, I did knock but you obviously didn’t hear me.” A black-and-white collie’s nose twitched from behind the woman’s knee.

  “Yes?”

  Cassandra swore the woman could remember her from her previous visits. Although she had never visited the farm, she had seen some of the family members as she drove past them walking down the road. They were usually accompanied by a herd of cows or, as in case of the brothers, seated on a tractor. She had only spoken to them the one time when accompanied by Elizabeth Blackmore.

  “Mrs Campbell, you might remember me. I’m Cassandra Potter, Susan’s sister. I’m staying in Shadow Vale for a few months.”

  The large woman was dressed in a long, shapeless, brown cardigan pulled tightly over darker brown trousers and a sweater. She was wearing wellington boots with thick woollen socks rolled over the tops. Her short grey hair stuck out from her head. She stared at Cassandra with pale-blue beady eyes before nodding.

  “I’m very sorry to disturb you, but I wondered if I might order a pint of milk from you for tomorrow. And one pint a day would be good if you can manage it.”

  Unsmiling, the woman looked her up and down, drawing in her breath. She was of medium height and overweight. “You’ll be staying, then?”

  Cassandra nodded and tried a smile. “I’m not sure how long…it all depends. Is he friendly?” Cassandra indicated the dog sniffing round her legs.

  “Aye, he is to some. And will ye be wanting the occasional half-dozen eggs?”

  “Yes please. If it’s not too much trouble. I’m afraid I don’t know your name.” She let the dog sniff her hand and risked a quick stroke of his ears.

  “Mrs Campbell will do.”

  “Oh…oh, right. And you have two sons and a daughter?”

  “Three.”

  “Oh…I see. I only met two when I was last here. I did see someone yesterday, who might have been your other son—” She stopped, aware of the older woman’s hostile gaze upon her. Cassandra felt she was trying to squeeze blood from a stone. “And their names are?”

  Mrs Campbell narrowed her eyes and gave Cassandra a withering look. “Yes, three sons and they’ll no be having time for fancy chitchat, if that’s what ye were thinking. We’ve a farm to run. But they’re Ian, Iver, and Rae.”

  “Oh no, of course not. I just wondered in case I saw them out and about…you know.” She drew some coins from her pocket. “I’ll pay you for the milk now, shall I?”

  “No need. It’ll be on your doorstep every morning, and ye can pay at the end of the week. Just leave the money with the empties on Saturday.”

  “Oh, fine. Right you are, then. Thank you. And your daughter…what’s her name, in case I bump into her?” Cassandra wondered why she was bothering being polite to this hostile woman. She hadn’t enquired about her journey up or where she had come from. “Do you think we’ll have more snow?” she added, looking up at the sky.

  Mrs Campbell shrugged her fleshy shoulders and turned away, shooing the dog inside. “Who knows? The girl’s name is Carol,” she snapped. “Guid day to ye.”

  Cassandra was left standing, looking at a closed door. As she walked back to her cottage, she laughed to herself. What an old biddy! Cynthia would have scoffed and said, ‘I told you so!’ And she would have been right. The Campbells—if Mrs Campbell was anything to go by—were a rum lot.

  She drew level with the Blackmores’ place. It was a much bigger cottage than hers, and judging by the fine stone pointing and neat-looking woodwork, the two sisters spent time and money on it. It was a far cry from the untidy farm she had just left. That wasn’t all. Gathered around a twee-looking wishing well on the front lawn, was a collection of gnomes. She felt another laugh bubble up inside her because, once again, Cynthia was right. Who in their right mind kept a garden full of plastic and pottery fairy-tale figures?

  Pondering on whether the Blackmores might be reasonable neighbours, she looked further ahead along the road to where the handsome composer, Angus, lived. During their brief conversation up on the hill, apart from his overall attractiveness, he seemed level-headed, polite, and agreeable. Cassandra casually wondered what he might have thought about the sister of a woman who had been connected to the case of a murdered child. Did he know about the shocking episode back in England? Susan never said whether she had told anyone there. Perhaps no one in the hamlet knew, after all.

  Cassandra shivered and it wasn’t just from the cold. She could still see those hea
dlines in the papers, still hear the barely concealed vicious voices as the reporters asked their questions. She knew they were all admonishing, criticising, judging her bemused and shocked sister.

  How many more children’s deaths will it take … Why did you ignore the signs ... What are your feelings … What were you doing there, posing as a sculptor?

  She recalled Susan saying how she wanted to shut herself away, hide, and sob in the dark. She approached social services with some hesitation before the death but had almost been shown the door. We’re the professionals, thank you very much. Didn’t the press realise what pressures were on everyone dealing with health and social issues? There were hundreds of cases, and that was before the added stress of staff shortages, long hours, and unpaid overtime came into the equation. And Susan had only been to see the family because of her art. She wasn’t a social worker, whose business it was on a daily basis. Did they realise how awful some of these places were? Families lived on squalid estates consisting of unkempt houses or high-rise flats without functioning lifts. There were communal lights, which never worked due to the gangs of vandals terrorising the area. In addition, there were the drugs, alcohol, intimidation, and sexual abuse. The list went on and on. Susan had been morbidly upset, and when Cassandra insisted she move in with her temporarily, Susan tried to involve her.

  Susan told Cassandra she had been admitted to the house by an obviously reluctant set of parents, who were only interested in the sniff of a payment for using Natalie as a model. Parents whom she damn well knew were liars.

  Afterwards, Susan made the cardinal mistake of speaking to one of the reporters who was hanging around Cassandra’s flat. The young woman seemed so nice and sympathetic at the time, making earnest eye contact and nodding in agreement to everything Susan said. The reporter even suggested she was a victim of circumstance. When Cassandra saw the headlines the next day, she was horrified to read how the reporter distorted her sister’s words.

  She read through the additional snippets of conversation the young woman had gathered from the Hodges’ neighbours and how they all said they could see it coming…a crime waiting to happen.

  So why hadn’t they gone to the police to report it? Why had they turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to slobby Wayne Hodges, and his slutty wife, Stacy?

  After the reporter filed her story and dished up her scoop, Susan started receiving letters from strangers. Cassandra assumed they were strangers because Susan said most were anonymous. She shuddered at the viciously penned words her weeping sister handed over for her to read. Cassandra could still remember a few choice phrases which stood out, like ‘useless, rich-bitch artist’ to the more startling and offensive terms, ‘murdering cow or child killer’.

  There was nothing Cassandra could do to help Susan beyond offering her support and a kind of sisterly love. It was pointless even thinking of going to the papers and telling them Susan’s side: how she had been an innocent bystander, who was only there due to circumstances. What good would it do? Their minds were made up, and most importantly, nothing was going to bring little Natalie back to life. Was it?

  Insidiously, the rot set in. Susan fled back up to Inverdarroch and sadly died not long after in the summer of 2012. Cassandra was devastated and blamed herself for not being there and most of all for not being a good enough sister.

  Chapter 9 January, 2013, Inverdarroch

  Back at the cottage, Cassandra started to blitz the place. The snow had almost melted with the sun and rise in temperature. She climbed on a chair, took down all the remaining curtains, and gathered them up to throw in the washing machine. With the breeze blowing down the valley, they would dry—partially at least—and she could iron them whilst damp and rehang them before nightfall.

  Next, she dragged out the cooker and fridge and cleaned up a small army of dead insects and dried onion rings and chips. The kitchen drawers and cupboards needed a good scrub and the wooden floors a sweep and wash. When they were dry, she unrolled the rugs she had bought and laid them down. With her new cushions, throws, lampshades, and a few pretty dishes full of pot pourri, the whole place took on a fresh feel and look. Not what you’d call home, she thought, but a hundred per cent nicer than when she first saw the cottage. It was amazing what a thorough clean and a few hundred pounds spent on soft furnishings could do. She planned to give the white-washed walls a new coat of paint to cover the stains and scuff marks, once the warmer weather came.

  She tackled the bathroom last. The mirror above the basin was speckled with iron mould and had a crack running down one corner. She had bought a replacement but needed a hefty screwdriver to take the old one down. Not wanting to get in the car and drive to the nearest town, she decided to leave it for another day. By then, she would most probably have a list of essentials she had forgotten. A handyman about the place would have been good, but Cassandra was used to doing things on her own. Besides, handymen often brought along their own share of problems, and those she could do without. She paused as an image of Angus flashed across her mind. She wouldn’t have minded seeing him in tight jeans and wielding a hefty screwdriver, sweaty and smelling of man. The memory of the line of his jaw, his five-o’clock shadow, and sensuous mouth made her heart thud in her chest. Crikey, girl, you’ve only met him once, and you’ve got it bad!

  Thinking of men reminded Cassandra she hadn’t rang her friend, Julian, since her arrival. Julian was a university lecturer, whom she had known for years. She couldn’t quite remember how they met—she thought it was at a mutual friend’s party—but he was always in the background. There was nothing between them: no romance beyond a goodnight kiss when they went out together, but he did tend to keep an eye upon her. Julian had his camping weekends, his book-club chums, and a love of hiking. Like Cassandra, he had never walked down the aisle or felt anything was missing. Cassandra wondered if he preferred men, but despite knowing Julian all those years, she had never dared ask. She assumed it was a reticence she had inherited from her parents.

  Cassandra promised she would ring as soon as she reached Inverdarroch, but for some reason she kept putting it off. Like Cynthia and Rosie, Julian considered her move to the Highlands way over the top and told her she was batty even considering it.

  “Cassandra, you’ll never cope. One week in a draughty cottage with no mod cons, and you’ll be climbing the walls,” he had vented a few days earlier.

  Cassandra laughed. “For heaven’s sake, you’re as bad as the terrible twins. I’ve coped living on my own for over twenty years, and the place has running water, electricity, and a massive fireplace for heat. What more do I need? There’s a telephone, which I’ve yet to have connected. Besides, I have my mobile.”

  “Ah, but is there a reliable signal? Inver-whatever-it’s-called is in the back of beyond. I looked it up on Google maps. It’s nothing but a blip on the landscape.”

  Cassandra suppressed a sigh, knowing Julian’s real problem was that she hadn’t invited him over—not during one of her earlier weekend visits nor for this extended stay. She knew he would find fault with her disappearing for weeks or months. He would say she was running away and not facing up to her problems.

  “Perhaps it’s one of the reasons I want to be there,” Cassandra replied in a calmer voice than she felt. Knowing full well it was true. News reporters or scandalmongers wouldn’t have heard of her in a remote part of Scotland, and there was a chance they hadn’t heard about Susan either. The more she considered the idea, the more attractive it was.

  While Julian tutted and complained, she gave in. “Look. Give me a few weeks or whatever, and I’ll invite you up for the weekend. I want to get the place looking reasonably decent first. Yes, I know you’ll help.” She held up a hand, palm upwards, warding off his argument. “But I want to do this on my own. It’ll be good therapy.” She didn’t dare tell him her flat was no longer her sanctuary. Once people linked her to Susan and found out where she lived, Cassandra hated the place. In a fit of pique, she had been on the verge of ringi
ng the estate agent and putting it on the market, but something held her back. She would give it another six months, after which everything would have died down, and then she would move house.

  “All right, have it your way. I’ll give you a week on your own, and then I’m coming up. No arguments.”

  ***

  Taking a rest from cleaning, Cassandra rang Julian and was surprised how easily the conversation went. She was expecting a lecture, but instead, he was good-humoured and genial, joking over her new yokel life and how he was expecting her to have a Scottish burr when he visited. Afterwards, she made a sandwich for lunch and sat by a newly lit fire. The warmth made her drowsy and relaxed as she stared into the leaping tongues of flame. Before she knew it, Cassandra was nodding off, her daydreams taking her back to the year before.

  Chapter 10 Liverpool 2012

  For the past few months she had been feeling anger directed at almost everything. How could the system have let Natalie Hodges down? Why was it women like Stacy met such loutish oafs and allowed themselves to become drudges to them? Down-trodden, bullied, and often abused. Moreover, why did these women marry these ill-mannered men?

  During her time spent with the Hodges family, Susan learnt a thing or two about them. She told Cassandra how Stacy first met Wayne when she already had Natalie in tow. She had two more children by him: the toddler, Darren, and the new baby. Why? Susan asked Cassandra. Why did these women give in to men, who disliked and often never accepted another man’s child? Cassandra agreed, although she had never had any personal experience. As Susan talked and they spent more time together, Cassandra suddenly realised her sister not only disliked and distrusted Wayne Hodges, but she felt contempt for men in general. Was this why she was single?

  Susan eventually blurted out to Cassandra how she first noticed the bruises on her second visit to the house. Stacy Hodges lived on a small social-housing estate, Pentland Park. Cassandra knew of the place and thought despite the change of name from council house to social housing, it did nothing to dispel the usual soulless construction. Within five years, it had a rundown, desolate look. It wasn’t as bad as the high-rise blocks of flats, but even so, she would have hated living there: every house the same, miles of concrete, little green areas, and few trees.