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

by Matilda Swift

  There must have been over three hundred students in the crowd, all braving the elbowing scrum for a chance to win the money. Arrina could barely hear herself over the excited calls of ‘scarecrow selfie!’

  The hoard of students ran on.

  To Arrina, it looked as though her students were running across barren earth, where their trampling would do no harm. However, she’d lived in the countryside long enough to know that when it came to fields, looks could be deceiving. Indeed, right at that instant, a huge cherry-red tractor emerged at the crest of a hill in front of them, showing that this definitely was a working field.

  Arrina mentally prepared herself for the barrage of angry shouts, which the farmer would direct her way. She scrabbled for any excuse to explain what was going on.

  But it looked like she wouldn’t get a chance to do that.

  The tractor was moving quickly and barrelling straight towards the students. In a single movement—like a flock of birds or a school of fish—the group turned and fled back towards the safety of the college building.

  Arrina was about to turn too—she’d heard enough tales of farmers and their shotguns to know it was best to run first and explain later. Then, from the corner of her eye, she saw the motorbike and the scarecrow lurch to one side. The costumed rider must have slipped on a patch of mud.

  Arrina ran as fast as she could. She pushed against the tide of fleeing students. They jostled and nudged her, too panicked to be polite. Arrina almost fell. She felt an elbow strike her ribs. It seemed that she would never get through the crush of bodies. But she pushed and pushed and finally popped free of their frantic scrum. She ran with long, powerful strides towards the tractor.

  She waved her arms wildly, trying to signal to the driver to slow down.

  But the tractor’s cab was empty. There was nobody inside.

  On the ground, in the direct path of an enormous tractor wheel, the scarecrow was wiggling furiously. It couldn’t get away. One leg of the ragged costume was firmly stuck beneath the body of the motorbike.

  Arrina crossed the last few steps towards the scarecrow. The tractor was so close it shook the ground beneath her feet. She grabbed the scarecrow, yanked as hard as she could on the handfuls of costume she held, dug her heels into the muddy earth, and pulled with all her might.

  The ridged wheel of the tractor was almost on top of them. Arrina pulled. The heat of the tractor’s engine warmed the air on her cheeks. It was too late! She heaved once more. Finally, the scarecrow sprang free. Arrina fell backwards, and the writhing, muddy form of the scarecrow tumbled down beside her.

  They were safe.

  Arrina’s right shoulder hit something hard as she landed. The air was punched from her lungs. She lay sprawled, unable to move, on the damp black earth. Arrina watched as the tractor crunched heavily over the motorbike, barely slowing as it did. It continued on until its nose collided with the sturdy fence at the back of her college. The squeaking grate of metal on metal pierced her ears. The loud rumble of the engine revved, choked, and died.

  The world was silent. Arrina and the scarecrow slowly pushed up to their feet. The scarecrow’s costume was shredded to bits. The person inside pulled the muddy flour sack from their head.

  Arrina gave a gasp when she saw who it was. He was a talented boy called Olly—a first-year art student with bright-blue hair, who all the teachers liked.

  ‘It was meant to be a performance piece,’ Olly said, gasping and looking in disbelief at the ruined mess that had so recently been his bike. ‘A comment on the shallowness of selfie culture. The money wasn’t even real.’

  With that, the tall sixteen-year-old collapsed into Arrina’s arms and cried. Her own vision watered too. She would have let the tractor hit her, she realised. She would not have been able to let her student go.

  ‘Oh no! Oh no!’ came a bellowing voice from behind them. ‘Please tell me nobody was hurt.’

  It was Hugo Hayes, shouting as he ran towards them down the hill. He was dressed in a checked shirt and jeans. His outfit and enormous size gave him the look of a storybook lumberjack. Arrina laughed out loud at the thought of this. She realised how full of giddy adrenaline she was right then. She took several deep breaths to calm herself.

  ‘I don’t know what happened,’ Hugo said as he reached them. He looked from the crushed motorbike to the crashed tractor over by the fence. ‘I must have hit a rock in the field back there. I was tossed out and fell to the ground. Somehow the tractor raced ahead. Are you both OK?’

  ‘Yes,’ Arrina said, ‘very luckily.’ Beside her, Olly quickly rubbed his eyes and tried to pull himself together. ‘Your runaway tractor almost crushed my student here.’ She wanted to shout at Hugo. In fact, she wanted to scream at him that Olly had nearly been killed. But she was too shaken up to do more than give a sharp edge to her tone.

  Then she realised that even that sharpness might have been too much. All around them, the field was stamped down and flattened with footprints. The Hayes family would never let her students onto their land after this.

  Hugo stood in silence, looking around himself in disbelief. Arrina glanced guiltily at the fake bank notes, which were trampled into the mud. She even saw a lost shoe and a bedraggled scrap of fabric between where she stood and the back of the college.

  Arrina had never been this close to Hugo before. He was so tall that she had to take a step back to get a proper look at his face. She couldn’t quite read the expression on it.

  ‘I checked it over myself,’ he said softly. Then he shook his head as if to clear it and bent down to assess Olly, looking closely for any sign of injury.

  Arrina knew that Hugo didn’t have any children, but she wouldn’t have guessed it from the tenderness with which he held Olly’s shoulders and asked him if he really was all right.

  ‘I’m good,’ Olly said, sniffing and trying to stand as straight as he could.

  ‘It’s best if we have you checked out anyway,’ Hugo said. ‘My Land Rover’s just back over that hill. I can drive you to the hospital.’

  ‘Actually,’ Arrina said, taking a few steps uphill to bring herself to eye level with the much taller man, ‘if you’ve had a fall, I think you could do with a check-up too. I’ll drive us all to A & E.’ She didn’t mention that she’d hit her shoulder as she fell. In fact, she was too numb from the adrenaline to even feel it.

  Arrina expected Hugo to protest. His family was already angry enough with her students about their treatment of his land, then the kids had just run wild across it. Surely, he wouldn’t follow her. But he accepted her plan without hesitation and even helped Olly back to the college’s car park through the gap in the fence.

  ‘Put your weight on me,’ Hugo said to Olly. ‘I can take it. I’m sure I look ancient to you, but I’m not dead yet.’

  The three of them hobbled slowly to Arrina’s little XJ6. With its metallic mistral-blue paintwork and its oatmeal interior, it looked like an old man’s hobby car. Which in fact, it was. Arrina had inherited it from a great-uncle several years earlier and had grown to love it too much to part with it or even have its colour scheme updated.

  ‘Cool car, miss,’ Olly said. Arrina usually scolded her students for calling her miss. Teachers at the college went by their first names only. But she said nothing about it then.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ Hugo added, with a genuine smile. ‘Very cool.’ He chuckled at how clumsy the word cool sounded coming from him. Then he folded himself awkwardly into the car’s tiny passenger seat, making no complaint about the cramped space.

  Arrina spent the whole afternoon in the hospital with Hugo and Olly. She waited with them for the results of their check-ups. Then she waved off Olly and his very understanding parents before driving Hugo home. They spent the journey back talking about Arrina’s car, while Arrina tried and failed to find an opening in which to discuss the footpath issue. She worried that after the events of that day, she had no chance of fighting to keep the path open.

  Hugo came
into Arrina’s office the following morning and wrote a cheque to the college for the mangled fence plus one to give to Olly for his bike. He even offered to write another to Arrina personally in exchange for her car. But she refused to part with it.

  ‘Speaking of transportation,’ she said, feeling her cheeks redden at the awkward conversational turn, ‘might I perhaps speak to you about the footpath situation. First, let me just—’

  ‘Forget about it,’ he said, cutting off the apology she had carefully rehearsed about the trampling of his field.

  For a moment, Arrina’s heart stopped. He’d seemed so friendly as they chatted the day before. Surely, she hadn’t misread him that badly.

  ‘Perhaps if I can explain—’ Arrina said.

  ‘No, really,’ Hugo said, putting up a hand to interrupt her. ‘My brother, Rory, has a bee in his bonnet about it for some reason. I was furious when I found out he’d sent that letter. I’m sorry if it caused you any stress, and I can assure you he won’t be sending anything like that in the future.’

  Arrina could have hugged him. ‘So, the students can still cross the land?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, of course! It’s a long hike to the station for them otherwise. I don’t know what Rory was thinking.’

  Arrina smiled broadly as she realised she wouldn’t have to tell the Board of Governors anything about the footpath at all.

  Arrina ran into Hugo in the Horse and Hound a couple of weeks after the #ScarecrowSelfie incident. She insisted on buying him a drink for fixing the footpath problem. He bought the next round to make up for his hot-headed brother causing the problem in the first place.

  As they talked over drinks, Hugo told Arrina how much he admired the work the college did for local young people. Arrina thanked him as modestly as she could, but inside she was glowing. In the face of constant closures of schools throughout the Peak District, she had managed to grow Heathervale College into a fantastic education hub for students from miles around. It was nice to have someone appreciate that.

  ‘In fact,’ Hugo said, ‘if I could have my time again, I think I’d be a teacher. It seems like such rewarding work.’

  ‘Well, like you said to Olly the other day, you’re not dead yet.’ Arrina had the loose-shouldered ease that came from drinking Heathervale Ale on an empty stomach. ‘I’ve got a vacancy in the business studies department that I’m having a nightmare trying to fill. You’d be perfect for it. It’s yours if you’re interested.’

  Hugo drained his drink then looked down at the bottom of his empty pint.

  ‘You know what?’ he said, turning to Arrina as he waved his glass in the air to signal for another round. ‘That sounds great. Let me hand over the day-to-day at Hayes Homes, and I’ll be ready by September.’

  Arrina was flabbergasted. ‘Right... sure,’ was all she managed to say. Hugo had founded a multimillion-pound business, was friendly, good with kids, and popular with the local community. What more could she ask?

  The next day, Arrina expected a sober and regretful call from Hugo saying he’d changed his mind, but it didn’t come. In fact, the next time they spoke, he asked if they could meet for coffee in Do-Re-Mi to discuss the details of his role. Arrina eagerly agreed.

  That was just a few weeks earlier, and in the wake of a visit from Gillian DeViers, Arrina found herself extra enthusiastic about the college’s new business mentor, Hugo. She couldn’t wait to tell the rest of the teaching team about their newest colleague.

  Arrina thought of pompous old Gillian with a shudder. She was glad that the woman had finally left the office, though the thick musk of her perfume still lingered in the air.

  Arrina summoned soothing mental images of Christmas trees and snow-capped mountain peaks, which gently edged thoughts of Gillian away. She snuggled deeper into the sofa cushions in her office and pictured the carollers who performed on the village green each Christmas Eve. They sang Hark the Herald in her head.

  Suddenly, their lively performance was cut short by a scream.

  Arrina leapt up off the sofa. She ran in the direction of the sound, knowing that it must belong to the only other person in the building—Gillian DeViers.

  Arrina’s feet pounded along the corridor. She turned to where the toilets were and saw the tweed-clad woman standing there, still screaming. Arrina ran towards her, trying to work out what had happened.

  There was no one else in the corridor. Gillian was not being attacked. She wasn’t injured. But still, Gillian screamed.

  As Arrina got closer, she saw that Gillian was staring at something.

  The door to the ladies’ bathroom was open in front of her. Gillian was screaming at what was inside.

  Arrina turned to see.

  There, on the floor, in a pool of fresh blood, was the sprawled and lifeless body of Hugo Hayes.

  3

  Hugo. Hugo Hayes. The storybook lumberjack who she’d so quickly come to see as a friend. Dead.

  He was here, in her college, just like they’d been planning for weeks. But no. It wasn’t meant to be like this. He wasn’t due in for days. He would be coming in for his first class on Monday. He couldn’t be dead. This couldn’t be real.

  Arrina closed her eyes tightly. The image of Hugo—face down and motionless, with a bloodstained knife lying beside him on the ground—was impossible to look at but just as hard to get out of her head now that she’d seen it.

  For several long seconds, this vision of him filled her brain, pushing every other thought out of her mind. But then the safety of procedure and policy rushed in to take its place.

  She needed to get to her office and call for help. Arrina put a firm hand on Gillian DeViers’s shaking back and guided the woman away from the gruesome scene.

  Inside the office, Arrina closed the door then checked and rechecked the lock while Gillian collapsed onto the sofa, with her arms tightly clutched across her chest. Then Arrina strode over to get her phone, which was in her file-covered desk’s top drawer.

  She dialled a single nine and stopped.

  Hugo. Hugo was dead.

  Surely, there was a way to fix this. She ran through her usual problem-solving list for college issues: first, talk things over with the people involved, then speak to parents and teachers if needed, and finally, involve the police only if the problem was too big to fix on her own.

  Arrina hated to call the police in—the village gossips feasted on news of college upsets for weeks.

  But this. Hugo. Dead. It wasn’t the same.

  She couldn’t speak to Hugo. Couldn’t ask him and his murderer to shake hands and make friends. And there were no parents or teachers to bring in to help clear things up. There was only herself. And Gillian—though the older woman was pale and shaking, and she would be no help at all with anything.

  Which left the final step—call the police. They would come in with flashing lights and uniforms. The news of their visit was sure to reach the village before the end of the day. It would be splashed across the local papers the next morning. And it would set Arrina back years in her efforts to get the villagers to support the college.

  Arrina looked down at her phone then back to Gillian DeViers. She heard a voice in her head say: If only that woman weren’t here.

  Arrina stopped herself. What? What would she do if Gillian weren’t here? Shut the door to the bathroom that Hugo lay dead in and hope the problem would magically go away? Drag his body out and leave it on the edge of the Hayes family farm so that they would have to deal with it instead? No, of course not.

  She would call the police.

  Arrina dialled the other two nines and asked them to send the police right away.

  ‘A textiles dummy!’ Gillian suddenly piped up, sitting straight-backed and sounding certain. ‘That’s what it must have been. Or a prop from a play.’

  She spoke with such determination that Arrina almost agreed.

  But no. The body had been Hugo’s. And it had possessed that particular stillness only seen in something v
ery recently alive and then suddenly not.

  Arrina shook her head, sat down in a chair nearby, and stared at the walls of her office. They looked strange to her, as though she had never truly seen them. Photographs of the breathtaking landscapes of the Peak District covered one wall. Next to these was a noticeboard of postcards from staff and students. Behind Arrina’s desk, there was a long line of cabinets filled with so much scrawled writing on so many forms, one of which was Hugo’s employment contract, right there, just a few feet away.

  Arrina shook her head again. Nothing made any sense.

  In the distance, Arrina heard the faint stir of sirens in the summer air. She ran through the corridors of the college, unable to slow her feet to even their usual purposeful stride.

  Outside, she was confused to find were two sets of flashing lights. Not just the police, but an ambulance as well, which she was certain was too late to make a difference.

  Arrina shouted hurried directions to the paramedics and rushed over to the police car. It was pulling to a stop on the far side of the broad driveway, and Arrina ran right up to it, eager to have the police tell her what would happen next—how they would somehow fix all of this.

  But when she saw who got out of the passenger side, her heart stopped in her chest.

  4

  It was Tony. Well, in fact, not Tony any longer. Not to her. Not since last December, when he’d broken off their relationship with no warning and no explanation.

  She couldn’t bring herself to call him Tony after that—the name she’d whispered as he held her and made promises that he entirely failed to keep. Since their break-up, whenever Arrina had run into him in the village, she’d called him Sergeant Mellor instead, not caring how ridiculous that sounded amongst the aisles of the greengrocers or outside the jam and pickle tent of the Summer Fête.

  All Arrina’s hopes that the day would be fixed by the police slipped away as she locked onto Tony’s deep-brown eyes. The dull fist of sadness that she felt over Hugo’s death suddenly sharpened and dug into her like claws.