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

by Matilda Swift

  ‘I wonder if she’s the reason Hugo didn’t get married when he was younger.’

  Julie nodded at the suggestion. She and Phil had only walked down the aisle a few years ago themselves, when Julie was thirty-seven. There was a broken engagement in her past, which Arrina knew the painful details of and which she was sure caused the wistful look in Julie’s eye right then.

  ‘Poor Fiona,’ Julie said. ‘I should go and pay my respects.’ She held a chunk of hair to her nose and sniffed, then she grimaced at the lingering smell of sour milk. ‘I might leave it a couple more days.’

  Arrina took a deep breath. ‘I actually went round there myself today.’

  ‘That’s very good of—’

  ‘And I overheard Fiona talking on the phone,’ she continued, knowing that she had to get the whole story out in one go. ‘I didn’t mean to. It was an accident. I ran into Rory at the back of the house, and he pushed me to go inside even though he walked off. And so I was in the house looking for Fiona, and she was on the phone talking to somebody. In fact, she was shouting at them quite angrily and getting mad about the details of Hugo’s will.’

  Arrina glanced down at the picture of the young and happy man in her hand. She placed it face down on the counter beside her. ‘She sounded incredibly angry,’ Arrina said, with her eyes pinned to her pink-tinted glass of rum. ‘And honestly, I’m scared of watching the CCTV from the college because I think Fiona might be on it.’ Arrina took a sharp swig of her drink once she’d finished her confession.

  Julie picked up the photo of Hugo from the counter and looked at it carefully.

  ‘What if it was Phil and me?’ Julie asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What if I’d been killed and you thought Phil had done it? Would you watch the tape?’

  ‘Why on earth would Phil murder you?’

  ‘Well, you know, I might be all sweetness and light with you, but sometimes I can be just the teensiest bit sarcastic, and if Phil’s in a bad mood, it really rubs him up the wrong way.’

  ‘You being sarcastic? Never.’ The spiced rum and the sugar from the cakes were swirling through Arrina’s veins with a soothing warmth.

  ‘It pains me to admit it, but even I’m not perfect.’ Julie swiped a finger across her plate to pick up the last smudges of buttercream. ‘But so, if you thought that Phil had killed me, would you watch the tape?’

  Arrina didn’t have to think about it. ‘If I even suspected he’d done it, I’d break down his door with an axe before he knew what was happening.’

  ‘That seems reasonable,’ Julie said before sticking her finger in her mouth and sucking the sweetness from it.

  ‘But after that,’ Arrina said, ‘I’d watch the tape, just to be sure.’

  ‘Then we know what we have to do.’

  Julie got up and squeezed into the storeroom-cum-office space just off the kitchen. She picked up an ancient-looking TV with a VCR slot below the screen. She set it down on the worksurface by their seats and plugged it in.

  Arrina took the tape from her bag and inserted it while Julie pulled the kitchen’s curtains closed.

  Two dark and fuzzy panels, joined by a white line down the middle, popped up on the screen. They showed the front and back views of the college in the middle of the night.

  Arrina and Julie shuffled closer together. Then they sat in silence and watched what happened on the screen.

  18

  Numbers in the top right corner ticked by while the night before Hugo’s murder played out on the screen. There was a faint VHS static over the pictures of the front and back of the college, but Arrina’s eyes adjusted, and soon she could see the details of the fluorescent-lit surroundings. A gentle wind blew through the trees in the background, which sped up to a stuttering swish as Arrina forwarded through the empty hours.

  When she saw a flicker of movement in the car park, she hit play and watched as a lost badger snuffled across the empty white-lined spaces and left through a tight gap in the fence. She hit fast forward again.

  For years, Arrina had been trying to persuade the Board of Governors to replace the ancient VHS security system with something more up to date. But they’d bought it from another school as it was closing, along with an extensive collection of long-play tapes, which meant there were years of life in the system yet.

  The tapes held twelve hours each. The one she was watching started at ten pm, so it was sure to have captured all the key events of early Tuesday morning. Since both of the cameras had been destroyed by thrown rocks, Arrina was sure the tape would have caught something. Or at least, she had all her fingers and toes crossed that it did, which felt the same as being sure right then.

  She forwarded slowly through the hours, switching to watch in real time whenever something other than leaves moved across the screen. Several more animals walked past, including a family of bob-tailed rabbits, a young fox, and a cat. The video didn’t show colour in the low light of night-time, but the cat looked a little like Tinsel. When Arrina leaned in to look more closely though, she saw the animal had a faint, irregular pattern on its fur, which her own sleek silver tom didn’t possess.

  Julie got up to make a cup of tea.

  Arrina kept her eyes fixed on the screen and sped through till two in the morning, but when a huge, steaming mug was put down on the work surface beside her, she let the tape play at normal speed and took a scalding sip. It was Yorkshire tea, served strong and milky, just the way Arrina liked it.

  Then she fast-forwarded again, and the scenes at both the front and the back of the college were empty until four am.

  That’s when the first person entered the frame.

  Arrina and Julie shuffled their chairs closer to the screen and watched as a tall, thin figure walked up the driveway at the front of the college.

  ‘That’s the killer,’ Julie whispered, grabbing Arrina’s shoulder with a painfully strong grip. ‘That’s him.’

  Arrina stiffened in her seat. The hairs on her arms stood on end despite the warmth of the kitchen. Though she knew the events on the video had already happened, she felt a shiver of fear at what she was watching.

  ‘Do you recognise him?’ Julie asked, removing her hand from Arrina’s shoulder and tapping on the screen.

  Arrina took another sip from her tea and squinted at the figure. He was dressed in dark clothing and moved quickly.

  ‘No,’ Arrina said, ‘but it seems like he’s been to the college before. Look how he keeps his face in the shadows so the camera doesn’t catch it.’

  ‘He’s scoped the place out,’ Julie said. ‘Got the low-down on the security system so he can get in and out without a trace.’

  ‘You’ve been watching too many police shows,’ Arrina said, though she, too, loved to binge the hour-long police procedurals, which wrapped everything up in a neat bow before the credits. ‘But I think you’re right. He’s heading straight for the camera now, and we still can’t see his face.’

  Arrina felt a prickle on the back of her neck. The man had been to the college before, perhaps even when she was around. Then he’d returned that night with a plan.

  She had no idea whether Hugo’s death was part of that plan or just a terrible accident. Neither option seemed to make sense.

  ‘At least we know Fiona Hayes wasn’t there,’ Arrina said. It felt good to cross the grieving woman off her suspect list, even if that meant the list was now entirely empty.

  ‘Not so, Watson,’ Julie corrected. ‘We know that Fiona wasn’t there right then. But who knows what happened next?’ She leaned closer to the screen.

  ‘You’re switching from cop dramas to Sherlock Holmes? And why am I the Watson here?’

  ‘It’s indubitable,’ Julie said, holding an imaginary pipe to her mouth and taking a puff.

  ‘I’m not sure you’re using that word correctly,’ Arrina said. ‘Do you know what it means?’

  ‘I indubitably do.’ Julie glanced at Arrina and smiled, but then her attention was caught by
a movement on the screen. ‘What’s he taking from his pocket?’

  The man pulled something out and held it in his fist.

  ‘I can’t see,’ Arrina said.

  ‘I know. It’s so small.’

  ‘No, I mean your head is in the way, Sherlock.’

  Julie shuffled to the side, and both women watched as the man fiddled with something in his hand. Then he threw it hard at the screen.

  Arrina and Julie jumped back as the projectile blurred towards them. It sailed off to the side of the frame.

  ‘It’s a rock,’ Arrina said. ‘He threw a rock at the camera.’

  She knew this had happened because she’d seen the rocks on the ground the following morning. But she was freshly incensed by the vandalism as she watched it happen before her very eyes.

  The man took another rock from his pocket and threw it. And another, and another until one hit squarely in the centre of the lens. The left-hand picture on the screen blinked out instantly.

  Arrina turned her gaze over to the image on the right side. That picture showed the back exit of the college—the empty car park and the shadows beyond it, which blurred into the edge of the Hayes family land.

  There was nobody there. Just a wide empty space and a sense of foreboding.

  ‘That’s a weird way to break a camera,’ Julie said while staring at the empty screen. ‘Phil’s always warning me about people using tree loppers to clip the cables. Apparently, it happens all the time.’

  Arrina took another careful sip of her hot tea and nodded. ‘And if he’s going to commit a murder later,’ Arrina mused, ‘why risk drawing attention to himself with all the noise he must be making?’

  ‘And why is he even breaking the cameras at all?’ Julie added. ‘His hood’s covering his face. So why does he need to break them?’

  The two women sat in silence. They watched a breeze stir the shadowy trees behind the college.

  ‘We’d be an excellent pair of question compilers about this case,’ Arrina said. ‘If anyone ever makes a test on this video, we’ve got some fantastic material for them.’

  ‘Oh, definitely,’ Julie said. ‘I think we might have found our true calling in life.’

  ‘Though we are rather lacking when it comes to the answers.’

  ‘I’m still counting on Fiona Hayes showing up. On those police shows, they always turn straight to the wife.’

  ‘I can’t imagine that man being connected to Fiona Hayes,’ Arrina said. ‘I think you were right to wonder why he’d use rocks to break the camera. It makes me think he’s got a very specific agenda. Figuring that out might be the key to all this.’

  Arrina still felt a niggle of doubt over Fiona’s anger at the will. But her husband’s death must have been stressful. Perhaps she’d had a sudden panic about losing her home and wanted to be sure that she was safe. That didn’t quite make sense of what she’d said. Arrina tried to recall the exact words—she remembered there’s nothing being shouted down the phone. There was more that she’d heard the woman say, she was certain.

  But Arrina’s mind couldn’t stay focused on Fiona.

  The man with the rocks was walking around to the back of the college—out of sight of the cameras but coming just as surely as if Arrina was watching him. In just a few seconds, he would appear on the TV, walking in from the white line in the centre of the screen.

  She took a large gulp from her hot cup of tea. It felt like coals going down, but Arrina barely winced.

  Julie reached over and held Arrina’s hand as they sat and waited for the figure to reappear. They watched in real time, seeing the seconds slowly tick by.

  A streak of white raced across the picture. Both women jumped.

  Something had run through the car park so quickly that it blurred on the screen. It couldn’t have been the man again. It was too small. Besides, it came from the wrong side of the college. Whatever it was, it was heading towards where the man would be. Arrina reached for the rewind button.

  A motion on the left margin of the image stayed her hand. It was the small white thing again. As it edged into the picture, Arrina saw that it was a dog with a white head and legs. The rest of it was a matte-black shadow, which Arrina slowly pieced together into the shape of a border collie. Arrina recognised it as the farm dog that belonged to Hugo and Rory Hayes.

  There was no sound with the picture, but Arrina could see the dog’s loud, full-bodied bark as it backed into the frame. Slowly and cautiously, the hooded figure walked forwards. The dog continued to back away.

  The tall, gangly-limbed man continued on his path, slowly but confidently, until he got to within a few feet of the CCTV.

  He pulled out a second handful of rocks and started throwing them in the direction of the camera, not caring about the angry dog by his side. Arrina and Julie both flinched as the rocks flew close to the lens. Several glanced off the edge of the camera, rattling their view of the scene, but the picture stayed intact.

  Suddenly, the figure stopped and turned.

  Arrina didn’t understand what had happened. Then a second person walked out from the shadows of the car park.

  It was the unmistakably tall and broad figure of Hugo Hayes.

  19

  ‘I can’t look,’ Julie said, burying her head in Arrina’s shoulder.

  Arrina wanted to turn away too. But she knew that the murder hadn’t happened out there. She’d parked her own car near that spot the next morning. There’d been no trace of blood on the ground. No mark of any disturbance.

  She forced herself to watch the video to find out what had happened between Hugo Hayes and the strange man outside the college.

  Hugo walked closer to the camera and the man who’d been trying to destroy it.

  The hooded figure was tall, but Hugo was taller, and he was the broader man by far. Hugo didn’t seem afraid. But neither did the hooded man.

  Arrina watched them gesture and saw Hugo mouth words she could not hear.

  She couldn’t guess what they were talking about. She didn’t even know why Hugo was there. He should have been tucked up safely in his bed on the other side of the village. And yet there he was, in the car park of the college, at four am on a Tuesday morning, facing down a mysterious hooded vandal.

  ‘Why doesn’t he call the police?’ Arrina asked, not sure if she was speaking to Julie or the screen. Every muscle in her body felt taught with the desire to change the events of that night. If only Hugo had called the police right then, everything would be OK.

  Hugo pointed at the camera then at the rocks in the other man’s fist. A gust of wind rocked the camera, which must have been knocked loose by the rocks that had hit it. The hooded man dropped the stones he held.

  Arrina could almost hear the clatter as they hit the ground. Her senses were sharpened to pins. Cool night air flickered across her skin. She could smell fresh soil from the field nearby, hear the low growl of the dog at Hugo’s feet.

  Hugo bent down to pat the dog’s hunched head.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Julie asked. ‘Is it awful?’

  ‘They’re just talking,’ Arrina said. ‘It looks like they know each other.’

  Julie didn’t look up from her hiding place in the fabric of Arrina’s checked shirt. ‘What’s happening now?’

  ‘Hugo’s pointing towards his farm. He’s going to hit the other guy. No, wait, he’s just clapping him on the shoulder.’

  ‘What?’ Julie lifted her head slightly to take a peek. Then the hooded man raised his hands, and she squealed before burying her face again.

  ‘He’s pulling back his hood,’ Arrina said.

  ‘Oh, goodness. I bet he’s got no nose. Has he got no nose?’

  ‘He’s not facing the camera. I can’t tell.’ Through the grainy film of the CCTV, she thought Hugo smiled at the man. ‘But I’m pretty sure it’s not Voldemort out there.’

  Something in the way the men stood struck a chord in Arrina. It triggered a recent memory.

  Arrina g
asped but said nothing. She hoped more than anything that she wasn’t right. But in spite of the black-and-white film, she could almost see the boy’s bright-blue hair. Arrina held her breath.

  Then the boy turned and pointed straight at the camera. She let out her breath in a huff when she saw she was correct. The boy in the car park was Olly. He was the art student who’d almost been hit by Hugo’s tractor at the start of the summer.

  The camera wobbled again in the breeze.

  ‘Who is it?’ Julie asked.

  Arrina’s throat felt sealed shut by worry. Olly couldn’t be the killer.

  But he was there that night, and he’d been throwing rocks to break the CCTV. It seemed that he’d also arranged to meet Hugo at the college at four am. Arrina could think of no reason he would do that if he wasn’t the killer.

  And he had almost been run over by Hugo’s tractor. His motorbike had been smashed to pieces that same day.

  Could Olly really have held his grudge all summer and planned Hugo’s murder as revenge?

  Julie dug her fingers into Arrina’s arm again.

  Surely, Olly wasn’t the killer. It had been months since the tractor accident. And Olly hadn’t seemed angry at Hugo when it happened.

  Olly reached into his pocket right then. Arrina held her breath.

  A glint of light hit the metal in his hand, and Arrina almost screamed. Julie dug her fingers deeper into Arrina’s flesh and pressed her face more tightly into her shoulder.

  Hugo reached towards the boy. He took something from Olly. Shook it. Arrina recognised the jumping glitter of a bunch of keys. Hugo pointed towards the college, and Olly nodded his head.