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

by Matilda Swift

  ‘They’re coming here to arrest you.’

  Still Fiona did not react to what Arrina was saying.

  ‘For Hugo’s murder.’

  Still nothing. Not even a flicker of alarm in her eyes.

  But then Arrina noticed that Fiona’s right hand was still holding onto the tissue she’d been clutching at the door and that now her knuckles were deathly pale—bloodless with the tension of the woman’s unrelenting grip.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Arrina said, her voice softer now. ‘It’s my fault that they’re coming here. I... I didn’t mean for any of this at all, but I’m here now to try and fix the mess I’ve created.’

  ‘They’re coming to arrest me?’ Fiona finally asked, her voice barely more than a whisper.

  ‘It was all a mix-up with the will and Maggie, and I know now that you didn’t do anything wrong at all, but I mentioned what I knew to the police, and now they’re on their way over here.’

  ‘They’re coming here?’ Again, she sounded utterly lost, as though waking up in the middle of a scene from a play she’d not rehearsed. She didn’t even seem surprised that Arrina knew of her secret connection to Maggie Lee.

  ‘Yes,’ Arrina said quietly.

  ‘Because of the will? But the changes weren’t finalised. There was nothing in his file about...’ She trailed off. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘They’ve found a video that they think shows you driving away from the college in Hugo’s car on the morning of his death. And it must be a mistake, but they won’t stop to figure out who it really was. They’re just going to come over here and take you away, just like they did to Olly.’

  ‘Driving away from the college?’ Fiona asked. But this time, there was some recognition there. ‘Driving Hugo’s car that morning... they have me on video?’

  Now it was Arrina’s turn to nod silently.

  Fiona wasn’t denying it.

  Arrina felt the muscles in her neck and shoulders stiffen. A tingle ran across her scalp. And a voice in her ear whispered run. But she didn’t. She stayed exactly where she was. She couldn’t be wrong about this. She was certain that Fiona wasn’t the murderer. The woman was so sad about her husband’s death. It couldn’t have been her who killed him.

  ‘I should have told them,’ Fiona said, fresh tears welling in her eyes. ‘I should have told the police that I was there that morning.’

  Arrina glanced out of the window again, not sure now whether police presence was such a bad idea.

  ‘But you see,’ Fiona continued, ‘when they told me about Hugo, I just couldn’t think straight. Then later, when they asked me for the details of my morning, I was scared. I knew I’d clipped your hedge on the way out of the college, and I thought that they’d see that as a sign that I was fleeing the scene, when really, it was just because I’m not used to driving Hugo’s Land Rover. And I didn’t think it would matter if I didn’t tell them I’d been there. Not really, because he was alive when I left him, and...’ Fiona wiped her eyes with her tissue and slumped back into her seat.

  ‘You were the one who hit the hedge!’ Arrina said.

  ‘Yes,’ Fiona said. ‘I’m terribly sorry. I meant to come back later that day and apologise for it. But then...’

  ‘No, of course. It doesn’t matter now. But I don’t understand why you were driving Hugo’s car instead of yours.’ She pointed in the direction of Fiona’s car and immediately felt foolish for doing so. Of course the woman knew where her own car was. ‘And why were you at the college that morning?’

  ‘That’s not my car. Mine broke down on Monday, so Hugo dropped his Land Rover off for me to use. I could barely drive the thing and certainly not at all after he... after his...’ She cleared her throat gently. ‘The garage was nice enough to drop that one off on Tuesday. I actually thought you were going to be the mechanic when you rang the bell. They said they’d be coming this morning. Hopefully, they’re bringing my car back, though the message wasn’t very clear.’

  Both women then turned to look out of the window. There was no sign of anyone at all out there.

  ‘But why were you at the college that morning?’ Arrina asked again, trying to make her question sound as gentle as possible without allowing the woman to skate over it.

  Fiona gave a gentle laugh, surprising Arrina entirely. ‘Oh, you’ll think me utterly strange. Hugo and I both. Perhaps we were, but we’d spent the summer under a great deal of strain, and we’d finally found a way through it and were feeling like a pair of young fools because of it.’ Her eyes fell on a picture of Hugo, which sat on the table beside her. In it, he was standing in front of a field of ripened wheat and grinning from ear to ear.

  ‘We’re both early birds,’ Fiona continued, ‘so when he called me at six that morning, it didn’t seem strange. He said he’d caught someone trying to break into the college a short while earlier and he wanted to go back in and check that everything was OK. I told him to call the police, but he insisted that he didn’t want to get the person in trouble—he said he knew the boy who did it.’

  Arrina nodded. ‘It was Olly. He’s a rather spirited young art student whose ideas seem to land him in the wrong place at the wrong time quite regularly.’

  ‘Well, Hugo said he’d got a set of keys to the college, so he was going to let himself in and take a look around. Then he asked if I’d like to come along and see the place. As I said, he really was terribly excited to be going to work there. He wanted to share that with me and introduce me to the next chapter of his life.’

  Her voice broke, and a single tear slipped onto her cheek. She took a moment to compose herself before continuing.

  ‘That’s what he called it—his next chapter. It seems that you know about dear Maggie and how excited Hugo was to have her in his life. I struggled somewhat with the changes at first, but I came to appreciate what a blessing it was that she’d come into our lives. Between her and the job at the college, it was as though Hugo was a new man. He was happier than I’d seen him in years. When I left him that morning, a little before seven, that’s how he was—happy, excited, and eager to face new challenges. He was planning to head back to the farm to pack up his things when I left him. The knock on the door that morning... I thought it was Hugo...’

  Again, her voice quavered and weakened. She wiped fresh tears from her face and glanced at the photo of Hugo beside her.

  A sharp rap on the door startled both women.

  On the driveway outside, there were no cars, and no lights flashed in the distance. At least Tony had decided to come and arrest Fiona in a calm and respectful manner.

  Fiona rose to answer the door.

  ‘No,’ Arrina said. ‘You stay here. I’ll go. I’ll see if I can... explain some things.’

  Fiona nodded and looked down at the photo of Hugo again.

  Arrina went to the door. Before she opened it, she squared her shoulders, ready to argue with Tony Mellor and stop him from arresting Fiona Hayes.

  She pulled back the door. Then stood in wordless confusion at the sight of the person who stood on the other side.

  35

  Ryan Thompson stood in the driveway, wearing oil-stained overalls and clutching a clipboard. Ryan was the student who’d spray-painted his name in ten-foot blue letters on a back wall of the college two years earlier. He and Arrina had spent an entire day scrubbing the graffiti off the wall together, and Arrina had later gone on to tutor him until he got on track with his studies.

  Ryan’s family lived a couple of villages over. But that didn’t explain what he was doing there on Fiona’s driveway right then.

  Ryan looked just as surprised as Arrina felt. The two of them stared and blinked in silence until Arrina was finally able to dredge up a few words. ‘You’re at university,’ she said. ‘I mean, I thought you were at university.’

  Ryan looked down at his grubby blue overalls as though amazed to find himself wearing them. ‘I am,’ he said. ‘I mean not right now. It’s the holidays. I’m helping my parents with the business.
’

  Arrina dug through her stunned brain to find what she knew of Ryan’s family. They owned the garage over in Eyam. She’d taken her temperamental XJ6 there once, but they’d struggled to get parts for it. She’d switched to a classic car specialist in Totley. But she knew the Thompsons’ place was well respected locally.

  ‘Right,’ Arrina said. Normally, when she ran into old students, she would ask questions about what they’d been doing since they left the college and what their plans were for the future. But none of those queries came to mind right then. She was still struggling to understand what Ryan was doing there. Or more precisely, why he was there and not Tony Mellor.

  ‘I’ve got the keys for Mrs Hayes,’ Ryan said, seeming just then to remember that his visit to the house had a purpose.

  Arrina looked over his shoulder, though she already knew that the driveway was clear.

  ‘Just keys?’ Arrina asked.

  Then Fiona walked up behind Arrina in the hallway. ‘Is everything OK?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m not really sure,’ Arrina said. ‘Ryan says he’s here to hand over your keys, but he doesn’t seem to have a vehicle to go with them.’

  ‘Oh, I do,’ Ryan said, nodding vigorously. ‘But it’s too big to drive up here. I’ve parked it down on the road. Actually, my parents thought you might want it taken to the farm instead, so just let me know, and I can drive it over there now if you like.’

  Arrina and Fiona looked at each other in confusion.

  ‘Thank you for the kind offer,’ Fiona said, ‘but I really do need it here. The driveway is a little tight, but I assure you, it’s not a problem. I’ll drive it up myself.’

  ‘Are you sure you want to do that?’ Arrina asked her, staring hard at the woman and trying to convey her worry about the imminent arrival of the police.

  ‘Yes,’ Ryan added. ‘I really don’t think—’

  ‘I’d like to get this sorted,’ Fiona said briskly, waving Arrina and Ryan’s concerns away. She slipped her feet into a pair of elegant black pumps and strode off down the driveway. Arrina dashed after the determined woman.

  She hated the thought of Fiona being arrested out there on the street. And surely the police could not be too far away. She thought they would have been here by now, and the waiting was making her nerves jangle. Arrina slipped her phone from the pocket of her jeans. She had received no further messages from Tony. Nothing to say how close he was.

  As she headed to the end of the driveway, she pulled up Tony’s number on her phone. She stared at the words DO NOT CALL and decided to ignore them for the first time in months.

  She was just about to dial his number when she reached the end of the driveway and saw what was parked there. She put her phone away and stood and stared.

  The vehicle Ryan had brought almost blocked the narrow road. It covered the pavement entirely. It was an enormous cherry-red tractor that Arrina recognised instantly.

  It was Hugo’s. The same tractor that had almost run her over just before the summer holidays.

  But what on earth was it doing here?

  Fiona was clearly just as confused as Arrina. The two women looked at the tractor as though they’d never seen a farm vehicle before in all their lives.

  ‘I really think it’s too big to get up the drive,’ Ryan said gently as he caught up to them. He clutched his clipboard nervously, hating to tell a customer they were wrong and hating even more that he had to do it in front of his old head teacher.

  ‘Yes,’ Fiona said, staring up at the enormous tractor in front of her. ‘Yes, I rather think it is.’

  ‘This is the tractor from the farm,’ Arrina said. ‘Why are you delivering it here?’

  Ryan looked down at his clipboard. He pointed at the address marked on it for delivery and held it out to Arrina and Fiona.

  ‘I thought it was a bit weird,’ the boy said. ‘But that’s what the paperwork said. Bring it here when it’s fixed. That’s what I’ve done.’

  ‘Bring it here?’ Fiona asked.

  Ryan looked down at his clipboard again. ‘Didn’t my dad call you?’ Ryan asked. ‘He said he was going to call to tell you I was coming and to explain...’ He trailed off and looked anxiously at Arrina, but she had no idea why the boy suddenly looked as though he wanted to be anywhere else in the world.

  ‘I did have a message from your father,’ Fiona said. ‘He said something about delivery... I’m sorry. I wasn’t really paying attention. I thought you were bringing my car back today.’

  Ryan shook his head. ‘Maybe...’ he started. He shifted from foot to foot, and Arrina saw him once again as the nervous kid in her office who was sure he was about to be hauled away by the police. ‘Maybe you should listen to my dad’s message again. I can give you the keys, and you just need to sign here. Then you can go inside and listen.’

  His hands were shaking slightly as he held out the pen and clipboard towards Fiona.

  ‘Perhaps you’d better tell us now,’ Arrina said. She used her firm-teacher voice, which she knew wasn’t playing fair with the nervous young man. But she was starting to think that the tractor held the key to something important, and she wasn’t about to delay finding out what by going back into the house.

  Ryan looked down at his oil-stained overalls. He was clearly wishing that he’d not come home to work in the family garage this summer. He was most likely imagining the holiday in Ibiza he could have been taking with his friends or the internship he should have organised, which would have kept him far away from the Peak District.

  He bit the inside of his lip.

  ‘Ryan,’ Arrina said sternly.

  The boy straightened his slumped shoulders but didn’t meet her eye.

  ‘We couldn’t figure out what was wrong with the tractor at first,’ Ryan said quietly. ‘The whole front end was smashed in, so the repairs took weeks. Mr Hayes insisted that we do the work slowly and carefully so we could figure out what happened. We examined each part carefully as we replaced it. It took us a long time to find out what went wrong.’ He looked guilty, as though the engine problem was all his fault, but Arrina had the feeling that something else was going on.

  ‘Which was what, exactly?’ Arrina asked.

  Ryan swallowed hard and shuffled his feet.

  ‘We found out that the engine had a... an unusual wiring system.’

  ‘I don’t think I quite follow you,’ Fiona said. ‘Hugo wouldn’t have touched the wiring.’

  ‘My dad said he’d explain everything,’ Ryan said. He scratched the uneven stubble on his cheek. ‘Maybe I should call him now, and he can tell you.’ He glanced at Arrina as though asking for permission.

  She shook her head. She was just starting to make sense of what Ryan was saying. The sinking feeling in her stomach suggested that she didn’t want to know any more. But she had to, and Ryan could tell her about it right now.

  ‘Could the wiring problem have happened before Hugo bought the vehicle?’ Arrina asked.

  Ryan silently shook his head. He glanced down at his clipboard then dropped it to his side. ‘We checked the tractor ourselves when Mr Hayes bought it,’ the young man said softly.

  ‘I don’t think I entirely follow what you’re saying,’ Fiona said. But there was more than a hint of concern in her voice. She was certainly getting an idea that things weren’t right.

  ‘Have your parents told anybody else about this?’ Arrina asked Ryan.

  Ryan shook his head again. ‘My dad wanted to speak to Mrs Hayes first. He said he’d call.’ The boy looked hopefully back towards the house, where the message from his father on the machine could take the attention off him finally.

  Arrina made no move in that direction. Instead, she glanced down the road to see if there was any sign of the police. She had a creeping chill along her spine. The tractor had been tampered with two months ago. Whoever had killed Hugo on Tuesday had tried to hurt him several months earlier as well. And there couldn’t be many people able to rewire a tractor so well that it
would take a mechanic all summer to figure it out.

  Whoever had tampered with the huge red vehicle was careful, meticulous, and deadly.

  Arrina realised that Tony might have been right to warn her away from the case. She’d thought she was simply helping. But was she really inching herself closer to a despicable killer who would stop at nothing to get what they wanted?

  The road was absolutely empty for as far as Arrina could see. No police car. No car of any kind at all. Nobody was coming to help them work out who had killed Hugo, and the startling emptiness of the world around Arrina, Fiona, and Ryan was starting to feel worrying.

  36

  Arrina stared up at the cherry-red tractor again. She had almost been killed by it herself just a couple of months earlier. She’d been skittish around tractors ever since. This one in particular made her feel anxious.

  But there was something else about it. Something that she knew was significant. A piece of the puzzle that wasn’t quite slotting into place in her mind.

  Arrina felt the itch to figure it out, but she was coming to realise that perhaps she had no business trying to solve the murder. Maybe she should leave it to the police.

  Arrina pulled her phone from her pocket again and stared at the screen. DO NOT CALL was there in front of her, begging her to disobey its instruction. Tony should have been here already. The drive from Grindleford wasn’t that long. Not even if he’d got stuck behind a tractor on the road. She wanted to ask where he was and beg him to get here more quickly.

  Then Arrina saw something inching around the corner of the road that suggested an explanation for the delay.

  Ambling along the small country lane was a fluffy white sheep. And if there was one thing Arrina knew about sheep, it was that they didn’t travel alone. Just then, another sheep rounded the corner and walked directly to the grassy verge at the roadside before lowering its head to eat.

  More slowly moving sheep wandered along the road, bleating and looking for food. They were in absolutely no hurry at all, even though Arrina was sure that somewhere further back in the flock there was a trapped police car and a very impatient Tony Mellor beeping at them to move.