“And I assume one of these two strapping gentlemen is your husband.”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “That’s Jonathan on the left. The other man is my father, God rest his soul. They were clearing trees at the back of the property that day. Pleased as punch, they were, when they finished the job. I took that photograph of them.”
“Jonathan moved away, didn’t he?” the psychologist asked. “I think I heard that he went abroad somewhere.”
She let out a short laugh. “Jonathan? Abroad? No, he loves this area too much. He’d never move away.”
Sheridan looked surprised. “Oh, so he lives locally?”
“Of course,” she said, pouring tea from the pot into the cups. “He’s at our other farm.”
“Grantham Farm?” Dani asked. If Jonathan was at the other farm, he was probably being questioned by Battle right now.
Vera looked up and nodded. “Yes, that’s right.”
“So you and he are separated?” Sheridan asked.
She laughed again. “No, nothing like that. It’s just that Jonathan is there, and I live here. It works better that way. But I visit him all the time. Samuel thinks I go out gallivanting with other men but that’s not true at all. I’m faithful to Jonathan. We sit and talk for hours, long into the night. We reminisce about the good old days, you know, that sort of thing.”
Dani felt her blood turn icy. “You said Samuel thinks you go out with other men when you go to Grantham Farm. So he doesn’t live there with his father?”
Vera frowned at Dani, as if the answer to that question was obvious. “No, of course not. We used to live there, all of us did. But now, Samuel lives here with me.”
“Is he here now?” Dani tried to keep the tension she felt in her body out of her voice. Battle and his team had gone to the wrong bloody house.
“No, he’s left me on my own again,” Vera said. “That’s all he ever does these days. I’ve barely seen him all day. You wouldn’t think it’s Christmas, a time you’re supposed to spend with your family.”
“Mrs Stokes, where is he?”
Vera waved her hand towards the rear of the house. “Out there somewhere. Feeding the hens, or so he tells me. They must be the best fed hens in all of Yorkshire, the amount of time he spends with them. Or perhaps he’s on that bike he likes to ride around in all weathers.” She nodded. “Yes, I’m sure I heard the engine just after he went outside.”
“When was this?” Dani asked.
“A couple of minutes before you arrived.”
Dani resisted the urge to sprint out of the back door and look for Michael. If he was on a vehicle, she’d have no chance, especially in this weather. “Mrs Stokes, this is very important. Do you know where he goes on the bike?”
Vera picked up one of the cups and blew on the tea before taking a sip. “I have no idea what he gets up to or where he goes. If he was younger, I’d know exactly where he’d be. The bunker. He used to go there all time whenever we visited his grandad here. Can I go to the bunker? he’d ask over and over. His grandad never refused him, so off they’d go, traipsing to the bunker. I never saw the appeal, myself. There’s nothing there except an empty room.”
Dani’s adrenaline kicked in. She tried to keep her voice steady as she asked, “Where exactly is the bunker?”
“At the back of the property,” Vera said. “That’s it, in that photograph. That’s what he’s sitting on top of. His precious bunker.”
Her phone rang. She pulled it out of her pocket and saw Battle’s name. Thrusting the phone at Sheridan, she said, “Tell him what’s happened and where we are. The team needs to get over here now.”
She rushed through the archway and into the kitchen, searching for the back door. She flung it open and stepped out into a snowy yard. A white van was parked out here, next to a cluster of outbuildings.
The snow was relentless, but she could see the faint impressions of tyre tracks that reminded her of the track she and Matt had found in the frozen stream bed. The snow hadn’t completely wiped them out, but they’d soon vanish.
She hurried out of the yard and onto open land, keeping her head down against the onslaught of wind and snow as she followed the rapidly disappearing tracks.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Tony answered the call from Battle with a quick, “Just give me a second, boss.” He looked over at Vera and said, “Could I possibly use your bathroom?”
“Yes,” she said, sipping her tea. “It’s just upstairs on the right. Is our friend coming back for a cuppa?”
“Perhaps in a bit,” Tony said. He ascended the steep wooden staircase that led to the next level and turned right. But the door he opened didn’t lead to a bathroom. The room beyond was a bedroom. It didn’t matter; he only wanted to get out of earshot of Vera while he told Battle to send the cavalry. Vera was under some sort of psychological stress and he didn’t want to make it worse by letting her know a rabble of coppers was coming to the house.
“I’m here, boss,” he told Battle.
“Where’s DI Summers?” the DCI asked gruffly.
“She’s gone after Stokes,” Tony said. “He’s here, living with his mother. You need to get everyone over here right away.”
“Right, we’re on our way. I can’t say when we’ll be there though. This bloody weather is closing off the roads.” There was a pause and then he said, “Is Vera Stokes there?”
“She is.”
“Don’t let her go anywhere. We found Jonathan Stokes’ body buried in the cellar here. According to the SOCOs’ initial assessment, he’s been under the earth at least fifteen years. We’re going to be taking Vera in for questioning.”
Tony had known that the woman downstairs had psychological issues, but Battle’s news made it abundantly clear just how deeply they were embedded in her mind. She’d said that she visited Jonathan at Grantham Farm regularly and spoke with him long into the night. That was obviously a delusion. But the fact that she knew her husband was in that house suggested she had some part in his death and burial there.
“Just to warn you, she might need to be handled with a gentle touch,” he told Battle. And not only because of her mental issues; she’s pregnant.” He wandered around the room, which seemed to be Vera’s bedroom, judging by the makeup on the dresser and clothes hanging in the open wardrobe.
“Just make sure she doesn’t do a runner,” Battle said, before hanging up.
Frustration filled Tony. He wanted to go out back and help Dani, but if he did that, a murderer —Vera Stokes—might get away.
He slid the DI’s phone into his pocket and was about to leave the room when something in the wardrobe caught his eye. He slid aside a white robe on its hanger and revealed the two items that had looked out of place among the dresses and tops.
He stroked his chin as he considered the implications of what he’d just found. Hanging from the rail were two latex, fake baby bumps, one larger than the other. Both were larger than the bump Vera currently sported beneath her robe.
So the pregnancy was fake. She was obviously planning to move to the larger fake bumps as time went on.
But why?
Had she lost a child? If his hypothesis was correct, then yes, she had lost one. She’d lost Ruth. But Ruth couldn’t have been a baby when she died; Tony himself had just seen a photograph in which she was at least six years old.
A mother faking a pregnancy because she’d lost a baby was something Tony had encountered before, but not someone faking a pregnancy after the loss of an older child. He supposed it was possible, but there seemed to be something else at play here.
He went back downstairs and into the living room, where Vera was sitting on the sofa, watching the Home Alone movie.
Tony sat next to her. “I’d love that cup of tea now, if that’s okay.”
“Of course,” she said, smiling. “Did you find the bathroom?”
“I did.”
She handed him one of the full china cups and said, “Merry Christmas.”
>
“Merry Christmas. Thank you.”
He took a sip of the tea and said, “Are you hoping for a boy or a girl?”
Her hand went to the bump beneath her robe. “I really don’t mind.”
“That’s probably the best way to look at it,” he said, nodding. “You don’t want to set your heart on a particular outcome and then be disappointed when it doesn’t happen. Children are like that, though, aren’t they? You have hopes and dreams for them, hoping they won’t make the mistakes you made when they grow up, and then they go ahead and make those same mistakes, anyway.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” she said.
“Girls are the worst.” Tony took a sip of tea, taking time for his words sink in and then added, “They sometimes turn away from their mothers once they reach a certain age. It isn’t right, really; they should remember who brought them up. Who nourished and cherished them.”
“Yes, you’re right,” Vera said. “My daughter was just like that. Rebellious. Willful. She wouldn’t listen to a word I said.”
Tony didn’t say anything further. It hadn’t escaped his attention that Vera was talking about her daughter in the past tense. He sipped his tea slowly. If he was right, Vera had a lot more to say on this subject and, given a little time, she would tell him more than she probably intended.
“She was always going off to that cliff,” she said, finally. “And she just had to snap her fingers and Samuel would follow her there like a lapdog. He didn’t have any friends. He was always an odd child and I think the other children could sense that. Ruth was the only one who understood him, I think.” Her hand flew to her mouth, as if she’d said something she shouldn’t have.
“What’s wrong?” he asked her gently.
“We don’t speak her name in this house. I don’t allow it.”
He nodded slowly, as if he understood. “I can see why. Some things—and people—are best forgotten, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” she said, nodding along with him. “They are.”
He gestured at the bump beneath her robe and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I bet you’re hoping it’s not a girl. I don’t envy you, having to go through all those kinds of problems a second time around.”
She looked down at the bump as if seeing it for the first time. “This? Oh, no, this isn’t real. Silly me for keeping up the pretence in front of you. I only wear this for Samuel.”
“For your son? I don’t understand.”
Her face darkened. “He’s been getting steadily more and more depressed over the years. I can recognise the symptoms of a breakdown, having had some first-hand experience, and I thought he was heading for one. I had to do something to help him. I thought back to the time in his life when he was happiest. It was when his sister was pregnant. He just seemed so optimistic and full of life at that time. So, I thought that if I told him I was pregnant, he’d get that happy smile back again and avoid a mental breakdown.”
“Was his sister pregnant when she…went away?”
“Yes,” Vera said, “She was.”
Tony realised he’d found the trigger that had eluded him for so long. Michael had internalised his rage over Ruth’s death for years, letting it build up inside him. But he had controlled it. Then, his mother had told him that she was pregnant and that had brought the emotions to the surface until they boiled over. Vera had been trying to help her son, but she’d inadvertently triggered his rage.
And Tanya Ward had died as a result.
“When I told him,” Vera said, “it had the opposite effect of what I’d wanted. He looked at me with a glare that would have slain me on the spot if looks could kill. I was going to tell him that I was lying and show him the bump I’m wearing, but his mood had turned so dark that I didn’t dare say anything. I had the feeling that if he knew I wasn’t pregnant, he’d…do something.”
Tony finished his tea and set the cup back on the tray. “Do you know what he’s capable of?”
“Yes, I think so,” she said, nodding slowly, her eyes unfocused. “It was when Tanya Ward went missing. Tanya had been my nurse in a hospital some years ago. Samuel would come to visit me and when he did, I saw the way he looked at her. Not in the way many men look at women, with lust in their eyes. No, this was something different. A cold, calculating stare. Like I could see something working behind his eyes; something dark.”
She put her cup on the tray next to the teapot. “When it was on the News about Tanya, I had my suspicions. But I told myself I wasn’t thinking straight. Then it was announced that there was a link between Tanya and a girl that went missing in Derbyshire. I remembered that Samuel had been in Derbyshire a few weeks earlier, delivering a fridge. As I said, I know what the darkness of the soul looks like and I saw that in Samuel every time I looked at him. Every day since the day I told him I was pregnant.”
Tony had no doubt that Vera did indeed recognise the darkness of the soul. She had probably murdered her own husband and daughter.
“Shall I pour us another cup?” he said, indicating the teapot.
“Oh, yes, that would be nice.”
He poured the drinks and passed her a cup. As she took it from him, he said, “We’ll just wait here a while and enjoy the movie, shall we?”
She smiled at him. “Yes, I’d like that.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Dani had no idea how long she’d been wandering in the snowstorm. The tracks were almost completely gone now, nothing more than slight depressions in the snow, almost invisible in the beam of her torch.
She shielded her eyes and tried to make out movement or shapes in front of her but could only see the swirling whiteness of the storm. The wind screamed around her like a banshee announcing an impending tragedy.
Aware that she might stumble into Stokes blindly, she reached into her pocket and took out a canister of Captor spray. The spray only worked when sprayed directly into the eyes, which would be almost impossible to do accurately in this wind.
She wished she’d brought her baton from the car, but she hadn’t had time to get it; Teresa and Gemma Matthews were out here somewhere, and they needed her help.
If she needed a handy weapon, and the Captor failed, the torch would have to do as a backup. Its casing was made of steel and she reckoned it was heavy enough to deal a painful blow, especially if she chose the target area carefully.
She moved as quickly as she could through the deepening snow. It soaked through her trousers, numbing her legs. Her face felt rigid and every breath she took into her lungs froze her insides.
She knew that even if Battle and the team had set off straight away from Grantham Farm, it would take them time to get here.
Time that Teresa and Gemma didn’t have.
She was their only hope.
As she trudged on through the seemingly never-ending whiteness, she wondered if she’d actually fallen somewhere back on the trail and was dreaming all of this while she slowly froze to death. She felt disconnected from the rest of the world, alone in a vast expanse of nothingness. Cold and snow were all there was. Even the tracks had disappeared now, buried beneath a white shroud.
Disoriented, she tried to continue in a straight line, but had no idea if she was achieving that goal. For all she knew, she might be going in circles.
Then she heard something. At first, she thought she’d imagined it, or it was the banshee wind playing tricks on her. But then she heard it again. A metallic clank.
Using the sound as a guide, she broke into a jog, pushing through the snow with powerful strides. She needed to get to Teresa and Gemma as soon as possible.
A dark shape became discernible through the falling snow and she realised, as she approached it, that it was the concrete structure she’d seen in the photograph on the farmhouse wall. The bunker.
A quad bike was parked a short distance away but there was no sign of Stokes.
Dani moved quickly to the concrete shaft. The hatch was open. A ladder descended into the pitch-black room
below.
“This is Detective Inspector Summers of the North Yorkshire police,” she called into the shaft while her eyes scanned the area around her. “Is there anyone down there?”
Two female voices floated up to her, one younger than the other.
“Yes! We’re down here!”
“Please help us!”
“Is he down there with you?” she called.
“No,” the older voice answered.
“Please help us,” the younger voice pleaded.
Dani couldn’t go down there. If Stokes slammed the hatch shut, she’d be trapped with Teresa and Gemma. “Can you get to the ladder?”
“No, we’re tied up. We need you to untie us.”
“You’re going to have to wait a little longer,” Dani said. “I need to find him.” She moved away from the hatch and over to the quad bike. A canvas bag on the back of the bike held everything a kidnapper needed to restrain victims: duct tape, rope, cable ties, strips of cloth that could be used as bindings or gags, and a long-bladed knife.
“Step away from the bike,” a voice shouted over the howling wind.
Dani turned to face Stokes. He held a shotgun in his hands, and it was levelled at her chest.
“Michael, you don’t want to do this,” she said.
“Don’t I?” he said. “What you mean is that you don’t want me to do this. I want to do it. I need to do it.”
“Need to do what? Kill a woman and a young girl? What will that achieve?”
“Don’t try to confuse me,” he said, raising the gun slightly. “I need to kill my mother for what she did to my sister.”
“And then what?”
“Then I take the girl to the cliff and she doesn’t come back.”
“Is that where you were taking Abigail Newton when she jumped from your van? You were taking her to the cliff to end her life?”
“Shut up! You don’t understand. It’s where Ruth would have wanted to spend her last moments, not lying at the foot of the stairs. I need to put it right. She was relying on me. She had faith in me.”
Eyes of the Wicked Page 22
