The Crow Trap (54 page)

The woman was standing with her back to the gap in the wall. She wore a long skirt over black boots. She had loosened a flagstone from the corner of the room and shifted it enough so she could dig out the soil underneath. The grave must have been shallow because already Vera saw a fragment of bone, cream as ivory, waxy in the candlelight. The woman squatted and began to scrabble at the soil with her fingers.

Vera was flattened against the outside wall of the building, looking in at an angle through the gap. All she had to do now was to wait for Ashworth. She began to relax.

Suddenly, behind her, so close that it sounded like a scream, she heard a woman’s voice in exclamation. Then loud footsteps and Neville Furness shouting, “Who is it? What’s going on?” Shit, Vera thought. That’s all I need. She’d thought they’d be inside all evening shagging like rabbits.

The woman in the building stood and turned in one movement, giving a throaty growl of astonishment. She picked up the shovel which she’d leant against the wall. She couldn’t see Vera, still hidden outside, but Rachael, silhouetted in the doorway, must have been visible from the light of the candle. The woman moved forward. Before Vera could stop her she lashed out with the shovel. There was the crunch of metal against flesh and bone. Then she ran and seemed to disappear immediately into the darkness.

A second later the scene was hit like a stage by the spot of Ashworth’s flashlight. Neville Furness sat on the grass cradling Rachael in his arms. She was conscious. There was blood, probably a broken nose.

Vera heard her gasping with pain but thought she’d rather have Neville fussing over her than a middle-aged detective. She turned towards Ashworth, blinking in the light.

“Did anyone pass you?”

“No.”

“She’s not headed back for the car then.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Radio for assistance. We’ll need medics for Rachael. Then stay here.

She’s mad enough to come back.”

“And you?”

“I think I know where she’s heading. Friendly territory.”

As she walked off she could hear him shouting at her not to be so bloody stupid, that this was no time to play cops and robbers, they’d get her no bother before morning. But the words seemed very distant, as far away as Neville’s murmurs of comfort and Rachael’s stifled moans. She turned back once to say to him, “Look, I know what I’m doing. This is familiar territory for me too.”

But he was still shouting, his mouth opening and shutting in the torchlight, and she didn’t know whether or not he’d heard.

As she headed up the hill towards the tarn she felt that she did know this place. Better in the dark than she did in daylight. As a child it had always been after dusk or before dawn when she’d come here with her father. The scale seemed different then the tarn had looked like an enormous lake but the geography was the same. They had come here to steal the eggs of black-necked grebe. Her father had paddled into the water in thigh-length angler’s waders. Connie had stood on the bank, clapping her hands in delight.

The cloud thinned slightly to let through a diffuse and milky moonlight. There were no sharp lines or edges. It was like viewing the scene darkly through a photographer’s filter. At one point she thought she saw the shadow of her quarry disappearing ahead of her, but imagined it was probably her imagination, the mist playing tricks.

Either the woman had run too quickly, had too big a start or Vera was quite wrong about where she was heading. Now it hardly mattered. She took the same path as she had walked that morning but without the exhaustion or irritation. She had the energy of a ten-year-old and could have gone on all night. From the top of the bank she could see the faint lights of Langholme. The pub would still be open. People would be in their homes watching television, enjoying a late, relaxed Friday night meal, drinking beer.

Then, before she could believe it she had reached the five-barred gate and the stile. There were no street lights in the lane behind the church, but there were in the village’s main street, and headlights and the noise of traffic.

Above the porch door of the Priory there was a bulb energy efficient elements encased in a wrought iron mounting. Parked on the drive was Anne Preece’s Fiat, but not Jeremy’s Volvo. That didn’t mean it wasn’t there, tucked away for the night in the garage.

She moved closer, walking on the lawn not the drive, so her footsteps wouldn’t be heard. There was a light in the room which faced the lane.

It was uncurtained and the sash window was wide open. From inside came a voice, Anne Preece’s, anxious but slightly tetchy, as if she had been landed with a problem which she didn’t want to handle.

“You look dreadful. Whatever’s the matter?”

There was a mumbled response which Vera couldn’t make out, but which seemed to make sense to Anne, which seemed to knock the heart from her.

“He did that to you?” she said. “Look, you must go to the police.”

Vera moved to the front door, turned the handle. It opened without a sound. The occupied room was to her right and that door was already open. She planted herself in the doorway, put on her jolly maiden aunt’s voice.

“Who said you could never find a policeman when you needed one? At least a policewoman. I hope I’ll do.”

Anne looked up. She was shocked and pale. It was a pleasant room which Vera hadn’t seen on her previous visit. A comfortable sofa with lemon and white striped covers. Two chairs in the same print. Lots of plants and cut flowers. The other woman sat in one of the chairs with her head in her hands. Barbara Waugh, smartly dressed in her black skirt and jacket and her leather boots, but bedraggled, tearful, shaking.

Anne said, “She’s run away from her husband. He must have terrified her. Look at the state she’s in.” “Oh no,” Vera said. “It’s not her husband who’s terrified her.” She shot an amused, rather self-satisfied look at Anne. “If it’s anyone, it’s me.” And standing where she was, legs apart, hands on her hips to block the door, she cautioned Barbara Waugh, told her in a flat, indifferent voice that she was under arrest. Then she waited for Ashworth to send in the troops.

Chapter Sixty-Seven.

They met at Baikie’s for old times’ sake, though Edie would have had them to Riverside Terrace, and Rachael, who seemed to spend most of her time in the farmhouse and was already acting as if she owned the place, had invited them there.

Edie had her doubts about the Black Law connection. She’d thought lately that Rachael cared more for the place than the man. But as she’d said to Vera she’d hardly made a success of her own personal life so it wasn’t really for her to say. Rachael was even talking about having Dougie back to live with them, which Edie didn’t think was healthy at all. Talk about trying to live another person’s life.

Rachael wasn’t Bella Furness reincarnated and never would be. Thank God.

Ashworth was the only man present. Rachael had wanted to invite Neville along but Edie had put her foot down at that. “He was never a part of it. Not really. And I’m sure you’ll pass on all the details anyway.”

So they sat in the room with the stuffed fox and Connie Baikie’s mountainous armchairs and they waited for Vera to tell another of her stories. Edie had lit a fire not because it was cold but because outside it was damp and drizzling and they wanted the comfort. Because it had been raining when Grace was killed.

Perhaps they drank for comfort too. Certainly by the time Vera got going there were two empty wine bottles on the table. Joe Ashworth, who would have to drive Vera home, had stuck to tea. He said he knew he was only there to be chauffeur.

Vera started with a tribute, generous for her. “Rachael was right all along. It all started years ago when Bella and Edmund met in hospital.

There was another woman on the same ward and attending the same therapy group who was being treated for depression. She’d been desperate for a child. After a number of miscarriages she’d finally given birth, but the baby died after a few hours. He was buried in St. Cuthbert’s churchyard. The grave is still there. She had a severe breakdown. They tried to treat her at home but on a number of occasions she went missing for days. Her husband found her out on the hill, starving and exhausted. That was when she was sectioned and forced to go into hospital.

At the same time as one of Barbara’s disappearances, a toddler disappeared. His mother and her boyfriend had brought him for an outing to the hills. It was spring and they wanted to show the boy the new lambs. While the pair were otherwise engaged the boy vanished. If you believed the local newspapers he’d been swept away by a large hawk into its eyrie. If you believed me at the time he was drowned in the Skirl which was in flood.

“In fact we were both wrong. The boy was taken by Barbara Waugh on one of her crazy moorland wanderings. We don’t know what she did with him while we were searching the hill, but later she took him to the old mine and kept him as a pet, a toy, a replacement son.” Vera’s voice showed no emotion. Weren’t fairy tales always gruesome? But she was thinking, I was there, I could have made more effort to find him. “We don’t know yet how he died. Perhaps she killed him. Perhaps he starved to death when she was taken into hospital. At some time, either then or later, she buried him under one of the flagstones in the engine house. She tried to forget him but couldn’t quite, although she had a child of her own and a husband who stuck by her.” Again, Vera kept her flat storyteller’s voice but she threw a knowing look towards Anne, because investigations always dug up more than people realized. A husband who had been so frightened by her manic outings on the hill, never knowing where she might be, that he tried to persuade her to stay at home as much as possible. He didn’t like her going out.”

“Did he know about the little boy?” Anne asked.

“He never even guessed.” Vera poured more wine. “So Barbara put the boy’s death at the back of her mind. Buried it like she’d buried the body. Sometimes she visited the mine, brought flowers, but I think she’d convinced herself by then that she wasn’t responsible for his dying. Perhaps she confused him with her own son. She took flowers to his grave too. And so things would have continued if her husband hadn’t decided to develop the site as a quarry. Because then there would be a risk that the grave would be discovered. The unpleasantness which she’d tidily hidden away under the engine-house floor could be brought to light. She wouldn’t be able to pretend any more that it wasn’t her fault. So what could she do?

At first she encouraged the opposition. She spread rumours that her husband had come under the evil influence of Neville Furness and Olivia Fulwell. She thought that if the public inquiry came out against the quarry everything could continue as before. She wound up her old friend Edmund Fulwell about the project. He was an easy target. She played on his love of his ancestral estate and he played on Grace’s affection for him to rig her otter counts.

“She put pressure on Bella too. The three of them kept in touch. Bella was in a difficult position. The farm was verging on bankruptcy. She’d hoped to get money from her brother to save it but that never materialized. Her only hope was to do a deal with the development company over access to the site. She wouldn’t have liked the idea but it would have been better than losing the farm. She arranged for Peter Kemp to come to Black Law to discuss possible ways forward.”

“Someone else was there that afternoon,” Rachael said. “Dougie heard someone.” “Barbara. Godfrey had told her what was going on and she came to turn the screw. Blackmail. She knew what had happened when Bella’s father had died, knew it had all been planned. That had come out at one of the group therapy sessions. She threatened to make the whole thing public. Bella was under so much pressure that she couldn’t see straight. She told Peter she couldn’t make a deal and she committed suicide.

“For a while it looked as if Barbara was safe. She thought the report would come out in her favour. After all, she’d become chummy with Anne and had indirectly nobbled Grace. Then she heard from Edmund that Grace was having cold feet. She was talking about seeing a shrink or a social worker. She couldn’t face lying any more. She knew it was making her ill. I’m not sure yet if Barbara planned to kill Grace to stop her telling the truth about the otters. She says not. She says she went to the engine room as she did on Friday night to try to move the remains of the little boy’s body and Grace surprised her.

“When he first heard about his daughter’s death Edmund was too shocked to work out what might have happened. He stayed at his flat, carried on helping in the restaurant. Then I think he probably remembered a story Barbara had told to the group, a story nobody believed because she was mad at the time and full of fantasies. This one was about a boy she had found on the hill. A boy she’d taken for her own. Her baby.

“He panicked. It had always been his style to run away. He went into hiding. First with Nancy Deakin and then in the house on the estate.

How did Barbara know he was there? A guess perhaps. He’d probably told her that he’d lived in one of those houses before he got married.

“The phone number and the back door key she got from Neville. Not directly … ” as Rachael was about to object. “She had access to the Slateburn offices through her husband and I think she regularly went through both their desks looking for anything which would help in her fight against the quarry. She phoned Edmund to check that he was there. And to frighten him. She knew him well enough to realize that if he was scared he’d probably start drinking. On the afternoon of the birthday party when the estate was overrun with strangers she let herself into the house. Edmund had already drunk himself into oblivion. It was easy enough.”