The Darkest Evening

ignored him. ‘So, you’ll sort out the details with Holly? She’s got the contacts and knows what’s happening.’
And before he could say anything else, the line went dead.
Joe knew he should be angry at the way Vera treated him, but deep down he thought she was doing him a favour. She knew what she was doing. If she’d asked him if he minded putting in the extra shift, he’d have had to say, yes, he did mind, with the food almost ready and Sal already angry with the hours he’d put in this month. This way he had no choice and Vera would be considered the villain, not him. In his heart, he’d rather be out in the freezing night investigating a murder, than here in his comfortable suburban home with his family. The notion scared him – what sort of monster did that make him – and he pushed it away while he dug his wellington boots from the cupboard under the stairs and placated his wife. ‘I’m sorry, but you know what she’s like.’
‘It’s time you moved from that team,’ Sal said, mouth in a straight line, sullen as her nearly teenage daughter, ‘find a boss who appreciates you.’
But Joe knew he would never move while Vera Stanhope was in charge of his team. Because she did appreciate him and that’s why he’d been summoned in this way, with Vera putting herself in the firing line. And, anyway, she needed him; she’d go ape without him to talk sense to her. She’d never really understood the difference between her own morality and the constraints of the law. He walked to the end of the street to the main road where the snow had already been cleared, to wait for Holly, feeling shit for abandoning Sal when she’d been planning the evening for days, but experiencing too the thrill of excitement and exhilaration that compensated for the boredom of family life, and made it possible for him to be a reasonable husband and father at home.
When they arrived, it was midnight. The last couple of miles had been weird and disorientating. No street lights. A scattering of stars, hidden when the cloud blew across them again, or by a flurry of snow. The only sound the crunch of the tractor’s giant tyres flattening the snow beneath them. The cab was open on either side. Holly was crouched on the seat next to the driver and he was perched on the wheel arch. The cold had seeped through his down jacket and gloves. It seemed to find any gap where there was bare skin: his wrists, his neck. Holly was wearing a ski suit and hat. He’d teased her when he’d first seen her getting into it. ‘You about to climb Everest?’ Now he envied her.
They swung around a corner and suddenly there were lights reflected in the snow. The downstairs rooms of the big house still seemed to be lit. The tractor stopped. ‘That’s the kitchen door. Your boss is waiting for you in there.’ They climbed down and Joe pushed his way in. The tractor drove away.
Inside there was a wall of heat and noise. Voices talking and a child crying. That high-pitched scream that gets under your skin and makes you want to yell back. Or do anything to stop the noise. Joe was confused by the sudden contrast with the dark world outside. A stylish, slender woman in a black dress and heels scooped up the baby from a high chair. On the tray there was an empty pot of yoghurt and a plastic spoon, a couple of toast fingers. ‘I’ll take him upstairs, try and get him settled.’ When she left the room, the other voices faded and everyone was looking at the arrivals.
Now he’d adjusted to the new environment, Joe realized that he knew most of the people there. Keating the pathologist and Cartwright the crime-scene manager were sitting at the table, hands clasped around mugs of steaming coffee. Joe could smell it. And there was Vera, in her element and her stockinged feet, at the head of the scrubbed pine table, beaming. The only stranger was a woman, angular and tall, of indeterminate age. She moved a large kettle back onto the hotplate of the range, scooped more coffee into a jug and poured on the hot water. It was as if she’d guessed what Joe was dreaming of. She pulled a tin from one of the shelves and lifted pieces of flapjack onto a plate. They oozed syrup and the pieces stuck to each other. She set the jug and the plate in the centre of the table.
‘I need to go home.’ She had a deep, educated voice. Not local. Not what Joe had been expecting in a housekeeper. ‘I told Karan, my partner, I’d get back. My baby’s playing up. He needs me.’
‘Will you be okay to go on your own?’ That was Vera.
‘Of course. I can walk. The cottage is just at the end of the track, where it meets the road. I have a head torch.’ She looked at Vera. ‘That is all right with you? I won’t be . . .’ she paused, ‘. . . contaminating evidence?’
‘No, you get off.’ Vera thought for a moment. ‘Billy, you go with her. Make sure she’s safe. You can mark where she’s been walking. Set up an access path a good way from our body.’
Cartwright seemed about to object but thought better of it and drained the last of his coffee. ‘Just leave me some of that flapjack. I know what you buggers are like.’ The kitchen door opened and the two disappeared. Joe and Holly shed their outer garments and took their places at the table.
‘So.’ Joe found a clean mug. ‘Are you going to fill us in?’
Vera looked at him. ‘I got a bit lost in the snow. There was more of a blizzard than I’d been expecting.’ She sounded sheepish, but moved on before he or Holly could get anywhere near I told