The Darkest Evening

of the big house. She saw now that only a couple of hundred yards from the parked Land Rover was the track that led to the back entrance to Brockburn. It was very narrow and hidden by a spinney of bare deciduous trees, in the upper branches an old rookery: large, untidy nests spilling twigs. Two cottages were tucked behind the spinney; in one of these lived Dorothy Felling and Karan Pabla. Vera stood at the junction. In the dark and a blizzard, she would have missed it. She felt a moment of guilt.
If I’d been more careful, I would have seen the turning. I might have caught up with the lass before she was killed. Instead, I was intent on getting warm and out of the weather. When a young woman was being attacked, I might have been chatting to Juliet and drinking tea.
Vera turned down the track, which was sunk between two steep banks. It was more sheltered here, the wind broken by the trees. The ground beside the lane flattened and she reached the cottages, which were low, single storey, stone, with small front gardens and a longer strip at the back leading on to a field full of sheep, the only boundary a rickety wire-mesh fence held up by wooden posts. Vera wondered who farmed this land. Not the Falstones. They were on the other side of the valley. Perhaps the tenant was Neil Heslop, the father of the lasses who’d helped out at the dinner on the Friday night. The first cottage was blank, dead-eyed, the windows misted. This must be the holiday home. In the back garden of the attached cottage, she saw a small child’s swing, a hen run, evidence of gardening: some frosted sprout stalks and leeks gone to seed. No sign of life inside though and no car parked outside. In a place like this you would need a car. She stopped by the small gate and listened for a child, music, voices, but everything was quiet.
Vera hesitated outside for a moment, tempted to go in and snoop. Somewhere like this, they’d likely not be too bothered about security and the door might be open. She was driven by curiosity, not by any sense that the couple might be guilty of Lorna’s murder. Holly might have suspected that they had secrets, but the constable’s description of them didn’t suggest hidden rage or a need for revenge, and the attack on Lorna had been brutal and violent. They were outsiders and this felt like an insider’s crime.
In the end Vera heard Joe Ashworth’s disapproving voice in her head warning her against intruding – he’d never been a rule-breaker – and she walked on. She was pleased that she’d listened to his unspoken advice, because just as she passed the cottage there was the sound of an engine coming towards her and a quad bike with a collie perched next to the driver emerged round a bend in the track. It would have been embarrassing to be caught breaking into a witness’s home. The driver was slight, but wrapped in a heavy jacket on top of blue padded overalls, a knitted hat pulled low over the face. It was only when the quad pulled to a stop that Vera recognized one of the young women who’d acted as waitresses at the dinner on the night Lorna was killed.
‘Can you switch that thing off for a moment?’ Vera was yelling over the engine sound and the collie was barking.
There was sudden silence apart from rooks in the distance.
‘I’m Vera Stanhope, investigating Lorna’s murder.’
The girl nodded. ‘Nettie Heslop.’
‘Aye, I met you at the big house Friday night. Are you the younger or the older daughter?’ Vera thought they’d looked similar and it’d been hard to age them. She didn’t bump into teenage lasses often enough to tell, only ones dressed up to the nines on a Saturday night in the Bigg Market in Newcastle and they all tried to look older than they were.
‘The oldest. Cath will be seventeen next week. I’m eighteen.’
‘You’re both at the high school in Kimmerston?’
Another nod. A quirky little smile. ‘A levels this year for me.’
‘You’ll both have known Lorna Falstone then. You’ll have been at school together.’
‘She’s five years older than me. I didn’t really know her.’ A pause. ‘We hung round with a different crowd. You know.’
‘All the same, you’d have gone into Kimmerston on the same bus every day. You’d have seen her around.’ Vera was wondering if it was possible for a young lass to be as isolated as Lorna had seemed, in a place where everyone was aware of everyone else’s business. If I was that way inclined, I’d imagine some sort of conspiracy of silence. ‘Both from farming families in the valley, I’d have thought you’d have some things in common.’
‘No,’ Nettie said. ‘Not really. Our parents weren’t friends or anything. Mam and Dad like a bit of a laugh – Dad plays fiddle and there are always folk in the house. The Falstones aren’t ones for socializing.’
‘You heard she’d had a baby? The bairn I took into the kitchen on Friday night. You didn’t recognize him?’
A shake of the head. ‘Like I said, we didn’t mix with them much.’ Another small smile. ‘Besides, we were rushed off our feet that night. I didn’t take much notice.’
Too much information? Too many excuses?
‘There must have been gossip, rumours about who the father was. You’d have heard folk talking.’
This time there was a pause. ‘A place like this there’s always gossip. I try not to listen.’
Vera thought this was harder work than getting info from some of the tough lads they picked up peddling drugs on the coast. She scrabbled in her bag for a card, but couldn’t find one. ‘Look, if you think of anything that might help, give me a ring. Kimmerston police station. They’ll put you through to me if you say who you are and ask.’
‘Okay.’
There was an awkward silence when they