The Darkest Evening

through the mains to the dining room and were outside the kitchen door smoking an illicit tab. Vera nodded in the direction of the closed door. ‘They must be bloody freezing.’
‘They’re young. They don’t feel it.’
‘Juliet said you had a bairn. Boy or a girl?’ The one thing Vera knew about parents was that they liked talking about their offspring.
‘Boy. Duncan.’
‘What have you done with him then?’
‘He’s with Karan, my partner.’ A pause. ‘We’ve got a cottage on the estate.’
‘You didn’t recognize him?’ Vera nodded towards the toddler in the car seat. ‘I don’t know, from playgroup or mother-and-baby club? He might be local. You wouldn’t be driving around in this if you weren’t on your way home.’
‘No,’ Dorothy said. ‘I’ve never seen him. But I don’t socialize much. Karan would be more likely to know. He does the toddler group. He’s the main carer.’
Then she was back, bent over the big double sink, up to her elbows in water, scrubbing out the giant pans. The young women floated in from outside, their arms wrapped around their bodies. They’d been standing in a covered porch so their feet were dry, but in the moment that the door was opened there was a blast of freezing air and Vera saw the falling snow, as heavy as it had been earlier, caught in the light from the kitchen.
‘Can you clear the plates, girls?’ Dorothy looked away from the sink for a moment to speak, but her back was turned to Vera. It was obvious that she was in no mood for conversation with the strange woman who’d blown in with a baby. ‘Then come back for the puddings. They can go on the table so people can help themselves. And leave the cheese on the sideboard. Juliet or Mark will deal with that. Then you can get off.’
‘Will they get home?’ Vera thought she didn’t need more dramas tonight.
‘Their dad farms the land around Brockburn. The Home Farm. The house isn’t far and he’s coming with a tractor. The girls can squeeze in the cab with him. He’s already on his way. That’s why I’ve told them to leave the desserts for Juliet and Mark to serve.’
The phone rang. Vera looked at Dorothy for permission to answer it. The housekeeper nodded. ‘Vera Stanhope.’
It was Holly, her DC. Vera had caught her still in the office and had left a list of instructions. ‘I’ve got a name for you. The registered owner of the car.’
‘Hang on.’ Vera scrabbled in her pocket and found a scrap of paper and a pencil. ‘Go ahead.’
‘Constance Browne. Aged sixty-seven. Address in Kirkhill.’
That was the last thing Vera had been expecting. Not the address. Kirkhill was just over the hill. But the age. Was this kid, eyelids drooping now, almost back to sleep, a grandchild? And was an older woman wandering around in the snow? Surely someone of that age would have been more cautious about driving in bad weather. More sensible. ‘I don’t suppose the car has been reported stolen?’
‘No record of that.’
‘Have you got a phone number for her?’
‘Just a minute.’ Holly rattled off a landline number and Vera scribbled it down.
‘Are you OK to hang on in the station for a while? I don’t know what the weather’s like there, but it’s a nightmare here and I don’t like the idea of an elderly woman out in it alone. We might need to get some sort of search under way. Mountain rescue maybe. People who know the area.’
There was a pause. Holly always thought she was taken for granted within the team, that Vera made allowances for the others when it came to putting in extra hours, because Joe had his family and Charlie had experienced problems with depression in the past. Holly felt hard done by.
‘If you’ve got anything planned for tonight,’ Vera said, ‘I’ll get the duty team on to it.’ She knew this was playing dirty. Holly very rarely had anything planned. The job was her life.
Another pause. Holly wasn’t daft. She knew she was being played. But she was like Vera. A natural detective. Curious. She’d regret leaving with the story still untold, and if it did develop into a more interesting case, she’d want to be in at the beginning.
‘Nothing special,’ Holly said. ‘I can stay for a bit. The snow’s not so bad down here and the ploughs are already out keeping the main roads clear.’
‘Let me just give this woman a ring. If she’s made her way home, you’d think she’d be on to us about the baby. She’d want to know it was safe. I’ll give you a bell when I’ve called her.’
‘Yeah, that’s fine. Want me to do anything while I’m here?’
If Dorothy hadn’t been listening, Vera might have asked Holly to find out about her and her partner. In fact, everything that there was to know about this branch of the Stanhopes. Arriving at Brockburn had been like wandering into a world that was alien – apart from those occasional visits with Hector she’d had nothing to do with this branch of the family – yet it was part of her own history, and she was intrigued. Fascinated. Instead, she said, ‘Give the hospitals a call. See if anyone’s been brought in with hypothermia, anyone at all, not just our Constance.’ She still couldn’t rid herself of the notion that the baby’s mother had been in the car.
She’d just replaced the receiver when the waitresses came in. Now they were wrapped up in thick duvet jackets and looked like ordinary young women. Solid. At the door they pulled on boots.
‘Your dad should be here any minute,’ Dorothy said. ‘He said he’d come around to the back door, so just keep an eye out for him here. No point freezing outside.’ She dried her hands on a towel that was hanging over the range and pulled an envelope of cash for each of them from a drawer. ‘If there are any tips, I’ll give you a