He stood up. One time he’d have been a bit nervous giving any kind of opinion, but he’d gained in confidence. Vera thought that was down to her. She’d trained him well.
‘I thought the father seemed cold, a bit distant,’ Joe said. ‘I was there with the social worker, when she was handing over their grandson. Their daughter had just died and this little scrap was all that was left of her. But Robert just took himself off when we arrived. Maybe it was just too much for him and he wouldn’t want strangers to see him emotional.’
Vera ignored that. ‘And the mother?’
‘There was a lot of guilt there. Like you said, Lorna had an eating disorder and they hadn’t done anything about it until it was almost too late. The mother, Jill, had kept in touch with Lorna but always felt the need to handle her carefully. No prying questions. They didn’t speak for a while and Jill was worried about losing her again.’
‘So, Lorna’s mother had no idea who the child’s father might be?’ Vera tried to imagine again why the dead young woman might have been so keen to keep the man’s identity to herself. Could it just be that she needed secrets to feel in control of her life once she’d started eating again? She looked out at the room. ‘So that’s the first priority. We have to find the man and at the moment Bolitho is prime suspect as lover or father.’ She paused for a moment before shaking her head. ‘I’m not sure I see him as capable of it, though. This looks like rage. She was hit over the head where she was found, according to Keating. I think she must have been chased from the car. I can’t see her leaving the child on its own with the door open otherwise. And, anyway, could Bolitho have left the big house, battered the lass to death, and then gone back to the party? Even if he’d managed not to get blood on his clothing, he’d surely not have been in the mood to have intellectual conversation over dinner.’
Vera tried to put herself in the dead woman’s head and wondered if the car had been shunted from the road. Though she hadn’t seen any damage, she hadn’t looked closely. That could explain some details of the scenario. Perhaps Lorna had got out and run, heading for the nearest house. She must have been terrified if she hadn’t even stopped to shut the door.
Surely that meant she’d known the person who had chased her, been scared from the beginning, because a simple bump in the snow wouldn’t provoke that kind of flight. You’d just talk, wouldn’t you? Exchange phone numbers and insurance details? Vera imagined the effort, the exhaustion and the panic as the slight young woman had run up the hill, seen the lights of the big house and headed towards it. But the shortest route would have been via the track to the back of the house, where she’d been found, and that would have taken her past Dorothy and Karan’s cottage. Why hadn’t she stopped there? Karan had claimed to be in all evening and there’d have been lights on, so why hadn’t she banged on the door, demanding sanctuary?
Vera was aware that the people in the room were staring at her. She must seem like a gaga old woman, standing there, lost in thought. Frozen. But she needed to go over these details again in her head. This was important.
Vera shook her head once more to clear her mind of the dark night, the panic, the ice, and turned back to the room. ‘Holly, you chatted to Juliet’s husband Mark Bolitho. What can you tell us? Do you think he’s capable of murdering a young woman?’
Holly stood up. The young detective was a mystery to Vera: always so cool, so immaculately dressed. Her private life never spoken of. If she had any kind of private life.
‘Bolitho grew up in Newcastle, went to university in Durham and came home to do an MA in theatre at Northumbria. He wrote and directed an independent film that did very well here and in the US, and he ended up as Creative Director at the Live, down on the quayside in Newcastle. He and Juliet married three years ago. He still works at the Live and spends a couple of days a week in the city. He’s kept a small flat there.’ Holly paused.
Vera thought this was all very well but she could have Googled the information herself. ‘Go on, Hol.’
‘His big plan is to bring theatre to Brockburn. He talks about the importance of arts for rural areas, but admits that his main motivation is to provide an income to maintain the big house. The party on Friday night was a way of tapping his arty and business friends for donations.’ Another pause. ‘He says that he’d never met Lorna Falstone.’ She looked up at them. ‘Really, I believed him. He might live in Brockburn, but I had the sense that all his work and his friends are still in the city.’
‘Could he have killed Lorna?’
‘It depends on time of death, but, like you, I really don’t think so. Guests started arriving mid-afternoon because of the weather and they were mostly people that he knew, so he did all the meet-and-greet and schmoozing. He could have slipped away, but it seems very unlikely.’
Vera took a moment to consider this. ‘Bolitho might not be the killer, but he still might be the father of Lorna’s child. We need to confirm that either way to save ourselves a wild-goose chase after the other men she knew.’ A pause. ‘You spoke to Dorothy and her partner last night, Hol. What did you make of them?’
‘I thought they were lovely,’ Holly said. Vera was surprised by the warmth in her voice; Holly was
