Lorna went there. Over a long period of time if she painted it in the winter and also in midsummer when the flowers were in bloom.
‘So how do we get there, Ernie? We’d best be quick or the light will have gone.’ Vera didn’t fancy another walk in the dark and the cold. Thoughts of the night she’d spent keeping vigil with Constance Browne still gave her the creeps, still appeared on the edge of her consciousness.
‘We can drive to the back lane that leads down to Brockburn and take it on foot from there.’
They went in the Land Rover and parked not far from Dorothy and Karan’s cottage. Vera thought again how compact the area of the investigation was and how connected the leading players were to each other. They made their way towards the big house, but before they reached it, Ernie turned off down a grassy path. Vera noticed tyre tracks had flattened the grass in places and remembered her meeting with Nettie Heslop the day after Lorna’s murder. Perhaps the girl had come this way on the quad bike, and hadn’t been driving from the big house or to feed sheep as Vera had thought then. Perhaps all the young people of Kirkhill used the cottage as a meeting place, but Vera couldn’t imagine that Lorna would have been part of that group.
The track narrowed to a footpath. The forest here wasn’t formed of the ubiquitous Sitka spruce; this was a patch of deciduous woodland, bare enough now to let in the afternoon light. It didn’t feel as sinister as the dark pines of the Forestry Commission plantation. Vera thought Lorna had captured the magic of the place in her painting. In the spring, it would be beautiful, a pool of bluebells. The path led downhill and at last opened into a clearing very different from the one where Constance Browne’s body had been found. The sun was very low now and slanted through the bare trunks onto a meadow. The almost derelict cottage faced them with its back to the water. They stopped for a moment to look at it. The stone walls were crumbling and covered in lichen. Most of the windows were cracked and covered in cobwebs, and ivy grew out of the chimney. The corrugated-iron roof was as rusty and multicoloured as Lorna had painted it.
Vera walked across the grass towards the house. Ernie reverted to his role as subordinate officer and followed at a distance. If it had ever been possible to lock the cottage, that time had long passed. The door was sagging on large metal hinges and propped shut with a stone that might once have been part of an outbuilding. Vera moved the rock, pulled open the door and looked inside.
The building was surprisingly watertight. The roof hadn’t rusted to the extent that the metal had worn through into holes. Vera had been expecting a dump – piles of beer cans, evidence of drug use, the occasional used condom – a place where the bored young of the community might gather to pass their spare time. But as her eyes grew used to the gloom, she saw that it was tidy, more adults’ den than teenagers’ hangout.
There were two rooms. This must once have been where the family lived and ate. There was still a small cast-iron range against one wall. The floor was of cracked stone flags, but had been recently brushed. In one corner, a pile of sheepskins provided a makeshift day bed. Someone must have carried them here, unless there was another way into the clearing, because there was no access for a vehicle; not even a quad bike could have made it down the narrow path through the trees. The scrubbed pine table, with the drawer in one side, the settle and two chairs might have belonged to the place, been used by the miller or whoever else had lived here, but they’d been cleaned and mended. There was nothing but the paintings to link the cottage to Lorna, but Vera was convinced that this was where the young woman had met her lover.
She turned to Ernie. ‘Do you know the place where we found Connie Browne’s body?’
‘Aye. I met Les Robson, the forester, in the Stanhope yesterday. He was talking about it. He and I go back a way.’
Of course you do.
‘How far is this place from there? As the crow flies.’
‘Be more likely the buzzard round here.’ Ernie must have realized she wasn’t in the mood for that kind of comment, because he continued speaking immediately. ‘A mile at the most, but you’d probably have to fight your way through the trees. And know where you were going. Quickest would be back along the path, then the road and the forest track.’ A pause. ‘What are you saying? That she could have been killed here?’
‘No reason for thinking that.’ But Vera did think it. ‘I’ll get Billy Cartwright and his team to take a look, though. Just in case.’ She was itching to look through the sheepskins, in the table drawer, to explore the further room she could only glimpse at from here, which had probably once been a bedroom, to search for Lorna’s diary, love letters, any scraps of information which might be hidden, but she didn’t want to contaminate the scene.
She looked at her watch. The light was fading now and she had an appointment at the big house. Then she got out her phone and saw there was a bit of reception.
‘Are you okay to stay here until the cavalry arrives, Ernie?’ It was against all the rules but Ernie had been wedded to the job and was more reliable than most young PCs she knew. Anyway, there was no evidence that this was a crime scene. Just a feeling in her gut that the place
