When he reached the car, there was mobile signal. He strapped Thomas into the seat and called the Falstones. Robert answered immediately and Joe heard the man sobbing at the other end of the line. Then he phoned the station, demanding action, every available officer.
‘There’s someone armed with a shotgun and the boss is wandering around in the forest on her own.’
Chapter Forty-One
VERA SAT QUITE STILL FOR A moment and tried to control the panic. She didn’t want her career, her life, to end in this place that reminded her of a war zone: dead trees like twisted limbs and animals ready to eat her flesh when she was gone. She had never before been so certain that she wanted to live to boring old age.
‘You do know it’s all over, pet. My chaps will have found Thomas by now and he’ll be back safe and sound with Robert and Jill.’ She’d aimed at jaunty, but her voice sounded tight and scared.
Still the barrel of the shotgun was icy against her skin. She could feel the weight of it, the round imprint burning like a brand. But it shifted a little and that gave her the confidence to continue.
‘What good will it do, shooting me? Another dead woman to add to your tally? You’re not that sort of person. Not a psychopath or serial killer. Not a monster.’
‘He’s my boy!’
‘I know he is, but Lorna would never acknowledge you as the father, would she?’
‘She said once that she loved me.’
‘Aye, well, she was a young lass looking for some kind of father figure.’ Vera paused for a beat. ‘Tell you what, why don’t you give me the shotgun? I’ve got a flask of whisky in my coat pocket. I reckon we both deserve a nip to warm us up and then you can tell me all about it, how it all fell apart.’
She could hear him breathing, smell the waxed jacket and the leather boots. She felt in her pocket for the flask. The clouds cleared and she held it so the moonlight reflected from it. ‘Just as well I filled it up after I spent the night here with Constance Browne.’
‘She was an interfering cow.’
‘Well, I did get that impression myself.’ Another pause. ‘What do you say? Give me the gun. I’d say that was a fair swap.’ Vera thought how ridiculous this was, bartering her life in return for whisky, and she felt a snort of hysteria rising from her stomach. But this man would hate to be laughed at and he’d already killed twice. She pushed back the impulse to giggle.
The cold steel moved from her skin. Now he was standing with the gun at his side.
‘Pass it over,’ she said, ‘and sit down. You’ve had a dreadful week. What was it you called it when I saw you at your daughter’s party? A nightmare. It must all seem like a nightmare.’
He raised the gun and she thought she’d miscalculated. She hadn’t played him right at all. But Neil Heslop flung the shotgun away from him. She heard the crash of twigs snapping as it landed in a pile of dead, discarded wood. In the silence the noise sounded like gunfire. She thought it would take the team an age to find it again. He got down on his knees, then twisted his body so he was sitting beside her. She unscrewed the flask, took a sip, then handed it over to him.
‘How did it start?’ she asked. ‘Some sort of mid-life crisis. Your son all grown up, but back home and reminding you he still had a life ahead of him, and your daughters suddenly independent young women, with lives of their own. Planning a future away from you. Your wife a domestic goddess, but without much time for you. Life a bit of a boring routine.’
‘Something like that,’ he said. He spoke very slowly, as if he was still in a sort of trance. ‘And then Lorna was so bonny.’
‘She was,’ Vera said. ‘She took after her mother. How did you meet her?’
‘She was working in the pub in Kirkhill. I’d go occasionally for a break, a bit of time to myself. I’d ask Rosemary to come along but she always had something better to do. A floor to mop or biscuits to bake . . . Important things. More important than me or our marriage.’ In his voice, there was resentment mixed with a thread of self-pity.
Vera was tempted to tell him what she thought about the self-indulgence of a middle-aged man who had a life most people would envy, but that could wait until she was somewhere warm and safe and she’d already heard his confession.
‘We started talking,’ he said. ‘I’d find myself hoping Lorna would be there when I went into the bar. I worked out what shifts she was working, dropped in when it was quiet. Not thinking it would lead anywhere, like, just enjoying her company. But dreaming about her when I was working the farm. Not able to get her out of my mind. One night there were a few rowdy guys in the pub, bikers, full of ale and hassling her. I helped her clear them out at last orders and offered to walk her home to make sure she got in safely.’ A pause. ‘She asked me in for coffee. That was when it started.’ He turned towards Vera. The moonlight caught his face. ‘I was her first. Her first boyfriend. That made it special.’
Oh aye, it would do. Every middle-aged man’s fantasy. ‘Then she found herself pregnant.’
‘I wasn’t upset,’ he said. ‘Not angry. I was pleased. Pleased when she decided to keep him. I could see how it would all work out. We’d be a family. A proper family. I told her I was willing to leave Rosemary and the children for her. I’m good with bairns when they’re young, so trusting and full of life. I’d have made a
