‘He’s absolutely fine. Back with the Falstones.’
‘And Heslop?’
‘Holly and I interviewed him this morning.’ A pause. ‘He didn’t give much away, but he’ll plead guilty. Save his family the trauma of a trial.’
Vera nodded her approval. ‘You okay to drive me home? I can get a taxi if Sal wants you back.’
‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I’ve told Sal it’ll be a late one and I promised I’ll take a few days off once this is all over. As long as I’m there for the kids’ nativity tomorrow afternoon . . .’ He paused. ‘I’ve got your Land Rover outside.’
‘Champion.’ The words of the poem of Holly’s rattled round her brain again, as much of an ear worm as some trashy pop song. But I have promises to keep. ‘We’ll make sure you keep your promise and get back in time for that play.’
He insisted on driving and she didn’t put up too much of a fight. When they arrived at the cottage, she took a key from her pocket. ‘You’ve not seen the place since I rebuilt after the fire.’ She opened the door. ‘Ta da!’
Joe followed her in. ‘You didn’t bother getting central heating when you refurbished? It’s bloody freezing in here.’
‘Nah,’ she said. ‘It’d have meant oil-fired up here and I’m doing my bit for global warming. Besides, I told you, I’d forgotten to renew the insurance so it all had to come out of my own pocket.’ She bent over the fire, which had already been laid, and set a match to it. ‘It’ll soon heat up.’ She stood up, felt her head swim a bit and grabbed hold of the back of a chair.
Joe left his coat on. ‘The place doesn’t look very different. I thought you might have added a few mod cons.’ He looked at her. ‘You sit down. The hospital said you should be resting. I’ll stick the kettle on.’
She decided not to insist and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, he was there with tea in her old black pot, milk in a bottle and two mugs. A packet of chocolate digestives. She saw him sniff the milk and decide it would do.
‘I’m staying tonight,’ he said. ‘The hospital would have kept you in until tomorrow if you’d been on your own. I’ve taken a casserole out of the freezer. Joanna said I’d find something there.’ He paused. ‘She wanted you to go and stay with them.’
Joanna was her hippy neighbour. She was as kind as it was possible to be, but Vera needed her own bed tonight. ‘Joe Ashworth, you’re a lifesaver.’ She looked at him over the rim of her mug. ‘Did Heslop explain why he took the lad?’
‘Not in any way that made sense.’
Vera thought sense hadn’t come into it at all, not by then. After killing Lorna, Heslop had sat in Home Farm, pretending at happy families, and brooding. His wife and kiddies must have known he was losing it, but they’d put his strange mood down to the shock of finding Lorna’s body.
‘Heslop saw Thomas as his link to Lorna,’ Vera said. ‘The lass wouldn’t let Heslop own her, but he decided he could possess his son.’ She paused. ‘I was scared he might attempt to kill the boy too. You’ve read those stories about jealous men who kill their wives and kids and then themselves.’
Joe shook his head as if it was beyond his understanding. ‘If he’d just sat tight and let the boy be, he could have got away with two murders.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so.’ Vera couldn’t let that go. ‘He’d already given too much of himself away. I was already on to him. I’ve never believed in happy families.’
They sat for a moment in silence.
‘There’s a bottle of Scotch in that dresser behind you,’ Vera said. ‘Dig it out and I’ll tell you how I knew Heslop was our man. Give you the benefit of my wisdom. Listen and learn, Joe Ashworth. Listen and learn.’
She poured out the whisky – she knew his measures would be pathetically small – before she started speaking again. ‘I wasn’t sure until after Constance Browne died, but in the end Heslop was the only one with means and opportunity. When I found Lorna’s car, that night in the blizzard, it had been left by a gate leading into a Home Farm field. We know now that Heslop had arranged to meet the lass there with his tractor. He’d just be the other side of the wall, waiting for her. It was his land, anyone seeing him would think he had every right to be on it and a good reason to be there.’
Vera thought that image would haunt her for the rest of her career: the young woman in the cold, the child in the car. She didn’t want to dwell on it and started talking again:
‘That’s why Lorna didn’t bang on the door at Karan and Dorothy’s cottage and call for help. That bothered me right from the start. The road from the abandoned car to where her body was found would have taken her right past their house. So, either Karan was lying – and I did have my doubts about him for a while – or Lorna got to Brockburn over the field. She wouldn’t have done that on foot. Not in the pitch dark and leaving the bairn behind. So that set me thinking about the bunch at Home Farm.’
She beamed at him. ‘Just common sense really. And a bit of logic. Of course, Heslop had to go back to Brockburn to pick up his lasses later in the evening, so even if the snow hadn’t covered his tracks, he’d have had an explanation for them being there.’
‘But he left Thomas in the car with the door open.’
Vera could tell that in his head, Joe was back on the narrow road, the forest behind him, in the blizzard and the dark. This case would haunt him too.
‘I think Lorna left
