‘But then you came along,’ Joe said.
‘Then I came along, out of the snow, to play the Good Samaritan,’ Vera said. ‘I left my business card in the car. It must have been a shock to the system to see that the police had come along to spoil all his plans.’
‘You know we found Lorna’s devices in Heslop’s office? We’ve been checking her texts and emails.’
Vera nodded.
‘In the beginning, Lorna was infatuated with Heslop,’ Joe said. ‘He was her first real love. Then she started to be less dependent and things got nasty. The relationship might have started out as consensual but it’s clear the man was harassing her big style. He was cyber stalking in the last few months when she was trying to break free from him, and some of the messages suggest that he was following her physically too.’
‘Bastard.’ Vera reached out for the bottle and topped up the glasses. She took a sip before continuing. She was warm and content. She’d sleep well tonight; she was already drowsy. ‘The poor lass must have felt entirely alone when Heslop threatened custody proceedings to take the boy off her. No wonder she panicked. Because she was so screwed up about her own parents – she still believed that Crispin was her natural father – she didn’t feel she could talk to Robert and Jill. And while she dropped a few hints to Constance, she was so scared of Heslop by this point that she couldn’t even confide properly in her.’
They sat for a moment. Vera felt her eyes closing. If she’d been here on her own, she’d have fallen asleep in the chair, warm as toast until morning, but she couldn’t do that with Joe in the house. She had a position to maintain.
‘Are you going to heat up that casserole then? I told you, I’m supposed to rest.’ Now she did lie back in the chair and allow herself to nap.
She woke to Joe’s voice, almost shouting into his mobile because phone reception was so bad. He was talking to his wife, making his excuses for another night away. Sal was giving him a hard time. Vera kept her eyes shut until the call was over, then she stretched.
‘Are we ready to eat? I’m clamming.’
They sat at the table she’d picked up for a tenner in a charity shop to replace the one she’d lost in the fire. Vera pointed Joe to the sideboard where there was the good bottle of red she’d been saving to take to her neighbours on Christmas Day. ‘We can’t eat one of Joanna’s casseroles without a decent glass of wine.’
‘So,’ Joe said. ‘Let’s hear why Constance Browne had to die.’ His role had always been to act as her stooge, to feed her the lines.
Vera settled back in her chair. ‘I think Connie must have guessed that Neil Heslop was Thomas’s father. She struck me as a perceptive woman. Curious too. And willing to meddle. Constance had been to warn Robert Falstone that his daughter was seeing someone inappropriate, but he’d just thought she was an interfering cow and took no notice.’
‘Why didn’t Constance speak to us?’ Joe asked. ‘To you when you went to interview her?’
‘She wanted to talk to Heslop before accusing him of murder. In a close community like Kirkhill, you don’t go to the police unless you’re sure of your facts and she’d known Heslop since he was a boy. Holly found out from his phone records that Constance spoke to him on the Sunday evening. I think they arranged to meet before the Monday morning art class, but he turned up earlier than she was expecting.’
‘How could she just go off with a man she suspected could be a killer?’
‘Because she really didn’t believe that a man she thought she knew well could act like that. Because she was a strong woman of a certain age and she thought she was indestructible.’ Vera gave a strange little smile. ‘She’d taught all the bairns in Kirkhill and Brockburn and sorted their problems. She probably thought she could sort this out too. She might have realized Heslop was desperate, depressed, suicidal even, but she was arrogant enough to think she could deal with the situation, maybe persuade him to hand himself in. I’m sure she went willingly.’ That smile again. ‘Pride and curiosity. A dangerous mix.’
‘I still don’t understand how you could have been so sure that Neil Heslop had taken her.’
Vera took a large mouthful of wine, and thought it was better than any of the painkillers they’d given her in the hospital. ‘It was Josh turning up late for the art class that clinched it. He said his car had broken down and he’d had to wait for his father to get in, so he could borrow his van. There was no explanation for where his father could have been on a dark winter’s morning.’
‘Do you know where Connie was killed? Heslop wouldn’t say when we talked to him yesterday.’
‘I’m sure it would have been in Jinny’s Mill. They probably walked in from the back drive close to Dorothy’s cottage. Nobody would have taken any notice of his van parked near Brockburn. It was often there.’
‘And after dumping her body in the clearing, he drove back to the farm,’ Joe said, ‘just in time for Josh to borrow his van to get into Kirkhill to teach the oldies’ art class.’
Vera nodded. ‘Heslop kept a cool head. There he was, playing the fiddle and the proud father at his daughter’s birthday celebration on the Sunday night, only two days after killing the mother of his child. But it was all on the surface – the strain must have
