“Bit risky, isn’t it?”
“I’ll be careful. I’ll not be seen.”
Famous last words, she thought. She picked up her bag and sailed out of the station, ignoring the officers who wanted to pass on information, and the demands to know where she was going.
“You can get hold of me through Ashworth,” she said imperiously, sweeping through the door, not even looking back to check that anyone was listening.
At home she found some walking breeches of Hector’s. Usually she never wore trousers. Anything on her legs made her eczema worse and she knew she’d suffer the next day. But in them she looked different, a completely new shape and profile. A thin waterproof anorak, boots and thick socks completed the picture. She went out of the house to check that the map was in the car and the ageing hippie, trying to round up a goat in the next field, stared at her, not recognizing her at all. Vera had intended to make a flask and sandwiches but she looked at her watch and found there wasn’t time. She took a packet of chocolate biscuits from the kitchen cupboard, filled a bottle of water and drove off. Only then did the woman in the field realize it must be Vera and gave a belated, rather startled wave.
Langholme was quiet. The church door was open and there was the buzz of a Hoover, then when that stopped women’s voices talking about flowers. She locked her car and put the keys into the zipped jacket pocket. She walked carefully past the Priory, not looking into the garden or at any of the other cars parked outside. The road ended with a five-barred gate and a fence with a stile. She crossed it and followed the well-worn path towards Black Law, walking steadily, only turning her head from time to time to check that no one was following her.
The path crossed the hill. On the lower slopes there were dry stone walls. The grass was cropped low by sheep. When she’d walked here in her childhood she’d been fit. From Langholme to the tarn had seemed a stroll. Since then she’d eaten too many curries and Chinese carry-outs. She’d drunk too much, spent too long in her car. It was another clear, hot day and soon she was sweating and dizzy with exertion. She took off the jacket and tied it round her waist by the sleeves. Already her legs were itching like crazy.
She walked through a gap in the last crumbling wall and the path climbed steeply. The ground was more uneven. Bright green bog and tufts of junco us curlew and skylark. But all she could see was the next place to put her boot and all she could hear was her laboured breathing. At the tarn she allowed herself to rest. She drank some water and ate a biscuit. As she licked the melted chocolate from her fingers she felt her pulse return to something like normal. A slight breeze rippled the water and dried the sweat on her face. From where she sat she could look down into the valley, to Baikie’s and Black Law farmhouse and the old mine. She stood up and walked on, finding the going easier because it was downhill.
She walked straight past the mine without looking inside the engine house, without showing any interest, followed the path along the burn, then took the short detour over the stile into Baikie’s garden. It was as if, suddenly, she’d stepped into a tropical wilderness. In the few days since the women had left the grass had grown and needed cutting.
The sun and the rain had brought more shrubs into flower. She walked round the house, found the key and let herself in through the back door. The house smelled hot and damp like a greenhouse. In the kitchen she peeled off the walking breeches and stood, pink-fleshed, bare-legged, desperate to scratch, waiting for the kettle to boil, hoping that there would be enough instant coffee in one of the jars to see her through.
She sat upstairs in the front bedroom because from there she had a view of the valley and the burn as far as the edge of the forestry plantation and the crow trap in one direction and the old mine buildings in the other. Connie had slept here before she had become too frail and fat to climb the stairs, in a large double bed with a brocade cover. Vera had a shadowy memory of one of the parties she’d attended as a child. She’d been sent upstairs to put the visitors’ coats on the bed and had been fascinated by the jars and bottles on the enormous Victorian dressing table, the alien female smell of perfume and face powder. Now the room looked like a dormitory in a youth hostel, the blankets folded at the end of the beds, the pillows in their striped cases.
At three o’clock Neville Furness and Rachael arrived. From the bedroom window Vera couldn’t see the farmyard, only one side of the farmhouse and the kitchen window, but she heard the car and their voices, saw them go into the kitchen carrying boxes of supplies. She ate another biscuit and hoped that Rachael wouldn’t decide to give Neville a tour of Baikie’s for old times’ sake. It wasn’t so much the collapse of the investigation which bothered her. It was the thought of being caught, sitting here, wearing nothing below the waist but a pair of knickers and some woollen socks. But there was no sign of Rachael or Neville all afternoon. As she’d suspected it seemed they had better things to do. The only people she saw were two athletic elderly walkers who seemed to cross her field of view in minutes.
Her phone rang. It was Ashworth.
“Nothing yet,” he said. “But you must be right. There’ve been preparations. The car’s been packed.”
“What with?”
“A shovel. Black bin bags.” “Ah,” she said, blew him an invisible kiss. “Thank you, God!”
“So, can I organize the back-up now?”
“No, not yet. Wait until we know exactly what’s going on.”
In the late afternoon the sun shone directly into the bedroom window and she felt herself dozing and forced herself to keep awake. At six o’clock Neville and Rachael left the farmhouse. They walked up the hill towards the tarn and returned through Baikie’s garden. They stopped for a moment under the window and Vera began to panic. She could hear them clearly but was so anxious that they’d come inside that she only took in snatches of their conversation, though it wasn’t like her to pass over gossip.
“So what will you do now?” Neville asked. “Will you try to trace your father?”
“I don’t think so. He sounds a bit of a nerd. He was running a weekend drama course for teachers and that was the only time Edie met him. He already had a wife and family. He never knew about me. It’s not as if I ever really felt the need of a father. I just didn’t like being kept in the dark. But I’ve not told Edie that. I want to keep my options open. She owes me that much.”
They walked on hand in hand like a couple of kids, and the moment when Rachael might have suggested taking him inside Baikie’s had passed.
Vera presumed that they returned to the farmhouse although they couldn’t have gone in through the kitchen, and from where she sat there was no sign that the place was occupied. The evening sun was too strong for the need for lights in the rooms and it was too warm for a fire.
Her phone rang. Ashworth’s voice was insistent and excited.
“We’re on.”
“How many people?”
“Just one.”
“No need to call the cavalry then,” Vera said, stretching her legs, thinking she’d best get dressed. “This one’s ours.”
Chapter Sixty-Six.
There was no movement until dusk and then it was cautious, wary, giving the impression of an animal coming out after dark to drink. Suddenly a bank of cloud had appeared and Vera could make out no detail. She saw only the shadow, slightly darker against the grey hill and then she almost dismissed it as a roe deer. She had been expecting something less subtle, more purposeful and confident.
The shape followed the line of the burn from the crow trap to the mine, stopping occasionally. Vera thought this was not through tiredness, though there would be the shovel to carry, besides a rucksack, but to watch and listen. By now it was so dark that Vera had to concentrate very hard not to miss the movement. With unusual self-doubt she wondered briefly if she should after all have asked for help, enlisted the specialists with their night sights and tracking devices. With the technology she would have felt more in control, would have known for certain what she was seeing. Then she thought that the person moving carefully across the hill would have smelled them, knew this landscape so well that an influx of strangers, however well hidden, would have been noticed.