She looked across at them, but didn’t seem to expect an answer. She shoved the gearstick to reverse and turned the Land Rover to face the road.
‘Let’s take a look at where Shirley Hewarth’s body was found, shall we? It was hard to get any sense of it on Friday night, with the dark and the chaos and all those people milling around.’
She brought the Land Rover to rest by the gate that led onto the hill. Remnants of the investigation remained: blue-and-white crime tape caught in the wind like kite tails, tyre tracks and footprints. Vera got out of the vehicle and Joe and Holly followed. It was unlike the inspector to move unless she had good reason. And in fact she only walked a couple of steps to the gate.
‘You can’t see the new conversions from here.’ She leaned against the Land Rover so that she was looking down to the valley. ‘There’s the dip in the hill that hides them. If that body had been dumped anywhere else, you’d see the car stopping.’
‘You think that’s why Shirley was left here?’ Joe was starting to see the sense in this trip now. It wasn’t just one of Vera’s weird ideas. ‘They must have known that the body wouldn’t go undiscovered for long, though – not that close to the footpath and at the start of the weekend.’
‘Maybe they didn’t mind her being found. They just didn’t want an audience while they were lifting the body from her car.’
Despite herself, Holly was starting to get engaged. ‘That might tell us something about the time of death. At least about the time the body was carried onto the hill. Because you wouldn’t care if you could be seen from the house, if it was nearly dark.’
‘You’d be taking a chance to do it in broad daylight, though!’ Joe thought the idea was crazy.
‘Would you?’ Vera looked away from the hill again and across the valley. ‘You might not be able to see the houses from here, but you’d hear any car coming from the development. You’ve got a view of the footpath right to the top of the hill and down to the burn. I’d say you’d be prepared to take the risk. Especially if you knew the habits of the folk at Valley Farm. Like when Janet O’Kane was most likely to be out with the dogs and when she’d be inside, pandering to that husband of hers.’
‘You think one of the Gilswick residents killed three people?’ Joe thought Vera was mad. ‘They’re old!’
‘Not much older than me.’
‘But they’ve got no motive.’
‘Then we’d better find one.’ There was a rumble of thunder in the distance. Vera opened the Land Rover door and climbed in before them. ‘That means it’s back to Valley Farm to talk to the retired bloody hedonists.’ She slammed her door shut and started the engine. ‘But I can’t face them again today. All that respectability in one place – it gives me the creeps.’
Chapter Thirty-Five
Lizzie woke early when it was still dark and lay still. She’d woken with a start in the middle of a dream: a prison officer screaming at her, his face so close to hers that she could only see his open mouth and yellow teeth, yelling at her that she’d never be let out. It took her a while to realize it had been a dream and she’d still be released that morning. The relief made her feel like laughing out loud, but she didn’t want to disturb the others. There were so few times in prison to feel alone.
She sensed the emptiness beyond her window. The space was like pressure on her skin, her eyes and ears. She imagined herself as a diver or someone in deep space. Of course in an open prison there was more freedom; it was possible to be outside, and her work on the farm gave her plenty of fresh air. But in a way that had just made her confinement more disturbing. It was as if she was constantly being told: You can go this far, but no further.
It started to get light. There was the bright song of a blackbird. Other noises. The day-shift screws’ cars arriving. A shouted greeting. This is the last time I’ll hear this. Not knowing whether she was terrified or exultant. Then she remembered the photos in the book she’d found in the library and decided that the hugeness of the world was a pool to dive into, not somewhere to drown. She loved the image, repeated the words in her head so she wouldn’t forget them, and wished she had time for one more meeting with the writers’ group so that she could share it. She knew the teacher would be impressed.
Rose worked in the kitchen and was already getting dressed. Lizzie lay in bed and watched. Not in a voyeuristic way. Rose always turned her back to the others and scrabbled into her underwear to maintain an illusion of privacy. Lizzie never bothered with that stuff. She didn’t mind the others seeing her body. She knew she was fit. She’d never had kids, didn’t have stretch-marks or flabby tits. Before she headed out to work, Rose bent and kissed Lizzie on the cheek. The gesture was so unexpected that Lizzie sat up, startled.
‘I won’t see you again before you leave.’ Rose was whispering. The cousins were still sleeping. Nothing woke them.
‘I’ll be at breakfast.’
‘But everyone’s there. It’s not the same.’
Lizzie climbed out of bed and they hugged. Lizzie wasn’t usually into casual physical contact, felt it like insects crawling over her skin, but Rose had looked after her inside. Taken care of her when the first few days had been a nightmare. Lizzie could see how she’d have been gentle with the old folk in the home, thought it was a shame Rose would never get to do that sort of work again.
In the canteen everyone wanted to come and say goodbye. Queuing at the counter for breakfast, Lizzie found herself almost in tears. Wondering what was making her so upset about leaving, she decided it was because people weren’t on her case all the time here. If you followed the rules they let you get on with things. There was none of that prodding and prying she’d got from her mother. The meddling with her head. The wringing of the hands. How are you, Lizzie? How can we help? What did we do wrong? Perhaps things would have been different if there’d been other kids for her mother to mither over. If her mother had been younger when Lizzie had been born. If her mother had been more careless in living her own life. More selfish. That would have been easier to handle.
When breakfast was over, one of the officers came to find her. There was a procedure for getting out of here. More rules. In her room she got into her own clothes and put her other few belongings into a black bag. Then she went to the governor’s office for the exit interview.
The governor was a very tall woman with a long neck that seemed to curve like a swan’s. She always wore blue. Today it was a blue mid-calf skirt in soft wool and a cashmere sweater that was almost grey. A string of pearls round her neck. She could have belonged to the place when it was a grand house.
‘So, Elizabeth, you’re on your way. I hope you’ve learned something from your stay here.’ She had a very deep voice with an accent that Lizzie had never been able to place. Scottish? Irish?
‘Yes, thank you.’ This was what the woman expected, but Lizzie thought it was true.
‘These days we do our best, you know.’ The woman stared out of the window. A cloud of rooks was blown by a sudden gusty breeze. ‘We hope all our women take something from the experience of being at Sittingwell.’ Then she was on her feet and holding out her hand for Lizzie to shake it. She might have been the headmistress of an exclusive private school. ‘Good luck.’
Lizzie picked up the bin bag and left the room. At the end of the corridor she saw that her mother was looking out for her.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Annie Redhead had sat in her car outside the prison waiting for her daughter to be released. She’d arrived early. For a while she listened to the news on the radio, then there was an item about the killings in Gilswick and she switched it off. She couldn’t bear to hear about that. The police had stopped reporters coming all the way up the valley, but they were camping out in the village, bothering anyone who went into the shop or the pub. When she’d driven past the church they’d been there too, waiting for parishioners who were starting to make their way inside. Janet said she’d bumped into a journalist on the hill when she’d been out walking Dipper and Wren, but he was frightened of dogs and had run away when they started barking at him.