Martin Edwards - The Hanging Wood

‘Someone sobbing?’

‘Sounds like a woman.’

‘Deirdre?’

‘Who else?’

Mario broke into a run, side by side with the young DC. The crying came from behind the farmhouse. All the curtains were closed, an old-fashioned mark of respect for the dead. Last time she was here, Hannah hadn’t clocked the paint peeling from the door-frame or the fact that the lavender in the pot outside had died. You could be forgiven for believing the Hinds had abandoned their home.

As she rounded the side of the house, she saw Mario and the DC standing over Deirdre Hinds. She had screwed herself up into a foetal ball, crouching on the cobbles. From head to toe, she looked a sodden mess, with her cheap and scruffy clothes drenched through, and her hair tangled like a ball of coarse wet wool. What little Hannah could see of her face was blotchy, and it looked as though someone had blacked her eye. No prizes for guessing the culprit, but thank God he’d done nothing worse to her. Hannah had feared he was about to lose it big time.

Mario stood at the woman’s side. ‘Where is he?’

Shoes slapping on the cobbles, Hannah came closer. Deirdre’s grey eyes were cloudy with tears. She tried to answer Mario, her lips moved, but no sound came. It was as if she’d been struck dumb.

Hannah knelt down so that she and the other woman were face-to- face.

‘What is it, Deirdre?’ she asked.

The woman stared at her.

‘Did he hurt you?’

Deirdre Hinds shook her head. In denial about her husband’s abuse, or was something more shocking on her mind?

‘Tell me where Mike is,’ Hannah said.

Deirdre clamped her eyes shut.

‘Please, Deirdre, talk to me. Is Gareth Madsen here?’

Deirdre took a deep breath and let out a long shriek of pain. She might have been one of the animals in the shippon, waiting to be fed. But Hannah heard the truth in the horror of her cry. It was not hunger that drove the woman to despair. Nor even a smack from her husband’s heavy hand. What tormented her was something she could not bring herself to describe.

‘How could you do that to your own brother? ’

Orla Payne’s words echoed in Daniel’s head as he walked out of the restaurant. She’d quoted Callum, quoting someone else. If he was right in believing Callum had spied on Gareth Madsen having sex with his sister-in-law, chances were that he’d been fascinated by their post-coital chit-chat.

Bryan had been seriously injured in an accident shortly before Callum disappeared. What if Fleur suspected Gareth of fixing Bryan’s car so that he would crash? If she’d challenged Gareth about the accident in the boy’s hearing, there would have been boundless scope for blackmail. Callum might not have taken it seriously, but if he’d dropped so much as a cheeky hint to Gareth that he knew about Gareth’s affair with Fleur, and his attempt to kill his brother, so that he could take both Bryan’s inheritance and his wife, he’d have placed himself in serious jeopardy. A man willing to murder his own flesh and blood wouldn’t scruple at disposing of a teenager who threatened his comfortable existence. The risk-taker in him might have relished it. Killing Callum in the Hanging Wood, burying his body in the pet graveyard nearby, liberating the pig, and encouraging Mike Hinds to put the blame on his own brother. Cruel and conscienceless, but very neat.

And where did this leave Fleur? She’d known about the car crash, probably known or guessed about Callum. Even if Gareth denied everything and protested that she was imagining things, she was smart enough to see through the salesman’s patter. Yet she hadn’t uttered a word, and Callum’s remains were left to rot alongside the skeletons of the dead dogs.

Worse than that, she’d not been able to bring herself to give him up. Was love a drug for her, did he give her something no other man could? So that not even Orla’s death, or Aslan’s, drove her to come clean?

How could the woman live with herself?

‘Daniel, there you are!’

For Christ’s sake, it was unbelievable. Fleur was back at St Herbert’s. Turning at right angles into the main corridor, he saw her heading towards him from the reception area. He could see Sham Madsen at her desk, a troubled look on her pretty face, and guessed that neither of them knew where Gareth was or what he was up to.

‘I had to come and see how you are,’ Fleur said. ‘I wanted to make sure you were all right after that awful storm.’

The colour of her cheeks might be snow-white, but she’d composed herself and put on fresh lipstick, a vivid splash of crimson. The note of concern in her voice was nicely calibrated. Fleur might have no conscience, but she remained a class act. Having gathered her strength at the Hall, she needed to check what he knew, and what he suspected, so she could rehearse her defence. One look at those compressed crimson lips told him she would never surrender.

‘That’s good of you,’ he said. ‘As a matter of fact, there are one or two questions I meant to ask.’

‘Tell us where they are,’ Hannah said. ‘Mike and Gareth, or either of them.’

Deirdre was mute, but she managed a feeble nod of the head. In the direction of the long line of outbuildings. Hannah and Mario exchanged glances.

‘Will you wait here?’ Mario asked her.

‘No chance. I want to find them.’

‘All right.’ Whether or not he thought her stupid to take the risk, Mario had too much sense to argue or try to be protective. He turned to the DC. ‘Stay with Mrs Hinds, make sure she comes to no harm. We’ll holler if we need assistance.’

The two of them sloshed through the puddles, past one steel-framed structure after another, casting a glance inside each one to see if they could catch sight of their quarries. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

As they approached the last of the outbuildings, an unmistakable stench greeted them. Hannah felt sick in the pit of her stomach.

Nothing for it but to take a look. If she wasn’t able to hack it, she should never have come to Lane End Farm.

Mike Hinds was sitting on his haunches inside the building. Flecks of rain plopped through a gap in the roof, down on to his weathered face, but he did not move an inch. His eyes stared through the two police officers. Hannah dared not imagine what he was seeing. He did not flinch as they approached, gave not the faintest indication that he was aware of their existence. She felt sure they were not in danger from him. His rage was spent. Orla had wanted justice, and her father had contrived the wildest justice: revenge.

The log-cutting machine was still and silent, its work done. Something was strapped to the conveyor belt, remnants of someone who once lived and breathed. The wicked blade was invisible, embedded in what was left, and this must have caused the machine to crash to a halt, but too late — far too late — to save Gareth Madsen.

The basket placed on the floor to collect the sawn logs was overflowing with a chaotic mess of segments spewed out by the log cutter. Slices of the man responsible for the deaths of Mike Hinds’ three children.

‘Aaaah …’

Mario groaned, then made a dreadful retching sound and turned to throw up on the ground. Hannah felt hypnotised, out of herself, paralysed by the savagery of what she saw. A human being, transformed into offal.

Blood, blood everywhere. Sticky viscous blood, staining Mike Hinds’ clothes and fingers, coating the severed remains of the murderer. Flowing in rivulets, mixing with pools of rainwater, streaming out of the building and on to the cobbles.

Thunder rolled and clattered in the distance. Soon the rain would teem down again. In time it would cleanse the farmyard of Gareth Madsen’s blood, washing it down the drain like so much sewage.