‘You could have killed her too?’
William looked surprised. ‘If I’d ever seen her again I would have done, gladly.’
‘But Mrs Pattinson was your mother, William, you saw her virtually every day of your life.’
For a moment William seemed bewildered. The façade of self-assurance deserted him. He seemed dazed. The granite eyes clouded over. Then, abruptly, the mists cleared.
‘I have no mother,’ he said.
The eyes were bright again, and there was ice in them.
Sergeant Mellor, who could never quite stop his disgust at it all from showing, had had enough once more.
‘Why did you get mixed up with an outfit like Avon Escorts in the first place? You had every advantage in life, looks, money, education, everything,’ he snapped. ‘Why did you need it?’
William shrugged. ‘For kicks, I guess. Bravado, too. Loads of the lads did it. Sex with some grateful old tart who’d let you do anything and you got paid for it...’ His voice overflowed with bitterness.
‘Your mother did it for kicks too, is that so different?’ interrupted Rose Piper.
‘I told you before, I have no mother. Not any more.’
‘Your mother was prepared to go to jail for crimes which you committed — terrible violent crimes,’ said Rose. She could not believe that this young man could still manage to sound self-righteous.
‘She’s a whore.’ William spoke through clenched teeth, hatred pouring from him.
‘No, that was you,’ said Rose Piper.
But William Lange just looked at her as if she was mad.
They found his bloodstained clothes, the lump hammer and the rubber kitchen gloves he had used for the killing of Charlie Collins buried beneath the compost heap at the bottom of the kitchen garden, just as he had told them they would.
William Lange had left no DNA evidence on Charlie Collins or in his apartment. That killing like all the others he had been responsible for had been brutally efficient.
‘I’ve studied human as well as animal biology. I’m a farmer, I know how to kill efficiently. They even gave elementary butchery training as part of the course at agricultural college, so that we’d understand the entire food producing process,’ he explained cursorily, and with the now familiar dry humourless laugh.
‘And I know how to avoid leaving forensic evidence, I know about DNA, doesn’t everybody?’ he asked, adding, almost in echo of his mother, ‘I read a lot of detective books.’
However, the evidence William Lange had carried away on his person was another matter. And once the police had been led to Lange and found the clothing and weapons he had used for the final murder, the situation changed dramatically. While he was being battered to death, Charlie Collins had deposited much of his life’s blood on William Lange’s person, drenching the young farmer. There was sure to be plenty of forensic and DNA evidence on his clothing. It would be elementary to prove that the lump hammer William had buried was the murder weapon. And a search of William Lange’s car, particularly the boot area where he had kept the butcher’s knife he had used for the previous murders, revealed a number of tiny older blood-spots which Rose and her team were confident would prove to have come from either Marty Morris, Colin Parker, Wayne Thompson, or all three.
William made a full and detailed statement. Everything added up. And his mother’s statement further incriminated him.
‘That’s it then,’ said DS Mellor at the end of what he thought had been a pretty good couple of days’ work. ‘Getting the case against Constance Lange dismissed should just be a formality now, eh boss?’
Rose Piper merely nodded curtly, as if her mind were somewhere else.
‘She’ll be a free woman again,’ Peter Mellor continued. ‘Can’t say I envy her though...’
Sergeant Mellor was feeling pleased with life for the first time in a long while. He was owed a few days’ leave which he planned to take now, and he looked forward to being able to be with his family. It was always a good moment when you knew a case was solved, and Mellor was truly glad to see the back of this one. He hadn’t enjoyed it. He didn’t like to witness human beings degrade themselves, and this case had left a nasty taste in his mouth. Also, some of it had been a little too close to home for his liking. Still, it was over now. Done and dusted.
‘Fancy a celebration pint, boss?’ he asked cheerily.
Rose frowned, as if he had irritated her. She stood up, turned away from him and headed for the door of the incident room.
‘What the hell is there to celebrate, Mellor?’ she demanded brusquely over her shoulder.
The sergeant regarded her retreating back curiously. ‘A result, guv, we got a result, didn’t we?’ he murmured almost to himself.
The only response he got was the slam of the door. Sergeant Mellor shook his head sorrowfully. The memory of the moment when his DCI had nearly got half their heads blown off was still vivid. He wondered sometimes why he still maintained respect for her, let alone affection. He did — although he was unsure how long he was prepared to go on working for her.
‘What a difficult bloody woman!’ he said, rather louder this time.
Constance Lange sat alone in her cell, overcome by the enormity of it all. For hours on end she stared at the blank wall facing her bunk bed. She knew that it was now just a matter of time before the case against her would be dismissed. But that made little difference to her either way.
Sometimes her mind drifted back to the good days. There had been so many of them. It was spring, the time of rebirth, every country-person’s favourite season. Through the small square of her barred window she could see a patch of bright blue sky.
Sometimes she imagined herself walking over the hills around Chalmpton Peverill, Josh running before her, the warm welcoming kitchen of the farmhouse and her equally warm and welcoming family awaiting her. Sometimes she could not really believe it was all over, or that it had ended in the way that it had.
She was glad only that she had finally told the truth. She knew she had done the right thing. And she trusted Rose Piper. Rose had been right. Constance felt the bond too.
Back in Chalmpton Peverill in the front bedroom of Honeysuckle Cottage, Charlotte and Michael sat up in bed that night and talked into the early hours. By the morning they had made a decision.
Charlotte, fighting to remain sane only because of her family, sat a now eternally tearful Helen down at the kitchen table. Josh lay how he always did nowadays — facing the door, his eyes sad, his tail flat on the floor — waiting patiently for his mistress to return.
Charlotte regarded him sorrowfully. Even though it seemed likely that her mother would be released, the dog’s devotion would never be rewarded by his mistress coming home. She knew that with absolute certainty. She sat down opposite her sister and began to talk.
‘We are our entire family now, Helen darling, you, me, Michael, and little Alex. I don’t know how we’re going to survive, but we will, somehow. And this is what Michael and I want to do...’
Two days later, early in the morning, Constance Lange was found dead in her cell at Eastwood Park. She had taken a massive overdose of Valium. An enquiry was immediately launched to discover how she had got hold of the drug, but the investigating officer was not confident of a conclusive result. You rarely could be in prisons. They remain the ultimate mystery.
That same day Charlotte, Michael, Helen and Alex drove to Heathrow airport to catch a flight to New Zealand. There was Lange family land over there, currently farmed by a distant cousin, and a home, at least of sorts, awaited them. Josh was going too. Both Charlotte and Helen considered the dog to be all that was left of their mother as they liked to remember her. Before the nightmare had begun.