Silent Voices

Chapter Fifteen

Late afternoon Vera called the whole team together for a meeting in the incident room. Tea, and iced buns from the bakery over the road. So much was going on in this case that she needed to keep a fix on the strands of the investigation. Once, she’d been interviewed for the Police Gazette and asked for the most important attribute of a good senior detective. She’d answered ‘concentration’. If she couldn’t keep the various possible scenarios in her head, she couldn’t expect her staff to keep on top of things.

Holly had been reluctant to come in when Vera had phoned her: ‘I think I should stay here. Hannah’s falling apart and we’ve developed a great relationship.’

Vera had insisted. ‘You’re doing her no favours if you make her dependent on you. Great for your ego, but a bastard for her. And we have to know what you’ve found out from her. You can go back later if you have to, but get a family liaison officer to take over tomorrow. They’re trained for that work, and you’re not.’

So Holly was there, an overnight bag at her feet, a badge that she was needed. Loving feeling indispensable, Vera could tell, despite the warning. Charlie was already into his second bun, a smudge of icing on his nose, crumbs down the front of his jacket. And Ashworth was frowning as he checked through his notes, looking almost grown-up. Vera wasn’t sure his extra family responsibilities were good for him. He’d lost his sense of fun, his joy in his work. She’d lost her playmate.

‘OK,’ she said, calling them to attention, poised in front of the whiteboard with the thick, black marker in her hand. ‘Let’s see what you know. Holly? Have we found out any more about Jenny’s private life? I see the search team’s been through the house. Any news on that?’

Holly pushed her hair away from her face and pretended not to like the attention. ‘Hannah doesn’t know anything about a recent boyfriend. She says there’ve been men in the past. One guy who worked for he National Park. According to Hannah, he was besotted, but Jenny dumped him about a year ago. Hannah was surprised; she’d thought her mother was keen too. Since then, nothing.’

‘You’ve got the name of this man?’ Vera knew Holly would have. Holly was ambitious and knew better than to leave herself open to criticism.

‘Sure. Lawrence May. Age: late forties. Divorced. No kids. They went walking and birdwatching together.’ Vera thought Hector, her father, might have known him. Hector had been keen on birds too, but best of all he’d liked killing and stuffing them. When she’d taken over his house in the hills she’d found the freezer full of corpses waiting for his attention. As a taxidermist on the shady side of legal, he’d have seen May as the enemy. A lily-livered robin-stroker without any idea of what the countryside was all about.

‘Spoken to him?’

‘Not yet.’

Of course not. She’d been too busy playing Mother Teresa with the girl.

‘Get onto it first thing tomorrow.’ Vera looked at the plate of buns and saw it was empty. Her fault. She should have known better than to leave it within reach of Charlie. ‘Did the search team turn up anything interesting from her home or her office?’

‘The team found her laptop at home,’ Holly said. ‘If she’s still in touch with Lawrence May, there should be emails. There was an electronic diary on it, but that was mostly work. IT is sorting through the rest now.’

‘We still haven’t found her handbag,’ Vera said. ‘A woman like that, surely she’d have a handbag. Probably a briefcase too. Holly, can you ask Hannah? She’d know what her mother usually carried her stuff around in.’

Holly nodded, but Vera could tell that her mind wasn’t on such mundane details. She was still thinking about bringing comfort to the girl.

‘According to her best mate, there was a new man in her life,’ Vera said. ‘A secret lover. If she’d started going out with May again, no reason surely why she’d keep it secret.’

‘Unless she just wanted to see how it worked out before going public,’ Joe Ashworth chipped in. Sometimes Vera thought he represented her feminine side. He had the empathy and she had the muscle. Well, the bulk. Muscle, she had to admit, was sorely lacking. ‘She wouldn’t want to make a fool of herself, announce they were an item again, only for it all to fall apart.’

‘The friend thought the new bloke might be married,’ Vera said. ‘Something to keep in mind. We haven’t got much else as a motive.’

‘Except for the Elias Jones case.’ Charlie still had his mouth full. ‘Lots of hatred stirred up over that.’

‘So let’s look at that again.’ Vera wrote the child’s name on the whiteboard. ‘How far have we got with it? Joe, you spoke to the social worker, the one that was pilloried in the press. Connie Masters. Do we think she killed her boss?’

‘She claims she didn’t even know Lister was living in the village.’

‘And do we believe her?’ Come on, Joe. Commit yourself.

‘Yeah,’ he said and she wanted to cheer. Joe Ashworth spent so much of his time sitting on the fence that he should have a blister on his arse. ‘At first it seems impossible – a place that small and they’ve not bumped into each other – but Masters has only been living there for a few months, and Lister would be out all day at work. The times when she might be around, in the evenings, Connie Masters is at home with her bairn.’

‘They didn’t socialize at all when they were working together?’ Holly liked her evenings in the pub with the lads when a case was closed. Liked being fancied.

‘Apparently not. Not Jenny’s way of working. She liked to keep home and the office separate.’

‘Still seems a bit of a coincidence…’ Holly pushing it.

‘The boss asked me what I thought, and I’m telling you.’ They glared at each other, the two bright kids in the school vying to be top of the class.

‘Have we tracked down Michael Morgan yet?’ Vera asked. Sometimes the rivalry between the younger members of her team amused her, but now she needed them to pull together and focus. Then, when everyone looked at her as if they didn’t have an idea what she was talking about, she added sharply: ‘Mattie Jones’s boyfriend. The man she fell for, the man she’ll have us believe she killed for. The man who became a sort of stepdad to Elias. So far, all I know about him is that he was weird. I might be wrong here, but aren’t we looking for weird? Do we know if he’s still sticking pins into people for a living? I guess he’d have to have a basic knowledge of anatomy if he trained as an acupuncturist. Might come in handy if you wanted to strangle a fit, healthy woman. I don’t suppose we’ve checked if he was a member of the Willows.’

She was glad that they looked sheepish, though she was as guilty as they were of having forgotten about Mattie’s lover. She’d concentrated, as they had, on Jenny Lister’s private life.

‘I want that information first thing tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Address, recent employment history and crosscheck with the Willows’ membership. But don’t make contact yet. We need to know more about him first. I have the impression he’s a slippery kind of character. I’ll maybe take a trip to Durham and chat to Mattie before we make a move on him.’

‘She’s not there.’ She hadn’t been sure Charlie had even been listening, but now he chipped in, a great smirk all over his face.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Mattie Jones isn’t in Durham nick.’

‘Where is she then?’ Vera glared at him. All the female lifers in the region were sent to the high-security wing in Durham. And Vera couldn’t stand her team playing games at her expense.

‘Hospital.’ Charlie was almost apologetic now. ‘Appendicitis. She was taken in as an emergency the day before yesterday. Picked up some sort of infection and she’s still there.’

‘I’d best buy a nice bag of grapes then. She’ll be ready for a visit.’

There was a moment of silence. Vera was suddenly aware of how tired everyone was. A day into the investigation and there was already too much information. Nothing here was simple. She needed to raise the energy level and hold their attention. Maybe they could all do with a swim or a workout at the gym. She grinned at the thought of Charlie on a treadmill.

‘The Willows,’ she said. ‘What do we have from there?’

‘I reckon Lister must have been killed before nine-thirty,’ Charlie said.

‘The pathologist won’t be that specific.’

‘Don’t care,’ he said. ‘Nine-thirty the cheap deal starts, and that’s when all the wrinklies and the yummy mummies turn up. They stand around chatting as much as swimming. Most of the old folk blind as bats without their specs in the pool, which is why it took so long for anyone to realize the woman was dead, but the killer wouldn’t have known that. Before nine-thirty it’s the business people, in for a quick swim before work. No lifeguard on duty, according to Joe. I chatted to the staff. Hardly any of the early-morning swimmers use the steam room. They’re in too much of a rush.’

‘Makes sense,’ Vera conceded. Sometimes you had to throw Charlie a scrap of praise to keep him motivated.

‘There’ve been reports of petty thieving.’ This was Ashworth wanting to move things to a close. Vera saw him take a quick look at the clock on the wall. His missus always gave him a hard time when he wasn’t back in time to see the kids before bedtime. ‘Could be a motive, if Lister saw one of them stealing.’

‘Who’s the main suspect?’

‘They’ve accused Lisa, the lass from the west end, but the assistant manager reckons she’s just a scapegoat. My money’s on Danny, the student. The thefts only started after he got the temporary work, and he’s an arrogant sort of bastard. You could see he’d think he’d get away with it. His boss thinks he wouldn’t risk his future career for a few trinkets, but I’m not so sure. He’s a chancer.’

Vera suddenly longed for a drink. Beer, she thought. There were a few cans of Speckled Hen left in the larder at home. If he behaved himself, she might even give one to Joe Ashworth. Her place was on his way home. Almost.

‘Seems to me we have three separate areas of enquiry,’ she said briskly. ‘First, Jenny Lister’s private life. We need to trace her secret lover. Why was she so desperate to keep him secret? If he’s married, we could be looking at a jealous wife. Then there’s the Elias Jones case. Is it relevant to the present investigation? If so, how? And finally, the thefts at the Willows. Doesn’t seem much of a motive, but people have killed for less.’

She winced at the cliché, but her team seemed happy enough with her summary. They’d have been happy whatever she’d said. They were bored now by all the talking and just wanted to get out of the room.

Ashworth took less persuading than she’d expected to come back with her for a drink. Perhaps he preferred to arrive home when the chaos of bath and bedtime was over, when the house was quiet and he could have his wife to himself. Joe liked to think of himself as a perfect family man, but everyone was allowed his little self-deception. It was a still evening, and dusk when they arrived at Vera’s house. She got out of her car and smelled gorse flowers and damp foliage and cows. If Hector had given her nothing else, he had given her this house and she would always be grateful to him for that. During this investigation, with all the talk of parenting, she’d found herself thinking about him, and it came to her suddenly that he was an easy scapegoat. She blamed him for all the ills in her life and that might not be quite fair. Hector might be the cause of most of them, but not all.

She lit the fire already laid in the grate, not because it was particularly cold, but because the rest of the room was a mess and it would give them something to look at. And because she knew Joe liked it. Her neighbours had bartered half a lamb for a load of apple logs with a guy in the Borders and had donated her some of the wood; she’d arrived home one night and found the logs neatly stacked in the lean-to at the back of her house. The couple were capable of these acts of kindness and she was grateful they were there, happily tolerated the occasional solstice party when dozens of odd people set up camp on the field in front of her house, turned a blind eye to their dope-smoking – even when it happened, thoughtlessly, in her home.

Vera left the curtains undrawn and fetched beer from the kitchen, a loaf of bread on a board, a lump of cheese. They sat on the two low chairs, their feet to the fire. Vera thought this was as happy as she would ever get.

Ashworth broke into her thoughts. ‘What do you make of this Elias Jones connection? Important or just a distraction?’

She considered for a moment, felt the metallic taste of beer and can on her tongue. ‘Important anyway,’ she said. ‘I mean, even if it doesn’t provide a direct motive. Because it tells us a lot about Jenny Lister.’

‘Like?’

‘She was efficient, organized. A control freak. She didn’t like mixing home and work. Principled. Principles don’t always make you popular. If she caught someone doing something she considered wrong, she wouldn’t keep quiet about it.’

‘You’re thinking about the thefts at the Willows?’

Vera took time to consider that one. ‘Maybe, though it seems very petty. More likely something going on in the village.’ She was thinking about Veronica Eliot and her pristine house and her model family. Nothing was ever that perfect, so what, exactly, was happening under the surface?

Ashworth looked at his watch.

‘It’s all right, Joe,’ she said indulgently. ‘You’re safe to go home now. The bairns’ll be in bed. Tomorrow, prise Holly away from the daughter and see if one of you can track down Jenny’s secret lover. A village that size, someone will know. They’ll have seen a strange car, bumped into them in Hexham.’

He stood up. His face was red from the fire. Or maybe the dig about the children had struck home. ‘What about you?’

She didn’t move. He could find his own way out. ‘Me, like I said, I’m going hospital visiting.’