Silent Voices

Chapter Sixteen

Mattie was in a side-ward; a female prison officer sat in the corner with a pile of fashion magazines on her lap and a bag of Maltesers in her hand. God, Vera thought. I bet the woman can’t believe her luck. All this time off the wing! The officer looked about the same age as the patient in the bed, she was a dirty blonde and big-busted, the buttons straining on her white uniform shirt. Easy-going, the sort who’d really enjoy a good night out and a couple of days sitting on her arse with a load of trashy reads and chocolate.

‘Hiya!’ Friendly too. Vera was pleased about that. Whatever Mattie had done, Vera didn’t like to think of her terrified and friendless in hospital. ‘The sister said you’d be coming. I’ll make myself scarce, shall I, so you can have a chat? Tell you the truth, I’m desperate for a tab.’ Her eyes were inquisitive, but she set the magazines on the chair and disappeared, her craving for nicotine stronger than her curiosity.

Vera pulled the chair closer to the bed. The woman lying there looked very young. There was a fan on the bedside locker, but she was still flushed and feverish. ‘She’s still got a nasty temperature,’ the sister had said. ‘Was hallucinating in the night about all sorts. But the antibiotics seem to be starting to work this morning.’

‘What sort of hallucinations?’ Might be the temperature, Vera thought. But it could be guilt or fear. Nothing like guilt to bring on nightmares.

‘Oh, you know, monsters and devils. The usual stuff.’ And the sister had laughed. She’d seen it all before.

Mattie seemed to be dozing now. Vera called her name and she opened her eyes, blinked, confused.

‘Where’s Sal?’

‘She the prison officer?’

Mattie nodded her head.

‘Gone to get a fag. I just need a few words. My name’s Vera Stanhope.’

‘You a doctor?’ She had a little-girl voice too. You’d never think she was old enough to have had a child at school.

Vera laughed. ‘Nah, pet. I’m the fuzz.’

Mattie closed her eyes again, as if she just wanted to shut Vera out, as if she preferred her dreams of monsters and devils.

‘I’m not here to cause bother,’ Vera said. ‘Just for some information, for a bit of a talk. I think you can help me.’

Mattie looked at her. ‘I told the police everything the first time.’

‘I know you did.’ Vera paused. ‘Have you seen the news lately?’ There was a television on a stand on the wall, but it was coin-operated, the NHS making money where it could.

Mattie followed her gaze. ‘Sal got it to work for me. She used her own cash. But we haven’t watched the news.’

Of course, Vera thought. Mattie would like the kids’ cartoons, and for Sal it’d be Britain’s Next Top Model and Wife Swap.

‘Jenny Lister is dead,’ Vera said. ‘You remember Jenny?’

Mattie nodded. Her eyes seemed very big. ‘She came to visit me in prison.’ A tear rolled down her face. ‘What happened?’

‘She was murdered.’

‘Why are you here?’ Mattie seemed wide awake now, even tried to sit herself up a bit. ‘That had nothing to do with me.’

‘You knew her,’ Vera said. ‘I’m talking to the people who knew her. That’s all.’

‘You can’t blame me.’ Now the words were hysterical and so loud that Vera was worried they’d attract attention from the nurses’ station. ‘I was locked up. I couldn’t get out if I’d wanted to.’ And Vera saw that she probably wouldn’t want to. She would feel safe in prison, segregated probably on a wing for vulnerable offenders, comforted by kind prison officers like Sal and by the daily routine of education and meals. Besides, it seemed Mattie didn’t even know the date of Jenny’s death. She’d been in hospital, not in prison, when it had happened.

‘No one’s blaming you,’ Vera said. ‘I need your help. That’s why I’m here.’

Mattie looked confused. The idea that someone might need her was obviously alien. She’d always been the needy one.

‘I liked Jenny. I wish she wasn’t dead.’ A pause followed by another wail, an outburst of self-pity. ‘I’ll miss her. Who’ll come to visit me now?’

‘When did you last see her?’

‘Last Thursday.’ The answer came quickly.

‘You’re sure?’ Vera had expected some vague date in the past.

‘She always came on Thursday.’

‘Every week?’ Vera was astounded. For a busy woman, this was surely above and beyond the call of duty.

‘Thursday. Afternoon visits.’

‘What did you talk about on Thursday afternoon when she came to visit?’ Vera thought it couldn’t have been much of a conversation. Whatever had dragged Jenny to Durham jail every week, it hadn’t been the scintillating chat. Was it guilt? Had the social worker blamed herself for the death of the boy and Mattie’s imprisonment?

‘The same stuff as usual,’ Mattie said.

‘And what was that?’ Vera found her sympathy was running out. She felt like shaking the lass, telling her to sharpen up her act, that Vera had a murderer to catch. Next time, she thought, she’d send Joe Ashworth to interview Mattie Jones. Vera had managed to toughen him up a bit over the years, but he was still a soppy bugger.

‘About me,’ Mattie said with a touch of pride. ‘About my childhood and that.’

‘A sort of therapy session?’ Vera wondered what had been the point of that. This woman was locked up. She wasn’t going to murder anyone else in the near future. Why hadn’t Jenny Lister saved whatever skill she had in poking around in other folk’s brains for the clients who needed her?

Mattie looked puzzled. The concept of therapy had passed her by. ‘It was for her book,’ she said.

‘What book?’

‘Mrs Lister was writing a book about me.’ The woman smiled, a child given a sudden treat. ‘It was going to have a photograph of me on the cover and everything.’

The prison officer appeared at the door. Even from where she sat, Vera could smell the smoke around her. She was carrying a cardboard mug of coffee and a can of Coke. ‘Everything all right in here?’ she asked breezily. She put the Coke on the bedside locker next to the fan. Another gesture of kindness that Vera failed to notice at that moment.

‘Did you know about this?’

‘What?’ The officer was immediately defensive and Vera softened her tone.

‘That Mattie’s social worker was planning to write a book about her, about the Elias Jones case?’

The officer shook her head. ‘Mattie got regular visits from her social worker. We all thought that was dead kind, because no other bugger came to see her.’

Vera turned back to the patient, who’d managed to reach the Coke and was ripping the pull-tab from the can.

‘Michael never came to see you then?’ she asked. ‘You never got a visit from him in prison?’

Mattie was very still for a moment, poised with the Coke halfway to her mouth. Then she shook her head.

‘Did you ask him to come? Have you spoken to him on the phone? Is he still working at the same place?’

Too many questions, Vera saw at once. Mattie couldn’t take them all in. Vera was about to start again, more slowly, when the young woman answered, moving awkwardly in the bed as she spoke.

‘He told me he’s got another girlfriend. She’s having his baby. He told me I shouldn’t bother him again.’

‘Did you tell Mrs Lister about all that?’ Vera leaned forward. She could do gentle and maternal when the situation demanded. And here they had a possible motive. If Michael Morgan was about to become a father, social services might want to be involved. They might consider the child at risk.

‘I was upset,’ Mattie said. ‘I’d used my phone card to speak to him and he told me about the baby. He hadn’t liked my boy and he’d said he never wanted a baby with me, but he made one with his new lass. It wasn’t fair. That afternoon Mrs Lister came, and I started crying and telling her all about it.’

‘When was that?’ Vera asked. ‘How long ago was that, Mattie?’

Mattie shook her head. ‘Not very long,’ she said.

‘Was it Mrs Lister’s last visit to you? The one before?’

But Mattie couldn’t say. She began to cry quietly, not this time for the dead social worker, but for herself, abandoned by the man with whom she’d fancied herself in love.

Sal shifted uneasily, protective of the young woman in her charge, but wanting to help. ‘Mattie got upset around the time of the anniversary of Elias’s death,’ she said. ‘That was when she contacted Morgan again. I think some of the other girls had seen it on the local news and had been having a go at her.’

Vera flashed a smile at her. ‘Thanks, pet.’ She turned away from the bed and lowered her voice. ‘If Mattie remembers anything about the social worker, get in touch with me. I need to catch her killer.’ She fished a card out of the canvas Sainsbury’s shopping bag she used as a briefcase and scribbled her personal mobile number on the back. ‘Jenny Lister was a good woman.’

But walking down the wide, gleaming corridor of the flash new hospital, she wondered if that was true. If Jenny Lister was planning a book on the Elias Jones case, she was abusing her client’s trust for her own gain. The true-crime books about famous murders sold in thousands, and one by a social worker involved in the case would attract huge publicity. Jenny Lister could become a wealthy woman. It seemed so out of character for the person she’d thought she was getting to know that Vera could hardly believe it. But why would Mattie make up something like that?

Vera drove fast up the A1 and, just after turning off towards Hexham, she phoned Holly. ‘You still in the Lister house?’

‘Yes.’ Just from the one word Vera could tell she was defensive and sulky. Ashworth would already have been in touch and would have told her to move out.

‘How’s Hannah this morning?’

‘Still pretty shell-shocked and numb, but at least she slept last night. The doctor gave her a sleeping pill and Simon persuaded her to take it.’

‘Is he still there too?’

‘He’s just left,’ Holly said. ‘His father’s just got back from working overseas and he’s gone home to see him. His mother’s cooking a family lunch. There was a three-line whip.’ A pause. ‘Look, boss, I really think I should stay. Hannah shouldn’t be left on her own, and the FLO can’t get here until this afternoon.’

‘No problem,’ Vera said. ‘I need to chat to her anyway, so you pack up your stuff and be ready to leave. I’ll be there in half an hour.’ I must be a truly horrible person, she thought, passing a timber lorry, for that exchange to have given me so much pleasure.

Hannah still seemed doped up when Vera arrived. She sat in a rocking chair by the kitchen window, staring at the blue tits pecking at a string of peanuts hanging from the bird table. Holly gave her a big hug before she left, but Hannah hardly responded. Vera thought Holly wouldn’t have liked that: she was kind-hearted enough, but she needed emotional payback.

‘I don’t know about you,’ Vera said. ‘But I’m starving. Is there anything to eat in this place?’

Hannah turned in her seat, but only shrugged. She looked as if she’d lost pounds just in the two days since her mother had died, and she’d been skinny to start with. Vera thought Holly would have done better to spend her time cooking a proper meal for the girl than to sit around feeding off her grief.

The freezer was well organized and everything labelled. Jenny Lister, superwoman. Vera found a tub of home-made soup and a bag of wholemeal rolls. She set the soup whirring round the microwave and stuck the rolls in the oven to thaw and crisp. Her sort of cooking. She ignored Hannah while she set the table and then called her to come for her lunch.

‘I’m not really hungry.’ Hannah looked at her with blurred, unfocused eyes.

‘Well, I am, and your mam will have taught you it’s rude to sit and watch a person eat.’

Hannah got up from the rocking chair and joined Vera. She sat with her elbows on the table as Vera ladled soup into a bowl. It smelled delicious – of tomato and basil – and, despite herself, the girl dipped in her spoon and reached out to break off a piece of bread.

Vera waited until the soup had gone before she started talking.

‘Did you know your mother went to visit Mattie Jones in prison?’

Hannah looked a bit brighter now, sharper. ‘She didn’t talk much about her work.’

‘Mattie Jones is the young woman who killed her child. You’d have seen about it on the news. It was a big case. Your mother didn’t mention it at the time?’

A pause. ‘I do remember. It was one of the few times I’d seen Mum get angry. She got up and switched off the television. She said she couldn’t stand the way the media demonized the people involved – Mattie and the social worker. The reporters made everything seem so simple, and this case wasn’t simple at all.’ Hannah shut her eyes and there was a little smile. Vera could tell in that moment that her mother had become alive for her again.

‘Did Jenny ever talk about a book she was writing?’

Hannah smiled again. ‘She was always talking about her book, but I don’t think she’d started writing it.’

‘What do you mean?’ Not wanting to put the girl under pressure, not wanting to give away how important the answer might be, Vera raised herself to her feet and filled the kettle.

‘It was her dream. To be a writer.’

‘You mean stories, and that?’ Still with her back to Hannah, Vera dropped teabags into mugs.

‘No! She said she’d never be any good at fiction. She wanted to do a sort of popular guide to social work. Real cases – the individuals disguised of course – to bring it alive for the reader. So people could understand the strains and the dilemmas that social workers face.’

Vera set a mug of tea in front of Hannah, ferreted in a tin for a couple of biscuits.

‘I think she started writing it,’ Vera said. ‘Researching it anyway. Are you sure she didn’t work on it at home?’

‘Not sure, no. We both led our own lives. She spent quite a lot of time working here on her laptop. Maybe she wanted to start her book in secret. You know what it’s like when you talk about your dreams. People have expectations, put the pressure on. I can imagine her completing it, even waiting before she got a deal with the publisher before telling me. Then it would be: Ta-da, look what I’ve done! And a bottle of fizz to celebrate.’ Hannah looked up, her eyes as feverish as Mattie’s had been. ‘But now it’ll never happen, will it?’

‘Would she have written it straight onto the laptop?’ Because there was no record of any document of that kind saved. The techies had already been through the material on the computer.

‘No, probably not. She was a great one for longhand. She still wrote letters! Real ones, every Christmas, to all her friends and the ageing aunts. It was one of the pieces of advice she gave me about essays at school: Anything tricky, write it out first. There’s a direct

line between the brain and the pen. It never worked for me, but it would have done for her.’

‘So we’re looking for a notebook somewhere.’ Vera was talking to herself more than the girl, but Hannah answered.

‘Yeah! A4, hardback. She bought them from an old-fashioned stationer’s in Hexham. Used them all the time for work. Why? Is it important?’

It could help us find out who killed your mother. But Vera didn’t say that. She just smiled and made more tea.

‘Did Holly ask you about your mam’s handbag?’ They were still sitting at the table, the teapot between them.

‘I don’t think so.’

Of course not. Anger and satisfaction mixed. She’d have an excuse for bollocking Holly when they next met.

‘We haven’t found it yet,’ Vera said, ‘and it could be important. Could you describe it to me? And did she use a briefcase?’

‘It was big enough for her to get all her files in, so she didn’t need a briefcase.’ Hannah gave a sudden smile. ‘She loved it. It was made of soft, red leather.’

‘These notebooks you’re talking about, she’d have carried them in the bag too?’

‘Probably.’ Hannah was losing interest now. She was staring out of the window. ‘Do you think Simon will be back soon?’ As if the boy could somehow save her from her sadness, as if he was the only person who could.