Silent Voices

Chapter Nineteen

The family liaison officer had arrived at the Lister house almost as soon as Hannah had finished washing up. Vera had half-heartedly offered to do it, but Hannah had refused. She needed, Vera thought, to feel that this was her place still. That it didn’t belong to strange police officers.

‘What are your plans, pet? Will you stay on here?’

Hannah turned from the sink and looked confused, as if the question had no meaning. Then the doorbell rang and it was the FLO, and while Hannah was obviously sorry it wasn’t Simon standing there, she seemed relieved by the interruption.

Outside on the pavement Vera took a deep breath; she felt more of a sense of escape and liberation than she would coming out of Durham jail. She phoned Ashworth. ‘Where are you?’

‘Doing the house-to-house again.’ He lowered his voice. ‘The plods that did it the first time round missed stuff.’

‘Anything useful?’

‘Well, I can’t go into details now.’ Vera imagined him in one of the houses in the street. He’d have excused himself from the lounge to take the call, would be standing in a narrow hall, the residents on the other side of the door straining to hear every word.

‘Give me half an hour,’ she said. ‘I want a word with the ex-social worker you took such a shine to. Then I’m planning a visit to Michael Morgan and I want you along. Charlie can carry on there. I’ve sent Holly to talk to Lawrence May, the guy who was Jenny’s boyfriend.’

On the way to Connie’s cottage she drove past the Eliot place. There was a new car on the drive of the white house, something low and sporty. The master of the house had obviously returned, and inside the family was probably celebrating with a special lunch, while Hannah mourned for her mother.

Vera had grown up in the hills and these low places, shut in by trees, gave her the creeps. She wouldn’t want to live so close to the river; imagined floods, biting insects, disease. Even the lambs seemed overfed and fat.

When she talked to Ashworth after her interview with Connie, he said he wanted to take his own car to Tynemouth, the town where Morgan lived and practised. It was miles away, right on the coast, and he could go straight home from there. He’d had enough late nights. His wife would kill him. Vera insisted he go with her. ‘We can’t go into this cold. This could be it, man. We need at least the chance to talk it through.’

‘Couldn’t it wait until the morning? Give us a chance to prepare properly for the interview?’

But, standing outside the shop in the weak spring sunshine, Vera knew she couldn’t wait a whole night before confronting Morgan. It would kill her. Sometimes she had this reckless streak. Impulsive. The sensible thing would be to wait, to consider all the angles; she couldn’t do it.

‘If it’s a late finish, I’ll drop you home,’ she said. ‘Then pick you up in the morning. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if you have to leave your car here overnight.’

And he had no argument to that. He climbed into the car beside her. She thought he was as eager as she was to talk to Morgan. He just had to go through the motions of putting his family first.

‘So what did you get from the house-to-house?’ Vera knew she was a good driver. Instinctive. These small roads could be tricky if you didn’t know them, but she couldn’t afford to hang around. Then she sensed Ashworth tense beside her and put her foot on the brake, reduced the speed a bit. She needed him to concentrate. She listened to his account of the conversation with Jenny’s neighbour.

‘She thought Lister had fallen for one of her clients?’

‘She wasn’t that certain,’ Ashworth said. ‘Just that it was someone unsuitable.’

‘But she wouldn’t have plucked the idea of a client out of thin air!’ Vera was excited now. ‘Jenny might have said something, dropped a hint that made Hilda think that way. And it stuck in her mind, even though she couldn’t remember the original comment.’

‘Maybe.’ Vera saw that Ashworth thought she was making too much of it. He was her restraining influence. Sometimes, she thought, he was her conscience.

‘Connie said that Jenny met Michael Morgan,’ Vera said. She kept her voice calm. Didn’t want Ashworth to think she was over-reacting. ‘Apparently she wanted to do her own assessment of the man.’

‘You think Lister was having an affair with Morgan?’ His voice was sharp and incredulous.

‘I’m keeping an open mind,’ she said. ‘But if the bastard killed her, I’ll have him.’

Tynemouth was a pretty little town, with a wide front street and bonny Georgian houses. A castle and a priory, both in ruins. Tea shops and posh frock shops and a converted church on one corner, called the Land of Green Ginger, where you could buy antiques and books and fancy children’s clothes. In the evening the bars and the restaurants pulled in the younger crowd, but this time of day, so early in the season, it was the haunt of elderly ladies and middle-aged couples walking hand in hand, window-shopping. The same sort of clientele, Vera thought, as the Willows Health Club.

They found Morgan’s place in a narrow terraced street just off the sea front. Tynemouth Acupuncture in discreet letters on a classy brass plaque next to the freshly painted door. It seemed he must live in the flat upstairs. The window was open and they could hear music. If you could call it music. Something electronic and repetitive. The clinic was shut.

Vera rang the bell and at last they heard light footsteps on an uncarpeted floor. She’d been expecting Morgan, but the door was opened by a young woman, who was hardly more than a girl. Long, straight dark hair, a skimpy printed dress worn over leggings, little flat pumps. The dress was loose and floaty and could have been concealing an early pregnancy.

‘Could we speak to Michael Morgan?’

The girl smiled. ‘I’m sorry, he’s tied up at the moment, but I could make an appointment for you.’ She spoke as if meeting the man would be a huge treat for them. More educated and less flaky than Mattie, but a similar type, Vera decided. Frail and drippy.

‘He’s here then, is he?’

‘Michael’s meditating,’ the girl said. ‘He can never be disturbed when he’s meditating.’

‘Bollocks.’ Vera flashed her a smile. ‘We’re police, pet, and I know he’d be delighted to help us with our enquiries.’ She nodded Ashworth past her up the stairs. ‘What’s your name then?’

‘Freya.’ Now she seemed just like a schoolgirl. ‘Freya Adams.’

‘We’ll need to speak to you in a little while too. But disappear for half an hour, there’s a good lass. Buy yourself a glass of pop and a bag of crisps and we’ll see you back here then.’ Vera shut the door, leaving the girl on the pavement. She thought maybe she should have been more tactful. Sometimes adrenalin got her that way, made her too slick and clever for her own good.

Two rooms of the flat must have been knocked through to make a long narrow space, with windows at either end. Vera walked straight into it at the top of the stairs. The floors had been stripped and waxed and were honey-coloured. There were thin muslin curtains, wall hangings in gold and saffron, the only furniture a futon, a low table and one wall covered in bookshelves. The music came from a system on one of the shelves. ‘Can we switch that off?’ It never did any harm to establish your authority immediately, and the persistent wailing made her want to scream. There was silence.

Morgan and Ashworth were standing close to the window that looked over a small garden at the back of the house, in the middle of a conversation. Vera had been expecting hostility: she’d be really pissed off if two strangers came into her house and started shouting the odds. But Morgan seemed only faintly amused. He was better-looking in the flesh than his photos had led her to expect: a striking face with very blue eyes. She’d checked out all the old newspaper pictures of him, but wouldn’t have recognized him in the street; he’d shaved his head since the trial and now had the look of an Eastern monk – the image, she guessed, he was aiming at. He came up to her, arm outstretched to shake her hand. ‘And you are?’

‘Vera Stanhope. Detective Inspector.’

He was wearing loose cotton trousers and a cotton shirt with no collar. The sort of gear her hippy neighbour went in for. It came to her that this man could well have come to the next-door parties.

‘I was just explaining to Mr Morgan that we’re sorry to disturb him,’ Ashworth said.

‘And I’ve told him that I’m always pleased to help the police in any way I can.’ Morgan nodded for them to take a seat. The futon was as uncomfortable as Vera had known it would be. It creaked. It hadn’t been made for someone of her weight, and she wasn’t sure if she’d make it to her feet unaided at the end of the interview.

‘Would you like tea?’ The man smiled at them. ‘I have camomile, peppermint…’

‘Just a few questions,’ Vera said. ‘We’ll not take up too much of your time.’

He smiled again and sat on the floor facing them. The movement was fluid, very graceful, and it came to Vera, unbidden, that he’d be very good at sex. The physical stuff. Was that part of his attraction? She felt a moment of panic, of the old regret that time was slipping past. Then something close to lust.

There was a silence. Ashworth and Morgan waited for her to speak. Morgan was looking at her as if he understood her discomfort, with compassionate blue eyes that held her attention. Sod him! Did she need his pity? She might want his body, but that was something quite different.

‘Is it right that you’ve got that lass of yours pregnant?’

She felt that Ashworth relaxed as soon as she’d spoken. This was what he’d been expecting, a full-on attack.

‘I think we both had something to do with that. But, yes, Freya’s going to have a baby. We’re delighted.’ He gave a slow smile and though Vera despised his attitude, she still couldn’t take her eyes from his face.

‘But Mattie’s not, is she?’

‘What’s this about, Inspector? Why are you here?’ The tone was still easy.

Vera ignored the question. ‘What I don’t get, Mr Morgan, is what you saw in Mattie. I mean, she’s a bonnie lass, but not your intellectual equal, I’d say. Or was that part of the appeal? That she’d never answer back?’

Morgan frowned. ‘You’re right, of course. It was a mistake to get involved with Mattie. I’ll always regret it. She became fixated, obsessed. It really wasn’t something I encouraged. And I much prefer my women to have minds of their own.’ He gave a little smile, which was almost a challenge to Vera: I’d much prefer someone like you. But that was nonsense, of course. Nobody wanted her. Morgan turned away and said in a soft voice, ‘I’ll always feel guilty about Elias dying, that I should have foreseen it or done something to prevent it.’

‘So how did you hook up with Mattie?’ This was Ashworth, less aggressive, asking the question as one man to another.

‘I suppose I started off feeling sorry for her.’ Morgan leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, showing again how flexible his body was. Vera was aware of the shoulder muscles under the flimsy cotton shirt. ‘And it’s always flattering to be needed. I thought I could make a difference in her life. A terrible arrogance, I see now.’

‘Where did you meet?’

‘That was quite by chance. A cafe in Newcastle. She didn’t have quite enough money to pay for her coffee and I offered her a few pence. She was ridiculously grateful. I’d saved her the embarrassment of having to walk away.’ He looked up at them, very earnest, willing them to understand. ‘There was simplicity about her that I found awesome. A real inner beauty.’

‘Not quite the full shilling though, is she?’ Vera broke in. ‘I mean, what would you talk about, those long boring nights in her flat?’

He shook his head, despairing of her crassness. ‘She was desperate to learn,’ he said. ‘I’ve always thought that I might make a teacher – not in the conventional sense, of course – and in talking to her about my beliefs and ideals they became clearer to me.’

Self-centred prat. Vera was pleased she no longer found him appealing. She saw the brown marks between his teeth, that there was a hair growing from a mole on his neck.

‘But you screwed Mattie up, didn’t you? Deprived her of the things that held her together: the telly, her friends in the street, the games she played with her lad. Was she always going to be an experiment? You never moved her in here, did you, like your classy new girlfriend? Basically she was just your bit of rough.’

Vera saw Morgan had been glad of the excuse to leave Mattie and move back to Tynemouth. He must have celebrated after Connie’s visit. It gave him an escape route and it made his desertion look like self-sacrifice: I’m leaving for the sake of your son.

Vera thought Mattie would have done better to drown him than the boy.

Morgan continued in the same reasonable way. ‘I didn’t understand how disturbed she was. I never thought she’d kill Elias in the hope of getting me back.’

‘When did Jenny Lister come to visit?’ Vera asked. Soon Freya would be back, and she wanted to catch the girl before she had a chance to talk to Morgan. It was time to move things on.

For the first time he didn’t have an immediate answer.

‘She did come to visit you?’

‘She came here a few times,’ he said. ‘I heard about her murder. I’m so sorry she’s dead.’

‘Bit of a coincidence,’ Vera said. ‘Death following you around wherever you go. What did she want with you?’

‘To assess me.’ He gave a small smile. ‘That’s what she said.’

‘Was this before you took up with Freya or after?’ Vera found from somewhere a blast of anger. He very nearly had me conned. He’s a clever bastard.

‘The first time was before Elias died. I think she wanted to make sure I no longer had any influence over the family. I convinced her of that.’

‘Jenny fell for your charms then, did she?’

‘She believed me. Charm didn’t come into it.’

‘When did you last see her?’

There was a pause. Outside in the street some young people were laughing and jeering, pulling Vera’s attention away from the room for a moment. In the distance she saw Freya approaching.

‘Well? It was recently, wasn’t it? Within the last two weeks. She’d found out from Mattie Jones that your young lassie was expecting a baby. She wanted to warn you from playing the same games with her as you did with Mattie.’

‘I don’t play games, Inspector.’

‘When did you last see her?’ Vera bellowed and the sound seemed to echo around the uncluttered room.

He gave a little nod. ‘You’re quite right. It was ten days ago, just a week before Jenny was murdered.’

‘And what did she want with you?’

‘She spoke to Freya, who confirmed that she was here under her own free will, that we love each other. But I’d guess love is a concept you don’t understand, Inspector.’

‘Did you have a relationship with Jenny Lister, Mr Morgan?’

He threw back his head and laughed.

Outside, the girl was almost at the door. Vera stood up suddenly, fury giving her the impetus to rise from the futon.

‘I want an answer!’

‘Of course there was no relationship, Inspector. Ms Lister was a rather beautiful woman. But not my type.’

Vera stamped out of the room, leaving Ashworth to follow.