Silent Voices

Chapter Twenty-Five

Vera called the whole team back to the incident room in Kimmerston to brief them on the Danny Shaw murder. Joe Ashworth wasn’t sure what had got into her. There was a sort of fury that ran in spasms through her body. It was as if she thought the boy had been strangled just to taunt her. Ashworth decided this evening that she was more mad than usual. She was there before the rest of them, pacing up and down at the front of the room. He knew better than to speak to her. He waited in silence for the team to gather.

Charlie was next in. Eyes like a bloodhound and a paper cup of coffee in one hand, some sort of pastry wrapped in greaseproof paper in the other. Charlie was always on the edge of some crisis, a major depression or breakdown. When his wife had left him, they’d thought for a couple of months that he’d lose it completely. She’d always done the practical stuff – washed his clothes and ironed them, cooked his food and cleared up his mess. Like she was his mother. They couldn’t see how he’d cope without her. But he’d pulled himself through it and still he survived, and each day he turned up was a little miracle. He’d even worked out how to use the washing machine, and these days he managed a shave before leaving the house.

Tenacious. That was how Vera had described Charlie to Joe Ashworth: ‘You can’t expect him to do much under his own initiative, but give him clear instructions, then all you have to do is wind him up and let him go.’

Holly was last in, and something about her, the way she looked round her, the self-satisfied smile of apology to Vera for keeping them waiting, let Ashworth know she had something important to share. She’d wait until the end and then make her announcement. Like some bloody conjuror pulling a rabbit from a hat.

Vera glowered at them. She wrote Danny’s name on the whiteboard, stabbing out the letters with the marker.

‘Our second victim. Danny Shaw. Mother Karen works on reception at the health club at the Willows. Father Derek, builder and developer, going through hard times financially. Danny was their only child. Spoilt rotten, then he grew up, went away to university and turned moody on them. Stopped talking. He wanted to be a lawyer and he had a kind of motive for the Lister murder. If Jenny Lister caught him stealing from his colleagues.’

‘You think his killing could be a revenge attack?’ Charlie said. ‘Because he strangled the woman?’

Vera stopped, frozen, her arm still outstretched towards the board. Ashworth thought she might have a go at Charlie, call him stupid for dreaming up such a notion. One way of relieving the pent-up tension. But instead she nodded. ‘I hadn’t thought of that, but it’s worth considering. Who cared for Lister enough to kill for her?’

‘Her daughter,’ Holly called out from the back of the room.

‘Or her daughter’s boyfriend,’ Vera said. ‘Just because he’s besotted with the girl. I can see him committing murder if she asked him to do it. We mustn’t forget him.’

‘How would Hannah know Shaw?’ Ashworth was all in favour of brainstorming, but this was madness, fantasy time.

‘Wouldn’t they have gone to school together? Only a year between them. We know Simon went to a posh place in town, but Danny and Hannah were both students at the high school in Hexham. Let’s check that out with the teachers, other kids. It’s another connection between the Shaws and the Listers. Holly, you sort it, you’re good at that stuff and nearer in age to the kids than the rest of us.’

She stopped for breath, took a gasp of air. ‘Some more news. I got the call while we were with the Shaw family. They’ve found Jenny Lister’s bag. No news yet on the notebook, though. We’re still waiting to hear. Guess where the bag was found! Barnard Bridge. Just across the burn from Mallow Cottage, Connie Masters’s place.’ She looked around the room. ‘Any ideas?’

Silence. In another office someone burst out laughing. The noise seemed to tear at Vera’s nerves, and Ashworth expected another outburst about their lack of intelligence and about how crap they were as detectives, but she held it together. Instead she nodded towards Charlie.

‘What have you got on Morgan? According to Shaw’s mother, he and Danny were mates. At least Morgan seemed to have some sort of influence on the boy.’ She had set Charlie off to re-interview the people who had been working or playing in the health club the day Jenny Lister had died. Had any of them seen Michael Morgan that morning? He hadn’t had a clinic there that day, but had he used the gym or the pool? Ashworth imagined that Charlie had spent his day drinking tea in living rooms in tidy houses all over the Tyne valley, interviewing the wrinklies from the aqua-aerobic class. The sort of task he loved.

Charlie slumped into a seat near the front, licked his fingers and crunched into a ball the greaseproof paper he’d been holding.

‘A few sightings that day of young men who could have been Morgan, but nothing specific and nothing consistent. They’re so eager to help, you get the feeling they’d say anything to make you happy.’

‘Morgan’s not that young.’

Charlie managed a quick smile. Progress, Ashworth thought. He couldn’t remember the last time his face cracked. ‘Believe me, to most of them, anything under fifty’s young. I’m young.’

Vera looked at Holly. ‘Well? What have we got on pretty little Freya? Any evidence that Freya knew Danny Shaw would be helpful.’

Holly sat very straight, waited until Charlie was looking at her too. God, Ashworth thought, she was such a drama queen. Like an eight-year-old in a tutu desperate to show off a new dance.

‘Well?’ Now Vera was really on the verge of losing it. Ashworth couldn’t wait for the storm to break.

‘No information on that, I’m afraid.’ Holly gave one of her you-are-never-going-to-believe-this, how-clever-am-I? smiles. ‘But I did find out that Freya was in the Willows the morning Jenny Lister was killed.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me as soon as you knew?’ Vera demanded.

At least, Ashworth thought, Vera wasn’t going to give Holly the satisfaction of applause.

‘I wasn’t sure myself until just now.’

Vera ignored that. ‘What was she doing there?’

‘There’s an exercise class for pregnant mums. Half pilates, half yoga. You know the sort of thing. It was her first week. We’d already checked that Freya wasn’t a member of the health club, but non-members can go to the specialist classes. They just pay on the day.’

‘How did you find out about it?’ Joe couldn’t help himself. ‘Did one of the staff see her there?’

‘Nothing like that. I saw the class advertised and it just seemed like Freya’s thing. It took me until half an hour ago to track down Natalie, the teacher. That’s why I was a bit late.’ Holly was about to launch into a detailed explanation of her cleverness in getting hold of the woman, but Vera interrupted her.

‘Go back to the hotel first thing tomorrow. See what time the girl left the health club that morning. It must have been before I found the body, because we’d have noticed her among the other witnesses. Did she drive there or get a lift? And let’s make absolutely certain Danny Shaw wasn’t around. We know his shift didn’t start until later and he wouldn’t have been working, but maybe he had another reason for being in the hotel. If he saw Freya commit the murder, we’ve got a motive for that killing too.’

Ashworth could sense ideas fizzing around Vera’s brain. She couldn’t stop talking, like his kids after too much sugar, too many e-numbers. ‘When you’ve got everything straight, call me and we’ll go to Tynemouth and talk to Freya. Or if the college has started for the new term, we’ll see her there. Better if we can catch her away from Morgan. There are too many bloody coincidences here.’

‘You don’t think Freya’s a plausible suspect?’ Ashworth interrupted her. ‘Why would she kill Jenny Lister?’

Vera spat the words back at him. ‘Because Morgan told her to. Because he has a way of making vulnerable lasses do what he wants. He got Mattie Jones to kill her own son, for Christ’s sake!’

Joe wanted to say they had no evidence for that: Vera should be careful. But he could tell she was in no mood to listen.