Silent Voices

Chapter Twenty-Six

It was almost dark. Joe Ashworth stood next to the unsteady wrought-iron table in Connie Masters’s garden and watched the CSI examine the patch of weeds where Jenny Lister’s bag still lay. Though he thought it would all be a waste of time. It was nothing more than an elaborate show: the investigator in his suit and bootees, looking like a giant Teletubby. He was working by the light of a strong torch now. What more could he hope to find? It seemed obvious to Joe that the bag had been thrown into the vegetation from the road, otherwise how could the cow parsley have seemed undisturbed from outside? So there would be no footwear prints, no traces at all left by the murderer, if indeed it had been the murderer who had dumped the bag.

Vera had decided they should drive here once the meeting in Kimmerston was over. He’d agreed reluctantly, partly because he was scared that she’d ask Holly instead if he refused, partly because he didn’t have the energy to put up a fight. He found himself depressed by his own cynicism. Usually his enthusiasm for work, his place as Vera’s second-in-command, her confidant and her surrogate son, kept him going through the tedious phases of an investigation. It was his role to motivate and encourage her, to tell her she was a genius, to keep her on track. This time he felt as if all the enthusiasm had been sucked out of him. Vera would put that down to the landscape, inland, low and waterlogged: What you need, Joey boy, is a good east wind to blow away the cobwebs. Ashworth thought it would take more to lift his mood than a walk on the beach with a wind from the sea.

In contrast, Vera was still fizzing. She stood beside him, yelling to the man on the other side of the burn.

‘Can you tell how long it was there?’

‘Not precisely.’ This CSI was new. Joe hadn’t seen him before. He seemed bemused by Vera’s antics, regarded her rather as if there was a hostile wild animal, pleased she was trapped on the other side of the burn. ‘Not yet.’

‘I’m looking for a notebook,’ she shouted. ‘A4 hardback. I need it before the water gets in and it rots away to nothing.’

Joe knew the notebook wouldn’t be there. The murderer was no fool. It was hard maybe to dispose of leather, but paper and cardboard could be burned away to nothing. Why risk dumping it?

He saw the CSI squat to look in the bag. Now the vegetation surrounded him, so all they could catch were glimpses of his blue suit, and he looked like a great blue bird on its nest.

The CSI stood up and shook his head. ‘No notebook,’ he said. ‘You can have the other contents when we get it back.’

Vera took the news more philosophically than Ashworth had expected. There was no ranting. Her fury seemed to have left as soon as it had appeared. It never suited her to be caged inside the incident room. ‘Aye, well, you can’t always get what you want. And that would be too easy, wouldn’t it, Joe? We always like a challenge.’

She shouted across the stream again. ‘Were you working the scene at the Shaw murder?’

‘Nah. Billy was in charge of that one.’

‘I’ll pester him then. There was a bonfire, and I want any paper that was left fast-tracked for examination.’

The CSI looked at her as if she were mad. She stamped off, round the back of the cottage to the kitchen door, turning to call Ashworth to follow her. ‘Don’t stand around there. The man knows what he’s about. He can work without an audience.’

Vera seemed to fill the small room. Connie was sitting on the floor watching television. The child must already be in bed. Vera had knocked on the kitchen door, then gone straight in. Connie got to her feet. ‘Would you like some tea?’

‘Well done, pet!’ Vera took no notice of the question. ‘You did all the right things once you’d realized what the lass had found. I wouldn’t have handled it better myself.’

Ashworth saw Connie give a little smile of pleasure. It seemed everyone wanted to please Vera Stanhope.

Vera leaned forwards, resting her huge hands on her bare knees. In the background the theme tune to a soap had begun. Connie switched the television off at the set.

‘You do realize how important this is.’ It was Vera in confiding mode. ‘If we find out who dumped the bag, we’re on our way to an arrest. And you live here, you’re around most of the time, the bairn plays in the garden. You might have seen someone.’

‘The murderer would hardly dispose of evidence in front of us!’

‘Maybe.’ Vera made a pantomime of considering the matter. ‘But we have to think about why they chose this particular spot. When they have the whole of Northumberland to pick from, why leave it just outside your back door?’

‘You don’t think it was me? If I’d killed Jenny Lister I wouldn’t be that stupid.’

‘Of course you wouldn’t, pet, and if I really thought you’d killed your boss we’d be speaking in the station with a tape running, not here over a nice cup of tea.’ She flashed a smile. ‘I think you did mention tea.’

‘I’ll make it,’ Joe said, knowing that was what Vera wanted. For him to be pottering away with kettle and pots, so that Connie had the sense the conversation was just between the two women. But for him to be keeping his ears open in case he picked up something Vera might have missed. After all, they were a good team.

‘So perhaps it was a coincidence,’ Vera went on. ‘But you’re not on the main road here, and this sort of place people notice strange cars. So I wonder if someone’s having a bit of fun with us. Like playing games, making mischief. Let’s throw a spanner in the works by dumping the bag next to Connie Masters’s cottage. Light the blue touchpaper and see what happens. Because I have the sense that our murderer enjoys playing games. So have you had any visitors lately?’

‘There was that man who called in, asking the way to the Eliot house on the afternoon of Jenny’s death.’

‘So there was,’ Vera said easily. ‘You told Joe here all about him. It didn’t seem very significant at the time, but looking back, it could be. Would you recognize him again if we show you some photos?’

Connie frowned. ‘I’m not sure. So much has happened since then.’

‘Worth a shot though, eh?’ Vera reached out and took the mug Joe handed to her. ‘I’ll send Joe round with a few pictures tomorrow. Was he carrying a bag?’

‘I think so. Not anything smart like a briefcase, but a holdall. Perhaps a rucksack.’

‘Big enough to hold Jenny Lister’s bag?’ Vera asked.

‘Yes.’ This time Connie sounded more certain. ‘If it was empty, it would squash up very small.’

‘Did you see him come and watch him go? Would he have had time to hoy the bag across the burn without you seeing?’

‘I didn’t see him either time,’ Connie said. ‘He just appeared when we came out into the garden. Alice saw him first. Later I went into the house to make him tea, and when I came back outside he’d disappeared. He could have done it before we spoke or after.’

‘You say he was looking for the Eliot house?’

‘Yes. It seemed kind of odd. I mean, if he was a friend of Christopher and Veronica’s, wouldn’t he know where he was going?’

‘Did he seem like a friend?’ Vera asked.

‘No.’ Joe saw Connie hesitate. She was reluctant to commit herself, but in the face of Vera’s barrage of questions she thought she should give an answer.

‘We understand you can’t be certain,’ he said. ‘Not after such a brief conversation. We won’t make too much of it. But what we’re after is an impression. In your line of work you must be good at summing people up, making a judgement about them.’

Connie looked up at him and smiled. ‘But I was a crap judge of character, wasn’t I? It never occurred to me for a second that Mattie Jones would kill her son.’

‘I bet you were right more often than you were wrong,’ Vera said. ‘And like Joe says, we’re after your best guess. That’s all.’

Connie took a deep breath. ‘My best guess, thinking about it afterwards? That he was working. It wasn’t a social call.’

‘He was selling something?’ Joe saw Vera was trying to rein herself in, so that Connie wouldn’t be intimidated by her enthusiasm. But still the question came out like a firecracker. It seemed to light up the room.

‘Perhaps.’

Connie sounded doubtful, but Vera got to her feet and started pacing the small room. It seemed to Ashworth that if she’d sat still much longer, she’d have exploded. She was muttering to herself, throwing out occasional questions to Joe and Connie, but not really expecting answers: ‘Who else might visit a customer or client in their own home? Solicitor? Estate agent, if he was doing a valuation? Come on, Joey, help me out here!’

‘He didn’t look like that,’ Connie said. ‘He wasn’t wearing a suit.’

Then Vera reached the point Joe knew she’d been aiming for all along. She looked directly at Connie. ‘Could it have been Michael Morgan?’

‘No! I’d have recognized him.’ But Ashworth could see that Vera had thrown in a seed of doubt. And Connie wanted to please Vera, to get once again that beam of approval. ‘Anyway, why would Morgan be visiting the Eliots?’

‘Perhaps Veronica likes having pins stuck into her. Or perhaps he didn’t go there at all and it was just an excuse.’

‘He wouldn’t come here,’ Connie said. ‘Not if he knew I lived in the cottage. He’d be scared I’d know him. I only met him twice, but his photo was everywhere in the papers.’

‘Like I said…’ Vera grinned. ‘We’re looking for someone who likes playing games, who enjoys taking a risk. And it wouldn’t be such an enormous risk. You see someone out of context, how often do you recognize them?’

Nobody answered.

‘Veronica was here this afternoon,’ Connie said. ‘She came for tea, but left soon after I called you.’

They all realized the implication of the words, but Vera didn’t pick up on it immediately. She was delighted, though, Ashworth could tell that. There was that shiver of anticipation, the sort she got when she was standing at the bar and he was getting in the first round. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you two would be best mates,’ Vera said, keeping it as calm as she could manage.

‘We haven’t been.’ Connie’s face seemed to close down and become expressionless. ‘Veronica was rather a bitch actually, as soon as she realized who I was. She made my life hell in the village with her gossip and her rumours.’

Joe could tell Vera didn’t really get the significance of what Connie was saying. Vera had always been an outsider: she was used to being considered the eccentric, the mad cop. It was only since she’d made pals with her druggie neighbours that she’d belonged to any sort of community. But Joe’s wife had found it a nightmare to fit into their estate when they’d first moved. A couple of nights she’d cried herself to sleep. Something about the babysitting circle and unused tokens, about the PTA committee. The small, unkind digs that stick in the brain and suck out all the confidence, made worse because the insults were so petty and she’d known she shouldn’t care.

‘What happened to change things between you and Veronica?’ he asked.

‘Jenny Lister’s death,’ Connie said. ‘Suddenly Veronica wanted my company. She invited me to lunch. Maybe it was just the voyeurism you get when things hit the papers. People seem attracted by that strange second-hand celebrity.’

‘And you asked her back here.’ Vera was grinning like a wolf. ‘Very neighbourly.’

‘It’s been lonely,’ Connie said. And Joe, catching the bleakness in her voice, understood how miserable she’d been, and thought how brave she’d been to hold things together. ‘Yeah, I asked her back. She was here when Alice found the bag.’

‘And what did she make of that?’ There was a glint in Vera’s eye: the wolf was sensing her prey.

‘She was anxious about Alice playing so close to the water,’ Connie replied. ‘Then later, when I said I was going to call the police, she said she’d go home, that she didn’t want to interfere. She’d only be in the way.’

‘Tactful.’ Vera nodded again. ‘It’s a real nuisance for us when folk hang around to watch the action.’

‘She offered to take Alice with her.’

‘Kind,’ Vera said. ‘Thoughtful.’ There was a pause. ‘I suppose you saw her coming. You’ve got a view down the track from the big house.’

‘No.’ Ashworth thought Connie understood where this was leading, but she pretended ignorance. ‘Veronica was early. I was still clearing up at the back of the house. She came to the kitchen door and gave me a bit of a shock.’

Vera gave the huge grin of approval that made everyone included in it feel like the most important person in the world. ‘So, hypothetically of course, Veronica could have hoyed the bag into the weed patch on her way round the side of the cottage. She wouldn’t know the bairn would be playing out there this afternoon.’

‘Hypothetically,’ Connie said, ‘I suppose she could.’

They stood up. ‘Does the name Danny Shaw mean anything to you?’ Vera asked.

Connie frowned. ‘No. Should it?’

‘You’ll see it on the news first thing in the morning. He was a student. He was strangled this afternoon at his home just up the valley.’

Connie was suddenly tense. Ashworth could see that her instinct was to gather up her child and run away with her, to take her somewhere safe.

‘The same killer?’

‘Not necessarily,’ Vera said. ‘But the cases are linked. We’re sure the cases are linked.’

Of course the cases are linked, Ashworth thought. But proving the connection was another matter entirely.