Silent Voices (Vera Stanhope 4) (18 page)

‘You were still working with Jenny before the case went to trial. Surely she would have told you?’

‘I was moved from the case as soon as Elias’s body was found,’ Connie said. ‘Standard practice, even before the disciplinary hearing.’

‘But you were based in the same office,’ Vera persisted. ‘You must have met in the tea room, bumped into each other in the Ladies. You’d have thought she’d tell you what she was up to.’

Connie shook her head. ‘Not Jenny’s style. She was discreet. I was no longer involved in the case.’

‘You don’t seem surprised. About the prison visits.’

‘No.’ Wood pigeons were calling in the trees on the other side of the river. They reminded Connie of childhood holidays in the country, long summer days. ‘Mattie was more than a client to Jenny. She’d known her for years. Jenny would have felt she’d let her down.’

‘So it would have been a kind of penance?’
Religion creeping in again.

‘Yes,’ Connie said. ‘Perhaps. Something like that.’

‘This book . . .’

‘Really, she didn’t say anything to me.’

‘Apparently,’ Vera paused, clearly choosing her words carefully, ‘she was quite evangelical about it. She wanted to tell the world what the social worker’s life was really all about. The human face. The moral dilemmas. Get away from all the tabloid stereotypes. Does that make sense to you?’

This time Connie paused. ‘Yeah, that sounds like Jenny. She could be quite priggish.’

Vera beamed. ‘Hallelujah! I never believe in saints. Someone’s telling the truth about the woman at last.’

Connie looked up, surprised, caught Vera’s eye and grinned too.

‘Did you know Michael Morgan had found himself another girlfriend? That she was having a baby by him?’ Vera asked. ‘At least that’s what he told Mattie. He could just have been trying to get her off his back, of course.’

‘Were they still in touch?’ Connie hadn’t expected that. She’d thought Michael had walked out of Mattie’s life, once and for all, before the murder.

‘She was in touch with
him.
She phoned him from the prison, sent him visiting orders. She was besotted, after all. And some women have no pride.’ Vera stretched her legs out in front of her. She was wearing sandals and her feet were rather grubby. ‘That would have started alarm bells, wouldn’t it? Michael Morgan involved with another woman and child?’

‘Yes, of course. Though he was never charged. No evidence that he’d witnessed abuse or instigated it. Social services would have to be careful. They’d take advice from lawyers.’

‘What would the procedure be?’

‘I’m not sure.’ It seemed to Connie that
that
life, the life of emergency case conferences and the bureaucracy of the ‘at risk’ register, was part of a former existence. She no longer understood it. ‘An informal visit to start with, I suppose. Contact with the woman’s GP and midwife, to alert them to a possible problem.’

‘Who would do that? Who would be in charge of the new case?’ Vera turned to Connie and waited for the answer. Connie could sense how much it mattered to her, felt her own heart beating faster, in time with the detective’s.

‘I guess it would be somebody senior because of the sensitivity. But you could easily find out. There’d be records.’

‘I know I could, pet. But I’m asking you. You knew them all. You were in the thick of it.’

‘They might ask Jenny,’ Connie said at last. ‘Because she knew Michael Morgan already.’

‘She
knew
Morgan?’

The violence of the response made Connie backtrack. ‘I’m not certain about that. You’ll have to check. But she talked about meeting him. It was after he’d left Mattie’s flat, but before Elias died. She said she wanted to assess him for herself, to judge the risk that he might pose to the family.’ A pause. ‘I was a bit pissed off actually. I thought she didn’t trust me.’

‘She never came back to you? Never told you if that meeting took place?’ The detective remained still, but Connie could sense a new energy about her, a sharpness. An excitement.

‘No, but Elias died soon after. We had other concerns then. Like I say, you’ll be able to check. Jenny’s record-keeping was legendary.’

Now Vera heaved herself off the seat, dusted bits of lichen from her skirt. She shook Connie’s hand, clasping it in both of hers. ‘Best keep this conversation secret,’ she said. ‘Safer, eh?’

‘I’m hardly likely to go to the press!’ Connie wished now that Vera would stay. She would have liked to share a pot of tea with her. The woman was entertaining.

‘Aye, well, take care of yourselves, all the same.’

And the woman stamped down the track to her big, flash car, leaving Connie feeling abandoned and uneasy.

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.