Silent Voices (Vera Stanhope 4) (24 page)

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.

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?’