Silent Voices (Vera Stanhope 4) (6 page)

Ashworth nodded. The council estates in the west end of Newcastle had been notorious when he was growing up, still had a reputation for crime and gangs despite the private housing that had gone up around it. He thought that Vera had been right again. ‘Any idea who might have been stealing?’

She paused. She’d have been brought up not to grass.

‘I’m not going to charge in with the handcuffs,’ he said. ‘But you work here. I’m just asking for your opinion.’

He saw her take that in and watched her give a little smile. Maybe people didn’t ask her opinion very often. She considered.

‘Things started going walkabout around the time Danny started working here.’

‘Danny?’

‘Danny Shaw. The temporary cleaner. I heard Ryan tell that fat lady detective about him. He’s a student. His mam works on reception.’

‘What’s he like?’

She paused to choose her words and folded her arms across her chest. ‘A bit kind of sly. He tells you what you want to hear. And not a great cleaner. But then I don’t think men do clean very well, do you?’ Ashworth was thinking she’d probably got that bit of wisdom from her mother, and in fact that it could have been an older woman talking, when she shot him a look. ‘But he’s fit, mind. All the girls here fancy him something rotten.’

‘Any of them been out with him?’

She shook her head. ‘He plays them along, all flirty and flattering, but you can tell it’s just a game with him. He thinks he’s better than us.’

‘What about you then?’ Ashworth asked, jovial as if he was about fifty-five and her uncle. ‘Have you got yourself a nice lad?’ And he hoped she had. He hoped she’d be happy.

She went all serious on him again. ‘Not yet. I saw what happened to my mother. Married when she was seventeen and three kids by the time she was twenty-one. I’m taking my time. I’ve got my career to think about.’ She sat, straight-backed with her hands on her knee, until he smiled at her and told her she could go.

Karen Shaw, the receptionist, was about to leave. She was sitting behind her desk, staring at the clock on the wall opposite, and as soon as the minute hand hit the hour she was off her chair and packing her magazine and putting her cardigan over her shoulders. Ashworth wondered why Taylor had kept her there all afternoon. Perhaps he’d just forgotten about her. Or perhaps Vera had told her to stick around until the end of her shift.

‘Have you got a moment?’

She glared at him. ‘A day like this, all I want is to get home to a deep bath and a big glass of wine.’

‘You’ve hardly been rushed off your feet! There’ve been no customers this afternoon.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve been bored out of my tiny mind.’ She pulled her bag onto her shoulder. ‘Look, it’s not challenging work at the best of times. Today I’ve felt like screaming.’ He could feel the energy fizzing around her.

He gave her his best smile, the one his mam said would charm the birds from the trees. ‘Tell you what, give me half an hour of your time and I’ll buy you that glass of wine.’

She hesitated, then grinned. ‘Better be a small one then. I’m driving.’

She led him upstairs to the hotel bar. The whole place had an empty, rather eerie feel. Ashworth was reminded of a horror movie that Sarah had forced him to watch on the telly one night. She had a taste for the macabre. He imagined an axeman appearing in the empty corridors. Only Jenny Lister hadn’t been killed with an axe.

The room was smaller than the lounge and the style was different. Ashworth imagined men in white jackets and girls in flapper dresses with headbands and long cigarette holders. There were shelves with cocktail glasses, and a silver cocktail shaker stood on the curved wooden bar. Behind it a spotty adolescent sat on a high stool, reading the sports page of the
Chronicle,
spoiling the atmosphere
.
All the staff, it seemed, had been told to continue working as if there hadn’t been a murder by the pool. The boy obviously resented their interrupting him. ‘Sorry, the hotel is closed.’

Karen flashed him a smile. ‘I’m staff and he’s fuzz.’

They sat at a table near the window looking out over the garden towards the river, she with a glass of Chardonnay and he with an orange juice. He saw that the lawns had been cut, but the borders were wild and overgrown. It occurred to him, in another uncharacteristic flash of whimsy, that they could look like lovers – the younger married man and the lively divorcee, both looking for fun or passion or companionship. Didn’t such people meet in hotels like this? For the first time he could almost understand the attraction of such an affair, the excitement.

‘I can’t be long. My husband will be expecting his tea on the table.’ Shattering the fantasy. Why had he assumed she’d be divorced?

‘How long have you worked at the Willows?’

She pulled a face. ‘Two years.’

‘You don’t enjoy it?’

‘Like I said, it’s pretty tedious. But I’m not qualified to do anything else. I thought I’d spend my days as a kept woman. Maybe I’d find anything that involved sucking up to a boss a bit hard to take.’

She paused, but he didn’t interrupt. He could tell she liked an audience. She’d keep talking.

And she did: ‘My husband has a property business. He bought up a bunch of cheap Tyneside flats before the boom, did them up to a basic standard and let them out to students. But lots of the work was done on credit. He always thought he’d be able to sell on, if things got tight.’

She paused again and this time he did stick in a few words. Just to show he was listening. ‘But when things got tight, nobody wanted to buy . . .’

‘Yeah. Suddenly the cash dried up. It was a shock to the system. No more holidays abroad, no new flash cars. We even had to sack the cleaner.’ She grinned at him to show she was mocking herself, the whole crazy lifestyle. It was clear that she hadn’t been brought up to money.

She continued more seriously: ‘I mean, we survived, but it wasn’t easy. Then Danny went off to uni and we had his fees to pay. He’s our only son and we didn’t want him to go short. Jerry was working his bollocks off, so the only thing to do was for me to get off my backside and get a job. I’d been a member of the Willows Health Club, so when I saw this post advertised I thought:
That’ll do for me.
And it’s OK. But I hadn’t reckoned on the boredom factor.’

She stared out of the window. He saw Keating, the pathologist, arriving at last. He’d been delayed on another case, and Jenny Lister was still waiting for him in the steam room.

‘Did you know the woman who died?’

‘I recognized the face. Wouldn’t have known the name.’

‘What do you remember about her?’

‘She was always in a hurry and she never stayed long. And she was polite. Always gave me a smile and a wave, even when she was just swiping her card through the barrier. Treated me like a person, not just a bit of the machinery.’

Now Ashworth had to come to the sensitive bit. A woman was going to protect her son, wasn’t she? Whatever he’d done. ‘You got a holiday job here for Danny?’

‘Yes.’ And already she was on the defensive, looking up at him as if to say:
So what? No harm in that, is there?

‘How’s he liking it?’

‘He’s a young lad. He’d rather be in bed or out with his mates. But it was his idea. He wants to go travelling in the summer and he knows we can’t pay for it. So it’s down to him.’

‘We’ll have to talk to him,’ Ashworth said. ‘He cleaned the pool area. He might have seen something.’

‘You don’t need my permission to do that. He’s nearly twenty. An adult. He’ll have started his shift now, if they’ve let him into the hotel.’

Ashworth knew that they’d let Danny in and that he was sitting in Taylor’s office. He was next on the list for interview.

‘What do you know about the thieving that’s been going on here?’

She drained her glass and set it on the table, kept her voice relaxed. ‘That sort of thing goes on everywhere, doesn’t it? Petty. There’s all sorts work here. Can’t see what it might have to do with murder.’

‘But it’ll have caused bad feeling. Gossip. Not nice to think that one of your mates might be stealing from you.’

She shrugged. ‘I try not to listen too much to gossip.’ Once again she gathered up the big squashy bag. ‘If there’s nothing else, there’s a deep bath and a chilled glass waiting for me at home. One’s never quite enough for me.’ He stayed where he was and watched from the window until she emerged from the main door of the hotel. She took a mobile phone from the bag, hit a button and put it to her ear. At the car she turned and he could see that she was frowning and talking furiously. He’d have bet his police pension that she was speaking to her son.

At the Lister house, Vera tried to persuade Hannah to move in with Simon’s parents, at least for a few days, but the girl refused. ‘I want to stay up all night and cry. I’ll probably get very drunk. I couldn’t do that anywhere but in my own home.’

‘We can arrange for a liaison officer to camp out with you then.’

‘No,’ Hannah said. ‘Absolutely not. I couldn’t bear it.’

She moved back to the window and stared down at the garden, which was all in shadow now.

‘You’ll stay with her?’ Vera directed the question to Simon. The girl took no notice of them.

‘Of course,’ Simon said. ‘I’ll do whatever she wants.’

He stood behind the girl and wrapped his arms around her. They seemed not to notice Vera’s leaving.

On her way out of the village, Vera saw the white house Hannah had described as Simon’s home, and on impulse she pulled into the gravel drive. She still thought of Simon and Hannah as hardly more than children and she’d feel happier if an adult were involved in the girl’s care, or at least aware of what was going on. Besides, perhaps Simon’s mother and Jenny Lister had been friends. The woman might have useful information.

Vera saw as soon as she drove past the high yew hedge that the garden was immaculate. The daffodils and narcissi were past their best, but still there was colour everywhere: clumps of blue grape hyacinth and forget-me-not and deep-purple hellebores. The lawn had even had its first cut of the season.
Either the woman’s a fanatic or she has paid help.
Vera couldn’t bear tidy gardens, and she was more interested in growing food than flowers. She let dandelions grow in damp patches and picked the leaves for salad on the rare occasions when she fancied a healthy meal. Her neighbours were ageing hippies who were pleased not to have order in the next-door garden. Vera wondered briefly what they’d make of this.

There was a twitch at an upstairs window. The noise of the car had attracted attention. Vera wondered if news of Jenny’s death had spread throughout the village. Had Simon told his mother on his way out that his girlfriend’s mother was the victim? Possibly not, Vera thought. He’d arrived so quickly to look after Hannah that surely he wouldn’t have had time for any conversation. Nobody appeared at the door. Simon’s mother – if that were the person upstairs – wouldn’t want to be thought a woman who peered out of windows. Or perhaps she just hoped the visitor would drive away?

Vera rang the bell and then there was the sound of footsteps on the stairs and an open door.

‘Yes?’ The woman was tall. She was in her fifties, perhaps the same age as Vera herself, but as well groomed and tidy as the unforgiving garden. Dark hair curled away from her face, grey trousers, a white cotton shirt and a long grey cardigan. Lipstick. Was she on her way out, or did she always wear it? Vera stood on the doorstep and thought how odd some women were.

‘Can I help you?’ The woman was losing patience. She was confused, Vera could tell. The car Vera was driving was large, new and rather expensive. One of the perks of her rank. Mrs Eliot would consider it the sort of car to be driven by a successful man. Yet Vera was large and shambolic, with bare legs and blotchy skin. She never wore make-up. Vera looked poor.

‘I’m from Northumbria Police. Inspector Stanhope.’ Somewhere at the bottom of her bag there was a warrant card, but best not go there. She might find that bit of bacon sandwich discarded from breakfast yesterday.

‘Oh?’ The woman seemed preoccupied but not scared, which was often the response to an unexpected knock from the police.
What have I done? Has there been an accident? Has anything happened to my husband, my daughter or my son?
Simon’s mother took in the information and seemed almost excited. Perhaps, after all, she had heard of her neighbour’s murder. Though there was no grief, or pretence of grief.

She held out her hand. ‘Veronica Eliot. Are you here about Connie Masters? She changed her name, but I recognized her at once. I knew there’d be charges brought eventually.’

The name was vaguely familiar to Vera, but she refused to be distracted.

‘I’m here about Jenny Lister.’

The woman frowned. Confused? Disappointed? ‘What about Jenny?’

‘So your son didn’t tell you?’ Then, when the woman shook her head. ‘Look, pet, why don’t you let me come in?’

Veronica Eliot moved aside, then let Vera into a large entrance hall. On the wall facing the door was a painting that drew Vera to stare at it. A small water-colour of stone gateposts with a grassy track curving away between them. Vera thought the track was inviting. You’d want to follow it. But in the painting it didn’t seem to be leading anywhere. On the gateposts were carved birds’ heads. Cormorants, maybe. Long necks and long beaks.