Silent Voices (Vera Stanhope 4) (17 page)

Hilda took off her apron, sat on a high-backed chair and folded her hands on her lap. When she spoke it was with the concentration of a
Mastermind
contestant answering questions on her specialist subject. ‘Jenny Lister moved into the village in . . .’ a very brief pause ‘. . . 1993. The summer. Hannah was a baby, and Jenny was still on maternity leave.’ Another pause and a little sniff to show she disapproved of the concept.
A touch of jealousy?
Ashworth wondered.
If I’d had bairns, I’d have stayed at home and looked after them myself.
‘The father, Jenny’s husband, had gone back to London, where he’d come from.’

The same sort of history as Connie Masters,
Joe Ashworth thought.
Her man left her while she had a young child. Was the shared experience relevant? Or would the stress of holding together a marriage, a new child and a stressful job be too much for most relationships? Maybe it happened all the time.
His wife hadn’t worked since their first child had been born. He couldn’t imagine how he’d survive if she were out all day. It seemed strange to him that he’d never realized how much he depended on her holding the show together.

Hilda continued. ‘Jenny was what they called a generic social worker in those days. She dealt with everything. Then there was a change in the system and she specialized in children. She ended up as the fostering and adoption officer.’ She looked at Ashworth through small, square spectacles. ‘But you’ll know that already.’

He nodded. ‘All the same, it’s useful to have someone sum it up.’ The other men might as well not have been in the room. Maurice seemed to be dropping off to sleep. The lorries rolling past the window provided a background rumble.

‘She had a boyfriend,’ Hilda said suddenly. ‘Lawrence. Worked as a ranger with the National Park. Nice enough. We invited them round to dinner one night. Before Maurice was taken ill, we liked to entertain. Still do, but only close friends these days.’

‘What happened with this Lawrence?’

‘I don’t know. They were talking about setting up home together, and the next thing I heard they’d parted.’

‘Did Jenny ever talk to you about it?’

‘She wasn’t one for weeping on folks’ shoulders,’ Hilda said. With the apron removed, Ashworth saw she was rather stylishly dressed. A pleated skirt and a yellow cotton blouse. A smart woman, in every sense of the word.

‘But you’d have been the nearest thing she had to a mother.’

‘I saw her in the garden soon after it happened. She looked dreadful. Pale as a ghost, and you could tell she’d been crying. I asked her in for coffee. She told me they’d split up. I made a comment about men – you know how you do when someone’s upset: “Don’t worry about it. Most of them are commitment-phobic.” Something of that sort. But she said Lawrence wasn’t like that, and it had been
her
decision to stop seeing him.’

‘Did she say why? Was there someone else?’

‘Aye.’ Hilda looked up at him. ‘Someone completely unsuitable. Her words not mine. “I know it’s wrong, but I can’t help myself. He makes me feel alive.” That’s what she told me.’

‘Did she tell you any more about him? You do realize how important this might be?’

‘She was ashamed of the relationship.’ The dumpy little woman looked up at Ashworth to make sure he understood what she was saying. ‘It didn’t seem healthy to me. You should never have to apologize for your choice of man. Maybe she’d met him by chance, had what they call a one-night stand. Or I wondered if she’d come across him through work.’

‘A colleague?’ Ashworth could tell how that might be frowned upon, but surely sleeping with a social worker wasn’t necessarily a matter of shame.

‘More likely a client, don’t you think?’ Hilda was speaking to Ashworth now as if he were an equal, almost as perceptive as herself. ‘I could see that happening. She’d feel sorry for someone, try to help him, then get too emotionally involved.’

Ashworth could see how that might happen too, and why it would have to be a secret. It would probably be against the rules of her profession, and Jenny would also be afraid of appearing a fool. The cool professional tangled up with some loser. How would that look?

‘It could have been a married man,’ Ashworth said. ‘Someone local, someone you know maybe, so she wouldn’t want to tell you about him.’ The idea of Jenny falling for a client made more sense to him, but he had to explore other options.

‘Maybe.’ Hilda seemed unconvinced. ‘But people don’t seem too bothered about having affairs these days. I don’t know that Jenny would have been
that
upset. Besides, if it had been someone local, I might well have heard about it before now.’ Implying that there was no doubt about it.

‘Cuthbert says he doesn’t know half the folk who live in the village these days.’

Hilda gave a wicked grin. ‘Aye, well. Cuthbert doesn’t belong to the WI.’

The morning after her lunch with Veronica Eliot, Connie Masters woke feeling washed out and tired. She drove to Hexham to shop for food, but returned home without even stopping in town for coffee. Outside a newsagent’s in the main street there was a blown-up headline: TYNE VALLEY SOCIAL WORKER’S DEATH. THE INVESTIGATION CONTINUES. No link had yet been made to Elias Jones, but Connie thought it was only a matter of time before the press picked up on it, until they’d hunt her down again.

Alice had woken several times in the night, troubled by the old nightmares. She trailed listlessly round the supermarket, hanging on to Connie’s hand, and when they got home she fell asleep straight after lunch on the sofa in the living room, watching children’s television. Connie covered her with a quilt and let her sleep. In the quiet house, with the background sound of running water, she imagined herself back in the social-services office where she’d been based, trawling through the conversations she’d had with Jenny Lister in the months either side of Elias’s death. Trying to find an answer for the new murder, one in which she played no part.

Jenny’s room at work had been small. One wall was covered with drawings and paintings done by the children she’d placed into foster care. Pictures of smiling stick-children, a big pink heart.
Molly loves Jenny.
There were plants, living and flowering, not dead like the ones in the open-plan office shared by the rest of the team. Walking into Jenny’s room had been to step into a place of colour and civilization. They might talk there about misery, but Connie had felt it first as a place of sanctuary, then as a place for confession. And even as a child, she’d lied about her sins.

‘Tell me about Michael Morgan.’ Jenny had smiled in an encouraging way. It had been the supervision session after Morgan had offered to leave Mattie and the child. They’d been sitting in the comfortable chairs, facing each other across the tiny coffee table. Of course Jenny organized her room informally before staff meetings. She wasn’t one for the hierarchy of sitting behind a desk to talk to her team.

And Connie had blustered a little, reluctant to tell Jenny that actually she’d only really met the man twice. Once briefly when he’d just moved in, when she’d had the impression of stillness, intensity, that had led her to describe him as ‘weird’; and that last occasion when he’d offered to move away from the family. She’d deliberately chosen times to visit Mattie when he wasn’t there. Ostensibly thinking that Mattie might talk to her more freely if Morgan wasn’t around, but really because Connie was unnerved by him. When he was in the room she felt she had no control.

She set up her excuse first. ‘Of course I try to see Mattie on her own as much as I can. I think he really has a hold over her.’

‘But you must have gained some idea?’ Jenny frowned. Her frown always gave the impression that she was a little disappointed in the staff member seated in front of her, that they hadn’t quite reached her exacting standards.

‘He’s charismatic.’ The words had come out of Connie’s mouth without her truly realizing the implication of them. But once out, she knew it was true. She’d only met the man twice and couldn’t describe him – couldn’t, for instance, have made up one of those Identikit pictures the police showed on
Crime-watch
– but she had a sense of him. A man who knew what he wanted and thought he would get it. A man who would command attention in whatever company he chose to appear.

‘In what way?’ The frown had disappeared and Connie now saw she had Jenny’s complete attention.

Connie shook her head, frustrated that she couldn’t quite find the right words. ‘It’s how he looks at you. Compelling. And it makes you think you’d tell him everything he wanted to know. Like a priest almost, at confession.’ Connie had been brought up a Catholic, had rejected all that as soon as she could think for herself of course, but was still haunted by its power.

‘What made a man like that take up with Mattie?’ They’d discussed this before, but Jenny had seemed suddenly more focused on the man than ever before. ‘He’s obviously educated, and as you say he has a certain attraction. A control issue, do you think? He wants a woman who will be subservient to him.’

‘Maybe.’

And Jenny had leaned forward. ‘I think I should see him. I’m not questioning your competence, not at all, but he could be dangerous, not just to Mattie and Elias, but to other young inadequate women and their children. I’d like to make my own assessment.’

Occasionally Jenny had done this: she’d dipped into one of her team’s cases to satisfy herself. The control freak in her, the team had decided, not liking it, because inevitably she came up with something they’d missed, but admiring her thoroughness.

Now, in the dark cottage, with the river running outside the window, Connie tried to remember what the outcome of that decision had been. Had Jenny arranged a meeting with Morgan?

Certainly, it had never been discussed during the court case or the disciplinary hearing, Connie had been clear about that. Surely, if Jenny had met Morgan, she would have kept a record of it. She might even have been called as a witness, asked to give her assessment of the man and his influence on the single mother. Mattie’s barrister had tried to implicate Morgan in Elias’s death: ‘This was a controlling man. He gave Ms Jones the impression that if she got rid of her son, he would return to her. One might almost say that he was inciting a mother to kill her son.’ The judge had pulled him up on that statement, and Morgan seemed to have made a good impression on the jury. Connie hadn’t been in court while he gave evidence, but she’d spoken to people who had been there, who’d said he’d seemed really caring and kind. Charming, even. What had Jenny made of him? Now, Connie was fascinated.
Why didn’t I ask her while I had the chance?

The room suddenly got darker and Connie was aware of a figure blocking the light from the small window. Someone was outside, looking in. A woman, big, untidy, with a round moon face. Connie decided it was one of those travellers who appeared sometimes, selling dishcloths or lucky heather. She hurried to the door before the woman knocked and woke up Alice, and was surprised at how much milder it was outside than in the room.

‘I never buy anything at the door.’ Best to be firm from the start, before you started getting the sales pitch.

‘Eh, pet, I’m not selling.’ The woman grinned. Stood, solid as a rock, refusing to budge from the doorstep.

‘I don’t need religion either.’

‘Nor me.’ The woman sighed. ‘My father was a scientist, of sorts, and I was brought up to despise the Church. But I always found it a tad appealing all the same. Forbidden fruits, you know what it’s like.’

‘Well, what do you want?’ By now Connie was so exasperated that she forgot the sleeping Alice and raised her voice.

The woman put a finger to her lips, a parody and a rebuke. ‘We don’t want to wake the little one. I saw her through the window. Sweet. Shall we talk out here? My name’s Vera Stanhope. Detective Inspector, Northumbria Police. You had a word with my colleague Joe Ashworth yesterday.’

‘You’re a police officer?’ Connie was astonished. And not just a police officer, a senior detective!

‘I know, pet. Hard to believe, isn’t it? But we’re not all pretty little boys like Joe.’ She sat heavily on the wooden bench under the window and patted the seat to indicate that Connie should join her. ‘Leave the door open and we’ll hear if the little girl wakes up.’

And to her surprise, Connie did as she was told.

‘Jenny Lister,’ Vera said.

‘I’ve already told your sergeant everything I know.’
But was that true? Details were dribbling back into her mind. Like the fact that Jenny had mentioned going to see Michael Morgan.

Vera looked at her with clear, steady eyes. ‘Oh, surely not everything,’ she said. ‘Anyway, things move on. There are new lines to investigate, new questions arise.’ She paused. ‘Did you know Jenny was planning to write a book about the Elias Jones case?’

‘No.’ It wasn’t the question she was expecting. She wondered if this woman was entirely sane. But thinking about it, the idea of Jenny as a writer wasn’t surprising. Jenny had been convinced she was right about everything, and might see it as her duty to pass on her wisdom to the world.

Vera nodded and continued immediately.

‘Did you know she visited Mattie Jones every week in prison? Even when the lass was on remand?’

‘No. Not really.’ This time the answer was less emphatic and Vera picked up on the hesitation.