Silent Voices (Vera Stanhope 4) (30 page)

‘Did your mum mention seeing anything unusual about the health club lately? We think one of the staff had been stealing from guests and other employees. It might be a motive.’ He wanted to start off with something impersonal, not too close to home.

‘No. Nothing like that. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t see something. We were both busy. Often she didn’t get back until late from work, and by then I’d be out with Si or holed up in my room revising. We were close, but there wasn’t a lot of time for chat.’

‘I’d like to talk again about Danny Shaw.’ Joe hesitated. This was more sensitive, but he wanted to broach it while he had Hannah to himself. ‘There’s a collage on his wall. His mother said you gave it to him. It sounds as if there was more between you than the fact that you went out together a few times. Karen says you were his first love, that he never quite got over you.’

She stooped again to pull out more weeds, avoiding his eye.

‘I fancied myself in love with
him
for a while. I gave him the picture while I was still a little bit besotted.’

‘What went wrong?’

‘Nothing really. I hooked up with Simon and saw that Danny was basically a bit of a prat.’

‘So you dumped Danny for Simon? That wasn’t the impression you gave yesterday.’

‘Wasn’t it?’ She smiled. ‘I don’t know. All that stuff seems so important when you’re going through it, but later it hardly seems to matter. This is a small place. There aren’t that many people of our age. You tend to have been out with most of the available boys by the time you hit seventeen. It’s like one of those Scottish country dances.
Change your partner when the music stops.
In the end we just all become good friends.’

Joe supposed that was true. It had been the same for him. He’d been out with a couple of his wife’s friends before hooking up with her; one had been to dinner at their house with her husband the week before. Teenage passion soon faded.

He wanted to ask Hannah if she’d slept with Danny, if they’d been
that
close, but resisted. His reluctance was more a matter of knowing the question would have seemed ridiculous to her than of not wanting to pry.

‘Was Danny upset? You said yesterday he emailed and phoned you after you dumped him. Did he make a nuisance of himself?’

She shrugged. ‘Nah. He soon got over it. He started going out with his new lass in freshers’ week, so he can’t have been that heart-broken.’

She pushed the wheelbarrow to the end of the garden and lifted the weeds onto the compost heap. ‘Is that all you wanted to know? I don’t think I’ve been much help.’

‘Did Simon ever talk to you about Patrick?’ Joe hadn’t meant to ask her about the dead brother, but he thought it was important: the child drowning, the effect on the adult Simon.

‘Of course.’ She wiped a stray hair away from her face and left a streak of mud. ‘We tell each other everything.’

‘What did he say?’

‘That Patrick was like a ghost in their lives. Nothing of him remains. Veronica threw away all his toys and his clothes, and they hardly ever mentioned his name after the accident. Simon said that sometimes he felt as if Patrick had never existed, that he’d created the whole incident in his imagination.’

‘Would your mother have been working as a social worker then?’ Ashworth felt as if he was groping towards a connection, an explanation.

‘I suppose so.’ Hannah looked up sharply. ‘Do you think she worked with the Eliot family after the tragedy? I suppose she would have qualified by then, and we’d be living here.’

‘It just crossed my mind,’ Joe said. ‘But that would be too much of a coincidence. Your mother would surely have remembered the case, happening so close to home. She would have mentioned it.’

‘Oh, I don’t think she would.’ Hannah was quite certain. ‘She had a thing about confidentiality. She said work had to stay in the office, where it belonged.’ She leaned the empty wheelbarrow against the wall. ‘Look, I probably won’t do any more of this now. Do you want some tea?’

‘Does Simon feel responsible for his brother’s death?’

She’d already started walking towards the back door of the house, and his question made her stop in her tracks.

‘Of course.’ She pulled out the band that was tying up her hair and shook it loose. ‘It’s made him the person he is.’

Vera wanted to talk to Michael Morgan. She’d never admit it to Joe Ashworth, but she’d seriously cocked up that last meeting when they’d barged into the flat. Something about the man – his ease with his body, his assumption of superiority – had got under her skin and made her lose the plot. He was into mind-games. That was how he made his living. He depended on the gullibility of his clients. This time she’d be calm. She’d take him through the facts, box him into a corner.

She met Joe in the cafe in Tynemouth where they’d taken Freya. He was already waiting for her, jotting notes in his Filofax, frowning a bit like a schoolboy doing difficult homework. Vera ordered coffee and a slab of chocolate cake. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast in Barnard Bridge.

‘How did you get on at the Shaw house?’

‘Danny was in the Willows the morning Jenny Lister died.’

‘Was he now?’ Vera wasn’t sure if this was good news or if it just complicated matters. ‘So he might have seen what happened, even if he wasn’t implicated himself.’

‘I asked Shaw about Greenhough.’

‘And?’ Vera looked up sharply from her cake. Something about that place still haunted her.

‘Christopher Eliot came close to selling it for development, but the deal fell through in the end. I had the impression that Veronica vetoed it.’

‘I wonder why she’s so attached to it. An overgrown garden and a few statues. A boathouse. If Patrick had died there, instead of in Barnard Bridge, you could understand it.’ Vera realized she was talking to herself and turned her attention to Ashworth. ‘Still no news of Connie?’ She knew the woman’s disappearance was on his mind.

‘I’ve put out a search for the car. If she’s not home tonight, I think we should go public, get the press involved. If she just wanted some breathing space she’d have told us where she was going. She’s not a stupid woman.’

‘You do realize,’ Vera said, ‘that some folk will see her disappearance as evidence of her guilt. Go to the media, and she’ll be the awful witch that caused Elias Jones’s death
and
a multiple murderer. Her photos all over the paper and the television. Just what she’d want before the lass starts school. Not.’

‘Do you think she’s a killer?’

‘Nah.’ Vera had just poked the last bit of cake into her mouth and the crumbs went everywhere when she spoke. ‘I think she’s scared. And not just of the press. Someone’s told her to make herself scarce.’

‘It could be more sinister than that.’

‘You think someone’s killed her to keep her quiet?’ Vera licked her fingers to pick up the crumbs from her plate and the surrounding table. ‘It’s possible. But if she’s dead, we can’t help her and going to the press will be bugger-all use.’ She paused. ‘What does she know that makes it so important that she shouldn’t talk to us?’

‘She could recognize the bloke that turned up at her house the afternoon of Jenny Lister’s death. We were going to show her photos of all the male suspects this morning.’

‘Aye,’ Vera said. ‘Maybe. But if he wanted to be discreet about visiting the Eliots, he’d hardly have asked directions from a stranger. And if he was the person who dumped Jenny’s bag, the same applies.’ She thought the guy was probably some door-to-door salesman. Surely Connie would have recognized Morgan if he’d turned up at her cottage. No way would she have invited him in for tea. But then with his new haircut Vera herself hadn’t recognized him.

‘Something about the Elias Jones case frightened her off then?’ It was clear Joe wasn’t going to let this go.

‘That takes us back to Michael Morgan again, doesn’t it? If we discount Connie, he’s the only person implicated in Elias Jones’s death who could be the killer. Mattie Jones was in hospital. So for now let’s concentrate on him. After that we’ll go back to Barnard Bridge. It’ll be the little girl’s bedtime. If they’re not back by then, it’s time to worry.’

She looked up at Ashworth, realizing that she might have sounded callous. He could be sentimental, especially when women and children were involved. But he nodded to show he agreed.

‘So,’ she said. ‘Morgan. I wondered if we should bring him in to the station.’

‘Have we got enough on him to do that?’

‘I’m not talking about an arrest,’ she grinned. ‘An invitation, that’s all. He’s an upstanding member of the community. I’m sure he’ll be delighted to help. He’d be less comfortable on our territory. What do you think?’ Usually that sort of question was rhetorical, but this time Vera really wanted Ashworth’s opinion.

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Come on, Joey. Spit it out! You’re allowed to disagree with me. Every now and again.’

‘He’s good at playing the game, isn’t he? They had him in for questioning after the boy died. An interview at the station won’t be anything new to him. Probably not even very scary. He’ll make sure his solicitor’s there.’

‘What do you suggest then?’ She could hear the annoyance in her own voice.
It’s all very well pulling holes in my ideas. More difficult to come up with a suggestion of your own.

‘What about taking him to his office at the Willows? That’ll inconvenience him, pull him out of his home just as he’s about to have his tea. While we’re picking him up, we can have a quick scout round the flat for evidence of Connie or the girl. It’ll be a neutral space, his office, but unsettling. I know he doesn’t keep any of his records there, but we can imply we have a specific reason for wanting to see it. Send him home in a taxi, and we’ll be . . .’

‘. . . almost in Barnard Bridge, to call in to Connie’s cottage before close of play.’ Vera grinned. ‘Eh, lad, I’ve taught you a couple of things at least while you’ve been working for me.’

She decided to phone Morgan in advance to tell him they’d be collecting him. That would be more formal than just turning up on the doorstep. And phoning from her mobile from the end of his street, she’d see if he or Freya appeared suddenly with Connie and her daughter. Though that was never going to happen. Morgan might be a bastard, but he was too bright to keep them there.

He was rattled by her insistence that they go to the Willows. ‘Is that really necessary, Inspector? There’s nothing at all to see.’

‘Of course we could always get a search warrant, if you’d prefer, Mr Morgan. That might take a few hours, though, and I wouldn’t really want to drag you out in the middle of the night.’

He was alone in the flat. No Freya. When Ashworth asked, Morgan said she’d gone to a film with some friends. He tried to make out that he was pleased for her, but it sounded to Vera as if he was sulking about it. She asked to use the bathroom and had a sneaky look at the rest of the flat. One bedroom with a futon instead of a bed. Like sleeping, Vera thought, on a sheet of hardboard. Everything very clean and ordered. No room to hide a mouse. In the bathroom the towels were folded, the mirror shone. She couldn’t imagine Morgan taking his turn with the Hoover and wondered if that was down to Freya or a cleaner. If it were Freya, she’d be defecting soon enough without any intervention from outside.

They drove to the Willows in complete silence. That was Vera’s idea. Morgan liked talking. It made him feel in control. Once, just as they came to the A69, he tried to start a conversation. ‘Has there been any development, Inspector?’

But Vera responded immediately, breaking in before he’d finished the sentence. ‘We’ll leave that until we can talk properly, shall we?’

During the drive she felt the tension rise in the man sitting behind her. At the Willows they made sure he was walking between them, not because they thought he’d try to escape, but to make him feel like a suspect. He used his electronic fob to get to the area closed to the public, and then again into the small room where he saw his patients.

‘Is that what you call them?’ Vera asked. They were sitting across a coffee table. There was a high bed against one wall, but these easy chairs must be where Morgan took the histories. She’d chosen the chair that she assumed he used. ‘Patients? Do you have any medical training?’

‘The training to become an acupuncturist is long and rigorous.’ He was determined not to be provoked, but he was finding it hard to keep the relaxed, amused tone he’d used with her before. There was a touch of petulance that made her want to cheer.

‘You’re not a doctor, though?’

‘Western medicine doesn’t have all the answers, Inspector.’

‘You’ll have heard about Danny Shaw.’ Changing the subject so abruptly that she saw Morgan blink. There wasn’t a seat for Ashworth and he stood, leaning against the door, blocking any escape. ‘Of course you will. No telly, I know, but it would have been in that fancy newspaper you read. No doubt about that. A second murder connected to the Willows. The press is loving it.’

‘It’s very sad,’ Morgan said, ‘but I can’t see what you think it might have to do with me.’

‘You were very close to Danny.’ Vera fired the words back at him. ‘Or so his mother says.’