Silent Voices (Vera Stanhope 4)

by Ann Cleeves

  ‘Exactly,’ Vera said. ‘You’re witnesses. So you don’t mind answering a few questions?’

  ‘Of course not. I thought you were just here to have a go at me about Michael. Because he’s a bit older than I am.’

  Vera shot a look at Ashworth, but let that go. ‘How often did you meet Jenny Lister?’

  ‘Only once,’ the girl said. ‘Though Michael had seen her before. He’d gone out with that terrible woman who killed her son, and social services had been involved then.’

  ‘He told you about that?’

  ‘Of course he did,’ Freya said. ‘Michael and I don’t have any secrets. It sounded dreadful. Michael really loved the kid. He was devastated about what had happened. Then there were all the rumours, people thinking he was involved in some way.’

  ‘Bad for business.’

  Ashworth thought Vera had gone too far, but Freya took the comment at face value. ‘Yeah, really bad! His regulars stuck by him of course, but he’s only just starting to pick up new clients.’

  ‘It didn’t put you off? The fact that he was linked to the Elias Jones case.’

  ‘No! If you really love someone, you stand by them, don’t you?’ She looked at them, demanding their agreement, but neither could quite meet her eye.

  ‘If we could go back to Jenny Lister,’ Vera said gently. ‘You met her about a week ago?’

  ‘Yes, something like that.’

  ‘Where did you talk to her?’

  ‘She came to the flat,’ Freya said. ‘I think she must have phoned to make an appointment because Michael knew she was coming. He asked me to get back from college early so I’d be in.’

  ‘Where are you studying?’ Ashworth couldn’t help interrupting. He was glad Freya still had a life of her own. Lectures and gossip. He wanted to pack her up into his car and take her home to her parents.

  ‘Newcastle College. I’m doing drama and English A levels. Acting’s my thing.’ She smiled self-consciously. ‘I’ve already got an agent, actually.’

  ‘Won’t the baby get in the way of all that?’ Vera was glaring at Ashworth, cross that he’d disrupted the flow of the conversation. He gave a little shrug of apology. ‘I assume it is Michael’s baby?’

  ‘Of course! What do you think I’m like?’

  ‘Didn’t you consider a termination?’

  Great, Vera, Ashworth thought. Dead tactful. Let’s talk about her getting rid of her baby in a public place, where anyone could walk past and listen in.

  But the girl seemed unfazed. ‘Michael doesn’t believe in abortion. And he said that we’d look after the baby together. He believes I’ll be a great actress. He wants me to fulfil my potential, live out my dreams.’

  There was a moment of stunned silence. ‘Well, we all want that, don’t we, pet? I want to become Chief Constable and win Miss World.’ Vera drank from her beer, gave a little sigh of distracted contentment. Ashworth, thinking of the chaos in his home, the pressure of home and work, wanted to weep for the girl. ‘How did the interview with Jenny Lister go?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘A few details would be good.’

  ‘First she talked to Michael and me together.’ Freya sat back in her chair, and for the first time Ashworth could see the small, rounded belly. ‘About our attitudes to a baby, how it would disrupt our lives. Michael would have to accept that things would change, that there’d be clutter, mess, noise. How would he cope with that? Practical stuff, like had I registered with the doctor and antenatal classes. Then she asked Michael to leave us alone and she talked to me.’

  ‘Michael didn’t mind that?’ Vera asked.

  ‘He’s very protective,’ Freya said. ‘But I told him it was OK. That was when the social worker asked more personal things, prying actually. About our relationship, my background, all that.’

  ‘What do your parents think of Michael?’ Again Ashworth found it impossible to keep quiet. No way was his daughter going to end up with some pervy man old enough to be her father. He’d make sure of that. What was Freya’s family thinking of?

  ‘My parents don’t give a shit actually. They moved to Spain, bought a bar. Act as if they’re twenty again. No responsibilities, pissed every night.’

  ‘Living the dream,’ Vera muttered, only loud enough for Ashworth to hear.

  ‘That social worker was a patronizing cow,’ the girl went on. ‘I had teachers like her. The ones that talk to you as if you’re daft, as if they always know best. You could see how she might wind someone up so they lost their temper and killed her.’

  ‘Where did you meet Michael?’ Ashworth asked. Outside in the main village street the shops were closing for the evening. The light had faded. The mist had seeped in from the sea and they could hear the foghorn at the mouth of the Tyne. From the metro station the first commuters were coming home from work. The waiter lit the candle on their table and the sudden flare of the flame lit up the girl’s face.

  ‘At the Willows,’ she said, brushing her long hair away from her face. ‘You know, the smart hotel on the other side of town. He used to run a clinic once a week in the health club. I’ve been working as a waitress there at weekends since I was fifteen. We met at the beginning of December, the staff Christmas party.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Vera sat alone in the house that had once been her father’s. Nights like this, a few glasses in to a bottle of Scotch, she could still imagine him there, lording it in the only comfortable armchair close to the fire. Or at the table, spread with plastic sheeting, his hand up the backside of some dead bird, preparing to stuff it, his eyes narrowed in concentration. That smell of dead flesh and chemicals.

  ‘Taxidermy. Art and science combined,’ he’d say.

  And theft. And murder. Because he’d taken rare birds from the wild, killed them to the order of collectors as barking mad as he was, and she’d never shopped him. What had that made her? It came to her now that this case was all about families, the weird ties between kids and their parents. Blood and water, she thought, remembering Elias, drowned by the mother who claimed to love him.

  She’d grown up with Hector’s insults, mocking, masked as humour: ‘Your mother was a beautiful woman. I only ever collect beautiful objects. Oh, Vee, whatever happened to you? Where did you spring from? Must be my side of the family, eh? Let’s hope you have my brains.’

  Only I didn’t even get the brains, she thought now, throwing another log onto the fire, watching it spit, the bark peel and split. I should have checked for a connection between Michael Morgan and the Willows. Basic policing.

  All the way north in the car she’d ranted at poor Joe Ashworth. ‘Do I have to think of everything? I asked for a staff list. For cross-checks between all suspects and the health club. Charlie was supposed to be doing it. What’s the idle bastard been up to?’ Driving too fast through the fog, enjoying seeing him grow pale, wincing when they almost hit an oncoming vehicle, his mouth clamped shut.

  Finally she’d provoked the reaction she’d hoped for. He’d cracked, lost it too. ‘Just because you don’t have a life worth saving, you don’t have to take me down with you. I have a wife, kids. People who actually care about me. And if you spent your time supervising your team, like an SIO should, instead of doing their work for them, you’d know what Charlie had been up to.’

  She’d dropped him off at the end of his street, with a curt arrangement to collect him the next morning: ‘Make sure you’re ready. I don’t want to hang around while you’re changing a nappy or kissing your brood goodbye.’ No invitation to come back to her house for a drink first, although she’d been looking forward to that all afternoon: the chance to put things into perspective, to relax with the one man she’d ever really been close to. She’d had it in mind since suggesting that he leave his car in the Tyne valley.

  How sad is that! It was her father sneaking inside her head again. He’s young enough to be your son. Do you really think he gives a tinker’s curse for you?

  She got to her feet and
went to the window. The fog hid all the lights in the valley. It was as if she was marooned, alone in the world. Unsteadily she carried the bottle and her glass into the kitchen. If she had another drink now, she knew she’d be up all night, and she had to show the ghost of her father that she was good at her job. That she knew what she was doing.

  Kimmerston police station and the morning briefing. Ashworth had been ready when she’d arrived at his neat little house in the tidy estate of wannabe executive homes; he’d appeared through the front door before she’d even left the car. And she’d been gracious. Had apologized, which was almost unheard of for her. So now there was an uneasy truce between them.

  She looked around the room at her team. ‘We’ve cocked up big-style.’ Vera thought that was noble of her, the ‘we’. ‘How did we miss the Morgan/Willows connection?’

  ‘Because he isn’t really a staff member,’ Charlie said. ‘He uses the room in the health club, pays a nominal rent for it because they think he pulls in punters for the other stuff. But he’s self-employed, so he wasn’t on the staff list they sent, and he’s not officially a member.’

  He was nervous, which pleased Vera no end. So nervous that the hand holding the polystyrene coffee cup was shaking and there was a tremor in his voice. She thought Ashworth would have been on the phone to Charlie as soon as he got in the night before: Just

  make sure you get your story straight. The boss is on the warpath.

  ‘Do we know whether he was in the hotel the morning Jenny Lister was killed?’

  ‘No one can tell me.’ Charlie looked at her, cowed, waiting for her to lose her temper. ‘He doesn’t have to sign in like the employees.’

  ‘Well, we’d better find out then, hadn’t we?’ Vera looked round at them. ‘No, I’d better find out. I could do with going back to the hotel anyway. I’ve lost my feel for that place, but I know it better than the rest of you. Does Morgan have a pass to get him through to the pool area?’

  ‘Yes, he’s got a staff pass. He negotiated it when he set up business there. He swims and uses the gym most days he’s in.’

  Charlie was starting to relax. Vera was tempted to let rip at him to keep him on his toes, but she’d woken up feeling generous, proud of herself because she’d stopped drinking at a sensible point in the proceedings. ‘What do we know about Freya Adams?’

  He’d even made notes on Freya and read from them now, becoming more fluent as she allowed him to speak without interruption.

  ‘Freya Adams started working at the Willows about two years ago, just a Saturday job at first because she was still at school, then full-time over last summer holidays and at Christmas. By that time she’d started at Newcastle College. She even moved into the staff quarters over Christmas because her parents had gone abroad. They’d fixed up for her to stay with her grandmother, but it seems that didn’t quite work out. She found it too restrictive apparently. Her nan treated her like a kid. At least according to Ryan Taylor, the assistant manager.’

  ‘Does she still work in the hotel?’ Ashworth asked.

  There was a quick look at the notes. ‘Not since she moved in with Morgan. He wants her to concentrate on her studies.’

  ‘Not restrictive at all then!’ This was from Holly, who’d been trying to put in her two penn’orth since the briefing started.

  ‘Does the management at the Willows know Freya is pregnant?’ Vera asked.

  ‘Ryan had heard a rumour, but hadn’t discussed it with Morgan.’ Charlie paused. ‘I got the impression that our Michael keeps himself to himself. He doesn’t mix much with the hotel staff. Sees himself as a bit superior. And of course he doesn’t drink, and most of the socializing involves alcohol.’

  ‘Why did he go to the Christmas party then? You wouldn’t have thought it would really be his thing.’ Vera hated the works Christmas party herself. Everyone trying to be jolly. Crap food and crap booze. No way could she face it sober.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Charlie looked up uncertainly from the scrap of paper in his hand, lost. ‘It surprised them all. He wasn’t even invited, he just turned up.’

  ‘Maybe he had his eye on Freya even then?’ Holly said. ‘I have him down as a bit of a predator. The way he picked up Mattie too. He could have been following her and just took his chance when she needed money in the coffee shop. Perhaps he seeks out young innocent girls without much support. There’d have been talk about the way Freya’s parents had abandoned her. So he saw the party as a way of hooking into her.’

  ‘And must have got her pregnant almost immediately.’ Vera wondered how consensual that sex had been. Had she been drinking at the party? Had it happened then? Too late now to charge him with anything, but all the same it added to the picture . . .

  ‘What do we think about Morgan and Jenny Lister?’ Joe Ashworth asked. ‘Were they having a relationship? If so, when? Was that before he took up with Freya?’

  There was a long silence. They were trying to get their heads round the complexities of the timing, but also unwilling to commit themselves.

  ‘I don’t see it,’ Holly said at last. ‘He’s into frail little things. Women who’re needy and won’t stand up to him. Women he can control. It’d be completely out of character to go out with someone older, independent, strong. We’ve only got the elderly neighbour’s word for it that Jenny had started a new relationship. There’s no evidence it was with Morgan.’

  ‘Strong women can be needy too.’ Vera spoke without thinking, then saw them all looking at her, drawing conclusions she’d rather they didn’t make. ‘And Jenny’s friend the teacher thought she was having some sort of affair. A guy she had to keep secret. Well, she’d hardly admit to be having it off with Morgan, would she? A client and someone involved with a notorious scandal. Holly, what did you get out of Lawrence May, the guy Jenny had been seeing?’

  ‘He couldn’t have killed her,’ Holly said. ‘He was at a conference in Derbyshire. I checked.’

  ‘Did he say why she dumped him?’

  ‘No, but I’d guess because he bored her to death. I mean, he seemed a really nice man. But earnest. You know the sort. As if he’s saving the planet single-handed. He had a go at me because I chucked a plastic bottle into the bin in his office instead of taking it away to recycle.’

  ‘She didn’t tell him she’d fallen for someone else?’

  ‘He said he had the impression there was something new going on in her life,’ Holly said. ‘I pressed him, but he couldn’t be more specific. He didn’t know if it was a new lover or a new project.’

  ‘So if Lister was involved with Morgan, we have no proof either way,’ Ashworth said. ‘So we keep it as a possibility, but don’t get hung up on it. In the end, it doesn’t matter if Morgan killed Lister because she was meddling in his new life with Freya or because he’d been screwing her. Courts don’t really care about motive. We have to show he was at the Willows that morning. We need evidence that he put a string round Jenny Lister’s neck and strangled her. Why doesn’t have to come into it.’

  But I want to know why, Vera thought, as she waited for the other actions to be assigned. I do care about motive. I’m a nosy bitch and it’s what I’m in the job for.

  Driving into the Willows, watching the women arriving all around her with their sports bags and their expensive trainers, Vera couldn’t believe that she’d been one of them, a punter snatching a quick fix of fitness between meetings or on her way to work. She wondered if numbers were still down, if any of the women had demanded a refund of their membership fee. It seemed a bit quiet for this time on a weekday. She walked through the lobby and down the stairs to the health club. Using her membership card she swiped her way through the turnstile. Almost invisible, she thought, even without her bag and towel. Another middle-aged woman with delusions that swimming a few lengths would make her healthier, more beautiful. If the staff were shown her description, even a photo, she doubted if anyone would remember she’d been there.

  Ryan Taylor was sorting out a crisis with
an exploding coffee machine. There was a pool of brown liquid dribbling from the machine onto one end of the tiled kitchen floor. Chefs and waitresses were walking it through the room. The place was hot. There were steaming pans on the gas hobs and someone was screaming at a young woman in whites: ‘Are you cremating that piece of meat? What do you think this is? Some cheap fast-food outlet.’

  Taylor was standing beside the pool and shouting into his mobile. ‘We’re coming up to our busiest time. I need an engineer here now! And get the bloody cleaner to mop up the mess.’

  ‘And I thought at least I’d get a decent cup of coffee.’

  He must have received the assurance he needed, because he switched off the phone, turned to her and grinned. ‘Come into my office, Inspector, and I’ll make one for you there.’

  ‘The cleaner you’re waiting for, it wouldn’t be Danny, that student?’

  Ryan looked at her sharply, wondering if the question had particular significance. ‘No, he works lates. Anyway, it’s his day off. Why?’

  ‘No reason, pet. Just curious.’

  She followed him to his office and watched him fill the coffee machine before she started talking.

  ‘When you’re in this place,’ she said, watching the water drip through the filter, ‘it’s hard to believe there’s any life outside at all. Must be worse for you. Do you live here?’

  ‘No. I’ve got a flat in town with my partner, Paul. There’s a room here I can use if I need to stay over.’

  ‘It’s an odd sort of community, a big hotel.’ She saw him wondering where she was going with the idea. She wasn’t quite sure herself. ‘Especially for the staff who live in. Everyone on top of each other. Like a monastery. Does it lead to tensions?’

  ‘It can do. And not much of the monastery about it.’

  ‘Romances, then. Love affairs . . .’