‘Why don’t you tell me all the same?’
She looked at her watch to check that she had time to wait for a couple of minutes and was reassured.
‘It was a bit odd. We went outside to sit after lunch – there was the first real sun of the spring – and there he was. Alice spotted him on the bridge. He said he’d come on the bus. He was looking for Veronica Eliot. She lives in the big white house by the crossroads. I told him she’d been out when I walked past. I suggested that he wait and offered him tea.’
‘Why would you do that?’ Ashworth disapproved of risk-taking at the best of times. A woman living on her own, it was surely crazy to invite a stranger into her home.
‘I’m not sure. I was lonely. I’m a pariah here since they found out about Elias. I wanted some adult company and he seemed OK. But I wasn’t going to leave Alice alone with him, so I took her in with me to make the tea. And when we got back, he’d disappeared. Like I said: odd. But maybe he saw Veronica’s car turn into her drive. Or maybe he just thought better of hanging out with a mad, desperate housewife and her child.’
Connie gave a small, sad smile and hurried away down the muddy track.
Chapter Twelve
Once the team briefing was over, Vera sat for a moment in her office. She wanted to sort her thoughts. She’d sent Ashworth to Barnard Bridge to talk to Connie Masters. Holly and Charlie were back at the Willows, interviewing the hotel staff members who had been absent the previous day. It seemed to Vera, looking down at the street where the weekly market was already busy, that the choice of the health club as a setting for murder was most significant. Why kill the woman there, when the culprit could be caught at any time? There must have been other, less complicated places to commit the crime. Jenny’s killer must have known she belonged to the club, or he had followed her there. That implied a stalker, a crime that was premeditated, planned over a long period. Otherwise, Vera thought, the motive was more trivial and banal, and Jenny had been killed because of something she’d witnessed on her visits to the Willows. No planning at all. Murder often happened for the pettiest of reasons, and those crimes were especially tragic.
She phoned the landline number for Jenny’s house in Barnard Bridge. Simon Eliot answered.
‘How’s Hannah?’
‘We didn’t get much sleep,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d call her doctor. Explain. She was talking all night and she needs to rest. Maybe he can give her something to knock her out tonight.’ He paused. ‘She wants to see her mother.’
Not her mother, her mother’s body. Something quite different.
‘That should be fine. I’m tied up, but I’ll arrange for someone to pick you up.’ Vera had already decided she’d send Holly. Maybe Hannah would talk more to someone closer her own age.
‘I’m not sure she wants me there,’ Simon said. ‘I think she’d like to say goodbye on her own.’ Vera caught the pain in his voice.
‘That’s a good thing surely,’ she said. ‘Give you a bit of time to yourself. No point you cracking up too.’ She paused. ‘I’d like to talk to some of Jenny’s friends. Seems there was nobody she was really close to at work, so I’m assuming there must have been people in the village. Your mam didn’t know. Can you help?’
‘Anne Mason,’ he said. ‘She’s a teacher at the primary school up the valley and lives in a barn conversion not far out of the village. They went to the theatre, out for meals. They did the flamenco class together. I think she’s away at the moment. It’s the Easter holidays. She and her husband have a holiday home in Bordeaux and they go there whenever they can. Jenny went with them sometimes.’
‘Don’t suppose you have a mobile number for her?’
‘I don’t, but Hannah might. I’ll check.’ There was silence on the other end of the line. ‘There’s nothing I can do to help her,’ he said at last, a cry from the heart.
‘Nothing anyone can do at the moment, pet.’ And Vera gave him Holly’s name, said she’d be in touch when they had a time for Hannah to go to the mortuary.
Vera had arranged to meet Craig, Jenny’s area manager, for lunch in Kimmerston. He had to be in the town anyway and that was the only window in his day. That was the way he talked: buzzword bingo brought to life. There was a partnership meeting, he’d said on the phone. Inter-agency stuff. That was his working life now, all strategy and politics. He never actually saw a client in his life. Vera thought he sounded bloody pleased about it. I should be like that, all strategy and politics. That’s what the bosses want of me. But, God, think how boring that would be.
He suggested they meet in a wine bar in Front Street. She’d walked past it a few times, but had never been tempted in. She knew exactly how it would be: over-priced and poncy. And full of beautiful people who would stare at her, thinking she was a Big Issue seller who’d wandered in from a night on the pavement. She got there deliberately a little late so that she wouldn’t have to wait on her own for him to arrive, and saw him immediately, a guy in his forties, wearing a suit, reading the Indie. A briefcase on the floor beside him. Vera had never carried a briefcase in her life. The place was almost empty – it was still early for the lunchtime rush – so they wouldn’t be overheard.
When he saw her approaching she noticed the surprise and disappointment on his face. Perhaps he’d been hoping for a Helen Mirren lookalike. These days, people expected senior female officers to walk straight out of Prime Suspect. He got up to shake her hand and she realized he was very tall. There weren’t many men who dwarfed her.
‘This is terrible,’ he said. ‘Jenny Lister was the best social worker I’ve ever met. I’m not sure what we’ll do without her. Her team is in pieces.’ He looked down at her bleakly. ‘I’m not sure what I’ll do without her. She kept the whole show on the road. Officially my deputy, but actually she was the one who kept me straight.’
That made Vera warm to him. Underneath the jargon and the ambition he was human after all. When he ordered a bowl of chips to go with his smoked-salmon baguette she liked him even more.
‘So she was good at her job?’
‘The understatement of the year.’ He dipped a chip into a bowl of mayonnaise. ‘If she’d wanted to, she could have gone to head up a social-services department. She was organized, an excellent supervisor, scarily clever.’
‘So why wasn’t she promoted?’ Vera had never quite believed in saints. What was it about Jenny Lister that she’d stayed in the field instead of taking the opportunity to become a manager?
‘She didn’t want it,’ he said. ‘She said she didn’t need the money or the aggro. And she’d miss working with clients and foster parents. She’d miss the kids.’
‘Did you believe her?’
The man looked up, shocked. ‘Of course! Jenny Lister didn’t lie.’
Not true, Vera thought. We all lie. We wouldn’t survive otherwise. It’s just that some of us do it better than others. Jenny Lister must have been a magnificent liar.
The man continued. ‘She loved being the most talented social worker in the place. Perhaps she knew management wouldn’t be her thing. She wouldn’t have wanted to be second best.’
‘What about her background?’ Vera asked. ‘Was she local?’
He looked up from his food. ‘Yes, born-and-bred Northumberland. Went south to university, but lived the rest of her life here.’
‘Are her parents still alive?’ Maybe Jenny had confided in them if they were local. Maybe they’d have Hannah to stay for a while.
‘No,’ he said. ‘She never talked about it, but my wife’s a local-history buff and came across the story in an old copy of the Hexham Courant. Jenny’s dad was a solicitor, seemed he was defrauding his clients. He took his own life before the case could go to court. The mother lived for a good few years after that, but she was never the same apparently. She couldn’t stand the shame. I think she lived in residential care somewhere on the coast. She died about ten years ago. I remember Jenny going to the funeral.’