‘And what was that?’ Vera found her sympathy was running out. She felt like shaking the lass, telling her to sharpen up her act, that Vera had a murderer to catch. Next time, she thought, she’d send Joe Ashworth to interview Mattie Jones. Vera had managed to toughen him up a bit over the years, but he was still a soppy bugger.
‘About me,’ Mattie said with a touch of pride. ‘About my childhood and that.’
‘A sort of therapy session?’ Vera wondered what had been the point of that. This woman was locked up. She wasn’t going to murder anyone else in the near future. Why hadn’t Jenny Lister saved whatever skill she had in poking around in other folk’s brains for the clients who needed her?
Mattie looked puzzled. The concept of therapy had passed her by. ‘It was for her book,’ she said.
‘What book?’
‘Mrs Lister was writing a book about me.’ The woman smiled, a child given a sudden treat. ‘It was going to have a photograph of me on the cover and everything.’
The prison officer appeared at the door. Even from where she sat, Vera could smell the smoke around her. She was carrying a cardboard mug of coffee and a can of Coke. ‘Everything all right in here?’ she asked breezily. She put the Coke on the bedside locker next to the fan. Another gesture of kindness that Vera failed to notice at that moment.
‘Did you know about this?’
‘What?’ The officer was immediately defensive and Vera softened her tone.
‘That Mattie’s social worker was planning to write a book about her, about the Elias Jones case?’
The officer shook her head. ‘Mattie got regular visits from her social worker. We all thought that was dead kind, because no other bugger came to see her.’
Vera turned back to the patient, who’d managed to reach the Coke and was ripping the pull-tab from the can.
‘Michael never came to see you then?’ she asked. ‘You never got a visit from him in prison?’
Mattie was very still for a moment, poised with the Coke halfway to her mouth. Then she shook her head.
‘Did you ask him to come? Have you spoken to him on the phone? Is he still working at the same place?’
Too many questions, Vera saw at once. Mattie couldn’t take them all in. Vera was about to start again, more slowly, when the young woman answered, moving awkwardly in the bed as she spoke.
‘He told me he’s got another girlfriend. She’s having his baby. He told me I shouldn’t bother him again.’
‘Did you tell Mrs Lister about all that?’ Vera leaned forward. She could do gentle and maternal when the situation demanded. And here they had a possible motive. If Michael Morgan was about to become a father, social services might want to be involved. They might consider the child at risk.
‘I was upset,’ Mattie said. ‘I’d used my phone card to speak to him and he told me about the baby. He hadn’t liked my boy and he’d said he never wanted a baby with me, but he made one with his new lass. It wasn’t fair. That afternoon Mrs Lister came, and I started crying and telling her all about it.’
‘When was that?’ Vera asked. ‘How long ago was that, Mattie?’
Mattie shook her head. ‘Not very long,’ she said.
‘Was it Mrs Lister’s last visit to you? The one before?’
But Mattie couldn’t say. She began to cry quietly, not this time for the dead social worker, but for herself, abandoned by the man with whom she’d fancied herself in love.
Sal shifted uneasily, protective of the young woman in her charge, but wanting to help. ‘Mattie got upset around the time of the anniversary of Elias’s death,’ she said. ‘That was when she contacted Morgan again. I think some of the other girls had seen it on the local news and had been having a go at her.’
Vera flashed a smile at her. ‘Thanks, pet.’ She turned away from the bed and lowered her voice. ‘If Mattie remembers anything about the social worker, get in touch with me. I need to catch her killer.’ She fished a card out of the canvas Sainsbury’s shopping bag she used as a briefcase and scribbled her personal mobile number on the back. ‘Jenny Lister was a good woman.’
But walking down the wide, gleaming corridor of the flash new hospital, she wondered if that was true. If Jenny Lister was planning a book on the Elias Jones case, she was abusing her client’s trust for her own gain. The true-crime books about famous murders sold in thousands, and one by a social worker involved in the case would attract huge publicity. Jenny Lister could become a wealthy woman. It seemed so out of character for the person she’d thought she was getting to know that Vera could hardly believe it. But why would Mattie make up something like that?
Vera drove fast up the A1 and, just after turning off towards Hexham, she phoned Holly. ‘You still in the Lister house?’
‘Yes.’ Just from the one word Vera could tell she was defensive and sulky. Ashworth would already have been in touch and would have told her to move out.
‘How’s Hannah this morning?’
‘Still pretty shell-shocked and numb, but at least she slept last night. The doctor gave her a sleeping pill and Simon persuaded her to take it.’
‘Is he still there too?’
‘He’s just left,’ Holly said. ‘His father’s just got back from working overseas and he’s gone home to see him. His mother’s cooking a family lunch. There was a three-line whip.’ A pause. ‘Look, boss, I really think I should stay. Hannah shouldn’t be left on her own, and the FLO can’t get here until this afternoon.’
‘No problem,’ Vera said. ‘I need to chat to her anyway, so you pack up your stuff and be ready to leave. I’ll be there in half an hour.’ I must be a truly horrible person, she thought, passing a timber lorry, for that exchange to have given me so much pleasure.
Hannah still seemed doped up when Vera arrived. She sat in a rocking chair by the kitchen window, staring at the blue tits pecking at a string of peanuts hanging from the bird table. Holly gave her a big hug before she left, but Hannah hardly responded. Vera thought Holly wouldn’t have liked that: she was kind-hearted enough, but she needed emotional payback.
‘I don’t know about you,’ Vera said. ‘But I’m starving. Is there anything to eat in this place?’
Hannah turned in her seat, but only shrugged. She looked as if she’d lost pounds just in the two days since her mother had died, and she’d been skinny to start with. Vera thought Holly would have done better to spend her time cooking a proper meal for the girl than to sit around feeding off her grief.
The freezer was well organized and everything labelled. Jenny Lister, superwoman. Vera found a tub of home-made soup and a bag of wholemeal rolls. She set the soup whirring round the microwave and stuck the rolls in the oven to thaw and crisp. Her sort of cooking. She ignored Hannah while she set the table and then called her to come for her lunch.
‘I’m not really hungry.’ Hannah looked at her with blurred, unfocused eyes.
‘Well, I am, and your mam will have taught you it’s rude to sit and watch a person eat.’
Hannah got up from the rocking chair and joined Vera. She sat with her elbows on the table as Vera ladled soup into a bowl. It smelled delicious – of tomato and basil – and, despite herself, the girl dipped in her spoon and reached out to break off a piece of bread.
Vera waited until the soup had gone before she started talking.
‘Did you know your mother went to visit Mattie Jones in prison?’
Hannah looked a bit brighter now, sharper. ‘She didn’t talk much about her work.’
‘Mattie Jones is the young woman who killed her child. You’d have seen about it on the news. It was a big case. Your mother didn’t mention it at the time?’
A pause. ‘I do remember. It was one of the few times I’d seen Mum get angry. She got up and switched off the television. She said she couldn’t stand the way the media demonized the people involved – Mattie and the social worker. The reporters made everything seem so simple, and this case wasn’t simple at all.’ Hannah shut her eyes and there was a little smile. Vera could tell in that moment that her mother had become alive for her again.