‘We nearly asked him to leave last year, when there was all that publicity about the little boy.’ Ryan was staring out of the window. ‘But in the end he talked Louise round.’
‘He’s got a way with women, has he?’ Vera gave a little laugh to show there was no real significance to the question.
‘Must have. Louise is as tough as old boots when it comes to the business.’
‘Did he ever bring Mattie Jones, the boy’s mother, here?’ Vera asked.
Ryan shook his head. ‘Not as far as I know. And once he and Freya set up home together, Freya kept away too. The girls she used to work with invited her back for lunch one day, but she didn’t come.’
‘Have you got a key to the room he uses as a clinic?’
‘Of course. But Michael doesn’t keep any equipment there. He brings it with him each time.’
‘Does he make his own appointments, or do the girls on reception here do it for him?’
‘He sees to all that himself,’ Ryan said. ‘If anyone expresses an interest in consulting him, we pass on his mobile number.’
‘So no appointment book.’ Vera should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. ‘No way of getting hold of his client list.’
‘Sorry.’
She gestured towards the closed door, the way from Ryan’s private room to the outside world of the hotel. ‘Tell you what, pet, while you’re out there doing my job for me, asking your people about Michael Morgan, find out if anyone ever saw him with Jenny Lister.’
Ryan nodded his head, another young man eager to please her.
‘I thought I’d just have a bit of a wander round myself, chat to folk. That’s all right with you?’
‘Of course.’ But Vera could tell that he’d be very pleased when he’d got rid of her, when she was finally off the premises.
Chapter Twenty-Two
She wandered through the hotel, going through doors that said Staff Only, looking into cupboards and a laundry, hitting at last on the staffroom. A small square box with hardly any natural light, one bright electric bulb in the middle of the room, furniture discarded from the rest of the building. A stack of lockers against one wall.
Lisa from the pool was there on her lunch break, eating chopped-up fruit from a Tupperware box, reading a paperback novel. Vera nodded towards the book. ‘Any good?’
A couple of middle-aged women were gossiping in a corner. They looked up briefly and went back to their chat. Ears flapping.
Lisa set down the book and ate the last piece of melon. ‘It’s OK. Escapist, you know.’
‘Aye, well, we all need a bit of that. Have you got a few minutes? I wondered if you’d give me a behind-the-scenes tour of the place.’ By now Vera thought she had it pretty well sussed, but she didn’t want the old bats in the corner listening in.
‘Sure.’ Lisa pushed the lid onto the box and put it into her bag. She’d always been pale, but it seemed to Vera today that all the colour had drained from her face.
‘Do the staff have passes?’ They’d left the staffroom, but were still backstage. Grey walls and dust, occasional piles of unidentifiable equipment.
‘Yeah. Electronic fobs that let you in from the public areas. Very high-tech.’
‘God,’ Vera said, ‘what a nightmare! I’d lose mine in a week.’
Lisa smiled indulgently. She was the sort of woman who never lost anything.
‘And once you’re into the staff areas you have free access everywhere?’
‘That’s right.’
‘What about to the pool?’ Vera was developing the germ of an idea. They’d assumed that the murderer had got to the pool through the public changing rooms, but if there was staff access, that wasn’t necessarily the case. Again she thought she’d cocked up here, hadn’t concentrated on the basics. She should have demanded a floor plan right from the start. No, she thought. Charlie should have sorted the floor plan. It occurred to her that all the stuff about Elias Jones could be a distraction.
‘Yes, that’s this way.’ Lisa led her down a small corridor and into a space that was half storeroom and half office. In one corner there was a half-sized desk with a computer and phone. The rest of the room was taken up with floats and the bendy rubber strips used by the members of the aqua-aerobics classes. She opened another door and they looked out onto the poolside, only yards from the sauna and steam room.
Lisa pulled a packet of blue plastic overshoes from a drawer. ‘If you want to go out, you’ll have to wear these.’
Vera pulled them on and walked out onto the tiles. The bootees were exactly the same as the ones she wore at a crime scene. The pool was quiet. There was that strange echo that reminded her of aching limbs and a pounding heart. A few determined swimmers ploughed through the water and a couple of women sprawled on the deckchairs. From outside, when it was closed, the office door looked like another wall panel. It wasn’t surprising that they’d missed it. Lisa must have been following her thoughts. ‘The architect wanted clean lines,’ she said. ‘There are a couple of other storerooms, but they’re hidden too. This is the only one you can access from both sides.’
Vera joined her back in the office. She leaned her backside against the desk. ‘Do you know a guy called Michael Morgan?’
‘He does the complementary therapies?’ The question was innocent enough, but Vera wasn’t deceived. Lisa knew him all right. She was suddenly more alert.
‘Works here once a week. Got one of the young waitresses pregnant. That’s the one.’ Vera looked directly at Lisa. ‘Did he ever try it on with you?’
‘No! Nothing like that. He wouldn’t.’ Lisa seemed horrified by the idea.
‘Why wouldn’t he? He has a history of it.’
‘I was his client,’ Lisa said. ‘Our relationship was professional.’ A wash of colour was spreading from her neck into her cheeks.
Maybe it was professional, but you’d have liked it to be more than that. What is it about Michael Morgan and women who should know better?
‘Tell me about it.’
‘It was hard, working here. I mean, I’m good at the job and I love it, but I’ve never really fitted in.’
‘You were bullied,’ Vera said.
‘That sounds a bit harsh, but it’s what it felt like. I didn’t go into town clubbing with the other girls and I’m not interested in the same stuff. They could be dead cruel. It got that I dreaded coming into work, started having these panic attacks. My GP couldn’t help, so I tried Michael.’
‘And he could help?’
Lisa nodded. ‘I don’t know how it works, but it made me feel really calm. Like I really stopped caring about what the rest of them thought about me. I looked forward to coming into work again.’
‘Did you ever see him away from here?’ Vera asked.
‘No.’ Lisa was playing with one of the soft rubber floats, twisting it in her hands. ‘Look, none of the other staff know I consulted him. There’s always been a lot of gossip, first when the little boy was killed and then when he took up with Freya. It’s as if he’s some sort of freak. If they knew I’d seen Michael, they’d love that. It’d just give them more ammunition to have a go at me. But he was kind to me, gentle, and I’m grateful to him.’
‘Did you ever catch him in the places where the public has no access?’
Lisa frowned. ‘No. Only in the office he used as a consulting room.’
‘But he would have had one of those magic fobs that would let him back here?’
‘I suppose so.’ Lisa looked at her watch. ‘Look, I’ll have to go. My shift started ten minutes ago.’
‘Did any of the other staff consult him?’ Lisa was already halfway through the door, but turned back to answer the question.
‘I wouldn’t know,’ she said, ‘would I? They wouldn’t admit to it any more than me.’