Vera drove along the narrow back roads from the Willows to Barnard Bridge, timing the journey, for no reason other than it seemed a sensible thing to do and she wasn’t ready yet to go back to the police station in Kimmerston. She had no specific village resident in mind for the murder. Connie Masters wouldn’t have left her child alone in the cottage to drive ten miles to kill her previous colleague, and though Vera still loved the idea of Veronica Eliot in the dock, she could see no reason for it. It was more likely, given her new knowledge of the layout of the health club, that they were looking for a staff member. She thought she should pin down the student cleaner whose employment had coincided with the thefts at the Willows. Maybe she’d call into his house that afternoon, catch him by surprise. Once she’d had some lunch.
The fog of the previous day had cleared and it was sunny, unusually warm for so early in the spring. Turning a corner, she saw a couple in the middle of the road. Hannah Lister and Simon Eliot walking hand in hand. Hannah wore jeans and a white muslin top; Simon seemed large and clumsy in comparison. Beauty and the Beast, Vera thought. Even from the back and from this distance she could sense the connection between them, like some sort of electric charge, and felt the old stab of envy. Was she a miserable cow, that lovers always made her feel that way? Did she want everyone in the world to be as lonely as she was?
The young people stepped onto the verge to allow her to pass, but she slowed down. ‘Do you want a lift?’ Immediately she saw she should have continued driving without acknowledging them. This had been a brief moment of happiness for Hannah, a time of escape. Opening the car window, Vera was aware of the birdsong from the woods by the side of the road, found herself unpicking the tangle of sound for individual species. Her father had tested her on her knowledge whenever they were out together: ‘Come on, Vee, don’t be such a duffer, you must recognize that!’
She’d expected an immediate rebuttal from the young people and was surprised when after some hesitation they got in, Simon in the back seat, although he was so tall that his knees almost touched his chin, and Hannah in the front.
‘Where would you like to go?’ Vera asked. ‘Are you on your way home?’
‘Where shall we go, Simon?’ The girl turned in the seat to speak to him. Her voice was brittle, almost manic. ‘Rome? Zanzibar? The moon?’
He reached out and took her hand in his. ‘We’ll do Rome in the summer,’ he said easily. ‘Or Zanzibar, if you prefer. But now, Inspector, yes, we’d better go home. To my place please. It was such a lovely day that we got up very early and we’ve been walking all morning, but now I think Hannah is very tired. Just as well you appeared to save us. Mother has offered to make us lunch.’
‘You must be feeling better if you’re up to facing the mother-in-law,’ Vera said with a smile.
‘The doctor gave me some pills and now I don’t feel very much at all.’ Hannah had drooped after the flicker of her exchange with Simon. She lay back in the seat with her eyes half closed.
‘But you do have to eat, and neither of us can face the supermarket.’ He was still leaning forward, the seat belt stretched to its limit, rubbing the back of her hand with his thumb.
‘I never did ask you,’ Vera said, talking to Simon’s reflection in the mirror, ‘where were you the morning Jenny died?’ She had a sudden horrible thought that he might be implicated in some way. She hadn’t checked, after all, that he had an alibi. But she hated the idea of it, of Hannah’s saviour as killer.
‘At home,’ he said. ‘Hannah wanted to revise, so we hadn’t planned to meet up until the evening.’ He must have realized why she was asking, but he didn’t seem at all offended.
‘Was your mother in?’
‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘I’d been out on the piss the night before, catching up with some of the lads I was at school with. I didn’t surface until midday. Mum was out then, but she came back soon after.’
By now they were approaching the crossroads, the turn-off to the village. Connie Masters’s cottage was on one side and the big white house was on the other. ‘Do you know the woman who lives there?’ Vera nodded towards the cottage.
‘No, I’ve seen people in there. A mother and a child. Are they permanent tenants? It always used to be a holiday place.’
‘Her name’s Masters,’ Vera said. ‘Connie Masters.’ Hannah stirred. ‘Wasn’t she the social worker supervising Mattie Jones?’
‘That’s right. Did your mother talk about her?’ ‘I didn’t realize she lived here. Mum felt sorry for her. About the way she’d been treated in the press. Because she screwed up over Elias Jones.’
As she watched the young people walk away, Vera wondered what she’d have made of Hannah’s mother if they’d met. Vera disliked good-looking women as a matter of course, and Jenny’s competence, her certainty that she was right in every situation, would have irritated her too. It seemed to Vera that Jenny, apparently so admired and respected, could have had many secret enemies. A book that would have exposed her clients’ and colleagues’ frailties would surely have added to the list. Connie, for example, would almost certainly have appeared in it. She definitely had an interest in ensuring that Jenny’s work was never published.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Vera parked in the main street of the village and went in search of food. The pub was open and she was tempted, but she knew how word got around in small places: that big boss policewoman was drinking at lunchtime. And besides, she wanted more than a bag of crisps and it seemed there was nothing else on offer. Walking down the street, she got on the phone to Ashworth. ‘Lister’s handbag. It still hasn’t turned up. A big red leather affair that she used as a briefcase.’ Knowing that shouting at him would serve no real purpose, because the team already had it as a priority and most of Northumbria Police were already looking for it. She had low blood sugar and it always made her radgy. ‘Any chance you can meet me at Danny Shaw’s place? I thought it was about time I met him.’
She found the Tyne Teashop and decided that would do. All the windows looked out on the river, and the place had a calm green light from the trees and the reflections of water that had seeped out onto the flood meadow. Most of the tables were occupied. Older couples: big bossy women and slight subdued men for the most part. You should have carried on working, pet, she thought, directing her sympathy to the men. Bet you never thought early retirement would be like this, acting as chauffeur to the wife, and endless cups of tea.
Then she turned her attention to home-made corned-beef pie and the whereabouts of Jenny Lister’s handbag. Had the murderer taken it from her locker? Did that mean she was murdered for what it contained: notes for the book she planned to write. And what had happened to it since? It would be hard to destroy a substantial bag, though of course the paper inside could have been burned. She shook her head and moved on to a meringue filled with cream and covered with grated chocolate. The meringue was crisp on the outside and slightly squelchy in the middle, as near perfect as was possible for an object that was a work of art, not science. The bag – along with the notebook – was probably in a landfill somewhere and would never be seen again.
Joe Ashworth was already waiting for her outside Danny Shaw’s house and she got into his car to talk before they went in. The house was grander than she’d expected, an extended detached cottage with a bit of an orchard at the back. Move it halfway up a mountain and she’d have been prepared to live there herself. It stood in a valley on the edge of a hamlet halfway between Barnard Bridge and the Willows, surrounded by established trees.
She nodded towards it. ‘I thought you said they’d fallen on hard times since the recession.’