Charlie slumped into a seat near the front, licked his fingers and crunched into a ball the greaseproof paper he’d been holding.
‘A few sightings that day of young men who could have been Morgan, but nothing specific and nothing consistent. They’re so eager to help, you get the feeling they’d say anything to make you happy.’
‘Morgan’s not that young.’
Charlie managed a quick smile. Progress, Ashworth thought. He couldn’t remember the last time his face cracked. ‘Believe me, to most of them, anything under fifty’s young. I’m young.’
Vera looked at Holly. ‘Well? What have we got on pretty little Freya? Any evidence that Freya knew Danny Shaw would be helpful.’
Holly sat very straight, waited until Charlie was looking at her too. God, Ashworth thought, she was such a drama queen. Like an eight-year-old in a tutu desperate to show off a new dance.
‘Well?’ Now Vera was really on the verge of losing it. Ashworth couldn’t wait for the storm to break.
‘No information on that, I’m afraid.’ Holly gave one of her you-are-never-going-to-believe-this, how-clever-am-I? smiles. ‘But I did find out that Freya was in the Willows the morning Jenny Lister was killed.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me as soon as you knew?’ Vera demanded.
At least, Ashworth thought, Vera wasn’t going to give Holly the satisfaction of applause.
‘I wasn’t sure myself until just now.’
Vera ignored that. ‘What was she doing there?’
‘There’s an exercise class for pregnant mums. Half pilates, half yoga. You know the sort of thing. It was her first week. We’d already checked that Freya wasn’t a member of the health club, but non-members can go to the specialist classes. They just pay on the day.’
‘How did you find out about it?’ Joe couldn’t help himself. ‘Did one of the staff see her there?’
‘Nothing like that. I saw the class advertised and it just seemed like Freya’s thing. It took me until half an hour ago to track down Natalie, the teacher. That’s why I was a bit late.’ Holly was about to launch into a detailed explanation of her cleverness in getting hold of the woman, but Vera interrupted her.
‘Go back to the hotel first thing tomorrow. See what time the girl left the health club that morning. It must have been before I found the body, because we’d have noticed her among the other witnesses. Did she drive there or get a lift? And let’s make absolutely certain Danny Shaw wasn’t around. We know his shift didn’t start until later and he wouldn’t have been working, but maybe he had another reason for being in the hotel. If he saw Freya commit the murder, we’ve got a motive for that killing too.’
Ashworth could sense ideas fizzing around Vera’s brain. She couldn’t stop talking, like his kids after too much sugar, too many e-numbers. ‘When you’ve got everything straight, call me and we’ll go to Tynemouth and talk to Freya. Or if the college has started for the new term, we’ll see her there. Better if we can catch her away from Morgan. There are too many bloody coincidences here.’
‘You don’t think Freya’s a plausible suspect?’ Ashworth interrupted her. ‘Why would she kill Jenny Lister?’
Vera spat the words back at him. ‘Because Morgan told her to. Because he has a way of making vulnerable lasses do what he wants. He got Mattie Jones to kill her own son, for Christ’s sake!’
Joe wanted to say they had no evidence for that: Vera should be careful. But he could tell she was in no mood to listen.
Chapter Twenty-Six
It was almost dark. Joe Ashworth stood next to the unsteady wrought-iron table in Connie Masters’s garden and watched the CSI examine the patch of weeds where Jenny Lister’s bag still lay. Though he thought it would all be a waste of time. It was nothing more than an elaborate show: the investigator in his suit and bootees, looking like a giant Teletubby. He was working by the light of a strong torch now. What more could he hope to find? It seemed obvious to Joe that the bag had been thrown into the vegetation from the road, otherwise how could the cow parsley have seemed undisturbed from outside? So there would be no footwear prints, no traces at all left by the murderer, if indeed it had been the murderer who had dumped the bag.
Vera had decided they should drive here once the meeting in Kimmerston was over. He’d agreed reluctantly, partly because he was scared that she’d ask Holly instead if he refused, partly because he didn’t have the energy to put up a fight. He found himself depressed by his own cynicism. Usually his enthusiasm for work, his place as Vera’s second-in-command, her confidant and her surrogate son, kept him going through the tedious phases of an investigation. It was his role to motivate and encourage her, to tell her she was a genius, to keep her on track. This time he felt as if all the enthusiasm had been sucked out of him. Vera would put that down to the landscape, inland, low and waterlogged: What you need, Joey boy, is a good east wind to blow away the cobwebs. Ashworth thought it would take more to lift his mood than a walk on the beach with a wind from the sea.
In contrast, Vera was still fizzing. She stood beside him, yelling to the man on the other side of the burn.
‘Can you tell how long it was there?’
‘Not precisely.’ This CSI was new. Joe hadn’t seen him before. He seemed bemused by Vera’s antics, regarded her rather as if there was a hostile wild animal, pleased she was trapped on the other side of the burn. ‘Not yet.’
‘I’m looking for a notebook,’ she shouted. ‘A4 hardback. I need it before the water gets in and it rots away to nothing.’
Joe knew the notebook wouldn’t be there. The murderer was no fool. It was hard maybe to dispose of leather, but paper and cardboard could be burned away to nothing. Why risk dumping it?
He saw the CSI squat to look in the bag. Now the vegetation surrounded him, so all they could catch were glimpses of his blue suit, and he looked like a great blue bird on its nest.
The CSI stood up and shook his head. ‘No notebook,’ he said. ‘You can have the other contents when we get it back.’
Vera took the news more philosophically than Ashworth had expected. There was no ranting. Her fury seemed to have left as soon as it had appeared. It never suited her to be caged inside the incident room. ‘Aye, well, you can’t always get what you want. And that would be too easy, wouldn’t it, Joe? We always like a challenge.’
She shouted across the stream again. ‘Were you working the scene at the Shaw murder?’
‘Nah. Billy was in charge of that one.’
‘I’ll pester him then. There was a bonfire, and I want any paper that was left fast-tracked for examination.’
The CSI looked at her as if she were mad. She stamped off, round the back of the cottage to the kitchen door, turning to call Ashworth to follow her. ‘Don’t stand around there. The man knows what he’s about. He can work without an audience.’
Vera seemed to fill the small room. Connie was sitting on the floor watching television. The child must already be in bed. Vera had knocked on the kitchen door, then gone straight in. Connie got to her feet. ‘Would you like some tea?’
‘Well done, pet!’ Vera took no notice of the question. ‘You did all the right things once you’d realized what the lass had found. I wouldn’t have handled it better myself.’
Ashworth saw Connie give a little smile of pleasure. It seemed everyone wanted to please Vera Stanhope.
Vera leaned forwards, resting her huge hands on her bare knees. In the background the theme tune to a soap had begun. Connie switched the television off at the set.
‘You do realize how important this is.’ It was Vera in confiding mode. ‘If we find out who dumped the bag, we’re on our way to an arrest. And you live here, you’re around most of the time, the bairn plays in the garden. You might have seen someone.’