After the meeting with Frank, he left Newcastle and drove inland. He thought he needed to stay close to Barnard Bridge while Vera went chasing all round the county following her instincts and her need for perpetual movement. His instinct told him that the answer to both murders was here in the lush green fields of the Tyne valley.
Karen Shaw had been allowed back to her house. Joe found her there with her husband. They welcomed him with a warmth he hadn’t expected. It was as if they saw him as some sort of medium or magician, as if he provided a means of communicating with the boy they’d lost. Or perhaps it was simpler than that. The young detective was a distraction. They’d been blaming themselves and each other for the loss of their son, and now they had someone else to talk to. There was the guilt that always lingers with survivors. He listened to their confessions, knowing there was nothing he could do to make them feel better.
‘He wanted to go back to Bristol a few days ago,’ Karen said, the words spilling out like tears. ‘His girlfriend had gone early. She does drama and there was a film they were making. She asked him to act in it, just a small part. Her family’s got money and she doesn’t need to do paid work in the holidays. They’d been skiing in Colorado over Easter; they’d invited him too and he could have gone with them, if he’d been able to find the fare. A couple of years ago we’d have been able to give it to him, no problem. Now it was impossible.’
She paused for breath and Joe tried to take her back to her first sentence. ‘That was the only reason he wanted to go back before the start of term? The film, I mean. Jenny Lister’s death hadn’t upset him?’
‘No.’ She stared up at him. He’d never seen her without make-up before. ‘Why would it?’
‘Well, he knew her, didn’t he?’ Joe gave an encouraging little smile. ‘Met her once at least. He’d been out with her daughter, Hannah.’
‘Hannah. I remember her. Bonny little thing. I never knew her surname, didn’t make the connection. You know her, don’t you, Derek? She was the little redhead. He was very keen on her for a while. His first real love.’ She gave a gasp of anguish, grieving perhaps because there would be no last love, no wedding, no grandchild.
Derek nodded, though Joe wouldn’t have bet that he really remembered Hannah Lister. He didn’t want to admit to a gap in the shared experience of bringing up their only son.
‘Why did Danny stick around in the end?’ Joe asked. ‘Why didn’t he go down to Bristol to be in the film?’
‘That was about money too, wasn’t it, Derek? He’d have lost a week’s pay if he hadn’t worked out his notice. And I told him he couldn’t let them down. I’d got him the job, and I’d have looked bad if he’d just quit.’ Her own confession. ‘If I hadn’t been so bothered about what they’d think about me at the Willows, he’d still be alive.’
The couple sat looking at each other.
‘It was just as much my fault.’ The husband was determined to shoulder his share of responsibility. ‘I told him he had to pay his way now. We spoilt him when he was a boy, Sergeant. Our only son. Money no object. We gave him whatever he wanted. It came hard to him when that had to stop. Especially when he hooked up with all those rich southern kids in uni. I could tell he blamed me. He was bored silly in that job in the health club. Sometimes I could see him looking at me and I knew he thought I’d let him down.’
‘Is that why he started stealing?’ Joe knew all about that now. Vera had called him as soon as she’d left Lisa’s house. Find out from the parents what was going on there. Did Jenny Lister catch him thieving? ‘Because it wasn’t for the cash, was it? He’d have hardly made enough to buy a couple of pints in the uni bar. Was it because he was bored?’
Now both parents turned on Ashworth. Fierce looks. A stony silence broken by Derek. ‘You can’t accuse the boy. He’s dead. He can’t fight back.’
‘If you want us to find his killer,’ Ashworth said, ‘you have to help me here. We have a witness who saw him take money from the staffroom. Did he know he’d been seen?’
Another silence.
‘You don’t seem surprised,’ Joe said gently. ‘If it’s not relevant, his stealing will never be made public. The witness won’t talk. But you must tell me what you know.’
‘I didn’t know,’ Karen said.
‘But you guessed? Suspected?’
‘He’d been moaning about being skint one morning and then suddenly there was a ten-pound note in his pocket and he was buying coffee in the hotel lounge before his shift started. I wondered.’
‘That must have been terrible,’ Joe said. He imagined finding out that one of his own kids was a thief. ‘It must have eaten away at you. Did you discuss it with anyone at work?’
‘No!’ The thought appalled her. ‘He was going to be a lawyer. If anyone found out, he could ruin the whole of his life for the sake of a cup of coffee. A few more days and he’d be in Bristol and we could forget the whole thing.’
It occurred to Joe that this woman had spent her life protecting her son and had created a monster. Would she kill to protect him? Perhaps, but there was no possibility that she would have stood behind him in the garden and strangled the boy, who had been, he saw now, her passion.
‘Did you discuss it with Danny?’
This time there was a hesitation. ‘No. I know I should have done. But I didn’t want the last few days of his holiday spoiled. I wanted us to be happy, the family we’d once been. I pushed the idea out of my head. I told myself Danny wouldn’t behave like that.’
Ashworth turned to her husband. ‘Did you know anything about this, Mr Shaw?’
The man shook his head, apparently baffled by the events that had run up to his son’s death.
‘Where was Danny the morning Mrs Lister died?’ Ashworth kept his voice gentle. Not a hint of accusation there. ‘I know his shift at the Willows didn’t start until late afternoon, but is there any chance he was in the hotel that morning?’ No reply. ‘Mrs Shaw?’
She didn’t speak for a long time, but this time he didn’t prompt her. ‘He didn’t come home the night before,’ she said at last. ‘Often when he was working late Derek would go and pick him up at the end of his shift. There are no buses in the evening and he didn’t have his own car.’ Something else for the boy to complain about. ‘But occasionally he’d stay over. There was one of the staff bedrooms he was allowed to use. If he’d swapped to work an early shift the following day, or if he’d started drinking with some of the lasses working there.’ She looked up. ‘Usually it was the lasses he stayed up chatting to. They all fell for him.’
‘And that was what had happened the evening before Mrs Lister was murdered?’
She nodded. ‘Derek would have gone to get him, but Danny phoned and said not to bother. He’d stay at the hotel.’
‘Did you see him the next day? The day of the murder?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t around when I turned up for my shift, so I thought he’d got the first bus home, that we’d missed each other.’ She looked fiercely at Ashworth. ‘He probably wasn’t even in the hotel when the woman died.’
‘You didn’t ask him? Later, after the woman’s body was found, you didn’t ask if he’d been there?’
‘No!’ she said. ‘How could I? That would have been like accusing him of murder!’
After her outburst, they sat again in silence. In the garden a red squirrel balanced on a branch of one of the mature trees that lined the road. A clock in another room chimed the half hour. Time was moving on, and Connie and Alice still hadn’t been found. Ashworth found himself distracted, realized he’d lost the focus of the interview.