Silent Voices

look like lovers – the younger married man and the lively divorcee, both looking for fun or passion or companionship. Didn’t such people meet in hotels like this? For the first time he could almost understand the attraction of such an affair, the excitement.
    ‘I can’t be long. My husband will be expecting his tea on the table.’ Shattering the fantasy. Why had he assumed she’d be divorced?
    ‘How long have you worked at the Willows?’
    She pulled a face. ‘Two years.’
    ‘You don’t enjoy it?’
    ‘Like I said, it’s pretty tedious. But I’m not qualified to do anything else. I thought I’d spend my days as a kept woman. Maybe I’d find anything that involved sucking up to a boss a bit hard to take.’
    She paused, but he didn’t interrupt. He could tell she liked an audience. She’d keep talking.
    And she did: ‘My husband has a property business. He bought up a bunch of cheap Tyneside flats before the boom, did them up to a basic standard and let them out to students. But lots of the work was done on credit. He always thought he’d be able to sell on, if things got tight.’
    She paused again and this time he did stick in a few words. Just to show he was listening. ‘But when things got tight, nobody wanted to buy . . .’
    ‘Yeah. Suddenly the cash dried up. It was a shock to the system. No more holidays abroad, no new flash cars. We even had to sack the cleaner.’ She grinned at him to show she was mocking herself, the whole crazy lifestyle. It was clear that she hadn’t been brought up to money.
    She continued more seriously: ‘I mean, we survived, but it wasn’t easy. Then Danny went off to uni and we had his fees to pay. He’s our only son and we didn’t want him to go short. Jerry was working his bollocks off, so the only thing to do was for me to get off my backside and get a job. I’d been a member of the Willows Health Club, so when I saw this post advertised I thought: That’ll do for me. And it’s OK. But I hadn’t reckoned on the boredom factor.’
    She stared out of the window. He saw Keating, the pathologist, arriving at last. He’d been delayed on another case, and Jenny Lister was still waiting for him in the steam room.
    ‘Did you know the woman who died?’
    ‘I recognized the face. Wouldn’t have known the name.’
    ‘What do you remember about her?’
    ‘She was always in a hurry and she never stayed long. And she was polite. Always gave me a smile and a wave, even when she was just swiping her card through the barrier. Treated me like a person, not just a bit of the machinery.’
    Now Ashworth had to come to the sensitive bit. A woman was going to protect her son, wasn’t she? Whatever he’d done. ‘You got a holiday job here for Danny?’
    ‘Yes.’ And already she was on the defensive, looking up at him as if to say: So what? No harm in that, is there?
    ‘How’s he liking it?’
    ‘He’s a young lad. He’d rather be in bed or out with his mates. But it was his idea. He wants to go travelling in the summer and he knows we can’t pay for it. So it’s down to him.’
    ‘We’ll have to talk to him,’ Ashworth said. ‘He cleaned the pool area. He might have seen something.’
    ‘You don’t need my permission to do that. He’s nearly twenty. An adult. He’ll have started his shift now, if they’ve let him into the hotel.’
    Ashworth knew that they’d let Danny in and that he was sitting in Taylor’s office. He was next on the list for interview.
    ‘What do you know about the thieving that’s been going on here?’
    She drained her glass and set it on the table, kept her voice relaxed. ‘That sort of thing goes on everywhere, doesn’t it? Petty. There’s all sorts work here. Can’t see what it might have to do with murder.’
    ‘But it’ll have caused bad feeling. Gossip. Not nice to think that one of your mates might be stealing from you.’
    She shrugged. ‘I try not to listen too much to gossip.’ Once again she gathered up the big squashy bag. ‘If there’s nothing else, there’s a deep bath and a chilled glass waiting for me at home. One’s never quite enough for me.’ He stayed where he was and watched from the window until she emerged from the main door of the hotel. She took a mobile phone from the bag, hit a button and put it to her ear. At the car she turned and he could see that she was frowning and talking furiously. He’d have bet his police pension that she was speaking to her son.

 
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