Silent Voices

through her depression and her hangover. She stared at him now, clear-eyed and horrified.
    ‘Some folk would think you had a motive. If it hadn’t been for her, you’d still have a job. You wouldn’t be stuck in this place living off benefit, all the world calling you names.’
    ‘No!’ Connie stood up to make her point. ‘That was down to me. If I’d followed best practice, if I’d made one phone call to Elias’s teacher, if I’d made the effort to visit in the evening when I knew I’d catch him in with Morgan, I’d still be working and I wouldn’t have had my picture all over the newspapers. I didn’t kill Elias. His mother did that. And Jenny Lister didn’t get me the sack. I managed to cock up my professional life all on my own.’
    ‘She could have backed you up a bit more, twisted the story to get you out of bother.’
    Connie smiled and he saw for the first time that she was an attractive woman. ‘Nah,’ she said, ‘that was never going to happen. Not Jenny’s style.’
    ‘Where were you yesterday morning?’ He was starting to be convinced by her story, but he wasn’t going to let that show.
    ‘What time?’
    ‘Between about eight and eleven-thirty.’
    ‘I was here until nine, when I took Alice to playgroup. That starts at nine-fifteen. I drove her up to the hall and dropped her off, then went into Hexham for an hour. A treat to myself. Window-shopping and a decent coffee. Not quite the same as going into Newcastle, but all I could manage in the time. It was a nice day, so I brought the car back here and walked into the village to collect Alice.’
    Ashworth looked out and saw that the rain had stopped. The sky – what you could see of it through the dripping trees – was starting to lighten. ‘Where did you park in Hexham?’
    ‘Next to the big supermarket, just up from the station.’
    ‘I don’t suppose you kept the parking ticket?’
    ‘I didn’t have a parking ticket!’ She was starting to get annoyed now and he liked her better this way: fiery, standing up for herself, rather than listless, all the energy sucked out of her. ‘There’s free parking there, though it’s a bit of a walk into town. I save on the parking and buy myself a coffee instead. Those are the kind of calculations I have to make, living on benefit and the pitiful maintenance my husband contributes for his daughter.’
    ‘Did you meet anyone you know?’
    ‘I don’t know anyone out here in the sticks.’
    ‘You see,’ Ashworth went on, all reason and calm, ‘Jenny Lister’s body was found in the Willows Health Club. That’s about halfway between here and Hexham. Not very far at all. You’d have passed it on your way into the town. Another coincidence, maybe?’
    ‘Yes, Sergeant,’ she said. ‘Another coincidence.’ She paused. ‘I’ve been to the Willows a couple of times. If you have dinner in the restaurant you can use the pool. That was in the old days, while I was still married, before we had Alice, when a drive into the country on a summer night was a treat.’ She got to her feet and Ashworth thought she was going to call the interview to a close, but she went into the kitchen and fetched the jug of coffee that had been keeping warm on the filter machine. She topped up his mug without asking and refilled her own. He liked milk and sugar, but she didn’t offer those and he didn’t ask.
    ‘Tell me about Jenny,’ he said. ‘What sort of woman was she?’
    ‘Efficient,’ she said. ‘Honest. Private.’
    ‘Did you like her?’
    Connie thought about that. ‘I admired her,’ she said. ‘She never let anyone get in close enough to know if we liked her or not. Nobody at work at least. That was her survival technique, I guess. Some people in social services work the other way: all their mates are people in the same business, who understand the stress and frustration. Jenny always said she wanted to leave her job at the office door. Maybe that was why she chose to live so far away from base.’ She paused before continuing. ‘Jenny was always convinced she was right. Always. She listened to the arguments, but once she’d made up her mind about a situation you couldn’t shift her.’
    Ashworth thought he had colleagues like that too. And there were plenty of people in the police service who didn’t like to mix work and home. Most of his mates were cops and that was easier because they could get the jokes, share the tension, but some officers didn’t want to know once the