Silent Voices

shift was over. It made them a bit isolated, outsiders in the team. Had Jenny come across in that way: aloof, maybe even patronizing?
    ‘Did she talk about her family at all?’
    ‘I knew she had a daughter, but that was only because Jenny had a photo of a girl on her desk and I asked about her. And when my husband left, Jenny said the same thing had happened to her, when her child was very young. Apart from that, nothing.’
    ‘You can’t think, then, who might have wanted to kill her.’
    ‘Oh, I’m sure she had threats,’ Connie said easily, ‘over the years. We all had those.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    She looked at him as if he were stupid. ‘Our work involved removing children from their families, usually against their will. Of course there were people who hated us. We were challenging their ability to be parents, violating their homes, making them look incompetent or cruel to their neighbours. What do you think the reaction was like? Often it was violent and abusive.’ She paused for a moment. ‘But do I think one of Jenny’s clients killed her? Absolutely not. Most of them live chaotic and disorganized lives and that’s why their children are at risk. No way could they plan a murder like that. They couldn’t even get to the Willows, never mind blag their way inside the health club. I don’t know who killed Jenny Lister, but I’d be astounded if it had anything to do with her being a social worker.’
    She gathered up the mugs and took them into the kitchen, came back into the tiny living room to put on outdoor shoes. Ashworth followed her outside. He wasn’t sure it was healthy, living on this low, damp land so close to the water. The garden was overgrown. In a corner rhubarb was starting to sprout, and a few celandines were growing in the long grass. ‘Do you think you’ll be living here long-term then?’ He couldn’t see it. Like she’d said, she was more of a city girl.
    ‘God, no!’ She pulled a face. ‘But I was desperate to get away from the press, and Frank, my ex, knows the owners. I don’t think I could face a whole winter here.’
    At the small gate, which was green with lichen and soft with rot, she paused.
    ‘There was a stranger in the village,’ she said. ‘Yesterday afternoon. Just after lunch. It’s probably not important. He wasn’t looking for Jenny.’
    ‘Why don’t you tell me all the same?’
    She looked at her watch to check that she had time to wait for a couple of minutes and was reassured.
    ‘It was a bit odd. We went outside to sit after lunch – there was the first real sun of the spring – and there he was. Alice spotted him on the bridge. He said he’d come on the bus. He was looking for Veronica Eliot. She lives in the big white house by the crossroads. I told him she’d been out when I walked past. I suggested that he wait and offered him tea.’
    ‘Why would you do that?’ Ashworth disapproved of risk-taking at the best of times. A woman living on her own, it was surely crazy to invite a stranger into her home.
    ‘I’m not sure. I was lonely. I’m a pariah here since they found out about Elias. I wanted some adult company and he seemed OK. But I wasn’t going to leave Alice alone with him, so I took her in with me to make the tea. And when we got back, he’d disappeared. Like I said: odd. But maybe he saw Veronica’s car turn into her drive. Or maybe he just thought better of hanging out with a mad, desperate housewife and her child.’
    Connie gave a small, sad smile and hurried away down the muddy track.

 
Chapter Twelve
     
    Once the team briefing was over, Vera sat for a moment in her office. She wanted to sort her thoughts. She’d sent Ashworth to Barnard Bridge to talk to Connie Masters. Holly and Charlie were back at the Willows, interviewing the hotel staff members who had been absent the previous day. It seemed to Vera, looking down at the street where the weekly market was already busy, that the choice of the health club as a setting for murder was most significant. Why kill the woman there, when the culprit could be caught at any time? There must have been other, less complicated places to commit the crime. Jenny’s killer must have known she belonged to the club, or he had followed her there. That implied a stalker, a crime that was premeditated, planned over a long period. Otherwise, Vera thought, the motive was more trivial and banal, and Jenny had been killed because of something she’d witnessed on her visits