Silent Voices

was writing a book about me.’ The woman smiled, a child given a sudden treat. ‘It was going to have a photograph of me on the cover and everything.’
    The prison officer appeared at the door. Even from where she sat, Vera could smell the smoke around her. She was carrying a cardboard mug of coffee and a can of Coke. ‘Everything all right in here?’ she asked breezily. She put the Coke on the bedside locker next to the fan. Another gesture of kindness that Vera failed to notice at that moment.
    ‘Did you know about this?’
    ‘What?’ The officer was immediately defensive and Vera softened her tone.
    ‘That Mattie’s social worker was planning to write a book about her, about the Elias Jones case?’
    The officer shook her head. ‘Mattie got regular visits from her social worker. We all thought that was dead kind, because no other bugger came to see her.’
    Vera turned back to the patient, who’d managed to reach the Coke and was ripping the pull-tab from the can.
    ‘Michael never came to see you then?’ she asked. ‘You never got a visit from him in prison?’
    Mattie was very still for a moment, poised with the Coke halfway to her mouth. Then she shook her head.
    ‘Did you ask him to come? Have you spoken to him on the phone? Is he still working at the same place?’
    Too many questions, Vera saw at once. Mattie couldn’t take them all in. Vera was about to start again, more slowly, when the young woman answered, moving awkwardly in the bed as she spoke.
    ‘He told me he’s got another girlfriend. She’s having his baby. He told me I shouldn’t bother him again.’
    ‘Did you tell Mrs Lister about all that?’ Vera leaned forward. She could do gentle and maternal when the situation demanded. And here they had a possible motive. If Michael Morgan was about to become a father, social services might want to be involved. They might consider the child at risk.
    ‘I was upset,’ Mattie said. ‘I’d used my phone card to speak to him and he told me about the baby. He hadn’t liked my boy and he’d said he never wanted a baby with me, but he made one with his new lass. It wasn’t fair. That afternoon Mrs Lister came, and I started crying and telling her all about it.’
    ‘When was that?’ Vera asked. ‘How long ago was that, Mattie?’
    Mattie shook her head. ‘Not very long,’ she said.
    ‘Was it Mrs Lister’s last visit to you? The one before?’
    But Mattie couldn’t say. She began to cry quietly, not this time for the dead social worker, but for herself, abandoned by the man with whom she’d fancied herself in love.
    Sal shifted uneasily, protective of the young woman in her charge, but wanting to help. ‘Mattie got upset around the time of the anniversary of Elias’s death,’ she said. ‘That was when she contacted Morgan again. I think some of the other girls had seen it on the local news and had been having a go at her.’
    Vera flashed a smile at her. ‘Thanks, pet.’ She turned away from the bed and lowered her voice. ‘If Mattie remembers anything about the social worker, get in touch with me. I need to catch her killer.’ She fished a card out of the canvas Sainsbury’s shopping bag she used as a briefcase and scribbled her personal mobile number on the back. ‘Jenny Lister was a good woman.’
    But walking down the wide, gleaming corridor of the flash new hospital, she wondered if that was true. If Jenny Lister was planning a book on the Elias Jones case, she was abusing her client’s trust for her own gain. The true-crime books about famous murders sold in thousands, and one by a social worker involved in the case would attract huge publicity. Jenny Lister could become a wealthy woman. It seemed so out of character for the person she’d thought she was getting to know that Vera could hardly believe it. But why would Mattie make up something like that?
    Vera drove fast up the A1 and, just after turning off towards Hexham, she phoned Holly. ‘You still in the Lister house?’
    ‘Yes.’ Just from the one word Vera could tell she was defensive and sulky. Ashworth would already have been in touch and would have told her to move out.
    ‘How’s Hannah this morning?’
    ‘Still pretty shell-shocked and numb, but at least she slept last night. The doctor gave her a sleeping pill and Simon persuaded her to take it.’
    ‘Is he still there too?’
    ‘He’s just left,’ Holly said. ‘His father’s just got back from working overseas and he’s gone home to