Silent Voices

have excused himself from the lounge to take the call, would be standing in a narrow hall, the residents on the other side of the door straining to hear every word.
    ‘Give me half an hour,’ she said. ‘I want a word with the ex-social worker you took such a shine to. Then I’m planning a visit to Michael Morgan and I want you along. Charlie can carry on there. I’ve sent Holly to talk to Lawrence May, the guy who was Jenny’s boyfriend.’
    On the way to Connie’s cottage she drove past the Eliot place. There was a new car on the drive of the white house, something low and sporty. The master of the house had obviously returned, and inside the family was probably celebrating with a special lunch, while Hannah mourned for her mother.
    Vera had grown up in the hills and these low places, shut in by trees, gave her the creeps. She wouldn’t want to live so close to the river; imagined floods, biting insects, disease. Even the lambs seemed overfed and fat.
    When she talked to Ashworth after her interview with Connie, he said he wanted to take his own car to Tynemouth, the town where Morgan lived and practised. It was miles away, right on the coast, and he could go straight home from there. He’d had enough late nights. His wife would kill him. Vera insisted he go with her. ‘We can’t go into this cold. This could be it, man. We need at least the chance to talk it through.’
    ‘Couldn’t it wait until the morning? Give us a chance to prepare properly for the interview?’
    But, standing outside the shop in the weak spring sunshine, Vera knew she couldn’t wait a whole night before confronting Morgan. It would kill her. Sometimes she had this reckless streak. Impulsive. The sensible thing would be to wait, to consider all the angles; she couldn’t do it.
    ‘If it’s a late finish, I’ll drop you home,’ she said. ‘Then pick you up in the morning. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if you have to leave your car here overnight.’
    And he had no argument to that. He climbed into the car beside her. She thought he was as eager as she was to talk to Morgan. He just had to go through the motions of putting his family first.
    ‘So what did you get from the house-to-house?’ Vera knew she was a good driver. Instinctive. These small roads could be tricky if you didn’t know them, but she couldn’t afford to hang around. Then she sensed Ashworth tense beside her and put her foot on the brake, reduced the speed a bit. She needed him to concentrate. She listened to his account of the conversation with Jenny’s neighbour.
    ‘She thought Lister had fallen for one of her clients?’
    ‘She wasn’t that certain,’ Ashworth said. ‘Just that it was someone unsuitable.’
    ‘But she wouldn’t have plucked the idea of a client out of thin air!’ Vera was excited now. ‘Jenny might have said something, dropped a hint that made Hilda think that way. And it stuck in her mind, even though she couldn’t remember the original comment.’
    ‘Maybe.’ Vera saw that Ashworth thought she was making too much of it. He was her restraining influence. Sometimes, she thought, he was her conscience.
    ‘Connie said that Jenny met Michael Morgan,’ Vera said. She kept her voice calm. Didn’t want Ashworth to think she was over-reacting. ‘Apparently she wanted to do her own assessment of the man.’
    ‘You think Lister was having an affair with Morgan?’ His voice was sharp and incredulous.
    ‘I’m keeping an open mind,’ she said. ‘But if the bastard killed her, I’ll have him.’
    Tynemouth was a pretty little town, with a wide front street and bonny Georgian houses. A castle and a priory, both in ruins. Tea shops and posh frock shops and a converted church on one corner, called the Land of Green Ginger, where you could buy antiques and books and fancy children’s clothes. In the evening the bars and the restaurants pulled in the younger crowd, but this time of day, so early in the season, it was the haunt of elderly ladies and middle-aged couples walking hand in hand, window-shopping. The same sort of clientele, Vera thought, as the Willows Health Club.
    They found Morgan’s place in a narrow terraced street just off the sea front. Tynemouth Acupuncture in discreet letters on a classy brass plaque next to the freshly painted door. It seemed he must live in the flat upstairs. The window was open and they could hear music. If you could call it music. Something electronic and repetitive. The clinic