Silent Voices

object that was a work of art, not science. The bag – along with the notebook – was probably in a landfill somewhere and would never be seen again.
    Joe Ashworth was already waiting for her outside Danny Shaw’s house and she got into his car to talk before they went in. The house was grander than she’d expected, an extended detached cottage with a bit of an orchard at the back. Move it halfway up a mountain and she’d have been prepared to live there herself. It stood in a valley on the edge of a hamlet halfway between Barnard Bridge and the Willows, surrounded by established trees.
    She nodded towards it. ‘I thought you said they’d fallen on hard times since the recession.’
    ‘Probably mortgaged to the hilt,’ he said. ‘Maybe they see it as an asset to hold on to. But that’s why the mother got the job at the Willows.’
    ‘She’ll be at work now?’
    ‘I assume so.’
    Out of the car, there was that cacophony of woodland birdsong that seemed to be a soundtrack to this case. She tried not to hear it, refusing to take her father’s test. The garden was wild; the lawn hadn’t had its first cut of the spring and there were weeds poking through the paving stones of the path that led from the front gate. There was the remnant of an untidy bonfire in one corner. Maybe once they’d had a weekly gardener, but that had probably been one of the expenses to go. Nearer the house they heard music.
    ‘Bingo!’ she said. ‘Not a wasted trip then.’
    Danny was sitting outside on a paved terrace, a portable CD player on the table beside him. His legs were stretched so that his feet rested on another wooden garden chair and there was an open book on his knee. But that was lying page-down. And although his face was turned away from her, she sensed that he was sleeping. There wasn’t much warmth in the sun and he was wearing a big grey jersey, his chin buried in the collar.
    ‘You’ve got to make the most of it this time of year, haven’t you?’ Vera perched on the table. It rocked under her weight. The boy didn’t reply.
    There was a moment of anger. Cocky little bastard. Even if he’d been asleep the question would have woken him.
    ‘Talk to me, lad!’
    Still no response. It seemed to take her an age to realize what had happened. She reached out to feel for a pulse, had the sensation of cold, dead flesh under her fingers, but still she didn’t believe it. She lifted his eyelids and saw the red pinpricks in the whites of his eyes and pulled back the deep collar of his sweater to see the line around his neck. Only then did it hit her, like a punch in the gut, that Danny had been killed too. Strangled in the same way as Jenny Lister. This time, the death was her responsibility, her failure. The music from the CD player thumped in her ears, taunting her, drowning out the sound of the birds. She knew better than to touch it. There could be a partial fingerprint on the flat plastic switch. But the noise was driving her crazy and she walked away from it, back towards the road, just pulling herself together sufficiently to shout to Joe, ‘Stay there. I’ll call it in.’
    Standing by her car, waiting for the CSIs – the hoopla of experts who gathered at a murder like raptors over a dead sheep – she wished for the first time in ten years that she still smoked. She hadn’t known Danny Shaw, but his death moved her more than any she’d encountered professionally. She’d been cruising on this case. It hadn’t even crossed her mind that there might be another killing. Now her mind raced. Why was Danny Shaw murdered? For something he’d seen? For something he’d known?
    There was the sound of a car in the road. Vera expected it to be the community officers she’d requested to secure the scene, but it was small and green, and Danny’s mother was inside.
    Karen Shaw was out of it like a shot. ‘Can I help you?’ Prickly, ready to pick a fight, assuming Vera was there to hassle her son. Which of course she had been. Then she seemed to sense Vera’s mood. She stood in the middle of the road. ‘What’s happened? Where’s my boy?’
    Vera couldn’t find the words to answer. Before Vera could stop her, Karen had let herself into the house and was running through it screaming for her son.
    By the time Vera reached her she’d gone into the garden through a French window in the dining room and Joe Ashworth had her in his arms. She was very small; her head just came up to his chest. He held her