Silent Voices

seemed like Freya’s thing. It took me until half an hour ago to track down Natalie, the teacher. That’s why I was a bit late.’ Holly was about to launch into a detailed explanation of her cleverness in getting hold of the woman, but Vera interrupted her.
    ‘Go back to the hotel first thing tomorrow. See what time the girl left the health club that morning. It must have been before I found the body, because we’d have noticed her among the other witnesses. Did she drive there or get a lift? And let’s make absolutely certain Danny Shaw wasn’t around. We know his shift didn’t start until later and he wouldn’t have been working, but maybe he had another reason for being in the hotel. If he saw Freya commit the murder, we’ve got a motive for that killing too.’
    Ashworth could sense ideas fizzing around Vera’s brain. She couldn’t stop talking, like his kids after too much sugar, too many e-numbers. ‘When you’ve got everything straight, call me and we’ll go to Tynemouth and talk to Freya. Or if the college has started for the new term, we’ll see her there. Better if we can catch her away from Morgan. There are too many bloody coincidences here.’
    ‘You don’t think Freya’s a plausible suspect?’ Ashworth interrupted her. ‘Why would she kill Jenny Lister?’
    Vera spat the words back at him. ‘Because Morgan told her to. Because he has a way of making vulnerable lasses do what he wants. He got Mattie Jones to kill her own son, for Christ’s sake!’
    Joe wanted to say they had no evidence for that: Vera should be careful. But he could tell she was in no mood to listen.

 
Chapter Twenty-Six
     
    It was almost dark. Joe Ashworth stood next to the unsteady wrought-iron table in Connie Masters’s garden and watched the CSI examine the patch of weeds where Jenny Lister’s bag still lay. Though he thought it would all be a waste of time. It was nothing more than an elaborate show: the investigator in his suit and bootees, looking like a giant Teletubby. He was working by the light of a strong torch now. What more could he hope to find? It seemed obvious to Joe that the bag had been thrown into the vegetation from the road, otherwise how could the cow parsley have seemed undisturbed from outside? So there would be no footwear prints, no traces at all left by the murderer, if indeed it had been the murderer who had dumped the bag.
    Vera had decided they should drive here once the meeting in Kimmerston was over. He’d agreed reluctantly, partly because he was scared that she’d ask Holly instead if he refused, partly because he didn’t have the energy to put up a fight. He found himself depressed by his own cynicism. Usually his enthusiasm for work, his place as Vera’s second-in-command, her confidant and her surrogate son, kept him going through the tedious phases of an investigation. It was his role to motivate and encourage her, to tell her she was a genius, to keep her on track. This time he felt as if all the enthusiasm had been sucked out of him. Vera would put that down to the landscape, inland, low and waterlogged: What you need, Joey boy, is a good east wind to blow away the cobwebs. Ashworth thought it would take more to lift his mood than a walk on the beach with a wind from the sea.
    In contrast, Vera was still fizzing. She stood beside him, yelling to the man on the other side of the burn.
    ‘Can you tell how long it was there?’
    ‘Not precisely.’ This CSI was new. Joe hadn’t seen him before. He seemed bemused by Vera’s antics, regarded her rather as if there was a hostile wild animal, pleased she was trapped on the other side of the burn. ‘Not yet.’
    ‘I’m looking for a notebook,’ she shouted. ‘A4 hardback. I need it before the water gets in and it rots away to nothing.’
    Joe knew the notebook wouldn’t be there. The murderer was no fool. It was hard maybe to dispose of leather, but paper and cardboard could be burned away to nothing. Why risk dumping it?
    He saw the CSI squat to look in the bag. Now the vegetation surrounded him, so all they could catch were glimpses of his blue suit, and he looked like a great blue bird on its nest.
    The CSI stood up and shook his head. ‘No notebook,’ he said. ‘You can have the other contents when we get it back.’
    Vera took the news more philosophically than Ashworth had expected. There was no ranting. Her fury seemed to have left as soon as it had appeared. It never suited her to be caged inside the