Silent Voices

miserable she’d been, and thought how brave she’d been to hold things together. ‘Yeah, I asked her back. She was here when Alice found the bag.’
    ‘And what did she make of that?’ There was a glint in Vera’s eye: the wolf was sensing her prey.
    ‘She was anxious about Alice playing so close to the water,’ Connie replied. ‘Then later, when I said I was going to call the police, she said she’d go home, that she didn’t want to interfere. She’d only be in the way.’
    ‘Tactful.’ Vera nodded again. ‘It’s a real nuisance for us when folk hang around to watch the action.’
    ‘She offered to take Alice with her.’
    ‘Kind,’ Vera said. ‘Thoughtful.’ There was a pause. ‘I suppose you saw her coming. You’ve got a view down the track from the big house.’
    ‘No.’ Ashworth thought Connie understood where this was leading, but she pretended ignorance. ‘Veronica was early. I was still clearing up at the back of the house. She came to the kitchen door and gave me a bit of a shock.’
    Vera gave the huge grin of approval that made everyone included in it feel like the most important person in the world. ‘So, hypothetically of course, Veronica could have hoyed the bag into the weed patch on her way round the side of the cottage. She wouldn’t know the bairn would be playing out there this afternoon.’
    ‘Hypothetically,’ Connie said, ‘I suppose she could.’
    They stood up. ‘Does the name Danny Shaw mean anything to you?’ Vera asked.
    Connie frowned. ‘No. Should it?’
    ‘You’ll see it on the news first thing in the morning. He was a student. He was strangled this afternoon at his home just up the valley.’
    Connie was suddenly tense. Ashworth could see that her instinct was to gather up her child and run away with her, to take her somewhere safe.
    ‘The same killer?’
    ‘Not necessarily,’ Vera said. ‘But the cases are linked. We’re sure the cases are linked.’
    Of course the cases are linked, Ashworth thought. But proving the connection was another matter entirely.

 
Chapter Twenty-Seven
     
    Ashworth had expected Vera to drag him to the Eliot house immediately, although it was so late. He’d sensed her excitement when Connie Masters had described Veronica’s visit, and Vera had never been the most patient of people. But standing by the cars outside the cottage, she surprised him by saying they’d call it a day.
    ‘You don’t want to speak to the Eliot woman?’
    Vera looked up to where the big house gleamed white in the darkness. ‘Do you think she was staring at us earlier? Is she wondering what we’ve found out about her? I bet she was upstairs at one of the bedroom windows with a pair of binoculars.’
    ‘Maybe.’
    ‘We’ll let her stew then, shall we? Give her a sleepless night and go to see her tomorrow.’
    ‘Do you fancy a pint?’ he asked. His way of making his peace with Vera. He’d sensed her antagonism earlier in the day. They were like a bickering married couple, he thought. In the end, they couldn’t survive without each other and one of them had to give in. Usually, it was him.
    ‘Thought you’d never ask, pet. Tell you what, it’s my treat. I got a few bottles of Wylam in last time I was in that shop in Hexham where they do the fancy local produce. Come back to mine and I’ll do you a sandwich too.’
    And that way you don’t have to drive home after we’ve been to the pub. But he didn’t say anything. He’d have to drive back anyway – Sarah would kill him if he turned up pissed in a taxi. He’d already phoned her to say he’d be very late. She wouldn’t be expecting him yet. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Why not?’
    Vera’s house was the most inconvenient place to live in the whole county. Stuck halfway up a hill along a track that was always blocked by the first snow and that turned into a river as soon as it rained. For her personal use she still drove Hector’s Land Rover, and he’d never known her not show up for work because of the weather. Joe suspected the dippy hippies turned out with shovels to dig her out, in recompense for her turning a blind eye to what went on in their house, or maybe she camped out in the pub in the nearest village if the forecast was bad. She would never move now. She’d grown up in the hills and got twitchy and bad-tempered if she had to leave them for more than a day.
    But the view was fantastic, Joe had to give her that. Too dark to appreciate it now, but he remembered it