Silent Voices

long and low. It had the feel of a rather grand student bedsit. A guitar lay on the floor next to a pile of CDs. There was a television and PC. At one end a workbench with a kettle and microwave, a small fridge. Flat-pack bookshelves. The posters on the walls seemed to date back to school days. Rock musicians and weird prints that meant nothing to Joe. On one wall a huge collage made of scraps of fabric and shiny paper in vivid colours, arresting and vital. At first it seemed to have no apparent form, but staring, Joe made out a huge, smiling face. Karen saw him looking at it.
    ‘Hannah did that,’ she said. ‘She made it for her GCSE exam. Danny said he liked it and she gave it to him for a birthday present.’ There was a pause. ‘Sometimes I think things would have been different if he’d stayed with Hannah. That’s when we started to lose him: when she told him she didn’t want to see him any more. It was as if he gave up on us then.’
    ‘But he had a new girlfriend in Bristol?’ Joe wanted to believe that Danny had been happy at university.
    ‘Oh, yes.’ Karen walked around the room, picking up small objects. ‘And she was lovely too. But more like a trophy. Something else for him to possess. He’d never have been able to possess Hannah.’

 
Chapter Thirty-One
     
    Sitting in the car outside the Shaw house, Joe Ashworth tried to imagine what it must have been like living there for the last few years. Derek, the strong man, who’d built houses, made money, provided well for his family, suddenly seeing himself as a failure. Living with dreams of what might have been. The woman, forced to give up the easy life and take work she despised. Had she blamed Derek? Secretly, and hating herself for it, had her resentment eaten into the marriage? Led her to find a lover, start an affair? Ashworth wouldn’t have been surprised. Then there was the boy, bright and charming and used to getting everything he wanted, thwarted first by Hannah and then by the change in his parents’ fortunes. Ashworth wished Vera had been with him for the interview. She would have teased out the implications of the situation. She would have made more sense of it.
    He started the car and drove along the valley towards Barnard Bridge. Connie’s Nissan was still missing from outside the cottage, but he stopped there anyway, knocked on the door and looked through the windows. The post was sticking out through the letter-box. He pushed it through. Sitting in the garden, he worked through the names of Connie’s friends given to him by Frank, calling each in turn. It didn’t take long. There were only three of them, all women, and none had seen Connie for a while. ‘We sort of lost touch when she moved out west,’ one said, and that was the gist of each of the responses. They felt awkward because they hadn’t been better friends. Joe realized again how isolated Connie had become, too proud to keep up with the friends from her old life and ignored by the women in her new one. He tried Connie’s mobile once again, but the call was immediately transferred to the answering service.
    On impulse he walked across the lane and up the drive to the big house where the Eliots lived. One time he’d have been nervous. He hadn’t liked policing when work took him into smart houses, was happier in the council estates, the small miners’ cottages. But Vera had worked on him: You’re as good as any of them. Don’t be intimidated by money. It doesn’t mean they’re brighter than you, and it certainly doesn’t make them better people.
    Veronica Eliot opened the door. She didn’t invite him in and he felt about as welcome as a double-glazing salesman. At least the Shaws had been pleased to see him.
    ‘I wondered if you have any idea where Connie Masters might be?’ he asked.
    ‘Why would I?’
    ‘You were at her house yesterday afternoon when Jenny Lister’s bag was found. Being neighbourly. She’s having a tough time at the moment. I thought she might have told you. If she was hiding out from the press.’
    ‘I don’t think the press have got to her yet.’ Veronica seemed less hostile. Had she thought she might be the subject of his attention? ‘She didn’t mention anything to me about going away.’
    ‘Is there anywhere in the village she might be?’
    Veronica appeared to consider, but he could tell she had already dismissed the idea out of hand. ‘She hasn’t made any close friends here. I must say, it seems