The Glass Room (Vera Stanhope 5)

happen, this party on the coast. Like a chemical reaction. Shake the bottle and wait for the fizz.’ Then she’d paused. ‘I need to know that all the elements will be there. All the suspects. I don’t want to contact the Kerr woman again. She already thinks I’m taking too much of an interest. But your Nina will know.’
    She’s not my Nina , he’d wanted to say, but he knew that would only provoke another caustic comment.
    Instead he’d fought back the only way he knew, by turning Vera’s own words against her. ‘I thought we were going to sort this one with traditional detective work. Knocking on doors, talking to witnesses.’
    ‘Aye, well.’ She’d looked at him, frowning. ‘That’s getting us nowhere quickly, and you know me. Patience was never one of my virtues.’
    So he’d phoned the university and found out that Ms Backworth had tutorials all day. And had driven in immediately, knowing he might bottle it if he gave himself time to think. He’d replayed his last encounter with Nina in his head since the group from the Writers’ House had broken up. Lust that felt like adultery. How his colleagues would mock him if they knew! They took one-night stands and affairs in their stride, and he hadn’t even touched the woman.
    He reached the multi-storey car park and tried to decide how he felt about Nina Backworth now. There’d been the sudden thrill of attraction when she’d come out of her office in the university. So upright. Her body held straight by the tailored jacket, the narrow skirt, the black leather boots. And then what? Only an anxiety that he was making a fool of himself. She’d sat in the cafe, cool as ice, and he’d burbled questions that seemed to come from nowhere.
    His phone rang as he reached his car. Vera, of course. Still impatient. Still not trusting him to carry out the simplest of instructions.
    ‘Yes?’ He stood, leaning against a concrete pillar, looking down at the city.
    ‘Well,’ she said, ‘how did it go?’
    ‘They’ll all be there. Rickard, Winterton, Thomas, Joanna Tobin, Chrissie Kerr.’
    ‘And your friend Nina?’
    ‘Of course,’ he said, though it was impossible to consider Nina a suspect. She’d been a victim. That’s why she was camping out in a strange house, why she couldn’t return to her own home.
    ‘I’m going to the Writers’ House tomorrow morning,’ she said. ‘I want to talk to Alex. And get a feel for the place again. If you fancy coming.’
    ‘Sure.’
    ‘What are your plans for the rest of the afternoon?’
    ‘Why?’ Joe could tell from her voice that she had plans for him. He didn’t say that it felt like evening to him, not afternoon, and that his shift was nearly over.
    ‘I want you to call in on Lenny Thomas,’ she said. ‘He’s got no alibi for the dead cat or the break-in at Nina Backworth’s place, and Holly said he seemed shifty when she talked to him. But you know Holly: she hasn’t got the gentlest of interviewing techniques. She makes me feel shifty. I’d like a second opinion.’
    Ashworth felt himself smiling. Above him a plane was approaching Newcastle airport to the west, dual landing lights flashing as regular as a lighthouse beam. He knew Vera was as fickle as any lover, but he liked it when he was in favour. Couldn’t help himself.
    ‘Sure,’ he said again.
    The flats in Red Row were quiet and most of the curtains were drawn. Climbing the stairs, he heard the occasional murmur of the television behind closed doors. A new headline on the national news to replace the Writers’ House murders. There was still heavy press interest, though it was mostly local now. On one of the doors someone had hung a Christmas wreath. Joe thought it’d be dead and brown by the beginning of December, but coming closer he saw that the holly leaves were plastic. A sudden squawk of a baby reminded him of his wife and the kids at home. Then silence again.
    Lenny answered as soon as Joe knocked. He was in the narrow corridor in the flat, wearing a coat.
    ‘On your way out?’ Joe said.
    ‘Nah, I’ve just got in.’ He stood for a moment, then his eyes slid away from Joe’s face. Even Joe thought he looked shifty. ‘What is it?’
    ‘A couple of questions. You know how it is.’
    ‘Not really.’
    Lenny frowned, and Joe wondered what was bothering him. What was giving him the guilty conscience? Maybe he’d found another woman and, despite the divorce from Helen, he considered that a betrayal. Helen had said he