The Glass Room (Vera Stanhope 5)

he’d bought the smallholding next to Vera’s house. A city boy, his only experience of rural living had been his annual pilgrimage to the Glastonbury Festival, yet somehow he’d made a go of it. Worked from dawn to dusk and even longer. Often, coming home close to midnight after a difficult case, Vera would hear him in the barn, would tip her head round the door to say goodnight. And that brief contact allowed her to believe that her colleagues were wrong. She did have friends. She did have a life away from the job.
    ‘What do you mean?’ Vera tried to keep her voice patient, although something about a weeping man made her feel like slapping him.
    ‘She’s been away for two days. No word. I think she’s ill. She won’t talk about it.’
    ‘What sort of ill?’ A pause. ‘Cancer?’ Vera’s mother had died of cancer when she was a child. She still had a kind of superstition about speaking the word.
    He shook his head. His greying hair was pulled back into a ponytail. ‘I think it’s her nerves. Depression. She went on Monday while I was at Morpeth farmers’ market. Must have got a taxi. She said she needed some space.’
    ‘She warned you she was leaving?’
    He shook his head again. ‘Nah, she left a note.’ He pulled a scrap of paper from his jeans pocket, set it on the small table next to him, moving a mug with five-day-old coffee dregs so that Vera could see it.
    Vera recognized the writing. Joanna often communicated by notes. Purple ink and immaculate italic, spiky and beautifully formed. ‘Septic tank emptied.’ ‘Parcel in barn.’ ‘Fancy coming in for supper tonight?’ This one read: ‘Gone away for a few days. Need some space. Soup in pan. Don’t worry.’ No signature, not even J. No x.
    ‘A few days,’ Vera said. ‘She’ll be back. Or she’ll phone.’
    He looked up at her bleakly. ‘She hasn’t been taking her drugs.’
    ‘What drugs?’ Vera knew Jack smoked dope. Their house smelled of it. Sometimes, after a few beers too many, he rolled a giant spliff when he was in her place, not thinking that she might be compromised. Once he’d even offered it to her. She’d been tempted, but had turned him down. She knew she had an addictive personality; best to keep her vices legal. She’d presumed Joanna smoked too, but couldn’t remember having seen it. Red wine was Joanna’s poison, drunk from a large Bristol Blue glass. ‘My only inheritance,’ she’d said once, holding the glass to the light. ‘All that I have left from home.’
    ‘Pills,’ Jack said. ‘Lithium. To keep her on an even keel, like.’
    ‘And that’s why you’re so worried?’
    ‘I’ve been worried for weeks. She’s been acting weird. Not talking. And now she’s disappeared.’
    It had been clear to Vera from the moment she’d seen the couple that Jack adored Joanna. He stole looks at her, basked in her presence. She was big-boned with long, corn-coloured hair worn in a plait down her back. Dramatically dark eyebrows. A wide mouth and large brown eyes. All her features big and generous – hands and feet to match. She wore red, boat-shaped leather shoes and patchwork dungarees, hand-knitted sweaters in bright colours. If Vera had been asked to describe her in one word, it would have been ‘jolly’. She’d never thought of Joanna as being depressed. Maybe a bit the other way, laughing too loudly sometimes and always the last one to leave a party, hugs and kisses all round. Not really in a sexy way, but flamboyant. Vera thought in an earlier life Joanna could have been in the theatre, or an artist. Or a lady. She spoke like an aristocrat, the sort of voice you’d have heard on the BBC in the Sixties. But life before Jack was never mentioned.
    Vera went back to the bags still standing on the doorstep and pulled out a couple of bottles of beer. There was a bottle opener on the coffee table next to the mug. So much for her planned evening of domesticity: changing the sheets on her bed, sticking a few towels in the washing machine.
    ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Tell me all about it.’
    ‘I never knew what she saw in me.’ His voice was weedy, the Liverpool accent even more pronounced.
    ‘Stop fishing for compliments!’ Vera barked. ‘I’ve no time for games.’
    He looked up at her, shocked. He’d expected sympathy and an easy ride.
    ‘Where did you meet her?’ Vera wasn’t sure how relevant this was, but she was curious anyway and thought it would get him talking.
    ‘Marseilles,’ he