The Glass Room (Vera Stanhope 5)

said. ‘A cafe by the harbour. I’d been working out of there, just finished the contract with the shipping company, money in my pocket. She was sitting alone, halfway through a bottle of wine. Drinking to get drunk, not because she was enjoying a glass with her fish supper. She heard me talk to the waiter, realized I’d never get myself understood and translated for me. She’s always been a bit of a show-off. We got talking. You know.’
    ‘What was she doing in Marseilles?’
    ‘She’d run away from her husband,’ Jack said. ‘Some rich bastard.’ He changed his voice, made it music-hall posh: ‘ He was heading up the office in Paris. Some businessman. Or banker. Or wanker. Marseilles was about as far away from him as she could get.’
    ‘Why didn’t she go back to the UK?’ Vera thought if you left your man, you’d want friends about you. Family even.
    ‘Nothing for her there. She’s like the black sheep in her family. They threatened to have her sectioned if she left her husband. You know, like locked up in a loony bin.’ He paused. ‘She tried to kill herself. There’s a scar on her wrist. I saw it that first time, sitting in the sun outside the cafe in Marseilles. It’s still there. She calls it her war wound.’
    ‘I’ve never noticed.’
    ‘That’s why she always wears all those bangles. Anyway, that was a long time ago. I got her sorted out. Took her to the GP. She’s fine if she takes her pills. They said she had bipolar disorder. I dunno, I’d have gone crazy if I’d lived what she’d been through.’
    ‘But she’s stopped taking the pills?’
    ‘Aye. Says she’s okay now and doesn’t need them.’ He paused again and looked up, straight at Vera. ‘I think there’s another man.’ Then: ‘I think she wants the high of being in love. That’s why she stopped taking the lithium.’
    ‘Where would she meet another man?’ Vera thought he was letting his imagination run wild. ‘Besides Chris in the pub and Arthur the vet, who does she ever meet?’
    ‘She has her own friends,’ Jack said. ‘Her own interests. That was the deal from the start. I wasn’t going to run her life for her.’ He hesitated. ‘Last week she was on the phone and hung up when I came into the room. She wouldn’t say who it was.’
    ‘So where do you think she’s gone?’ Vera realized she’d finished the beer. She thought she’d like to get rid of Jack before she opened another. Then she’d be able to enjoy it in peace.
    ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘If I knew, I’d go and find her.’
    ‘Even though you don’t want to run her life for her?’ Vera looked at him, challenging him to come up with a rational answer. ‘Maybe it’s just as she says in the note, and she needs a few days away.’ She was thinking it would be easy enough for her to find out where Joanna had run away to. There was only one taxi firm within ten miles of the farm and everyone used it. If she had a word with Tommy Wooler, she’d soon know where Jo was hiding out. If Jack hadn’t been so anxious, he’d have thought of that too.
    ‘She’s stopped taking her pills,’ he said again, bending forward to make sure Vera understood the gravity of his words. ‘She’s been up and down for days: one minute high as a kite, singing and laughing, the next all angry and shouting the odds. She’s not herself. I’m not going to drag her back against her will. Do you think I’d live with her if she didn’t want to be with me? Do you think I’d force her to be unhappy? Look, I know you think I’m a soft git, but I’d die for Joanna Tobin.’ He paused for breath. ‘I’m worried about her, about what she might do to herself.’
    ‘You think she might attempt suicide again?’
    ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘That’s what I think. If it doesn’t work out for her. If whatever she’s dreaming about doesn’t happen.’
    Vera pushed herself to her feet. There was frozen stuff in her bags that would soon be melting. ‘So what do you want me to do?’
    He looked at her as if she was mad. ‘Find her, of course. Make sure she’s safe.’
    ‘And then?’
    ‘That’s all.’ He’d stood too and they’d moved to the front door. Outside it was freezing and the sky was spattered with stars. ‘Just make sure she’s safe.’

Chapter Two
    God , Vera thought, if any of the others considered doing this – going freelance, playing the private eye – I’d give them such a bollocking. She stood in the lean-to putting the