The Glass Room (Vera Stanhope 5)

out?’
    ‘No, there was a jacket in the cloakroom downstairs for folk to borrow. I took that.’ Lenny looked at Joe as if he were daft.
    ‘What did you do with it when you came back inside?’
    ‘I put it back!’
    ‘And then?’ Holly asked, determined now to have the last word. ‘What did you do then?’
    ‘I went to bed,’ Lenny said. ‘I couldn’t make the night last any longer. It was going to end, wasn’t it? I had to get ready to go back to the real world.’
    ‘What time was that?’ Joe wondered if the week at the Writers’ House had been a good thing for Lenny. Had it set up expectations that would never be realized?
    ‘Twelve-thirty. I looked at my watch when I got into my room.’
    ‘Did you listen to any music when you were sitting in the drawing room?’ Joe asked.
    ‘No. Why?’ Now he just looked confused.
    Joe looked at Holly. She shook her head to show that there were no further questions.
    Joe ended up giving Lenny a lift back to his flat in Red Row. Lenny said he didn’t have a car any more. His ex-wife had offered him her old one, but he couldn’t afford to run it. They dropped Mark Winterton at the Writers’ House to pick up his Volvo. The lane was blocked with vehicles. A reporter from BBC Look North was doing a piece to camera with the house in the background. They watched him straighten his tie, then nod to the cameraman. At last the media all moved aside to let the car past. Joe thought Lenny might be interested in the activity, but he sat in the passenger seat, listless and unengaged.
    Red Row had once been a mining community just inland from the big sweep of Druridge Bay. Recently there’d been a new private development, big houses all looking out to the sea, but the village itself still looked sad. As if there were no longer any point to it. A main street with red-bricked terraced houses and a small council estate. A boarded-up shop.
    ‘Do you want to come in?’ Lenny sounded eager, but he expected refusal.
    ‘Aye, why not? I could use a cup of tea.’
    And before the words were out of Joe’s mouth, Lenny was knocking at his neighbour’s door to scrounge some milk. The old lady who lived there seemed pleased to see him: ‘Eh, Lenny lad, it’s good to have you home.’
    Sitting in the small, cold room, Joe wondered what he was doing there. Was this about pity for a lonely man? ‘We talked to your wife,’ he said. The words were out of his mouth too quickly. He hadn’t thought them through. This sounded like interference.
    But Lenny didn’t seem offended.
    ‘She’s a grand woman,’ he said. ‘A great mother.’
    ‘You don’t think you could still make a go of it, the two of you?’ Joe wondered what Vera would make of this. You’ve turned counsellor now, have you, Joey boy? Well, maybe you could always get a job with Relate.
    Lenny looked up at him and grinned sadly. ‘Likely too much water under the bridge,’ he said. ‘And I can’t fancy being a kept man any more. It might have been different if I’d got the contract with the publisher. That would’ve put us on an equal footing. You know what I mean?’
    Joe nodded.
    ‘Not that I don’t dream about it,’ Lenny went on. ‘Late at night. Not that I wouldn’t do anything to make it right.’
    Driving back to Police Headquarters, Joe Ashworth thought Lenny was a romantic, the sort of dangerous romantic who might kill for the notion of the perfect relationship. But Joe couldn’t see how the deaths of Tony Ferdinand or Miranda Barton could help him achieve his aim of a perfect marriage.

Chapter Twenty-Seven
    Vera had agreed to meet Paul Rutherford at the Lit & Phil Library in Newcastle. She’d suggested the venue. He’d said he’d only have an hour spare before he took the train south, and the library was just round the corner from the Central Station. The Lit & Phil was a Newcastle institution, a private subscription library. Hector had been a member, had dragged her there for lectures and meetings until she’d been old enough to leave alone in the house in the hills. Usually Vera despised the things and places Hector loved, on principle, but the library still held a place in her affections. Each year she renewed her membership. If she was struggling to make sense of a case, occasionally she’d go down the stairs to the Silence Room in the basement, and ponder the details of the investigation away from interruption. She recognized some of the regulars – the tall, skinny man who was