Ann Cleeves - Silent Voices

Vera was so intrigued that she was tempted to bang on the door to demand information about Connie Masters. But that was clearly what Veronica had been hoping for, and Vera refused to give her the satisfaction. Instead she got into her car and drove away slowly, hoping the scatter of gravel wasn’t chipping the paintwork on her flash new car.

At the crossroads at the edge of the village, she paused to take her bearings. In the cottage squatting in the low ground next to the river on the other side of the road an upstairs light was switched on. It made her realize that it was later than she’d thought. Looking at the clock on the dashboard, she supposed that Ashworth would have finished at the Willows and would already be on his way home to his neat little box on a neat little housing estate just outside Kimmerston. She’d catch up with him in the morning. In the cottage, silhouetted against the light behind, she saw a woman and a child, and was overwhelmed by a sudden sense of loss for a childhood she’d never experienced. The woman in the cottage stood with her arms wrapped around the girl as if protecting her from the world outside the window. Hector hadn’t meant to be cruel, but he’d been careless and Vera had been left to fend for herself.

Ashworth wasn’t on his way home, as Vera had supposed. He was in the steam room, still looking down at Jenny Lister’s body, standing next to Keating the pathologist. The doctor was a rugby-playing Ulsterman usually given to plain speaking. Today, though, his tone was rather whimsical. It seemed he’d been in the hotel before. ‘We looked at the Willows as a possible venue for my daughter’s wedding. The grounds would have been glorious, but inside…’ He paused, distracted by his first view of the victim. ‘… rather sad, don’t you think? Impossible to keep up a place this size these days.’

‘The boss thought she’d been strangled,’ Ashworth said. Danny Shaw was waiting in the manager’s office, and he didn’t want the lad giving up and going away. He didn’t have time for small talk.

‘I’d say the boss is quite right. Not manually, though. Look at that mark. Fine rope or wire. Rope more likely, because the skin’s not been cut.’

‘Was she killed here or moved after death?’ Ashworth knew the questions Vera would want answered.

‘Here, I’d say, though you’ll have to wait for the post-mortem before I can be certain.’

‘Thanks. Can I leave you to it? I’m still trying to interview the possible witnesses.’

Keating must have picked up the trace of complaint in Ashworth’s voice. ‘Where’s the sweet and beautiful Vera?’

‘Gone to inform the next of kin.’

‘Bear with her, Joe. She’s the best detective I’ve ever worked with.’

Ashworth was embarrassed. He wouldn’t have wanted Keating to think he was disloyal. ‘I know.’

Danny Shaw sat in the manager’s office. Ashworth saw him through a window in the door, leaning back in his chair, nodding his head to the rhythm of music coming through his iPod. But something about the way the boy moved made Ashworth think this was a pose. The boy was too self-conscious, and not as cool and relaxed as he was trying to make out. He was wearing black combats and a loose black T-shirt, and looked to Ashworth a classic student. As soon as the door opened he took out the earplugs and straightened, half rose from his chair in a gesture of respect. Polite enough, Ashworth had to concede. He didn’t much like students on the whole. Envy, maybe; he wouldn’t have minded three years of sitting on his backside reading books. Then he remembered what Lisa had said about Danny: He tells you what you want to hear.

‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ Ashworth said. ‘But your mam will have let you know I was on my way.’

The boy looked bewildered. So perhaps it hadn’t been Danny that Karen had been speaking to so earnestly on her mobile in the hotel car park after the interview in the bar.

‘Did you know Jenny Lister, the woman who died?’ Best get to the point, Ashworth thought. His Sarah would kill him if he turned up really late. She couldn’t sleep until he got in, and the baby always woke in the night. One o’clock, regular as clockwork, and again at five unless they were lucky.

‘They don’t let me loose on the members.’ Danny laughed. ‘I’m just the cleaner.’

Ashworth put a blown-up photo of the victim on the table. ‘But you might have seen her around.’

There was a moment’s hesitation as Danny glanced down. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I can’t help.’

‘Tell me how your job works,’ Ashworth said. ‘Talk me through a regular shift.’

‘I’m on lates. Start at four. First off, based in the men’s changing rooms. It’s a busy time, people coming in straight from work, so it’s about keeping the place clean and tidy, mopping the floors where people come in from the pool, checking the toilets and showers. Then, when the health club closes at ten, I clean the pool area and gym.’ He managed to imply that the job was beneath him.

‘And that’s what you did last night?’

‘Yes, just the same as usual.’

‘And you checked the steam room and sauna?’ Ashworth had to ask, though Vera had phoned him after speaking to Jenny’s daughter. They knew now that Jenny had still been alive for breakfast that morning; there was no possibility that her body had been in the steam room all night.

‘Of course.’ He smiled, challenging Ashworth to question his commitment to his work. Ashworth decided not to play.

‘See anything out of the ordinary?’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know.’ Ashworth tried to keep his voice patient. ‘Like signs of a break-in, or that there was still someone in the place.’

‘You think the murderer might have got in the night before?’

‘We don’t have a specific theory at this point. We have to explore all the possibilities.’

There was another moment of silence. Danny seemed at least now to be taking the question seriously. ‘I certainly didn’t see anybody. I mean, I’d have called security. The hotel does lots of weddings at weekends, some conferences. Late at night you get pissed people thinking it’d be fun to go skinny-dipping when nobody else is around; once I caught a couple of lads hiding away in the showers before we locked up, but we do a thorough check that the place is empty. There was nothing like that last night.’

‘Can you walk me through the changing rooms?’ Ashworth found it almost impossible to visualize the changing rooms and the business side of the health club. He knew Vera had been in to find the victim’s identity card, but it wouldn’t hurt for him to have a quick look.

‘Sure.’ The boy got to his feet – glad, it seemed, to be on the move. Because he’d been slouched in the chair, Ashworth hadn’t realized how tall he was. Standing, he became a gangly, loose-limbed giant.

Ashworth followed him into the ladies’ changing rooms. There was a smell of chlorine from the pool and something else faintly cosmetic. There were bays of lockers all along one wall, with wooden benches underneath them and again between the bays. The tiled floor was clean and dry. For a moment he longed to be out of this antiseptic, artificial atmosphere. He hadn’t had a breath of fresh air since Vera had summoned him at lunchtime.

‘Is this where the thieving was happening?’

‘What thieving?’

‘Are you pissing me about, lad?’ Usually he minded his language when he was working – and when he wasn’t – but something about this boy got under his skin. ‘I’d heard stuff had been stolen from the changing rooms.’

‘Oh, that. I’m not sure much was actually taken. Most of the members are getting on. They forget where they put something and they put it down to theft.’