Ann Cleeves - Silent Voices

‘Did you believe her?’

The man looked up, shocked. ‘Of course! Jenny Lister didn’t lie.’

Not true , Vera thought. We all lie. We wouldn’t survive otherwise. It’s just that some of us do it better than others. Jenny Lister must have been a magnificent liar.

The man continued. ‘She loved being the most talented social worker in the place. Perhaps she knew management wouldn’t be her thing. She wouldn’t have wanted to be second best.’

‘What about her background?’ Vera asked. ‘Was she local?’

He looked up from his food. ‘Yes, born-and-bred Northumberland. Went south to university, but lived the rest of her life here.’

‘Are her parents still alive?’ Maybe Jenny had confided in them if they were local. Maybe they’d have Hannah to stay for a while.

‘No,’ he said. ‘She never talked about it, but my wife’s a local-history buff and came across the story in an old copy of the Hexham Courant . Jenny’s dad was a solicitor, seemed he was defrauding his clients. He took his own life before the case could go to court. The mother lived for a good few years after that, but she was never the same apparently. She couldn’t stand the shame. I think she lived in residential care somewhere on the coast. She died about ten years ago. I remember Jenny going to the funeral.’

Another woman with a crook for a father, Vera thought. Perhaps she and Jenny would have had things in common after all.

On the way back to the station, pushing her way against the market-day flow of people on the wide pavement, Vera’s mobile beeped to show she had a text. She’d never really understood the text thing. Why not phone and leave a message? Really she needed specs, but was too vain and too disorganized to go for an eye test, and here in the busy street she couldn’t be arsed to try to read it. She’d be flattened by the elderly farmers and the county ladies walking in the opposite direction. In her office, she made coffee before checking her phone. The message was from Simon Eliot. Of course, that was the way the young communicated. Jenny’s friend Anne just home from holiday. Happy to talk to you. Then a phone number.

She was about to phone Anne Mason when there was a call on her landline. It was Holly, just back from taking Hannah to the mortuary, speaking in a sort of stage whisper. ‘Is it OK if I stay with her, boss? She’s in a real state. She’s only a kid.’ Was there a touch of accusation in the tone? As if Vera was a heartless beast for not taking better care of the girl?

‘Sure, if she wants you there.’

‘She’s so knackered I’m not quite sure what she wants, but she’s asked if I can hang around.’

‘That’s great then. See if you can get her to talk. So far all we have on Jenny Lister is that she’s a cross between Saint Theresa and Gandhi. With about as much of a love life.’

‘Yeah,’ Holly was enthusiastic, glad to have something to get her teeth into. ‘Her husband left when Hannah was a baby. There must have been men in her life since then. I mean, that was years ago.’

She seemed not to realize there was anything cruel in the comment, and Vera let it go. Vera had never had a man in her life. What would Holly have made of that?

Anne Mason lived halfway up a hill looking down over the valley, where Barnard Bridge village ran the length of the burn. Vera didn’t much like this sort of barn conversion – a massive structure that left you with echoing spaces and an exposed roof. The design reminded Vera of a church, and where would you put all your junk if you didn’t have an attic? She could see Anne’s place from the beginning of the narrow lane, which branched off the main road a couple of miles out of the village. The lane ran along the Tyne for a while and her view was hidden by woodland. Then the car emerged into open countryside and she saw the building again, the milky sun reflected from the glass that had replaced the wide barn doors.

Anne Mason didn’t seem to be the sort of woman who would collect much junk. She was slight and fine with small hands, sensible short grey hair. She was still wearing the cotton trousers and walking boots in which she’d travelled.

They sat in stylish Scandinavian chairs looking down at the valley.

‘We got Simon’s phone call when we were driving up the A1. I can’t believe it. Jenny of all people.’ There was a rucksack on the polished wooden floor close to the door. Occasionally she would glance at it and Vera could tell that, despite her friend’s death, it irked her not to be unpacking immediately. She was a woman who would hate untidiness, unfinished business. Unbidden, a phrase from the Elias Jones report came into Vera’s head: Michael hates clutter. The women weren’t soulmates then. Jenny’s house had been comfortably cluttered; it wouldn’t have bothered her to go off to work with a couple of mucky plates on the counter.

‘Where’s your husband now?’ Vera asked. If Jenny had gone on holiday with them both in the past, the man might have something useful to contribute.

‘He’s gone to collect our dog from the kennel.’ Anne gave an apologetic grin. ‘We don’t have children. The dog’s our baby.’

The lower floor of the barn was open-plan, a big wood-burning stove at one end and the kitchen at the other, all shiny black granite and stainless steel.

‘What does he do for a living?’ This place wasn’t bought on a teacher’s wage.

‘He’s an architect. This was his project.’ She smiled again, waited for the anticipated compliment.

‘Lovely,’ Vera said, with no attempt to pretend that she meant it. ‘Now, what can you tell me about Jenny Lister? I understand that you were close friends.’

‘Very. We met about ten years ago. I was teaching in Hannah’s primary school – I’m still there, for my sins. Jenny joined the PTA. We’d share lifts back to the village after meetings, took to calling into the pub for a drink afterwards, and found we had lots of interests in common: film, theatre, books. The friendship developed from there.’

‘How often did you meet?’

‘At least once a week. Wednesday was our night. We were both so busy that it was easier to keep one evening free. Sometimes we’d go out – we’d always do the RSC, for example, when they came to Newcastle; occasionally there’d be something we’d fancy at the Sage. Recently we took a six-week basic flamenco course, great fun, though Jenny was much better at it than I was. Usually we’d just stay in the village. Supper here or at her house. A walk in the summer, if the weather was good.’ Anne suddenly looked stricken, and Vera saw that she was thinking there’d be no more companionable Wednesday evenings. Nothing to look forward to, to break up the week. Then no doubt she’d felt guilty for being so selfish. Vera had always thought guilt an overrated emotion.

‘Did she talk to you about the Elias Jones murder?’

‘Not in any detail. She was very professional about her work. When there was all the publicity – the stuff in the papers laying into social workers – I could tell she was having a bad time. I asked her once why she did it. I mean, teaching isn’t the easiest job in the world, but you’d have to be mad to go into social work, wouldn’t you? You get all the blame and none of the credit.’ Anne paused, and looked out of the huge glass window towards the village. ‘Jenny just said she loved it. It was the one thing she was good at. Not true, of course: she was good at lots of things. She was a brilliant mother.’ Another pause. ‘And a wonderful friend.’

‘What did you talk about then?’ Vera was struggling to imagine it. These two middle-aged, middle-class women spending all that time together. Wouldn’t they just run out of things to say? She’d never had that sort of friendship. She was growing quite close to the hippy-dippy neighbours who had the smallholding next to her house in the hills. Some evenings they got pissed together on her whisky and their dreadful home-made wine. She’d help them when the sheep needed clipping or the hens had escaped. But to spend hours, just talking…