Ann Cleeves: Silent Voices

Lisa hesitated, then looked inside.

‘Have you seen her before?’ Vera demanded. What was it with the lass? Vera couldn’t be doing with these weak and wilting young women.

‘I’m not sure. They all look much the same, don’t they?’ And Vera supposed they did. Just as all the skinny young women looked the same to her.

‘Can we get this steam switched off?’ Vera didn’t know what damp and warmth did to a corpse, but she didn’t suppose it would help preserve it. ‘Without going in there, I mean.’

Taylor bounced over to her. ‘Sure, I’ll organize it now.’ He hesitated. ‘Is there anything else I can do to help?’

‘I’m assuming she died here this morning,’ Vera said. ‘I mean, the place would have been cleaned overnight. Someone would have noticed if she was in the steam room then.’

‘Sure. Of course.’

But the words seemed forced to her. ‘Really? This is a murder inquiry. I’m not fussed about your hygiene regime.’

‘We’ve been having problems with our cleaning staff. A couple of the regular girls are off sick. I brought in a temp, but he’s not brilliant. I’m not saying he didn’t clean in here, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he’d sloped off early.’

‘Where did you get him from?’ Vera tried not to sound too keen, but felt a spark of interest. New member of staff. Dead punter. Didn’t necessarily mean there was a connection, but it would make life a whole lot easier if the temporary cleaner had a conviction for killing middle-aged women. Or if the victim turned out to be his estranged wife.

‘He’s the son of our receptionist. University student home for the holidays.’

‘Right.’ She should have known life couldn’t be that simple. ‘I’ll need to talk to him. And to all the staff who were on duty.’ She thought she’d rather do the staff interviews. Leave the jolly old buggers to Ashworth, who had the patience of a saint. ‘You’ll have a record of all the health-club members who checked in today?’

There was an entry system with swipe cards. She assumed each card had an individual chip and didn’t just activate the turnstile.

‘Aye,’ he said, but again he didn’t sound too convinced. ‘All the IT is done from headquarters in Tunbridge Wells. I assume they’ll have the records.’ Vera thought she’d get Holly onto that. It’d be a boring kind of job, hanging on the end of the phone while some geek worked his magic with the computer. Holly, her most recently appointed DC, was young and bonny and bright and, even without seeing her, the geek would want to prove how clever he was. Holly was also known to get a bit above herself, and Vera occasionally gave her boring jobs to put her in her place.

‘There’s no way a non-member could get into the pool area?’

‘In theory,’ Taylor said. ‘Unless she was a guest of someone who does belong to the club. Then we’d ask the member to show her own card at the desk and sign the guest in.’

Vera replayed her own visits to the club in her head. She was always in a hurry, often swiped the plastic card upside down so that the turnstile wouldn’t work, and dropped her towel because she was flustered, holding up the people behind her. But there was usually a yellow-clad woman at the nearby desk to put her straight.

‘You said “In theory”,’ Vera said. ‘What about in practice? How hard would it be for an impostor to get in?’

‘Not hard at all. You’d have to know the set-up, but there are ways round the system.’

‘Such as?’ Something about the round little man was starting to irritate. It was his good humour, she thought. Nothing seemed to rattle him. Happy people really got on her tits.

‘Well, you could claim to have forgotten your card. People do that all the time. We’d ask you to sign in, but we’d never check your signature against a members’ list. Karen on the desk would just click you through.’

‘So you could sign it as anything?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘How else could you get round the system?’

‘Borrow a card from a mate. We’re pretty sure that happens all the time, especially with younger members. Each card has a photo, but we don’t usually look at them. It’s there for its deterrent effect as much as anything.’ He seemed quite unconcerned that the system was being abused – to find it rather a joke.

‘Great,’ Vera said. ‘Bloody great.’ But really she was already intrigued by the complications of the case. She was a good detective. She didn’t often enough get the chance to prove it.

Connie waited outside the church hall in the spring sunshine. There were primroses in clumps on the bank on the other side of the lane. One time she’d have thought this idyllic: the sun, the kids’ voices coming through the open windows of the hall, bird-song from the bushes along the burn and from the trees marking the boundary of the churchyard. After a winter of snow and rain, it was good just to see the blue sky. But now she felt the tension that came with every trip to pick up Alice. Other mothers were wandering along to collect their children from playgroup. Connie always made sure she got to the hall first. She couldn’t cope with the turned faces, the occasional false, pitying smile, then the accusing silence that lasted just as long as she walked past the waiting women to join the queue.

The playgroup leader opened the door and Connie went in ahead of the crowd. Best just to pick up her daughter and get out of there. Alice was sitting on the mat, back straight, legs crossed. She caught sight of her mother and beamed at her, but her posture remained just the same. Connie wanted to say: Don’t try so hard, sweetie. Don’t care what they all think of you. But Alice wanted to be popular with the other kids and she wanted to please the middle-aged women who ran the group. It was only at night that her control gave way. Then she wet the bed, was tormented by nightmares and climbed trembling in beside Connie to sleep. In the morning she refused to talk about the night terrors. Connie had never found out the exact cause of the scary dreams, but she could guess. She was haunted herself by memories of being chased down the street by a flock of reporters.

‘Alice, your mummy is here.’ It was Auntie Elizabeth. The play leaders were known collectively as ‘the aunties’. Elizabeth was plump and pleasant. The vicar’s wife. Connie thought she was itching to get inside Connie’s house and inside her head. Maybe she thought her faith gave her permission to be curious and to poke around in other people’s lives. Connie could understand the compulsion: she’d spent her working life being nosy too. But she knew that the woman looked out for Alice and she was grateful for that. The child shot to her feet and ran over to her mother. The kids must have been playing outside in the sun, because her freckles seemed brighter and there was a patch of mud on the knee of her jeans. For a moment Connie wondered if she’d been pushed, imagined bullying, the resentments and cruelties of the mothers played out by the children. She couldn’t think that way, though. It would lead to paranoia and madness.

She took Alice’s hand and led her to the table where the paintings, the handprints and pasta collages had been laid out to dry. The other mothers had gathered around Elizabeth and, while Alice found her own creations, their conversation filtered into Connie’s consciousness.

‘No Veronica today?’

Veronica wasn’t an auntie, but chair of the playgroup committee. She stalked through Connie’s dreams. A slender predator with a Marks and Spencer cardigan and bright-red lips. Often she was in the hall when the mums turned up, soliciting unpaid fees, cakes for the next bring-and-buy.