Ann Cleeves - Silent Voices

Tynemouth was hidden by the misty drizzle and she came on it suddenly, the lamps on the wide main street hardly throwing enough light to park the car. Outside there was a smell of salt and seaweed. The foghorn was sounding, as it had that first time she’d come to interview Morgan.

There were no lights on in his flat. She looked at her watch. Nine o’clock. Too early, surely, for the couple to be in bed. All the same she rang the bell and banged on the door. No answer. Someone appeared in the mist at the top of the street. Tall as Morgan and wearing a long coat, a snug hat that gave the same outline as a bald head would. But it wasn’t him, she saw as he approached. This man was younger, a student.

Still she refused to give up and she walked through the village, checking all the bars and restaurants, looking for Morgan or his woman. Looking quite mad, she realized, as she grew more desperate. All she wanted was confirmation, for Morgan to dig into his memory, to relive his conversations with Mattie Jones and Danny Shaw. A few words to make sense of the whole drama. There was no sign of them and at last, after trying the flat for one last time, she went back to her car. When she arrived home, she saw it was midnight.

The water rose silently in the night. There was no wind, no rain like pebbles against the window, but, instead, a persistently steady downpour. When Vera woke it was to quite a different landscape, a countryside dominated by water. Looking down from her house, she saw that the banks of the lough had breached in places and become indistinct, almost lacy in outline, ditches had become rivers, then seeped into low meadows and formed a string of pools. But the sky was lighter now and the rain had stopped.

It was just dawn and she was woken by her phone. Charlie. My God, he’s been up all night. ‘I’ve found the car.’ His voice was hoarse, as if he’d been speaking all night too, but triumphant.

‘Where?’

‘Not far from where the CCTV picked it up in Effingham. There’s a small business park on the Barnard Bridge side of the village. It’s in the car park there.’

‘Bloody hell, man, how did you find it?’

‘I looked.’

And she imagined him driving round in the dark and the rain, checking every side street and lay-by in the Tyne valley.

‘Are you still there now?’

‘Yeah, I found it about an hour ago, but I reckoned you needed your beauty sleep.’

‘You shouldn’t have bothered about that!’

‘Aye, well, I was so knackered I dropped off myself, before I got round to calling you.’

She laughed. ‘You’re too honest for your own good, Charlie. You’ll never make management. Can you give me the names of the businesses?’

There was a pause and she heard him shift in his seat. She pictured him looking at a noticeboard at the car-park entrance. She knew exactly the sort of place this would be: half a dozen units in tidy brick buildings, housing insurance companies, IT firms, some local businesses, some household names. After all, the rents would be lower here than in the city.

He reeled them off for her: ‘Swift Computing, Northumbrian Organic Foods, Fenham and Bright Communications, General-’

‘Stop there, Charlie. Christopher Eliot works for Fenham and Bright. Treat the car as a crime scene and don’t let anyone close to it, but don’t call in the CSIs until I’ve spoken to the man. Watch him come in to work, and only stop him if he tries to leave.’ Then she remembered he’d been up all night. ‘I’ll get Holly to relieve you.’

‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Don’t bother. I can hang on for as long as it’ll take you to get here.’

‘But I’m not coming straight to the Tyne valley. I’ve got to see Morgan first. I need to get a few facts straight before I have a go at the Eliots.’ She was already dressing, rooting in the drawers for clean underwear, deciding that the skirt she’d had on the day before would be fine. Just as well Crimplene didn’t crease. No time for a shower. All the way south she was on the phone, using the hands-free kit she’d transferred into Hector’s Land Rover, choosing that over her own car because she thought it would make it better through the flood.

At first she thought Michael Morgan had done a runner. The curtains to the flat were still closed and though it was still too early for his clinic to open, she’d have expected some sign of life. She’d imagined him and Freya breakfasting on organic muesli and yoghurt after an hour’s yoga. Whale calls as background music.

She banged on the door, aware of neighbours looking from windows across the street. They’d remember her from the night before. Any minute now they’d be calling the police. Neighbourhood Watch would be big in Tynemouth. It was that sort of place. Just as she was thinking she’d cut her losses and head straight off to meet up with Charlie, she heard footsteps on the stairs and the door was opened.

She saw immediately that Morgan had been drinking. Maybe all night, or maybe he’d had a couple of hours’ sleep and woken up with a hangover that hadn’t quite kicked in yet because he was still pissed. She was an expert. He was wearing loose jogging pants and a hooded sweater and he stank of alcohol and sweat.

‘My God, man, I thought you were into clean living.’ She pushed the door further open and he stumbled back a little before following her upstairs. She drew the curtains and opened windows at both ends of the room. There was an empty vodka bottle on the floor, a tumbler beside it. Without speaking, she went into the kitchen and made two mugs of instant coffee.

‘Did Freya buy this?’ She held up the jar of Fair-trade instant and shook it at him. ‘You’re into the real stuff, aren’t you? You and Danny Shaw were both snobby about your coffee.’

‘Freya’s gone,’ he said.

‘What happened?’ Inside she gave a little cheer, but she kept her voice sympathetic. You could have taken her for a social worker.

‘She’s fallen for someone else. One of the other drama students. Brilliant actor, apparently. Destined for stardom.’ With each phrase he grew more bitter. Vera wondered how much of his reaction was grief that Freya had left him and how much was shock that she’d dared choose someone else over him. Like Danny, when Hannah had dumped him. Pride was something else the two men had in common.

‘Well, she’s very young,’ Vera said. ‘Too young to settle down maybe.’

‘But I wanted to settle down!’ It came out almost like a scream. ‘I wanted a home and a family. I wanted all those things everyone else has.’

‘It’s not all about what you want though, is it, pet?’ She thought he was like one of those toddlers she saw occasionally in the supermarket, lying on the floor and kicking and shouting because his mam wouldn’t buy him an ice cream. ‘Besides, I’ve got more important things to talk about than your love life. Drink that coffee and get yourself sorted. I need some questions answering and I haven’t got all day.’ She lowered herself on the futon in the living room and waited for him to follow her.

Later, when the interview was over and she’d heaved herself to her feet ready to go, he said: ‘I really cared for Freya, you know. It wasn’t just about me.’

And Mattie Jones really cared for you. But she didn’t spend a night getting pissed on cheap vodka; she killed her child. Vera looked at him and said nothing. Perhaps after all she couldn’t blame him for that.

Charlie was still in the business park when Vera arrived there. She slid into his car on the passenger seat. Holly and Joe were already in the back. The complex was smart and landscaped, the visitor parking hidden from the office blocks by a row of trees and shrubs.