Ann Cleeves - Silent Voices

‘How did you get here?’ Vera said. Then immediately, ‘Your mother, was it? The one child that she has left she wants to protect. You gave her a ring and she drove out to rescue you? Took you home to get changed, then let you on your way? Very responsible, I’m sure, to let a murderer on the loose.’

‘You can’t blame my mother,’ he said. He sounded suddenly weary. ‘She doesn’t know what’s been going on.’

‘She knows enough,’ Vera snapped back. ‘She guessed it at least. Why else would she get Connie and Alice out of Mallow Cottage?’

‘Because I asked her to.’

‘And why would you do that? What danger could Connie Masters be to you?

‘Jenny was planning to interview her for the bloody book. Maybe she already had. What if she’d told the woman we were lovers? I couldn’t risk Masters talking to the police again. She could give me a motive for murder.’

The words were rambling, incoherent, and Vera thought Simon was deceiving himself. That wasn’t the real reason for the abduction. From the big white house he’d seen Connie and Alice together. Playing happy families in the garden where his brother had been drowned. She could tell from the bitterness in his voice that he’d hated them.

‘I want to talk to Hannah,’ he said. ‘I want to explain.’

‘Yeah, and I want to win the Lottery and not deal with people like you ever again. But it’s not going to happen.’

‘Please,’ Hannah said. ‘Give him a couple of minutes.’ She stood up and the two young people were facing each other across the room. Again, Vera thought how calm she was. It had been the uncertainty surrounding her mother’s death that had fractured her confidence and personality. Knowledge had put her back together. ‘So tell me, please, Simon, why did you feel the need to kill the woman who’d been so good to you?’

‘How can you say that?’ He was screaming. ‘How can you say that when she tempted me? When she took me away from you?’

‘That was your choice, I’d say, Simon. Your responsibility. Why did she have to die?’

‘She was going to tell you. Then everything would have been over between us. I couldn’t bear it.’ Tears were running down his cheeks.

‘Oh, Simon, you’re such a child. You make me feel as old as the world.’ The words were cold and deliberate. Hannah walked towards him and Vera expected a gesture of violence. A slap on the face. She was ready for that. Instead the girl took him in her arms and held him for a moment. He rested his head on her shoulder and she stroked his hair. Then she pushed him away and turned to Vera. ‘Now take him away. I never want to see him again. If he stays here any longer I might have to get a bread knife and kill him.’

To mark the end of the investigation Vera treated the team to dinner at the Willows. She didn’t see it as a celebration – the memory of the encounter between Hannah and Simon was too fresh for that – and the Willows, with its large echoing dining room, seemed to suit the mood. Besides, this was where the whole case had started.

Ryan Taylor had given them the best table in the room, next to a long window and looking out over the garden and the river. The water had gone down, but still there was a feeling of being on an island, of being cut off from the rest of the world. The place was almost empty. In a far corner an elderly couple sipped coffee in silence. At a table near the door a businessman was spooning soup into his mouth and reading the Telegraph.

‘Tell me, Joe, how did you let Simon Eliot get away?’

They’d finished eating. Vera had insisted that there’d be no talk until after the meal. And they’d drunk a lot of wine. Vera had said the taxis home would be on her. Or, she said, winking at Joe Ashworth and Holly, who seemed to be getting on better this evening than she could remember, they could stay the night here if they preferred. Charlie had just gone outside for a cigarette. They could see him in the security light on the terrace, his hand cupped round the flame as he tried to light it. He must have seen them looking, and waved at them through the window to wait until he got inside before they started talking.

Vera was teasing Joe, a habit she’d probably never get out of. Even if he became her boss, which wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility, she knew she’d still have a go at him. Her resolution at the pool not to bait him was completely forgotten.

‘So come on!’ she said. ‘All that back-up, the cars and the chopper, and he could just ring his mam and you let him drive away.’

Joe, mellow on Merlot and a brandy with his coffee, didn’t allow himself to be provoked. ‘You told us he spent every summer camping out there. He knew all the places to hide.’

‘Banged up now, at any rate,’ Vera said. She’d taken Eliot to the police station herself, breaking every rule in the book yet again, letting him sit beside her in the Land Rover. Hannah she’d left in the care of Hilda. ‘He’ll plead guilty. No need for Jenny’s daughter to appear in court. That was what I was afraid of, that was why I wanted to wait.’

They sat for a moment, and Vera knew they were all thinking about Connie and Alice and what might have happened if Joe hadn’t got there on time. Charlie appeared in the doorway and walked across the polished wooden floor to join them.

‘So talk us through it then, boss,’ he said. He was already unsteady on his feet, but he poured himself another glass of wine. He’d already told them he didn’t do spirits: the slippery slope. ‘Beginning to end.’

Vera had been waiting for the invitation. She’d have given them the story anyway, but it was much more gratifying to be asked. She sat back in her chair at the head of the table, a glass in her hand, and began. She spoke slowly. This wasn’t for rushing.

‘The beginning was simple,’ she said. ‘A frustrated middle-aged woman fancying a good-looking young man. And a student choosing experience over innocence. Or wanting his cake and eating it. It happened one night when Hannah was out. Simon came to visit her, but she’d been held up and Jenny asked him in to wait. Offered him a glass of wine.’ She shrugged, held up her glass. ‘Terrible stuff, alcohol.’

She looked round the table and saw that she had them hooked, like bairns listening to a bedtime story.

‘Simon kissed her,’ she said. ‘Nothing else then and he apologized, but that was the start of it. Jenny became obsessed with him and an affair developed. He was flattered by her attention, I think. Why wouldn’t he be? She was still lovely. They met every week in Durham. Jenny wanted to see Mattie anyway to get information for the book. She went first to see Mattie. The prison visits were short. Jenny was there as much to make herself feel better about screwing her daughter’s man as to collect information for her great work of literature. Really she was desperate to spend time with the boy.’

She paused, topped up her glass, and imagined herself as Jenny Lister, counting off the hours until she could spend time with Simon Eliot in his student house. ‘Then guilt set in, as it always does.’ Again she looked at Ashworth. ‘It’s a terrible thing, guilt. Not everyone can cope with it.’ Another grin.

‘So why did Simon Eliot kill her?’ Charlie could understand the sex part, Vera saw that; it was the violence he didn’t get.

‘Eh, Charlie man, give a woman the chance to tell a story in her own time.’

Vera had asked Taylor to leave the whisky bottle on the table and tipped a little more into her glass. Bugger the doctors and their healthy living – tonight she needed to get pleasantly pissed.

‘While Jenny Lister was besotted with her young lover, Michael Morgan had taken up with pretty little Freya. About the same sort of age difference between both couples, though we don’t talk about Jenny corrupting Simon, do we? Then Jenny found out from Mattie that Freya was pregnant and she became involved in the Morgan case again. It all got a bit close to home, didn’t it? Suddenly it would have hit her that she was screwing Mattie’s half-brother…’ Vera half closed her eyes and thought about chance and the coincidence of Jenny Lister and Veronica Eliot living in the same village. But Northumberland was the least-populated county in England and in small communities there were always connections. ‘She decided it had to stop. And being honourable and really stupid, she decided she’d have to come clean to Hannah. Simon couldn’t stand that. Hannah worshipped him. They were engaged, after all, a big commitment for a couple that young.’