by Ann Cleeves
He was dark and big and towered over Hannah. Not conventionally good-looking, Vera thought. Slightly overweight, nerdy glasses, impossibly big feet. But there was a charge of attraction between them, even in this moment of the girl’s grief, that took Vera’s breath away and gave her a dark and destructive pang of jealousy. I’ve never experienced that in my life, and now I probably never will. He sat on one of the kitchen chairs and took Hannah onto his lap and began to stroke the hair away from her forehead, as if she were a small child. The gesture was so intimate that for a moment Vera was forced to look away.
The student dragged his attention from his girlfriend and gave a little nod to Vera. ‘I’m Simon Eliot, Hannah’s fiancé.’
‘What did Jenny make of your engagement?’ She had to pull them into conversation, and it was impossible to ignore the relationship between them. It would have been impossible too, surely, for Jenny to ignore it.
‘She thought we were too young.’ Hannah slid from Simon’s knee and took the chair beside him, though her hand still rested on his leg. ‘We wanted to get married this summer, but she asked us to wait.’
‘And did you agree?’
‘In the end. At least until Simon gets his MA. Another year. It seems like a lifetime, but in the scheme of things . . .’
‘Why marry at all?’ Vera asked. ‘Why not just live together like everyone else?’
‘That’s just it!’ For the moment Hannah seemed to have forgotten her mother’s death. Her eyes gleamed. ‘We’re not like everyone else. What we have is so special. We wanted a special gesture to reflect that. We wanted everyone to know that we intend to spend the rest of our lives together.’
Vera thought that Hannah’s parents had made similar promises when they married, but that relationship had hardly survived their daughter’s birth. They’d probably started off with ideals too. But Hannah was young and romantic, and it would have been cruel to disillusion her. Now, this student was all she had to cling on to.
‘But Jenny had nothing against Simon?’
‘Of course not! We all got on together very well. Mum was just over-protective. Since Dad left there’d only been the two of us. I suppose it was hard for her to accept that there was someone else in my life.’
Vera turned to the man. ‘And your parents. What did they make of the prospect of your marrying so soon?’
He gave a little shrug. ‘They weren’t over the moon. They’d have come round.’
‘Simon’s mother’s a snob,’ Hannah said. ‘A social worker’s daughter wasn’t quite what she had planned for him.’ She smiled to show there was no ill will.
There was a pause. It seemed to Vera that they’d all been colluding in avoiding discussing Jenny Lister’s murder. For a moment they’d wanted to pretend that nothing dreadful had happened, that the worst thing going on in their lives was a vague parental uneasiness about an early marriage.
‘When did you last see your mother?’ Vera asked, keeping the same tone – nosy neighbour.
‘This morning,’ Hannah said. ‘At breakfast. I’d got up early to have it with her. I’m on Easter holiday, but I wanted to do some serious revision for my A levels. Prove to Simon’s parents that I do have a brain, even though I’m planning to go to art school instead of a fancy uni.’
‘Did she discuss her plans for the day?’
‘Yes, she was going for a swim on the way into work. She does a lot of evenings, so she doesn’t have to start at nine.’
‘Do you know if she had anything specific at work to get in for?’ Vera thought she’d get a better idea of time of death by finding out when Jenny was in the health club than by anything the pathologist would give her.
‘A meeting at ten-thirty, I think. She was supervising a student and had scheduled a session with him.’
‘Where was Jenny based?’
‘The area social-services office in Blyth.’
Vera looked up, a little surprised. ‘That’s a long drive every day!’
‘She didn’t mind it. Said it was good to put some distance between her and work, and anyway she covered the whole of the county, so some days she was doing visits this way.’ There was a moment of silence, then Hannah looked directly at Vera. ‘How did she die?’
‘I’m not sure, pet. We’ll need to wait for the results of the post-mortem.’
‘But you must know.’
‘I think she was strangled.’
‘No one would want to kill my mother.’ The girl spoke with certainty, the same certainty with which she’d pronounced her love for the man sitting next to her. ‘It must have been a mistake. Or some psychotic. My mother was a good woman.’
Leaving the house, Vera thought goodness was a concept she didn’t entirely understand.
Chapter Six
There were times when Joe Ashworth thought he was a saint to put up with Vera Stanhope. His wife certainly thought he was mad to tolerate the late nights and the early mornings, the abrupt summons to Vera’s house in the hills at a moment’s notice: ‘Just because she doesn’t have any family responsibilities, no life away from the job, it doesn’t mean you can just drop everything and run away to her.’ Ashworth had tried to make a joke of it, ‘At least you can’t be worried we’re having an affair!’ Because Vera was twenty years older than him, overweight and her skin was rough with eczema. His wife had frowned then and looked at him over the mug of hot chocolate she made each evening to help her sleep. There was no problem about her putting on weight. She’d only just stopped feeding the baby, and the kids kept her active. ‘Maybe you don’t fancy the inspector, but she might have designs on you!’ Ashworth had laughed at that, though the thought had made him uncomfortable. Sometimes his boss had a way of staring at him through half-closed eyes and he wondered what she was thinking. Had she ever had sex? It was hardly something he could ask her, though at times her questions to him were personal, verging on the rude.
Now she’d left him in charge at the health club and the hotel while she buggered off up the Tyne valley to nose around into the victim’s private life. Not her job at all, and something she could have left to a junior member of the team. His wife occasionally suggested that he should apply for a different post – if not promotion, then a sideways move to give him greater experience. Times like this, Ashworth thought it was a sensible suggestion.
He saw Lisa, the young lass Vera had co-opted to help her, in the hotel lounge, which was empty finally; all the health-club members had been interviewed and sent away, and a big notice on the hotel door said that the club was closed for business for twenty-four hours ‘Due to Unforeseen Circumstances’. He believed Vera had been thoughtless with Lisa – making the girl peer into the steam room to look at the body, just to save herself a few minutes in the identification, was unprofessional and unkind.
A young woman with a Polish accent seemed to be in charge of the lounge. She wore a black dress and flat shoes. ‘Can I get you some refreshment?’ He asked Lisa if she’d like a coffee and, when her latte arrived, with small round home-made biscuits on a plate, Lisa sat, bent forward, her hands wrapped round the glass. There was a smudge of foamed milk on her upper lip. She must have seen him looking at it, because she blushed and wiped it away with her napkin.
The lounge was set out like the drawing room in one of the National Trust houses Joe’s wife had made him go to, before the kids had come along. Polished dark-wood floor with a square carpet in the middle. The carpet was red and woven, almost as hard on the feet as the floor itself, so threadbare that in some places there was no pattern left. Pictures in big gilt frames on the walls. Mostly portraits, men in wigs and women in long dresses. Big leather chesterfields against the walls and chintz-covered chairs grouped around tables with fragile legs. At one end there was a huge fireplace, but without a fire today, and the big radiators were cold too, so there was a chill as soon as you walked in. The room had a background smell of dust.
Now the remnants of the pensioners’ coffee and sandwiches were scattere
d on white china plates over the tables. There were coffee pots and bowls of lump sugar. Crumbs and crusts had ended up on the floor. At the other end of the room a middle-aged woman was starting to clear up the debris.
‘Thanks for sticking around,’ he said. By now Lisa’s shift should be over. They were sitting in a corner, and his words seemed to echo around the space.
She slid her eyes up to look at him. ‘That’s all right.’
‘The dead woman’s called Jenny Lister,’ he said. ‘Does that mean anything to you?’
She shook her head. ‘She never came to any of my classes. But mostly I do the over-fifties stretch-and-tone, and she looked a bit young for that.’
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Sorry the boss made you look at her.’
‘Though she didn’t look that old,’ Lisa went on. ‘She might have gone to Natalie’s mums-and-babies class. It’s not unusual to get new mothers in their forties. Not these days. You should check with her.’
‘Were you on duty at the pool all morning?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘We only have trained lifeguards in after nine-thirty, when the off-peak membership starts. Before that it’s the keen swimmers. They sign a disclaimer form. There’s usually someone around, but we’re short-staffed at the moment. I popped in a few times, but I didn’t see or hear anything unusual.’
There was a moment of silence and she looked up at him bleakly. Ashworth felt he was floundering. What would Vera Stanhope do now? She’d thought this lass was worried about something, and usually she was right about people. ‘What’s it like working here?’
He saw the question had surprised Lisa. What relevance could that have to the murder of a middle-aged woman?
She looked at him suspiciously. ‘It’s OK. Usually.’
‘This is between ourselves,’ Ashworth said. ‘I won’t pass anything you say on to your boss.’
‘He’s all right.’
Perhaps she’s not really anxious, Ashworth thought. Perhaps she’s just a sulky, uncommunicative teenage girl. He’d had younger sisters and could remember them driving his mam and dad crazy with their silences and their moods.
‘So is there anything you think I should know, anything odd or unpleasant that might be important to our investigation?’ He spoke briskly, but resisted the urge to raise his voice.
Lisa put down her latte and looked uncomfortable. She twisted a strand of hair between her fingers. ‘Things have been going missing,’ she said. ‘Just in the last couple of weeks.’
‘What sort of things?’
‘Purses, credit cards, watches.’
‘From the changing rooms?’ Why hadn’t Taylor mentioned that? It might have provided a motive of a sort, if Jenny Lister had walked in on the culprit.
‘Once or twice,’ Lisa said. ‘But more often from the staffroom. That’s why Ryan could get away with not reporting it. He didn’t want the fuss, you see. He didn’t want people cancelling their membership because they thought someone was thieving. Not with Louise, the general manager, being away.’
And that’s why he didn’t mention it to me.
Lisa looked up at him again. ‘They think it was me,’ she said. ‘Not Ryan, he’s OK. Fair. He knows I wouldn’t do anything like that. But the rest of the staff. I’ve heard them talking. It’s because my dad’s been inside and I live in the west end. You just have to give your address and you get blamed. But it wasn’t me. I like this job. I’m not going to screw it up.’
Ashworth nodded. The council estates in the west end of Newcastle had been notorious when he was growing up, still had a reputation for crime and gangs despite the private housing that had gone up around it. He thought that Vera had been right again. ‘Any idea who might have been stealing?’
She paused. She’d have been brought up not to grass.
‘I’m not going to charge in with the handcuffs,’ he said. ‘But you work here. I’m just asking for your opinion.’
He saw her take that in and watched her give a little smile. Maybe people didn’t ask her opinion very often. She considered.
‘Things started going walkabout around the time Danny started working here.’
‘Danny?’
‘Danny Shaw. The temporary cleaner. I heard Ryan tell that fat lady detective about him. He’s a student. His mam works on reception.’
‘What’s he like?’
She paused to choose her words and folded her arms across her chest. ‘A bit kind of sly. He tells you what you want to hear. And not a great cleaner. But then I don’t think men do clean very well, do you?’ Ashworth was thinking she’d probably got that bit of wisdom from her mother, and in fact that it could have been an older woman talking, when she shot him a look. ‘But he’s fit, mind. All the girls here fancy him something rotten.’
‘Any of them been out with him?’
She shook her head. ‘He plays them along, all flirty and flattering, but you can tell it’s just a game with him. He thinks he’s better than us.’
‘What about you then?’ Ashworth asked, jovial as if he was about fifty-five and her uncle. ‘Have you got yourself a nice lad?’ And he hoped she had. He hoped she’d be happy.
She went all serious on him again. ‘Not yet. I saw what happened to my mother. Married when she was seventeen and three kids by the time she was twenty-one. I’m taking my time. I’ve got my career to think about.’ She sat, straight-backed with her hands on her knee, until he smiled at her and told her she could go.
Karen Shaw, the receptionist, was about to leave. She was sitting behind her desk, staring at the clock on the wall opposite, and as soon as the minute hand hit the hour she was off her chair and packing her magazine and putting her cardigan over her shoulders. Ashworth wondered why Taylor had kept her there all afternoon. Perhaps he’d just forgotten about her. Or perhaps Vera had told her to stick around until the end of her shift.
‘Have you got a moment?’
She glared at him. ‘A day like this, all I want is to get home to a deep bath and a big glass of wine.’
‘You’ve hardly been rushed off your feet! There’ve been no customers this afternoon.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve been bored out of my tiny mind.’ She pulled her bag onto her shoulder. ‘Look, it’s not challenging work at the best of times. Today I’ve felt like screaming.’ He could feel the energy fizzing around her.
He gave her his best smile, the one his mam said would charm the birds from the trees. ‘Tell you what, give me half an hour of your time and I’ll buy you that glass of wine.’
She hesitated, then grinned. ‘Better be a small one then. I’m driving.’
She led him upstairs to the hotel bar. The whole place had an empty, rather eerie feel. Ashworth was reminded of a horror movie that Sarah had forced him to watch on the telly one night. She had a taste for the macabre. He imagined an axeman appearing in the empty corridors. Only Jenny Lister hadn’t been killed with an axe.
The room was smaller than the lounge and the style was different. Ashworth imagined men in white jackets and girls in flapper dresses with headbands and long cigarette holders. There were shelves with cocktail glasses, and a silver cocktail shaker stood on the curved wooden bar. Behind it a spotty adolescent sat on a high stool, reading the sports page of the Chronicle, spoiling the atmosphere. All the staff, it seemed, had been told to continue working as if there hadn’t been a murder by the pool. The boy obviously resented their interrupting him. ‘Sorry, the hotel is closed.’
Karen flashed him a smile. ‘I’m staff and he’s fuzz.’
They sat at a table near the window looking out over the garden towards the river, she with a glass of Chardonnay and he with an orange juice. He saw that the lawns had been cut, but the borders were wild and overgrown. It occurred to him, in another uncharacteristic flash of whimsy, that they could look like lovers – the younger married man and the lively divorcee, both looking for fun or passion or companionship. Didn’t such people meet in hotels like this? For the first time he
could almost understand the attraction of such an affair, the excitement.
‘I can’t be long. My husband will be expecting his tea on the table.’ Shattering the fantasy. Why had he assumed she’d be divorced?
‘How long have you worked at the Willows?’
She pulled a face. ‘Two years.’
‘You don’t enjoy it?’
‘Like I said, it’s pretty tedious. But I’m not qualified to do anything else. I thought I’d spend my days as a kept woman. Maybe I’d find anything that involved sucking up to a boss a bit hard to take.’
She paused, but he didn’t interrupt. He could tell she liked an audience. She’d keep talking.
And she did: ‘My husband has a property business. He bought up a bunch of cheap Tyneside flats before the boom, did them up to a basic standard and let them out to students. But lots of the work was done on credit. He always thought he’d be able to sell on, if things got tight.’
She paused again and this time he did stick in a few words. Just to show he was listening. ‘But when things got tight, nobody wanted to buy . . .’
‘Yeah. Suddenly the cash dried up. It was a shock to the system. No more holidays abroad, no new flash cars. We even had to sack the cleaner.’ She grinned at him to show she was mocking herself, the whole crazy lifestyle. It was clear that she hadn’t been brought up to money.
She continued more seriously: ‘I mean, we survived, but it wasn’t easy. Then Danny went off to uni and we had his fees to pay. He’s our only son and we didn’t want him to go short. Jerry was working his bollocks off, so the only thing to do was for me to get off my backside and get a job. I’d been a member of the Willows Health Club, so when I saw this post advertised I thought: That’ll do for me. And it’s OK. But I hadn’t reckoned on the boredom factor.’