BooksBarbecue
Back Silent Voices Save as PDF
Chapters (42)
  1. Chapter One
  2. Chapter Two
  3. Chapter Three
  4. Chapter Four
  5. Chapter Five
  6. Chapter Six
  7. Chapter Seven
  8. Chapter Eight
  9. Chapter Nine
  10. Chapter Ten
  11. Chapter Eleven
  12. Chapter Twelve
  13. Chapter Thirteen
  14. Chapter Fourteen
  15. Chapter Fifteen
  16. Chapter Sixteen
  17. Chapter Seventeen
  18. Chapter Eighteen
  19. Chapter Nineteen
  20. Chapter Twenty
  21. Chapter Twenty-One
  22. Chapter Twenty-Two
  23. Chapter Twenty-Three
  24. Chapter Twenty-Four
  25. Chapter Twenty-Five
  26. Chapter Twenty-Six
  27. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  28. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  29. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  30. Chapter Thirty
  31. Chapter Thirty-One
  32. Chapter Thirty-Two
  33. Chapter Thirty-Three
  34. Chapter Thirty-Four
  35. Chapter Thirty-Five
  36. Chapter Thirty-Six
  37. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  38. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  39. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  40. Chapter Forty
  41. Chapter Forty-One
  42. Chapter Forty-Two

‘You don’t think Freya’s a plausible suspect?’ Ashworth interrupted her. ‘Why would she kill Jenny Lister?’

Vera spat the words back at him. ‘Because Morgan told her to. Because he has a way of making vulnerable lasses do what he wants. He got Mattie Jones to kill her own son, for Christ’s sake!’

Joe wanted to say they had no evidence for that: Vera should be careful. But he could tell she was in no mood to listen.

Chapter Twenty-Six

It was almost dark. Joe Ashworth stood next to the unsteady wrought-iron table in Connie Masters’s garden and watched the CSI examine the patch of weeds where Jenny Lister’s bag still lay. Though he thought it would all be a waste of time. It was nothing more than an elaborate show: the investigator in his suit and bootees, looking like a giant Teletubby. He was working by the light of a strong torch now. What more could he hope to find? It seemed obvious to Joe that the bag had been thrown into the vegetation from the road, otherwise how could the cow parsley have seemed undisturbed from outside? So there would be no footwear prints, no traces at all left by the murderer, if indeed it had been the murderer who had dumped the bag.

Vera had decided they should drive here once the meeting in Kimmerston was over. He’d agreed reluctantly, partly because he was scared that she’d ask Holly instead if he refused, partly because he didn’t have the energy to put up a fight. He found himself depressed by his own cynicism. Usually his enthusiasm for work, his place as Vera’s second-in-command, her confidant and her surrogate son, kept him going through the tedious phases of an investigation. It was his role to motivate and encourage her, to tell her she was a genius, to keep her on track. This time he felt as if all the enthusiasm had been sucked out of him. Vera would put that down to the landscape, inland, low and waterlogged: What you need, Joey boy, is a good east wind to blow away the cobwebs. Ashworth thought it would take more to lift his mood than a walk on the beach with a wind from the sea.

In contrast, Vera was still fizzing. She stood beside him, yelling to the man on the other side of the burn.

‘Can you tell how long it was there?’

‘Not precisely.’ This CSI was new. Joe hadn’t seen him before. He seemed bemused by Vera’s antics, regarded her rather as if there was a hostile wild animal, pleased she was trapped on the other side of the burn. ‘Not yet.’

‘I’m looking for a notebook,’ she shouted. ‘A4 hardback. I need it before the water gets in and it rots away to nothing.’