‘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.