Vera looked around the room. She saw that she had their full attention. There were no facetious comments, no eyes rolled towards the ceiling to show they’d lost patience with all this talk. Usually they wanted action, but the death of a child affected them, made them quiet and still.

‘The officers investigating the child’s death spoke to Michael. It seemed bathtime was always a trauma for the boy. In interview, Mattie admitted that she used water as a punishment, held Elias’s head under until he choked.’ Vera kept her voice even, but imagined the scene in her head. Mattie whispering so that her lover couldn’t hear: Michael doesn’t like clutter. Michael doesn’t like noise. Be a good boy and this’ll never happen again. ‘It was hardly surprising he was freaked out by an unexpected wave at the seaside. In the court case her defence team tried to persuade the jury that the death was a repetition of the earlier incidents and she hadn’t meant to kill her son.’

Now the team members were furious, full of righteous indignation. ‘Didn’t the boyfriend try to stop her? How could a mother do that to her son?’

Vera answered the last question first. ‘The psychologist’s report talked about Mattie’s low IQ. Michael was the first man to show her any kindness and she was in love, head over heels, crazy for him. The psychologist was surprised at the use of water to exercise control over the boy. It’s not a normal form of punishment. She thought it likely Mattie had been treated the same way herself, perhaps by one of her foster parents or in residential care. Mattie might even have thought it was a normal way to behave.’

The room fell silent. ‘Michael claims he had no knowledge that Mattie was mistreating her son,’ Vera went on. ‘The CPS must have believed him. They never prosecuted.’ Then there was a release of tension, some chortles of derision. Nobody had much faith in the judgement of the CPS.

She looked at Ashworth. She’d stolen his thunder for long enough. Let him take over now.

‘The press blamed Connie Masters,’ he said. ‘She was suspended, then sacked. Took her dismissal to an industrial tribunal, but they upheld the social-services department decision. Jenny Lister’s memo clinched it. She’d instructed Masters to maintain her involvement with the case, not to focus exclusively on Michael.’

Ashworth paused. Vera wondered if he’d done amateur theatrics when he was at school. He could do a dramatic pause as well as anyone she knew. Almost. Nobody was quite as good as her when it came to summing up the essence of a case.

‘The important decision, of course,’ he said, looking around, making sure he had the full attention of his audience, ‘is whether this has any relevance to Jenny Lister’s murder, or if it’s entirely a coincidence.’

Chapter Eleven

Ashworth sat in Connie Masters’s cottage. It was dark and dreary, full of second-hand furniture, everything shabby. The middle of the morning, but they still needed the standard lamp in the corner switched on. And the carpet could have done with a good clean. Joe and his wife furnished their home from Ikea, or Habitat if they could run to it, pale wood and lots of light, the occasional splash of colour.