‘She always came on Thursday.’

‘Every week?’ Vera was astounded. For a busy woman, this was surely above and beyond the call of duty.

‘Thursday. Afternoon visits.’

‘What did you talk about on Thursday afternoon when she came to visit?’ Vera thought it couldn’t have been much of a conversation. Whatever had dragged Jenny to Durham jail every week, it hadn’t been the scintillating chat. Was it guilt? Had the social worker blamed herself for the death of the boy and Mattie’s imprisonment?

‘The same stuff as usual,’ Mattie said.

‘And what was that?’ Vera found her sympathy was running out. She felt like shaking the lass, telling her to sharpen up her act, that Vera had a murderer to catch. Next time, she thought, she’d send Joe Ashworth to interview Mattie Jones. Vera had managed to toughen him up a bit over the years, but he was still a soppy bugger.

‘About me,’ Mattie said with a touch of pride. ‘About my childhood and that.’

‘A sort of therapy session?’ Vera wondered what had been the point of that. This woman was locked up. She wasn’t going to murder anyone else in the near future. Why hadn’t Jenny Lister saved whatever skill she had in poking around in other folk’s brains for the clients who needed her?

Mattie looked puzzled. The concept of therapy had passed her by. ‘It was for her book,’ she said.

‘What book?’

‘Mrs Lister was writing a book about me.’ The woman smiled, a child given a sudden treat. ‘It was going to have a photograph of me on the cover and everything.’

The prison officer appeared at the door. Even from where she sat, Vera could smell the smoke around her. She was carrying a cardboard mug of coffee and a can of Coke. ‘Everything all right in here?’ she asked breezily. She put the Coke on the bedside locker next to the fan. Another gesture of kindness that Vera failed to notice at that moment.

‘Did you know about this?’

‘What?’ The officer was immediately defensive and Vera softened her tone.

‘That Mattie’s social worker was planning to write a book about her, about the Elias Jones case?’

The officer shook her head. ‘Mattie got regular visits from her social worker. We all thought that was dead kind, because no other bugger came to see her.’

Vera turned back to the patient, who’d managed to reach the Coke and was ripping the pull-tab from the can.

‘Michael never came to see you then?’ she asked. ‘You never got a visit from him in prison?’

Mattie was very still for a moment, poised with the Coke halfway to her mouth. Then she shook her head.

‘Did you ask him to come? Have you spoken to him on the phone? Is he still working at the same place?’

Too many questions, Vera saw at once. Mattie couldn’t take them all in. Vera was about to start again, more slowly, when the young woman answered, moving awkwardly in the bed as she spoke.