‘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.

‘He told me he’s got another girlfriend. She’s having his baby. He told me I shouldn’t bother him again.’

‘Did you tell Mrs Lister about all that?’ Vera leaned forward. She could do gentle and maternal when the situation demanded. And here they had a possible motive. If Michael Morgan was about to become a father, social services might want to be involved. They might consider the child at risk.

‘I was upset,’ Mattie said. ‘I’d used my phone card to speak to him and he told me about the baby. He hadn’t liked my boy and he’d said he never wanted a baby with me, but he made one with his new lass. It wasn’t fair. That afternoon Mrs Lister came, and I started crying and telling her all about it.’

‘When was that?’ Vera asked. ‘How long ago was that, Mattie?’