Silent Voices Read Online Free PDF Page A

moment she wondered if she’d get it open, then she put her shoulder to the door, pushing it until the mechanism caught. The door swung towards her.
    Vera looked inside, without touching anything at first. The clothes were neatly folded. A floral skirt, a white shirt, almost as crisp as those worn by the children in the newsreel, a navy cotton sweater. White lacy underwear, as fresh as if it had been newly bought. How did women do that? Vera’s turned grey after the first wash. And she would never have bought anything so glamorous. Under the clothes, a pair of sandals. You could tell they’d be comfortable, the leather soft, but stylish too, with a small heel, the leather plaited and fastened at the ankle. Not the sort of thing Vera would wear in a million years.
    On the television the weather forecast was being read by a young woman in a breathy voice. The next few days would be unusually mild and sunny for the time of year. ‘Beautiful spring weather.’ Vera turned briefly and saw a photograph of fat lambs and catkins. The people who ran the smallholding next to her house were still lambing. It was always later in the hills this far north.
    No handbag. That seemed odd to Vera. Wouldn’t every woman have a handbag with her? Even Vera carried her stuff in a canvas shopping bag. There was a purse, though, tucked inside one of the sleeves of the navy jersey. Had the woman left her bag in her car because it was too bulky for the locker? A bunch of keys was attached to one corner of the purse by a metal clip. Opening it, she found the woman’s health-club membership card. The photo was small and grainy, but was clearly of the victim. There was a name.
    Jenny Lister. Aged forty-one. Vera would have guessed her as a couple of years younger than that. The address was a village in the Tyne valley, Barnard Bridge, which was about five miles away. Very nice, Vera thought, and pretty much what she would have expected. But why would anyone want to murder a middle-aged woman from an affluent community in rural Northumberland?
    She flicked through the contents of the purse. A couple of credit and debit cards in the same name and twenty pounds in cash. One of the credit cards was labelled Mrs Jenny Lister. So there was a husband, or at least had been once. If the couple were still living together, he was probably at work. Vera looked at her watch. It had already gone three. Perhaps the couple had sat down for breakfast together, discussed their day. Now he would have no idea what had happened to his wife, no concerns for her safety. Unless, of course, he’d followed her and strangled her.
    Upstairs in the lounge, Ashworth and his colleagues had almost worked their way through the members of the aqua-aerobics class. He was using a small office, calling people in one at a time to take their contact details, and to ask if they’d been into the steam room or noticed anything unusual. The plate on the office door read Ryan Taylor, deputy manager.
    ‘Who’s the manager?’ Vera asked, distracted for a moment. ‘The big cheese?’
    ‘Woman called Franklin. She’s away on leave. Morocco.’
    ‘Very nice.’ She said it automatically, but Vera knew really she’d hate foreign travel. She came out all blotchy in the heat.
    Ashworth was on his own, catching up on the notes from his most recent interview.
    ‘We’ve got a name,’ Vera said. ‘Jenny Lister. Lives out at Barnard Bridge.’
    ‘Worth a bob or two then.’ Ashworth looked up from the sheet of paper.
    ‘I thought I’d head out there now. She might still have school-age kids. I’d rather tell them what’s happened immediately than have them phoning round her friends to find out where she is, causing lots of noise and fuss.’
    ‘Fine,’ Ashworth said. ‘Do you want anyone to go with you?’
    ‘I think I can find the way by myself.’ Vera knew it wasn’t her place to be ferreting round the dead woman’s home and family. She’d been told at appraisal after