Silent Voices (Vera Stanhope 4) Read Free

her. ‘Sure, I’ll organize it now.’ He hesitated. ‘Is there anything else I can do to help?’
    ‘I’m assuming she died here this morning,’ Vera said. ‘I mean, the place would have been cleaned overnight. Someone would have noticed if she was in the steam room then.’
    ‘Sure. Of course.’
    But the words seemed forced to her. ‘Really? This is a murder inquiry. I’m not fussed about your hygiene regime.’
    ‘We’ve been having problems with our cleaning staff. A couple of the regular girls are off sick. I brought in a temp, but he’s not brilliant. I’m not saying he didn’t clean in here, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he’d sloped off early.’
    ‘Where did you get him from?’ Vera tried not to sound too keen, but felt a spark of interest. New member of staff. Dead punter. Didn’t necessarily mean there was a connection, but it would make life a whole lot easier if the temporary cleaner had a conviction for killing middle-aged women. Or if the victim turned out to be his estranged wife.
    ‘He’s the son of our receptionist. University student home for the holidays.’
    ‘Right.’ She should have known life couldn’t be that simple. ‘I’ll need to talk to him. And to all the staff who were on duty.’ She thought she’d rather do the staff interviews. Leave the jolly old buggers to Ashworth, who had the patience of a saint. ‘You’ll have a record of all the health-club members who checked in today?’
    There was an entry system with swipe cards. She assumed each card had an individual chip and didn’t just activate the turnstile.
    ‘Aye,’ he said, but again he didn’t sound too convinced. ‘All the IT is done from headquarters in Tunbridge Wells. I assume they’ll have the records.’ Vera thought she’d get Holly onto that. It’d be a boring kind of job, hanging on the end of the phone while some geek worked his magic with the computer. Holly, her most recently appointed DC, was young and bonny and bright and, even without seeing her, the geek would want to prove how clever he was. Holly was also known to get a bit above herself, and Vera occasionally gave her boring jobs to put her in her place.
    ‘There’s no way a non-member could get into the pool area?’
    ‘In theory,’ Taylor said. ‘Unless she was a guest of someone who does belong to the club. Then we’d ask the member to show her own card at the desk and sign the guest in.’
    Vera replayed her own visits to the club in her head. She was always in a hurry, often swiped the plastic card upside down so that the turnstile wouldn’t work, and dropped her towel because she was flustered, holding up the people behind her. But there was usually a yellow-clad woman at the nearby desk to put her straight.
    ‘You said “In theory”,’ Vera said. ‘What about in practice? How hard would it be for an impostor to get in?’
    ‘Not hard at all. You’d have to know the set-up, but there are ways round the system.’
    ‘Such as?’ Something about the round little man was starting to irritate. It was his good humour, she thought. Nothing seemed to rattle him. Happy people really got on her tits.
    ‘Well, you could claim to have forgotten your card. People do that all the time. We’d ask you to sign in, but we’d never check your signature against a members’ list. Karen on the desk would just click you through.’
    ‘So you could sign it as anything?’
    ‘Pretty much.’
    ‘How else could you get round the system?’
    ‘Borrow a card from a mate. We’re pretty sure that happens all the time, especially with younger members. Each card has a photo, but we don’t usually look at them. It’s there for its deterrent effect as much as anything.’ He seemed quite unconcerned that the system was being abused – to find it rather a joke.
    ‘Great,’ Vera said. ‘Bloody great.’ But really she was already intrigued by the complications of the case. She was a good detective. She didn’t often enough get the