Vera Stanhope Quotes

We don't often notice the people who look after us, do we? Though we'd miss them if they weren't there

But she thought the men’s brains had turned to jelly. They couldn’t see straight. Faced with a pretty woman they all seemed to lose their reason.

Was it only possible truly to enjoy something if you knew there was a danger that it might be taken away?

Vera thought for a moment that she might have found a man if she’d scrubbed up a bit better, then decided that no man was worth the time it took to plaster stuff on your face in the morning, when you could have an extra cup of tea instead.

the hugeness of the world was a pool to dive into, not somewhere to drown.

Not unless he crossed the line.’ Holly supposed she should let this go, but she was tired of Vera’s bullying. ‘Ah, that line . . .’ Vera leaned back in her chair with her eyes half-closed. ‘If only we knew exactly where it was.’ There

He was never very good at talking about feelings. He'd been on his own for so long that it was as if he'd had to learn a new language

In theory Vera liked strong women; in practice they often irritated her.

She’d learned that it was important when you were dealing with professional do-gooders to keep calm. Otherwise they judged you. Wrote things like anger-management problems in their reports.

Oh, I’m interested in everything, Joe. That’s why I’m a bloody brilliant detective.’ She gave him her widest smile. ‘That’s why I’m in charge and you’re sitting there, doing as you’re told.

Vera watched him walk to his car, the champagne in one hand, the flowers in the other. Thought that if she'd been married to someone like Joe Ashworth, she'd be so bored she'd commit murder herself.

And once the others started shouting too, she stopped speaking and just watched. Pleased, as if it was what she had wanted all the time. That hate spreading like a wild fire on the hill.’ A pause. ‘It was as if she was drunk on the power.

the light had the clear, sharp quality which comes before rain.

Don’t be daft, lad. I’ve worked with more loonies than you’ve had hot dinners. And I don’t just mean the offenders.

last

rooms, easy to heat. Now there was one L-shaped open-plan

You never answered back?

Mary watched her fondly. ‘My Clive

Vera had a stab of recognition which made her stop in her tracks. For a moment, the woman, overweight, aggressive, seen reflected in the shop window, looked very much like her.

An inspector’s role was strategic. Except that she’d always been seduced by the detail. She told herself she’d be back at the station before lunchtime.

Now it came back in jagged flashes, like the sunlight on the pavements. She thought, This is what it is like to be old. This is how old people remember their childhood.

He was so restless and he had so much energy, but it was destructive. Like it wasn’t the sort of energy that got walls painted or the house cleaned. He just prowled like a lion in a cage.

It was much more organized than he would have expected, for a lad with a temper who’d been on the fringes of criminal activity since he was a boy. It came to Joe that perhaps Keane had needed order, to be in control, and the anger came out of chaos and situations he couldn’t handle. Three young kids and a flaky wife might do that to you. For the first time, he felt some sympathy for the dead man.

I will tell him, but when I’ve reached a state when I can’t pretend any longer.’ ‘Isn’t it a strain, all this pretence?’ Lorraine gave a little laugh. ‘All couples pretend about something. We’d go mad if we were honest all the time. Successful relationships are made up of white lies, small attempts at flattery, aren’t they? We want our partners to be happy, so we tell them the stories they want to hear.

Vera Stanhope climbed out of Hector’s ancient Land Rover and felt the inevitable strain on her knees. Hector’s Land Rover. Her father had been dead for years, but still she thought of the vehicle as his. She stopped for a moment to look down the valley at the view. Another thing her father had gifted her: this house. Sod all else, she thought, maybe she should forgive him because of this. It was October and the light was going. A smell of wood-smoke and ice. Most of the trees were already bare and the whooper swans had come back to the lough.

He expected a blast of Vera's famous sarcasm, but none came. Instead she stopped moving and leaned against a desk. He had a sudden image of an enormous sea-lion stranded on a rock.

Vera smiled. She liked it when Joe stood up to her, as long as he didn’t do it too often.

She was tall, angular, striking in a Glenda Jackson sort of way.

didn’t have time for small talk.

She got Wainwright to drive her up the

was she keen to let slip that she’d been back to visit Joanna the night before. He began with a recap.

It didn’t necessarily mean that he’d been awake all night washing away his mother’s blood. She looked under the bed and felt behind the wardrobe. No porn. No girlie posters on the walls. In fact there were no pictures on the walls at all, only a framed certificate from his catering course. What did he do for sex? Probably used the Internet, like most of the UK’s male population. It came to Vera that more than likely he was a virgin. In contrast, Miranda’s room was surprisingly big. Opulent and glamorous in an old-fashioned way. It held a double bed, piled with pillows and silk-covered cushions, in various shades of purple. These seemed to have been artfully arranged – another sign, Vera thought, that Miranda hadn’t been to bed the night before. There was a small wrought-iron grate, just for decoration now. Where the fire would once have been laid stood a candle in a big blue candle-holder, identical to the one on the table on the terrace. Was that significant? Vera tried to remember if she’d seen one like it in the main house. On one side of the chimneybreast, bookshelves had been built into the alcove, and on the other stood a big Victorian wardrobe. There was a dressing table with an ornate framed mirror under the window, and an upholstered stool in front of it. No PC. So what did Miranda do for sex? The question came, unbidden, into her head. Vera sat on the stool and gave a wry smile into the mirror. She knew her team had sometimes asked the same question about her. But not recently. As you got older, folk seemed to think you could do without. This is where Miranda would have sat to prepare herself to meet the residents. Again Vera was reminded of an ageing actress. Her dressing table was scattered with make-up. The woman hadn’t shared her son’s obsession with order and cleanliness. And beyond the mirror there was a view to the coast. It wasn’t possible to see the terrace from here – it was in the shadow of the big house. But the beach was visible. What had Miranda been thinking as she put on her face, as she brushed her hair and held it in place with spray? That her life as a writer was over? Or did she still hope for the big break, the posters on the Underground and the reviews in the Sunday papers? Was she still writing? It seemed to Vera that this question was so important, so fundamental, that she’d been a fool not to consider it before. If Miranda had written a new book, and Tony Ferdinand had offered to help her find a home for it, of course Miranda would be shattered to find him dead. The stabbed body would symbolize her shattered dreams. It wouldn’t be easy for a middle-aged

We don’t often notice the people who look after us, do we? Though we’d miss them if they weren’t there.

court

one. ‘Is there a problem?’ The young woman sounded stressed. Maybe her summer hadn’t been so quiet and the last thing she needed was one of her cases to blow up. ‘I was hoping you’d be able to tell me that. What’s your involvement with the Keane family?’ ‘I’ll need to phone you back,’ Freya said. ‘Check out who you are.’ ‘Tell you what: I can come over and see you. I’ll have my warrant card and we can have a proper chat. It’s always better to talk face-to-face.’ Vera paused, in an effort to

She loved the way Peter disappeared from Baikie's with talk of a meeting at Trust Headquarters, only to return at dusk with flowers and champagne. She loved dancing with him on the lawn to the music from Constance's old wind-up gramophone. No one had ever made such a fuss of her before.

Then they all jumped in again, sharing memories, telling the same old stories, because if they were talking about the past, somehow they didn’t have to think too much about the present.

My memory’s not so good. I blame the ECT but it’s probably just age.

His Susan had always been a lovely baker. There was no sweetness in her nature these days and Percy had the sudden notion that it all went into her cakes and puddings.

What did your neighbours do before they retired?’ Vera knew she should move on to the detail, to questions more relevant to the investigation, but she’d always been a nosy cow.

It astonished him how many of the players in the case still lived in the town, or had connections with the place. It was as if they’d had no ambition, or lacked the confidence to uproot themselves and try life elsewhere.

Since we found Mrs Lister’s body in the pool.

Whenever she asked about the family, it was just going through the motions. She had no real interest.

hanging

But perhaps do-gooders could wear lacy bras too.

You don’t think of that when you retire – that you don’t have any space to yourself.

They might share the same secret, but they had different interests. The thought worried her. It was one of the reasons she was scared about leaving prison: that Shirley might land her in the shit, big time.

She paused for a moment and tried to work out why she was so horrified at the prospect of living in the middle of the country. ‘I never feel safe away from the edge.

I texted to ask if she wanted to try for a quiet chat again.’ Jack paused. ‘She said she was fine. Nothing I can’t deal with. That was classic Shirley. She thought she could take on the world all by herself.’ He looked up at Holly. ‘Trouble was, none of the rest of us could keep up with her.

All couples pretend about something. We’d go mad if we were honest all the time. Successful relationships are made up of white lies, small attempts at flattery, aren’t they? We want our partners to be happy, so we tell them the stories they want to hear.

After all, it was easy enough to be virtuous if there was no temptation.

She’d been an only child of two doting but not terribly emotionally intelligent parents. They were practical – if she asked for something, they gave it to her. But she couldn’t ask for what she really needed. She didn’t know how.

She allowed herself a moment of self-pity, while she thought how different her life would have been if her mother had lived. Because her mother would have loved her, wouldn’t she? Unconditionally. She would have taken her into town and bought her the sort of clothes the other girls wore, had tea ready on the table when she got in from school, taken an interest. All the things that Hector had never managed to do. It occurred to her that with a mother like that, she’d have grown into a different woman. Softer, weaker. Not so good at her job.

She thought that if these weren’t witnesses, she’d like them as friends; she suddenly felt strangely lonely.

The CSIs were still working the crime scene and the young had a taste for the ghoulish.

Of course. I should have guessed. That jacket comes straight from central casting.

She’d looked after Hector in his last months out of a sense of duty. Because she was all he had.

Joe’s Sal was obsessive about housework. Vera thought she should find something better to do with her time.

Kindness is very attractive when you’re not used to it.

We weren’t that sort of family. We just got on with things.

Almost, he hoped that there would be no afterlife; surely that would take energy and there were days now when he felt that he had no energy left.

As the rest of them aged and raged against the good night to come, he faced it with equanimity, even with amusement. Death, he said, was the last big adventure.

When you got old there was the worry of indignity and dying.

gossip was what brought her to life. Malicious gossip suited her best,

He was a great family man, a bit too soft-hearted for a policeman, in Vera’s opinion; but then she thought Holly was heartless, so perhaps she was never pleased.

He was one of those quiet, sickly bairns. I was a nursery nurse before I married and I knew the sort. Given to asthma and feeling sorry for himself. It didn’t help that he was an only child and his mother loved the bones of him.

She was a regular customer at the deli and you couldn’t miss her. It was her size and those awful clothes, as if she didn’t give a shit what she looked like, or what people thought of her.

She loved her parents – of course she did – but when they were with her, she had to put on a show.

But people often had a voyeur’s excitement when they were close to a violent death, as if it conferred a degree of celebrity on them.

The room wasn’t a mess, but there was clutter. Last week’s Observer on the arm of a chair, a couple of books on the table.

Joe grabbed the remote, pressed a button to pause the piece and then played it again. No doubt; the bloke who’d refused

He’d been obsessed with dying when he was a small boy. He’d banged his head against the pillow in an attempt to drive away the thoughts. How was it possible not to exist? How could he not exist? As a teenager, the preoccupation was still there, but he’d hidden it more skilfully, turning the obsession into an intellectual pose, a cloak to hide his real terror.

Rick supposed there were worse ways to go than a fatal heart attack. Anything, surely, would be better than descending into dementia like Ken. The cloudy eyes and unfocused thoughts, the restless twitching of the hands. That was surely a kind of death. It was as if Ken was disappearing almost before their eyes but becoming at the same time deeper and more nuanced.

She was so used to living alone that gatherings of people, even people she cared about, freaked her out a bit. It was a sort of claustrophobia and occasionally she felt close to a panic attack.

She’d always thought he missed having his laundry done more than he missed his wife’s company.

She’d always been eager to please – part of her problem.

That was the trouble when you got obsessed with a case: you lost perspective, saw everything through the prism of the investigation.

She decided it was time to get out of the water. If she stayed any longer, she’d go wrinkled and prune-like. Even worse, she might fall asleep and wake up only when it was cold.

The snow was fine and powdery. She could see how the wind might have caught the tiny flakes. It was deep enough to trickle into her boots. Thank God for fat legs so there wasn’t much of a gap.

Vera had banned Sorry for your loss. ‘We’re not characters from an American cop show,’ she’d yelled at

It’s just that she always seemed indestructible. I never saw her tired or upset or vulnerable. She was one of those women who can face anything the world has to throw at her.

I found her a little irritating – she was one of those rather self-righteous women with a heightened belief in their own moral superiority

It gave people the right to pity me. And in my opinion, there is nothing more degrading than pity.

She didn’t sound scared. Excited, if anything. The invulnerability of the young.

There’s nothing to fear from the dead. They can’t hurt us. And I owe her. If I’d been more patient when I first went to interview her, asked her the right questions, she’d still be alive. She was killed for the secrets she kept. Besides, you’re fitter than me. I’d show myself up by not keeping pace.

It seemed to Vera now that the beauty of the eggs, the order, the strange friendships, had been all that had held him together through the depression following her mother’s death. Or maybe he’d just been a selfish bastard, with a weird passion for collecting and owning things that would have been better left in the wild.

Guilt always made her ratty.

That woman’s a ghoul – the delight she takes in other people’s misery.

Typical of this place. All show and no substance. And just like these people, who were acting their hearts out in an attempt to persuade her that they were sophisticated, intelligent and entirely blameless in the matter of Tony Ferdinand’s death.

She was scared of people when they were alive and dangerous. At least the dead could do you no harm.

Cecilia Bertrand had sent through the synopsis of Kelsall’s novel.

She forwarded it to Vera

But I’ve come to realize writing’s not a noble calling. Like you said, it’s all about marketing, isn’t it?

They were flawed and cruel, but there was no intent to kill. Not within the meaning of the law. And the law’s all we have to hold things together.

This is urgent. Please make sure Miss Willmore gets it immediately, wherever she is.’ She looked at her watch, then she made one more call and drove north.

we all have secrets. We’ve all done things of which we’re ashamed.

Writers were like parasites, preying on other people’s stress and misery. Objective observers like spies or detectives.

almost as much as she did. They loved the drama of it, the frisson of fear, the exhilaration of still being alive. People had been putting together stories of death and the motives for killing since the beginning of time, to thrill and to entertain

Vera felt a twinge of sympathy. Perhaps the make-up and the sophisticated clothes were protection. Everyone had their own way of facing a hostile world.

The shock of waking suddenly had made her muscles tense and she’d never been any good at relaxing.