The Moth Catcher (Vera Stanhope series Book 7)

by Ann Cleeves

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet. Something unusual. These creatures are the only things that linked the victims.’

  ‘You don’t think two men were killed because of these?’

  Vera didn’t answer. Perhaps the idea was that Benton would stay until the following morning and the victims would examine the contents together. But all this was speculation and probably a waste of time. She pictured what Holly Clarke would make of her theories, as she struggled to get to her feet. MacBride looked away as if he didn’t want to add to her embarrassment. ‘Eh, pet, give me a hand, will you? Otherwise we’ll be here all day.’

  He gave a little laugh and pulled her up. She dusted leaves and twigs from her knees.

  Back at the cars, she paused. ‘You haven’t found the murder weapon in your search of the grounds? I mean, whatever caused the blunt-force trauma to the back of Randle’s head. It seems that the knife my DC found, when we first came to the house, killed Benton. Dr Keating seems pretty certain about that.’ She still thought it odd that the men had been killed in different ways.

  ‘Nothing definite and, trust me, we’ve looked!’

  ‘I’m sure you have. And that you’d have come across it, if it had been here. Any thoughts?’

  ‘I’m wondering if it had been hidden in plain sight. There’s a toolshed. Lots of spades and shovels. We’ve sent them for analysis. And we’re still waiting for Doc Keating to give his opinion.’

  When she was in the Land Rover at the end of the drive Billy Cartwright was on his way in. Vera wound down the window and they had a brief shouted chat. To save him having to back all the way down the lane or her pulling into the verge, she turned right out of the drive towards the Valley Farm development. She turned in the courtyard to make her way back to the village, stopping briefly to look up at the houses. Perhaps because it was still early, everything was very quiet. But upstairs in the farmhouse Nigel Lucas was sitting in the window. He’d obviously heard her vehicle and was staring down at her. Next to him on the windowsill stood a pair of binoculars.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Vera was late for the morning briefing and she’d already set it back by an hour. Joe knew she got criticized by her bosses for being too hands-on. They thought she should learn to delegate and have more faith in her team. She’d once read out a comment she’d been given at her appraisal: You shouldn’t believe that you’re indispensable. Your role is to pass on your skills to others. ‘Well,’ she’d said. ‘If they can persuade Holly not to look down her nose at folk who live in dirty houses, they’re better senior officers than I am.’ He’d laughed at the time, but now he thought the bosses had a point. Vera was the worst kind of control freak.

  She burst in just as everyone was starting to get impatient. Holly was muttering that she’d go back to her desk, because she wanted to complete the detailed timeline for the suspects’ movements on the day of the murders. She’d just stood up when Vera swept in, full of energy, unstoppable as a steamroller. ‘Are you leaving us, Hol? That’s a shame, because we’ve got a locus for the Randle lad’s murder and we could do with your input.’

  Muttered laughter, while Vera beamed. Holly sat down and the briefing started. Vera didn’t even bother to get her usual mug of coffee. This morning, it seemed, she didn’t need caffeine to get her going.

  ‘So finally we know where Randle was killed.’ Vera was standing in front of them, but she couldn’t keep still. She moved up and down the narrow space between the chairs and the whiteboard. If she hadn’t been so heavy, Joe would have said she was dancing. The spirit of Muhammad Ali before a title fight was there, even if her weight stopped her prancing on her toes. ‘In the veggie garden at the side of the house.’ Joe listened to the details: the blood on the cold-frame, the crushed salad plants and the moth traps that had been set, but not emptied.

  ‘So.’ Vera threw out the single word like a challenge. ‘Let’s think what could have happened here. Let’s run through some possibilities.’ But, instead of pausing to give them all a chance to think, to throw in their ideas, she carried on talking. She was so wired that she found silence impossible. ‘We know that Benton and Randle met; we think they had a cup of tea in the flat. Then at some point they must have separated. Why? How did Randle end up in the garden, leaving Benton in the flat? And when did they set up those bloody moth traps? It might be useful to know if they’d been running since Patrick arrived. They’re right in the heart of the wood and you can’t see them from the road, but you might see the bulbs at night.’

  Joe was thinking that all these were small domestic details and there might not be a coherent rationale to link them. During his daily life he sometimes did things that were out of order, not inexplicable exactly, but triggered by a sudden impulse. He stuck up his hand.

  ‘Maybe Randle just fancied some salad leaves to go with whatever he was cooking for his tea.’

  He thought Vera might yell at him for being flippant, but she stopped moving and, when she did shout, it was to the whole team. ‘What did Randle have in his fridge? Anyone?’

  Holly had the notes. ‘Two big pieces of spinach quiche, bought from the deli in Kimmerston; some Northumberland goats’ cheese and a tub of supermarket potato salad. Some English asparagus. Then the usual bits and pieces. Milk, eggs, half a packet of bacon, a jar of mayonnaise and three bottles of lager. A loaf of wholemeal bread and half a packet of unsalted butter.’ She paused. ‘There was a bowl of tomatoes on the kitchen windowsill.’

  Vera nodded. ‘There are tomatoes already ripening in the greenhouse at the Hall. He’ll have picked those. The Carswells would have given him permission. They’re not the kind of folk who’d like to see food go to waste.’ She looked up at them. ‘Two large slices of quiche. What does that tell us?’

  ‘That he was expecting Benton to stay for supper?’ Holly again, though by now the whole group had reached the same conclusion.

  ‘And that means?’

  ‘That he could have gone into the garden to cut salad leaves to go with the meal.’

  ‘So let’s give Joe a big clap, everyone.’ There were a few muffled cheers and catcalls before Vera continued, ‘That changes the whole dynamic of the relationship between the two victims, doesn’t it? We thought Benton was there for a business meeting or an interview. That was the impression he gave his chum from the charity where he’d been volunteering. But that doesn’t quite fit with our scenario. This is more informal. You wouldn’t pop out in the middle of a business meeting to get a few leaves to make a salad. They must have been friends.’

  Joe stuck up his hand again. ‘So why the suit? If it was a social occasion, especially if you were going to be grubbing around looking at moths in the wood, you wouldn’t wear a suit.’

  A moment of silence. Someone shouted in the neighbouring office and a door slammed. Holly coughed. ‘Could it have been a confidence thing? I mean, this might have been the first time they’d met in person, but we know they’d spoken on the phone. Randle would have an educated accent, wouldn’t he? Like his mother. We know that Benton was socially awkward. Perhaps the suit was to give him confidence. He’d been invited to dinner and he thought that was the right thing to wear. Otherwise he only had the tracksuit bottoms and polo shirts in his wardrobe at Laurel Avenue.’

  Joe thought this was speculation. 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.

  ‘So what was the meeting for? Benton told the woman at the dole office, and his mate Frank, that it was business. Randle had set the moth traps at some point. Had he found an unusual species? Were they preparing to write some sort of academic paper about it? Did Randle need Benton’s photographic skills? Help me out here, somebody. What am I missing? What was so important that they needed to meet, instead of making do with a phone call or email?’

  Another long silence. Vera launched herself f
rom her rock. ‘Okay, let’s leave the “why?” for now and move on. The two men arrive at the big house from Gilswick. They chat, Randle goes into the garden. He goes to pick some salad. The murderer hits him hard on the back of the head to kill him.’ She looked out at the room. ‘Pete MacBride from the search team thinks he might have been killed with a spade. Plenty of those in the toolshed. All being checked. All bright and sparkly, though, so if one of them was the murder weapon the killer took the time to clean it. Then he went into the flat and stabbed Benton with a kitchen knife. Is that the way we think it happened?’

  ‘No!’ Joe decided that was impossible. ‘The killer must have gone to the flat first, expecting to find Randle there. We don’t know what he intended at that point. He certainly wasn’t anticipating finding a stranger in the place. Benton was killed because he could identify the intruder. Then the murderer went outside to search for Randle. Surely it must have happened that way.’

  ‘So Benton was collateral damage?’ Vera closed her eyes for a moment. ‘He was never an intended victim.’

  She stood, as still as some bloated and ancient Buddha, and then snapped back to life. ‘Actions for the day,’ she said. ‘Joe, I want you to visit Shirley Hewarth, the social worker at Hope charity. What was so urgent that she had to go out to Sittingwell to visit Lizzie Redhead? Hope is for people who don’t have support from statutory bodies or from the wider community. I’ve checked their mission statement.’ She rolled her eyes and they chuckled. They all knew what Vera thought of mission statements. ‘Lizzie has affluent parents, a home to go back to and more support than she wants. So why is Hewarth so involved?’ A pause for breath. ‘Hol, I need a bit of action on all the communications we’re dealing with here. Phones, laptops and PCs. There must be something that’ll give us a hint to the relationship between the two victims. We’ve got two murder scenes now and plenty to go on.’ A brief pause. ‘And where’s Patrick Randle’s laptop? I asked his mother, and he never travelled without it. If we find that, we’re close to finding the killer.’

  Joe thought they had too much to go on. He stood up, and the others followed. Vera gave a strange, enigmatic smile and disappeared into her office.

  Joe phoned Shirley Hewarth to make an appointment. She sounded brisk and efficient. ‘Of course, Sergeant. Can we make it early this afternoon? One-thirty? I’ve got meetings all morning.’

  He went home for lunch because Sal always moaned that she never saw him when he was in the middle of a case. He hadn’t warned her that he was coming and she was in the garden drinking coffee, reading a novel while the toddler was having a midday nap. He felt a moment of resentment, so intense that it felt close to hatred. If she had time to read during the day, why did she expect him to get up at night with the baby? Then he asked himself if he’d want to be with the kids all day – especially Jess, who was almost a teenager and behaving like one – and he thought Sal deserved a moment’s peace. When he stroked the back of her neck it was warm from the sun, and when he kissed her she tasted of the chocolate biscuit she’d just eaten with her coffee. So she’d stopped the diet again. He was about to kiss her again when the baby woke up. Sal grinned and said she’d make him a sandwich. ‘You should have come back a bit earlier, so we could have had some time to ourselves.’

  He arrived in Bebington just as a meeting had finished in the charity’s office and waited at the door to let a group of women come out. He thought Holly would have judged them immediately because of their clothes – market-stall tops over leggings worn thin with washing – their obesity and their poor skin. She’d have labelled them, without even talking to them, as offenders, offenders’ partners or possible informants. It would be inconceivable to her that one of them could become her friend. Joe had grown up with women like these as neighbours and he’d been in and out of their homes, playing with their kids. Now, standing on the pavement as they walked past, listening to snatches of their conversation, he felt nostalgic for his childhood, the mucky chaos of many of the houses in the street where they’d lived. The warmth and lack of pretension.

  Shirley Hewarth was waiting for him in the office upstairs. She was on her own and saw him look at the empty second desk. ‘I’m not a one-woman band, Sergeant, but the others are volunteers and they don’t always turn up. Life gets in the way, and I don’t blame them. Coffee?’

  She was dressed in a short-sleeved white shirt and a navy skirt. Tights, despite the heat, and smart shoes with a bit of a heel. She looked more like a lawyer than most social workers he’d met, especially those who worked in the voluntary sector.

  They sat on two easy chairs in one corner. Joe shifted his seat so that the sun wasn’t in his eyes. She set the tray on a low table. ‘Isn’t this amazing weather for April?’ She flashed out an automatic smile; she’d be used to making small talk to put her clients at ease. ‘I suppose global warming has its advantages.’

  ‘You went to visit Lizzie Redhead in prison.’

  He’d hoped the direct approach might make her uncomfortable, but she answered immediately. ‘Lizzie was referred to us by her probation officer. I’ve visited twice. Last time was to set up plans for her release. She’ll be out over the weekend.’

  ‘Do you visit every client referred by the probation service?’ Joe was still in his jacket, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to stand up and take it off. Hewarth seemed cool and unflustered, though he thought she’d be a good actor. She’d have stood up to thugs and bullies and imperious lawyers. It would be hard to tell what was going on inside her head.

  She gave a little laugh. ‘Not at all. But I thought it was important to talk to Elizabeth before her release date. She’s an interesting young woman.’ There was a pause. ‘Despite the support from her parents, she has a history of self-destructive behaviour. I can’t go into details, but this was one case in which I felt I could make a difference. I used to be a probation officer, and I didn’t have so many of those in my career.’

  There was a silence. ‘Why did you leave the service?’ Joe couldn’t understand that. Why leave a job with reasonable pay and prospects for a good pension to join a bunch of amateurs in a rundown office in an ex-mining town?

  It took her a while to answer. ‘When I joined the service our remit was to assist, advise and befriend offenders. The system wasn’t always perfect, but most of us did our best to help the people we were supervising. That’s all changed. I didn’t want to be a glorified cop. It wasn’t what I was trained for.’

  ‘Tell me a little more about Lizzie Redhead.’

  ‘Ah.’ Hewarth leaned back in the chair. The front of her shirt gaped a little and he caught a glimpse of a white lacy bra.

  Joe thought she wasn’t much younger than Vera, but there was something sexy about her. Slightly provocative. He had to drag his attention back to the conversation, to listen to what the woman was saying.

  ‘You’ll know that Elizabeth was charged with GBH after a fight in a bar.’ Shirley sat upright again and the blouse fell back into place. Joe thought she was deciding how much she could tell him without breaking her client’s confidence. ‘Before that she had a history of drug and alcohol abuse. Not a cause of her problems, I think, but a symptom of them. She was a hyperactive child, easily bored, and that continued into her adult life.’

  Shirley reached out and poured more coffee.

  ‘Was Lizzie ever admitted to hospital? To get clean?’

  ‘No. I suspect her parents might have tried to persuade her to accept help, but as I explained, I don’t think addiction was at the root of her problems. They were looking for easy answers, and Lizzie’s anything but easy.’ Shirley gave a little smile. ‘The bright, sparky ones seldom are.’

  ‘I was looking for a connection between her and Martin Benton,’ Joe said. ‘You can’t think of anything?’

  ‘No!’ Her voice was suddenly icy. ‘I think you’re looking in quite the wrong direction there, Sergeant. Lizzie didn’t become a client of Hope until she went to prison. The two of them
never met.’

  Another silence. Punctuated by a siren in the distance. The phone ringing in the office upstairs.

  ‘Lizzie was mixed up with Jason Crow. You’ll have heard of him, if you work round here,’ Joe said. He was still trying to work out what motivated Hewarth. She seemed affluent enough. She must be of an age when she could have taken early retirement from the probation service if she didn’t like the new regime, could be drinking cocktails and walking her dogs, like the retired hedonists in Valley Farm. She didn’t seem moved by the sort of passion for justice that carried his Methodist father to preach in dingy chapels or to knock on doors at election time. But perhaps do-gooders could wear lacy bras too.

  ‘Oh, we’ve all heard of Jay Crow,’ Shirley said. ‘Most of the people who come through our doors are more scared of him than they are of you and your colleagues.’

  ‘Have you met him?’

  There was a moment of hesitation. ‘I knew the family. Supervised his mother on and off, for most of my career. He was intimidating even as a boy.’

  ‘Should Lizzie still be scared of him?’

  She paused again. ‘I don’t think so. I hear Lizzie’s parents bought him off.’

  ‘You must hear a lot from all the people who come through this door.’ Shirley didn’t reply and Joe continued, ‘They all knew Martin Benton. Have you heard any rumours? Anything about who might have wanted him dead?’

  Joe thought they’d all been assuming Randle had been the target for the murder and that Benton had just got in the way. But perhaps it had happened the other way round. If Benton had been followed from Kimmerston, he could have been the intended victim.

  Shirley shook her head. ‘Martin didn’t have any enemies. He was a gentle creature.’

  ‘But he worked here. He’d have heard a lot too. All those meetings with folk baring their souls. Perhaps he heard more than was good for him.’

  ‘He never took part in any of the meetings.’ For the first time the woman seemed uncomfortable. ‘Martin worked in the office, making sure our IT was working properly. His only face-to-face contact with clients was running workshops in basic computing, and we used a room in the library for those.’