The Moth Catcher (Vera Stanhope series Book 7) Read online

  ‘About four o’clock. I was in the kitchen and he came in with the dogs.’

  ‘Did he seem okay? Not anxious about anything?’

  Susan shook her head. Again she seemed disappointed because she couldn’t be of more help. She had no juicy bit of information to pass on. The detective got to her feet and that seemed to break a kind of spell, because Percy found that he could stand up now too. At the door the fat woman wobbled a bit as she struggled to pull on her shoes, and Percy put out his hand to steady her.

  She turned to Susan and smiled. ‘Have you got a key to the big house? Could I borrow it?’

  For a moment Susan was flustered; she’d never been any good at taking responsibility. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps I should call the Carswells and ask their permission. They left me their phone number, in case of emergency.’

  ‘Why don’t you give me that, as well as the key, and I’ll sort it all out for you?’

  So Susan handed over the bunch of keys and the piece of card with the number neatly written on, and the detective left the house.

  They stood at the window and watched her walk out to her Land Rover.

  ‘Nice woman,’ Susan said. ‘You’d think she’d want to lose a bit of weight, though.’

  Chapter Three

  When Vera arrived back at the scene, Joe Ashworth had turned up. He was talking to Billy Cartwright, the crime-scene manager, and they’d taped off the road.

  ‘You here already, Vera?’ Cartwright said. ‘There’s something ghoulish about the pleasure you take in your work.’

  She thought he was probably right, but she didn’t deign to give him an answer.

  ‘What have we got then, Billy? First impressions?’ Billy might be too fond of the lasses, but he was good at his job.

  ‘This isn’t where the lad was killed. You need to be looking elsewhere for the murder scene.’

  ‘It is murder then?’

  ‘Not my job to tell you that, Vera my love. Paul Keating’s on his way.’ Keating, a dour Ulsterman, was the senior pathologist. ‘But I can’t see that it was an accident. He was put in the ditch because it was close enough to the road for someone to get him easily out of a car. And he was hidden. He might have lain there unnoticed for weeks.’

  If Percy Douglas hadn’t been caught short. And, by then, the rats and foxes would have been at the body and that would have made life more difficult.

  ‘Tyre tracks on the verge?’

  ‘One set, very recent, most probably belonging to the chap who found the body.’

  She nodded and thought there was nothing she could do here until the experts had finished poking around. And she was restless. She’d never been good at hanging about. No patience. ‘Joe, you come with me. I know where our victim lived, or where he’d lived for the past fortnight at least.’

  He started to climb into the passenger seat of the Land Rover, but she called him back. ‘We’ll walk, shall we? It’s not far and I could do with the exercise.’

  He seemed a bit surprised, but he knew better than to question her. Vera liked that about Joe. He could be as bolshie as the rest of the team, but he picked his battles and didn’t make a fuss about the trivial stuff. That got her thinking about Holly, who made a fuss about everything. ‘Has anyone told DC Clarke what’s going on?’

  ‘Aye, I let her know as soon as the call came through. She said she’d make her own way, but she’d be a while.’

  They walked in silence for a moment. Vera was pleased it was just her and Joe. That was how she liked it best. She couldn’t imagine being any closer to a son. There was grass growing in the middle of the road and, once they were out of earshot of Billy and his team, it was very quiet.

  ‘What is this place then?’ Joe wasn’t a country boy and Vera sensed that he was out of his comfort zone. Joe aspired to a new house on a suburban executive estate, somewhere safe for the kids to play out. His ideal neighbours would be teachers, small-businessmen. Respectable, but not too posh. Vera’s neighbours were aristo hippy dropouts who smoked dope and drank good red wine. And worked their bollocks off on a smallholding in the hills that could hardly provide any kind of living.

  ‘I’m not sure what they call it. The nearest village is back on the main road. Gilswick. And that’s nothing but a few houses, a church and a pub. Maybe this valley doesn’t have a name of its own.’

  They turned a corner and came to the entrance to a drive. Crumbling stone pillars half-covered in ivy. No gate. No house name. Vera had seen it on her way to chat to Percy, but she hadn’t stopped. The drive led through wild woodland underplanted with daffs, and at this point there was no sight of the house.

  ‘This is a grand sort of place for a young man.’ Joe was tense, a bit anxious. His dad was an ex-miner and Methodist lay preacher. Joe had been brought up to think that all men were equal, but had never quite believed it.

  ‘He didn’t own it!’ Vera gave a little laugh, but her second-hand impression from Susan was that Patrick Randle might have come from somewhere like this. An idle young man with time to laze around in someone else’s home. Enough money not to bother with a proper job. ‘He was the house-sitter.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Someone who looks after a house when the owners are away.’

  They turned a corner and the house was in front of them. Not a huge mansion with pillars and turrets. This was compact and square. Old. Solid stone. A pele-tower at one end, long fallen into disuse. One of the fortified farmhouses that had been built along the border, to see off the Scottish reivers. In the last of the sunshine, the stone looked warm. ‘Nice,’ Vera said and felt a momentary stab of envy. Hector, her father, had grown up somewhere like this. The third son with no claim to the land, and anyway he’d upset everyone and the family had disowned him. Then she thought of her little house in the hills – she couldn’t keep that clean and maintained; she’d have no chance with something like this.

  They walked on. To the side of the house there was an old-fashioned kitchen garden. Fruit bushes covered with netting, vegetables starting to come up in rows. Everything tidy. Susan hadn’t mentioned a gardener, and Vera thought she would have done if the family had employed a man. So this was the Carswells’ work. They loved this place, and they must surely be retired to devote so much time to it. Beyond the garden the hill rose steeply to a rocky outcrop. They stood for a moment and heard sheep and running water.

  Susan’s key let them into a big kitchen. An old cream Aga at one end and a drying rack over it, empty except for dishcloths and tea towels. Beside it stood a basket containing a fat black Labrador, and a blanket on which lay another, thinner dog.

  ‘Shit!’ said Vera. ‘We’ll need to get someone to take care of the animals.’ She wondered if she might persuade Percy to take them until the family got home. Though it might be more a case of persuading Susan.

  There was a big scrubbed pine table. The kitchen was tidy and everything gleamed, but it wasn’t Homes & Gardens. None of the chairs matched and the crockery on the dresser was old and some of it a bit chipped. The rug on the tile floor was made of rush matting. Presumably the cleanliness was Susan’s work. If Randle had lived in the flat in the attic, Vera supposed that he’d have his own kitchen there.

  They wandered on through the house. There was a formal dining room, which felt cold and looked as if it was hardly ever used. Dark paintings of Victorian gentlemen in dull gilt frames. French windows led to a terrace of flagstones and then to a lawn. Vera wondered if cutting the grass was part of the house-sitter’s job description. Then a family living room. A fireplace with bookshelves in the alcoves on either side, old sofas scratched by generations of dogs, photos on the mantelpiece. One of a handsome young man in uniform standing next to a young woman in a floral dress; others of the same people as they got older: with two children on a beach, standing outside a college at a son’s graduation, in smart clothes at a daughter’s wedding. The last picture must be recent and showed the two of them sitting on a white bench ou
tside this house. They were probably in their mid-seventies, but wiry and fit. The man looked at the woman with the same adoration as in the first picture.

  ‘The portrait of a happy marriage,’ Joe said.

  ‘Man, that’s a bit profound for you.’ Vera kept her voice light, but she was moved too. A tad jealous. She didn’t have any personal experience of happy families. ‘It’s easy enough to be taken in by appearances.’

  A wide polished staircase led to the first floor. The bedrooms were big and airy. Old-fashioned furniture, sheets and blankets and floral quilts. None of that duvet nonsense, with cushions on the beds that you only had to throw off before you went to sleep. Two double rooms and two twins – the twin rooms still decorated for children. One with a train set on a big table and a moth-eaten rocking horse. Vera wondered if there’d been grandchildren. There’d surely have been photos, and they hadn’t seen any downstairs. Perhaps the Carswells were waiting in hope for their children to produce offspring. They found one family bathroom with a deep old enamel bath, and a more recent shower room, built in what might once have been a cupboard in the main bedroom. The only gesture towards modernization. No toiletries in either room to indicate they were used by a young man. And still there was no sign of disturbance, nothing that could be considered a crime scene.

  ‘Where did our victim live then?’ Joe was getting impatient, but Vera didn’t mind taking her time over this stage of the investigation. It was getting the feel of the place. Like setting a scene in a story. You learned a lot about people from the place they lived, and the Carswells might have been halfway around the world when this man was killed, but he was staying in their house.

  Joe looked across the bannister and down to the hall below. ‘I mean, you said he lived in the attic, but I can’t see any way up.’

  He was right. There were no stairs leading from the first floor. But there definitely was an attic. Vera had seen the windows from outside. ‘They’ll go from the kitchen,’ she said after a moment’s thought. ‘The staff quarters. You wouldn’t want to see the minions in the main body of the house. Not when this place was first turned into a domestic residence.’ She hoped the Carswells wouldn’t hold that attitude. She liked their house and had a picture of them as friendly people. Open-minded. Though, as she’d told Joe, appearances could be deceptive and she needed to keep an open mind too.

  They found the stairs in the kitchen, hidden by what they’d thought was a cupboard door. It was painted white, like the door leading into the walk-in larder on the other side of the range. Behind, steep and very narrow stairs twisted their way up. There was a switch inside and a bare bulb screwed into the wall gave the only light. Perhaps once there’d been access to the first floor, but it seemed that must have been plastered over. Vera thought the work had been done when they’d installed a shower in the cupboard in the main bedroom. But now the stairs continued up and the light hardly reached here. The passage was wider, but still, because of her bulk, she had the nightmare thought that she might get stuck in one of the tight twists, that she’d suffer the indignity of Joe trying to pull her out.

  She was starting to feel panicky and claustrophobic by the time she reached the top. The crime-scene suit didn’t help. Behind her Joe was breathing evenly, but she was already out of breath. Another white wooden door. She pushed against it and nothing happened. She pulled it and had to squeeze against the wall because it opened towards her.

  ‘The maids must have been skinny little things in the old days.’ She gave a little laugh, trying to make light of her discomfort, stepped into a cramped hall and stretched. Bare whitewashed walls. A pair of wellingtons. A scarf and a duffel coat on a hook. The only light came from a small window in the roof. Joe joined her and they took up all the space. She paused for a moment before opening another door into Patrick Randle’s flat.

  It was big and light and must have stretched over half the house. This had more the feel of a city loft apartment than a home in the country. The walls sloped, but big windows let in the last of the evening light. The floorboards had been stripped and polished and the doors were open, so Vera could see right to the gable end. There a window was open and they heard the outdoor sounds of woodpigeons and water. Close to the entrance there was a small bathroom. A crumpled towel on the side of the bath. An electric razor on the shelf over the sink. Vera caught her reflection in the mirror and turned away quickly.

  The rest of the space was divided by one wall. A large open-plan kitchen and living room took up most of it. In the kitchen section a fridge and a slim cooker. A cup and two plates washed up on the draining board, two more mugs still dirty in the sink. Did that mean that Patrick Randle had entertained a visitor? The rest of the room was furnished with cast-offs from downstairs: a squashy sofa and a scratched dining table. 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.

  Vera walked on towards the open door that led to the bedroom. The room faced west and it was bright, inviting. It seemed to glow. She stood at the door, aware that Joe was opening drawers in the room behind her, making a first check of Randle’s possessions. Inside the room there was a double bed, low to the floor. The mattress very thin, so she thought it’d be hard to get a good night’s sleep. In one corner a huge, heavy wardrobe. She thought that must have been built up here; you’d never get it up those narrow stairs. In fact all the furniture must have been in place before the door to the first-floor bedroom had been plastered over.

  Then she thought it was odd the way your mind worked, because as soon as she’d looked into the room she’d seen the man lying on the floor under the window. So why had she focused on the trivial matter of the furniture? Why had her attention been caught by a monstrous wardrobe? She forced herself to look again. To concentrate, because sometimes first impressions were the most important. In shock you picked up details that you could miss later. This was an older man. Middle-aged. Grey hair, grey suit. A civil servant of a man. He lay on his back and his spectacles were still in place on his nose, though tilted so that he would only see through one of the lenses. His white shirt had been slashed into shreds by the sharpest of knives. The shirt was no longer white, but reddish-brown, and what looked like blood had soaked into the stripped wooden floor beneath him.

  Joe must have sensed that something had shocked her because he came up behind her.

  ‘Stay there!’ It came out as a shout, and she hadn’t intended that. But she was thinking that this was a nightmare. She and Joe had walked from one crime scene to another and any defence lawyer would have a field day about contamination. At least Joe had made her put on the fresh scene suit before coming into the house.

  And while all those thoughts were rattling around in her brain something else was going on too. An excitement. Because this was a new case that was different from anything she’d ever worked before. Two bodies, connected but not lying together. And nothing made her feel as alive as murder.

  Chapter Four

  Vera waited in the big house for Paul Keating. She’d given her orders, rattling them off to Joe Ashworth until she’d confused him and had to start again more slowly. Then she’d spoken on the phone to Holly.

  ‘Where are you, Hol?’

  ‘On my way, Ma’am.’ The voice sounded as if she was speaking through a piece of hosepipe. She must be using the hands-free set in her car. But, even so, Vera felt a stab of anger. Why did that Ma’am always sound as if her DC was taking the piss? Cocky and resentful at the same time.

  ‘Well, don’t stop at the cordon in the lane. I’ll leave instructions for them to let you past. Come to the big house further up the valley. The drive is the first on the left after you pass the crime scene. I’ll be waiting for you.’

  ‘You don’t want me to help out at the scene?’ She sounded offended. It took very little to offend Holly.

  ‘Not at the scene in the ditch. There’s been another murder, and I need someone fresh here. We don’t want any fu
rther contamination.’ That shut Holly up.

  Vera waited outside the house, sitting on the white bench where the photograph of the owners had been taken. It was cooler now, with the sun only just over the horizon, but there was the smell of cut grass that always made her think of summer. She loved this time of year. She’d sent Joe back to the station to start making calls and pulling together information. And to organize all the extra personnel they’d need for the following day. She’d already talked to Billy Cartwright on the phone. They’d need a different team at each locus, and she wanted him to supervise both, so he’d need to bring in another manager for the lane as well as for the house. Paul Keating was the only Kimmerston pathologist on call. He’d said he’d try to pull in a colleague to help with the post-mortems, but he wanted to look at both scenes himself. ‘Don’t worry, Inspector. I’ll change before I head up to you. We’re aware of the dangers of cross-contamination.’ She’d known him for decades, but he’d never used her first name.

  There was the sound of a car on the drive. Holly’s Nissan. Very new and very sensible. No fun. The young woman got out, slender legs first.

  Am I just jealous? Because she’s young and bonny and organized? Am I being unfair?

  ‘You said there was a second murder.’ Holly was already struggling into the paper suit, pulling bootees over her shoes and tucking her hair into the hood.

  ‘A middle-aged man in the flat where the house-sitter was staying. It looks as if he’s been stabbed, though there was no sign of a knife on my first quick search. No sign of a break-in, either, so it’s possible that he was known to our first victim.’ Vera thought that an intruder would be unlikely to wander into the flat in the attic without prior knowledge of the building’s layout. Any valuables would be in the main part of the house, and it had taken her and Joe a while to find the entrance to the staircase in the kitchen. But those speculations could wait.