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

  ‘Could you both tell me what you were doing yesterday afternoon and evening?’ She was sitting at a scrubbed pine table. There was a jam jar of daffodils, a seed catalogue and a scattering of the Sunday papers from a couple of days ago.

  ‘I was at WI in the afternoon,’ Janet said. ‘I went with Annie. Lorraine says it’s not really her thing, though I’m sure she’d enjoy it if she gave it a try. It’s not all jam and Jerusalem these days.’ She seemed aware that she was talking too much and her voice tailed off.

  ‘Mr O’Kane?’ Vera turned to the man.

  ‘I was here all afternoon.’

  ‘You didn’t go out at all?’

  ‘I’ve not been well.’ He sounded fractious, like a difficult child. ‘And besides, Janet’s the one who feels the need for fresh air. I was reading.’

  ‘John’s working on a book.’ The woman managed to sound proud and apologetic at the same time.

  ‘The history of the Border Reivers,’ he said. ‘My subject.’

  ‘Fascinating.’ Vera turned her attention back to Janet. ‘Did you notice anyone in the lane when you were driving back from the WI?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that, of course. Annie phoned to say you’d asked her. But no, I didn’t see anyone.’

  ‘Does the name Martin Benton mean anything to you, Mr O’Kane?’

  ‘Who’s he?’ The professor scowled.

  Vera thought O’Kane had been pandered to throughout his career and couldn’t quite get used to being a retired old git without a secretary or fawning students. Then she decided she might be bored and demanding, if she’d just retired. ‘He’s the man who was found dead in the attic of the big house with multiple stab wounds to the chest.’

  There was a pause. ‘No,’ the professor said at last. ‘I’ve never heard the name before.’

  ‘And later in the evening?’ Vera asked. ‘What did you do then?’

  ‘At about eight o’clock we went next door for drinks,’ John said. ‘Usually we only meet up on a Friday night. It’s something of a weekly ritual. Nigel prides himself on making the best G&T in the North, and I wouldn’t disagree. It marks the beginning of the weekend for us retired people who no longer work away from home during the week. Last night was a bit special, because it was midweek and Lorraine’s birthday.’

  ‘How did you get next door?’ Vera was starting to lose patience with him.

  ‘I might be ill, Inspector, but I was perfectly able to walk a few yards.’

  ‘Did you go this way, through the garden or through the front door?’ She found herself glaring at him. Something of his arrogance reminded her of her father, Hector.

  Again there was a moment’s silence and this time Janet answered. ‘John was ready before me, and he went in by the front door. Our Friday socials are quite formal, in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way. We make an effort, dress up a bit. And we did exactly the same last night for Lorraine’s party. You know how it is.’ Vera didn’t and Janet continued. ‘We were going to eat next door too and I’d made a pudding, so I just went out the back way and let myself into Lorraine’s kitchen. I’d made a cheesecake and it needed to go in the fridge.’

  ‘Their back door wasn’t locked?’

  ‘No, none of us lock our doors during the day, if we’re in.’

  ‘Did either of you notice anything unusual while you were on the way to the farmhouse?’

  ‘If we’d seen a stranger brandishing a knife, I really think we might have mentioned it, Inspector.’ The professor again. His face seemed very red. Vera couldn’t tell if he really had a fever or if the questions were making him angry or anxious.

  ‘There might have been an incident that seemed insignificant at the time.’ Her voice was bland. ‘A car on the lane. A walker down by the burn. It would help if you could remember anything of that sort.’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary at all.’

  ‘Mrs O’Kane?’

  Janet took more time to consider. ‘No,’ she said at last. ‘I was in the garden for a little while because I shut the hens away before going next door. We lock them up at night because of foxes, and I knew I wouldn’t want to do it later. I don’t remember seeing anyone on the hill. I’m sorry. I wish I could help.’

  In the silence that followed Vera could hear the hens at the bottom of the garden. She thought they sounded like old women gossiping. That’s all I am. An old woman who gossips. She stood up and sensed the relief in the room. It was physical, like a smell.

  John O’Kane gave her a little wave, but made no move to get to his feet. Janet walked with her to the door. ‘Call in again, Inspector. Any time.’ A polite formula that certainly wasn’t sincere.

  Vera got into the car and drove down the lane. There were messages on her phone, but she didn’t want to read them until later. She thought all the residents of Valley Farm were watching to make sure that she’d driven away.

  Chapter Thirteen

  When Vera arrived at The Lamb they’d already stopped serving food, but the landlady took pity on her. Vera found herself alone in the small bar with a plate of reheated shepherd’s pie. No alcohol. She needed a sharp brain. There were missed calls from Joe and Holly. She called Joe first.

  ‘What have you got for me?’ The words slurred because of the pie. The phone in one hand and a fork in the other.

  ‘I’ve found a connection between Benton and Randle.’ He sounded jubilant. She thought he’d been waiting for her call so that he could pass on the information.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Moths.’

  ‘You’d better explain, lad.’

  ‘Randle did ecology at university and his PhD was something about moths. I checked with his supervisor. I couldn’t quite grasp the detail. Something about moths being an indicator of global warming.’

  ‘And?’ The prompt was automatic. Her plate was empty and she pushed it away from her, took a scrap of paper and a pen from her jacket pocket.

  ‘Benton was into moths too. There was a trap in his garden in Kimmerston and his office was full of photographs. He might have been an amateur, but you could tell he knew what he was on about. The woman at the charity where he’d worked said he had two passions: computers and moths.’

  ‘Do we have a record of any communication between them? Phone calls? Emails?’ Vera was struggling to understand how an interest in Lepidoptera could lead to murder. Hector had never been into moths. His obsession had been for larger, more macho creatures: buzzards, peregrines, goshawks. She imagined moth-trapping as a gentler occupation, old-fashioned. The pastime of elderly clerics and schoolmasters. One of her father’s friends had been a collector. Like Hector, he’d seemed more interested in dead beasts than live ones, and there’d been drawers of insects pinned onto boards.

  There was a sudden flash of memory. Vera and Hector had stayed with the collector one night in a house close to Kimmerston. The place hadn’t been as grand as Gilswick Hall, but had been large and shabby, surrounded by farmland. She remembered the mercury-vapour bulbs of the moth trap in the garden sending shafts of light into the sky, and the chug of the generator that powered them. Then, at dawn, examining the contents that had collected in the egg boxes at the base of the trap. The two men poring over them, excited as children taking part in a lucky dip. Later Hector had been dismissive: ‘There’s something distasteful about a grown man fiddling with the genitals of a small insect to make an identification.’ But at the time he’d been caught up in the excitement of discovery. Vera decided he just hadn’t had the patience for such detailed work.

  Joe’s voice brought her back to the present with a start. ‘We haven’t found either of the phones yet. We’re trying to track down the service providers. Randle’s mother will have a number for him, but she’s on her way north and I don’t want to disturb her unless I have to. The last call to Benton’s landline was from a mobile number.’

  ‘What time are we expecting the mother?’

  ‘H
olly’s meeting her train at Alnmouth at six. We’ve found accommodation for her at Kimmerston and we’ve arranged for her to see Patrick’s body first thing tomorrow.’

  ‘Tell Holly to take Mrs Randle out for a meal. I’ll join them if I can.’ Vera thought the last thing a recently bereaved woman would need would be to be alone all evening in a strange hotel. But perhaps making conversation to strangers would be even worse. ‘If she’d like to, of course. Give her the option. We can talk tomorrow, if she’d rather.’ She paused. ‘What about emails?’

  ‘The techies have got Martin Benton’s computer. Nothing yet, they say. He seems to have deleted all his communications as he went along. Almost as if he was paranoid about security. And Randle didn’t have a laptop in the flat. At least there wasn’t one there when the search team went in.’

  ‘Seems a bit odd.’ Vera thought that if Randle was planning to continue his academic research he’d want to keep up with the latest scientific publications. To write. Even if he’d had an iPhone for calls and emails, surely he’d need a computer too.

  ‘You think the murderer took his computer?’

  ‘Well, we’re assuming the same person killed both men, even though the cause of death was different, so we know they were in Randle’s flat.’ She felt suddenly tired. It was the food and the warmth. I’m not much younger than the folk at Valley Farm. They’ll be relaxing at home or pottering in their gardens. Perhaps I’m past my sell-by date. But she knew that was ridiculous as soon as the thought floated into her head. She was as sharp as ever. ‘I’ll be driving back to the office shortly. Let’s get together before Holly heads out for Patrick Randle’s mam. I want everything you can dig out on the three couples who live at that small development at the head of the valley. Sam and Annie Redhead. They used to have the classy restaurant on the square at Kimmerston, but they seem a bit young for retirement.’ Younger than me? ‘Find out why they sold up so suddenly. Nigel and Lorraine Lucas. They lived south, somewhere in the Midlands. He had his own security business and she was an art teacher. And Professor and Mrs O’Kane. He was a historian at Newcastle Uni and she was some kind of social worker. All ladies and gentlemen of leisure, but there’s a weird feel about the place.’ Vera tried to remember how Janet had described it. ‘A kind of desperation.’

  Later they sat in her office drinking the lethal coffee that she’d brewed to keep her awake. In the open-plan room beyond the glass door there was a buzz that reminded her of the hens at Valley Farm. Muttered conversations on phones and the hum of the printers. Late-afternoon sun flooded through the windows. She perched on her desk so that she was looking down at Holly and Joe. ‘So,’ she said, ‘what can you tell me about our victims? Hol, you checked out Benton’s workplace. Any motive there?’

  ‘He seemed a gentle sort of guy.’ Holly was choosing her words carefully. She was always anxious about getting things wrong. A perfectionist. Better say nothing than make a mistake. ‘Nobody mentioned him losing his temper or annoying people in the office. He was negotiating his way through the benefits system, but he was luckier than most claimants moved from sickness benefit. He’d inherited the house from his mother, so there were no housing costs, no worries about the bedroom tax, and he had some savings. He’d been in and out of mental hospital, but once he’d given up teaching his health seems to have improved too.’

  ‘Apart from one episode immediately after the death of his mother,’ Joe said.

  ‘Yeah, apart from that.’ Holly was concentrating so hard on her narrative that the interruption failed to throw her. ‘It’s almost as if he saw the withdrawal of his benefit as an opportunity. A chance to follow his dreams for once.’ She looked up. ‘Sorry, that sounds daft.’

  ‘Not daft at all.’ Again Vera thought of the tiny community at Valley Farm. This case seemed to be all about people following their dreams. It had appeared a bit self-indulgent to her. ‘But we still don’t have any idea what his business might have been?’

  Holly shook her head. ‘He had one friend at the charity. An ex-offender called Frank Sloan. Martin told Frank that he’d approve of the work that he was planning, but gave him no more details.’

  ‘So why the secrecy?’ Vera looked at Joe. ‘I hope you’ve got something for me, because we’ve got bugger-all to work on so far.’

  ‘I know how he travelled to Gilswick yesterday.’

  ‘So?’ Vera stretched and pretended not to be pleased. It didn’t do to have favourites.

  ‘He left his bike chained up at the bus station and got the bus. It left Kimmerston at two-thirty and arrived into Gilswick an hour later. It stops everywhere.’ Joe paused. ‘I spoke to the driver. Most of his passengers are regulars coming back from Kimmerston after shopping – Tuesday’s a bit busier than usual because it’s market day – so he noticed the stranger. He described Benton exactly, down to the suit. I got uniform to check, and the bike was still in the racks in the bus station.’

  ‘And how did our grey man get from the village to the big house?’

  ‘Randle picked him up in his car. The bus stops at Gilswick for quarter of an hour before heading back to town. The driver went into the post office to buy a can of pop and saw Benton get into the VW.’ Joe allowed himself a brief grin. ‘The guy described Randle’s car perfectly.’

  ‘And we know that both men arrived at the big house, because Randle’s VW was found there.’ Vera was trying to work out where everyone else in the valley had been at the time. Janet and Annie had been in the village hall for the WI, Nigel had been in the supermarket at Kimmerston and his wife had been painting at home. Vera had lost track of Percy Douglas and his daughter, who lived in the bungalow. She’d get Hol to knock up some sort of chart or spreadsheet for witness movements. It was the sort of thing she was good at.

  ‘What I don’t understand,’ Joe was saying, ‘is how Randle came to be in the ditch. We can assume that both men went into the flat. There were two mugs on the draining board. How did they come to be separated?’

  ‘And why was Benton wearing a suit?’ Holly surprised herself by speaking without having considered the words first and coloured slightly. ‘I mean, if they intended going out into the garden to look at moths, wouldn’t he wear something more casual?’ She looked at her colleagues.

  ‘Of course he would.’ Vera wondered how she could show that she was pleased with Holly’s contribution without sounding patronizing. In the end it was easier to do nothing. ‘So we’ve ended up with lots more questions.’

  There was a silence. In the main office the hum of conversation continued. Outside there was the rumble of rush-hour traffic.

  Holly looked at her watch. ‘I should get off to the station to meet Alicia Randle. I want to be there when the train arrives. I haven’t booked anywhere for dinner. Any ideas?’

  ‘What about Annie’s, that restaurant on the square?’ Vera thought there was nothing wrong with killing two birds with one stone. ‘Haven’t they got a private dining room? We went there once for the boss’s leaving do. I’ll see if that’s free. We’ll see you there, Hol. About seven?’

  It was a kind of dismissal and Holly went. Joe and Vera were left alone. There was another moment of silence and then Joe got to his feet too.

  ‘Just a minute.’ Vera thought more clearly when he was there. Her brain was muddled with detail, but Joe was straightforward. He could see the wood for the trees. She poured more coffee into both their mugs. It was thick like drain-sludge. ‘Do you really think the interest in moths is what links these men? I just can’t see that as a motive for murder.’

  ‘I think it was what brought them together in the first place.’ Joe tried the coffee, pulled a face and stuck the mug on the windowsill. ‘There’ll be a website, won’t there? Online contact between moth-obsessives. It’s too much coincidence to think they never had any contact.’

  ‘We’ll get Holly to look into that in the morning.’

  ‘They might have become friends,’ Joe went on. ‘Of a sort, at least. An online rel
ationship. Benton was shy, socially awkward. If this was their first meeting, perhaps the suit was about him wanting to make a good impression.’

  ‘So the meeting in the big house might not have been about work.’ Vera wondered if she could be described as socially awkward. Once she retired, would all her contact with the outside world be made online? ‘It might have been about friendship. And if that was the case, why did both men have to die?’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Annie stood at the window in the bedroom and watched until she saw the detective’s car disappear down the lane towards the village. The house faced south and the valley seemed a lake of sunshine. It was only as the car joined the main road that she felt the muscles in her neck and face become relaxed. She realized how tight her whole body had been while Vera Stanhope had been prowling around their territory, prodding for answers, intruding into their space.

  There was a moment of euphoria, like bursts of sunlight in her brain. Of course there was nothing to worry about after all. She was tempted to call Lorraine and Jan and suggest an impromptu bottle of wine. A girly gossip and some fizz to celebrate having Valley Farm to themselves again. Then she remembered that two men were dead and that although she couldn’t see into the big house because of the trees, there would still be people there. People in paper overalls and masks and they’d be searching for physical evidence, just as Vera Stanhope had been searching for connections in their own small community.

  She heard footsteps on the bare wood of the stairs and Sam stood behind her. ‘She’s gone then.’