The Moth Catcher (3 page)

‘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.

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 further 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.

‘ID?’

‘Nothing yet. I’ve sent Joe back with a photograph to circulate. Our victim looks the sort who’d be reported missing, though. Respectable. You know.’

Holly gave a brief nod.

‘The first victim is Patrick Randle. Aged twenty-five. He was employed by an agency to stay in the house while the owners were away. I’m presuming they wanted someone to walk the dogs and cut the grass, and they could afford to pay an outsider to do it, but we’ll need to check the details. Joe will phone them from the station.’

Holly nodded again.

‘Shall we go up then?’ Without waiting for an answer Vera went inside the house. She locked the kitchen door behind them, then opened the painted door by the side of the Aga. ‘You go up first.’ She didn’t want Holly following her up the stairs, muttering when the progress was slow. ‘There’s a small passageway at the top. Wait for me there.’

Randle’s flat was in shadow now. Vera flicked a switch and spotlights fixed to the beams in the sloping ceiling lit the rooms. For a moment she wondered if she’d imagined it all. She’d look into the bedroom and there’d be no body on the floor. The stripped pine boards would be clean. But the middle-aged man was still there, caught in the pool of artificial light.

Vera stopped at the doorway and moved aside so that Holly could see into the bedroom. ‘I don’t want to go in there. I saw the body from here and haven’t been over the threshold. This is a fresh scene suit, but I was out near the ditch to look at Randle. We don’t want a defence lawyer screaming further down the line that we didn’t keep everything separate.’

‘You want me to go in?’

Well, I didn’t bring you out here for your scintillating company.
Vera took a breath, told herself again that she was probably just jealous. No other reason why this woman should get under her skin. ‘Yes please, Hol. It’ll take Billy a while to get a separate team of CSIs here and I’d like to see if there’s any ID on the body. And while you’re in there, have a look for the weapon. I’d say we’re looking for a very sharp knife and it might have been thrown under the bed or a chair.’

Holly walked into the room. She made her way to the far side of the body so that Vera would have a good view of what she was doing.

She’s bright,
Vera thought,
considers everything.

The younger woman squatted by the side of the body, taking care not to move it or touch the skin, and reached into the pockets on the suit jacket. First the outside pockets, and then she lifted the cloth so she could get into those on the inside. She shook her head. ‘Nothing.’

‘Try the trousers.’

‘I can only get to the front pockets without moving him.’

‘That’ll do.’ Vera thought that only younger men carried important things in their back pockets anyway. Or middle-aged men in jeans. This man would have his wallet inside his jacket. A wallet and his keys. And that led her to wonder how the victim had got here and, if Patrick Randle had owned a car, where it might be kept. There had been no vehicles parked on the gravel outside the house. She was still thinking about that when Holly stood up.

‘Sorry, Ma’am. Nothing. That’s unusual, isn’t it?’

‘His pockets have been emptied,’ Vera said. ‘To delay identification, or for some other reason.’

Holly kneeled again to look under the bed. ‘No sign of a knife.’

Downstairs in the big kitchen Vera was on the phone to Joe. ‘Can you get me the registration details of Randle’s vehicle? We found a driver’s licence on him. There was nothing on the grey man’s body, so an ID for him would be brilliant.’

‘The grey man?’

‘The man in the flat.’ That was how she was thinking of him. As a grey man. Anonymous. She waited on the line while Joe dug out the details of Randle’s car. A small VW, only a year old. Would a young man be able to afford a car like that? Unless he had wealthy parents? She wasn’t sure. The young had always been a mystery to her, even when she’d been one of their ranks. She’d understand the grey man better and felt more sympathy for him, without knowing anything at all about him.

They went outside. ‘There are some buildings at the back.’ Vera’s feet crunched on the gravel, slightly muffled by the paper overshoes. ‘I’m assuming one of those has been used as a garage.’ The light had thickened into dusk. A bat skimmed over their heads. Vera waited for Holly to scream, but she gave no reaction.

There were two garages. One was a small open-fronted barn, rickety and in need of repair. Against one wall stood a neat stack of logs, depleted after the winter. That was where they found Randle’s car. ‘We won’t be able to get into the vehicle,’ Vera said. ‘There was a bunch of keys on Randle’s body, and Billy has those.’ Holly put on new gloves and tried the handle. The car was unlocked. Was that carelessness or a sense that crime would be unusual out here in the valley? Again Vera thought that the boy must have money, if he cared so little about security. They looked through the windows, but didn’t get into the vehicle. There were two empty Coke cans on the passenger seat. In the back a brown Manila file was stuck in the side pocket.

‘I want to see that,’ Vera said, ‘as soon as the CSIs have finished with it.’ She paused. This was where the gravel ended and the vegetable garden began. There was no sign of another vehicle and the second garage was locked. So how had the older man arrived at the house? The nearest public transport would be the bus to Gilswick, and she guessed they’d be as common as hens’ teeth. Then there’d be the walk down the lane. A good two miles, possibly more. In his grey suit and his city shoes. Someone would surely have seen him if he’d made the journey during daylight. Otherwise he must have got a lift. That would have been organized in advance. The grey man wouldn’t be the kind to hitch-hike. Or a taxi. Or – and as Vera considered the possibilities, this seemed most likely – Randle had brought him here. And that meant there must be some connection between the two men. They’d arranged to meet.