The Moth Catcher (7 page)

‘And Elsie was?’ The reflected light was making him blink.

‘Martin’s mam, of course.’

‘Did he always live with his mother?’

‘On and off.’ She looked up at him. ‘He was never a strong man. Always had trouble with his nerves.’ There was a moment’s silence. The budgie squawked. ‘What’s he done?’

‘Nothing.’ Joe hesitated and then thought that the news would get out soon enough. ‘Martin’s dead. He died in suspicious circumstances. I need to notify his next of kin. And get into the house, if I can.’

‘Did he kill himself?’

Joe thought of the body that had been lying on the polished wooden floor in the attic of the big house. The slashes of the knife ripping at the shirt, and through the skin and bone. That certainly hadn’t been the result of suicide. ‘No!’

‘It wouldn’t have been surprising,’ Kitty said. ‘Elsie didn’t go into details, but I think he tried. Once or twice.’ She paused. ‘I don’t know about next of kin. His father died just before Elsie. There weren’t any other children.’ She looked up. ‘Sad, isn’t it? I can’t think of any relative who might be interested.’

‘Can you tell me about him?’ A Vera question, open-ended.

‘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 hesitated and Joe knew better than to jump in with another question. ‘He’s always been a loner. Never had a woman, as far as I know.’ A pause, a sly look and a grin to show how enlightened she was. ‘Or a man. He was canny enough, though. Kind. He took other people’s problems to heart. He was at the front door every five minutes collecting for some charity or other.’

‘Where did he live when he wasn’t at home?’

‘I believe he got himself a flat in Newcastle when he did his teacher training. I thought it would be the making of him. He’d have pals from the college and he might meet a nice lass. But it didn’t last and he was soon home.’

‘He was a teacher?’

‘Elsie’s idea. Her man had been down the pit and she didn’t want manual work for her boy. I never thought he’d have the constitution for teaching, though, not with the way bairns are these days.’

‘And he went along with the idea?’ Joe couldn’t imagine his children doing anything he suggested without a battle.

Kitty shot him a glance. ‘That was part of his problem. He’d never been brought up to think for himself.’

‘But he stuck at teaching for quite a long time.’

‘Aye, but the stress of it was killing him and he moved around a lot. Every time he changed jobs his mother had an excuse: the head teacher didn’t like him, or they were a cliquey bunch in the staffroom. Nothing was ever Martin’s fault. Truth was he just didn’t have the personality to control the classes.’ She sighed. ‘One of my pals had a grandson in his class. Apparently it was a riot. But they’re short of qualified maths teachers, aren’t they, so he always seemed to get a job. He never learned to drive, but he had a bike and he got to work on that.’ She paused.

‘Did he still have a bike?’ Joe was wondering if that was how he’d got to Gilswick the day before. It’d be quite a stretch, but not impossible if you were used to riding long distances.’

‘He did. He went out on it yesterday, early afternoon, and he never came back.’ She looked guilty. ‘That’s why I was looking out when you turned up. I was wondering if I should tell someone he wasn’t home. But why would anyone be worried? A grown-up man.’ Another pause. ‘But Elsie would have been worried. She’d have had the police out as soon as it got dark.’ A young woman pushing a buggy walked past the window and Kitty waved as if they were old friends.

‘You said Martin lived at home “on and off”. What did you mean by that?’

She looked awkward. ‘He spent a bit of time in hospital. St David’s. You must know it.’

St David’s. The psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of Kimmerston. The name still spoken in a hushed tone. When Joe had been growing up it had been a place of legend. The ogre’s castle. ‘If you don’t stop playing up, Joe Ashworth, you’ll end up in St Davey’s.’ He nodded.

Kitty went on. ‘I don’t think he minded it so much in there, and it gave his mam a break, whatever she said. They gave him pills and they seemed to work for a while, but then he’d get poorly again. Depressed. Maybe he stopped taking the medication. I don’t think it helped him being next door with Elsie fussing all over him, treating him like a bairn. She liked it when he was off sick from work. He was company for her. I said so a few times, but she didn’t like me interfering and I decided it wasn’t worth falling out over.’

‘How did Martin get on after his mother died?’ Joe wondered what that must be like: to be sheltered and pampered and then find yourself alone, with the freedom to make decisions for yourself. It’d surely blow the mind even of a sane man.

‘He had a bit of a breakdown,’ Kitty said, ‘and ended up in hospital again. I think he realized he was ill and took himself off to the doctor. Since he’s been back he’s seemed better than I’ve known him for years. He gets a bit of company from some lad that visits every couple of weeks.’ She broke off. ‘I suppose he’s the closest Martin had to a friend – you’ll need to tell him.’

‘Who was he, the visitor? A community psychiatric nurse?’

Kitty shook her head. ‘Martin had one of those when he first came out of hospital. A lass. Didn’t look much like a nurse to me. Fishnet tights and a skirt that barely covered her behind. Enough to give a healthy man palpitations.’

‘So who was the lad?’ Joe was starting to feel that he was losing the plot.

‘Name of Frank. Maybe he was a teacher with Martin, though he didn’t look like a teacher. Big lad. Tattoos. Or perhaps they met in hospital.’

‘Do you have a second name for him?’

Kitty shook her head.

‘According to the Job Centre, Martin was planning to become self-employed rather than go on Jobseeker’s Allowance. Any idea what that was about?’ Joe thought maybe Benton had set up as a private tutor. There was plenty of call for people to give a bit of extra coaching, especially in maths. And surely it’d be easier to deal with one child than a rowdy classroom. But why would that have taken him to the big house at Gilswick? There were no kids there.

‘I never really talked to him once Elsie died,’ Kitty said. ‘He was always pleasant enough. Took in my parcels if I missed the postman. A good neighbour. But if he confided in anyone, it wasn’t me.’ She paused. ‘He wouldn’t have been completely without money, if they stopped his benefit. Elsie and him never spent much at all, and his father left him a little nest egg. But maybe he felt he wanted to do his own thing – after years of trying to please his mother, maybe he wanted a bit of independence.’

Kitty gave Joe a key to the back door of Benton’s house. She’d had it since Elsie had died. Joe stood in the Benton yard and phoned Vera. ‘What do you want me to do?’

There was a pause. ‘Well, it’s not a murder scene, is it? We know Benton was killed in the flat at Gilswick Hall. We’ll get the CSIs into his house as soon as they can make it, but it wouldn’t hurt for you to have a look first. I just need something to link Benton to Randle, and we’ve got bugger-all at the moment.’

He waited before opening the door and took time to look around the yard. A washing line with a shirt and a pair of socks dangling in the sunshine. Did that mean Benton was planning to come back the night before, to take them in? Joe had never done his own washing, but Sal would never leave laundry out overnight. A shed, very tidy. Tools hanging on nails, a stepladder. In the yard a couple of pots with daffs, dying now.

Joe unlocked the door and stepped into a back kitchen. And back into time and his nana’s house. A sink and a twin-tub washing machine. Then a step into the kitchen proper. If Benton had been pampered by his mother, there was no sign here that he hadn’t been able to care for himself. No dirty pots. The small gas cooker was so clean that it shone, and a tea towel had been folded on the rail. He opened the elderly fridge to find a carton of milk, four eggs and a supermarket packet of bacon. Then a row of small jars. All clean and all empty. Joe stared at them for a moment, but couldn’t think what they might be for. The house was long and narrow and seemed squashed by the houses on either side. At this point the only light came from the small scullery window.

He walked through to a dining room, gloomy and stale. Joe wanted to open a window and let in some air. A dark wood table and four matching chairs and a sideboard. Clean enough, but dusty. There was a gas fire in a tiled surround that looked so old Joe wouldn’t have wanted to try lighting it. None of the rooms had central heating. He thought that this room hadn’t been used since Elsie had died. Maybe not even before that.

Opening the door to the small living room, Joe blinked because of the sudden light. The sun flooded in, as it had in Kitty’s house. No sofa, but two chairs covered in a shiny floral pattern facing a large TV. Nothing unusual. Nothing to add character to the man who’d spent his life here. Had it been as if he was a lodger in his mother’s house, frightened of upsetting her, of disturbing the family home?

Upstairs. The door ahead of Joe opened into a bathroom. Deep enamel bath, stained and chipped. No shower. To the left, a separate lavatory. There were three small bedrooms. The largest held a double bed, pink candlewick quilt and the smell of old woman. Talcum powder and lavender, on top of something less pleasant. And next to the bed there
was
still a commode with a social-services stamp on the back. Joe shut the door quickly. Let the CSIs check in there.

It seemed that Martin Benton had taken the other bedrooms for his use. The smaller one was just big enough for a single bed, small wardrobe and chest of drawers. The bed was made. Sheets and blankets, army-style. The clothes in the chest and the wardrobe were mass-produced. What struck Joe as strange was that they were all very similar. Jogging bottoms, all black. Polo shirts. Two grey fleeces. Two pairs of trousers of the sort that old men wear to work and a few folded shirts, all white. It seemed that Benton had only possessed one suit and he’d been wearing it when he died. Why had he been wearing his suit for his trip to Gilswick? It suggested something formal. An interview? Had there been a parent in Gilswick village, wanting him to tutor a child? That still couldn’t explain his presence in the valley. And would Benton really have cycled all the way from Kimmerston to Gilswick in his suit? Joe thought they still needed to find out how he’d made his way to the big house.

The second room looked out over the yard and was a revelation. It was kitted out like an office: a large desk against one wall, one main computer and a laptop. Next to the window was a filing cabinet and on a shelf above the desk a row of reference books and academic textbooks, all related not to maths, but to natural history. The impression was more of a gallery than an office. The walls were white and hung with photographs. Beautiful photographs of butterflies, moths and other insects, all blown up so that every detail could be seen. Joe’s attention was caught by a picture of a caterpillar on a laurel leaf. Every vein on the leaf was sharp and clear. There was a raindrop, a shimmering prism like a tear. It seemed to Joe that if Benton had intended to set up his own business, it would surely have been as a photographer. A camera that Joe guessed had taken up six months’ invalidity benefit was hidden in one of the filing-cabinet drawers.

If Benton had been in Gilswick to take photographs of the house or the gardens, why hadn’t he taken his camera?

The camera was in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet; the other two drawers were conventionally arranged. Each drop-file was neatly labelled with a letter of the alphabet, but all of them were empty. Joe suddenly felt a wave of depression. He imagined Benton preparing his office for business, excited perhaps; but he had been killed before he could start out. If he’d gone to the big house for work, it must have been the first contract of his self-employment and might have marked a turning point in his life. Joe checked the desk for a mobile phone. There was nothing. The landline phone was in the hall downstairs. No messages. He dialled 1471 and a disembodied voice gave him a mobile number. He made a note of it and then went outside into the sunshine, closing the door carefully behind him.

Kitty was still sitting in her bay window. He tapped on her door and she answered at once.

‘Do you know what that contraption is, at the bottom of Martin’s garden?’

‘Oh, aye,’ she said. ‘That’s his moth trap.’

When Holly got back from the post-mortem, Vera left her in the police station and headed out to Gilswick. She knew that was the wrong way round, and that she should be the person coordinating the action from a desk while her subordinate should be doing the legwork. But it was spring and being the boss should carry some perks. With the first real sunshine of the year, she couldn’t bear to be inside. She’d parked outside the big house and was watching the search team walking through the woodland between the road and the manor when Joe phoned to say that he’d got a name for the grey man. Martin Benton. An anonymous kind of name for an anonymous man.

She ended the call, waited for a moment and then started the car. It was time to get to know the other residents of the valley. The lane wound past Percy Douglas’s bungalow and ended in a small development. Three houses converted from a farmhouse and two barns. Vera supposed that the buildings had once been a part of the Carswell estate. All over the county farm tenancies were being relinquished and buildings converted to residential use. It was hard to make a living in the hills.

All the houses faced into a paved square, which had probably once been the farmyard. The stone farmhouse had a small front garden, with more land at the back; the barn conversions led straight onto the yard. Fancy cars were parked outside each of them. There was a view of the valley and the hills beyond. It would be as exposed as Vera’s place in the winter and she wondered how all the glass in the barns stood up to the weather. Would you get a window cleaner to come all the way out here? She thought someone must have seen her car coming along the track, and she stayed in the Land Rover for a moment. There were three households here and she needed to speak to the most inquisitive resident. She didn’t have to wait for long.