Ann Cleeves
The Moth Catcher
The seventh book in the Vera Stanhope series, 2015
Chapter One
Lizzie Redhead listened. In the prison it was never quiet. Not even now in the middle of the night. The other women in her room stirred, snuffling like animals in their sleep. No cells here. Dormitories that reminded her of school. No privacy. No darkness, either. A gleam from the corridor outside shone through the crack under the door, and though this was a low-security establishment there were spotlights at the walls and the gate, and the curtains were thin. Footsteps in the corridor outside. A screw checking that lass on suicide-watch. Two in the morning.
Lizzie worked in the prison farm, so she had access to fresh air and enough exercise to keep her fit, but that didn’t mean she slept well. She’d never needed much sleep. She’d always believed she didn’t belong to her parents; had decided when she was quite small that she was a foundling child, secretly adopted. What did they have in common after all? She had too much energy and a very low boredom threshold. Annie and Sam were soft and gentle, big on squidgy hugs and soppy kisses. Lizzie saw herself as hard and metallic. As an adult she’d chosen men like her. Flinty. Flint on flint made fire. Jason Crow had set her alight.
In a week she’d be released, and she was making plans. She’d become healthy in prison. She’d realized there were better ways to get her kicks than booze and drugs. Jason had taught her that too, though she hadn’t believed him at the time. She knew, from all he’d told her, that she was lucky to have ended up in an open institution.
In prison her entertainment was simple. She visited the library and joined the writers’ group. She had stories to tell and she needed to find the right words. In the library she’d found a book published by the National Geographic and kept renewing the loan until she believed the book was hers. She lay on her bed and looked at pictures of places she wanted to see for herself, felt dizzy at the idea of travelling, had in her nostrils the smell of the rain forest, the salt of distant seas. Huge places, big enough to contain her ambition. Her parents had spent all their life within ten miles of the valley where her father had been born. Lizzie needed tough places to battle with, rocks sharp enough to cut her flesh.
She’d been a cutter when she was a teenager, slicing into her arm with a razor, high on the smell of metal and blood. She still occasionally harboured dreams of steel, sharp blades, blood oozing in perfectly round drops from clean cuts. Her mother had never noticed. Lizzie had always been good at hiding her secrets. Now she was hiding Jason Crow’s secrets too. She was haunted by them, but she waited for the time that they might be useful to her.
Chapter Two
Percy steered the Mini down the lane from The Lamb towards the bungalow he shared with his daughter. On the passenger seat beside him sat Madge, a Border-cross and the best dog he’d ever had. She’d win prizes at the trials, if Percy could be arsed to train her properly. Percy’s sight wasn’t so good these days, so he drove with his nose to the windscreen peering at the road ahead. His daughter said he should stop driving, but hadn’t done anything about it. She liked the two hours of peace his time in The Lamb gave her. Besides, the lane didn’t go anywhere except the big house and those fancy barn conversions, and at this time of day those people were all drinking too. Susan, his daughter, went in to clean for them, and she said the recycling bin was full of bottles every week. Major and Mrs C from the big house were away visiting their son in Australia, so they wouldn’t be driving down the lane. There was nothing else to hit, and the car could find its own way home.
Percy found that his mind was wandering. The beer was strong and he’d been persuaded to take a third pint from one of the youngsters who’d moved into the village. He was late. Susan would be waiting for him, her eye on the clock and his tea in the oven. She liked the washing up done and the kitchen all clean and tidy before the start of EastEnders. Her husband had run away with a lass from Prudhoe as soon as their kids had left home, and Susan had moved in with Percy. To take care of him, she said. To have someone to boss around, he thought, though he was used to her now and would miss her if she moved out.
The lane ran along the bottom of the valley. On each side the hills rose steeply, first to fields quartered with drystone walls where sheep grazed and then to open moorland. Close to the road there were trees, a narrow strip of woodland, with primroses now and the green spears that would turn into bluebells. New leaves just starting and the low sun throwing shadows across the road. He was retired, but he’d always earned his living on farms and could turn his hand to anything. He’d liked sheep-work best and this was his favourite time of year. Lambs on the hill and the scent of summer on the way. The sun starting to get a bit of heat in it.
The third pint was sitting uncomfortably on his bladder. That was something else Susan nagged him to go to the doctor about. He was up to the toilet several times a night. Sometimes he got caught short when he was out, pissing himself like a bairn just out of nappies. There was no fun in getting old, no matter what he said to the kids in the pub about having the perfect life. Me, I’ve got no worries in the world. When you got old there was the worry of indignity and dying. He pulled the car as close to the verge as he could get and jumped out. Just managed to get his zip undone in time, the water in the burn mingling with the sound of his own water aimed at the ditch. There was a moment of relief as he did up his trousers and he thought that he would make an appointment to see the doctor. He couldn’t carry on like this.
Then he saw the boy’s face, half-hidden by cow parsley. The eyes were open and the pale hair drifted in the ditch water like weed. They’d had a dry spell, so the ditch was less than half-full. Most of the face was above the water line. It was unmarked. No lines, no wounds. This was a young man, and he looked as if he’d just gone to sleep. He was wearing a woollen jersey and a waxed jacket, and the clothes that weren’t lying in the mud at the bottom of the ditch looked clean and dry. Percy wasn’t appalled by death. He’d killed beasts and he’d seen dead people. He’d just been too young to serve in the war, but when he was a child it hadn’t been unusual for people to die at home. Now people mocked health-and-safety laws, but there’d been more accidents at work then too. Farm machinery without guards or brakes, foolish men showing off. And he’d been holding his wife’s hand when she slipped away. It was a shock to see the boy lying here and it sobered him up, but he didn’t want to vomit.
He looked at the face more carefully and took a moment to remember when he’d last seen it. Last week in the lounge of The Lamb. Eating one of Gloria’s steak pies. Alone. He’d asked his mate Matty who the boy was, but Matty had no curiosity and didn’t bother answering. And Percy had seen the boy again, more recently. Yesterday morning, strolling down the road towards the village. Percy had been up on the hill walking Madge and had meant to ask Susan about him. Susan was more nebby than he was and she knew all the gossip.
Percy walked back to the car and took the mobile phone out of the glove compartment. All around him blackbirds were singing fit to burst. It was that time of year. The time for marking territories and breeding. He always missed his dead wife most in the spring. Not just the friendship, but the sex.
Susan had given the phone to him so that she could keep track of him. She’d called him earlier this evening to remind him he should be on his way home, and that was why he’d headed straight to the car from the pub, without going to the Gents first. It didn’t do to cross his daughter. He’d never used the phone before, but Susan had talked him through it when she gave it to him. The figures were big, so he could read them easily. His first call was to the bungalow. Susan had a temper on her; she could chuck his tea in the bin if he was late, and now that he was sober he was hungry. Then 999. The person on the other end of the line told him to stay where he was. Percy found a bar of chocolate in his jacket pocket and he waited. Doing what he was told for once.
He’d been expecting a police car or an ambulance. No siren. There was no rush after all; the bloke was quite clearly dead and cold. Percy had been thinking about it. At first he’d assumed some sort of accident. But if the lad had been knocked into the ditch by a car he’d have been lying on top of the vegetation, not hidden underneath it. The same would be true if the man had been taken ill. He might be walking on the verge to keep out of the way of a car or a tractor, but he wouldn’t be that close to the ditch. Percy had come to the conclusion the bloke had been put there. Hidden. Even a walker in the lane wouldn’t have seen the body unless he’d scrambled through the undergrowth like Percy, who’d been trying to retain a bit of his dignity by getting away from the road. Then he heard a vehicle, an old vehicle, coughing and spluttering. Madge had been asleep, but she woke up, gave a little growl until Percy put his hand on her neck. It was a Land Rover, so mucky and bashed that it was impossible to make out the original colour, and there was a woman at the wheel. He got out of his car to tell her that she was on the wrong road and this was a dead-end, and anyway she wouldn’t get past him here, but she stopped and got out. He wondered how her knees managed the weight of her on the deep step down to the tarmac. She was big. No beauty. Bad skin and bad clothes, but lovely eyes. Brown like conkers.
‘Percy Douglas?’ A local voice.
He thought he might have seen her in The Lamb. Not a regular, but occasionally. The size of her, you wouldn’t miss her even if she was sitting on her own in a corner.
‘Aye.’ It still didn’t occur to him that she was here because of the body.
‘I’m Vera Stanhope. Detective Inspector. I don’t get out of the office much these days, but I live not far off, so I thought I’d come along.’ She groped in her pockets for a moment, as if she was planning to show him some ID, but in the end all she pulled out was a half-eaten tube of mints. She gave up. ‘Are you going to let me see this body of yours?’
‘Nothing to do with me.’ But he started down the lane.
‘Hang on. I’d best dress the part or the CSIs will cut me up into slices and stick me in one of their fancy microscopes.’ She reached into the Land Rover and pulled out a packet wrapped in plastic. There was a white paper suit with a hood, and white boots to go over her shoes. ‘I know,’ she said, when she was all dressed up, ‘I look like the Abominable Snowman.’
She made him stay on the lane and point her in the direction of the body. She stood on the bank and looked down into the ditch. ‘How did you find him? You can hardly see him, even from here.’
Percy felt himself blushing.
‘Call of nature, was it?’
He nodded.
‘I get taken short myself these days. Not so easy for a woman. You should thank your lucky stars.’
He could tell she wasn’t thinking about what she was saying. All her attention was on the lad in the ditch.
‘Do you know him?’
He shook his head. ‘I’ve seen him about. In the pub in the village once. Walking down the lane a couple of days ago.’
‘Where do you live?’ Her voice friendly, interested.
‘In the bungalow further up the lane. I built it when I first got married. Major Carswell let me have a bit of land. Most of my work was on the estate farms.’
She nodded as if she understood how these things worked. ‘A bit odd then – you not knowing the man. If he was local.’
‘He doesn’t live in the valley.’ Percy was sure about that. ‘He’s a visitor maybe.’ He paused. ‘Susan would probably know.’
‘Susan?’
‘My daughter. Lives with me.’
There was the sound of another vehicle. This time a police car with a couple of uniformed officers inside. Vera Stanhope climbed back to the lane. ‘The cavalry,’ she said. ‘Just in time. I’m gasping for a cup of tea, and you’ll be starving. Why don’t you make your way home and I’ll follow you when I’ve chatted to the workers. Your Susan can tell me what she knows about the lad in the ditch.’
She turned up half an hour later. Percy and Susan were still at the table, but the cottage pie had been eaten and they were onto tea and home-made cake. His Susan had always been a lovely baker. There was no sweetness in her nature these days and Percy had the sudden notion that it all went into her cakes and puddings. The detective knocked at the kitchen door, but didn’t wait for anyone to answer. Just inside, she pulled off her shoes. Percy thought that was a smart move. Susan couldn’t abide anyone bringing dirt into the house.
‘I hope I’m not disturbing you.’ And with that, the detective was at the table, and Susan had already fetched another cup and saucer. Tea was poured and a slice of cake had been cut. The bright conker eyes were looking at them.
‘Percy here told me you’d know all about the lad he found in the ditch. We’ve got a name for him now, at least. There was a wallet in his jacket with a credit and debit card. And a driver’s licence. Patrick Randle. Does that mean anything to you?’ She bit into the cake.
Susan was enjoying every minute of this. Since Brian had left and the kids had gone away – Karen to university and Lee to the army – gossip was what brought her to life. Malicious gossip suited her best, and she’d upset most of the women in the village. It pained him that she had so few friends. ‘Patrick,’ Susan said, ‘that’s the name of the house-sitter at the Hall.’
Vera looked at her without interrupting, and Susan continued.
‘When the major and his wife go away to stay with their son in Australia, they bring someone in to look after the house. Well, it’s more to look after the dogs really, but they feel happier knowing there’s someone onsite at night. When they’re away I still go in a couple of times a week – it’s a good chance to give the place a good clean – but I wouldn’t want to stay there or walk those great slobbering Labradors.’
‘Is it always Patrick who stays, when they’re on holiday?’ Vera had finished her slice of cake. Without asking, Susan cut her another.
‘No, it’s usually a woman, middle-aged. Name of Louise. This time she was unavailable and the agency sent them the young man. I wasn’t sorry. Louise acted as if she was lady of the manor, all airs and graces. She was the hired help, same as me.’ That bitterness showing itself again.
‘How long has Patrick been here?’ Vera reached out for the teapot.
‘Just a fortnight. He arrived on the Tuesday and that’s one of my cleaning days. Mrs Carswell asked me to show him round and settle him in. There’s a flat in the attic where their eldest Nicholas lived, before he went off to Australia, and the house-sitters always stay there.’
‘What was he like, this Patrick?’
Percy was tempted to leave the women to it. This time of the evening he usually put on the television, and he never liked his routine disturbed. And he thought Susan would show herself up and say something nasty. But there was such a connection between the women, such concentration, that he was scared of moving in case he broke it.
‘He seemed pleasant enough,’ Susan said. Percy felt relieved. ‘Easy to talk to. Relaxed. I asked why he was house-sitting. It seemed an odd way for a bright young man to earn a living.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘That it suited him just at the moment. He was between projects and he was enjoying exploring the country.’
‘Projects?’ Vera squinted at her. ‘What did he mean by that?’
‘I’m not sure. But that was what he said.’
‘Where did he come from?’ The questions were coming quickly now. Percy thought the fat woman would surely have an address, if she’d found his driver’s licence, so what could that be about?’
‘He didn’t say.’ Susan sounded disappointed. He saw that Vera Stanhope was providing her with attention, and she didn’t get much of that these days.
‘But you might be able to guess,’ Vera said. ‘From his voice, the way he spoke.’
Susan thought for a moment. ‘He had a voice like a television newsreader. A bit posh.’
‘From the South then?’
Susan nodded.
‘When did you last see him?’
‘Yesterday afternoon. Today I work for the people who live in the barn conversions. There are three houses at the end of the valley.’
‘What time yesterday?’ Again the question was fired at speed. Percy thought the woman found it hard for her words to keep up with her brain.
‘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 outside 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 pau...