Ann Cleeves - The Moth Catcher

‘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 relationship. 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?’

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.’

‘Aye.’

‘I was thinking we should go away,’ he said. He looked pale and he had a bit of a paunch. She thought, as she always did when she saw him face-on, that he could do with more exercise. Walk to the shop in the village if the weather was nice, instead of taking the car. Sometimes she panicked at the thought that he would die before her; then she decided that the worry was ridiculous. You’re the one to talk. A size sixteen these days! If anyone’s going to have a heart attack, it’s you.

Sam came up behind her and they looked together down at the burn. ‘We always said we’d do a cruise when we had the time, didn’t we? Let’s just go for it. Book something last-minute. The Med. The Caribbean. It doesn’t matter where it is.’