Ann Cleeves - The Moth Catcher

‘There was a murder in the valley. A young man called Patrick Randle.’ Lizzie realized that she was moved by the thought. Although she’d never met Patrick, she pictured a good-looking young man lying on a table in a mortuary. White and waxy. Some of the women in Sittingwell knew about violent death and had described the procedure. Even those inside for less serious crimes were fascinated and borrowed books about famous killers from the prison library. They told her all about the process, about the crime-scene investigation and the post-mortem, forensics and DNA. She knew where the pathologist cut into the body. She looked at Shirley, expecting a comment, but none came. ‘And an older man.’ Lizzie had no interest in picturing his body.

‘You’ve heard about that?’ Shirley spoke at last. She seemed surprised. Upset.

‘Were you going to tell me?’

‘Of course!’

Lizzie looked at the social worker. She thought Shirley Hewarth had secrets too – so many secrets that they might get confused in the woman’s head.

‘How did you know about the murders?’ Shirley sounded shaken, uncertain. Lizzie thought she seemed tired, with that deep exhaustion that comes from several nights without any sleep.

‘I’ve just been interviewed by a detective.’ Lizzie looked up. ‘He asked me about the murders. Because they happened close to where my parents live. He thought Jason might be involved.’

A silence. Outside someone was walking on the gravel path beyond the window and they both waited until the sound moved away.

‘What did you tell him?’

‘Nothing,’ Lizzie said. ‘There was nothing to say. Two strangers were killed in the valley. What could that have to do with me or Jason?’

‘Of course.’ Shirley wiped her hand across her forehead and Lizzie thought again that she looked exhausted. ‘We’ll have to think about finding you work,’ Shirley said, her voice suddenly bright and professional. ‘I thought the hospitality industry might suit you. You’re articulate and present very well, and you’ll have picked up a lot from your parents. You might consider a college course in September, but it would be good to get some hands-on experience before that.’

There was another silence. Lizzie couldn’t imagine working in a restaurant. She’d never been any good at taking orders. She had travel in her head. Wide spaces, to contrast with this place. Huge grasslands and orange deserts. Once she’d made her peace with her family and raised the funds, she’d disappear overseas. She’d joined the creative writing group in Sittingwell and had secret dreams of writing a book to capture her travels. Didn’t writers make money?

‘I’ve been thinking I should go to the police.’ The social worker’s voice burst into Lizzie’s dreams. ‘Explain about Jason. This is murder, after all. The things he told you might be more relevant than you realize.’

‘No!’ Lizzie forced her voice to be calm. ‘You promised. Everything we discussed was confidential. I trusted you.’

Shirley didn’t reply.

‘I’ll be out soon and we can discuss things properly. Will you at least wait until then?’

‘I can’t stop thinking about it,’ Shirley said. ‘It’s making me ill. There are things you don’t understand. Martin Benton, the older victim, used to work for me.’

‘Do you know who killed him?’ Lizzie felt another tingle of excitement. She could understand why some of the women inside loved those true-crime books. The ones with pictures of blank-faced killers staring out of the pages. There was something compulsive about the sadism. The sexual violence. She remembered again Jason’s words, his hard laughter and his scorn at her tears. The books the women read were all about pain and humiliation.

There was another long silence before Shirley spoke again. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘So you’ve nothing to tell the police.’ When she was a child and hadn’t been able to persuade her friends to do as she wanted, Lizzie had thrown tantrums, pulled hair and dug fingernails into soft flesh. Now she’d learned to be more subtle, more reasonable. ‘What can you contribute to the investigation? You’ll just be another crank with weird stories to tell.’

‘I suppose that’s true.’ Shirley was about to stand up.

‘The older dead man,’ Lizzie said. ‘The one who worked for you. What’s his role in all this?’

‘I don’t know.’ Now Shirley did get to her feet. She began to walk towards the door to call to the officer sitting at the reception desk in the grand lobby that she was ready to go. ‘Really, I can’t see how he might have got caught up in this business at all. I don’t understand any of it.’

Watching from her chair, Lizzie thought Shirley was lying.

Holly stood beside Alicia Randle in the mortuary and tried to put herself in the older woman’s place. Why had Alicia felt the need to travel north to look at a dead body? There was nothing of the young man left inside the grey skin but bone and muscle. A white sheet reached to his neck. Alicia stretched out an arm. Holly was afraid that she was going to pull back the sheet to reveal Paul Keating’s dissection. Instead the woman touched her son’s forehead. She needed to be certain , Holly thought suddenly. All this time she’s been carrying the hope that there was a mistake, that her boy wasn’t the victim. She twisted her body so that she could see Alicia’s face without seeming to stare. The woman was crying. No sound. Even in her grief she felt the need to maintain a certain dignity.

‘That is Patrick?’ The Carswells’ cleaner had made the formal identification, but Holly felt now that she needed to ask.

‘Oh yes. Or it was Patrick.’ Alicia stroked the forehead again, bent to kiss it lightly and then turned away.

She was booked on a train later in the morning and Holly drove her into Alnmouth for coffee, instead of leaving her to wait on her own at the station. They sat in the window of an old-fashioned tea shop. In the car there’d been no conversation, but now Alicia seemed to feel the need to talk.

‘I found Simon,’ Alicia said. ‘My first dead golden boy. He’d hanged himself. Tied a belt round a bannister and dropped into the stairwell. I still have nightmares. I don’t think he meant me to find him. Of course his father was alive then, and I was supposed to be spending the day with friends. But I got bored and came back to the house early. It was this time of year. Simon was home from Oxford for the Easter holidays and I wanted to spend some time with him. I could tell that he was stressed. My husband had high expectations of both the boys. I’ve always thought Simon planned for his father to find the body. A petty act of revenge and quite unfair.’ She was dry-eyed now, but the words flowed instead of tears. ‘Suicide can be a kind of violence too, don’t you think? It hurts the people left behind. It took me a long time to forgive Simon, but I understood even at the time how desperate he must have been. At least I can grieve for Patrick without those complications. Without blame.’ She paused and sipped the coffee. The cups were very small and painted with flowers. Vera wouldn’t have got her fat fingers through the handle.

Holly didn’t know what to say. Usually she was confident and decisive at work, but this case seemed to be undermining her judgement. ‘We can’t find any motive for either murder,’ she said at last. ‘You don’t have any idea why someone would have wanted to kill Patrick?’

‘In the last year I felt as if I’d lost touch with him.’ Alicia poured more tea. Her hand shook a little and there was a spill on the tablecloth. ‘We’d been so close, especially after my husband died, but more recently if he’d had problems, I don’t think I’d be the person he’d come to. Perhaps he disliked the fact that I’d fallen in love with another man, though he always seemed to get on well enough with Henry.’