Ann Cleeves - The Moth Catcher

‘Susan says she’s a bit of a doormat. It’s almost as if she’s scared of him.’ He looked up. ‘But you don’t want to take too much notice of what Susan says. She’s never been one to let the truth stand in the way of a good story.’ He gave an awkward little laugh. ‘I tell her she should be a writer herself.’

Vera smiled too. ‘You must remember the farmhouse up there when it was still working. The place where the Lucas family lives now.’

‘I used to work there. Contract mostly. And my dad before me. He was a moudy man.’

Vera grinned. ‘Eh, I haven’t heard that word for years! You’d get in the moudy man to clear your land of moles and pests.’

Percy nodded. ‘You wouldn’t recognize the house now. It’s all been tarted up. You’d never guess it was ever a working farm.’ A pause. ‘A chap called Heslop used to be the tenant farmer. Spent all his adult life there, struggling to make a living from the place. He only gave up when his wife couldn’t stand it any more and forced him to shift to the town. He died six months later. He’d be turning in his grave if he could see what they’d done to the place.’

‘You’ve been inside?’

‘Nigel Lucas had a party last Christmas and invited most of the village.’ He gave a wicked grin. ‘I think they were hoping the Carswells would show, but the major and his wife were down south visiting their daughter. So Nigel had to make do with the plebs.’

‘He’s a bit of a social climber, is he?’

‘Cash is no object,’ Percy said. ‘Susan says their kitchen cost more than a man’s wage for a year. But I don’t think that’s enough for Nigel. He’d like to get in with the county set. It’ll never happen, though. Round here you need to be born to it.’

‘How did he make all his money?’ Vera leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. She thought this was as happy as she got, digging around into the background of her suspects. Perhaps she was a bit of a historian too.

‘He had his own business. Burglar alarms. That sort of thing, I suppose. Sold it and made a fortune, apparently.’ Percy paused again. ‘Susan says he’s been accepted as a magistrate. She saw the letter when she was cleaning last week.’

Vera thought that figured. Nigel would see it as a first step to becoming established in the county. Besides, he’d love sitting on the bench and passing judgement on more lowly mortals. ‘What does Susan think of the wife? She seems a bonny thing. Younger than him?’

Percy considered. ‘She’s not that much younger. Not according to Susan. Well preserved.’

Vera thought Susan would probably know. She imagined the cleaner going through desk drawers when she had the place to herself, picking up birth dates and stray personal details. She’d be one to hoard information, loving it for its own sake. And isn’t that just what I do?

She looked across at Percy. ‘Did Susan pick up any useful facts about Patrick Randle, the house-sitter? She’d have been curious – a new man in the valley – but she might be a bit embarrassed to tell us, because she wasn’t supposed to go up into the flat. She wouldn’t want us to know she’d been prying. But she might have told you.’

For the first time Percy seemed uncomfortable. He shifted in his chair. ‘She means no harm.’

‘That’s not really an answer, is it, pet?’

The old man didn’t reply and Vera continued, ‘You know this place. Two men are dead. You’d tell me, wouldn’t you, if you had any idea what might have caused it? Even if you only suspected?’

‘I don’t know anything about the murders,’ Percy said. ‘Really. I hate all this. The police in the meadow and the roadblock at the end of the lane, so I get stopped every time I just want a quick pint in The Lamb. If I knew owt useful, I’d tell you. I want everything back to normal.’

Vera nodded, satisfied at last.

She expected to find the station quiet, but Holly was still there. With a touch of guilt Vera suspected the officer had been waiting for her . If it’d been Joe, Vera would have taken him home, fed him something her hippy neighbours had left in her freezer, opened a beer. But she’d learned that Holly disliked that sort of approach, saw it almost as corrupting. So Vera took her to the canteen, bought coffee from one of the machines. That was about as informal as Holly was comfortable with. Their words seemed to rattle around the empty space.

‘So, Hol? How did you get on with Randle’s girlfriend?

‘She’d seen about the murder in the press. Of course she was upset. Although Becky was the one to end the relationship, I don’t think she saw the separation as permanent. She always thought there’d be a happy-ever-after ending.’

Vera heard the sarcasm, but ignored it. Holly could do with a bit of romance in her life. It might make her a tad less brittle.

‘If she still cared for the lad, why did she dump him?’

‘Because she thought he was keeping secrets from her. Maybe she thought if she threatened to dump him, it would jolt him into confiding in her. It didn’t work, though.’

Vera became more alert at that. Until then she’d been going through the motions, letting Holly know that she was taking her seriously. But now this was starting to get interesting. ‘Come on, Hol. Tell me more. What sort of secrets. Another woman?’

‘Nothing like that. At least I don’t think so. Apparently Patrick’s personality changed at about the time his mother took up with her new man. He became interested in the family history and started researching the past, digging around in the archives of the local paper. He got a bit paranoid about his university research too, talked about people stealing his data. I’m not sure what it was all about. But he sent Becky a text last week.’ Holly looked down at her notes. ‘ Nearly fit to be your friend again. If you can forgive me. Which Becky took to mean that he’d finished whatever project had been taking up all his time, and he hoped it might be possible for them to get back together. That he might be prepared to tell her what had been going on.’

‘Did she reply?’ Vera’s coffee had been left to go cold.

‘She didn’t phone him. I’m not sure whether she texted.’

Vera tried to get her head around this. Of course the emotional affairs of two young people might have no relevance at all to the case, but Patrick’s obsession with secrecy struck her as significant. What could a young man from his background possibly have to hide? And where could Martin Benton fit in? She realized that it was starting to get dark outside.

‘Get on home.’ She made a little shooing gesture with her hands. ‘We’ve got a full day tomorrow and I can’t have you off your game. You’ve done brilliantly, Hol. Thanks.’ Then she smiled at the young woman’s confusion. It never did any harm to wrong-foot the team by giving a bit of praise. It occurred to Vera, watching Holly walk away to spend the night alone in her flat, that they had more in common than she liked to admit. She’d been spiky and defensive when she’d been a young officer, and though there were more women in the service now, Holly didn’t have it easy. No family around to support her. And it probably wasn’t her fault that she looked like something out of a fashion magazine, with legs up to her waist and American teeth. Holly left the canteen and Vera watched with a stab of sympathy. Then she thought she must be getting soft in her old age.

On the way back to her car she called into her office. On her desk was the brown Manila file she’d seen in Randle’s car and a little note from Joe: This is the file you were asking about. It was empty. No fingerprints except Randle’s . She thought that just about summed up the progress they were making with the case.