Ann Cleeves - The Moth Catcher

Out on the street Annie felt a ridiculous rush of optimism. Perhaps Lizzie had been changed by the shock of the court case and prison – the few months away from the dealers to get herself clean. The murders in the valley had nothing to do with them, after all. It was the act of a random lunatic. She’d seen occasional cases on the television news. Sick bastards riding down country roads with a shotgun, killing any strangers who got in their way. Glorying in the violence. The police always caught those people.

She drove back towards Gilswick with the car window open, listening to birdsong. Thinking that she would have to explain about Lizzie to Sam. They couldn’t put off talking about their daughter any longer.

It was still early when Vera arrived at the big house. She’d phoned the station to set back the briefing for an hour and she’d demanded Billy’s presence at Gilswick Hall. He might be a randy old goat, but he was the most meticulous crime-scene manager she’d ever worked with. The officer in charge of the search team was new to her. He was a big bald-headed Scot called Peter MacBride and he was waiting for her by the front door of the Carswell house when she drove up. Getting out of the car, she heard a cuckoo and thought how rare that was these days. When she was a kid they listened out for them every year. She had a sudden sense of nature being knocked out of kilter. A heatwave in April, wasps out of season and the cuckoos disappearing. Two strangers killed in a place people thought of as paradise.

MacBride was apologetic. ‘Sorry it’s taken so long. It made sense to work our way from the house towards the road and the ditch where the body was found. The veggie patch is at the back, so we’ve only just got to that.’

‘You had an early start today.’

‘Aye, well, I’m a persistent bugger. It’s been eating away at me that we haven’t been able to find the murder scene for the young man. I got the team to assemble just before dawn, so we could make a prompt start at first light.’

Vera followed him round the side of the house. She’d looked out at the vegetable garden from the upstairs windows, but hadn’t ventured here. It was big and well tended, almost commercial in scale. Fruit bushes in a cage, strawberry plants under netting, rows of vegetables already starting to push through the soil. Everything labelled and almost weed-free. She wondered again if Patrick had been expected to work out here. Now that was even more relevant and she made a note to ask Joe to check with the house-sitting agency.

A row of cold-frames stood beyond the fruit cage. Solid wooden frames with the glass lids now removed. Inside mostly salad crops – radish, lettuce and spring onions. The lettuce was the cut-and-come-again variety and was ready for harvest. On the corner of the far edge of one frame a dark stain that could be blood.

‘Of course we’ll need a sample for DNA testing?’

He nodded to show that it was already being sorted. ‘And as soon as you’ve finished here, we’ll cover it and let the scientists do their thing.’

‘Lorna Dawson’s testing the soil from his shoes?’ Vera liked the man. His competence and lack of drama.

He nodded again. ‘I’ve been in touch and she says she’ll try to visit. It’s a long way from Aberdeen, though, and it depends what else she has on.’

Inside the frame the plants were crushed. ‘So what’s your theory?’ Vera had dozens of scenarios dancing in her brain, but none of them made sense yet.

‘I think the victim was out here working. Someone came up behind him and hit him. He twisted as he fell into the frame and that’s how we have blood on that side of it.’

‘Well, I suppose that ties in with the injuries on the body.’ But Vera thought it didn’t tie in with anything else. They knew that Patrick had picked Benton up from the bus in Gilswick and had driven him back to the big house. There were two mugs in the kitchen in the flat, so they’d had tea together. Why would Patrick leave the older man alone to come out and do a spot of gardening? It didn’t make sense.

‘There were no defensive injuries.’ She was speaking almost to herself now. ‘What does that tell us?’

‘There’s a grass path almost all the way from the house.’ MacBride looked back towards the building. ‘If Randle was bending over the frame working, he might not have heard the killer approaching.’

Vera didn’t answer immediately. She was picturing the scene. Late afternoon. Warm. Forget about Benton for a while and focus on what was happening here. There had been no blood stains on Randle’s jersey or jacket, only on his shirt, so perhaps he had been gardening. He’d taken off his jumper and jacket and put them on the ground close by. ‘Maybe.’ But why would he work in the garden when he had a guest – Benton – in the flat?

She straightened and paused, hoping to catch the sound of the cuckoo again, but all she could hear were woodpigeons. ‘It’s a bloody long way from here to the ditch by the road. The killer must have had access to a vehicle. It’d be struggle enough to get him to the drive.’ She wondered why the killer had bothered. If there’d only been one murder, she’d have understood it. It could have been an attempt to make the whole thing look like an accident. A hit-and-run. And that might explain why the jacket and jersey had been replaced. But the body in the flat was going to be found eventually and then there was no way the authorities wouldn’t link the two deaths. It all seemed too complicated. Too weird. Again she thought that the timing of the men’s deaths was the key to this. But she knew there was no way Paul Keating would be able to tell her which of the victims had died first.

She stretched and looked at her watch. She should get back to the station. In Kimmerston the troops would be waiting for the briefing. The sun was almost warm now. MacBride’s team were making their way in a line through the small orchard between the back of the house and the hill.

He followed her gaze. ‘Just in case someone came down to the house from the footpath that runs along the ridge. But we’ll be packing up by the end of the day.’

‘Aye, well, thank them. And thank you.’ They were almost at the house when she had another idea. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve come across a moth trap? Wooden or plastic contraption, with a funnel and a very bright bulb.’

‘Is that what they are? We left them in situ . This way.’ He led her down a beaten path through the trees that separated the house from the road. Sunlight slanted onto the patches of clear fell and the bright-green spears of bluebells. In some places the plants were in flower, giving the undergrowth a bluish sheen. Birdsong everywhere. She thought this was what had brought the people in the new development at the end of the track to live in the valley. They imagined it would always be like this.

‘Did you find anything else of interest here?’

‘Four sweetie wrappers. Unusual because they’re from a local manufacturer. Kimmerston Confectionery. Only sold in a few outlets. They do the old-fashioned sweets – black bullets, pear drops, sherbet lemons. All individually wrapped. No telling how long they’ve been here, though, and they could have blown in from the road. Or been eaten by Randle when he was setting up the traps.’

Vera didn’t say anything. She didn’t think Randle was the sort of chap who’d drop litter. And she knew she’d seen a bowl of the sweets recently, though she couldn’t for the life of her remember where.

MacBride stopped so suddenly that Vera almost walked into the back of him. By the side of the path there were two moth traps, set quite close to each other. Huge car batteries to power them. ‘They were full of insects,’ he said. ‘We didn’t know what to do with them.’