Ann Cleeves - The Moth Catcher

He waved the coffee pot at Holly. ‘Fancy some?’

She shook her head. The coffee was almost strong enough to stand a spoon in. She could smell it from where she was waiting and thought she could feel the effect of the caffeine from there.

They were still standing in the kitchen and Holly nodded out into the garden. ‘You’re into moths.’

‘The trap? It was a phase Jonathan went through when he was a young teenager. Before he got the acting bug. I got into moth-trapping with him. There’s something primeval about catching things. Even tiny beasts that are a nightmare to identify. When Shirley and I separated, I brought the trap here. I thought it’d be something Jon and I could do together when he came to stay for weekends, but we only set it a few times. He’d already joined the Youth Theatre by then and all my time seemed to be taken up ferrying him to rehearsals. Mandy’s always at me to get rid of it. I should bring it in and stick it on eBay.’

‘It’s a connection between all three victims,’ Holly said. ‘Martin Benton and Patrick Randle were into moths too. Seems like a weird coincidence. You’re sure you never had any contact with them?’

‘Never.’

‘What about Shirley? Could she have met either of the men through their hobby?’

‘Shirley was never interested.’ Jack drank more coffee, peered at her over the rim of the mug. ‘She couldn’t see the point – said they all looked the same anyway. She encouraged Jonathan, but it wasn’t her thing at all.’

There were footsteps on the stairs. Jonathan had pulled on a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt, but looked even more hungover than his father.

‘The detective was asking about moth-trapping,’ Jack said. ‘I told her you had other interests these days. Like prancing on a stage, girls and booze.’ The gentle tease took him an effort, and Jonathan managed a smile to show he understood that. He sat at the table with his head in his hands. His father reached for another mug, poured coffee and slid it towards him.

Holly was remembering their last conversation in the office in Northumbria University. She turned her attention to Jack. ‘When we last spoke, you said Patrick Randle’s name was familiar. Could you have come across it because he was into moths too? He’s written a couple of articles.’

‘Maybe.’ Jack sounded doubtful. ‘But like I explained, it was only really a second-hand hobby for me. Jon was the one who followed the stuff online and got the magazines. I helped out in the garden to support him.’

‘Jon?’

The younger man lifted his head and she saw he’d hardly been following the conversation.

‘Perhaps you came across Martin Benton and Patrick Randle when you were moth-trapping. You might have seen Martin’s photographs. They’re brilliant. He lived in Kimmerston, just up the hill from here. He’s the computer wizard who worked for your mother.’ Holly was thinking there were just too many connections now for Martin’s employment at Hope to be pure coincidence.

Jon was staring at her now and making an effort to concentrate.

Holly tried to speak slowly and clearly. ‘When I asked you about Martin yesterday you said you’d met him in the office in Bebington, but I wonder if you’d come across him previously. Because of the shared interest.’

‘Yes!’ It was a light-bulb moment and came out as a shout. ‘He taught me. Just for one term; he was filling in for someone on maternity leave. He was a pretty crap teacher actually, and maths was never my favourite subject. But he was brilliant on moths and butterflies. We got talking one break and he said I could go and see his set-up.’

‘Did you go?’

‘A couple of times over the summer. I must have been about fourteen and we still all lived together in Kimmerston then. Mum came with me when I first went. She had a suspicious mind and spent too much of her time working with perverts. She thought I was in danger of being corrupted or groomed.’

‘And were you?’

‘Nah. Martin was a bit weird, but there was nothing dodgy like that. He was completely harmless.’

‘Weird in what way?’ Holly couldn’t work out the significance of this. It meant that Shirley Hewarth had known Benton for much longer than anyone had realized, but why would that be important?

‘Very precise. A bit obsessive. He lived with his mother, who treated him like a kid. We’d be out in his garden checking the trap and Mrs Benton would come out to check he was warm enough, or she’d appear with mugs of coffee and bits of cake. With Martin, everything was recorded and written down and then he’d transfer the data to a file on his computer. He was a great one for lists.’ Jon seemed brighter as he relived the memories of his early teens. Perhaps the toxic coffee was working its magic. ‘At first I thought all that was brilliant, but Martin expected me to keep the same detailed records and in the end I just found it tedious. I didn’t have that sort of brain. I loved the experience: being out late at night to set the trap and early in the morning to see what we’d caught. He’d put them in jars in the fridge overnight to make them still, and once I went up to his house the next morning to watch him photograph them. He was a brilliant photographer. But it was very passive and I soon got bored.’

‘You don’t remember all this, Mr Hewarth?’ Holly turned to the older man.

He shook his head. ‘Like I said, I just helped Jon out when he was trapping in the garden. When I was around. I was still working then of course, covering stories all over the region, away a lot.’

‘And neither of you made the connection between Martin Benton the moth-trapper and the guy who was working with Shirley?’

‘I didn’t,’ Jonathan said. ‘It was a long time ago and it’s an anonymous sort of name, heard in a different situation. When I knew him Martin was a teacher, not an unemployed guy looking for work experience.’

Holly thought that made sense. She remembered Vera’s first description of Benton as the ‘grey man’. It seemed sad that Benton had been so easily forgotten. But perhaps Shirley had remembered, when Martin had turned up at her office looking for work. Perhaps she could still picture a kind teacher who’d spent time with her son and tried to encourage his interest in natural history.

‘He was ill.’ Another memory had returned to Jonathan. ‘It wasn’t just that I got bored with going out with him. I went to his house one day and his mother said he wasn’t there. He was in hospital. I felt kind of relieved. It gave me a way out and meant I had an excuse for dropping the whole thing. I was one for brief enthusiasms in those days. Phases. I’d already moved on to something else and joined the Youth Theatre. But Martin wouldn’t have understood that.’

There was a moment of silence.

‘Did you ever see him again?’

Jonathan shook his head. ‘My mother asked if I wanted to visit him in hospital that summer. But I’d found out that he was in St David’s. You know, the loony bin. Mum said she’d go with me, but I couldn’t face it.’ A pause. ‘That seems so mean now. Callous. I’m glad he wasn’t alone when he died. It was a double-murder, wasn’t it? I read it in the paper. He was visiting a friend.’

Holly didn’t like to say that the bodies hadn’t been found together, that Randle had been killed in the vegetable garden and Benton inside the house, or that they still didn’t have any real idea of the relationship between the two men. She stood up. Jack stood too, but Jonathan was still, frozen in the past, reliving memories of his youth when the worst thing he had to face was the awkwardness of telling a former teacher that he no longer shared his passion for the natural world.