The Moth Catcher (16 page)

He thought the man would refuse to answer, but he only sounded bored. ‘The same lass as you. Elizabeth Redhead.’ He looked up briefly from his paperwork. ‘Bloody do-gooders, eh?’

Lizzie watched the detective leave the room. She’d been surprised to see him there when the screw had brought her in. She’d been expecting Shirley Hewarth. Joe Ashworth hadn’t seemed much like a detective to her. He was too gentle. Good-looking enough, but not her type. He talked more like a doctor or a priest. He’d be no real match for her. There’d be no steel in him. No fire. Nothing to hit against.

She looked out of the window while she waited for her new visitor to arrive, imagined Ashworth walking out through the main door, getting into his car and driving through the gate. She thought she’d soon be there too. Outside. The women talked about
Outside
as if it was a different place in a different universe. But lots of them were at Sittingwell because they were working towards a release date after years inside a high-security prison. Lizzie had met murderers here. Women who’d killed their kids. Their men. Of course they’d be daunted to be leaving. She didn’t think
she’d
find it so hard to adjust to the outside world. She had plans.

The policeman’s visit had been a shock. She couldn’t have anticipated a double-murder in the valley. She was running through the implications of the news when the door opened and Shirley Hewarth came in. The woman always looked very smart. Professional. Lizzie liked that about her. She thought appearances mattered. Shirley had brought a bag of sweets and opened them on the table, nodded for Lizzie to take one. Lizzie took a sherbet lemon. Her favourite. She liked the sharp burst of sherbet on her tongue when the hard lemon case was shattered.

‘So, Lizzie. Only a few days until your release. We should be thinking of your future.’

Lizzie nodded. She thought any screw listening in to the conversation would be completely misled. The conversation sounded just like any other pre-release interview between a social worker and an offender. They would never guess that Shirley and Lizzie shared secrets. And, sure enough, there were footsteps on the parquet floor in the hall outside as the officer moved away to sit at the desk in reception.

‘I’m going to chat with your mother,’ Shirley went on. ‘Is that okay with you?’

‘Why do you need to talk to her?’ Lizzie looked up sharply.

‘You’ll be staying with her, won’t you?’

Lizzie thought about that. Her parents didn’t feature in the pictures she held in her head. But she was suddenly surprised by a wave of emotion as she thought how it would be good to spend some time with them. Inside, she’d come to enjoy the ritual of daily life. The calmness of the expected. Her parents would provide that for her too. It would be a good place to make decisions and set her up for her next big adventure.

‘You won’t tell them about Jason,’ Lizzie said. She thought she’d shared too much with the social worker. Shirley had been a good listener and she’d seemed to understand. Lizzie hadn’t meant to pass on Jason’s secrets. They’d spilled out when Shirley had asked her about her experience of prison.

‘Everything between us is confidential. You know that.’

‘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.’

‘Can you think of anyone he might have confided in?’

Alicia shook her head. ‘At one time I’d have said Rebecca, his girlfriend, but as I told you last night, they’d separated. There were colleagues, people at the university. I don’t think he was particularly close to them, though. They shared a passion for Lepidoptera, but not much else.’

‘Does Rebecca know that Patrick is dead?’

‘Not from me! I suppose she might have seen it in the media. Of course I should have phoned her.’ The woman seemed distraught. ‘How dreadful not to have thought of that!’

‘I’m sure she’ll understand,’ Holly said. ‘Would you like me to tell her?’

‘Oh, please do. Pass on my apologies. Tell her I’ll be in touch. She might like to come to the funeral.’ Alicia’s voice tailed away.

‘Have you had any thoughts about that?’ Holly thought how hard it must be to plan a funeral for a child. Somehow it was unnatural for a son to die before his mother. Two sons.

‘I’ll bury him in the churchyard in the village, next to his brother,’ Alicia said. ‘They never met, but I know that’s where Patrick would like to be.’ She looked at her watch. ‘The train won’t arrive for half an hour, but would you mind driving me to the station, please? I’m afraid I’m not very good company, and I’d rather be there in plenty of time. Punctuality has always been an obsession. Patrick used to tease me about it.’

At the station Holly got out of the car and shook the woman’s hand. With anyone else she would have been less formal, put an arm around her shoulder, taken a hand, but she knew Alicia Randle wouldn’t want that. ‘Shall I wait with you?’

‘No, no.’ It sounded as if the woman was horrified by the thought and Holly understood. Alicia was close to tears and wanted to sit on the empty platform and cry in peace.

Back in the police station in Kimmerston, Holly tried to track down Rebecca Brown, Patrick’s ex-girlfriend. The number that Alicia had given them over dinner was unavailable. She was about to call the university in Exeter when Vera wandered up to her desk. ‘Can you sort out a media release, Hol? I’d like to get it out for the lunchtime news. If there was a stranger in the valley, somebody must have seen him, and the canvassers have come up with bugger-all so far. Let’s appeal to all the nosy stay-at-homes in the surrounding villages and the people who were walking on the hills or along the burn. We need details of any unfamiliar cars or people. I’ve still got teams out there, but we need a wider hit.’

Holly nodded and replaced the phone. The call to the university would have to wait.

‘How was Alicia Randle?’ Vera leaned against the desk. The fat on her backside spread inside her Crimplene skirt, made it bulge. Holly found herself fascinated by it.

‘Very brave,’ Holly replied. ‘She said it was easier to grieve for Patrick than for her first son. Less complicated. He couldn’t be in any way to blame.’

‘Let’s hope that’s true.’ Vera slid away from the desk, leaving Holly to wonder exactly what she meant.

Later, when the media release had been sent to the press office for approval, Holly tried again to track down Patrick’s former girlfriend. The woman at the end of the phone in Exeter University’s school of medicine was cautious. ‘Give me your number and I’ll call you back. You could be the press.’