The Moth Catcher (23 page)

Nigel was pouring drinks. He’d made a jug of some sort of cocktail and insisted that they try that first. It was syrupy and very alcoholic. She drank it too quickly and already the room appeared to spin. Everyone seemed to be talking too quickly and laughing too loud. John O’Kane came up behind her and pulled her into a dance. The music was slower now. One of the soppier Beatles numbers. She found herself enjoying the touch of his hand on her back and realized she must be even drunker than she’d thought. There was something flattering about his attention. Usually he talked about himself, his book, his work. Today he asked about her, murmuring so that she could just catch his words over the music.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Yeah.’

He moved his hand from her back to her neck. The sensation of bare skin on bare skin, even here, in front of all these people, thrilled her. She glanced at Sam, who sitting next to Jan on the sofa. They seemed to be engaged in an intense conversation. Annie wondered if it was about Lizzie or if there was a sexual attraction there too, if Sam felt so relaxed with Jan, who was competent and easy to speak to, that he wanted to pull her towards him and kiss her.

We’re all getting old and desperate. We can’t believe we’re no longer attractive.

She pulled away gently from John. ‘I need some food to soak up some of the booze.’ She walked over to the table and cut herself some French bread and cheese. John followed her.

‘Is Jan okay?’ Because, looking at Janet more closely, Annie thought she looked tired and tense. She was still listening to Sam and giving him her full attention, but she’d been holding the same drink for the past hour and the fingers clutching the glass were rigid. Annie thought they all took Jan for granted. They all went to her with their troubles. Perhaps she needed someone to listen to
her.

The professor shrugged. ‘She’s been moody for the last few days. When I ask her, she says it’s the murders. Something about being aware of her own mortality.’

The music changed again and Nigel and Lorraine were on their feet doing some elaborate jive, twisting and swinging, until Lorraine stumbled and they ended up in a giggling heap on the floor.

We’re too old to behave like this
, Annie thought.
We should have more dignity
.
We’re bad for each other. It’ll be good for us to have Lizzie at home. Someone younger to put our lives into proper perspective.
All evening people seemed to come and go, swinging into her line of sight and then out of it, disappearing from the room and coming back with no explanation.

It was late. The music had stopped and nobody had bothered to put on a new CD. The room was lit by candles. Nigel had made coffee and they were drinking it with his malt whisky, beyond caring about the next morning’s hangover. Only Janet seemed relatively sober. She got to her feet and said she’d have to let the Carswell dogs out.

‘Shall I come with you?’ Sam, not John. John was slumped on the floor next to Annie, his head so close to her shoulder that she could smell his shampoo.

‘No,’ Janet said. ‘I won’t go far. Just down the track a little way.’

Sam started to get to his feet.

‘Really, I’m fine.’ Janet already had her hand on the door handle. ‘I could do with some time on my own. Send out a search party if I’m not back in quarter of an hour.’

They all laughed, but Annie made a note of the time on the clock on the wall. If Janet wasn’t back, she’d go and look for the woman herself.

Ten minutes had passed when they heard the scream. Distant, but clearly audible through the open window. There was no music in the room now and the noise cut through the silence. They were on their feet, running outside. There was the sound of their footsteps on the gravel, they were calling out Janet’s name and it was impossible to tell where the scream had come from. By now it was quite dark. No moon and no street lights.

‘Be quiet!’ It was the professor yelling over the chaos. Suddenly they were all still, listening.

Annie could hear the water in the burn below them. Then there was another sound. A dog barking. And footsteps on the track. The light of a small torch, moving in rhythm as the person holding it walked towards them.

‘Janet!’ The professor again.

‘Come here,’ she shouted. ‘You have to come here.’

Then they were all in motion again, tumbling down the track, stumbling like children racing down a grassy bank. Annie thought it was like a nightmare. The scream had sobered them a little, but not enough for this to make any sense.

When they reached her Janet was standing still. She had the dogs beside her. John put his arm around her. Annie thought it was the first time that the couple had had physical contact all evening. ‘Are you okay? I thought something dreadful had happened.’

‘It has.’ A pause. ‘At least I think it has. Perhaps I imagined it. Come with me and check.’

She walked back down the track a little way and shone her torch along the footpath that branched from it and led to the hill. Something was lying across the path. A sack of rubbish, Annie thought at first. Fly-tipping wasn’t unknown here in the valley.

‘We’d better stay here,’ Janet leaned forward as far as she could reach without losing balance. ‘I suppose the police will find things difficult if we all get too close, though the dogs have been there. They found her.’ The torchlight showed a woman. She’d been slashed by a knife. Over and over. There was blood all over her clothes. One of the shoes had fallen off and rested at a distance from her feet.

‘Who is she?’ Nigel seemed calm, almost detached. ‘I don’t recognize her from the village.’

Annie pushed her way to the front of the group so that she could get a better view. The clothes were familiar. The patent-leather shoe with its small heel. She felt suddenly bereft, as if a relative had died. ‘I know her. That’s Shirley Hewarth. She’s the social worker who’s been visiting our Lizzie.’

Holly had been asleep for an hour when she got the call. She recognized Joe Ashworth’s voice immediately, even before she looked at the caller ID, and was awake and alert. She’d switched on the bedside lamp. Her bedroom was mostly white. White linen, white walls. Pale-green blinds at the window. One ex-lover had called it antiseptic.
Like living in a hospital.

She always kept a notebook at the side of her bed and she was writing as she pulled clothes out of the drawer with one hand. The name of the victim brought her up short. ‘
Who?
’

‘Shirley Hewarth. The woman from Hope NorthEast.’

Holly was thinking fast now, making connections. ‘Martin Benton’s boss.’

‘Aye, and supervising the daughter of one of the Valley Farm families.’

‘But no link to Patrick Randle.’

‘Not as far as we know.’ Joe spoke slowly, but she thought he was running through the possibilities in his head too.

‘I don’t suppose she’s a moth expert?’

He gave a little laugh. ‘The boss wants us all out there to talk to the witnesses. She doesn’t want to leave it until the morning.’

Of course not. That would be far too easy.

‘Who found the body?’ Holly held the phone between her ear and her shoulder so that she could pull on a pair of jeans. The great thing about women was their ability to multi-task. Sometimes she thought that was Vera’s only feminine attribute.

‘Janet O’Kane. She was walking the Carswells’ dogs last thing. The body was just off the track, lying across the footpath that leads to the hill.’

‘Not hidden then.’ She put the phone on the bed while she pulled a jersey over her head. ‘Sorry, I missed that.’

‘Hewarth was close enough to the track to have been dumped from a car,’ Joe said. ‘Billy Cartwright and Paul Keating are on their way. No information yet about whether she was murdered where she was found.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Outside the boss’s house. She asked me to pick her up on the way to the scene. I think she had a few drinks last night. With her neighbours.’ Joe’s disapproval was obvious. He disliked the couple who farmed the smallholding next to Vera’s house. He thought they were feckless and that they led Vera astray.

‘I’ll see you there then.’ Holly was going to add:
Race you
. But Joe would have disapproved of that too. She’d never before met a police officer who was so law-abiding.

When she arrived at the scene Vera and Joe had just arrived. Vera was wearing strange baggy trousers tucked into wellington boots and looked even less like a senior detective than usual. Holly wondered if they might be pyjama bottoms, because she couldn’t believe Vera owned a tracksuit. All the cars had been directed to park next to the Valley Farm development. Big arc lights had already been set up where the footpath joined the track and the crime-scene team were just erecting a scene tent over the body. Everything was in monochrome, with sharp shadows and black silhouettes, all the officers and CSIs in their white suits and masks. It looked like a film set. For a horror movie perhaps. Something about a deadly virus infecting the world.

Vera was struggling to get into the scene suit, moaning as she always did that they were never big enough. ‘Do they think all police officers are bairns? Or anorexic?’

Holly followed her through the cordon and into the tent. She recognized the victim from her clothes and the little pearl earrings, but thought Shirley Hewarth looked older in death than she remembered, when they’d talked in the charity’s office.

‘Will anyone be waiting for her at home?’ Vera’s words were muffled by the mask.

Joe shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. I’m not sure why, though. Perhaps she said. She lived in Cullercoats. I checked the actual address, because I was curious to know what sort of place it was.’

‘And?’

‘A Tyneside flat close to the sea front. Nothing flash. It doesn’t sound like a family home.’

‘She’s not wearing a wedding ring.’ Billy Cartwright was squatting next to the body. ‘Not that that means anything.’

Vera turned suddenly. ‘Hol, would you go? Better you than some plod knocking on the door, if there is anyone in the place. You’d met her at least. She’s of an age to have grown-up kids and they seem to bounce back these days, don’t they? The boomerang generation.’ A pause. ‘So even if she doesn’t have a partner, there might be someone at home who needs to know what’s happened to her, before they read it in the press. See if you can get into the house, even if it’s empty. It’d be good to get your opinion of the place before we get a search team in. Anything that might tell us what she was doing out here tonight.’ Vera paused again. ‘Or why she was dumped here.’

So Holly found herself back in her car, driving towards the coast, along the empty night-time roads.

The flat was in a quiet street, narrow and tree-lined. At the end of it was the main road that led along the coast, and beyond that the sea. There were no lights in any of the houses. It was early morning, so everyone was asleep. Classic Tyneside flat-layout: it looked like a standard 1930s terrace, but with two doors side by side at each house. One led to the ground-floor flat, and one to steps and the second flat upstairs. Shirley Hewarth lived on the first floor. Holly rang the bell. No answer.

There was a small window open at the front of the flat, but that wouldn’t help her get in, unless she was prepared to climb the drainpipe in full view of any passer-by. And it wasn’t long until dawn now. There’d be joggers and dog-walkers making their way to the sea front. She felt along the lintel of the door. No key. The small front garden would be the responsibility of the ground-floor flat. It was overgrown. Rubbish had blown into the borders and the grass was almost knee-high. There were no curtains at the window and there was enough light from the street lamp to see that the place was empty. No furniture. Perhaps it had just been sold or was being prepared to rent out.

Outside Shirley’s door two pots had been planted with brightly coloured annuals. They were too heavy to lift, but Holly ran her fingers through the compost, which was almost dry. A couple of inches below the surface of the second pot she found the key. Shirley might once have been a probation officer, but she hadn’t been very good about security. Holly pulled on her scene suit and let herself in.

There was a light switch just inside the door and she turned it on.

‘Hello! Is anyone at home?’ Holly was a light sleeper, but she supposed a relative or lover might have slept through the bell. No response.

The stairs led up from a narrow hallway. It was uncluttered. No junk mail or free newspapers waiting to be dumped in the recycling bin. There was carpet on the stairs and it had been hoovered so recently that there were still stripes in the pile. Had Shirley cleaned because she was expecting guests? Or was she always so house-proud? Holly suspected the latter and wondered briefly how Hewarth could have worked for the charity in the mucky office in Bebington. And her work would have taken her to even more scuzzy houses, when she was interviewing her clients.
But my work takes me into places that make me feel filthy just stepping in through the door
.
Perhaps that’s why we both kept our homes so clean.

At the top of the stairs there was a hall with four doors leading off. A coat-stand and shoe-rack. Everything orderly, everything in its place. The first door led to the bathroom. Holly found only women’s toiletries in the wall cupboard and only one toothbrush in the glass mug by the sink. So it seemed Shirley had lived here alone. Like Holly and Vera, she’d been a single woman.

There were two bedrooms, one looking out over the street, with a double bed, and a smaller room with a futon that could be let down for visitors. Holly already had the impression that this wasn’t the home of a lonely woman, even if she had lived alone. Surely Shirley would have friends. Her room had a bay window that would give her a glimpse of the sea. The furniture was old, without being special or antique, inherited perhaps from relatives. On one wall a series of watercolours. Holly opened the dark-wood wardrobe. It contained work clothes – smart but sober skirts, shirts and jackets, a couple of dresses that might have been worn to weddings or functions. A row of shoes on the floor underneath. Nothing expensive or unusual. In the chest of drawers chain-store underwear and jeans, T-shirts and jerseys. All neatly folded. This was a woman of a certain age with a limited budget, who didn’t want to stand out from the crowd and took care of what she had.