The Moth Catcher (8 page)

The door of the farmhouse opened and a squat man appeared. Late fifties or early sixties. A bit of a beer belly and a rolling gait that made her think of a sailor. He came up to her and she opened the car door to greet him.

‘Can I help you?’ A southern English voice. Not posh. Jovial enough, but making it plain all the same that she’d strayed onto private property.

She smiled. ‘I hope so, pet. I’m after information.’ Laying on the accent, because she’d taken an irrational dislike to him and wanted to mark this out as her territory, not his. She climbed out of the vehicle. ‘Inspector Vera Stanhope. Northumbria Police.’

‘Ah, we saw all the activity at the Hall.’ His manner had changed from suspicion to interest. He’d be one of those ghouls who’d want all the details of the killings. He held out his hand. ‘Nigel Lucas.’

‘You’ll have heard rumours, no doubt.’

‘Well, we got a phone call from Susan Savage, old Percy’s daughter, last night and she said that the Carswells’ house-sitter had been found dead in the ditch. I must admit we went upstairs to look at what was going on down by the burn.’ Vera wanted to slap him. And remind him that the lad had a mother who was grieving for him.

‘I’ve got a few questions,’ she said. ‘Can I come in?’

‘Of course, Inspector.’

The interior of the house had been torn apart and rebuilt. Once there would have been small rooms, easy to heat. Now there was one L-shaped open-plan space. The door opened into one of those kitchens that you’d be scared to cook or eat in. All granite and stainless steel, more laboratory than home. Vera found herself wondering where they kept their boots and the vacuum cleaner. There must be hidden storage space and she was distracted, looking for where it might be. But Lucas was leading her on through an arch into a living space, the width of the house, where the original flagstone floor was scattered with rugs. The walls were eggshell blue and covered with paintings. Watercolours. Vera recognized some of the scenes as local. There was a giant television screen, a glass coffee table and two white leather sofas. Not much else. She sat on one of the sofas and hoped she wouldn’t leave a mark from her greasy coat when she stood up. Or at least that nobody would notice.

‘Can I get you something to drink, Inspector?’

‘I’m on duty.’ She wondered why she couldn’t be more gracious, why she found the man so intensely irritating.

He gave a little laugh. ‘I wasn’t thinking of alcohol. It’s not quite wine o’clock, even in the Lucas household. And we had a bit of a session here last night. But I could do you a coffee.’

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘That would be lovely.’

The man shouted up the polished wooden stairs that twisted from a corner of the room. ‘Lorraine, we’ve got a guest. Are you ready for a break?’

There was a muffled reply.

‘My wife,’ he said. ‘She took up watercolours again when we retired, and she’s ever so good – she did all these . . .’ He nodded at the walls. ‘But she usually takes a breather at about this time.’ He sounded very proud of his wife, and for the first time Vera felt herself soften.
Good God, woman, don’t despise the man because of the way he’s decorated his house. You’re turning into a snob, like your father.
Hector was always sneering about the nouveaux riches who bought property in the country without understanding its ways.

Lorraine turned out to be slender and pale, with high cheekbones and hair that was almost white. Vera thought she was younger than her husband by at least ten years. She wore jeans and sandals and a loose silk top. Was that the style they called hippy-chic? Silver earrings. Make-up. Vera wondered if she was on her way out to a special lunch or if she always made the effort. It was clear that her husband doted on her. Vera thought for a moment that
she
might have found a man if she’d scrubbed up a bit better, then decided that no man was worth the time it took to plaster stuff on your face in the morning, when you could have an extra cup of tea instead.

‘How can we help you, Inspector?’ Lorraine had the same accent as the husband, but gentler. He’d disappeared into the kitchen and there was the sound of grinding beans, cups being put onto a tray. A performance for the audience on the leather sofa.

‘Patrick Randle . . .’ Vera looked at her and waited. No response. ‘He was house-sitting for the Carswells.’

‘Ah yes.’ A small frown to indicate sympathy. ‘Susan said there’d been an accident and that he was dead. Terrible.’

‘Someone killed him. Hit him over the head with a blunt instrument.’

Lorraine looked horrified. Vera thought she was upset not so much by the young man’s murder as by the fact that Vera had been so forthright.

‘Percy found him in the ditch by the lane,’ Vera went on, ‘and then there was another body in the attic flat in the big house. A middle-aged man named Martin Benton. Ring any bells?’

Lorraine shook her head slowly. ‘We moved here to escape all that. Robberies. Violence. We spent all our lives in the city, and when we retired we thought: “Why not live the dream?” We’d been to Northumberland on holiday. We put in an offer on this place online. We hadn’t even seen it then.’

Vera was tempted to say that they’d have been unlikely to come across a double-murder even in the city, but decided that wouldn’t help. ‘How long have you lived here?’

‘Two years. It’s taken us this long to get it as we want it. Nigel project-managed it all himself. He had his own business, with offices all over the South. Lucas Security. You’ve probably heard of it. He’s used to running a big show, so this was a doddle.’

So he got craftspeople in and bossed them around.
‘And you don’t get bored?’

Nigel walked in then, carrying a tray with a coffee pot, a milk jug and a plate of home-made biscuits.
You must be bored, pet. Someone like you doesn’t bake biscuits unless you need to fill your day.

Lorraine was about to answer, but Nigel got in first. ‘We don’t have time to be bored, Inspector. There’s something going on in the valley every day. Life’s one big impromptu party, here in the farm conversions. One of our neighbours calls us “the retired hedonists’ club”. We all took early retirement. Kids flown the nest. Those of us who had kids . . . We all have reasonable occupational or private pensions. This is the time of life when we can enjoy ourselves.’

Lorraine had been staring out of the window, but looked back into the room. ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t speak like that, Nige. Not when there’s been a murder.’ She paused. ‘Two murders. The inspector says they found another body in the house-sitter’s flat.’

There was a moment of silence. Vera thought they were trying to find a suitable response. Something tasteful, after Nigel’s boast of indulgent pleasures. She almost felt sorry for them.

‘The man in the big house was middle-aged,’ she said. ‘Grey hair. Glasses. His name was Martin Benton. Does that mean anything to you?’

Again it was Nigel who answered. ‘We don’t mix much with the Carswells. I mean, they’re pleasant enough when we meet them in the lane. But they’re almost aristocracy, aren’t they? Their family has had that place for generations. We might have got them out of a fix financially by buying the farmhouse, but they’re not going to ask us down to the Hall for dinner.’ There was a brief hint of resentment and then he smiled again.

‘I don’t think Mr Benton was a friend of the family, either,’ Vera said. ‘You didn’t see anyone of that description in the lane yesterday?’

‘No.’ Lorraine had the coffee cup poised between the tray and her mouth. ‘But we probably wouldn’t. He wouldn’t come past here to get to the Hall.’

‘Where were you yesterday afternoon?’

They looked at each other. ‘I went into Kimmerston to do some shopping,’ Nigel said. ‘Stocking up. It doesn’t do to run out of milk all the way out here.’ As if he lived in a remote community halfway up the Amazon.

‘And you, Mrs Lucas?’

‘I was here,’ she said.

‘In the house?’ Vera was about to ask if there’d been any phone calls to the landline, any visitors to corroborate the story.

‘No. Outside. The garden at the back leads onto the hill. I was sketching the view across the valley.’

‘So you’d have seen anyone driving up the lane? Or out walking?’

‘I suppose so.’ Though she seemed uncertain. Everything about her seemed a little unfocused. Vera wondered if she had a hangover, or if she was taking prescription drugs. ‘I get lost in my work.’

‘Well, did you see anyone at all?’ She tried to keep the impatience from her voice.

There was a beat of hesitation, the little frown again. ‘No. No, I don’t think I did.’

Vera got to her feet. ‘One of my colleagues will be along later today to take a statement. If you can remember anything else – even if it seems to have no importance at all – please let us know.’

They walked out through the grand kitchen and Vera paused there for a moment. ‘Your neighbours, the other members of “the retired hedonists’ club”. What can you tell me about them?’

Nigel rubbed his hands together. Vera wondered if he was real. Surely there was more to the man than this caricature who seemed to have stepped out of a 1970s sitcom.

‘The O’Kanes are in the house to our right. John’s a retired academic, a history professor. She was a kind of social worker. Divorce-court mediation – something of the sort. You know the type.
Guardian
readers. They keep hens. She’s a veggie.’ As if there was nothing more for Vera to know. He paused for a moment. ‘Lovely people, though.’

‘And the house on the left?’

‘Annie and Sam. They ran their own business in Kimmerston, before they sold up and moved out here. They’re local. Know everyone in a ten-mile radius of Gilswick. Great if you need a plumber in a hurry.’ Another pause. ‘Salt-of-the-earth.’

Outside, Vera sat in the car to phone Joe and Holly and catch up on their news. She was aware of Nigel and Lorraine Lucas staring at her through their huge picture window.

Annie Redhead was making biscuits. A fat woman in a dreadful coat had just come out of the Lucas house and was sitting in her car making a phone call. Annie wondered if she had anything to do with the death of the Randle boy. Surely she must do. Could she be a reporter? They’d been bothered by the press a few times after Lizzie was sent away.

The biscuits were made with dried ginger and golden syrup and the kitchen was full of the smell of them. She lifted a tray out of the cooker and prised each biscuit onto a wire tray to cool and harden. She and Sam couldn’t possibly eat them all and she’d give most of them away to the neighbours, but baking reminded her of the old life, before they’d come back to Gilswick. When they’d run the restaurant, she’d made tiny pieces of shortbread or brownie to go with after-dinner coffee. Otherwise Sam had never allowed her into his kitchen.

There was a sound of an engine. She looked out of the window again, but the woman was still there, still talking into her phone. The sound was made by Sam’s car turning into the yard. Every morning he went down to the village to soak up the news and collect his paper, and now he was back. He must have seen the stranger, but he didn’t acknowledge her. He’d never been one for confrontation. That was why they were living here, miles from anywhere, and why Annie was making biscuits for entertainment.

The door opened and Sam walked in as if he didn’t really have the right to take up the space. The way he always walked into a room. She stooped to put another baking tray into the oven and felt the strain on her hip as she stood up. She should lose some weight. If it came to it and she needed a hip replacement, it wouldn’t do to be carrying all this fat. ‘All right?’

He smiled. ‘I met Gordon in the shop. He sent his love.’

‘That’s nice.’ Gordon had been the postman when they’d first married and lived in the valley the first time. He’d seemed ancient even then and it was hard to believe that he was still alive.

‘Percy was there.’

She looked up sharply. ‘Any more news about what’s been going on at the Hall?’

‘Perce reckons there are two people dead. The lad that he found in the ditch and another in the house.’

‘Not the major? Or Mrs C?’

Sam shook his head. ‘Can’t be, can it? They’re visiting their boy in Australia.’ He folded his newspaper on the table so that he could read it. He did the same every morning, and Annie switched on the kettle for tea. That was their ritual. Tea and the crossword.

Sam looked up. ‘Who’s in that car in the yard?’

‘I don’t know. She’s been in next door.’

And that was when the doorbell rang and, glancing through the window, she saw that the fat woman was standing on their step.

Annie went to open the door. She thought again that she’d always done the front-of-house. That had never been Sam’s style and she was quite surprised to see him, still in his seat, when she led the strange woman into the kitchen. She’d almost expected him to have scuttled upstairs.

‘Eh, this is a lovely house.’ The woman was even bigger than Annie. She stood in the middle of the kitchen and, unlike Sam, seemed to expand to fit the room, to suck all the extra space into her body. ‘Cosier than that great palace next door. I’m Vera Stanhope. Northumbria Police. You’ll likely have been expecting me.’

‘Aren’t you Hector’s daughter?’

The women turned to look at Sam. Clearly the question had surprised them both.

‘For my sins,’ Vera said. ‘Did you know him?’

‘Knew of him.’

‘He didn’t have many friends,’ the detective said. ‘Lots of acquaintances. Through his business. You weren’t one of those?’

Sam shook his head slowly.

‘That’s all right then.
They
were an unsavoury lot.’

Annie looked at them for some explanation, but none was forthcoming. She’d have to ask Sam later. She made tea and put some of the biscuits that had cooled onto a plate. Remembered just in time to take the others out of the oven.

‘So how can we help you?’ Annie realized that her voice was sharp, but she wanted this over. Vera Stanhope seemed to have no urgency, and Annie didn’t like having the detective in her house. It made her uneasy.