The Moth Catcher

Chapter Seven

Vera stood in the mortuary with Holly, Billy Cartwright and Paul Keating. Randle was lying on the stainless-steel table and, as his clothes were cut away, Billy was bagging them. Holly was taking notes. Vera was trying to contain her impatience. She understood that Keating was meticulous and hated being forced into speculation, but still she found this waiting for a cause of death impossible. She would have preferred to be with the search team in the valley at Gilswick, looking for the place where Randle had died. Or in Percy’s bungalow, talking to him about life in the tiny community, asking if he’d seen her grey man the day before.

But she tried to focus. Patrick Randle’s clothes would tell them something about the man, and Holly knew all about clothes. ‘What do you think, Hol? Can we tell the sort of chap he was by what he’s wearing?’

The DC looked up from her notebook. She always seemed surprised when Vera asked her opinion. ‘I’m not sure. Waxed jacket. Barbour. That wouldn’t be cheap. It’s a good-quality shirt, but something that an older man might wear in the country. Is that a stain on the back?’ Billy Cartwright shifted the clear plastic bag so that they could all see. ‘It’s certainly well worn and rubbed at the neck. On top of that, a jumper. Round-necked. Hand-knitted.’

‘Is it?’ Vera hadn’t noticed and she was surprised. When she’d been growing up sometimes bairns wore hand-made clothes, but it wasn’t so common for adults. These days she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen a man in a hand-knitted top.

Holly continued. ‘Jeans. Levis. Underwear from M &S. Shoes. Very good-quality, leather soles as well as leather uppers. Well polished and well looked after.’

‘So what does that tell us, Hol? A typical student, do we think? Doesn’t sound like it to me.’

‘It depends which university he went to. Maybe he’d fit into one of the smarter ones.’ She sounded unsure.

‘Oxford or Cambridge, do you think? Joe didn’t tell us where he did his PhD.’ Vera was feeling out of her depth. When she was young, all students had looked the same – as if they’d bought their clothes from the church jumble sale. ‘We’ll get Joe to find out.’ Her frustration spilled over. ‘Any chance of getting to the cause of death, Doctor? Sometime this month would be good.’

Keating looked up from his work. ‘Patience, Inspector.’ Friendly enough. ‘The younger man’s death was caused by a blunt-force trauma blow to the head. I think one blow, because of the lack of spatter on the clothes. There’s just that small stain on the shirt.’

‘And you couldn’t tell me this last night? You must have been able to tell he’d not been stabbed, as soon as you moved the body.’

Keating didn’t answer immediately. ‘I thought you deserved your beauty sleep, Inspector.’

His assistant muffled a giggle. There was an awkward silence. Vera continued, ‘But there’s no stain on the jumper.’

‘Apparently not.’

‘So he was just wearing a shirt when he was attacked?’ She was running through various scenarios to explain the fact. Why would a killer add extra clothes to the victim’s body after death?

‘I think that’s a logical assumption.’

‘Why was one victim stabbed and the other bludgeoned to death?’ Vera’s mind was racing. ‘If they were both killed at the same time, wouldn’t the same weapon be used?’ She turned to the pathologist. ‘I’m assuming they both were killed at the same time.’

Keating shrugged. ‘You should know by now that we can’t pin down the time of death with that kind of pinpoint accuracy.’

‘But Randle might have been killed in the flat, with the middle-aged man?’

‘That’s entirely possible.’ This time Billy Cartwright joined in. ‘The search team only made a start yesterday. We’re stretched. Of course we’ll be checking for blood stains, anything that places Randle there after his death.’

But I didn’t see anything. There was no blood, except under the older man.

‘Then why move him!’ She realized the words had come out as a cry. ‘Why dress him up in a jumper and a jacket and risk being seen carrying him into the ditch?’

‘I do bodies,’ Keating said, ‘not mind-reading. I’m afraid I can’t answer that for you.’

‘And I’m not saying that Randle was killed in the flat in the big house.’ Billy Cartwright seemed to be enjoying her discomfort. ‘Not yet. Just that it is a possibility.’

‘Can you tell me anything about the knife Hol found in the pond?’ Vera thought this was just too complicated. She’d assumed a double-murder, both men killed with the same knife.

‘We’re pretty sure it’s one of a set from the kitchen in the flat. You noticed yourself that one was missing from the block on the counter. We can tell you later if it matches the wounds on the older man.’

‘So the killer didn’t come prepared,’ Vera said. ‘Not into the flat, at least.’ Possibilities flashed into her mind, but nothing made sense.

Later they were in the briefing room at Kimmerston. Vera had left Holly to be present at the second postmortem. There were already photos on the whiteboard: close-ups of Patrick Randle and of the chap Vera called the ‘grey man’. Pictures of the ditch and its vegetation, the outside of the manor house and inside Randle’s flat. On the desks where the team was sitting a pile of bacon sandwiches, half-eaten, and torn sachets of brown sauce. Bodies never put Vera off her food.

‘We know nothing about this man.’ Pointing to the second victim. ‘Nobody’s got in touch overnight to report him missing. I’ve just checked. And precious little about this one.’ Jabbing a ruler at Randle. ‘Joe, have we got a bit more from the agency?’

‘It seems Randle did request a placement in Northumberland when he first joined up with them, so they put him in for the Carswell job and gave him two short-term contracts while he was waiting to start it.’

‘Do we know why he was interested in coming to Northumberland?’ It seemed to Vera that this made the killing less likely to be random, or the work of some delusional mad person.

‘He told the agency he was interested in natural history and this was an area he hadn’t explored yet.’

‘I suppose that could be true. If he had an ecology degree.’ But Vera thought the request lay at the heart of the case. They needed to know exactly what had brought Randle north.

‘I’ve spoken to the mother.’ Joe’s voice was sombre. He was a great family man, a bit too soft-hearted for a policeman, in Vera’s opinion; but then she thought Holly was heartless, so perhaps she was never pleased.

‘And?’

‘She’s older than I was expecting, in her late sixties. She said Patrick came when she’d given up having another child. He read directly from his notes. “But not an afterthought – a consolation.”’

‘I thought he was an only son.’ Charlie looked up from his sandwich.

Vera gave a slow clap of her hands. ‘So you’re awake after all. And listening! I was wondering.’

‘There was another boy,’ Joe said. ‘Simon. He’d have been nineteen years older than Patrick. Apparently he committed suicide. When he was a student.’

‘Oh,’ Vera was moved almost to tears. ‘The poor woman.’

‘Patrick did his first degree in York and his Masters and his PhD in Exeter.’

‘Not one of the posh ones then?’

‘Posh enough,’ Joe said. ‘Apparently. I asked Sal. She’s already been reading up on unis. We’ve got high hopes for our Jess.’ There was a moment of silence and Joe looked up at Vera. ‘The mother would like to come up to view the body.’

‘Oh,’ Vera said again. She thought that would be a job for Joe. He was good at all the touchy-feely stuff and he’d know how to handle it. Though maybe Holly needed the practice. ‘Well, I suppose that saves us having to make the trek down to chat to her.’

Vera perched on a desk, her fat legs swinging. She was wearing square lace-up shoes and her feet banged against the table leg. She was aware that the team was waiting for her to speak. ‘So we’re starting to build up a picture of the youngest victim, but we still don’t know anything about the older man.’

Joe stood up. She realized he wanted them all to take notice of him, and that wasn’t like Joe. He waited until he had their full attention before he spoke. ‘We know where he was yesterday morning.’

Vera turned slowly to face him. She stopped her legs from swinging. ‘And where was that?’

‘Kimmerston Front Street. A BBC Look North reporter was canvassing opinion about immigration from the EU, and our second victim was one of the people stopped.’

‘And you know this how, Joe?’

‘I saw him on breakfast telly and called the BBC in Newcastle as soon as I got in. The reporter isn’t at his desk yet, but they could tell me where the film was made.’ Joe tried not to grin.

Vera began to chuckle. ‘You spawny git, Joe Ashworth. Better to be lucky than to be smart any time. I don’t suppose the reporter asked for his name?’

‘I don’t know yet, but I’ll soon find out.’