by Ann Cleeves
‘So who was the lad?’ Joe was starting to feel that he was losing the plot.
‘Name of Frank. Maybe he was a teacher with Martin, though he didn’t look like a teacher. Big lad. Tattoos. Or perhaps they met in hospital.’
‘Do you have a second name for him?’
Kitty shook her head.
‘According to the Job Centre, Martin was planning to become self-employed rather than go on Jobseeker’s Allowance. Any idea what that was about?’ Joe thought maybe Benton had set up as a private tutor. There was plenty of call for people to give a bit of extra coaching, especially in maths. And surely it’d be easier to deal with one child than a rowdy classroom. But why would that have taken him to the big house at Gilswick? There were no kids there.
‘I never really talked to him once Elsie died,’ Kitty said. ‘He was always pleasant enough. Took in my parcels if I missed the postman. A good neighbour. But if he confided in anyone, it wasn’t me.’ She paused. ‘He wouldn’t have been completely without money, if they stopped his benefit. Elsie and him never spent much at all, and his father left him a little nest egg. But maybe he felt he wanted to do his own thing – after years of trying to please his mother, maybe he wanted a bit of independence.’
Kitty gave Joe a key to the back door of Benton’s house. She’d had it since Elsie had died. Joe stood in the Benton yard and phoned Vera. ‘What do you want me to do?’
There was a pause. ‘Well, it’s not a murder scene, is it? We know Benton was killed in the flat at Gilswick Hall. We’ll get the CSIs into his house as soon as they can make it, but it wouldn’t hurt for you to have a look first. I just need something to link Benton to Randle, and we’ve got bugger-all at the moment.’
He waited before opening the door and took time to look around the yard. A washing line with a shirt and a pair of socks dangling in the sunshine. Did that mean Benton was planning to come back the night before, to take them in? Joe had never done his own washing, but Sal would never leave laundry out overnight. A shed, very tidy. Tools hanging on nails, a stepladder. In the yard a couple of pots with daffs, dying now.
Joe unlocked the door and stepped into a back kitchen. And back into time and his nana’s house. A sink and a twin-tub washing machine. Then a step into the kitchen proper. If Benton had been pampered by his mother, there was no sign here that he hadn’t been able to care for himself. No dirty pots. The small gas cooker was so clean that it shone, and a tea towel had been folded on the rail. He opened the elderly fridge to find a carton of milk, four eggs and a supermarket packet of bacon. Then a row of small jars. All clean and all empty. Joe stared at them for a moment, but couldn’t think what they might be for. The house was long and narrow and seemed squashed by the houses on either side. At this point the only light came from the small scullery window.
He walked through to a dining room, gloomy and stale. Joe wanted to open a window and let in some air. A dark wood table and four matching chairs and a sideboard. Clean enough, but dusty. There was a gas fire in a tiled surround that looked so old Joe wouldn’t have wanted to try lighting it. None of the rooms had central heating. He thought that this room hadn’t been used since Elsie had died. Maybe not even before that.
Opening the door to the small living room, Joe blinked because of the sudden light. The sun flooded in, as it had in Kitty’s house. No sofa, but two chairs covered in a shiny floral pattern facing a large TV. Nothing unusual. Nothing to add character to the man who’d spent his life here. Had it been as if he was a lodger in his mother’s house, frightened of upsetting her, of disturbing the family home?
Upstairs. The door ahead of Joe opened into a bathroom. Deep enamel bath, stained and chipped. No shower. To the left, a separate lavatory. There were three small bedrooms. The largest held a double bed, pink candlewick quilt and the smell of old woman. Talcum powder and lavender, on top of something less pleasant. And next to the bed there was still a commode with a social-services stamp on the back. Joe shut the door quickly. Let the CSIs check in there.
It seemed that Martin Benton had taken the other bedrooms for his use. The smaller one was just big enough for a single bed, small wardrobe and chest of drawers. The bed was made. Sheets and blankets, army-style. The clothes in the chest and the wardrobe were mass-produced. What struck Joe as strange was that they were all very similar. Jogging bottoms, all black. Polo shirts. Two grey fleeces. Two pairs of trousers of the sort that old men wear to work and a few folded shirts, all white. It seemed that Benton had only possessed one suit and he’d been wearing it when he died. Why had he been wearing his suit for his trip to Gilswick? It suggested something formal. An interview? Had there been a parent in Gilswick village, wanting him to tutor a child? That still couldn’t explain his presence in the valley. And would Benton really have cycled all the way from Kimmerston to Gilswick in his suit? Joe thought they still needed to find out how he’d made his way to the big house.
The second room looked out over the yard and was a revelation. It was kitted out like an office: a large desk against one wall, one main computer and a laptop. Next to the window was a filing cabinet and on a shelf above the desk a row of reference books and academic textbooks, all related not to maths, but to natural history. The impression was more of a gallery than an office. The walls were white and hung with photographs. Beautiful photographs of butterflies, moths and other insects, all blown up so that every detail could be seen. Joe’s attention was caught by a picture of a caterpillar on a laurel leaf. Every vein on the leaf was sharp and clear. There was a raindrop, a shimmering prism like a tear. It seemed to Joe that if Benton had intended to set up his own business, it would surely have been as a photographer. A camera that Joe guessed had taken up six months’ invalidity benefit was hidden in one of the filing-cabinet drawers.
If Benton had been in Gilswick to take photographs of the house or the gardens, why hadn’t he taken his camera?
The camera was in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet; the other two drawers were conventionally arranged. Each drop-file was neatly labelled with a letter of the alphabet, but all of them were empty. Joe suddenly felt a wave of depression. He imagined Benton preparing his office for business, excited perhaps; but he had been killed before he could start out. If he’d gone to the big house for work, it must have been the first contract of his self-employment and might have marked a turning point in his life. Joe checked the desk for a mobile phone. There was nothing. The landline phone was in the hall downstairs. No messages. He dialled 1471 and a disembodied voice gave him a mobile number. He made a note of it and then went outside into the sunshine, closing the door carefully behind him.
Kitty was still sitting in her bay window. He tapped on her door and she answered at once.
‘Do you know what that contraption is, at the bottom of Martin’s garden?’
‘Oh, aye,’ she said. ‘That’s his moth trap.’
Chapter Nine
When Holly got back from the post-mortem, Vera left her in the police station and headed out to Gilswick. She knew that was the wrong way round, and that she should be the person coordinating the action from a desk while her subordinate should be doing the legwork. But it was spring and being the boss should carry some perks. With the first real sunshine of the year, she couldn’t bear to be inside. She’d parked outside the big house and was watching the search team walking through the woodland between the road and the manor when Joe phoned to say that he’d got a name for the grey man. Martin Benton. An anonymous kind of name for an anonymous man.
She ended the call, waited for a moment and then started the car. It was time to get to know the other residents of the valley. The lane wound past Percy Douglas’s bungalow and ended in a small development. Three houses converted from a farmhouse and two barns. Vera supposed that the buildings had once been a part of the Carswell estate. All over the county farm tenancies were being relinquished and buildings converted to residential use. It was hard to make a living in the hills.
All th
e houses faced into a paved square, which had probably once been the farmyard. The stone farmhouse had a small front garden, with more land at the back; the barn conversions led straight onto the yard. Fancy cars were parked outside each of them. There was a view of the valley and the hills beyond. It would be as exposed as Vera’s place in the winter and she wondered how all the glass in the barns stood up to the weather. Would you get a window cleaner to come all the way out here? She thought someone must have seen her car coming along the track, and she stayed in the Land Rover for a moment. There were three households here and she needed to speak to the most inquisitive resident. She didn’t have to wait for long.
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. Water-colours. 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 Be
nton 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.’
