The Moth Catcher (Vera Stanhope series Book 7)

by Ann Cleeves

  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.

  The room with the futon had a built-in cupboard. It was empty apart from a man’s denim jacket and a suit. Holly tried to work out from the style if they might belong to a son, or if they’d been left behind by a former husband or boyfriend. In the end she gave up. By now someone would have found out about Shirley’s next of kin and they should have the family details. They would know about an ex-partner or children.

  The final door led to a living room and then to a tiny kitchen, which had been built as an extension to the back of the building. The living room was small and square. There was an original grate surrounded by shiny green tiles, and the walls had been painted a paler shade of the same colour. It looked as if Shirley had lit fires here in the winter – a copper bucket of smokeless fuel still stood next to the hearth Bookshelves in the alcoves each side of the chimney. A lot of work-related non-fiction: criminology, sociology, child-development. The rest contemporary paperback novels. Still nothing unexpected or out of the ordinary. Nothing to allow Holly to explain to Vera why the woman had been killed.

  A pine table was folded against one wall and a sofa stood against another. Four Ikea chairs were stacked. Again Holly imagined friends, pictured them sitting round the table for supper. Other women sharing gossip and food. People with whom Shirley had worked in the probation service perhaps. Holly felt a moment of regret. Perhaps she should make more effort with her friends, invite them to a meal in her home. But her flat was her refuge and she couldn’t imagine it rowdy with laughter, wine spilt on the table or scraps of food on the floor.

  A single step led down to the kitchen. This space was so narrow that Holly could almost touch both walls by stretching out her arms. The sink and cooker stood on one side and a workbench on the other. At the far end was another door that led to stone steps and down to the back yard. A street lamp lit up a paved area with more pots of herbs and flowers, a small wooden garden table and chairs, a rotary washing line and, tucked into one corner, a wheelie-bin. No moth trap. Beyond a brick wall an alley. Most of the adjoining yards would be identical. Holly tried to recapture her response to the living Shirley Hewarth, but the woman seemed to slide away from her. Wandering around her home had brought her no closer.

  Standing at the top of the step between the kitchen and the living room, Holly looked around both spaces. There was no television. Unusual surely, for a single woman of Shirley’s age. How did she spend the time when she wasn’t at work? Her friends wouldn’t visit every evening. Or did work take up most of her time? On the back of the door that led to the steps down to the yard there was a cork noticeboard. For the first time Holly caught a sense of the victim. There was a recent photo of the woman with a young man who looked so like Shirley that it must be a son. Shirley with a group of women in anoraks and walking boots, grinning outside a country pub. An invitation to a sixtieth birthday party, and another to a retirement bash. Holly made a note of the names and addresses. A couple of scribbled recipes. The programme for Sage Gateshead, the music venue. Ticks beside the classical concerts. A ticket for a drama at the Live Theatre a couple of days later. So Shirley liked her culture. Perhaps she was snobby about her entertainment and that explained the absence of a television.

  Remembering what they’d learned about Patrick Randle’s movements from the food he’d bought, Holly opened the fridge. No meat or fish. A tub of hummus and some cheese. Milk, eggs, salad. A packet of supermarket raspberries. Not even Vera could tell anything about Shirley Hewarth from that. It was starting to get light. The strange grey light of dawn. But still Holly was reluctant to leave without something to show from the visit. Her eyes wandered back to the notice-board. With the invitations and tickets there was a shopping list. It was curiosity about the woman that made her unpin it and take a look.

  In her own mind she’d decided Shirley was a veggie. And, indeed, the list seemed to confirm that: olive oil, basil, pasta, green peppers, mushrooms. No meat. No wine, either.

  The list had been written on the back of an envelope. Holly turned it over and saw Shirley’s name and address. And a postmark, unusually clear: Wychbold, Herefordshire. Where Alicia Randle lived and where Patrick had grown up.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Joe was heading up the briefing because Vera was at Shirley Hewarth’s post-mortem. Everyone was scratchy and wired: lack of sleep, an overload of caffeine and the excitement that comes with a possible break in the case. An underlying sense of failure because they hadn’t caught the killer before another person had died. He’d been home to snatch a couple of hours’ rest and a shower, and now he stood in front of the team trying to order his thoughts. To wonder what Vera would do to get them to focus, if she was standing in his place. There was a mumble of chat as people got more coffee, found places to sit.

  Holly slid up to him. He hadn’t seen her since she’d been sent to Shirley’s flat to notify any possible next of kin of the woman’s death. A thankless task. She looked cool and refreshed, though she’d probably had less sleep than him. She waved a clear plastic evidence bag in front of his nose.

  ‘What am I looking at?’

  ‘A shopping list. I found it in Hewarth’s house.’ Her hair was still damp from the shower. She turned over the plastic bag so that he could see Shirley’s address written on an envelope. ‘Look at the postmark.’

  ‘Herefordshire.’ Now his mind was racing.

  ‘Wychbold, Herefordshire. Where Alicia Randle lives.’

  ‘Could be a coincidence.’ But he didn’t really believe that. />
  ‘It’s a very small town. I checked. So it’d be a very big coincidence.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you found the letter that was inside it?’ Because understanding why Patrick Randle, or his mother, had written to Shirley Hewarth would make all the difference to the investigation.

  Holly shook her head. ‘I had a quick look, but the boss told me to leave it for the search team. They’re going in first thing today.’

  ‘So you told Vera?’ Of course she had, Joe thought. That’d be the first thing she’d do. Like a kid wanting a gold star. To be recognized as top of the class.

  ‘She said not to phone you, in case you were managing to get some sleep.’

  He didn’t know what to say to that, so he just nodded and called the briefing to order.

  ‘Now we have another victim, and this has to stop before anyone else dies.’ He felt the need to say that, though Vera wouldn’t have bothered. She’d have taken it as read. ‘Of course this killing will be part of the Gilswick Valley investigation. Hewarth and Benton were obviously connected. She’d been his boss and, when his contract ended, he worked at the charity as a volunteer. Besides, Hewarth’s body was found only a mile or so from the first scene. Now I’d like to concentrate on Hope North-East. We need to find out everything there is to know about the organization. It’s run by a group of trustees. Who are they? Let’s get the forensic accountants to check out the finances. And we want a detailed list of the clients. Most of them will be known to us. Did anyone have a grievance? What was going on there, to make two of the workers so vulnerable? And why the time gap between the two murders? That doesn’t fit the profile of an offender with a grudge suddenly taking it into his head to wipe out the people who’d pissed him off and going on a killing spree.’ Joe paused for breath.

  Charlie stuck up his hand. ‘Where does Randle fit in then? Are we saying that the intended targets were Benton and Hewarth all along, and Randle got in the way? That the moth-trapping connection was just a coincidence?’

  ‘The moth-trapping brought them together.’ It was a new young officer, cocky. ‘That’s why Benton was out at Gilswick. Like you said, Randle might just have got in the way. Bloody unlucky.’

  Joe raised both hands to catch their attention. ‘We think this might be a bit more complicated than Randle being collateral damage. Last night Holly found a connection between him and Shirley Hewarth. Tell them, Hol.’

  He listened while Holly explained about the envelope and the postmark. There was silence as they tried to take in the implication of the link.

  ‘Of course there are other connections between the victims.’ Joe had been leaning against his desk and now he pushed himself to his feet. ‘Shirley Hewarth was involved with the Redhead family, whose daughter Elizabeth will be released from prison this weekend. Hewarth’s body was found very close to the Redhead home. Also close to the big house where Randle was acting as house-sitter, so we have geographical proximity on all sorts of levels.’ He felt suddenly overwhelmed. There was too much information and too many complications. Vera might enjoy the challenge of a labyrinthine investigation, but he preferred things to be straightforward

  Holly stood up. ‘Any idea how Shirley got to the valley at Gilswick?’

  ‘We found her car, tucked into a farm gateway close to where Randle’s body was found off the track. No idea whether she drove it there or if that was the work of the killer.’ Joe thought they had very few ideas about what might have happened the night before.

  Holly was still on her feet. ‘Do we have a next of kin yet? When I looked round the flat I had the impression there was a man in Shirley’s life. A son?’

  That gave Joe the chance to leave the speculation behind and to pass on the concrete details that had been gathered overnight. He stood in front of the whiteboard and pointed to a photograph of Shirley.

  ‘Shirley Hewarth, aged fifty-eight. She was divorced from Jack Hewarth ten years ago. He was a journo with The Journal in Newcastle until he was offered redundancy several years ago. He hasn’t worked since, but he’s older than her and now lives off his pension. There’s one grown-up son, Jonathan, now twenty-one. When the couple first divorced, Shirley stayed in the marital home, but when Jonathan went off to uni they sold it, split the profits and Shirley’s been living in the flat in Cullercoats ever since. At around the same time she left the probation service and started work for Hope North-East.’

  ‘Have we tracked down the ex and the son?’

  ‘Jack Hewarth still lives in Kimmerston with a new partner, who has her own business, that classy dress shop on Front Street. He seems to go in for younger women. Jonathan is a third-year student at Northumbria University. Doing drama and music. Living in a student flat in Heaton. They’ve both been informed of Shirley’s death.’ Joe paused for breath. ‘Obviously we’ll need to talk to them at some point today, because they could give useful background to the victim, but I don’t see either of them as potential suspects.’

  The door banged open and Vera sailed in straight from the post-mortem, scarf trailing behind her like a pennant, bags in each hand.

  ‘We don’t talk about her as “the victim”,’ Vera said. On her high horse. ‘Her name’s Ms Hewarth. Or Mrs Hewarth. Or Shirley. She’s entitled to a bit of respect.’ A pause. ‘She was killed by stabbing, like Benton. Is that significant? Not killed where she was found, so we’re looking for yet another murder scene. Hol says there’s no sign of violence in the flat where she lived, but we’ve got the CSIs checking that now. There’s no weapon yet, but Paul Keating did go so far as to say it looked like another kitchen knife. How far have you got, Joe? Have you told them about the envelope? Which would indicate that all three of the deceased were connected. Find the connection and we’ve got the killer.’

  Easy.

  Joe drove to the Hope North-East office in Bebington. The visit had been at his suggestion, when Vera had planned the action for the day. Shirley’s name hadn’t been given to the media and he hoped word hadn’t got out yet. He wanted to tell the volunteers himself that their boss was dead. He wanted to see their reaction. ‘They run some sessions on a Saturday, so the volunteers might be around.’

  He was surprised to find the office open; he’d assumed that Shirley would be the only key-holder and had expected to find people waiting for her on the pavement. Upstairs the skinny volunteer described by Holly was filling the kettle. She heard his footsteps on the stairs and sang out, ‘Just making a brew.’ She obviously hadn’t heard about Shirley’s death.

  When she turned and saw him, she was thrown. Suddenly anxious about having to deal with a stranger. ‘Shirley’s not in yet. She shouldn’t be long. I thought you were her.’

  ‘I’m afraid she won’t be coming in.’ Joe was speaking to her as if she were a child. He’d grown up with women like her. Nervy and fragile, surviving on anti-depressants, afraid of the world.

  ‘Why? What’s happened?’ She was trembling. He thought anything out of the ordinary would scare her and that she’d known he was police from the moment she saw him.

  ‘I think you should sit down.’

  She was used to doing what she was told and took the seat at her desk.

  He pulled up another chair, so that he was on her level. ‘There was an incident last night. I’m afraid Shirley’s dead.’

  ‘No!’ It came out as a wail of grief. One thing was certain. This woman had had nothing to do with Hewarth’s murder. He’d seen people less upset by the death of a close relative or partner.

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  ‘Yesterday afternoon.’ Sharon was ripping a tissue into shreds. The pieces formed a small mound on the desk in front of her and she gathered them up in her palm, trying to roll them together like a snowball. ‘She asked me to lock up, because she had a meeting.’

  ‘You weren’t in when I came to chat to Shirley.’

  ‘No,’ she looked up at him. ‘Our bairn had a hospital appointment. He’s got terrible asthma. Usually his nan
a minds him, but I wanted to take him for the tests myself. I’m only a volunteer, so there’s never any problem about taking the time off. I came in later.’ Her voice tailed off as if she realized that, in the scheme of things, none of this was important.

  ‘What time did you get back?’

  ‘About three-thirty.’

  ‘And when did Shirley go out?’

  ‘Not long after. It was as if she’d been waiting for me to come in so that she could get off.’ Sharon looked up at him. ‘What happened to her? An accident in her car?’

  Joe shook his head. ‘We’re treating her death as suspicious.’ He paused for a moment. ‘Where was she going?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Was that unusual?’ Still Joe kept his voice gentle. He had the sense that the woman was on the verge of an emotional meltdown, that Shirley and her work at Hope was all that was keeping her together. ‘I mean, did she usually tell you where she was going?’

  ‘She wrote down the addresses of all her visits in the big diary,’ Sharon said. ‘Health and safety. Some of our clients could be aggressive. I wanted to know where she was going. Just in case.’

  Joe thought the volunteer might be emotionally frail, but she wasn’t stupid. ‘And did you have a system where she phoned in after the visits? So you’d know she was safe?’

  ‘She didn’t phone,’ Sharon said. ‘She’d always text. After each client. Visit over. Then the time.’

  ‘So she must have texted yesterday then. Because you didn’t panic and call us out.’ He gave a little smile to show it was almost a joke.