The Moth Catcher by Ann Cleeves Read Free Book Online

until nearly six. Then Joe made coffee and switched on the television. He’d wake Sal at seven and still get to the police station before Vera and Holly returned from the post-mortem. He took his coffee into the lounge. The bairn was on the carpet playing with a stack of blocks. Happy as Larry, so Joe switched from CBeebies to the breakfast news to see if there was anything on the Gilswick double-murder. Nothing on the national news, and only a brief piece on the local. It would have been too late the night before for the press office to get out a media release. He carried on watching anyway. There was a feature about immigration, a reporter in the street asking passers-by what they thought about border controls. Usually the journalist got the answers he was hoping for: bluster and bigotry. As Joe looked, the reporter approached a man walking down the pavement towards him. The man just shook his head and hurried on, ignoring the fact that the reporter was calling after him, ‘Surely you must have an opinion, sir.’
    Joe grabbed the remote, pressed a button to pause the piece and then played it again. No doubt; the bloke who’d refused to answer the journalist’s question was their second victim, the middle-aged man in the grey suit. He thought Holly would be a Radio 4 person. She might not even own a television, and anyway she’d be in the hospital, helping Paul Keating with the forensic capture of Patrick Randle’s body. Holly wouldn’t be the person to deliver news to the boss that might lead them to their older victim’s identity. The thought cheered him up and carried him through the changing of a stinking nappy.

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,