The Moth Catcher by Ann Cleeves Read Free Book Online Page A

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