Free The Moth Catcher by Ann Cleeves Page A

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,