The Moth Catcher Read Free

the moment. He was between projects and he was enjoying exploring the country.’
    ‘Projects?’ Vera squinted at her. ‘What did he mean by that?’
    ‘I’m not sure. But that was what he said.’
    ‘Where did he come from?’ The questions were coming quickly now. Percy thought the fat woman would surely have an address, if she’d found his driver’s licence, so what could that be about?’
    ‘He didn’t say.’ Susan sounded disappointed. He saw that Vera Stanhope was providing her with attention, and she didn’t get much of that these days.
    ‘But you might be able to guess,’ Vera said. ‘From his voice, the way he spoke.’
    Susan thought for a moment. ‘He had a voice like a television newsreader. A bit posh.’
    ‘From the South then?’
    Susan nodded.
    ‘When did you last see him?’
    ‘Yesterday afternoon. Today I work for the people who live in the barn conversions. There are three houses at the end of the valley.’
    ‘What time yesterday?’ Again the question was fired at speed. Percy thought the woman found it hard for her words to keep up with her brain.
    ‘About four o’clock. I was in the kitchen and he came in with the dogs.’
    ‘Did he seem okay? Not anxious about anything?’
    Susan shook her head. Again she seemed disappointed because she couldn’t be of more help. She had no juicy bit of information to pass on. The detective got to her feet and that seemed to break a kind of spell, because Percy found that he could stand up now too. At the door the fat woman wobbled a bit as she struggled to pull on her shoes, and Percy put out his hand to steady her.
    She turned to Susan and smiled. ‘Have you got a key to the big house? Could I borrow it?’
    For a moment Susan was flustered; she’d never been any good at taking responsibility. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps I should call the Carswells and ask their permission. They left me their phone number, in case of emergency.’
    ‘Why don’t you give me that, as well as the key, and I’ll sort it all out for you?’
    So Susan handed over the bunch of keys and the piece of card with the number neatly written on, and the detective left the house.
    They stood at the window and watched her walk out to her Land Rover.
    ‘Nice woman,’ Susan said. ‘You’d think she’d want to lose a bit of weight, though.’

Chapter Three
     
    When Vera arrived back at the scene, Joe Ashworth had turned up. He was talking to Billy Cartwright, the crime-scene manager, and they’d taped off the road.
    ‘You here already, Vera?’ Cartwright said. ‘There’s something ghoulish about the pleasure you take in your work.’
    She thought he was probably right, but she didn’t deign to give him an answer.
    ‘What have we got then, Billy? First impressions?’ Billy might be too fond of the lasses, but he was good at his job.
    ‘This isn’t where the lad was killed. You need to be looking elsewhere for the murder scene.’
    ‘It
is
murder then?’
    ‘Not my job to tell you that, Vera my love. Paul Keating’s on his way.’ Keating, a dour Ulsterman, was the senior pathologist. ‘But I can’t see that it was an accident. He was put in the ditch because it was close enough to the road for someone to get him easily out of a car. And he was hidden. He might have lain there unnoticed for weeks.’
    If Percy Douglas hadn’t been caught short. And, by then, the rats and foxes would have been at the body and that would have made life more difficult.
    ‘Tyre tracks on the verge?’
    ‘One set, very recent, most probably belonging to the chap who found the body.’
    She nodded and thought there was nothing she could do here until the experts had finished poking around. And she was restless. She’d never been good at hanging about. No patience. ‘Joe, you come with me. I know where our victim lived, or where he’d lived for the past fortnight at least.’
    He started to climb into the passenger seat of the Land Rover, but she called him back. ‘We’ll