A row of cold-frames stood beyond the fruit cage. Solid wooden frames with the glass lids now removed. Inside mostly salad crops – radish, lettuce and spring onions. The lettuce was the cut-and-come-again variety and was ready for harvest. On the corner of the far edge of one frame a dark stain that could be blood.
‘Of course we’ll need a sample for DNA testing?’
He nodded to show that it was already being sorted. ‘And as soon as you’ve finished here, we’ll cover it and let the scientists do their thing.’
‘Lorna Dawson’s testing the soil from his shoes?’ Vera liked the man. His competence and lack of drama.
He nodded again. ‘I’ve been in touch and she says she’ll try to visit. It’s a long way from Aberdeen, though, and it depends what else she has on.’
Inside the frame the plants were crushed. ‘So what’s your theory?’ Vera had dozens of scenarios dancing in her brain, but none of them made sense yet.
‘I think the victim was out here working. Someone came up behind him and hit him. He twisted as he fell into the frame and that’s how we have blood on that side of it.’
‘Well, I suppose that ties in with the injuries on the body.’ But Vera thought it didn’t tie in with anything else. They knew that Patrick had picked Benton up from the bus in Gilswick and had driven him back to the big house. There were two mugs in the kitchen in the flat, so they’d had tea together. Why would Patrick leave the older man alone to come out and do a spot of gardening? It didn’t make sense.
‘There were no defensive injuries.’ She was speaking almost to herself now. ‘What does that tell us?’
‘There’s a grass path almost all the way from the house.’ MacBride looked back towards the building. ‘If Randle was bending over the frame working, he might not have heard the killer approaching.’
Vera didn’t answer immediately. She was picturing the scene. Late afternoon. Warm. Forget about Benton for a while and focus on what was happening here. There had been no blood stains on Randle’s jersey or jacket, only on his shirt, so perhaps he had been gardening. He’d taken off his jumper and jacket and put them on the ground close by. ‘Maybe.’ But why would he work in the garden when he had a guest – Benton – in the flat?
She straightened and paused, hoping to catch the sound of the cuckoo again, but all she could hear were woodpigeons. ‘It’s a bloody long way from here to the ditch by the road. The killer must have had access to a vehicle. It’d be struggle enough to get him to the drive.’ She wondered why the killer had bothered. If there’d only been one murder, she’d have understood it. It could have been an attempt to make the whole thing look like an accident. A hit-and-run. And that might explain why the jacket and jersey had been replaced. But the body in the flat was going to be found eventually and then there was no way the authorities wouldn’t link the two deaths. It all seemed too complicated. Too weird. Again she thought that the timing of the men’s deaths was the key to this. But she knew there was no way Paul Keating would be able to tell her which of the victims had died first.
She stretched and looked at her watch. She should get back to the station. In Kimmerston the troops would be waiting for the briefing. The sun was almost warm now. MacBride’s team were making their way in a line through the small orchard between the back of the house and the hill.
He followed her gaze. ‘Just in case someone came down to the house from the footpath that runs along the ridge. But we’ll be packing up by the end of the day.’
‘Aye, well, thank them. And thank you.’ They were almost at the house when she had another idea. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve come across a moth trap? Wooden or plastic contraption, with a funnel and a very bright bulb.’
‘Is that what they are? We left them in situ. This way.’ He led her down a beaten path through the trees that separated the house from the road. Sunlight slanted onto the patches of clear fell and the bright-green spears of bluebells. In some places the plants were in flower, giving the undergrowth a bluish sheen. Birdsong everywhere. She thought this was what had brought the people in the new development at the end of the track to live in the valley. They imagined it would always be like this.
‘Did you find anything else of interest here?’
‘Four sweetie wrappers. Unusual because they’re from a local manufacturer. Kimmerston Confectionery. Only sold in a few outlets. They do the old-fashioned sweets – black bullets, pear drops, sherbet lemons. All individually wrapped. No telling how long they’ve been here, though, and they could have blown in from the road. Or been eaten by Randle when he was setting up the traps.’
Vera didn’t say anything. She didn’t think Randle was the sort of chap who’d drop litter. And she knew she’d seen a bowl of the sweets recently, though she couldn’t for the life of her remember where.
MacBride stopped so suddenly that Vera almost walked into the back of him. By the side of the path there were two moth traps, set quite close to each other. Huge car batteries to power them. ‘They were full of insects,’ he said. ‘We didn’t know what to do with them.’
‘The traps will be on a timer,’ she said. ‘They’ll only be lit at night.’ The light would attract the insects, luring them into the funnel and the soft cardboard egg boxes below.
Vera lowered herself into a crouch, heard her knee joints cracking, then wondered what she was doing down here. She wouldn’t know a rare moth if it bit her on the nose. ‘Can you get the contents to an expert? The Hancock Museum will have someone. Or one of the unis. And we’ll need Fingerprints to look at the traps.’
‘What are you looking for?’
‘I’m not sure yet. Something unusual. These creatures are the only things that linked the victims.’
‘You don’t think two men were killed because of these?’
Vera didn’t answer. Perhaps the idea was that Benton would stay until the following morning and the victims would examine the contents together. But all this was speculation and probably a waste of time. She pictured what Holly Clarke would make of her theories, as she struggled to get to her feet. MacBride looked away as if he didn’t want to add to her embarrassment. ‘Eh, pet, give me a hand, will you? Otherwise we’ll be here all day.’
He gave a little laugh and pulled her up. She dusted leaves and twigs from her knees.
Back at the cars, she paused. ‘You haven’t found the murder weapon in your search of the grounds? I mean, whatever caused the blunt-force trauma to the back of Randle’s head. It seems that the knife my DC found, when we first came to the house, killed Benton. Dr Keating seems pretty certain about that.’ She still thought it odd that the men had been killed in different ways.
‘Nothing definite and, trust me, we’ve looked!’
‘I’m sure you have. And that you’d have come across it, if it had been here. Any thoughts?’
‘I’m wondering if it had been hidden in plain sight. There’s a toolshed. Lots of spades and shovels. We’ve sent them for analysis. And we’re still waiting for Doc Keating to give his opinion.’
When she was in the Land Rover at the end of the drive Billy Cartwright was on his way in. Vera wound down the window and they had a brief shouted chat. To save him having to back all the way down the lane or her pulling into the verge, she turned right out of the drive towards the Valley Farm development. She turned in the courtyard to make her way back to the village, stopping briefly to look up at the houses. Perhaps because it was still early, everything was very quiet. But upstairs in the farmhouse Nigel Lucas was sitting in the window. He’d obviously heard her vehicle and was staring down at her. Next to him on the windowsill stood a pair of binoculars.