‘Did you go?’
‘A couple of times over the summer. I must have been about fourteen and we still all lived together in Kimmerston then. Mum came with me when I first went. She had a suspicious mind and spent too much of her time working with perverts. She thought I was in danger of being corrupted or groomed.’
‘And were you?’
‘Nah. Martin was a bit weird, but there was nothing dodgy like that. He was completely harmless.’
‘Weird in what way?’ Holly couldn’t work out the significance of this. It meant that Shirley Hewarth had known Benton for much longer than anyone had realized, but why would that be important?
‘Very precise. A bit obsessive. He lived with his mother, who treated him like a kid. We’d be out in his garden checking the trap and Mrs Benton would come out to check he was warm enough, or she’d appear with mugs of coffee and bits of cake. With Martin, everything was recorded and written down and then he’d transfer the data to a file on his computer. He was a great one for lists.’ Jon seemed brighter as he relived the memories of his early teens. Perhaps the toxic coffee was working its magic. ‘At first I thought all that was brilliant, but Martin expected me to keep the same detailed records and in the end I just found it tedious. I didn’t have that sort of brain. I loved the experience: being out late at night to set the trap and early in the morning to see what we’d caught. He’d put them in jars in the fridge overnight to make them still, and once I went up to his house the next morning to watch him photograph them. He was a brilliant photographer. But it was very passive and I soon got bored.’
‘You don’t remember all this, Mr Hewarth?’ Holly turned to the older man.
He shook his head. ‘Like I said, I just helped Jon out when he was trapping in the garden. When I was around. I was still working then of course, covering stories all over the region, away a lot.’
‘And neither of you made the connection between Martin Benton the moth-trapper and the guy who was working with Shirley?’
‘I didn’t,’ Jonathan said. ‘It was a long time ago and it’s an anonymous sort of name, heard in a different situation. When I knew him Martin was a teacher, not an unemployed guy looking for work experience.’
Holly thought that made sense. She remembered Vera’s first description of Benton as the ‘grey man’. It seemed sad that Benton had been so easily forgotten. But perhaps Shirley had remembered, when Martin had turned up at her office looking for work. Perhaps she could still picture a kind teacher who’d spent time with her son and tried to encourage his interest in natural history.
‘He was ill.’ Another memory had returned to Jonathan. ‘It wasn’t just that I got bored with going out with him. I went to his house one day and his mother said he wasn’t there. He was in hospital. I felt kind of relieved. It gave me a way out and meant I had an excuse for dropping the whole thing. I was one for brief enthusiasms in those days. Phases. I’d already moved on to something else and joined the Youth Theatre. But Martin wouldn’t have understood that.’
There was a moment of silence.
‘Did you ever see him again?’
Jonathan shook his head. ‘My mother asked if I wanted to visit him in hospital that summer. But I’d found out that he was in St David’s. You know, the loony bin. Mum said she’d go with me, but I couldn’t face it.’ A pause. ‘That seems so mean now. Callous. I’m glad he wasn’t alone when he died. It was a double-murder, wasn’t it? I read it in the paper. He was visiting a friend.’
Holly didn’t like to say that the bodies hadn’t been found together, that Randle had been killed in the vegetable garden and Benton inside the house, or that they still didn’t have any real idea of the relationship between the two men. She stood up. Jack stood too, but Jonathan was still, frozen in the past, reliving memories of his youth when the worst thing he had to face was the awkwardness of telling a former teacher that he no longer shared his passion for the natural world.
At the door Holly stopped for a moment and turned to Jack Hewarth. ‘You still can’t remember why Patrick Randle’s name seems familiar?’
‘Sorry. I have been trying. But the more I think about it, the further away it slips.’
‘If you do, will you give me a ring?’
‘Sure.’ But he seemed disengaged again and she could tell he had no hope of the memory returning.
Chapter Thirty-Four
At mid-morning the weather started to change and a blustery wind from the west made it feel like spring instead of summer. Joe had tracked down the chairman of the trustees of Hope North-East and had arranged to meet him. He’d stuck his head into Vera’s office before setting off and had found her in a philosophical mood. She got that way sometimes.
‘This case is full of people worried about dying.’ She’d leaned towards him, her eyes gleaming as if she was fascinated by death, not worried by it. ‘They can feel their time running out. The murders must have made the fear more real. Daft, isn’t it? We’ve all got to go sometime.’
Joe wondered how he’d respond to news that he had a terminal illness. He didn’t think he’d be able to keep it secret. He’d even like the fuss and attention. And it might be exciting to be so close to death. He’d be reckless for the first time in his life. Drink too much. Take risks.
‘Perhaps fear in the abstract is worse than facing the immediate reality.’ Vera had still seemed preoccupied by morbid thoughts, but her voice had been cheerful. She probably wasn’t afraid of anything. Joe hadn’t bothered answering.
Hope’s chair of trustees was a labour councillor and former union man. He lived in a miners’ welfare cottage on the outskirts of Bebington. Joe knew of him through his father. They’d been comrades-in-arms, the same post-war generation. John Laidlaw had been a kind of hero in their family. The cottage was neat, the garden tended. A handrail had been fixed close to the front door, and through the window Joe saw an elderly woman sitting with a piece of embroidery on her knee, a walking frame propped beside her. She seemed to be drowsing, but the man who opened the door was spry and fit and looked younger than his wife.
‘You’ll be Bobby Ashworth’s son. This is a terrible business. Come into the kitchen, so we don’t disturb Doreen. She had a stroke last year and hasn’t been herself since.’
John Laidlaw was dressed in his Sunday best, shirt and tie and shining shoes. Joe thought he’d probably just come back from chapel. They sat on plastic chairs across a Formica table.
‘Shirley Hewarth was the best thing that happened to Hope. I got to know her when I was a magistrate. I knew she wasn’t happy with the way the probation service was going. Nobody in their right mind would be…’ The last was thrown out as a challenge. The former miner still saw a police officer as a potential enemy. ‘I offered her the job as director. Never thought she’d accept.’ A quick grin. ‘Then we had to find the money to pay her.’
‘Why do you think she did accept?’ That had been bothering Joe since he’d first encountered the woman.
‘Because she had principles and a social conscience.’ To John Laidlaw the answer was obvious. ‘She knew people coming out of prison are more likely to reoffend without support.’
Joe remembered the woman he’d met, the glimpse of the lacy bra. He thought there’d been more to Shirley Hewarth than a social conscience.
‘What did she bring to your organization?’
‘A professional approach. Before that, we were a glorified self-help group. Ex-offenders providing advice for their mates. And I’d use my contacts to drag in some volunteers to run occasional sessions. It was more like a drop-in centre. It served to keep lads off the street, but not much more than that. Shirley knew her way round the funding system and managed to pull in pots of money from a variety of sources. That meant we could run training courses, evaluate the work we were doing, provide individual counselling to clients who needed it. Then, because we had some credibility, statutory agencies bought in our services.’ Laidlaw stopped for breath.