The Sting of Death Page 6

  ‘I think she’d have taken her phone,’ said Maggs robustly.

  The man glanced down at the mobile. ‘That’s her old one,’ he said. ‘She’ll have the current one in the car, in case she needs to use it. But she won’t want it in the tent with her. She’d want a break from all that rubbish.’

  ‘Car?’ Drew echoed. Penn hadn’t mentioned a car. Somehow it cast a different light on things.

  ‘Yes, car,’ the man insisted. ‘Beige Metro, ancient thing it is now, but it seems to go all right. Passed its MOT only a few weeks ago, as it happens. After a bit of welding work.’

  Despite the sudden thawing into something close to chattiness, Drew continued to feel that the man was monitoring his own words with enormous care. There was a lack of spontaneity in his delivery, a distance, as if he were speaking to them down a phone or from a platform. But at least he didn’t seem angry or suspicious any longer.

  ‘We’d better go.’ Drew turned to Maggs. ‘Do you think we can find our way back to the main road?’

  ‘Course we can,’ she smiled. Drew wanted to hug her for the way she hadn’t put her foot in anything. She hadn’t mentioned Penn or given anything away about where they came from.

  ‘Come on then,’ he smiled back. ‘Sorry if we alarmed you,’ he told Philip Renton. ‘Perhaps if you would be so kind as to tell Justine we were looking for her? I’d be very grateful.’

  ‘No problem,’ said Renton, following them out of the cottage.

  ‘What time is it?’ Drew asked, as they bumped the van back down the track.

  ‘Five past five.’

  ‘Let’s go to Okehampton and see if there’s a police station there. I think we have something to report, don’t you?’

  She stared at him. ‘Gosh! It’s not like you to call in the cops. But if you’re going to, why not try Exeter? It’s nearer and on the way home.’

  He hesitated. ‘For one thing, there are people in the Exeter police who’d probably know me, and for another, I don’t fancy driving through town just as the rush hour’s starting. The van’ll overheat if we get stuck in traffic. Anyway, it’s a nice evening for a bit of a drive.’

  ‘I still think it’s funny. Why does it matter that someone might recognise you?’

  He chewed his lip. ‘Well, they might get silly about me and detective work. It’s just a gut feeling – another gut feeling, if you like – that it’d be easier. It’s not far, anyhow.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said slowly. ‘I just hope you know what you’re doing. I’ve always thought you preferred to leave the police out of things if you possibly can.’

  ‘Nonsense. Don’t I always keep on the right side of the law?’

  ‘When you have to,’ she conceded. ‘But this – what are you going to tell them?’

  ‘What did you think of that farmer chap?’ he asked, rather than giving a direct reply.

  ‘Odd,’ she said. ‘Not too happy to see us. Distracted about something. But he’s a farmer. Aren’t they always distracted about the weather or the price of beef or something?’

  ‘Did you pick up any clues about his relationship with Justine?’

  She scratched her head and screwed up her face. ‘Not really,’ she admitted. ‘He seemed to know quite a lot about her. All that stuff about the car. He didn’t seem worried at all.’

  ‘Mmm. Thanks, by the way, for not mentioning Penn.’

  ‘That’s okay. I could tell you wanted her kept out of it. Don’t know why, though.’

  ‘Just a sort of hunch. Except I don’t think Mr Renton was saying more than he had to, either. The whole thing was an exercise in minimalism, when you think about it.’

  Maggs wriggled her shoulders. ‘Could be he really thought we were thieves or squatters or something, and we’d run away at the sight of him. He might have been so thrown when we said we knew Justine that he couldn’t think straight.’

  ‘Oh, he was thinking straight, all right,’ Drew said firmly. ‘That’s what’s bothering me.’

  They found Okehampton Police Station with no difficulty, on the hill leading down into the town. ‘Looks like a school,’ Maggs observed.

  Drew examined the building. ‘It must have been one once,’ he agreed. ‘You wouldn’t think they’d need all that space, would you?’

  The generous car park had clearly been the playground at one time, and the entrance once thronged with chattering pupils. ‘Lucky they’re still open,’ Maggs muttered. ‘It’s well after half past five.’

  A very tall man met them inside the main door, dressed in a short-sleeved green shirt and cord trousers. He looked as if he’d recently been exposed to too much sun. He glanced around the reception area and seeing it unmanned, sighed and stopped. ‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Er, well …’ Drew began. ‘This is going to sound funny, but we think you should know about a young woman who’s missing.’

  ‘Oh yes, sir? A relative of yours?’

  ‘Only a very distant one,’ Drew said. ‘By marriage, that is. Though I’ve never met her,’ he added hastily.

  ‘Really? That sounds rather odd. Perhaps you’d like to come through and tell me about it?’ Drew and Maggs exchanged one of their looks, sharing bewilderment. They’d both expected to be given a form to fill in and nothing more than that. The tall man noted their reaction.

  ‘I’m sorry. I haven’t introduced myself,’ he smiled. ‘Detective Sergeant Cooper. I’ll take your names and details in a moment. You seem surprised about something.’

  ‘Well,’ Drew forced a laugh. ‘We didn’t expect you to take us so seriously.’

  ‘We’re really not like the police you see on telly,’ Cooper told him. ‘You’ve taken the trouble to come here. The least I can do is listen to what you have to say. Don’t you think?’

  Maggs gave a little bounce on her toes, a sign that she was pleased. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Oh, definitely.’

  DS Cooper had been on the brink of going home after a dull and depressing day, when the unlikely duo came in through the front entrance of the station. An open-faced youngish man, neatly dressed and of middle height, accompanied by a plump dark-skinned girl, unself-consciously wearing clothes that showed every curve; an intriguing pair. Cooper was instantly impressed by the girl in particular. Clear-eyed and very young, she seemed completely at ease. She also seemed to have a very relaxed relationship with the chap.

  It took a few minutes to establish who they were and the nature of their partnership. ‘You run a funeral business?’ he repeated incredulously. It would probably have taken him a solid week of guessing before he’d come up with that. And yet, now they’d told him, he could see that it fitted Slocombe’s well-scrubbed look, his gentle smile and air of having seen more of life than most. The girl was far more complicated. How in the world had she stumbled into such a business? He hoped he would get the chance of finding out more.

  ‘It isn’t at all relevant to what we’re here about,’ Slocombe assured him. ‘It’s got absolutely nothing to do with it.’

  Deftly, Cooper extracted the salient points. Drew did most of the talking, turning to Maggs for confirmation now and then. The detective made notes every few seconds, circling some words and linking others with heavy lines. Finally, he summarised.

  ‘Your wife’s cousin asked you to help her find this Justine Pereira, after she’d failed to locate her herself. You can’t be sure, but it seems possible that she arranged to visit you yesterday with this specifically in mind. You freely agreed to this request, and you took your business partner with you on an exploration of Miss Pereira’s home. You find signs that she left in a hurry. Her landlord, a farmer, confronts you, and tells you there’s nothing to worry about – she’s gone off camping of her own accord and will contact you when she returns. So why come to us?’ He wrinkled his brow exaggeratedly.

  ‘Gut feeling,’ Drew ventured.

  ‘We couldn’t just leave it there,’ Maggs added.

  Cooper smiled. ‘No,’ he
agreed. ‘I do see.’

  ‘I’m not really sure that I do,’ admitted Drew. ‘It’s something and nothing, isn’t it. Not just the atmosphere on the farm – which really is odd – but before that. I’ve never met Penn before, but she got under my skin somehow. There was an edge to her, as if she had to hold on tight to herself. And then this farmer, Renton, was the same. You could tell he was being careful what he said, that he had to think about it first.’

  Cooper had little else to do, otherwise it might have gone differently. He liked these people and trusted the bloke’s judgment. ‘I assume you regularly get involved in people’s lives,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘You see them at times of crisis, the same as I do. You get a feeling for what’s a natural reaction and what isn’t. That kind of thing?’

  ‘Right!’ Drew responded. ‘That’s right. You’ve put your finger on it. This Renton chap – he was behaving like a man in a crisis. And yet, if he was telling the truth, he hadn’t anything to worry about. I hadn’t thought it through until now.’ He turned to Maggs for her endorsement. ‘Had you?’

  She ducked her chin, uncharacteristically self-effacing. ‘Well …’ she began. ‘I just thought he was a bit tense, I suppose. I was more bothered about Justine’s things, left the way they were. And the mobile. I didn’t believe what he said about the mobile. I think he just made that up on the spot.’

  ‘Er—’ Cooper prompted. ‘I don’t think you’ve told me about that.’

  They quickly made amends. ‘Why would someone keep their old phone anyway?’ Maggs concluded. ‘And it was all charged up, ready to use. It was the mobile that finally did it for me.’

  Both men looked at her. The detective nodded slowly. ‘Good point,’ he said. Then he sat up straighter. ‘Look, there isn’t a lot we can do, with no evidence of any foul play or violence. But I’ll put an alert out and get in touch with Miss Strabinski to see what she can add. From now on, there’ll be a lot of people watching for Miss Pereira and her car. Have you got a description of her?’

  Drew and Maggs both shook their heads. ‘She’s small,’ said Maggs eventually. ‘And drives a beige Metro. An old beige Metro.’

  ‘How do you know she’s small?’ Drew asked her.

  ‘Her clothes in that wardrobe, for one thing. And the shoes in the bedroom were only about size 4.’ Maggs glanced down at her own size 6s, with a tiny sigh. ‘Oh, and she’s got black hair, quite long.’ She glanced at Drew smugly. ‘There was a rather unhygienic hairbrush in the bathroom.’

  ‘I don’t remember going into a bathroom.’

  ‘You didn’t. I dashed in while you went downstairs. You can learn a lot from bathrooms.’

  ‘Did you find anything else?’ Cooper asked.

  Maggs shrugged. ‘Just soap and shampoo – oh, and a fairly new-looking toothbrush.’

  They drove home briskly, Drew finding himself irritated at being so upstaged. ‘Why didn’t you mention the toothbrush right at the start?’ he demanded. ‘You were playing games with him and me.’

  ‘It just seemed such a cliché,’ she defended. ‘And I thought she might have another one, an old favourite, that she’d taken with her. I still think she might. I mean, for a person to leave without even a toothbrush does seem very dramatic.’

  ‘There wasn’t a handbag anywhere,’ he reminded her. ‘Which would a girl choose first, if she was in a tremendous rush?’

  ‘That isn’t really the question. If she thought she’d be back by bedtime, she’d just take the bag. I bet she leaves it in her car most of the time, anyway. My mum does that – drives Dad crazy. She puts it under the passenger seat. I’m forever having to go out and fetch it for her.’

  ‘The policeman was nice, wasn’t he,’ Drew interrupted.

  ‘Tall. Not the most cheerful bloke in the world.’

  ‘There’s something about very tall people, isn’t there,’ he mused. ‘They always seem unusually dignified, somehow. Especially when they’re thin as well.’

  ‘He’s got a bit of a pot,’ she noted. ‘Must be fond of a beer.’

  ‘Seemed a good listener.’

  ‘Sensible, too. Weren’t we lucky to find him!’

  ‘Weren’t we,’ he agreed, with only slightly less enthusiasm.

  * * *

  Karen was much more interested in his findings than he’d expected her to be. Since the children had arrived, she’d become a somewhat less reliable confidante than before. The long discussions they’d had in the early days, where she followed every twist and turn of his thinking, were now very rare. They both knew that Maggs had in some ways taken Karen’s place, and although most of the tensions arising from this development had been accommodated, there were still moments when it mattered.

  ‘I wish I’d come with you,’ Karen said, having heard the story. ‘After all, Penn is my cousin.’

  ‘Justine isn’t, though,’ he corrected her. ‘And you didn’t miss much.’

  ‘Except that nice policeman,’ she chuckled. ‘He sounds quite something.’

  ‘He was unusual,’ Drew agreed. ‘I think we just caught him on a quiet day, when he was glad of anything to relieve the boredom.’

  ‘Surely not. I thought they were all working their socks off these days, with crime levels soaring and all that.’

  ‘Evidently not in Okehampton. Not this week, anyway.’

  ‘He won’t really do anything, though, will he? What’re you going to tell Penn? You ought to phone her. She’ll be wondering what you thought of the cottage.’

  ‘Tomorrow. I’ll do that tomorrow. Sorry I was too late to help with putting the kids to bed.’

  ‘I kept them up a bit late, hoping you’d come in time. Timmy had a long sleep this afternoon in the garden.’

  Karen’s garden was increasingly prodigious as the summer wore on. She’d encroached on the burial field at one end, cutting down a straggly hedge and planting a row of fast-growing willows a generous fifteen yards further back, gaining herself a space for beans, brussels sprouts, cabbages, sweetcorn and potatoes. Drew had been happy to let her. He had ten acres to play with, enough to bury thousands of people, enough to last a lifetime, even if business became seriously good. And since their income was significantly below the official poverty line, the food she produced was more than welcome. ‘I’ll soon have enough surplus to make regular sales,’ she said proudly. ‘I can do veggie boxes.’

  Drew had his doubts about that, but said nothing. Veggie boxes involved efficient paperwork, a lot of driving to deliver the boxes, and a lot of complaints and demands from bothersome customers.

  ‘Did you ever meet Justine?’ he asked suddenly. ‘As a child, I mean?’

  Karen’s gaze lost focus as she examined memories from early childhood. ‘We had a party, I remember. It must have been my mother’s birthday – thirty, possibly. Uncle Sebastian came with Auntie Helen, Penn’s mother. And they had another little girl with them, a bit younger than Penn. I remember I was fascinated by her; she had very black hair and a narrow little face. She looked like a picture of Mary Lennox in a book I had. You know – the girl in The Secret Garden. She seemed thin and sad like Mary. She was probably only two or three. I have a feeling somebody said her mother was away, so Auntie Helen was looking after her for a while. It seems like a million years ago. I wasn’t a great deal older than Steph is now.’

  ‘Your family!’ Drew exclaimed. ‘It’s like one of those ten-volume sagas. I thought, you being an only child, there’d be nothing much to it. How come it’s taken me so long to realise?’

  ‘There is nothing much to it. It’s a perfectly ordinary group of people.’

  ‘Maggs said she must have long black hair,’ he remembered. ‘And she’s small, to judge by her clothes and shoes. Seems to fit your memory of her.’

  ‘Her father was Spanish, isn’t that what Penn said? That would explain the hair colour. She sounds very bohemian.’

  ‘Lonely,’ Drew pronounced. ‘At least, solitary. There was something sad about the place wher
e she lives.’

  ‘I wonder where she is,’ Karen said with feeling. ‘It’s good of you to get involved, Drew. Especially as it might get you into trouble with Roma. You realise that, don’t you?’

  He frowned. ‘I hadn’t seen it like that,’ he admitted. ‘You mean because she hasn’t been speaking to Justine?’

  ‘She might feel rather iffy about you interfering, if the whole subject of Justine is taboo. You ought to go and talk to her about it, if you don’t want to lose her friendship.’

  ‘She’s not that special to me, you know.’

  ‘Oh, I think she is,’ Karen twinkled. ‘But that’s okay. I know what you’re like by now. It doesn’t worry me.’

  ‘No reason why it should,’ he said uncomfortably. There were still grey areas in his dealings with other women that had never been properly thrashed out between them.

  The phone interrupted. ‘Hospice here,’ said a brisk female voice. ‘I understand you’re dealing with Mr Graham French? Well, he died at six o’clock this evening. We’ll keep him overnight, but perhaps you could come for him tomorrow? The family will be in touch in the morning.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He sighed as he replaced the phone. He’d really liked Mr French.

  * * *

  Roma Millan’s sister Helen had mixed feelings of her own about the virtues of family life. Just at the moment, she could definitely have done without the whole business. The post had brought no fewer than three letters from assorted relatives, and they all seemed to want something from her. She had hoped, when she firmly decided that one child was quite enough, that the responsibilities of blood ties would weigh lightly on her shoulders. She had no image of herself as a caring dependable person, and if she forgot people’s birthdays they never seemed surprised or offended.

  The letters were from her husband’s sister, Miriam; her daughter, and Angus, her father’s much younger brother. Angus was the only one who wrote regularly from his isolated Devon village. He’d bolted there, after his breakdown, like a frightened rabbit, and although nobody ever laid eyes on him, they all received frequent communications in which he complained about how poor and cold and hungry and ill he was. Helen sent him cheques when she remembered, but he didn’t always pay them in. She supposed he seldom visited a bank, and would prefer cash, but Helen didn’t have spare cash very often.