Cold Coffin (24 page)

At that point a WPC entered the room. Coming up to Kate, she murmured that a Professor Steinle was on the phone, wanting to speak to her.

“He’s calling from Vienna, ma’am, and he says it’s important.”

“Professor Steinle? Did he ask for me by name?”

“No, ma’am. He asked to be put on to the most senior officer engaged on the Kimberley case.”

“Right.” Kate signed to Boulter to take over the briefing, and departed to her own office.

“Detective Chief Inspector Maddox here. What can I do for you, Herr Professor Steinle?”

“You are in charge of the enquiry concerning Sir Noah Kimberley’s death, Frau Chief Inspector?” His excellent English was spoken with a marked accent. He showed no surprise to find that this senior police officer was female.

“I am. Do you have some information for me?”

“It is a possibility, I believe, that what I will now relate may be of much importance to your enquiries. Especially I think this, since it concerns the precise day of Sir Noah’s decease. You must understand, Frau Chief Inspector, that I have only just today learned of this sad event, in a letter I received from a correspondent of mine who lives in London. I am much grieved, as Sir Noah was an old friend of mine. Let me explain. I am the Herr Direktor of a firm here in Austria which conducts business of a similar nature to Croptech in England. Landwirtschaft-lichindustrie Steinle. The late Sir Noah Kimberley and I first met when we were both post-graduate students at the university of Cambridge, many years ago, of course. I speak to you now, Frau Chief Inspector, to inform you that on the Friday of last week, early in the afternoon, I had the unhappy duty of telephoning my good friend Sir Noah with some news of an unpleasant nature.”

Kate’s interest quickened. This must have been the call Sir Noah received just before Lady Kimberley left for London, which had seemed to upset him. She scribbled down an approximation of the Austrian firm’s long name.

“What unpleasant news was this, Herr Professor?”

“I had received a communication from one of Sir Noah’s most senior employees, offering to my company his services. There is nothing reprehensible, you may think, in such an offer. However, in this instance the man was most plainly suggesting that he would be able to bring with him to Landwirtschaftlichindustrie Steinle details of chemical processes developed at Croptech. In return for this information, he would expect to be paid a very large salary. Such confidential information, as this man well knew, would be of infinite value to my own firm. As a businessman, Frau Chief Inspector, I must of course consider what is profitable for my own organization, but I do not indulge in dishonourable practices. My initial reaction on receiving this proposal was to reject it outright with all the contempt it deserved. However, upon reflection it seemed more fitting that I should warn my old friend of this serious disloyalty in one of his employees. So I telephoned Sir Noah. To ensure that I was speaking to him privately, I waited until the early afternoon, knowing that his normal custom was to take luncheon at home with his wife. Sir Noah sounded deeply shocked on the telephone, as one would expect.”

“What was the name of the employee concerned?” Kate enquired.

“It was Trent. Dr. Gavin Trent. To judge from his qualifications, he is a biochemist of considerable talent. But he is not, I fear, a person of whom his professional colleagues can be proud.”

Kate broke in, “You are clearly unaware, Herr Professor, that Dr. Trent has also been murdered.”

“Wirtig?”
A shocked silence followed. “But this is terrible.  How is it possible that both these two men—?”

“Unfortunately, we still have no answer to that question, but your information has thrown new light upon my enquiry. Tell me, please, the communication you received from Dr. Trent ... was it in the form of a letter?”

“Yes. Addressed to me personally, and marked
Confidential.”

“I would like to see that letter, if I may.”

“Naturlich,
if that is your wish.”

“Thank you. I will arrange to have it collected. Either one of my own officers will fly to Vienna to talk to you, or possibly the Austrian police can handle the matter for me. Whichever way, I ask for your co-operation in answering as fully as possible all questions put to you.”

“Of course, of course, Frau Chief Inspector.”

“One other point, Herr Professor Steinle. Did you telephone Sir Noah a second time that day, in the early evening?”

“A second time? I had no occasion to telephone him again. Why do you ask?”

“It’s of no consequence. Did Sir Noah give you any indication of what action he proposed taking in the light of the information you’d given him?”

“No. He merely said that he was very distressed, as of course I knew he would be. Sir Noah’s intention, I would imagine, was to take up the matter with Dr. Trent in the sternest possible way.”

“Yes,” said Kate. “I expect it was.”

“Christ!” said Boulter, when Kate had imparted the gist of the phone call from Austria. “This alters the outlook more than somewhat.”

Kate had had the advantage of a little time to consider. “How about this scenario, Tim? Noah Kimberley drives to Trent’s cottage that Friday evening intent on having a showdown over the man’s appalling disloyalty. The row ends in violence and Kimberley gets killed—either deliberately or accidentally.”

“Do you reckon that either of those two was the type to get into a fight?”

“By all accounts Trent had the very devil of a temper. And don’t forget, Kimberley must have been as mad as hell with him.”

“So, if Trent killed Kimberley, who killed Trent?”

“One step at a time, Tim. Having a dead man on his hands, Trent panics. He’s got to dispose of the body somehow. Inspiration dawns. The Tillingtons are away for several months, their house locked up. Hiding it there would be a way of buying time till he can think of something more permanent.” She paused, and Boulter promptly nailed flaws in her line of reasoning.

“How is Trent supposed to know the way through the security system at Milford Grange? How does he know there’ll be an empty freezer waiting for him there, big enough to take the body?”

“The freezer might have been a bonus he only noticed when he got to the house.”

“And beating the security system?”

“We reasoned that Roger Barlow, with his scientific mind, might have figured out how to do it. Why not Gavin Trent?”

Boulter looked sceptical. Kate persisted doggedly. “Those unidentified fingerprints at Milford Grange. Were they checked against Trent’s?”

“Can’t say offhand, guv. I doubt it, considering that Trent was a goner
himself.”

“Well, have it done right away.”

Only minutes later, Boulter burst back into her office alight with excitement, his scepticism about the DCI’s theory forgotten.

“Bang on, guv. Those prints at Milford Grange are definitely Trent’s.
We’re on our way.”

Kate applied a dampener to his enthusiasm. “There are still several
unanswered questions. First off, who was the woman in the case, the
woman who drove Kimberley’s car to Cardiff Airport that evening? And if and when we get a lead on her, we come back to who the hell killed
Trent? And why?”

“Did
she
kill him?” Boulter floated. “Was there a row between them
afterwards? Could Trent have threatened to expose her?”

“But he’d be exposing himself, too, if we’re on the right track. We’ve got to find that woman, Tim. Whether or not she killed Trent, she’s obviously a vital element in the case.”

“Agreed.”

“Okay then, let’s consider what we know about her. Just a few stray bits
and pieces, that’s all, and even those may not all relate to the same
woman. But let’s assume for now that they do. We have two sightings of
her on record—one by Giles Lambert, the car dealer. A lot of hair, was all he could say. The other sighting was by the man at the Severn Bridge toll
gate, but he couldn’t give any description apart from a guess that she was
either drunk or crazy, judging by the way she drove. Or, we can suggest,
possibly an inexperienced driver, or someone who was in a panic. We have
strong circumstantial evidence from both Trent’s sister and his former cleaning lady that there had been a woman in his life. What can we put
together about
her?
That she used expensive perfume and wore a some
what vivid red lipstick.”

“And,” Boulter put in shrewdly, “for some reason it was important to keep their affair secret. It couldn’t have mattered a monkey’s to Trent, so the need for secrecy must have been on her side.”

“As in married woman, for instance.”

“A whisky-drinking woman, too. Remember the half-empty bottle on
Trent’s table, almost certainly brought by his visitor the night he was
killed.”

“A lot of women drink whisky,” Kate pointed out. “I do, for one.”

Boulter chuckled. “Had I better caution you, guv?”

Kate screwed up her mouth pensively. “We also know that her taste in
music was very different from Trent’s. But again, a taste for Tom Jones is shared by a very large number of people.”

“According to what Trent’s sister told you, he must have been really
besotted with this woman to have bothered to listen to the sort of music he despised. If he was so crazy about her, why the heck did he try to wangle himself a fancy new job in Vienna?”

“Good point, Tim. He might have seen that she was losing interest, and he just wanted to get away. Or maybe the plan was for her to leave her husband and go off with him.”

“Could she have killed him—because he was coming on too heavy,
maybe? He might have threatened to spill the beans to her husband if she
didn’t agree to do what he wanted.”

Kate ruminated. “But if Trent killed Kimberley and she was in on it
with him, they could hardly blackmail each other. It’s possible she got
scared that Trent might panic and let the cat out of the bag, incriminating her too. He was an unstable sort of character, don’t forget, unable to control his temper.”

“Assuming she did do it, she’d need to be one tough lady to drown him
like that in the pond.”

Kate tried to push away the nagging thought in her head, but it
wouldn’t leave her.

“Dr. Cheryl Miller,” she said. “She’s a tough lady, all right.”

“She’s married, too, in a way. Though I wouldn’t have thought she’d care a damn if the whole world knew who she was doing a number with.”

Kate shook her head slowly. “But with Gavin Trent
...
I just can’t see it. I’d say he was the very last man she’d want to have an affair with.”

“How about if all that guff she gave us about having such a contempt for Trent was just a smokescreen?”

“Why should she worry about putting up a smokescreen? You’ve just
pointed out that she wouldn’t care a damn who knew who she was sleep
ing with. On the other hand ...”

“On the other hand, what?”

Kate talked herself through this new idea. “The way I read Cheryl Miller, she has a contempt for men—
all
men. Even Jessop, though she
sticks by him because it gives her a good feeling to be needed. But Jessop
apart, I think it’s her aim in life to put men down. In her sexual involve
ments she doesn’t fall for the man, she just uses him for her own amuse
ment.”

“Some men,” said Boulter, rolling his eyes, “wouldn’t mind being used by that one.”

“Huh! I bet they live to regret it.”

“Or maybe die.”

“You might be on to something, Tim. It’s just conceivable that she deliberately set out to seduce Trent for the sheer hell of it. A chap who was short on experience of women the way he was might easily go completely overboard if a sexy woman like Cheryl Miller seemed to have the hots for him. Then comes the moment of truth, when she bitchily tells him to get lost. He threatens to blow the gaff about her gaolbird husband, and ...”

“But how would Trent have known about Jessop? She’d have been too astute to confide that sort of secret in pillow talk.”

“You’re right, it’s unlikely. I suppose Trent could have found out some other way.”

“Anyhow,” Boulter said, “Dr. Miller’s prints don’t match the ones found on that Tom Jones tape.”

Kate was taken by surprise by the feeling of thankfulness that flooded through her. She and Cheryl Miller had little in common beyond the fact that they were both succeeding in a man’s world.
We of the elite sisterhood, Kate.
Otherwise, they could hardly have been more different.

“I was overlooking that, Tim,” she said, smiling. “We can’t write her off as a suspect on that account, of course. But weighing up all the odds, it does seem to me highly improbable that she was the woman involved with Trent.”

“You like Cheryl Miller, guv, don’t you?”

“There’s liking and liking, but yes I do. I respect what she’s achieved, and I think I can understand what motivates her. She’s a sad woman.”

“Sad ... her? She doesn’t strike me as sad.”

“Take my word for it. Life’s treated Cheryl Miller pretty badly.”

“She’s not the only one,” Boulter said, with a depth of feeling in his voice.

You bloody fool, Tim! Why can’t you see that you’ve got it all on a plate?
Men could have both an interesting career and a fulfilling family life. For women, it was so often a matter of choosing which.

“Back to business, Sergeant,” she said irritably. “One way or another we’ve got to track down this woman. She’s the key to the whole case. So let’s sift through what we’ve got all over again.”

Gavin Trent’s funeral was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon. Kate wanted to attend, even though she couldn’t afford the time, if only to give moral support to his sister and her husband, who was coming down specially. At the last minute she discovered a disastrous ladder in her tights, and she’d already used the spare pair she carried in the car. She popped out to the newsagent’s just across Aston Pringle’s wide main street from the police station.