Cold Coffin (27 page)

Paula Kimberley responded now, but she was obviously scarcely aware of who they were.

“Just ... just a couple, I think. Aidan told me I must ... must get a few hours’ sleep. To ... to be ready ...”

Ready for what?

“Mrs. Kimberley, where is your husband?” Kate asked.

“Isn’t he here ... downstairs?”

“No, he’s nowhere around.”

“Nor’s his car, ma’am,” put in Boulter. “I took a dekko in the garage, and it’s empty.”

“But ... where can he have gone?” Paula suddenly tensed, her eyes frightened. Then she reached out and grabbed Kate by the lapels of her beige linen jacket. “Aidan will come back for me, won’t he?” she pleaded. “He will come back?”

He’s abandoned her, Kate thought. Somehow he managed to get her to take an overdose of sleeping pills, to keep her knocked out while he skipped. And Paula, in her befuddled state, was coming to realize that she’d been deserted.

Kate glanced an urgent appeal at the doctor, who nodded his consent.

“Where has your husband gone?” she demanded. “Tell me!”

The mists must have cleared from Paula’s brain, and she was beginning to get herself together.

“Why are you here?” she asked Kate in a clogged voice. “What do you want?”

Kate decided to take a chance. She wasn’t prepared to waste time going round in circles.

“Your husband has run out on you, Mrs. Kimberley. You have to accept that. So tell me where he’s gone.”

But she’d succeeded too well in getting her meaning across. Paula was shocked into silence. She looked terrified.

Kate drew Boulter to one side. “Kimberley wanted to keep his wife doped and quiet while he made his escape. As I told you, it’s clear from what Lord Balmayne said that he’d already made plans for a quick getaway, if need be. Something must have happened to scare him, and he’s scarpered. He could be on the point of leaving the country by now. But how? Where from? By the time we can set something up at all points of departure, he’ll be gone.”

The sergeant nodded gloomily.

“He’s unlikely to have booked a ticket in advance, Tim, if we’re right that he’s bolted in a panic. He’d go by air almost certainly, but how the hell can we pin down which airport, which flight? There are hundreds of planes leaving the country all the time.”

“Not so many this late in the evening,” Boulter pointed out.

“That’s right, his choice would be limited.” A stray thought suddenly crystallized in Kate’s brain. “I wonder if ... It’s a chance in a million, of course.”

“What is, guv?”

“Maybe Kimberley used the phone here before he left, to make a reservation. Worth a try.”

She ran downstairs, Boulter following. The phone was in the living room, standing on a writing table in a small alcove. Praying for a miracle, Kate picked up the handset and pushed the redial button to get automatic connection to the last number dialled. The silence seemed to stretch for an age before the purr of the ringing tone. Then a gabbled response she couldn’t catch.

“Who am I speaking to?” she asked.

It was the British Airways desk at Heathrow. Kate held down her leaping excitement as she identified herself.

“Now, listen. I need your co-operation, and I want it fast. This is urgent. Have you received a call today from a Mr. Aidan Kimberley— probably in the past few hours—to make a reservation on a flight this evening?”

“Which destination, please?”

“Unfortunately I don’t have that information. It would be somewhere non-domestic.”

The delay seemed interminable to Kate, though to be fair the woman was reasonably quick.

“We have no record of a passenger by that name today,” she reported.

Damn! What now?

“Maybe that wasn’t the name he used. Listen, ask around among your colleagues, will you? See if anyone can remember a man who wanted to make a last-minute reservation. It’s possible that he wasn’t fussy about his destination. I think he’d be travelling alone, and it’s likely to have been just a one-way ticket. Please be as quick as you can. This is extremely urgent.”

Another agonizing delay. Then a different voice came on the line.

“I believe I may have dealt with the gentleman you’re enquiring about. A Mr. Kay.”

Gotcha, chummie!
Kate flicked Boulter a thumbs-up. “That’ll be the man. Tell me about him.”

“He phoned at seven forty-five and said he had the chance of a few days’ holiday, so could I find him a flight this evening to somewhere pleasant. I booked him on the twenty-two-thirty flight to Malta. Just a one-way ticket. He said he’d probably return by a different route.”

“Thanks a lot,” said Kate. “You’ve been a terrific help.”

“Another thing. I’ve just been informed that Mr. Kay collected his ticket from the desk a few minutes ago. They’ll be boarding that flight shortly. Shall I have a call put out for him?”

“No, don’t do that. He mustn’t be alerted, whatever happens. Thanks again.”

Boulter had been using his personal radio again. He showed her the number of Special Branch at Heathrow scribbled in his notebook.

“Thanks, Tim. What would I do without you?” Kate said as she punched out the number.

Special Branch wasted no time. In less than ten minutes they called her back.

“Chief Inspector Maddox? We’ve nabbed your man Kimberley, alias Kay, and we’re holding him for you. And I’ve never seen anyone so taken by surprise.”

“That’s great,” she said, with a rush of relief. “That’s a pint all round I owe you.”

“You may be interested to know that his hand luggage is a canvas holdall packed with an enormous sum in currency. What was it, a bank raid?”

“It’s his own money, would you believe?” she said with a laugh. “Legitimately come by.”

* * * *

The doctor gave it as his opinion that Paula Kimberley was certainly not fit to be interviewed at present, and was best left where she was for another two or three hours. Kate accepted this resignedly, though she was impatient for answers. She told Boulter to have a couple of WPCs come to guard her until she could be taken to divisional headquarters at Marlingford. Meanwhile, an escort was despatched to Heathrow to bring Aidan Kimberley back.

This meant that Kate had a brief respite, and she might as well make the most of it. She decided to go back to Stonebank Cottage to have a meal and freshen up before setting out for Marlingford and the heavy night that would await her there.

She headed her car homewards, taking a short cut through the darkening country lanes. It had started to rain and was getting heavier by the minute. After the long dry spell the air smelt fresh and cool as it drifted in through the ventilators. Kate wasn’t feeling the least bit tired; the flow of adrenalin saw to that. She didn’t know all the answers yet, didn’t know what charges would have to be brought. But she was confident that by morning she’d have the case all wrapped up.

The rain was teeming down by now. Her headlights picked out the blurred figure of a man, running. He half turned and jerked his thumb, asking for a lift.

What
me?
A woman alone on a deserted road after dark. Think again, chum. Then she was close enough to see the man’s face. It was Don Trotton.

She braked hard, and he ran up to the car as Kate reached over and wound down the window.

“Oh!” he said, taken aback and clearly not pleased to see who it was. “It’s you.”

He looked thoroughly wet and bedraggled. His hair was plastered to his head, and his sodden sweater and trousers clung to his body. And, Kate noted, there was a cut on his forehead, from which blood was oozing.

“What on earth’s happened to you, Don?” she asked.

“Forget it,” he snarled. “I’m okay.”

“You don’t look okay to me. If you’re heading for home, you’ve still got quite a way to go. Get in and I’ll drive you.”

“But—”

“That’s an order, Inspector.” Kate wasn’t about to have a member of the public come across an officer of the South Midlands force in such unfavourable circumstances.
Absurd
circumstances, she thought with an inward giggle. Already, she was mentally writing scenarios about what could have brought the swaggering, conceited Don Trotton to this indignity. Knowing him, a woman had to be involved, and it looked as if he’d been in a fight. With her? Had she been throwing things at him? Or was it an angry husband who’d beaten him up? Whatever, he’d somehow been rendered car-less and forced to get home as best he could. Then, to cap it all, he’d been caught in a downpour.

Trotton obeyed her mutinously, getting in the car and slumping back into the seat in sullen silence.

“Are you going to give me an explanation?” Kate demanded, as she started off.

“It’s personal,” he muttered. “None of your business.”

“It is my business if you’ve been assaulted,” she reminded him, enjoying herself hugely.

“Oh, for God’s sake, can’t you leave it alone?”

“The way it looks to me, Don, this is the evening when you’ve met your Waterloo. And not before time!”

He didn’t answer that. But when, a few minutes later, she turned into the driveway of the big Victorian house where he had a flat, he said suddenly, “Look, Kate, there’s no need to make a meal of this, is there? Let’s just forget it ever happened, eh?”

“Hush it up, you mean? I’m surprised at you, Inspector Trotton, asking such a thing of a senior officer. Out you get.”

Aidan Kimberley and his wife arrived separately at divisional headquarters but at about the same time. It was Paula Kimberley that Kate interviewed first, with Sergeant Boulter in attendance. When she later had Aidan Kimberley brought to the interview room, he was a changed man from the one she had met at his uncle’s home. The suave self-confidence was gone, and so was his knife-crease grooming. He looked weary, dishevelled—and very nervous. This latter he was trying hard to conceal by adopting an attitude of impatience and outrage.

“Why the devil have I been brought here, Chief Inspector? The whole thing is ridiculous. A ridiculous mistake. I explained to the people at Heathrow that the money I was carrying is all my own. I can prove it.”

“I’ve no doubt you can, Mr. Kimberley. You were arrested, as you were informed at the time, on suspicion of murder. My concern is with the deaths of Sir Noah Kimberley and Dr. Gavin Trent.”

“You can’t seriously imagine that I had anything to do with any of that,” he protested. “If you’re determined to go ahead with this charade, then perhaps I’d better have my solicitor present.”

“That is your right, of course, as was explained to you when you were cautioned. Do you wish to have him sent for now, before we proceed any further?”

Kimberley gestured irritably. “What’s the point? I have nothing to answer to, nothing to hide. So just get on with this and let me go.”

“You haven’t enquired about your wife, Mr. Kimberley.”

On Kate’s instructions he’d been told nothing about the police visit to his cottage and the discovery of Paula Kimberley in a drugged state. Watching his face, she guessed that he didn’t know how to react to her remark without giving something away.

“She’s at home, I presume,” he said, with an exaggerated shrug of the shoulders. “What about her?”

“No, Mrs. Kimberley is not at home. In fact, she is here in this building. The reason you were kept waiting for me to see you was because I was interviewing your wife.”

Kimberley’s eyes flickered, and seconds of silence ticked away. Finally he asked in a taut voice, “What has Paula been saying?”

“She has given us a great deal of information,” Kate said. “All of which confirms what we already suspected.”

“What . .  . what information?”

“She has admitted that she was an accessory in the concealment of Sir Noah Kimberley’s body, following his accidental death at Dr. Gavin Trent’s cottage.”

Paula, in her fury at the way her husband had left her to face the music alone, had held nothing back. The whole story had come gushing out of her in a half-hysterical stream, with only slight prompting from Kate. Fidelity had never been part of the Kimberleys’ marriage, it seemed, and each was free to go their own way. The unspoken deal was that they should be discreet and keep up the appearance that theirs was a successful match between two talented, beautiful people.

A surly loner like Gavin Trent had seemed an amusing challenge to Paula, and for a few weeks they’d carried on a clandestine affair. This hadn’t been difficult, because in the summer months she often remained at Inchmere St. Mary during the week, when her husband returned to London. Her interior design work was just as easily carried on in the country, with many of her clients living in the locality.

Trent, almost totally inexperienced with women, had at once lost his head over her when she set out to charm him. The scene of his first seduction had been at his cottage, when Paula had called on him late one night bearing a bottle of champagne. But after a couple more visits there, she’d preferred their sex-sessions to happen in the luxury of her own home. This fact explained to Kate the lack of her fingerprints at Trent’s place, except on the Tom Jones cassette.

Totally infatuated with Paula, Trent was soon trying to persuade her to get a divorce and marry him. When he started spouting wildly about how he had the chance to earn a very high salary so she could leave her husband and go off with him to Vienna, Paula knew that the time had come to end the affair. Anyway, the novelty had worn off and she no longer found him diverting. That was how matters stood when she received a panic phone call from Trent one evening, begging her to go to his cottage at once as he desperately needed her help. Arriving there, she had been horrified to find her husband’s uncle lying dead on the floor. Trent had gabbled that it had been a terrible accident—the result, he insisted, of what he’d been trying to do for
her
sake, to make a new life for the two of them. Sir Noah had called round accusing him of disloyalty in wanting to leave Croptech and take a far better paying job abroad, and in his justifiable anger he had lashed out at Sir Noah, who had fallen and hit his head on the hearthstone.