Model Murder (6 page)

Kate adopted a patient expression that held only a dash of scepticism. “You have to look at this from my point of view, sir. A woman whom you had met only once before, many years ago, approached you with a business proposition in a field for which it seems she had no special qualifications. Yet you were persuaded to employ her on an exceedingly generous salary, and provide her with accommodations that can only be described as luxurious. All on the strength of her personality and enthusiasm. Is that a fair summary of what you’ve told me?”

“I have also told you, Chief Inspector, that my faith in Corinne Saxon has been fully vindicated. The hotel is a great success. She earned every penny of her salary.”

“But I can’t help asking myself if the relationship between you was perhaps closer than you have suggested.”

“Madam, you are being offensive.”

“I’m sorry, sir, I have no wish to be offensive. But I must insist that you answer the question. Was your relationship with Miss Saxon one of intimacy?”

He said with great vehemence, “No! There was nothing like that. Absolutely not! Corinne and I ... no, not at all. Beyond the fact that I employed her, we were friends, you might say colleagues. Partners. But that was all. I repeat, Chief Inspector, that was all. I swear it.”

“Thank you, sir. I won’t trouble you any more at the moment.”

     * * * *

On their way back to the Incident Room, Boulter said with a chuckle, “Talk about protesting too much! You wouldn’t think the old boy had that much go left in him.”

But Kate shook her head. “No, Tim, they weren’t sleeping together. I believe him about that. All the same, he’s hiding something.”

“Why didn’t you press him harder, then, guv?”

“He’s a man with iron self-discipline. His naval training, I suppose. We’ll find out what it is he’s not telling us if we play it softly, softly.”

In her newly set-up office, Kate waved Boulter into the second chair.

“Before you and I head for home tonight, Tim, I want to run through exactly what we’ve got on this enquiry so far.”

“Bloody little.”

“Let’s try making a few suppositions, then. See where they lead us.” Kate wanted to find a sense of direction, ready for the report she’d need to make to her superintendent in the morning. Luckily for her, Jolly Joliffe had been tied up all day on a budget meeting at Force HQ, and she’d only spoken to him briefly over the phone. Tomorrow, he’d be on her back demanding to know what progress she’d made.

“Can we believe, Tim, that within minutes of leaving Streatfield Park for a few days’ holiday, Corinne Saxon stopped her car and went for a stroll in the woods, where she was attacked by a prowler? It just doesn’t add up. In smart clothes like that? In those high-heeled shoes? And why was she carrying a flashlamp when it would still have been daylight?”

“Maybe she was taken short, guv, and stopped for a pee.”

“I can’t buy that. No one would feel the need to walk so far into the woods for modesty’s sake. Besides, if she had felt the need for a pee so soon after starting out, I think a woman like Corinne Saxon would have hung on till she got to the nearest service station where she’d have found decent facilities. And what about that damned torch?” Kate absently stabbed the point of a pen at the notepad on her desk. “I can’t accept that she went into those woods alone. Not unless it was to meet up with someone there.”

“That sounds good logic to me,” said Boulter.

“Okay, then, let’s concentrate on the idea that the man who killed her wasn’t a stranger. Either Corinne had fixed in advance for them to meet up there, or she entered the woods
with
him. Either of her own free will—because she didn’t realise he was dangerous—or she was coaxed there. Or dragged there.”

“She’d have had to have been carried,” Boulter pointed out. “There were no signs of drag marks.”

“Right. That torch still bothers me, though.”

“It was quite a heavy one. A good weapon. Maybe she took it with her because she was scared of the man, whoever he was.”

“Could be.” Kate frowned in thought. “Admiral Fortescue was very definite about Corinne not saying where she was going for her few days’ break. Significant? Maybe she wasn’t planning to go far at all. Maybe she was intending to shack up with some man right here in the vicinity. Maybe she left her car at his place and they came to the woods in his car. But in that case she surely wouldn’t have been scared of him and wouldn’t have carried the torch as a potential weapon. And we’re back again to those fancy shoes.”

Kate was suddenly caught by a huge yawn, which set Boulter off, too.

“None of it seems to make any bloody sense, does it, Tim? So let’s get off home for some shut-eye. But bright and early in the morning, mind.”

Home for Kate now was a ground-floor flat in the newly converted stable block of a large old house near Ampney-on-the-Water. Richard Gower had secured it for her by calling in a few favours. Staying with her Aunt Felix at Stonebank Cottage had worked out fine as a temporary measure when she’d first been promoted to the Cotswold Division. But both of them were women who needed their own space. It was four months now since Kate had been living in her own place, and she still marvelled at her good luck every time she arrived home.

Tonight, she switched on lights and admired her living room, all done in restful tones of green and apricot, with white paintwork. She hadn’t turned on the central heating yet, so for cosiness she lit the log-effect gas fire.

Five minutes later she’d heated a frozen pizza in the microwave, and sliced a tomato salad. With a glass of white wine added she carried the tray through and flopped onto the sofa with her shoes kicked off and her legs tucked up. She flicked around channels on the TV, but there was nothing that appealed. She found herself thinking how good it would be if Richard were here with her. Hopefully, soon, things would be back to normal between them. But first she had a case to solve.

Imprinted on Kate’s memory was a vivid image of the murdered woman lying on the damp woodland floor, her clothing stained and torn; her body violated; her magnificent auburn hair lank and grimy; her beautiful face grotesquely distorted by the brutality of her death. And she recalled, with what would be to her everlasting shame, that brief flash of triumph she’d felt on recognising the victim.

She looked down with distaste at the meal she’d prepared, and shoved the tray to one side. Her appetite had suddenly vanished.

Despite Kate’s early, example-setting arrival at the Incident Room on Saturday morning, Frank Massey had already installed himself as office manager. As always, wherever the inspector happened to be, an air of calm and order prevailed.

“Am I glad to see you here, Frank. Now I don’t have to keep looking over my shoulder for procedural cock-ups.”

He chuckled. “Truth to tell, Kate, I was damned glad to get called to this job. It’s a handy excuse to keep out of the house for a bit. I’m going to find myself a room at a local pub.”

Kate hoisted her eyebrows. “Hey, it’s not too far for you to travel back and forth each day. I had you tagged as a home-lover.”

“The thing is, Louise has got her parents staying with us for a week or so. Lovely people, of course, but a couple of days of their overeager company is enough to wear me down. I told them how desolated I was that I couldn’t stick around for the remainder of their visit.”

“You hypocritical bastard.”

“You reckon I should have told them the ugly truth?”

A couple of blue-overalled Telecom men walked in, carrying boxes of equipment. Frank excused himself and went to get them organised. Kate saw Boulter at a desk across the room, bent over lists he was making. She called out and beckoned him to follow her into her office.

“You look like death this morning, Tim. Got a hangover, have you?”

“No, I have not got a hangover,” he growled, then tacked on, “ma’am.”

Kate gave him a sharp look. “Come on, what’s up?”

“Julie isn’t bloody home, if you must know. When I got back last night there was a note stuck to the fridge saying she’d taken the kids to her sister Brenda’s for the weekend. Not a word to me beforehand, oh no!”

Boulter wasn’t getting any sympathy from her. “Didn’t you phone to warn her you’d be late, as I suggested? Or had she already left?”

He coloured right up to his sandy eyebrows. “There didn’t seem any point phoning her. She knows what this job’s like. Or she damn well ought to by now.”

“And you damn well ought to know what it’s like for a woman being stuck at home bringing up two young children, with a husband who seems to care a helluva lot more about his job than he does about her.”

Boulter gave her a mutinous glare. “You’d give me a right rollicking, wouldn’t you, if I let my private life interfere with my work?”

Suddenly Kate was swept back years. She had a sharp-focus image of her husband’s angry face in the early days of their marriage, when she’d been an eager young WPC in London’s Met and had once again ruined their plans for the evening by arriving home late. Even phoning from work to warn him hadn’t been good enough for Noel. She could clearly hear, as though it were only yesterday, the bitter rage in his voice. “When it’s a case of me or the job, the bloody job wins hands down every time, doesn’t it?”

The job of a police officer demanded one hundred per cent dedication, and it bloody wasn’t fair! All the same, Kate warned herself, it wasn’t part of her working brief to advise her sergeant on how to save his marriage falling apart. Nor was her advice appreciated, as she’d discovered in the past.
Why the hell can’t you keep your big mouth shut, Kate?

“There’s work to do, Tim,” she said briskly. “I want to get the squad busy interviewing the staff and guests.”

“I’ve got everybody listed. The hotel office typed up the names for me.”

“Fine. I’ll give the lads a little homily first about bearing in mind that this is a functioning hotel and not making ourselves too intrusive ... unless we have to. The guests are paying a lot of money to stay here, and they’re entitled to be left free of police harassment.”

Refusing to drop his bad mood, Boulter twisted his face into a sneer. “I bet some of those rich buggers have a few things to keep hidden. We’d uncover the odd can of worms if we did a bit of digging.”

“It’s a rape and murder we’re investigating,” she reminded him sharply. “That and nothing else. There’s to be no digging for cans of worms just because we envy other people their wealth. Understood?”

Boulter shrugged disgruntledly.

“Understood, Sergeant?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

A tap on the door, and Frank Massey looked in. Sensing an atmosphere, he murmured, “Sorry if I’m interrupting.”

“That’s okay, Frank. What do you have there for me?”

He held out a large buff envelope. “This has just been brought over from DHQ. It was handed in there by Mr. Richard Gower, who said he’d promised it to you.”

Kate took the envelope and spread the contents on her desk. Richard had sent a photocopy of the piece in the
Gazette
about Corinne Saxon’s ex-husband and his antique shop. He’d also enclosed prints of some pictures taken by the paper’s photographer on the hotel’s launch day. The one that had appeared in the
Gazette
(copy of feature enclosed) was of Corinne standing between Admiral Fortescue and Adrian Berger, the local architect who had planned the conversion from stately home to hotel, a good-looking man in his late forties whose enthusiasm for the project had been appealing.

Studying the pictures, Kate was reminded again of how stunning Corinne had looked that day in a white crepe silk dress cut dramatically with one shoulder left bare, tight sleeves to the wrists and a dragon motif embroidered across the bodice in gold thread. Her gleaming red hair had been caught up in a loose swathe to one side so that soft tendrils just caressed that bared shoulder.

If Corinne Saxon had currently been married, Kate reminded herself, her husband would be the first person she’d need to eliminate from suspicion. Or not eliminate. An ex-husband, even though they’d been divorced for several years, still qualified to be checked out.

“We’ll go and pay a call on this man Paul Kenway, Tim, and see what he’s got to say for himself.”

* * * *

Ashecombe-in-the-Vale was one of the Cotswolds’ loveliest villages, a magnet for tourists. Already, even before nine-thirty in the morning, its wide main street was busy with sightseers, and cameras were much in evidence.

Boulter, spotting a postman emptying the box outside the sub post office, pulled up alongside him. “Petersfield House, mate?”

The man straightened up and pointed. “It’s the first place on the left over the bridge. There’s a sign up. You can’t miss it.” His glance followed them curiously as they drove on; he’d scented police, even though their car was unmarked.

Seen from across the river, the gabled building glowed a rich tawny-gold in the morning sun, its paintwork glinting white. Built a couple of hundred years ago, Kate guessed, with gardens sweeping down to the riverbank, its situation was superb. It was only as they drew closer, swinging in through the double gates and stopping in the small parking bay provided, that she noticed signs of neglect. The painted window frames were in fact cracked and peeling, while heavy wooden props shored up the wall on one side.

A hanging sign read
Kenway Antiques, Stripped Pine a Speciality.
Taped behind a small glass pane of the front door, a postcard with felt-pen lettering invited them to enter. As they did so, a bell on a coiled spring was set tinkling.

The aim here was to suggest that this was a lived-in home. Furniture and other pieces were arranged around the hallway and adjoining rooms in a fairly convincing manner, with price tags discreetly placed. But the whole place looked dowdy and depressing, somehow. There simply wasn’t enough good quality stuff to support a thriving business.

A woman appeared through a doorway, carrying a feather duster. In her late thirties, she was tall and big-boned, with a mass of dark hair bunched back in a white chiffon scarf. Her features were good and she could have looked really attractive, but the gloss was missing. Kate noted from the bulge beneath her grubby pink track suit that she was about three months pregnant.