The Sting of Death (5 page)

Drew couldn’t explain afterwards why he’d
instinctively withheld any mention of Penn. She hadn’t asked him to, and her name would surely have smoothed the way quite effectively. He could only suppose that it was something to do with her connection to Karen, and a prudent feeling that it was wise to reveal as little as possible.

‘My name’s Slocombe and this is my business partner,’ he said. ‘You won’t have heard of us. We’re old friends of Justine’s from before she came to live here. We know her mother, actually.’

The man finally came into the kitchen and stood where they could see him properly. He was tall and muscular with a heavy jaw and thick dark brows. ‘Well I’m Philip Renton,’ he said, ‘and I own this place. Justine is my tenant and I can assure you there’s no reason at all to worry about her. I know for a fact that she’s gone off for a little holiday. Camping, I think she said. So you can go back to wherever you came from and assure all those friends and relatives that everything’s fine. She’ll be back soon. I’ll tell her you dropped by, shall I?’

Drew spent a long time considering the face before him. The eyes hardly moved, as if the brain behind them was working overtime, and all the man’s attention was turned inward. There was no discernible warmth, no simple fellow feeling.

‘We came quite a long way, you know,’ Maggs
said reproachfully. ‘The place doesn’t really look as if she went camping.’

Renton laughed. ‘You think she should have tidied up first? Are you sure you know our Justine?’

‘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.’