Cold Coffin Page 3

  “Right,” he said.

  Kate cast an eye a little farther afield, looking for evidence to support her theory. A few moments later she spotted it, half-hidden in bracken—a length of dead branch. Going closer, she saw it was ten feet long and both ends, where they’d been snapped off, had rough, splintery surfaces.

  “How about this? It didn’t get here by itself. The trees around here are all saplings and couldn’t have shed a branch this thick. And see where some side twigs have been stripped off, as if preparing it for the job. That suggests premeditation.”

  “A bit farfetched, guv, surely? Isn’t it more likely that the branch was brought here by some kids?”

  “Maybe, but it’s still worth looking into. Get the two ends bagged, and when the Scenes of Crime chaps turn up, tell them to take it away for forensic examination.”

  “Even if it was like you suggest, guv, any blood would have been washed off by the water.”

  “There still might be some flakes of skin trapped there.”

  “Huh! When are we ever that lucky?”

  “Don’t be such a Jeremiah. Now, I want to establish who pulled the victim out of the water. And why. From what the doctor said, it’s clear that it happened some hours after Trent’s death. I’m going to talk to the young couple who found the body now, and see if they can shed some light. What’s their name?”

  “Er ... Carver. Mike and Jenny.”

  Kate returned to the patrol car and got into the front passenger seat, twisting round to talk to the Carvers. They were over their first horror by now and she could sense stirrings of excitement in them. What a story to beef up their honeymoon! No more than twenty-one, either of them, they sat close together with their hands tightly clasped; it would take a crowbar to separate them.

  “All I want at the moment,” Kate said, “is to get a general picture. You will be required to make a full statement, of course, but that can be done at a police station. So will you tell me about this morning. You’re staying at the Unicorn Inn, I understand, and you set out for a walk after breakfast. What made you come this way?”

  “Well ... nothing. I mean, we’ve been a couple of times before.”

  “It’s so pretty,” the girl said. “With the sun shining through the branches and everything.”

  “Did you see anyone else in the wood?”

  “We did hear a dog barking,” she volunteered after a moment. “Sort of as if it was excited. That was just a few minutes before we ... we found that poor man.”

  “Was the barking coming from this direction?”

  They consulted each other with their eyes. “Hard to say, really,” Mike answered. “Yes, I think so. It ... it was an accident, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s what I have to establish. That’s why anything you can tell me might be useful. Anything at all. Did you see anyone else after you left the hotel and started on your walk?”

  Further non-verbal exchanges, then Mike said, “There was a man driving a tractor in a field. He waved to us. And I remember now ... there was another man, walking with his dog. He went into the woods just ahead of us, so we took a different path.”

  Descriptions of things seen through a rosy romantic haze were not usually very informative. The man had been of medium height, medium build, wearing ... well, ordinary clothes. The dog? Not small. Not big, either. Sort of medium, and brown ... ish.

  “The man had his trousers pushed into his boots,” Jenny recalled suddenly. “You know, those green wellies.”

  As a clue, it didn’t amount to a lot. Not a big clue, not small. Sort of medium.

  “When you found the body, did you touch it in any way?” Kate asked them.

  She sensed hesitation. A flutter of fear. Mike muttered, “I could see he must be dead, really, but I did ... well, just feel him to be sure. I touched his cheek, and it was absolutely cold. Shouldn’t I have done?”

  “Yes, of course, don’t worry. But that was all—you just touched him? You didn’t move him at all?”

  “Oh no!” they chorused firmly. “We left him, and ran to find a phone somewhere. But we’d only just reached the road when a police car happened to come along and we waved at it to stop.”

  Kate thanked them and left the car, beckoning to Sergeant Boulter. “We have to trace a man who walked in the woods with his dog this morning. He was wearing green wellies. Get onto it, will you, Tim. There’s a tractor working in the fields over there, and the driver might be able to help.”

  * * * *

  The nick at Aston Pringle was the most suitable to use as her temporary HQ. It was the nearest one with decent facilities. Unlike many of the local police stations in the division, it was purpose-built. Comfortable, convenient, with smart cream paintwork and carpeting on the floors. Yet it was soulless. Sorting out which of the available rooms she could best use, Kate had a sudden nostalgic vision of the small station in South-East London to which she’d been assigned as a probationer WPC after completing her training at police college. It was on the corner of a street, in a building that had once been a small fur warehouse, and a camphory smell still lingered. There’d even been a station cat, a ginger kitten which had wandered in one cold night, wet through and half-starved. The excuse for keeping her was the totally non-existent evidence of mice under the floorboards, and the stray had grown plump and complacent, pampered by everyone. Even the toughest thief-taker in the nick, a sergeant with a voice like gravel, had once been spotted by Kate feeding the cat scraps of raw liver that he’d brought along wrapped in kitchen foil.

  At the start of a murder case one never knew what might be involved. Hopefully, it could be resolved quickly, but it might blow up into a widespread investigation. Kate was on the phone to divisional headquarters, organizing an office manager for the Incident Room, when Boulter turned up. He’d brought in a man for questioning, whom he’d left downstairs with the custody officer while he came to find Kate and fill her in.

  “Name of George Jessop, guv. Caretaker and handyman at Croptech. Lives alone in a bungalow within the firm’s grounds. Been in the job two-and-a-half years. He’s a taciturn sort of character, keeps himself to himself. When I challenged him straight out he admitted to finding the body, but insists that he had nothing to do with Trent’s death.”

  “What was he doing walking his dog in the woods at past nine in the morning?” Kate demanded. “Shouldn’t he have been at work?”

  “Says he makes his own hours. As long as the various jobs get done, nobody seems to mind.”

  “Right. I’ll talk to him now. I’m going to use the room next door as my office, so bring him along there, will you?”

  George Jessop was a formerly handsome man gone to seed. He looked forty-five but was probably a bit younger than that. What had once been black hair was now an unattractive tone of yellowish grey, and untidily long. He wore a lumberjack-type check flannel shirt above bleached blue jeans. His expression was sullen.

  “Sit down, Mr. Jessop. I gather that you found the body of Dr. Trent?”

  “That’s right.” His voice was more cultivated than she had expected.

  “At what time was this?”

  “How should I know?” Then, unwillingly, “About quarter past nine, I imagine.”

  Kate pretended surprise. “As long ago as that? Why hadn’t you notified us?”

  “I had to get back to work. The laundry service was due with the overalls delivery and I had to be there.”

  “For heaven’s sake! You know perfectly well you should have informed the police immediately.”

  “Well, I didn’t.” He shrugged in resentful justification. “I suppose I ... well, panicked.”

  “Why should you have panicked?”

  “Finding a dead body. Well, he looked dead but I couldn’t be sure. That’s why I dragged him out of the water. Then I thought ... Christ, I’ll be done for this if I’m not careful. The best thing, I decided, was to clear off and keep my mouth shut.”

  Kate regarded him sceptically. No hon
est and upright citizen this guy. He expected to come under suspicion. So ... did that mean he had a record? She wanted the answer to that question before she talked to him any further. She gave instructions for him to be taken to an interview room to make a statement, more as a delaying tactic than anything.

  Meanwhile, Kate made a quick trip with Boulter to the dead man’s cottage, taking the bunch of keys found on the body. It certainly was remote, a small two-up, two-downer hiding shyly among the trees, lying at the end of a rutted track leading from a quiet lane with no other dwelling in sight. The surrounding patch of garden was well kept but lacked charm. Vegetables grew in dead straight rows with not a single weed to be seen. Even the flowerbeds looked regimented, and the shrubs had all been trimmed to precise neatness. On a gravelled area beside the cottage stood a black Austin Metro, clean and polished. Locked.

  Inside the cottage everything was just as neat. The front door opened directly into a decent-sized living room. It was a masculine room. The furniture, Swedish-style, dated from the fashion of a few years back. The carpet, wall-to-wall, was a good quality plain beige Wilton. The stereo equipment was of superb quality, with a collection of classical tapes and compact discs methodically filed in a cabinet beside it. Set between the speakers for optimum effect was a comfortable leather armchair. It looked as if music was high on the agenda of a lonely life. The other armchair had a little-used look about it. Everything was clean and tidy. Did he have a woman come in to clean for him? Kate told Boulter to check that point. A cleaning lady might be a useful source of information.

  She pointed to a whisky bottle on a small table, a quarter full, with a used glass beside it.

  “Was he a solitary drinker, Tim?”

  He shrugged. “Looks like it.”

  The adjoining kitchen was also neat and tidy—a designer job with expensive fitments. And why not? Dr. Trent must have been earning a good salary, with only himself to spend it on. The back door was beside the sink unit. There was a keyhole but no key, and the bolt was drawn back. Touching only the shank of the handle, Kate found that the door was unsecured. It opened onto a small area of concrete slabs where the refuse bin stood.

  “Carelessness?” she said to Boulter. “Or what?”

  They climbed the narrow, boxed-in staircase. A smart bathroom ... towels on the heated rail neatly folded, the soap placed squarely on the basin. The first of the two bedrooms was clearly little used except as a place for storage—an empty suitcase, a portable electric heater and several grocer’s cartons full of books. Trent’s own bedroom was a good deal larger and adequately if unimaginatively furnished. A blue-striped duvet was spread tidily across the bed and there was nothing an inch out of place. Even the piled-up scientific journals, presumably his favoured bedtime reading, were squared off with fussy precision.

  They returned to the living room and gave it a more careful scrutiny. A wide teakwood unit was set against one wall. In addition to bookshelves it held the television and video recorder, with drawers and cupboards underneath. Kate glanced at the books for clues about Trent’s taste in literature. Mostly they were works of reference with a few scientific biographies and a handful of classic novels. The only video tapes as far as Kate could see were of TV programmes that had been recorded for keeping or retiming, each one meticulously labelled. In one of the drawers were various papers neatly banded together. Receipts, catalogues ... nothing out of the ordinary. A few letters from friends or acquaintances working in the same field as himself, it seemed, with very little in the way of personal chat in them. There were several letters and a few picture postcards from someone signing herself Fiona. They mentioned a husband and children, chatty accounts of domestic life. Trent’s sister, Kate guessed. She handed them to Boulter.

  “She’s very possibly the next of kin. Or she could put us on to who is. Lives in Preston, I see. Have her informed. Better take his address book away with us, and that list of phone numbers too.”

  “Will do, guv.”

  In a cupboard under the drawer were a few bottles, cans of beer and glasses. The usual standard drinks ... gin, sherry, martini, mixers, some white and red table wines. And another bottle of whisky, a different brand from the one Trent had been drinking from. What immediately struck Kate was that the whisky had been opened and was about three quarters full. It bore the price sticker of a supermarket in Marlingford, as did all the other bottles in the cupboard.

  She glanced across at the whisky bottle on the table. No price sticker on that.

  “Why would Trent open a new bottle when he had an already opened one in the cupboard? A tidy-minded man like he obviously was.”

  The sergeant bit his thumbnail. “A visitor brought it? Trent wouldn’t like to produce his own bottle, in that case.”

  “But only one glass!”

  “The other person didn’t drink, perhaps.”

  “And Trent sank most of the bottle all on his own? He’d have been legless. No, Tim, there’s something a bit out of kilter about this. Get Scenes of Crime to check for fingerprints and so on. Now, it’s time we got back to the nick to see what’s turned up about George Jessop. Better slip the bolt on the back door to prevent anyone getting in.”

  Quite a lot of information had turned up. Criminal Records reported that Keith George Jessop had been charged with manslaughter, nearly five years previously, in Leicestershire. He’d served two years in gaol before his release.

  The name “Keith George Jessop” struck a chord with Kate where George Jessop hadn’t. Details of the case came back to her as she scanned the report.

  “Do you remember it, Tim?”

  “No, guv.”

  “It was a nasty one. He was a schoolteacher and the dead boy was one of his students, a seventeen-year-old. Jessop denied that there had been anything sexual between them, but a couple of other boys in his class gave evidence that Jessop had rewarded them for sexual favours. Anyway, on the evening in question, Jessop and the dead boy had been seen together outside a pub, quarrelling fiercely. Later they were spotted on a railway footbridge, still arguing. A man living nearby reported hearing a scream, followed by running footsteps, and another witness saw Jessop, still running, in an adjoining street. Next morning the boy’s body was found beside the railway line by a platelayer. Under cross-examination Jessop admitted having been with the boy when he fell, but insisted that it had been accidental. They’d been struggling and the boy had fallen back against the wall and toppled over—it had already been established they’d both been drinking. Jessop then panicked and ran for it—without even checking whether the boy was dead or alive. That really stuck in the public’s gullet, plus, of course, the fact that he was regarded as a monster for corrupting the lads in his charge.”

  “What was the quarrel supposed to be about?”

  “Jessop claimed he’d been trying to help the boy with extra coaching for his A-levels, and they’d been arguing about the amount of work he needed to put in if he hoped to pass. The prosecution tried to make out that the boy had been trying a spot of blackmail, threatening to expose Jessop to the education authority if he didn’t cough up more money. But none of that could be proved. The public was furious that the jury brought in a verdict of manslaughter. They reckoned that Jessop had got away with murder—literally. There was an outcry when he was only given a three-year sentence.”

  Kate had Jessop brought back to her for further questioning. He stuck grimly to the story he’d already given ... that he’d had nothing to do with Dr. Gavin Trent’s death except for coming across his body in the pond and dragging it out to check that he was dead. Confronted by Kate’s knowledge of his prison record, Jessop declared it was precisely because of what had happened before that he’d wanted to avoid getting involved with the police.

  “They wouldn’t believe me then,” he said bitterly, “so what hope had I of anyone believing me now?”

  “We only want to get at the truth, Mr. Jessop,” said Kate. “If you’re innocent in this matter you have nothi
ng to fear, and you won’t help yourself by concealing evidence. Now, you live alone, I gather?”

  “That’s supposed to be a crime, is it?”

  “You’re not married?”

  Jessop gave her a dark look. “Separated.”

  “Did you and Dr. Trent have a sexual relationship?” Kate asked.

  “No, nothing like that.” He almost shouted it.

  “Was Dr. Trent homosexual?”

  “How am I supposed to know? I’m only the caretaker at Croptech.”

  “Very well, Mr. Jessop. I’ll be wanting to talk to you again, so I must ask you not to leave the district.”

  “Where the hell would I go?”

  “Just so long as you understand that I mean what I say.”

  * * * *

  Kate and Boulter adjourned to the Half Moon across the street for lunch. Kate ordered a half of lager and a slice of pizza; Boulter a pint of bitter with a Cornish pasty, and as an afterthought, a ham roll and a pork pie. The way he demolished food, Kate reflected, he’d end up with a paunch before he was many years older.

  “My money’s on Jessop,” he said as he broke open the pasty and smothered it with tomato ketchup. “He did it all right.”

  Kate sipped her lager. “According to Doc Meddowes, Trent died last night. Yet the evidence at the scene supports Jessop’s story that he dragged the body out of the water at around nine-fifteen this morning. If he was the killer, why should he return to the pond next morning?”

  “Making sure that Trent was dead.” Boulter took a massive bite and chewed.

  “He’d hardly have needed to pull him out to confirm that, after so many hours.”

  “He might’ve been scared that something we’d find on the body would incriminate him—if there really was something going on between the two of them. A letter he’d written to Trent, something like that.”

  “It’s a possibility, Tim.”

  “There’s a big ‘but’ in the way you said that, guv.”

  Kate nodded her head. “I don’t go for it. What did Jessop tell you about his movements last night?”