by Faith Martin
But her brother was already shaking his head. ‘I’m not so sure about that,’ he said sullenly. ‘And we definitely need to do something about Patsy.’
Juliet turned her attention away from her preening, and looked at her twin thoughtfully. She’d long since learned to respect Jasper’s brains, along with his ability to get what he wanted. And since she wasn’t exactly a slouch in either of those two departments herself, a bond of mutual respect had built up between them over the years.
Although she was also rather fond of her twin, in a detached sort of way, she was even fonder of her own skin. So after a moment’s thought, she had to concede that he had a point. ‘I agree,’ she admitted coolly. ‘We’ll have to play Patsy very carefully. She’s such a dunderhead, and we could be in hot water if she blabs.’
‘Oh, she won’t blab,’ Jasper predicted with a savage smile. ‘She might be a bit of a nitwit, but not such a nitwit as that, surely? She’ll keep her mouth shut if only to keep her own neck off the chopping block. Won’t she? You know her better than I do.’
Juliet considered Patsy Arles thoughtfully. ‘Well, she’s not particularly bright,’ she admitted. Not that that needed to be laboured, really, since she’d been so easily manipulated by them into doing their dirty work for them; her lack of intelligence went without saying. ‘But she is needy, bless her, and she does so adore me. And she could easily adore you too, if you’d just put some effort into it,’ she added meaningfully.
‘Oh no, I don’t want to have her hanging around my neck like a love-sick calf,’ Jasper protested.
‘It might be a good idea though,’ his sister advised. ‘Just until the heat dies down. A woman in love will never snitch on her man, and all that guff,’ Juliet added, yawning widely.
Jasper scowled and kicked at one of his sister’s shoes that was lying, discarded on the floor near his chair. It skittered across the floor and rolled to a stop near the bed. ‘I don’t like it that she hasn’t called,’ he said flatly. ‘I would have expected her to call in a bit of a flap by now, wouldn’t you?’
For a moment, Juliet thought about that, and sighed. ‘Yes, I agree. The silly little chump must have been having kittens afterwards.’
‘My feelings exactly,’ Jasper agreed. ‘So I’d have thought that her first instinct would be to come and unburden herself to you and beg you for help. So why hasn’t she?’
Juliet cocked her lovely head to one side, and her lips twisted into a wry smile. ‘Well, it is New Year’s Day,’ she pointed out. ‘And no doubt her ghastly family have descended on her mother. So she couldn’t very well slip away today with ease. Especially in this,’ she added, indicating the snow still falling outside. ‘Her mummy-dearest wouldn’t let her!’
‘She could still have telephoned us,’ Jasper said.
‘I’m not sure they have a telephone,’ Juliet said, startling Jasper, who hadn’t really given much thought to the fact that the whole world wasn’t rich enough and privileged enough to have a telephone in their house. ‘Even if they did, she might have been too scared to use it for fear of being overheard. After what must have happened last night …’ She trailed off with a frown. ‘I wonder what went wrong, exactly? The plan should have been perfect.’
Jasper shrugged. ‘Whatever it was, let’s just hope the silly cow didn’t leave any clues behind her for our pretty little PC Plod to find.’
Juliet glanced at her brother with a wicked smile. ‘Fancy her, do you? Our lovely lady in blue?’
‘Leave off, I’m not that desperate,’ Jasper shot back, but avoiding his sister’s knowing eyes. ‘Besides, it’s not her I’m worried about so much. It’s that man she had with her. I didn’t like the look of him at all.’
‘Ah yes, the yummy Dr Ryder,’ Juliet said.
‘He’s old enough to be your father,’ Jasper objected.
‘So?’ Juliet asked archly.
Jasper stared at her for a moment, then shrugged. ‘Your disgusting love life is not my main concern at the moment. We have to face it, there might be sticky times ahead, sister dearest, and we’re going to have to come up with something to keep sweet Patsy from flipping out. Either a threat or a bribe, do you think? Or both? Come on, sis, let’s put our thinking caps on.’
Chapter 11
The next morning Trudy was just adding the finishing touches to her report when DI Jennings arrived. After giving him time to settle in, she knocked at his door and waited to be summoned.
He listened without any comment as she ran down all the pertinent points about the case, and what she’d done so far. She tried to convince herself that he probably wouldn’t be interested in Dr Ryder’s thoughts on the state of the victim’s pupils, reminding herself of all the times that he’d told her he preferred to have solid facts, not airy-fairy theories. So she helpfully left that bit out. When she’d finished, and he’d had a moment to digest what it all amounted to, he grunted.
‘I don’t like these marks in the snow around the car that might or might not have been pawprints or footprints,’ he grumbled.
Trudy nodded. ‘No, sir,’ she agreed. ‘But they really were too indistinct to draw any conclusions. And with it snowing on and off all through that night and the next morning …’ She gave a graphic shrug.
‘Yes. Well, we’ll just have to wait and see what the post-mortem brings to light. At this stage it seems most likely that death will have been due to injuries sustained in the crash, or hypothermia – possibly a combination of both – in which case we can get on with putting it all to bed. All right, carry on as you were.’
Trudy bit back a happy smile and left. So it wasn’t going to be taken away from her just yet!
She went back to her desk, but her happy smile abruptly disappeared at the sight of the man who was waiting there for her. Around thirty, tall, good-looking with black hair and distinctive green eyes, he grinned widely when she approached.
‘If it isn’t my favourite constable,’ Duncan Gillingham, reporter for the Oxford Tribune, greeted her cheerfully. ‘What’s all this I hear about a dead man in a car in north Oxford?’
Trudy sighed. ‘I might have known,’ she muttered. How did the press get to hear these things so quickly? Why couldn’t they just stay at home in the warm like most sensible people and let everyone else get on with their own business?
Especially this particular specimen!
She cast a quick, worried glance at DI Jennings’s door, hoping he hadn’t been informed that the press had come sniffing around. Catching the direction of her gaze, Duncan started to walk rapidly towards her boss’s office.
‘You can’t go in there!’ Trudy shouted, literally running to put herself between him and his goal, and firmly blocking the doorway. ‘Who let you in here anyway?’ she demanded.
‘Some old bloke or other at the front desk,’ he said vaguely. ‘Can’t interfere with the free press you know,’ he added, tutting teasingly. ‘And let’s face it, there’s no one around here to throw me out on my ear, is there?’ he said, giving the all-but-deserted room a mocking glance.
‘That doesn’t mean you can just waltz in …’ Trudy was saying hotly when she felt, rather than heard, the door open behind her.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ DI Jennings said, catching first his constable’s angry eye, and then the amused eye of the man with her. ‘And you are?’
‘He’s a reporter, sir,’ Trudy said quickly. ‘He wanted to know about the fatal car accident. I told him—’
‘To sling my hook,’ Duncan said genially, cutting her off in mid-stride, and (probably unintentionally) earning her bonus points with her superior, who had no time for journalists either. ‘But as I was just telling her, the public have a right to know. Care to comment, Inspector?’
Jennings sighed heavily. ‘Come on in then. The bare bones only, mind, and you can make yourself useful for once,’ he said flatly. ‘I want you to put out an appeal for anyone in the vicinity of the accident in the early hours of yesterday morning to get in
touch. Or anyone who has any information on the victim, especially any contact details for his next of kin.’
Duncan shot her a triumphant wink as the inspector closed the door behind him, and Trudy, defeated, returned to her desk.
She knew she shouldn’t feel unsettled, but she did. Duncan Gillingham and trouble seemed to go hand in hand, and she was feeling defensive of her case. It might not be the most exciting case in the world but, at the moment anyway, it was all hers and she didn’t want Duncan butting in.
She brooded all the time the reporter was in her superior’s office, and when he came out she was careful not to look at him. Had she done so, she’d have seen the speculative and appreciative look he gave her and so wouldn’t have been so surprised when, instead of walking past and heading for the front door, he headed for her again instead.
‘So how are things with you?’ he asked, casually leaning one hip against her desk. He craned his neck to try and read the piece of paper in her typewriter, and she angrily pulled it out, ripping one corner. Which meant she’d have to fill in the form again.
She swore at him – but only under her breath.
‘Things are fine, thank you,’ she said shortly.
‘Fancy coming out for a drink with me?’
‘No.’
‘Oh, come on,’ he cajoled. ‘You know you like me really. And after all that excitement we had over that dead May Queen last year, I thought we’d become friends, at least.’
Trudy sighed and bent her head more industriously over her typewriter, knowing he wouldn’t take the hint even as she did so.
She was right – he didn’t. ‘Why the cold shoulder, Constable Loveday?’ she heard him ask, his voice rich with suppressed laughter. ‘Isn’t it chilly enough as it is, without that?’
‘Go away,’ Trudy said tiredly.
‘After you agree to have a drink with me.’
‘Have it with your fiancée,’ Trudy said pointedly.
*
Duncan winced at this direct, palpable hit. ‘You know, one day …’ he began, with some heat, but didn’t bother to finish the thought. Instead, he glanced at the telephone on her desk and casually extracted his notebook from his pocket and wrote its number down.
Knowing that he had to make the lunchtime deadline if he wanted to get his piece into the early edition, he reluctantly gave her a jaunty salute and wandered off.
As he walked back to his office, however, fighting his way through the snow and other pedestrians, he began thinking up ways to persuade her to go out for that drink. After all, in his opinion, she owed him that much. Hadn’t he all but saved her life not so long ago?
So it was that when his piece appeared in the local paper later that afternoon, the newspaper’s readers were asked to contact WPC Trudy Loveday with any information on the case, giving her desk telephone number. Usually he would have given the police station contact details only, and it would have been the job of the desk sergeant to filter out nuisance callers. But this way, she would find herself pestered with interested curiosity seekers for some time to come, and if he knew human nature, (and he prided himself that he did) the vast majority of them wouldn’t have any useful information at all. They would simply be calling to try and get more juicy details from her, exasperating her beyond endurance.
That would teach her to play hard to get! It would also, with a bit of luck, prompt her to get in touch with him, if only to vent her spleen. Giving him the perfect opportunity to soothe her ruffled feathers and persuade her to come out with him for that drink.
And who knew where that might lead?
*
But as it happened, one of the first calls Trudy received that afternoon wasn’t from one of the newspaper’s readers at all, but from her colleague in Birmingham, who not only surprised her by diligently dealing with her request for information on Terrence James Parker, but obviously doing so in double quick time.
In the course of the conversation she learned, however, that the constable given the task had made it a priority only as it involved a trip to a warm records office, as opposed to a call-out to a break-in at a draughty knacker’s yard!
Nevertheless, despite such unexpected cooperation, the news from up north turned out to be negative. Wherever their victim had grown up, it appeared that he had not done so in the environs of Birmingham.
Sighing over another dead end, she thanked her colleague warmly and hung up, only for the telephone to ring again immediately.
It was some old lady wanting to know if the dead man in the car had red hair. She had just reassured the old dear that he hadn’t, and hung up, when somebody else rang, demanding to know where exactly the crash had occurred.
It didn’t take her very long, after questioning her callers as to why they had contacted her, to find out exactly what Duncan Gillingham had done.
Damn the man!
When her telephone rang for about the tenth time in so many minutes, she almost snarled her name into the instrument.
‘Is that Constable Loveday?’ a cultured male voice asked politely.
Trudy composed herself and sighed. ‘Yes, sir,’ she agreed, expecting the usual prurient demand for information that she couldn’t give out.
‘I’ve just read the article about Terrence Parker.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Trudy said again, forcing herself to remain calm. It was no good letting thoughts of Duncan rile her like this – especially since her own boss had put him up to it. ‘But I’m afraid I can’t give out any information other than that which has already appeared in the newspapers.’
There was a moment’s puzzled silence, and then the voice said, somewhat amused, ‘Yes, I’m sure that’s so. I’m calling, however, to give you some information. The article has asked for anyone who knew Mr Terrence Parker to contact you?’
Trudy sat up a little straighter in her chair. She turned to a fresh page on her notebook. ‘You know Mr Parker, sir?’
‘Yes. But it’s rather … well, let’s just say that I prefer to be discreet about this. What I have to tell you, I wouldn’t like to discuss over an open telephone line. Can you possibly call on me? Normally I’d be happy to come to you at the police station, but with the roads being like they are, I’m afraid of ending up in a snowdrift.’
Trudy did just wonder, momentarily, if this could possibly be another time-waster, maybe somewhat bolder than the rest, but something about his tone of voice made her think that he was not.
‘That’s all right, I understand perfectly. Where do you live, sir?’
‘I’m at my office in Aldates at the moment.’
Even better, Trudy thought. She wouldn’t even have to try and find a ride – she could walk it easily. She took a note of his address, listened to his directions on how to find the office, and promised to be there as soon as possible.
It was just as she was shrugging into her coat that she remembered she’d promised to call Dr Ryder sometime today, and had so far been remiss.
She quickly rang his home number and was rather frostily told by his son that his father had gone into his office to check on things, so she thanked him and hung up.
She rang the coroner’s office, relieved to be told by his secretary that the coroner was free. Due to the weather, court wasn’t sitting, since witnesses and office staff were finding it hard to get about, just like the rest of the country at the moment.
When she was put through, she asked him if he wanted to meet her outside Christ Church to go and talk to a mysterious man who had some very discreet information about their dead man. He couldn’t say yes fast enough.
*
‘Brrrr … it’s perishing,’ Trudy said in greeting, the moment she spotted the coroner walking towards her down the pavement. A path had been cleared with just enough room for people to walk single file through the snowdrifts. ‘Luckily, we don’t have far to go. The address is just down here somewhere.’
They walked carefully down the hill, slipping and sliding a little where the compacted
snow had turned almost into ice. Trudy checked the numbers on the shops and office entrances for the one she wanted. Her caller had been clear in his directions, however, and she found the place a few minutes later.
She paused, looking at the gold lettering on the pane of glass in the door. ‘Prescott, Watts and Cummings.’
‘Solicitors?’ Clement guessed, reading it over her shoulder.
‘Close. I looked them up in the phone book before I left. They’re accountants.’
Clement raised an eyebrow. ‘And where there are accountants, there’s usually money involved.’
Trudy nodded happily. ‘Interesting, isn’t it? “Follow the money” was one of my old training sergeant’s favourite maxims! So let’s see what he has to tell us.’
Chapter 12
Philip Prescott was a small man in every way. Shorter than Trudy by some inches, he had small feet, small hands, and a small, neat face. He could have been aged anywhere between forty and sixty, for although his face was unlined it did not seem particularly young. His hair was a nondescript brown, as were his eyes.
He was dressed in a neat three-piece suit of charcoal-grey with a plain white shirt and black tie. His office was small, like the man, but the view from his window was impressive – a view of Christ Church college itself, and its sweeping gardens, now, of course, obliterated by a seemingly habitual white blanket of snow.
‘I must say, I’ll be glad when all this white stuff disappears,’ the accountant said, by way of an opening gambit once Trudy and Clement had introduced themselves and were sitting opposite his desk.
‘Yes, I think we’re all getting rather tired of it,’ Clement agreed with a brief smile.
Preliminary courtesies over, Prescott nodded, leaned forward and put both bent elbows on the top of his desk. He then neatly placed both hands, palm-to-palm in front of him, making his fingers into a steeple. Throughout the course of the following interview, he would periodically and gently butt the underside of his chin with these steepled fingertips. It was almost certainly a subconscious habit, Clement mused. He wondered idly how he had acquired it and if he was aware he was even doing it.
