A Meeting of Minds Page 12

  Safer, perhaps, to assume that Chisholm was simply part of the investigation into the woman’s death. Which made one wonder what she’d been up to, that required an undercover cop working on the case.

  By mid-afternoon Neil Raynes, deserted first by Marty, then by the chick Rosemary, was beginning to regret he’d not gone in to work. Out here in the comparative wilds, he felt cut off from real life. He could think of nothing to do but unearth his vintage Dawes bike from the stuff stacked at the back of the garage, overhaul it and go pedal-pushing to relieve himself of spleen.

  Down by the converted stables he saw that the Winters’ silver Alfa Romeo had been returned and was parked outside. The local television station had mentioned little more than that a woman had been discovered stabbed to death in the driving seat of a car at Henley-on-Thames. Her identity had been revealed by Sunday’s police presence at the house. And now here her car was, looking perfectly normal.

  He went close with ghoulish curiosity to peer in. There seemed to be no bloodstains on the front seats. The police must have returned it after forensic examination. Their speed, and the evidence of a garage valet service, amazed him. It wasn’t as though anyone was in great haste to drive the thing again. Which was a pity. He’d give a lot to get behind the wheel and slide up in it at work; give the others in the porters’ room an eyeful of high living.

  He ran an exploratory hand under the front wheel-arch, encountered something small, and heard a soft tinkle as the remote-lock key fell to ground. That was a really ancient dodge! You’d think the pigs would have some slicker contrivance up their sleeves. It was the sort of thing a garage might consider adequate precaution.

  He picked the key up, turning it in his fingers, idly clicked it, and the car’s lights flicked once. As he heard the door locks released he felt some similar response in himself. He looked around; was reassured that no one was watching.

  He considered the stabbed body. He’d overheard Beattie say it was naked. There could be minute traces of the blood remaining. Blood was a substance that took a lot of removing. His face showed distaste, but he was compelled to open the driver’s door and lean in. Nothing but the usual car smells. No bleach; nothing in the nature of decaying meat. They’d done a good job cleaning the interior. Nobody would have guessed.

  This lump at the back of his throat was there again, and the familiar nausea threatening. It was the mental linking of car and blood. He doubted he’d ever be free of it. Years had gone by and it still made him want to throw up. It had been his father’s Mercedes and his father’s second wife. He’d fancied them both.

  No, that wasn’t fair. He’d gone for the car in a big way, before ever Miriam started on him; and because they couldn’t do it under the old man’s nose they’d devised ways of going off together. Miriam had liked him to drive; preferred him on top. He’d discovered too late how a woman can manipulate by appearing the fragile one. And in the end she’d paid for it. So had he. But at least he was still alive.

  To hell with nil nisi bonum: she’d been a harpy. Not like the pathetic Winter woman, but both had tried to pull him for the same reason. And look where it had ended.

  He turned a morose gaze back on the car. These days he would sometimes drive Marty, but he never took the Saab out alone. Sooner or later he’d have to get over the shakes. This Alfa couldn’t be all that of a challenge: a woman’s car.

  He considered the dashboard and in his mind went through the procedure for starting up, slipping into gear. He slid, self-indulgently, into the driving seat and reached for the pedals. Not that he meant to commit himself.

  The engine turned over like silk, purred seductively.

  It was too easy. He drove it gently, almost silently, round to the front of the house and turned into the driveway. It felt all right, quite good really.

  When he had almost reached Mill Lane, Z, sitting at a window to make out her report on the morning spent with Fenner, glimpsed the car disappearing. So the bumper was fixed and the garage had returned it. She was amazed that Vanessa had so soon recovered to use it, and hoped she’d offered Beattie a lift into town. It would be a good way of repaying the old lady for her kindness.

  Neil Raynes settled his shoulders back in the driving seat. These country roads were no place to try out the car’s capability. The Eyeties built their wheels for speed, didn’t they?

  He made for the M25, keen to find out how fast he could put a ring round London. An hour and a half was the accepted run. He knew he could beat that.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Superintendent Yeadings frowned, listening to the taped interview with Barry Childe. The man should never have been charged. As he now claimed, the electrical equipment at his cottage just might have been intended for the indoor culture of legitimate exotics.

  Salmon had been too hasty following up Beaumont’s report. There had been no need to let the man know that the loft had been searched and yielded its secrets. After a few days spent cooling off, he might otherwise have continued with the project, contacting the illegal seed supplier, and the DI catching bigger fish.

  Fish – Salmon! The connection was inevitable. An apt name for the man; it was something to do with his mouth. Unconsciously Yeadings dropped the corners of his own and performed slow jaw functions, glassy-eyed.

  Beaumont, alongside, must have been suffering similar doubts, muttering almost inaudibly, ‘Salmon, a prey to red herrings.’

  Of all non-runners in Thames Valley Police, Kidlington had inflicted that wet fish on them. Recommended for the task, for heaven’s sake – because unacceptable everywhere else!

  ‘Is the DI still investigating the small-holding arson in Denham?’ Z asked. So she too had the man on her mind.

  Yeadings sighed, straightened his back. ‘He is. Which indicates,’ he told his two sergeants, ‘that the upper brass expects we may find both incidents connected. And, while it can leave our DI precariously balanced with a foot on two galloping horses, his main weight must be on our present case, since murder takes precedence over malicious damage or fraud.’

  What made him uneasy was the possibility that one of his own team might be sidelined on to the lesser case. It struck him that if personnel were stretched, this was an opportunity for his own Little-Jack-Horner thumb to be firmly dipped into the pie. And happily so, since Nan had rightly complained that excessive desk work played havoc with the shine on his workaday trousers.

  He would drive out on the A40 and take a look at the charred remains of what had been, until the previous week, a pleasant cottage with outbuildings and a couple of acres put down to chrysanthemums and young spruces intended for the Christmas trade. Unless there was a direct connection with Sheila Winter, the only tenuous link would be that of horticulture.

  Before he went there he would get DI Salmon to wise him up on the case. Meanwhile, Z should tell him everything she’d learned from Dr Fenner’s visit to his daughter’s solicitor.

  ‘Not a lot,’ she admitted. ‘There was a will, but he didn’t choose to disclose what it contained, except that he’s sole executor. So I guess that’s the end of the solicitor’s interest. Fenner will probably deal with it himself.’

  ‘His ex-wife may call her own brief in to see fair play. In which case you can probably get all you need from her. I’d be interested to know what’s to happen to the business.’

  ‘He told me he owned 40%, Sheila just 12%, and Barclays Bank the rest.’

  ‘So can we assume she’s left her share to her father? In which case he could dispose of the whole as he wished. If she divided it equally between her parents that would leave the bank with the lion’s share and the family wishes could be outvoted. I think you should try to find out, through Beattie if necessary, about bequests, and the funeral arrangements.’

  ‘Sheila left a letter with instructions. Her father is to arrange for cremation. A quiet occasion; no flowers; no eulogy; minimal C of E service.’

  ‘No flowers?’ Yeadings queried. ‘And she expected her f
ather to outlive her?’

  ‘Apparently she had a premonition about dying young. It does seem strange about the flowers, since she seemed so fond of them.’

  ‘Perhaps she’d been involved with too many elaborate funerals professionally. Beaumont, what’s your immediate programme?’

  ‘Sticking with Salmon and his sole suspect,’ he punned atrociously. ‘Looking for a link between Childe and the Denham arson. Chasing up the old lags he was inside with, particularly any with a taste for horticulture. Checking with the prison what gardening books he had out of the library, just in case there were specific instructions for growing his own drugs indoors.’

  After the necessary quiet groan evoked by the pun, Yeadings almost smiled. Present allocations seemed to leave Greenvale Garden Centre for him to take a leisurely look at. He reminded himself that he was to take the family there for their Saturday lunch. ‘Who is currently examining the CCTV tapes?’ he inquired.

  ‘DC Silver,’ Beaumont offered. ‘He fancied the dead woman being behind whatever Childe was setting up at home, so he’s been given a free hand on that theory.’

  ‘But he’s held up because no one has yet found the password to access Sheila’s laptop computer,’ Z complained. ‘The experts are working on that now.’

  ‘And Sheila Winter’s personal life, have we any gossip on that? Her father implied she could have been interested in at least one man. “Like myself, not celibate,” is more or less what he said.’

  ‘Nobody has come forward so far, and she seems to have kept that side of her life pretty low key. It’s a pity about the funeral ban on flowers. Notes pinned on the wreaths can tell quite a lot about the senders.’

  The black phone on Yeadings’s desk gave a double buzz. He lifted the receiver. ‘Yes?’ The two sergeants looked hopeful.

  ‘Good. I’ll come down and see him,’ said Yeadings. He rose and came round the desk. ‘Dr Fenner has called. I think this time I’ll see him on my own. He hasn’t a lot of hair, but he just might want to let it all down.’

  He found the academic in the duty office. He had declined the offer of a seat and stood towering against a notice-board, his overcoat over one arm. ‘This is an un-cosy place to talk,’ Yeadings observed. ‘Shall we go out and sit in your car?’

  It still held the heat of his journey. Fenner switched on the engine, adjusted the fan and opened his near window.

  ‘There seems no point in my staying on here any longer,’ he said, coming at once to the point. ‘Since it will be a cremation, I’m sure the body can’t be released for some days.’

  ‘There are a number of questions we’d like settled first,’ Yeadings agreed vaguely.

  ‘But before leaving I thought I should find out if you have any idea …’

  ‘We have discovered a number of facts, but have had no time to sift what may be relevant.’

  ‘You’ll need to know about her financial standing. I can’t be more precise than to say I believe the business was starting to make a reasonable profit after heavy initial outlays. In the will she leaves her share of it to her mother who had paid for the new apartment at Ashbourne House. Maintenance there and all household expenses were to be covered by Sheila, but now they won’t, of course.’

  ‘There was an earlier property, in London, I believe.’

  ‘Yes. It had been in both their names, but three years back Sheila covenanted her half to me when she needed capital to develop the centre. On the strength of that I took out a loan to buy a 40% share in the company, without voting rights. Sheila retained 12% and her bank the rest. Your Miss Zyczynski will have informed you of this.’

  ‘She did.’

  ‘And now you need to know how her will disposes of it.’ Yeadings waited. Fenner gave a wintry smile. ‘My daughter left a letter for me with her solicitor which expressed her strong desire that I should never be required to support my ex-wife either financially or in any other way. I was to “remain totally unshackled.”

  ‘For that reason only, she left her entire interest in Greenvale Garden Centre to her mother. Neither of us had been aware of this provision, Superintendent.

  ‘To me it comes as a shock, because I had hoped to keep the centre going as a memorial to her. As it now stands I shall lose any control. What Vanessa chooses to do with her interest will decide the final outcome. She would never be capable of taking Sheila’s place or using her voting power wisely. It is more than possible that, recognising this, the bank will prefer to dispose of the business to one of the bigger horticultural chains, and Vanessa will be adequately paid off.’

  ‘Is Mrs Winter aware of the will’s contents?’

  ‘Not unless Sheila mentioned it to her, which I doubt. I shall leave the papers with my own solicitor in Cambridge and he will advise her of her position.’

  ‘I understand.’ Yeadings opened the passenger door and climbed out. ‘Thank you for being so helpful, sir. If anything comes to mind regarding your daughter’s more personal life perhaps you would get in touch again?’

  ‘I knew nothing, I’m afraid. Except that – just after her last birthday, which was in August, I noticed her letter appeared more light-hearted, younger somehow. She wrote that it was time she had a little fun in her life and I would hear all about it at some later date. I thought then that perhaps she had met someone who had proved to her there was more to life than hard business sense.’

  He paused, seeking the right words. ‘I had even begun to hope for a wedding invitation.’

  His smile was a wry one. ‘My second marriage was unfortunate, but I believed her capable of better judgement than mine.’

  ‘She gave no hint of the kind of man she could be involved with?’

  ‘None. Indeed, I may well have misunderstood her intention altogether.’

  Yeadings watched the car drive off with a twinge of pity. Could Sheila Winter ever have imagined what she deprived her father of in severing his interest in her business? She had ensured Vanessa’s financial independence, but at some cost to him. If the garden centre had been her baby, what could it have proved to him, her survivor?

  He turned towards his own Rover, unlocked it and sat inside waiting for it to warm. His mind was still on the man who had just left. On a sudden inspiration he reached for his mobile phone and punched in Beaumont’s number.

  ‘Just a notion about Sheila Winter’s laptop,’ he said as the DS answered. ‘Tell Silver to try FENNER for the password.’

  It seemed possible that Sheila had resented being summarily deprived of her family name. This could have been a way of reinstating herself.

  Then he pressed out the number for DI Salmon’s mobile and made an arrangement to meet up at his office.

  ‘I need to be put in the picture about the arson case at Denham,’ he told him. ‘So bring along all you’ve got on that so far.’

  Salmon took his time in complying, and passed out the information with surly reluctance. Yeadings affected to be blandly unaffected, nodding at the sparse evidence and watching the audio tape winding left-to-right inside the half-open top drawer of his desk. ‘That’s the lot?’ he asked mildly at the end of an inconclusive account of the damage sustained in the fire.

  ‘It was clearly kids.’ said the DI. ‘No tools were taken, just a ghetto-blaster from under one of the potting-house stagings. The usual sort of vandalism.’

  ‘But torched,’ Yeadings insisted. ‘That’s something rather novel for the area. Denham’s a quiet little place normally, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘It was school half-term. Kids run wild when they’re let loose.’

  ‘Halloween,’ Yeadings reminded him. ‘D’you think it was trick-or-treating? Any mention of fire crackers in the Fire Chief’s report?. In my experience there’s always some trace left.’

  ‘Accelerant was used, and two two-gallon petrol cans found slung into the undergrowth.’

  ‘From local garage forecourts?’

  ‘The cans were old ones. And people are filling up the things at the p
umps all the time. Nobody takes any notice.’

  ‘They do in the case of underage customers.’ Yeadings swung his office chair to face the window and let a silence build.

  ‘So it seems you haven’t anything to go on. Why, then, should our masters bracket this arson with the Sheila Winter murder?’

  Salmon set his mouth in a hard line and considered how he could defend his being upgraded to the more serious crime. ‘It’s possible someone has it in for the garden trade.’

  The superintendent’s black, caterpillar eyebrows shot up to their highest level. ‘A nutter seeking revenge for a faulty conservatory or a bad outbreak of fungal black spot? I thought it was young lads you had in your sights. The fact of petrol being used inclines me more to suspect adult naughtiness, which the murder almost certainly was. So, assuming there’s a connection, can you suggest a scenario? An organised protection racket, for example?’

  Salmon looked ill at ease. ‘Enquiries among the other smallholders rule that out. The damaged place wasn’t the biggest, and none of the others had been threatened. The idea was laughed out of town.’

  ‘You hadn’t mentioned this before. I expect a report to contain positive and negative findings.’ His voice had sharpened. ‘Have you any other suggestions?’

  Salmon was beginning to look defiant. ‘Industrial sabotage?’ he tried.

  ‘Chrysanthemums and conifers,’ Yeadings reminded him. ‘I really don’t see those modest crops threatening any rivals of similar magnitude, do you? From what I recall, apart from half an acre of rose bushes, that’s about all that’s grown on that stretch of the A40. At this time of year the small-holdings make most of their money from imported vegetables, bulbs and cut flowers.’

  He watched Salmon making up his mind to come clean. ‘From the continent,’ he prompted him innocently. ‘The Netherlands, mostly.’