The Sting of Death (21 page)

‘
Daily Chronicle
,’ she beamed. ‘Wondered if the parents had anything to say.’

‘I thought they’d stopped this sort of crap,’ Den told her. ‘You’re wasting your time anyway. As I said, they’re out.’

‘Funny. Gone to stay with friends, have they? Can’t bear the painful memories?’

‘Something like that. Now you’d better go. This is still the scene of a suspicious death and nobody’s asked you to be here.’

‘Suspicious death? Surely you’ve had the
post-mortem
results by now, and know what killed her?’

‘No comment,’ said Den, with a disgusted look.

‘Hey, don’t be like that. This is public interest stuff. Little girl found dead in a ditch a week after going missing. Only – what? – a few hundred yards from her house. We’re not giving up on a story like that.’ She looked carefully all around her, easily spotting the well-trodden track towards the orchard. ‘That way, is it?’

‘Leave it,’ Den warned her. ‘Forensics haven’t finished with it yet. It’s out of bounds.’

‘So what’s with this girl lodger or whatever she is? Why’s everybody being so cagey about her? Has she been taken in for questioning? You ought to tell us, you know. We’ve a right to be kept informed.’

‘No comment,’ he snarled again. ‘Now go away.’

Defiantly, the reporter got back into her car and reversed it at speed across the yard, already fumbling for a mobile phone as she headed back down the lane towards the road.

‘So where are they?’ Bennie queried. ‘Don’t they know they should stay put? That we’d be back this morning wanting to speak to them?’

‘Search me,’ Den snapped. He looked at the upper windows of the house, which stared implacably down at him. He felt a quiver of unease. ‘You don’t think … ?’ he began.

‘What?’ She followed his line of gaze. ‘That they’ve topped themselves in their grief? I doubt it.’

‘We should have a quick look,’ Den grimaced. ‘This is Crediton all over again. Why’s everybody avoiding us, do you think?’

Bennie did not respond to the feeble joke. ‘We’d have to break in.’

‘True. Best leave it then. Let the DI worry about it.’

‘Right.’ She sighed with relief. ‘Now we’re off to Pitcombe. Is that it?’

Cooper scratched his head. ‘Is that what he said?’ He looked at her blankly for a moment, forgetting the significance of Pitcombe.

‘Come on, Den. Wake up, will you? Pitcombe’s the mother of the girl who lives in the cottage here. We’re to go and talk to them again, remember?’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ he nodded. ‘I just didn’t connect,
for a minute. It’s not going to be a lot of fun, is it?’ He made no move to return to the car, despite Bennie’s attempts to shift him. ‘They ought to be here,’ he worried. ‘Somebody should have stayed all night to keep an eye on them.’

‘Well, they didn’t. They probably insisted on being left alone.’

‘But don’t they want to know about the
post-mortem
?’

‘I don’t know, Den,’ she said patiently. ‘That’s why we have to go and talk to the Pereira woman. See if we can get her to admit she dropped the kid on its head and panicked. Get the whole thing sewn up, once and for all. Plus we need to call in and tell them we’ve drawn a blank here.’

‘Let’s go then,’ he said. ‘I don’t like it here, anyway.’

Philip Renton slowly left the barn behind the house, when he was sure the police had finally left. All his movements were heavy, whole minutes passing between one step and the next. Something in the house was urging him, finally identified at a ringing telephone.
Business
, he thought distantly. He should apply himself to business. It had stopped before he got to it, but a few minutes later it began again.

‘Mr Renton? We sent two officers to tell you this in person, but they must have missed you. I
hope you’ll understand if we tell you this over the phone …’

He was standing in the yard, fifteen minutes later, when Sheena drove in. She had been to the supermarket, hysterically tearing out of his clinging arms when he tried to stop her. And then, when she got there, she’d filled the trolley with all the things that Georgia had liked best, including a box of jelly babies. Standing in the check-out line, she suddenly saw what she’d done, staring at the Alphabet Spaghetti, the small seedless grapes, chocolate milk drink and bloody jelly babies. With a shriek, she’d thrust the whole thing away from her and run from the shop in tears.

Her husband didn’t seem to be doing anything. He was just
there
. His bruised face was haggard, his hands shaking. Sheena found him repellant in his obvious distress. ‘Have you been here since I left?’ she asked.

He nodded, then recollected himself and shook his head. ‘They phoned – about the post-mortem.’

‘Phoned? Shouldn’t they come in person? Why are they so insensitive?’

He shrugged weakly, unable to explain. ‘Her neck was broken. They think she – she didn’t suffer. It was quick, they said.’

‘Broken neck? Like strangled? Is that the same thing?’

‘No, I don’t think so. More like a fall. Or a quick blow. Something like that.’

Sheena’s face screwed up. ‘I don’t want to know.’ She breathed quickly. ‘Yes I do. I want to know. If I don’t I’ll never rest.’

‘Rest,’ he echoed, looking as if he was ready to sink to the ground and never get up again.

‘Have they arrested Justine yet?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Wouldn’t it be on the news? There’ll be reporters here, won’t there? Hasn’t
anybody
been?’ The thought that they might not have had any visitors seemed very bleak to her. Were they so antisocial, so disliked in the neighbourhood that nobody would come to offer solace at such a time?

‘I think somebody came. I was … outside. They went again.’

‘We’d better have something to eat.’ She headed for the front door, fists tightly clenched. Inside, something was erupting and she couldn’t let it. It had to do with Philip, his blank expression, his still unexamined confession about the affair with Justine. There was rage against him, acid in her throat, but she couldn’t let it out. He’d lost his little daughter and was plainly suffering. All she could do was wait it out until they were both strong enough to decide what to do next. 

Drew was relieved to find that Maggs’s attention was aroused by the latest news. ‘Accident?’ she repeated. ‘Are they sure?’

‘Not completely. But that’s the way it looks.’

‘Poor little thing. But it doesn’t explain anything, does it? Why was she left in the ditch? Do they think she was climbing a tree or something, and just lay where she fell? Dropping the bag of jelly babies?’

Drew was hooked. ‘Jelly babies?’

‘That horrible sticky mess with wasps all over it, beside the body. Roma says it was once a bag of jelly babies. And that was what made her really sure that Justine had killed the kid – though I didn’t follow the logic, I must admit.’

‘The body was moved,’ Drew remembered. ‘That’s what Graham said. So somebody knew she was dead and tried to hide her.’

‘It still looks like Justine, doesn’t it.’

‘I don’t know.’ Drew heaved a sigh. ‘I still can’t quite see it.’

‘Nor me,’ Maggs admitted. ‘I like her, you know. She’s obviously a mess in lots of ways, but she doesn’t come across as
guilty
. I mean, if you’d done something like that, you’d have trouble living with yourself, wouldn’t you?’

‘Right,’ he nodded. ‘You’ve put your finger on it. That’s what’s been nagging at me. After all, we’ve seen what guilt does to people – that
sunken look they get, when they think they should have done more for their husband or old mother.’

‘That worried frown when they think they’re going to be found out,’ she chimed in.

He laughed. ‘It wouldn’t cut any ice in a court of law, though. People would say we were mad.’

‘We probably are,’ she said, before another thought struck her. ‘You know who
does
look guilty?’

He gazed at her consideringly. ‘Sunken eyes? Worried frown. Hmm …’

‘Mr Renton!’ she crowed. ‘I only saw him for a minute, but he was the absolute picture of guilt.’

Drew began to shake his head. ‘No, not him. That wasn’t guilt; that was horror, grief … stuff like that. Poor bloke.’

‘No.’ Maggs slapped the table emphatically. ‘I’m telling you – it was guilt.’

The day swirled on, phone calls flying back and forth, people talking confusedly, asking unanswerable questions of each other. Everyone experienced frustration at not having the whole picture available to them, including DS Den Cooper.

‘Where’s Mr Millan?’ he asked Roma.

‘He’s having a few days on his own down
on the coast. I can assure you he has nothing relevant to contribute to this business. He’s a lot better off out of it.’

‘And where is Penn Strabinski?’

Roma shrugged. ‘Nobody seems to have an answer to that.’

And where were the Rentons this morning?
Den thought angrily, knowing Roma would have no answer to that one. ‘Although,’ Roma went on, after a brief pause. ‘I did get a message from her this morning. Or rather, Justine did.’

‘From Miss Strabinski?’

‘Penn. For God’s sake, call her Penn.’

He eyed her impatiently and waited for whatever was coming next. ‘I’m not sure I should tell you,’ she prevaricated. ‘I’m sure she wouldn’t want me to. But it does put Justine in a much better light.’

‘Go on,’ he encouraged.

‘Well, Penn phoned my sister – her mother – and asked her to tell Justine that she – Penn – is sorry for what she did and that she’d explain everything. A bit mysterious, but we assume it’s about the way she kidnapped Justine and left her in that place.’

‘The place she says she wouldn’t be able to find again?’ Den couldn’t resist adding.

Roma didn’t rise to the provocation. ‘Helen
came over this morning, which was good of her. She could have phoned.’

‘She was just being nosy.’ Justine had come quietly into the room. ‘I suppose you’ve come to see me?’ she said to Den. Bennie Timms was on a chair beside the fireplace, leaving everything to Cooper.

‘The post-mortem report’s come through,’ he said. ‘It isn’t quite conclusive yet, but the initial suggestion is that the little girl died of a fall, or some sudden trauma of that sort.’

He and Justine stared at each other, each watching for clues to the other’s thoughts. ‘So she died quickly? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘So it seems. Of course we can’t possibly get the whole picture. But it seems unlikely that she suffered any pain.’

‘Thank God for that,’ Justine breathed, tension draining from her shoulders and hands. ‘I’ve had such terrible visions all night of how it might have been for her. She was such a sweet little thing. She had an awful life, really. We do treat children horribly, don’t we?’

‘Do we?’ Bennie Timms spoke from the fireplace. Everyone looked at her.

‘We make them fit our own selfish ways. They’re at the mercy of our crazy beliefs or money-grubbing values.’ Justine glared briefly at her mother as she spoke. ‘They’re completely
at our mercy. It’s disgusting. I’m never going to have any more, that’s for sure.’

‘Any more?’ Bennie murmured.

‘My little girl died,’ Justine said aggressively, as if expecting not to be believed. ‘She was three, as well. I’m sure you knew that – it must be somewhere in your records.’

‘You’re not in our records,’ said Den. ‘You haven’t ever committed a crime, as far as we know. But your father did say …’

Justine smiled, her expression a complex tangle of exasperation and triumph. ‘He would,’ she said. Carlos had taken himself off in his dirty white car for a visit to a barber, directed by Roma who showed no inclination to offer him any of her own facilities.

Den drew himself up and hardened his heart. ‘Miss Pereira, I do have to put it to you that you were present at the death of Georgia Renton and that you deliberately concealed the fact of her death by placing her body in the ditch where it was subsequently found. It is an offence to knowingly conceal a death. Do you have anything to say?’

‘Are you accusing me? Charging me?’ She frowned at him. ‘Or just trying to get me to admit something in front of witnesses?’ Her composure surprised him and he kept his eyes on her, saying nothing further.

‘I promise you,’ she went on, ‘I was not there
when she died. I can tell you absolutely nothing about what happened. But it does seem obvious to me that my cousin Penn must have known something about it.’ She frowned more deeply. ‘I think we’ll find that Penn holds the answer to the whole thing, if we could just find her.’

Den looked at Roma, who had drifted over to the window, her back to the room. ‘Mrs Millan? Have you any idea as to where your niece might be?’

‘Not really,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Neither does her mother. Are you going to arrest Justine?’

‘No, we’re not going to arrest her at present, but the investigation will continue. There’ll be a further forensic examination at the farm and some more interviews.’ He addressed Justine. Would you be good enough to stay here for a few more days, or inform us of your movements if you leave?’

Justine nodded. ‘You should find Penn,’ she advised him.

‘We’ll do our best,’ he agreed, with another glance at Roma.

Karen took Roma’s phone call to the Peaceful Repose office, since Drew and Maggs were both at the top of the burial ground and out of earshot. After five rings it automatically switched through to the house.

‘Is Drew there?’ Roma demanded.

‘I could call him. It’d take a couple of minutes.’ She hesitated. ‘I think he’s doing some measuring.’

‘Don’t bother him then. He can phone me back. I’ve got another commission for him, if he’s interested.’

Karen didn’t find it hard to guess. ‘You want him to look for Penn,’ she said.

‘Clever girl! That’s exactly it. I’m probably going to sound barmy, but I’ve a hunch I know where she is.’

‘So why not go and see for yourself?’

There was a silence at the other end. ‘Can we just say I prefer not to?’ Roma eventually said. ‘There are at least two rather good reasons, but I can’t really explain them at the moment.’ Justine might be listening, Karen guessed.