Cold Coffin Read Online Free

as yet. Since her promotion to Chief Inspector and her transfer to the Cotswold Division of the South Midlands force, a heavy workload had kept her under constant pressure. But at last she felt she had time to breathe. As she drove through the Cotswold countryside in her silver Montego, a summer haze lay over the landscape, muting colours and softening the outlines of the hills. Life could be a whole lot worse, Kate, all said and done.
    Dreamtime ended abruptly not long after she arrived for work on Thursday morning. The report of a suspicious death came in. The body of a man had been found in the woods near Little Bedham on land adjoining the Croptech site. Not Sir Noah Kimberley, though, which scotched Kate’s immediate thought. The man had been recognized by one of the attending police officers as Dr. Gavin Trent, a senior scientist at Croptech. Sir Noah’s deputy, Kate remembered Richard telling her. Very highly strung, a bag of nerves. Maybe, the thought crossed her mind, he had good reason to be nervous.
    On a sudden decision Kate reached for the phone and asked for Sergeant Boulter at the Chipping Bassett station.
    “Heard about this man Trent, Tim?” she asked.
    “Just this minute, guv. Looks a bit peculiar, doesn’t it, what with the bossman having skedaddled the other day?”
    “That’s exactly what I’m thinking, so I’d like us to be in on this from the start. Get to the scene right away, will you, and I’ll meet you there. Is there a wife to be informed?”
    “No, he wasn’t married. He was known as a real loner. Lived by himself in a cottage about half a mile from where the body was found.”
    “Better get someone onto tracing his next of kin, then.”
    Fourteen miles in nineteen minutes. No delighting in the glorious Cotswold landscape this time. At Little Bedham, a short distance along a lost lane that meandered through beechwoods, Kate came across a uniformed officer standing guard by a gated entrance to a woodland track.
    “Morning, Constable. Is Sergeant Boulter here yet?”
    “Arrived a few minutes ago, ma’am.” He swung back the five-barred gate for her. “If you’ll just follow the track. It’s not too rough.”
    She bumped her car a further hundred yards and came to a clearing where two other police cars were drawn up. Sitting in the back of one of them were a young man and a girl. Their faces looked shocked and pale.
    “Who’re they?” she enquired of another uniformed PC.
    “They found the body, ma’am. Honeymooners, I gather, staying at the Unicorn Inn. They were out for a morning stroll through the woods, and ...”
    Kate walked over and gave them a sympathetic smile through the car’s open window.
    “I’m Detective Chief Inspector Maddox. I just want to go and take a look at things, then we’ll have a chat. I won’t keep you any longer than I have to.”
    The dead man lay on the bank of a small pond that was ringed with saplings of oak and ash. The clothing—jeans and a thick-knit sweater— was sodden. Sergeant Boulter was crouched down on his haunches, examining the body but not touching it. He straightened at Kate’s approach.
    “Well, Tim?”
    “Drowned is my guess, guv. But the thing that makes it fishy is that when he was found by that young couple he’d already been dragged clear of the water.”
    “Can we be sure that he didn’t struggle out himself, and then collapse?”
    “No way. You can see signs here that he was dragged out as a dead weight.”
    “You’re right, Tim. The clothing is only just beginning to dry, so it must have happened quite recently. And look there, a footprint that’s still damp. It could have been made by the young man who found the body, of course. Did you happen to notice if he’s wearing boots?”
    “Trainers, I’m pretty sure.”
    “Then the footprint was made by our mystery man. We’d better protect it.” Kate unzipped her shoulderbag and took from it a silk scarf, which she spread out over the damp marks left by