‘Stealing from his partner,’ Trudy acknowledged. ‘Which was, presumably, less dangerous than stealing from the tax man!’ Trudging automatically back up the hill, she wondered aloud where this took them, exactly. ‘Presumably he’d been pilfering more than his fair share since they set up the business. He strikes me as the kind of man who would have liked to have money to splash around.’

Clement nodded, then realising that Trudy couldn’t see him do so – since they’d been forced to walk one behind the other due to the snowbanks crowding in on either side of them – said loudly, ‘Yes, I agree. Unluckily for our dead man though, Geoffrey Thorpe had finally got wise and caught him out.’

‘Which might explain why Geoffrey Thorpe looked more worried when we talked to him, as opposed to being actually sad.’ Trudy nodded. ‘He must have been hoping he could keep all their business problems a secret, to avoid loss of confidence in their firm. He couldn’t have been feeling very friendly towards Terry for some time – certainly not enough to really mourn his passing. I’m only surprised they kept on trading! Mr Thorpe must have faced him with it as soon he’d found out and demanded that Terry pay him back every penny, wouldn’t he?’

‘I would think that’s a fair bet,’ Clement agreed dryly.

Chapter 13

The news that her car crash victim was turning out to have feet of clay did not sit well with Inspector Jennings. At the top of the hill, Trudy and Clement had separated to go back to their respective workplaces, and on entering the police station, Trudy had immediately made her report to her superior officer.

‘So he was a wrong ’un,’ the inspector grunted after she finished speaking. ‘I don’t see how it’s relevant in the circumstances though.’ If the car crash was purely accidental, he added to himself silently. But what if it wasn’t?

Damn it, he didn’t have the men for this sort of complication! They were stretched so tight with the few staff that he did have, that he couldn’t possibly justify allocating another officer to what was almost certainly still going to turn out to be a simple road traffic fatality.

And had it been anyone other than WPC Loveday and that bloody interfering coroner who were currently looking into the matter, he might have felt sure enough that the odds were in his favour, to simply let it drop. But that pair had the knack of summoning very real mountains out of apparent molehills. It was enough to give a man indigestion.