The Cold Hand of Malice

by Frank Smith

  It was the same every Saturday. Business in the gift shop always tapered off by mid-afternoon, and that was when Peggy did her shopping for the week. Milverton’s wasn’t the best place in town to shop, but it was handy, and Tesco’s was half a mile away, parking would be at a premium, and the store would be packed. Peggy went through the same mental exercise almost every week, and she always ended up at Milverton’s.

  With her mind on other things, Peggy barely noticed the short, plump, middle-aged woman coming toward her until they were only a few feet apart, and even then it took her a moment to realize that she knew the woman. ‘Billie?’ she said, stopping dead in her tracks. ‘Billie Strickland? Is that really you?’

  ‘Peggy!’ The woman beamed ‘Well I’ll be damned! Fancy running into you on the street like this.’ The smiled faded into a guilty grimace as she glanced around. ‘You won’t tell anyone you saw me, though, will you? I mean John would be furious if he knew, but I just had to come to check out the lie of the land, so to speak. Do you live around here?’

  ‘My mother has the gift shop,’ Peggy told her with a nod over her shoulder. ‘But what are you doing here, Billie? And why mustn’t John know?’

  Billie Strickland leaned closer to Peggy. ‘As if you didn’t know,’ she said in a hoarse whisper, then drew back and winked. ‘But the boys must have their little secrets and play their little games, mustn’t they? Still,’ she sighed, ‘I suppose it’s necessary in this sort of business. John says the deal is as good as done, but it’s all hush-hush until it’s finalized. But then, you’d know more about that than I do, wouldn’t you, being in the thick of things, so to speak?’

  Peggy had no idea what Billie Strickland was talking about, but her curiosity was piqued, and she wanted to know more. ‘Look,’ she said, taking Billie’s arm, ‘there’s a lovely little tea room at the end of the street. Why don’t we go down there and have a cup of tea and a scone – or a butter tart?’ Billie could never resist the pastries.

  The woman closed her eyes and heaved a gentle sigh. ‘You’re like an angel from heaven,’ she breathed. ‘My feet are killing me and I could murder a cup of tea. Please, lead on, and it’s my treat.’

  ‘Sorry I took so long, Mum,’ said Peggy breathlessly as she entered the shop and set two bags of groceries on the floor behind the counter, ‘but I bumped into an old friend I haven’t seen in years, and she insisted that I go and have a cup of tea with her down at Mabel’s, and the time just slipped by.’

  ‘That’s all right, love,’ her mother said. ‘I’ve only had one customer since you left, and it will soon be time to shut the shop in any case. You did say you’d stay for supper, didn’t you, Peg?’

  ‘I did, but I shall have to eat and run, I’m afraid.’ She glanced at the time. ‘In fact, if it’s all right with you, I’ll put the oven on now and get started on the vegetables. Is Arthur still out the back in the workshop?’

  Her mother nodded. ‘Better give him a shout and tell him supper will be early so he can come in and wash up,’ she said.

  Peggy took the packaged lasagne from one of the bags and went down the passage to the kitchen. Only part of her mind was on what she was doing; the rest of it was still back there in the tea shop, listening to Billie Strickland talk about her husband, John.

  ‘He wanted me to come with him, of course, and I said I’d think about it, but having seen the place for myself, I’ve made up my mind. There is no way I could come here to live, even if it is only for six months to a year. Not that I have anything against Broadminster, per se,’ she added hastily. ‘It’s a charming town in its own way, but you must admit it isn’t Birmingham or even Solihull, now is it, Peggy? I mean where are the shops? The theatres? The restaurants?’

  That would be a sticking point with Billie, Peggy thought. Cutting Billie off from the amenities of the big city would be like depriving her of air.

  ‘No,’ Billie continued determinedly, ‘John will have to commute and come home on the weekends. Henry has assured him that everything will be ready for the move back to Solihull by the end of the year, so it’s not as if we will have to put up with it for long. In fact we might all be together again for Christmas.’

  Peggy had sipped her tea to give herself time to think. At least a dozen questions were hammering away inside her head, all looking for answers, but how could she put them without revealing that this was all news to her?

  She set her cup aside. ‘I’m afraid we don’t hear much down here about what is going on back at the old firm,’ she said, choosing her words carefully. ‘What, exactly, is John’s title, now?’ Her recollection of John Strickland was of a rather plodding junior manager, but from the way Billie was talking, it sounded as if he had finally started up the corporate ladder.

  ‘Special Projects Manager,’ Billie told her with a touch of smugness. ‘There were three others in the running, but they chose John, and Henry as good as told him that he could be in line for VP in two or three years if everything goes smoothly with this move. So, perhaps it’s a good thing I bumped into you this afternoon, because I want John to succeed down here, and I know I can count on you to do everything you can to help him. He will be bringing in his own office staff, of course, but I’m sure that you and he will be working very closely together.’

  Billie popped the last piece of butter tart into her mouth and sighed contentedly. ‘I feel so much better now after talking to you,’ she said. ‘But please don’t tell John I was here.’

  Peggy’s mind had been so busy trying to absorb what she was hearing that she barely acknowledged the implied question before asking, ‘Just when does all this take place – John’s actual move down here, I mean,’ she added hastily as she saw Billie’s pencilled browns begin to draw together in a questioning frown.

  ‘Oh, sometime next month is what he told me. I don’t know the exact date.’

  Sometime next month! Peggy tried to get the words out of her head, but they were still there an hour later when she left her mother’s house. Not for home as she had told her mother, but to the office. But John as a future VP? No way. But then, that was the way Henry Beaumont worked.

  Twenty

  Tuesday, March 17

  Paget arrived at work some twenty minutes late. It had rained hard all the way in from Ashton Prior to Charter Lane; an accident at the top of Strathe Hill had slowed traffic to a crawl, and the traffic lights were out at the bottom of the hill. Not the way he’d hoped to start the day after spending the previous one standing in for Alcott, still off with the flu, at yet another of Chief Superintendent Brock’s interminable meetings. He’d heaved a mental sigh of relief when the meeting concluded at three o’clock – still time to do a little work – but Brock had asked him to stay behind to discuss the case.

  Discussion was hardly the word. Brock had been hell-bent on setting up a special task force to take over the investigation, and it had taken Paget the best part of an hour to try to dissuade him. He’d finally succeeded, but he knew that Brock wouldn’t let the matter rest for long if he couldn’t be shown results.

  ‘Morning, boss,’ Tregalles greeted him when Paget entered the incident room. He looked remarkably cheerful, considering as Paget could see at a glance, there was nothing new on the whiteboards. Even Ormside looked slightly less dour than usual as he acknowledged Paget’s entrance with a nod.

  ‘All right, Tregalles,’ he said, ‘what’s happened?’

  The sergeant grinned broadly. ‘Must be your birthday, boss,’ he said. ‘Got a present for you.’ The grin faded. Clearly Paget was in no mood for games. ‘Trevor Ballantyne,’ he said soberly. ‘He’s in room number 1. Came in first thing this morning to say he wanted to make a correction to his statement about the night of the murder, but he wouldn’t say any more until you got here. Could be the break we’ve been looking for.’

  ‘Sounds promising,’ said Paget cautiously, ‘so let’s see what he has to say.’ He started for the door, then paused in mid-stride. ‘Where’s Forsythe?’ h
e asked Ormside as he scanned the room.

  ‘Next door picking up faxes,’ the sergeant told him.

  ‘Send her along as soon as she gets back,’ Paget told him. ‘I’d like her to hear what Ballantyne has to say as well.’

  Tregalles didn’t say anything as he followed Paget out, but he couldn’t help wondering why the boss had been taking so much interest in Molly Forsythe lately. Not that she wasn’t worth taking an interest in, he thought. Good-looking woman like that, and smart. And clearly she’d caught Paget’s eye. Could that be the reason for . . .? He gave his head a mental shake. No, couldn’t be, he told himself. Not Paget, not with someone like Grace Lovett living with him. On the other hand, you could never tell when something like that might happen. Tregalles had seen it before – office romances springing up between the most unlikely people working closely together. And even DCIs were human.

  Trevor Ballantyne looked as if he hadn’t slept for days. He was neatly dressed and clean-shaven, but his face was grey, and there were dark hollows under his eyes.

  Paget and Tregalles faced him across the table, while Molly Forsythe sat near the door. ‘Now, then, Mr Ballantyne,’ said Paget, ‘exactly what is it you wish to tell us?’

  Ballantyne ran his tongue across his lips to moisten them. ‘I know I should have told you before,’ he began hesitantly, ‘and I’m sorry, but I didn’t see any harm in it at the time. But with Moira under suspicion, and the way things look, I decided I had to speak up and set the record straight so to speak. I don’t know who killed Laura, but I do know who had the opportunity, and perhaps a motive, and in a way I was part of it – although I didn’t know it at the time, of course,’ he added hastily.

  ‘A name . . .?’ Paget prompted.

  Ballantyne drew a deep breath. ‘Simon,’ he said. ‘I’m not saying he did it,’ he went on quickly, ‘but he wasn’t where he said he was, and with the way things were with the marriage, it could have been him. But I do know that Moira had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘You’re saying you lied when you told us Simon was with you that evening? Is that correct, Mr Ballantyne?’

  He nodded. ‘And I’m sorry. I know it’s a crime to mislead the police but, as I said, I couldn’t believe it at first, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.’

  Ballantyne went on to tell them that he had picked up Simon Holbrook shortly before seven o’clock as he’d originally stated, but they had only gone a short distance before Simon said he was sorry, but Susan Chase had telephoned just before he left the house to ask if he could help her with a problem she had with the shop’s security system. It wasn’t working properly, and she was nervous about leaving it overnight, so Simon said he’d come over and see what he could do. But he’d made it clear that he didn’t want Laura to know, because she might get the wrong idea, so he’d asked Trevor to say that they’d been together all evening if the subject should ever come up.

  ‘I dropped him off at the shop,’ Ballantyne explained, ‘and picked him up on my way back. I was going to drop him off then go on home, but he invited me in for a nightcap – a sort of thank you for going along with him, I thought at the time – so I went in.

  ‘Because it was all fiction, of course,’ he continued. ‘We both knew it; I mean I knew that he and Susan had been seeing each other on the quiet for months, but I didn’t see any real harm in it. Simon hadn’t said anything, at least not in so many words, but you could see that things were beginning to go pear-shaped with their marriage, so I wasn’t exactly surprised when Simon asked me to drop him off.’

  He paused, frowning as if something was puzzling him. ‘Except he seemed to be more on edge than usual that night,’ he said slowly. ‘Mind you, he’s a funny chap at the best of times, up one minute, down the next. It’s tension. When it’s really bad it makes him ill, and I knew he was worried about the situation at home, so I left it. You wouldn’t think it to look at him, but he suffers from depression, and he only gets more upset if you try to talk to him about it.’

  Paget said, ‘What did you mean when you said you knew he was worried about the situation at home? What situation, exactly?’

  ‘Just the way things had changed,’ said Ballantyne. ‘Less than a year ago he couldn’t stop talking about how wonderful Laura was, and how she had saved the company, and how bright the future was. And he was right; the woman is brilliant – or was, of course, but I haven’t heard him utter one good word about her in recent months. Not one!’

  ‘So what brought about the change?’ asked Paget.

  ‘Laura’s attitude, mostly. The business was all she thought about; she couldn’t talk about anything else, and she was constantly putting Simon down. Like he told me himself a couple of weeks ago. He said, “She isn’t interested in me at all. All she ever wanted was the company. I mean without me and my ideas there wouldn’t be any –”’ Ballantyne glanced at Molly, and decided to leave out the actual words that Holbrook had used, and said instead – ‘“friggin company”. He said she was overruling him at work, putting him down in front of others, and it was just as bad at home.’

  Ballantyne shook his head sadly. ‘We’ve noticed the change in them ourselves,’ he continued. ‘Moira and I have talked about it. Simon’s been trying to put a brave face on it, but we’ve noticed it at the club. Just the odd word now and again, but Laura could really put the knife in when she wanted to, and she was so good at it that you hardly knew she’d done it until you thought about it later.’

  ‘What did you mean when you said it was just as bad at home?’ Paget asked. ‘Did Mr Holbrook elaborate?’

  ‘Sex,’ said Ballantyne, lowering his voice. ‘He told me that he and Laura hadn’t had sex in months, and that must have been the last straw for poor old Simon. I felt sorry for him, I really did, which was why I was willing to go along with him that night when he gave me that cock-and-bull story about Susan’s security system. Funny, though, when you think about it, isn’t it? I mean him and Susan after he left her for Laura. Mind you, it was Laura who did the running, but Simon was as much to blame, so I’m still amazed that Susan would have anything to do with either of them. But she took it all in her stride the way she does with everything else.’ He frowned. ‘If it were anyone else but Susan, I’d be tempted to think she could be doing it for revenge – taking Simon back from her sister, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘You and Simon Holbrook must go back a few years,’ Tregalles said. ‘How long have you known each other?’

  ‘On and off ever since our schooldays,’ he said. ‘Not that we ever chummed around together or anything like that. He was a couple of years ahead of me, and that’s a lot when you’re kids. And then, of course, we went our separate ways: university, jobs that took us in different directions, and it was only when Simon came back to Broadminster to set up his business here that we came into contact again. Even then we didn’t really get together until we met through the badminton club.’

  ‘Your wife mentioned that you also knew the Chase sisters during those early years,’ said Paget.

  ‘Right, I did. At school. In fact Laura and I were in the same form for a while. Susan was a year ahead of her sister to start with, but Laura went into an accelerated programme, which meant that she and Susan ended up in the sixth form at the same time. And it didn’t matter what Susan did, Laura always had to do the same or go one better. The two girls were as different as chalk and cheese. Laura was always looking for a challenge; she always had to be best; top of the class, but Susan wasn’t like that at all. She was a good student, mark you; always well up there near the top, but she wasn’t interested in competing with her sister, and I think that used to annoy Laura more than anything – that Susan didn’t respond when she was challenged, I mean.

  ‘Lovely girl, Susan,’ Ballantyne continued wistfully. ‘She really didn’t deserve to have a sister like Laura always nipping at her heels. She would have made someone a wonderful wife, but it wasn’t to be. She never married. Not that she didn’t hav
e the chance.’ The way he said it made Paget wonder if Ballantyne had had hopes in that direction himself back then.

  ‘Funny,’ Ballantyne continued, frowning, ‘I haven’t thought of it for years, but the only time I ever saw Susan get really upset, was because of something Laura did to her. Laura treated it as a huge joke, but it was anything but a joke to Susan. She put on a brave face, but I’m sure she could have killed her . . .’

  Ballantyne stopped abruptly. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Just a figure of speech. Didn’t mean to run on like that. It’s just that I hadn’t thought about some of those things in years.’

  ‘What exactly was it that Laura did?’ Tregalles asked.

  Ballantyne looked uncomfortable. ‘It’s all in the past,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t mean anything now. I’m afraid I got off track.’

  ‘Nevertheless, we would like to hear it,’ said Paget, taking the lead again.

  ‘It was just a figure of speech,’ Ballantyne said. ‘I didn’t mean . . .’ He looked from one to the other as if expecting a response, but when no one spoke, he sat back in his chair and shrugged in a way that said he thought it was a waste of time.

  ‘Susan would have been about eighteen at the time,’ he said. ‘She was going with a chap a couple of years older than she was, and things were beginning to get pretty serious when Laura moved in on him and took him away from her. Laura dumped him later, but the damage was done. As I said, she treated it as a big joke at the time, but it wasn’t a joke to Susan. And then, along comes Laura again some seventeen or eighteen years later, and damned if she doesn’t do it again with Simon.’

  Ballantyne saw the look that passed between the two detectives. ‘Look,’ he said earnestly, ‘if it had been anyone else but Susan, maybe they would have reacted differently, maybe even violently, but not Susan. She’s not like that. In fact I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like Susan.’

  ‘Except Laura,’ Paget observed drily. ‘But let’s get back to the night Laura was killed. Did you see Simon actually go into the shop?’