Fair Game

by Sheila Radley

  If she were brave enough, though, it would not only stop the shoot but also shame Will and his father. And make her mother sorry she’d slapped her, into the bargain.

  Chapter Four

  Shooting was on Detective Chief Inspector Quantrill’s mind that day too, though in relation to people rather than pheasants.

  Douglas Quantrill, head of Breckham Market divisional CID, detested shotguns. Although he was Suffolk born and bred, his agricultural forebears were labourers, not landowners. He didn’t doubt that they would have poached rabbits for the pot, but they’d have done it with snares or ferrets, not guns. He himself had never fired a shotgun, and didn’t intend to. He’d been obliged to do rifle and bayonet training during his two years’National Service, and that had put him off weapons for life.

  What he disliked most about shotguns was the terrible damage they inflict at close quarters. A 12-bore, fired from a distance of ten feet, will cut a fence post in half. Fired from that distance at a human being – deliberately or by accident, the result is equally horrendous – it will blow a hole in the victim about eight inches across.

  As he drove home through the rainwashed dark, Quantrill brooded over the alarming availability of shotguns in rural Suffolk. According to statistics, they average out at about one for every third household. And that’s just the legally owned ones.

  Despite a continuing police campaign to persuade owners to keep all guns in locked steel cabinets, he knew there were still far too many rural houses where shotguns were left hanging on beams or propped in corners. Anyone who had a mind to embark on armed crime would find it easy enough to get hold of a gun.

  Worse, their availability meant that shotguns were used in many of the domestic murders in the county. That was what was on Quantrill’s mind that evening, because he’d just visited the scene of the second such shooting in the division in recent months. Shotgun murders are, literally, bloody awful. He was longing for a shower and a change of clothes, and a large drink to take away the taste of violent death.

  One of the tragedies of domestic murder is that so many of them have similar ingredients. It was all too common, in his job, to attend an incident where the relationship had obviously been in such a state of stress that a violent ending had become almost inevitable. Family, and friends and neighbours, must have seen it coming.

  When the man was jealously possessive, the woman was seeking company or affection elsewhere, and threats were known to have been issued, there was bound to be an ugly conclusion. And if the man owned a shotgun, it was odds-on that he would either attempt or commit murder.

  (That was how it had been with today’s incident. Afterwards, the husband had mumbled that he kept the gun in the house because he liked to go out after the odd rabbit. He hadn’t intended to kill his wife, of course not. He loved her. He loved her so much that he just couldn’t take any more. If he couldn’t have her, no one else was going to; and so on. Another characteristic of domestic murder, in Quantrill’s experience, was that most men who commit it say much the same thing by way of explanation.)

  Quantrill was not himself a possessive husband, and he found it impossible to imagine what the condition must be like. According to his sergeant, Hilary Lloyd, who was in charge of the current investigation, it probably resulted from emotional insecurity.

  If she was right – and he had such high regard for her judgement that he had no reason to doubt it – then it explained why such men were drawn to shotguns: not to have a go at rabbits or whatever, that was just an excuse, but to bolster their own egos. And an emotionally insecure man was the last person who ought to be in charge of such a dangerous weapon as a shotgun.

  Mulling it over, as he peered ahead through the clacking windscreen wipers, Quantrill realised why he’d been having a niggling personal worry all afternoon.

  He dearly loved his younger daughter Alison, and couldn’t bear to think of her being involved with a man who was emotionally insecure. But how do you tell? If insecure men are drawn to shotguns, does it follow that men who like shooting make risky partners?

  He wasn’t querying the stability of real countrymen, of course. For farmers and gamekeepers and landowners, shooting is a way of life. But he couldn’t feel the same about gun-happy policemen. Surely no sane detective, who had seen for himself what shotguns do to people, would ever want to handle such a gun for pleasure?

  Incredible as it was, though, he knew one of them who did. Alison knew him too, and much too well for her father’s peace of mind. It was bad enough to be aware that she was living with the undeserving prat, without the worry of knowing that he’d just taken up shooting as a hobby.

  But the thought of Alison always had the power to give Quantrill’s spirits an instant lift. As he turned off Mount Street, swished over the mess of fallen leaves that carpeted Bramley Road and eased his large Rover through his gateway, he was heartened to think that he would soon be seeing her. She was coming home – alone, thank God – for supper, and staying the weekend, and he was looking forward to it more than he would admit. It seemed an age since they’d been able to spend any time together, and there was so much he wanted to talk to her about.

  To begin with, there was the news that had left him speechless when he was told it this morning. Promotion to Detective Superintendent … He could hardly take it in.

  Alison would be delighted, of course. So would her mother, there was no doubt about that. But for himself, Quantrill knew that it wasn’t going to be easy, after all these years, to come to terms with the new situation.

  ‘Promoted!’ Molly’s voice rose in a squeak of joy. ‘Oh, how marvellous! Does that mean a new job?’

  ‘Deputy head of the county CID.’

  ‘Oh, Douggie – isn’t that wonderful?’

  ‘Terrific,’ said her husband, a fraction sour. He hated being called Douggie. But excitement suited Molly, pinking her full cheeks (the ‘just-one-bite-can’t-hurt’phase of her dieting cycle had come round again) and making her look plumply pretty. He wished, though, that she’d left her hair a softly fading brown, rather than experimenting with that unlikely chestnut colour.

  ‘Detective Superintendent …’ she breathed, bright-eyed. ‘Oh, I’m so pleased! And you are too, aren’t you, Douggie? Do say you’re pleased –’

  ‘Of course I am.’

  He had already put the murder out of his mind, and now he tried to do the same with promotion. Sitting in front of the log fire in the comfortable living-room of their bungalow, with a reviving mug of beer in his hand, he was waiting for Alison’s arrival. And for his supper. He sniffed the air hopefully, but could smell nothing cooking.

  Douglas Quantrill was a typical husband of his background and generation, perfectly capable in his own opinion of fending for himself, but too good a tactician to let on to his wife. He quite liked having an occasional forage in the kitchen, but only when she wasn’t there to interfere. Once, when Molly had gone out for the evening, he had offered to initiate his son Peter into the art of cooking a man-sized mixed grill, or at least a bacon butty; but all the idle youth had ever wanted to learn was how to microwave a frozen pizza to eat on the hoof.

  Thankfully, Molly had never been an adventurous cook. Douglas was a plain meat-and-two-veg man, and conscious of his good fortune in having a wife who didn’t want to contaminate honest English food with olive oil and garlic. But now that she was working full-time as a receptionist at Breckham Market health centre, Molly often came home via the new Sainsbury’s superstore bringing something quick and easy for supper, and Quantrill had learned to be suspicious of these ready-prepared meals. Even when they sounded English, they’d invariably been mucked about.

  Tonight, he had hoped that Molly would produce something home-made in Alison’s honour. In the absence of any cooking smell, though, it seemed more likely that his wife had brought what she called a ‘special’ into the house. Sighing, he braced himself for some kind of herby foreign pap that would probably leave him burping for the rest of
the evening. Sainsbury’s, he thought darkly, had a lot to answer for.

  But he wasn’t going to make a fuss about it. A couple of years ago – before his son had nearly been killed in a motor-bike accident – he would have objected strongly to being given foreign grub; but now he’d mellowed a bit. Much as he liked the steak and kidney pie that Molly used to make, he knew better than to hanker after it. What he’d learned from the family’s near-tragedy was that hankering after anything – or anyone – unattainable was a waste of time and spirit.

  One thing he could honestly say he’d never hankered after, though, was promotion to superintendent. He hadn’t expected or applied for it. It had taken him twenty years’hard slog to reach his present rank, and that suited him well enough.

  He liked being in charge of his own divisional CID. His patch was big enough to give him plenty of elbow room, but not so large that he didn’t have a fair idea of what was going on in every far-flung village. He liked living at the centre of things in Breckham Market, and he particularly liked his roomy bungalow with its big garden. In fact – apart from his worries about Alison’s relationship – he was very nearly happy.

  Certainly he was as happy here as he was ever likely to be, and the thought of advancement had never entered his head. Which was just as well, considering that he wasn’t the one who was being promoted. The man who was going to become a superintendent, and deputy head of the county CID, was his colleague from the neighbouring division, Detective Chief Inspector Martin Tait.

  ‘Oh, won’t Alison be thrilled?’ said Molly eagerly as she bustled about setting the table.

  She didn’t expect or want any domestic help from her husband. Douglas’s idea of help was always more trouble than it was worth, and though she sometimes suspected that his ham-fistedness was deliberate, she much preferred him to keep out of her way. Besides, now that a Sainsbury’s was sited in Breckham Market, catering for her family had become so much simpler.

  She had bought cannelloni for supper, and for Alison’s benefit she was going to serve it with a green salad and a bottled vinaigrette dressing, deceitfully decanted into a jug. Douglas wouldn’t like any of it, but at least he wouldn’t make a fuss in front of their daughter. He could always fill up with biscuits and cheese.

  ‘I do wish Martin could have come with her this evening,’ she went on as she dusted two wineglasses. It was no use expecting her husband to drink anything with a meal except beer. ‘Then we could have had a family celebration.’

  ‘Family?’ said Quantrill irritably. ‘I’m damned if I’ll include Martin Tait in the family when all he’s doing is taking advantage of Alison.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be stubborn and out of date! Anyway, I’m sure they’ll be getting married before very long.’

  Molly didn’t feel quite as confident as she sounded. Martin was undoubtedly a good catch, charming, well-mannered and with brilliant prospects. It had disappointed her that Alison sometimes seemed very cool towards him, but Molly had kept on hoping for a conventional engagement and a full-scale wedding.

  (She could see it all: Alison, dark-haired and green-eyed like her father, in ivory silk; herself in dusky pink with a wide-brimmed navy hat; Peter, her favourite, so unprecedentedly co-operative that he was actually wearing a suit and a tie; and Douglas – tall and still very handsome, she thought, despite some extra weight and the thick salting of grey in his hair – resplendent in hired morning suit and grey top hat.)

  It had really hurt Molly when Alison had mentioned during a telephone conversation that she and Martin were already living together. It seemed, somehow, so shabby; not at all what Molly had been brought up to consider right and proper. Unlike her husband, though, she had become reconciled to it. So many of her friends’children also lived or had lived with partners that it was almost customary.

  What did it matter, she told herself, as long as Alison and Martin eventually had a wedding of some kind? But they’d been together for almost a year now, and there was still no hint of it.

  ‘When Alison comes to her senses I doubt she’ll be marrying him at all,’ pronounced Quantrill, though he wasn’t as confident as he sounded, either. ‘With any luck she’s coming to tell us she’s left him.’

  Molly was exasperated. ‘Why do you always have such a down on Martin?’

  ‘Because he’s not good enough for her, that’s why.’

  ‘How can you say that, when he’s done so well in his career!’ She looked scornfully at her husband. ‘Ah, that’s what’s the trouble, isn’t it? When Martin first came to Breckham Market he was only your sergeant. Now he’s being promoted to superintendent, he’ll out-rank you. You’re jealous of him, Douglas Quantrill!’

  ‘I’m nothing of the sort.’ Smarting, he marched out to the kitchen, poured himself a beer and contemplated the indignity of the situation.

  He’d never liked Martin Tait anyway. The man was arrogant, calculating, brashly self-confident. Tait had joined the police on what Quantrill considered a misguided training scheme that guaranteed accelerated promotion to university graduates. When he first came to Breckham Market as Quantrill’s sergeant he hadn’t known enough about rural policing to keep his feet dry, but he’d made no secret of his ambition to reach the rank of chief constable in record time.

  Whereas Quantrill, with no educational qualifications, had come up the hard way, it had taken Tait only six years to reach the same rank. Quantrill had always been prepared to acknowledge that Tait was a good detective, but he found it hard to accept that the man was now mature enough to become deputy head of the county CID; even harder to think of him as his future boss.

  And then there was this unsuitable relationship between Tait and his daughter. It had been on-off for years, and Quantrill had kept hoping that it would stay off. Quite apart from his professional resentment of Tait, he didn’t consider him personally reliable. More than once, during the years they’d worked together, he’d put a mental question mark against the man on account of his attitude or behaviour.

  It was absolutely typical of Tait to expect to live with Alison without marrying her. (‘Having his cake and eating it,’ Quantrill had thought; resentful again, because that was something he hadn’t been allowed to get away with when he was young.) But it was on his daughter’s behalf that he objected to it, even though Alison had laughed affectionately and assured him that she wasn’t being ‘taken advantage of’. It was Martin who’d wanted to marry, she said, and she was the one who preferred to keep her independence.

  But Quantrill wasn’t reassured. Did that mean, he wondered, that Tait was possessive? And was that brash over-confidence merely a smokescreen to conceal some deep emotional insecurity?

  ‘It’s not his professional ability I’m talking about,’ he told his wife crossly, ‘it’s his character. His background’s unsatisfactory, for a start.’

  ‘For goodness’ sake – his grandfather was a solicitor in Woodbridge, and Martin went to Framlingham College and Sussex University. What more do you want?’

  ‘A more stable family history, that’s what. I learned about it when we were working on the Fodderstone case. Do you know that his grandmother spent her last years in a private mental hospital? And that his aunt killed herself? And that his father was an irresponsible charmer who gambled away everything he could lay his hands on, and died leaving his widow and young son penniless? If that’s the kind of family you want our daughter to marry into, I certainly don’t.’

  Molly sat down, shaken. ‘I didn’t know about his father,’ she said slowly. ‘Nor about his aunt – though Alison did tell me how fond of her he was, and how her death upset him.’

  Her frown cleared: ‘But I do know about his poor old grandmother, Martin told me that himself. She was ninety when she died, and she’d been suffering from senile dementia. That’s a very distressing way to go – I’ve seen some of our health centre patients in the early stages of the disease, and it’s dreadful for them and their families. But it’s not hereditary. There’s abs
olutely no reason why it should stop Alison from marrying Martin.’

  Unwilling to burden his wife with his real worries, Quantrill took refuge in pig-headedness. ‘Well, I hope to God she doesn’t, that’s all.’

  ‘… and so we’ve decided that we’ll celebrate Martin’s promotion by getting married. We’re going to buy a house in Yarchester, settle down and think about starting a family. There, Mum! That’s what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, Alison … I’m so pleased, dear …’

  Molly was shedding tears, presumably of joy. They were not a demonstrative family and Quantrill sat watching, heavy-hearted, as mother and daughter exchanged unaccustomed kisses. But Molly quickly extricated herself: ‘And your father’s pleased too,’ she said pointedly as she wiped her shining eyes. ‘Aren’t you, Douggie?’

  At least it gave him an excuse to abandon the mush on his plate. ‘Course I am,’ he said, falsely hearty. He got up to kiss Alison sedately on the cheek, but she met him with such a loving hug that for a moment he felt quite choked.

  ‘Don’t be such an old worrier, Dad,’ she whispered. ‘Everything will be fine, really.’

  ‘Take no notice of your father,’ said Molly as he sat down again, embarrassed. ‘He’s jealous of Martin’s promotion, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s not true, Mum, and you know it! Anyway, Martin has a tremendous respect for Dad – and quite right too. He’s sorry about this evening, but may he come to supper on Saturday? He wants to do things properly and ask Dad’s permission to marry me.’

  Quantrill snorted. ‘He’s left it a bit late, hasn’t he?’ he said sourly, reaching for the cheese.

  ‘Do give him a bit of credit for trying,’ coaxed Alison. ‘I know things were different in your day. But can’t you see that it’s better to know each other thoroughly first, instead of going into marriage all starry-eyed and innocent?’