Do you know if there’s anyone who might have a grudge against your sister?
Wilkes stared at him, his bloodshot eyes ringed with dark, puffy skin, his forehead deeply furrowed. ‘If there’s anyone? You must be joking.’ He moved away, and busied himself with his cooking.
Quantrill took out one of his personal cards with the address and telephone number of Breckham Market divisional police headquarters, crossed out his own rank and name and substituted that of Detective Sergeant Hilary Lloyd. He touched Harold Wilkes’s arm and gave him the card, indicating that it was Hilary who was in the next room with his sister. Wilkes’s frown immediately lightened.
Quantrill gave him a friendly smile. ‘Miss Lloyd is a very nice young woman,’ he enunciated. It was not a matter on which he had, as yet, formed his own opinion, but other people had said so and he wanted to give Wilkes some encouragement. He pointed to the telephone number. ‘If you’d like to talk to her, just ring –’
He stopped, cursing himself for his clumsiness. He’d despised Angela Arrowsmith for her inability to understand her brother’s handicap, but now he was being equally inconsiderate. It was so difficult to imagine how comprehensive a disability deafness was, how much of normal everyday life the deaf were cut off from.
He shifted his pointing finger. ‘Just call at this address. Or write to her, and she’ll come to see you in private.’ Both suggestions were unsatisfactory: he didn’t know whether Wilkes could drive, and there was no public transport apart from the weekly market-day bus; and members of the public were invariably more reluctant to write to the police than to call at the station or telephone.
But at least Wilkes understood. He nodded, and from the look on his face as he tucked the card carefully into his shirt pocket, it was evident that he’d gladly go out of his way to see Hilary Lloyd again.
Quantrill left the room feeling that although his attempt to obtain information from Simon Arrowsmith and the boy had ended in frustration, something might eventually emerge from a meeting between the deaf man and Sergeant Lloyd. But then it occurred to him that Harold Wilkes’s eagerness to keep in touch with the woman detective didn’t necessarily mean that he had any information to give her. She would probably spend hours of valuable police time on the man, only to discover that he wanted to see her merely because he found her attractive.
It was, Quantrill thought with gloom, just as he’d first suspected: a female sergeant was bound to be a liability.
A female sergeant was definitely not of the right sex to encourage a man’s woman like Angela Arrowsmith to talk. The job had fallen to Hilary only because she had known her in Yarchester. Studying Angela, while Quantrill was still in the room, Hilary had decided that she was so much on the defensive, so suspicious that another woman might be trying to put her down, that the only possible approach to her would be by way of open admiration.
Angela was obviously proud of the décor of her unused room, and the woman detective’s comments on it when they were alone together began to disarm her. Hilary went on to compliment her on the cut of her black dress; Angela, who never let slip an opportunity for earning commission, explained that she was a mail-order agent.
‘I could find a really smart dress for you,’ she said, glancing her disapproval of Hilary’s casual clothes. ‘I’ll show you a catalogue – but it had better be a one-off order, cash down, I can’t take on any new credit customers at this stage. I‘m planning to give up the mail-order business and open a restaurant, with Harold as chef.’
‘That sounds exciting,’ said Hilary, who thought it more interesting than exciting; her primary interest was in the fact that Angela had apparently forgotten the morning’s unpleasantness completely. ‘But is your brother-in-law fit enough for regular work?’
‘He’s all right, apart from his headaches. It’ll do him good to get out of the house more, and I’ll take on an assistant to help him. I had a look round a few days ago and found a perfect property I can rent. It used to be a restaurant, but the previous owners had no flair. They didn’t make a success of it, and it’s been empty for months. It’s very dreary inside, it’ll have to be completely redecorated and carpeted, and the kitchen needs re-equipping. But it’s exactly the size I want. It’ll seat over a hundred diners, and still leave room for a bar, and a small stage for the cabaret –’
Angela’s eyes were shining with visionary commercial fervour. Incredulous, Hilary managed to force her facial muscles into an angle of approval and applause.
‘Really exciting … Whereabouts in Yarchester is this?’ she asked, knowing that the city was amply provided with restaurants of every size and ethnic variety, as well as hotels, pubs, discos, dance halls and night clubs. An amateur owner with a handicapped chef wouldn’t survive for more than a couple of months – unless of course she had some influential backing. Perhaps Angela’s old contacts were setting her up in a restaurant to provide them with a front for their activities? But if that were so, she’d hardly tell a policewoman about it … unless she’d either forgotten Hilary’s job, or didn’t realise that her friends from the Black Bull were making use of her.
‘It’s not in Yarchester,’ said Angela, ‘there’s too much competition, and the rents are too high. The restaurant’s in Breckham Market, in Bridge Street. The town’s half-dead in the evenings, there’s absolutely nowhere for swingers in the twenty-five to forty-five age group to go, and they’re the ones with the money. A good restaurant and night spot will be a winner.’
Hilary said nothing. The scheme was so crazy that she couldn’t believe that Angela Arrowsmith was being serious.
She had visited Breckham Market on several occasions, though she couldn’t as yet claim to know the town well. But what she had learned from Wpc Patsy Hopkins was that, apart from a few well-known layabouts, drunks, vandals and petty villains, the inhabitants of the old town and of the surrounding villages were publicly staid. Suffolk people were not – never had been, even before the expression became outdated – swingers. The Rugby Club dinner and the Civic Ball were the liveliest events in Breckham’s social calendar. Anyone who wanted to kick over the traces preferred to go to Yarchester, and do it in anonymity.
The inhabitants of the new town, on the far side of the by-pass, were a good deal less inhibited. They had moved out of London en masse in the nineteen-sixties, lured by new houses and jobs, and they almost certainly thought, as Angela did, that Breckham Market was half-dead. In more affluent times they might have lived up to the image that she still had of them.
But market research – or even an intelligent reading of the newspapers – was evidently not Angela’s strong point. She seemed not to know that money had become short. Many of the factories on the industrial estate had been put out of business in the recession; there was considerable unemployment in the new town, with the threat of more to come. Those who were still lucky enough to be in work were unlikely, Hilary imagined, to become regular customers of a large restaurant club.
‘How many did you say it will seat?’ she asked, so horrified that she forgot, for the moment, the purpose of the interview.
‘A hundred and twenty, at least.’ Angela noticed Hilary’s expression, and laughed. ‘Oh, I shan’t be relying for custom on passers-by. Publicity and advertising, that’s what it’s all about. That’s how my brother-in-law built up his business – Ross Arrowsmith, you know, the man who’s made a fortune out of computers and things. He had a double-page advertising feature in the East Anglian Daily Press at the beginning of this year, when his company moved into the Old Maltings, and that’s what I shall have when I open my restaurant. That’ll be in November, just in time for the Christmas season. I shall give a pre-opening reception for the press and travel agents and local businessmen, and that’ll bring in block bookings for coach parties and office parties …’
Angela Arrowsmith was completely, almost alarmingly, obsessed by her scheme; Hilary could see it in her eyes, hear it in her voice. Either the woman was a fantasist, or she had
a backer who had reasons of his own for being prepared to invest a considerable sum of money in an overambitious venture that hadn’t a hope of commercial success.
‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ the detective sergeant asked suddenly.
Brought back to reality, Angela blinked her enamelled eyelids. ‘Should I?’
‘The Black Bull, Yarchester, about five years ago. I was in uniform, you were behind the bar. That’s why I wondered whether you were going back to Yarchester to open your restaurant. Making use of your old contacts, perhaps?’
Angela Arrowsmith attempted to bayonet her with a look. ‘You bitch!’ she said furiously. She unleashed the vocabulary that she had been restraining in keeping with her respectably-married image, and told Sergeant Lloyd exactly what she thought of her. Hilary, who felt wryly that she probably deserved the earful, finished her coffee while she waited for the verbal offensive to slacken.
‘I’ve had no connection with anybody from the Bull for years,’ Angela asserted eventually. ‘I’ve always been straight, and my restaurant will be strictly legitimate.’
‘Of course. You wouldn’t have told me about it otherwise, would you? But aren’t you taking a terrible risk, in the present state of the economy? It certainly isn’t anything I’d want to invest in, even if I had the money.’
‘Nobody’s asking you to. I’m not a penniless divorcee any more, you know, I own half this house, and a car, and I’ve got access to other money. And as soon as the restaurant gets started, the takings will roll in.’
‘Where’s this “other money” coming from?’
‘That’s none of your business. And don’t think you can start raising police objections when I apply for a liquor licence, because you’ve got absolutely nothing against me.’
‘But someone has. A very nasty threat was paint-sprayed on your door this morning,’ Hilary reminded her. ‘Who did that?’
‘How the hell do I know? Isn’t that what you’re paid for, to find out?’
‘I’ve already found out that you’re no longer frightened. You’ve practically forgotten the incident, haven’t you? So I think you know perfectly well who did it. You say it was no one from your past; a member of your family, then?’
Angela denied that vigorously. Having persuaded Simon to help her raise the money to open her restaurant, and intending, as soon as the police went, to talk Harold into working as her chef, she didn’t want either of them hassled by further questioning. Above all, she didn’t want the police to find out about Len Pratt.
And then Angela had a brilliant idea. Not only would it keep the police away from Simon, Harold and Len; it would also settle more than one old score.
She sighed, as if capitulating out of weariness, and protested that it would be unfair to name someone when she had no proof of his involvement. She could be wrong, and if he found out that she’d accused him falsely …
Sergeant Lloyd assured her that the source of the information would not be revealed.
‘Well, then –’
Angela hesitated, realising that the false trail wouldn’t do more than buy her a little time. The police would probably soon be back. But they were supposed to be overworked, and with the mystery of that headless body in the layby still to solve, they wouldn’t want to spend too long over something they’d said they didn’t class as a crime.
Meanwhile, she could enjoy the thought that they were questioning that pig of a man who’d looked at her as though she were dirt when she’d suggested a mutually beneficial business discussion over dinner. It would also serve him right for being too mean to give her the financial backing she’d wanted for a beauty salon. And it would pay him back, too, for the trouble and inconvenience she’d been caused by having her mail-order business correspondence so often misdelivered to his offices.
‘Well … it could be Ross. Ross Arrowsmith, my brother-in-law. He fancies me. He wanted me to go out to dinner with him a few months ago. I wouldn’t, of course, and I think he’s been trying to find a way of punishing me for it ever since.’
‘But where’s the connection with what happened this morning?’
‘Ross was jogging on the common, just about at that time. I looked out of my bedroom window, on my way back to bed after letting Princess out, and saw him.’
‘It was a very misty morning. Are you sure it was him?’
‘I couldn’t see very well, but I’m almost sure. He jogs round the common most mornings. Not that I’m accusing him, of course. I’m not making a complaint, there’s no point. I’m just telling you.’
Hilary thanked her for the information. She half-disbelieved the woman – the Angela she had known in Yarchester would never have turned down any kind of invitation from a wealthy man – but she didn’t want to do her an injustice. It wasn’t impossible that Angela had changed her habits when she remarried.
It wasn’t impossible, either, that her plans for the restaurant were, as she’d protested, strictly legitimate. But if so, she was almost certainly heading for financial trouble.
Hilary had occasionally had to deal with people who had taken to crime – theft or handling or fraud or arson – as a direct result of the failure of injudicious business ventures. She had also seen the broken homes and ruined lives that were all too often the indirect result of business failure. As she rose to go she offered a word of caution, not so much for Angela’s own sake – she was a woman who would always look after herself – but for the sake of her hapless family.
‘Look,’ Hilary said, ‘if you’re really serious about this restaurant –’
‘Of course I’m serious.’
‘Then I expect you’ve already taken professional advice – or you will be taking it, before you commit yourself to anything. It sounds an exciting idea, but if it were mine I’d want to discuss it with a solicitor or an accountant first. There are stories almost every week in the local papers of people who come to grief through starting up in business too hurriedly.’
Angela’s thin mouth became lipless. She glared at Sergeant Lloyd. ‘You snob!’ she said with passion. ‘You patronising bloody snob, trying to tell me how to run my life! What do you know about business, copper?’
Departing with another earful of invective, Hilary was blundered into on the front doorstep by an anxious Simon Arrowsmith. One hand clutched his pipe, the other clutched heavily at her arm.
‘Oh, Miss Lloyd – will you please use your influence with the Chief Inspector? After your first visit this morning you left a policeman outside the house, to protect my wife. Now Mr Quantrill has sent him away, leaving Angela completely unprotected. Can you change his mind, please?’
‘Sorry,’ said Hilary. ‘He carries the rank, so he makes the decisions.’
‘But you’re a woman. Surely you can persuade him?’
‘Sorry,’ she repeated. ‘I happen to agree with this particular decision, you see. If your wife’s no longer worried – and she isn’t, you know – there’s really no need for you to worry on her behalf. I’m sure she isn’t in any danger.’
She could hardly point out to the man that from what she had seen of his relationship with his wife, he was the one who was most in need of protection.
Chapter Eight
1.15 p.m., and the sun was hot on the tables and benches that stood on the gravelled forecourt of the Cross Keys, which overlooked the common from the Upper Wickford side. It wasn’t a pub that Quantrill liked. The beer was carbonated, the volume product of a giant brewery combine rather than traditional Suffolk ale, and the old brick building had been prettified inside with fake horse brasses, and outside with windowboxes sprouting plastic roses. If he’d been on his own, Quantrill would have gone elsewhere. But it made a convenient stopping place for a quick lunch, and as the other outside tables were empty he could say what he had to say to his new sergeant without being overheard.
Hoping for granary bread, sharp cheese and crisp pickled onions, he ordered what the blackboard menu described as a Ploughman’s Platter. W
hat arrived on the platter was a chunk of steam-baked French loaf, with papery crust and cottonwool crumb, a slice of flabby processed cheese and a spoonful of sweet chutney, the whole decorated with a few bits of limp lettuce and a quarter of underripe tomato. The sight did nothing to improve his humour.
‘Well, that’s a morning wasted,’ he said. ‘And right in the middle of a murder enquiry, too.’
He slapped butter on a piece of bread, cheese on the butter and chutney on the soapy cheese. Hilary Lloyd made no move to start her own meal. She sat on the wooden bench with her face turned to the sun, soaking up its warmth and saying nothing. She wanted time to think, to untangle the implications of what she’d heard at Nether Wickford, before coming to any conclusions about it.
‘Not that I’m blaming you entirely, Miss Lloyd,’ Quantrill went on. ‘The incident had to be investigated, once it had been reported, and you were right to take the possibility of a link with the A135 murder seriously. But it looks now as though we can definitely rule that out. I’ve called off all the enquiry teams, here and in Mrs Arrowsmith’s old haunts in Yarchester.’
He paused to drink some beer. His new sergeant’s quiet composure irritated him, and irritation made him pompous.
‘When a police officer of your rank and experience reports that a witness seems frightened for her life, I don’t question the accuracy of your observation. If you say she was frightened when you first interviewed her, I believe you. But what I do suggest is that you misjudged what you saw, and overreacted. Of course Mrs Arrowsmith was frightened. She’d had a very unpleasant shock. But it seems clear to me that her husband had simply seized an unexpected opportunity to try to quieten her for a bit, without intending her any physical harm. She knows – or suspects – that he did it, and has decided to keep it in the family. And that’s all there is to it.’
Quantrill was not normally a dogmatic man. The fact was that the company of the woman detective unsettled him. A male sergeant would automatically have gone into the bar to do the ordering and carrying, but although Sergeant Lloyd, politely conscious of her rank, had said, ‘Shall I –?’ – though, come to think of it, without actually making a move – he had found himself instinctively getting up and doing the running for her.
Blood on the Happy Highway Page 7
