Blood on the Happy Highway

by Sheila Radley

  ‘They’re rubbish! I’ll have to have them stripped out, and the whole place refitted. I want a quality image.’

  ‘– quality image. Of course. You’ll want a lot of work done.’ He tugged down the lower edge of his tight waistcoat in an attempt to conceal the shirt that kept making a grubby appearance between it and the waistband of his striped trousers. ‘Er – might I ask who you were thinking of employing to do it?’

  She smiled magnanimously, sensing victory. ‘I did wonder whether you’d be interested, Mr Mutimer. Unless it’s too big a job?’

  ‘No, no, no. No job too small, no job too big either. I can use sub-contractors, you see. I’ll do it for you with pleasure, Mrs Arrowsmith. Quality work, just as you want it.’

  ‘Four thousand, then?’

  He sighed aloud, but went on smiling. With reason: he had paid under two thousand pounds for the freehold of the disused chapel some ten years previously, and since then had contrived to spend none of his own time or money on it, apart from replacing some roof tiles and renewing the guttering. True, he had gone for long periods without receiving any rent, because none of the tenancies had lasted for more than two years at most, and some had been considerably shorter. But Cyril Mutimer was an optimist, a firm believer that there would be another fool along any minute, eager to part with a sizeable premium for the lease, and then to pay him for redecorating and improving his own property. And all the time its freehold value – at least twenty thousand, at the last estimate – was increasing.

  ‘You strike a hard bargain, Mrs Arrowsmith. Oh, I can see you’re a real businesswoman. Four thousand it is, then, for a seven-year lease with a rent review every three years. The rent is a hundred pounds a week, payable monthly in advance. Quite small, when you consider the profit you’ll be making, eh?’

  Angela did a rapid mental calculation. Yes, once her restaurant club got going, a hundred a week wouldn’t really be a lot. Len Pratt made huge profits from his place in Yarchester, if his new Saab saloon and his cigars and champagne were anything to go by, and there was no reason why she shouldn’t do the same. But in the weeks before the opening, the rent would be a drain on her borrowed capital.

  ‘I won’t pay a hundred a week,’ she told him. ‘Four hundred per calendar month, that’s all I’ll go to.’

  ‘Oh, Mrs Arrowsmith,’ he beamed sorrowfully, ‘I do believe you’ve a better head for business than most of the men I deal with. The only way I could possibly go as low as that would be by keeping the rent strictly on a cash basis. Not a word to the tax man, eh?’ He opened a cupboard and took out a bottle and two smeared glasses. ‘We’ll drink to our agreement, then, shall we? The keys will be yours just as soon as you bring me the four thousand premium and the first four hundred rent – though how I let you beat me down to that, I shall never understand. But then, being only a bachelor, I suppose I’m an easy victim for a charming young businesswoman.’

  His hands, as he passed her a generous slug of neat whisky, radiated a clammy warmth. Accustomed as she was to her brother’s fastidious standard of housekeeping, Angela hesitated slightly before she put the dirty glass to her lips. But she liked whisky, and she was too greatly pleased with herself and her rapidly maturing plans to refuse the drink.

  She leaned forward with a smile and patted the baby-faced little old builder on the cheek. ‘You’re a sweetie, Mr Mutimer,’ she told him, wondering how far she could continue to exploit so much good-natured innocence.

  When she returned to Tenerife, Angela Arrowsmith found a strange Ford Cortina parked in the drive. A clean-shaven young man, in snappily-cut grey suit and striped shirt, was in the immaculate main room with Simon, who was sending up pipe-smoke signals of distress. The visitor leaped to his feet as soon as Angela appeared, holding out his hand and introducing himself.

  ‘Terry Bennett, Oasis Finance Company, Yarchester. Very glad to meet you, Mrs Arrowsmith.’ His delivery was quick and confident, his smile as fast as a camera’s shutter.

  ‘You didn’t waste any time getting here,’ Angela complimented him. She enjoyed being looked over by men, and began to preen herself, but his indifferent eyes switched away almost immediately.

  ‘As I told you on the phone,’ he said, ‘Oasis is on call twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. We’re entirely at our clients’service.’

  ‘Hasn’t my husband offered you a drink? Typical … Get on with it, Simon!’

  ‘Thank you, but I don’t drink during working hours. Company policy.’ Bennett’s lips exposed his teeth for a fraction of a second, and then he sat down and lifted his executive case on to the coffee table in front of him. He was mildly intrigued by the disparity in the Arrowsmiths’ages, but his professional interest was confined to the value of his clients’possessions. He also needed to know, when he was dealing with a couple, which was the dominant partner; there was so little doubt, with the Arrowsmiths, that he addressed himself exclusively to Angela.

  ‘You want our help with business finance, I believe? What’s the proposition?’

  Angela told him, wasting no more charm. ‘According to your advertisement,’ she added briskly, ‘there’s no upper limit to the amount you can advance. But I’ve managed to get the lease of the property for four thousand, much less than the owner asked, so I think an advance of twenty thousand will be enough to start with.’

  There was a silence: horrified on Simon’s part, quizzical on Bennett’s. The wife might be the dominant partner, he thought, but she obviously knew nothing at all about finance.

  ‘Unlimited advances refer only to freehold properties, Mrs Arrowsmith, dependent on their valuation. On a leasehold business, I’m afraid all we can offer you is up to 80% of the purchase price.

  That’d be £3,200 at maximum, depending on the terms of the lease. Of course, if you can give us some additional security –’

  He looked round the expensively furnished room as though seeing it for the first time. In fact he had already mentally inventoried its contents, just as he had assessed the current market value of the house.

  ‘What about this house?’ said Angela.

  Bennett contrived to give the impression that he had only now noticed its existence. ‘Mortgaged?’ he asked. ‘Could I see the documents, then, please? And also any outstanding hire purchase or loan agreements.’

  ‘Simon –’ commanded Angela.

  Shoulders bowed, feet dragging, Simon fetched the papers. Bennett opened his case and took out an Arrowsmith pocket calculator. He skimmed his eye over the mortgage document. ‘I see that this property is held in your joint names. Can I take it that you’re also applying jointly for an Oasis loan?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Angela. Simon put up a troubled smokescreen and hid behind it.

  Bennett made some swift calculations. Finally he said, ‘Ten thousand. Taking everything into account, that’s the absolute maximum I can go to.’

  Angela argued. Bennett was adamant: ‘Ten thousand, and that’s sticking my neck out on your behalf. You won’t get a better deal anywhere else, Mrs Arrowsmith.’ He paused, connecting her name with the name on his calculator. ‘Of course, if you know anyone – a relative, say – who would be prepared to act as guarantor –?’

  Angela agreed, ungraciously, to accept his offer.

  ‘Right. Good. Wise decision.’ Bennett took some forms from his case and began rapidly to fill them in. ‘So you are applying to borrow £10,000, repayable over a period of ten years. Your repayments will be only £15.43 per thousand pounds borrowed per month – that’s a low true interest rate of 14% –’

  Three people listened to the representative of the Oasis Finance Company as he rattled out a confusion of figures. Angela listened pouting with disappointment; Simon listened in fear and despair; and Gary Hilton, listening crouched outside the door, balanced a scribbling pad on his knee and wrote down everything he thought significant, words as well as figures, for the benefit of his uncle.

  Harold Wilkes, his head clan
ging with tinnitus, hovered above the boy and read what he wrote. Once or twice the deaf man softly groaned aloud, and Gary shushed him with an angry grimace.

  ‘And when do I get this measly ten thousand?’ the boy heard his mother ask.

  ‘Just as soon as I’ve completed the paperwork in the office. I can put the cheque in the post on Monday.’

  ‘Don’t bother to post it. I’ll come to Yarchester on Monday morning to collect it.’

  ‘Just as you like, Mrs Arrowsmith. Any time after eleven. I’ll make sure it’s ready for you. Now, if you and your husband will both sign the application form, please, here and here –’

  Simon spoke, for the first time. His voice was indistinct, hampered both by the stem of his pipe and by tension.

  ‘Wait a minute. I want to speak to my wife before we sign anything. Would you mind stepping out into the garden, Mr Bennett – here, through the sun lounge. We won’t keep you long.’

  Gary heard the visitor protest that he had another appointment, that funds were limited, that he couldn’t promise to keep the offer open for more than twenty-four hours. His sales patter was cut short by the closing of the sliding door. Then Simon spoke again, and although his voice was strained there was an element of hope in it.

  ‘Angie, sweetheart – I realise you’re disappointed, but at least you know now what the situation is. Ten thousand’s no good to you, is it? I mean, when you think what it cost us to furnish this house … you couldn’t even begin to equip a big restaurant with what you’d have left after paying for the lease. I know you’d set your heart on it, but it really does look as though you’ll have to drop the idea. So there’s no point now in borrowing that ten thousand, is there? Let’s send the man away, and then go to a travel agent this afternoon and book a holiday for you. What about Florida? Or a Mediterranean cruise?’

  ‘Drop the idea? You must be out of your tiny mind, Simon Arrowsmith! You know nothing at all about business, do you? I don’t intend to buy the furniture and equipment, you idiot, I shall lease it. That’s what you told me Ross did when he moved into the Old Maltings, and I shall do the same. I’m going to call my restaurant Arrowsmith’s, by the way. Sounds good, doesn’t it?’

  ‘But sweetheart, Ross didn’t move until his business was properly established. He started in a small way, and built it up –’

  ‘… So there’s hardly anything I need to pay cash for. I’ll have to pay old Mutimer the premium and the rent, but he can wait a long time for the money for the alterations and redecoration. In fact I can probably sweet-talk him into doing it for free …’

  ‘Couldn’t you start small too, Angie? Get yourself established in a nice little coffee shop, and –’

  ‘A nice little coffee shop? You’re pathetic, do you know that, Simon Arrowsmith? I don’t want a frigging little anything, I want some excitement. I don’t intend to go on spending my evenings sitting here watching video with you and my stupid brother and that boy who’s as half-witted as his father, I want to be a Somebody. I mean to think big, and make money fast. As soon as Arrowsmith’s opens, the profits will roll in.’

  ‘But you said you wanted to open in November. That means it’ll be two months before you get any income, and meanwhile you’ll have repayments to make, and rent and rates to pay –’

  ‘So I’ll open sooner. I’ll crack the whip at old Mutimer, and open as soon as possible.’

  ‘But Angie – you still won’t have enough money. You’ve got to be realistic, sweetheart. You can’t lease everything you need, you must have some working capital. This ten thousand isn’t nearly enough, you know that yourself –’

  ‘Then I’ll borrow the rest from somewhere else. Harold can help, for a start. He’s always been careful with his money, and they earn a lot on those oil rigs. He must have a few thousand tucked away somewhere, and I’ve done a lot for him, he owes me. Then there’s– well, never mind. But I’ll get the extra money, don’t worry. Just let’s sign for the ten thousand, so that I can make a start.’

  ‘Angie … you don’t seem to realise what you’re letting us in for. If we sign the form, and then can’t keep up the repayments, Oasis will take everything we possess that isn’t already mortgaged or on hire purchase. We’ll be ruined.’

  She told him, in words of four letters, what she thought of him. ‘God knows why I ever married you, Simon Arrowsmith,’ she concluded. ‘Well, this is where you make your choice, because if you don’t sign I’m off. For good. I’ll leave the three of you to your boring existence and go where there’s some excitement, Yarchester, London, Tenerife. I mean it, Simon. Sign here and now, or you’ve lost me.’

  Gary, listening angrily behind the door and scribbling notes for his uncle, lifted his head, open-mouthed and bright-eyed with sudden hope. There was nothing he would like better than for his mother to go for good. He mouthed silent, frantic instructions to his stepfather: ‘Now’s your chance, Si … don’t sign … get rid of her!’

  But Simon loved his wife, and so he signed.

  Chapter Ten

  On the way back from Wickford to Breckham Market, Quantrill made a detour. Instead of crossing straight over the A135 he turned right, northwards, along the main road in the direction of Yarchester.

  Ahead, a recently engineered stretch of road went up and over a rise, through a cutting which reduced the gradient. To the right, crowning the rise, was a small wood, its leaves still green except where horse-chestnuts were already yellowing in anticipation of autumn. Quantrill signalled right again, positioned his car on the crown of the road until he could cross the oncoming traffic, and then turned from the main road on to what had been the route of the A135 before the improvements were made.

  The old road, curving through the wood for no more than fifty yards before it rejoined the new road, had already been narrowed by an accumulation of dust and leaf debris. In the undergrowth on either side of it, haws and blackberries were beginning to ripen, and dead-nettle and ragged robin were in their second flowering. A bush of honeysuckle bore, simultaneously, buds, small pale flowers, unripe green berries and ripe red ones.

  It made an attractive layby, despite the litter that had been tossed from parked vehicles. A family saloon car was there now, with an inflatable dinghy on top and a caravan hitched behind, parked for a break on its return journey from a seaside holiday. The caravan stays had been lowered and a woman was inside, brewing up; her husband had his head under the bonnet of the car, and three children were playing in and out of the undergrowth, all of them evidently oblivious of the fact that they were within a few yards of the place where a headless corpse had lain a few weeks ago.

  The car was facing south, the direction from which Quantrill had come. Another car, a hatchback, its rear loaded with small-scale mock-ups of double-glazed windows, was parked lower down, facing in the same direction. The salesman – presumably working on commission and therefore needing to canvass on Saturdays as well as weekdays – sat behind the wheel in a fug of cigarette smoke, reading one of his own leaflets with an expression of profound pessimism.

  Quantrill stopped his car beyond the caravan. ‘I come back here whenever I run out of ideas on the case,’ he told Sergeant Lloyd. ‘Sorry to drag you with me, though – I expect you’ve seen enough of this layby.’

  ‘It’s familiar,’ she agreed wryly. ‘I spent almost a week, with the rest of Mr Colman’s team, doing a fingertip search through the undergrowth. We wore masks and overalls and rubber gloves, of course, but it’s still revolting to have to search an area that’s used as a combined rubbish tip and public lavatory. I don’t think any of us would have minded quite so much if it had been the actual scene of the crime, because then we’d have known that sooner or later we’d find something significant. But when the body is plastic-wrapped and has obviously been dumped, there’s almost certainly nothing to find and so it’s difficult to work with the same enthusiasm.’

  It was another reminder, if Quantrill needed one, that for all her graceful composure, H
ilary Lloyd was a working detective. Even so –

  ‘Enthusiasm?’ he queried.

  ‘Oh yes! It’s a fascinating job, searching the scene inch by inch to find the scraps of evidence that’ll build up into a case. I’m sorry in a lot of ways to have come off scene-of-crime work. When I leave the force I’ll probably take up archaeology as a hobby – going on digs will give me all the interest of scraping and sifting and looking for clues, with the added bonus that nothing I find will squelch or smell.’

  Quantrill, who had done plenty of fingertip searches himself, earlier in his career, gave her a grin of acknowledgement. ‘I just want to take another look round. Shan’t be more than a few minutes.’

  ‘I’ll come with you. I need to, now that I’m in your investigating team. When I was here before I had to keep my nose to the ground. It’s about time I stood up and studied the view.’

  They walked slowly, some yards apart and without speaking, to the upper, northern end of the old road. It was from this end that traffic coming from the direction of Yarchester and the coast, travelling on the left-hand side of the road, would enter the layby.

  ‘Is there a parking sign here?’ asked Hilary. ‘I don’t see one.’

  ‘No, there isn’t. If you don’t know the layby, there’s nothing to draw attention to it. We set up an experiment, getting half a dozen policemen from other divisions to drive separately along this road over a distance of twenty miles, looking for a suitable dumping place for an imaginary body they were carrying. Four did their dumping before they reached this spot, two did it afterwards. And of those two, one didn’t even realise that this was a layby, and the other realised but not until after he’d overshot the entrance. So we’re reasonably certain that the driver knew the road well.

  ‘Alternatively, if he didn’t come down the A135, but across country, he must know this particular area. If he knew of the existence of the layby, he might think that by leaving the body here he could persuade us that it had been brought down the main road.’