Blood on the Happy Highway

by Sheila Radley

  Simon blew his nose noisily. ‘She was too trusting, that was why. She didn’t realise that there are vicious people in the world.’

  The Chief Inspector thought of several possible replies, none of them kind. But acknowledging the legal presumption of Simon Arrowsmith’s innocence, and consequently the man’s right to cherish what illusions he liked, he kept his thoughts to himself.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Simon, blowing his nose again, ‘I don’t see what you expect to find out by coming here at this hour in the morning. I don’t see what you want me to do.’

  ‘As I explained last night, sir,’ repeated Quantrill patiently, ‘we’d like you to repeat your movements of last Saturday morning.

  Detective Constable Jackson will go with you to ask what you can remember about last week. He’s waiting for you now, in the hall.’

  Simon tugged wretchedly at his beard. ‘How can I go out, when you took away all our shoes last night?’

  Quantrill glanced down at the beach sandals the man was wearing. ‘I think you’ll find that Dc Jackson has brought back one pair of shoes for each of you. The rest will be returned later today. Gary’s bicycle may take a little longer, but we’ll get it back to him as soon as we can. I’m extremely grateful to the three of you for being so co-operative.’

  He looked at his watch. ‘Almost eight o’clock. Isn’t this about the time you said you went to visit your mother last Saturday morning?’

  Simon nodded unhappily. ‘Are you leaving now?’ he asked.

  ‘No. I need to talk to your brother and your stepson when they get up – at about half past eight, if they follow what they said was last week’s pattern. That is of course if I have your permission to stay, Mr Arrowsmith?’

  Looking very much as though he would like to refuse it – as though he knew that his co-operation was being assumed to such an extent that as soon as his back was turned the police would examine his car – Simon gave another glum nod. ‘What do you want me to do when I get to my mother’s house?’ he asked hoarsely.

  ‘Just stay as long as you did last Saturday morning, sir. You’ll find Sergeant Lloyd there, waiting for you.’

  Hilary Lloyd had made a point of arriving early at Mrs Arrowsmith senior’s house. She loitered conspicuously in the road, looking at the attractive yellow-plastered house and its small red-brick appendage, and by the time she had wandered up the garden path between overhanging clumps of damp Michaelmas daisies, she found Mrs Arrowsmith’s neighbour’s back door open.

  Hilary introduced herself to the old lady, who stood leaning on her walking frame, and said that she had come by appointment to meet Simon Arrowsmith. Mrs Cullen immediately enquired about Nellie.

  ‘Thank goodness for that,’ said May, when Hilary told her that Simon’s mother was beginning a slow recovery. ‘Will you step inside to wait for him, Miss? There’s a cup of tea in the pot. Nellie generally has one with me about this time, we’re both early risers.’

  The old lady moved with the aid of her frame across the tiny kitchen and into the living room, half of which was now occupied by her bed. She lowered herself painfully into a wooden wheelback armchair from which she had a good view of the road and the common. A tray of tea stood on the table by her elbow, and she reached out to take a second cup and saucer from the sideboard that filled most of the remainder of the room. Hilary, sitting on the only other chair, averted her eyes as Mrs Cullen’s cruelly deformed hands attempted to pour the tea into the cup rather than the saucer.

  ‘Ross’s wife did pop in yesterday afternoon,’ said May, ‘to tell me that Nellie had been moved out of the intensive care unit. She’s a nice girl, Jen; she knew I’d be anxious about Nellie. I haven’t set eyes on Simon since he followed his mother to the infirmary on Thursday morning – but there, he’s had other troubles to contend with, poor boy.’

  ‘You know about Simon’s wife’s death, Mrs Cullen?’

  ‘Jen told me. Well, there … I don’t wish to speak ill of the dead, but between you and me, Miss, he’s far better off without her. What was she doing, out there on the main road at that time of night, that’s what I’d like to know?’

  The question was rhetorical, indignant. Hilary could see that for all Mrs Cullen’s soft complexion and wispy white hair she was a tough-minded old lady. There was no need to wrap sordid facts in gentle phrases for her benefit.

  ‘Apparently Angela went out to meet someone. We think it’s likely that he killed her.’

  ‘Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.’ May’s facial expression was shocked but her voice was steady. ‘Do you know – you may not believe me, but it’s as true as I’m sitting here – I thought that’s what might have happened. I didn’t say so to Jen, and I wouldn’t have said so to Nellie, but it’s what I said to myself as soon as I heard that she’d been found dead: somebody’s done her in.’

  ‘So we’re engaged on a murder enquiry,’ said Hilary. ‘I want to find out all I can about Angela, and I’ll be grateful for any help you can give me, Mrs Cullen.’

  ‘There’s nothing I could swear to, Miss, because I never met her. All I know about her is what I heard from Nellie. Not that Nellie said anything against her, but I wasn’t born yesterday. Angela took advantage of that poor boy’s youth and innocence, and she’s made his life a misery ever since.’

  The old lady told Hilary the unhappy story of Simon’s marriage, and Angela’s ambitions. ‘Oh, she was full of big ideas, that woman, without a penny for her own to pay for them. She came to Nellie’s house only last Wednesday morning, cadging money.’

  ‘Did Mrs Arrowsmith let her have any?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ May Cullen shook her head over her friend’s folly. ‘Nellie’s soft, you see; that’s where Simon gets it from. She lent Angela the money, but she was so worried, when she told me about it afterwards, that I shouldn’t be surprised if that was what brought on her heart attack.’

  Mrs Cullen paused to drink some tea, raising the cup to her lips by holding it between the fists of both her crippled hands. Her eyes, deeply sunk in her fragile skull, were bright with indignation as she told Sergeant Lloyd how Angela had arrived unexpectedly at Nellie’s door and had invited her to go to Breckham Market for a cup of coffee. ‘First time she’s ever done such a thing. Nellie, bless her heart, thinks how nice Angela is – washes her face and puts on her coat and goes.

  ‘Well, an hour later the car’s back. Angela drops Nellie and drives off. Nellie comes straight in here, and she doesn’t look at all well. “Oh, May,” she says, “I do hope I’ve done the right thing. Angela was short of money, and she asked me to lend her some, just until her restaurant opens. I couldn’t very well refuse, could I? After all, she is Simon’s wife. So she drove me to the building society and I drew out the money for her.” And I said, “Oh, Nellie, you never did! How much?”’

  Hilary shared May’s despair over Nellie Arrowsmith’s gullibility. ‘How much, Mrs Cullen?’

  The old lady’s voice dropped to a horrified whisper: ‘Two thousand five hundred pounds. Nearly all that her husband left her.’

  Hilary winced. ‘Oh no …’

  ‘And that’s not the whole story. Angela was a liar, too. She went home and told Simon that his mother had offered to lend her some money, and that it was only a thousand pounds. Simon came to see his mother that night to say that she shouldn’t have lent it, and when he heard the truth he was so upset … So was Ross’s wife when I told her. Well, we all know poor Nellie was silly to do what she did, but Angela was downright wicked. If that was how she treated her own family, how did she treat other people? I’m not surprised that somebody finally stopped her games.’

  Hilary was about to question Mrs Cullen further when she saw Simon Arrowsmith, escorted by Dc Jackson, walking across the common on the footpath that led from Nether to Upper Wickford. She explained to the old lady that Simon was reconstructing his movements on the previous Saturday morning.

  May Cullen looked puzzled. ‘Why is he walking across the common,
then?’

  ‘Because that’s what he did at about this time last week.’

  ‘No, he didn’t. Poor boy, with all the worry and shock, he must have forgotten. Last Friday evening he had a row with Angela, so he came over and spent the night at his mother’s.’

  As Simon Arrowsmith and Dc Jackson walked round to the back door of Simon’s mother’s house, Ross Arrowsmith and Dc Bedford jogged towards it on the road that ran along the Upper Wickford side of the common.

  ‘That car wasn’t there last week,’ panted Ross, indicating the Metro HLE parked outside the old house.

  ‘No, sir, that’s Sergeant Lloyd’s. She’s having a word with your brother.’

  Ross muttered something, and swung off to the left along the path that crossed the common. Bedford consulted his watch and his clipboard.

  ‘There should be a car, any time now, passing from right to left along the road on the Nether Wickford side. A regular traveller, I believe. Do you remember seeing it, last Saturday?’

  ‘Last Saturday was misty. I couldn’t even see Simon’s house from here.’

  ‘Look, there it goes now. A white Ford Fiesta. Do you remember it?’

  ‘No.’

  The car, passing their front 30 yards ahead, suddenly did an emergency stop, its tyres squealing. Dc Bedford looked hard at his companion, who checked his pace and then stood still.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ross Arrowsmith thoughtfully. ‘That I can remember – the sound of braking, coming through the mist.’ He moved on. ‘By that time I’d turned left, off the path and on to the grass – just about here. The mist had begun to lift and I could see the stationary car. I don’t remember its make or colour, but I certainly saw a man doing whatever that man’s doing now … moving to the side of the road … going back to the car … yes, I remember that. I slowed down, about here, to let him drive away before I reached the road.’

  They picked up their jogging pace. ‘And is this as near to your half-brother’s house as you went, sir?’

  ‘Yes. At this point I heard another vehicle coming from the right, so I stayed where I was on the grass, just at the side of the road. You have to watch the traffic, in misty weather. I stood here looking to the right, waiting for the vehicle to pass.’

  They both stood looking to the right. The road was empty, and Bedford had no need to look at his clipboard to know that there was no record, in all the statements that had been taken the previous week, of any vehicle travelling in that direction at that particular time.

  ‘It must have been one we missed,’ he said cheerfully, wondering whether Ross Arrowsmith had begun to lie. ‘What kind of vehicle was it?’

  ‘I took no notice. I was thinking about my work. But then the mist lifted, and I could see Simon’s house quite clearly. A man was standing at the gate.’

  ‘Inside the gate, or outside?’

  ‘I don’t know. I formed the impression that it wasn’t Simon, and then I looked away almost immediately.’

  ‘Was it his brother-in-law? His stepson?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. I haven’t met either of them.’

  The mystery man sounded to Dc Bedford like a fabrication. Unwillingly, he began to regard Ross Arrowsmith as a suspect.

  And then a mud-splattered Land Rover came into view, from the right. ‘Was this the vehicle you saw?’ Bedford asked.

  Ross Arrowsmith was tired of being questioned. He shoved his hair out of his eyes. ‘God knows,’ he said sharply. ‘I don’t.’

  Dc Bedford made a note of the Land Rover’s number.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Inspector Tait spent most of Friday night reading through the files on the A135 murder. On Saturday morning he sent Dc Wigby out with a list of the names and addresses of all the women in East Anglia who had bought Jayne Edwards mail-order dresses similar in style, colour and size to the one the headless woman had been wearing. Tait himself went straight to Yarchester, in search of the two women who had bought their dresses through Angela Arrowsmith’s agency.

  Most of Angela’s customers lived in one small area of the city, sloping down from a main thoroughfare, Gold Street, towards the wharves on the riverside. The area had alternated for centuries between prosperity and seediness. Gold Street itself, busy rather than prosperous, contained a variety of small shops, a former cinema that had become a bingo hall, the unisex hairdressing salon where Angela had worked before her marriage to Simon, and the Black Bull pub, now under new ownership and trying to live down its recent disrepute.

  Tait’s first call was at a block of council flats. His ring at a ground-floor door was answered by a young woman who drooped as though the weight of the entire block was on her shoulders.

  ‘Yes …?’ she said.

  ‘Mrs Lynette Willis?’

  ‘Yes …?’

  ‘Detective Inspector Tait, regional crime squad.’ He held up his warrant card and she looked at it with puzzled, watery eyes.

  ‘Yes …?’ she said.

  Normally, he would have asked if he might go in. It was inadvisable – both unsatisfactory and tactless, except when house-to-house enquiries were being made – to interview householders on their doorsteps. But in giving the woman his usual quick once-over glance, he had realised that there was something familiar about the pink, red and grey striped dress she was wearing.

  Washed out as it was, the dress was here and not in the forensic science lab; limp as she was, Mrs Willis was alive, not lying headless in the morgue. And that was all he needed to know.

  Tait gave her the benefit of his most charming smile. ‘Thank you very much,’ he said, and went.

  His next call was at a small house in an early Victorian terrace. The houses were unappreciatively owner-occupied, their pretty proportions and uniform appearance spoiled by the substitution of a variety of modern doors and windows.

  Tait was hoping, in the interests of identifying the headless woman, that he would not find Angela’s second customer, Mrs Kath Turner, there. However, she answered his ring: a bustling, forty-ish permed brunette, as much alive as Mrs Willis, only more so. Tait invited himself in, but no further than the narrow hall. Once he had seen the dress, he could go.

  But the dress was no longer in Mrs Turner’s possession.

  ‘I gave it away. I was tired of it, and it was only a cheapie in the first place. Who to? Some girl – well, girl, I say: round about thirty, a good bit older than her boy friend.’

  ‘What was her name?’

  ‘Now you’re asking … I only saw her once, and that was months ago. Middle of June, I think, just after we came back from Spain. My Ron was at the pub one evening – the Black Bull, that’s his local – and he got playing darts with this young feller he’d never seen before. Well, my Ron! A fool if ever there was one, once he’s got three or four pints inside him. Best friends with the nearest stranger. This young feller Mick spun him some hard luck story, so Ron invited him back here for a bacon sandwich, not realising that Mick had got this woman in tow.

  ‘“Who’s this?” I said. I was annoyed, I don’t mind telling you. “Oh, this is Denise,” said Mick, and he took less notice of her after that than if she’d been a dog. Next thing I knew, she was sitting in my kitchen crying her eyes out. Yes, that was her name, Denise.’

  ‘Denise who?’ asked Tait. ‘Mick who?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Ron didn’t know and didn’t care, and I didn’t know and didn’t want to know. All I wanted was to get rid of them.’

  ‘But you gave the woman your dress?’

  ‘Ah well, I was sorry for the poor cow. I gave her a cup of tea, and heard more than I wanted to know about her troubles in return. Seems her husband had been in prison for a couple of years, and she’d recently picked up with young Mick. He’d put her in the club. She wanted the baby – wouldn’t get rid of it because she’d fallen in love with him. God knows why, he was nothing to look at, all nose and no chin.’

  ‘Why was she crying?’ asked Tait. ‘Was Mick threatening to ditch her?’
>
  ‘He was talking about moving on, by himself, at the end of the week. He said it was because he couldn’t get a job here, and that as soon as he found one somewhere he’d send for her. Well, that was a load of rubbish. He didn’t want her round his neck, and she knew that as well as I did. But what really upset her was that her husband was due out of jail in July. He sounded a thoroughly nasty character – used to beat her up, she said. He’d spent most of their marriage in jail for robbery. They had no children of their own, and she was afraid he’d half-kill her when he found out she was carrying someone else’s.’

  Tait could feel his scalp bristling with an excitement that he kept well under control. Just one more stroke of luck, and he could wrap up the A135 murder case before lunch.

  ‘Did she mention her husband’s name? Or say which prison he was in?’

  Kath Turner shook her head firmly. ‘No. And I didn’t want to know, either. We’ve never mixed with people like that, and I don’t intend to start.’

  ‘Can you tell me anything else about Denise? What did she look like?’

  She shrugged. ‘Nothing out of the ordinary. Not much over five feet tall … short mousy hair … round face. I didn’t see a lot of her face, she was crying most of the time.’

  ‘Is that why you gave her the dress?’

  ‘Yes – I’d just washed it, and it was hanging in the kitchen to air. I was tired of it anyway, and I could see we were about the same size, so I asked her if she’d like it. Well, she hadn’t got much going for her, had she? You should’ve seen her face light up, poor little cow.’

  Recalling the incident, Kath Turner paused. Then, ‘Oh yes, there is something else I can tell you about Denise,’ she said. ‘It was when I gave her the dress. She smiled, and I saw her teeth for the first time. The top two in front were set crooked – there was a gap between them wide enough to push a pencil through.’