Blood on the Happy Highway

by Sheila Radley

  Hoist by his own lie, but impressed into silence, Quantrill meekly relinquished his keys.

  The rain had eased off, earlier in the afternoon, and the roads were rapidly drying out under a brisk south-easterly wind. Quantrill was edgy during the first part of the journey, partly because of discomfort and partly because he had never before been driven in his own car by a woman. But as they left the city, he had to acknowledge that he could find no fault with Hilary Lloyd’s driving. Her concentration was good, her gear-work positive, her hands on the wheel light but firm.

  He took a surreptitious look at her diamond eternity ring and for the first time allowed himself to wonder about its significance. He would have liked to ask why she had left the nursing profession, in which his elder daughter was perfectly happy, but he was reluctant to betray any curiosity. Besides, he suspected that she would give him a flippant stock answer, and he had no intention of allowing her to fob him off. He turned up the volume of the police radio, and they drove on without speaking.

  The main road between Yarchester and Breckham Market, for the most part a wretchedly narrow two-lane highway, was crowded with Saturday afternoon traffic. Tired of travelling behind a touring caravan, Hilary turned off to the left along a pretty, wooded by-road that she knew would join an alternative route to Breckham Market.

  The chestnut trees on either side of the empty road had already begun to change colour and lose their leaves. The wind was bringing more large yellow leaves down, bowling them about on the ground. But the movement on the road some thirty yards ahead seemed to be greater than the strength of the wind warranted, and Hilary braked to a gentle stop.

  ‘Oh, look,’ she said, delighted. ‘Squirrels, playing.’

  ‘They’re only grey squirrels,’ said Quantrill indifferently. ‘Vermin. They do no end of damage to young trees.’ But he too was amused by the antics of the lively pair who were chasing and tumbling through the fallen leaves oblivious of the stationary car, their feathery tails whisking. ‘Attractive little beggars, though. Better give them a hoot – the button’s on the end of the indicator.’

  Hilary drove slowly forward, sounding the horn. The squirrels scattered, one to either side of the road, and she picked up speed. One squirrel had already scampered up a tree and she tried to keep an eye on the other, but the leaves were still blowing, distracting her. As she passed the spot, a lithe grey creature with a streaming tail suddenly bounded across in front of her wheels, intent on joining its companion.

  ‘Oh no!’ Hilary braked again, this time harder. ‘Please God I haven’t hit it.’

  She stopped, unclipped her seat belt and turned to look anxiously through the rear window. ‘Ah, that’s all right – I missed it. It’s still in the road, playing about as though nothing … oh, no!’

  Her stomach lurched. The squirrel was still alive, still rising and twisting in the leaves, but not this time in play. Sickened and shaken, she turned away from the sight.

  Quantrill, moving gingerly, took one look through the window. ‘What are you waiting for?’ he demanded. ‘You can see it’s badly injured. Reverse. Kill it.’

  His face was a blur, his words incomprehensible. Her gorge rose at the thought of killing a living creature in cold blood.

  ‘Get on with it, woman!’ he said angrily. ‘For God’s sake, you can’t leave the animal writhing in agony.’ He seized her by the shoulder. ‘Oh, come out of the way. Let me do it.’

  It was the contempt in his voice that reached her. She swallowed hard, drew a deep breath and found reverse gear. ‘You’ll have to guide me,’ she said. ‘I can’t look.’

  His hand was still on her shoulder, but gripping her more gently. He left it there as, looking back, he gave his instructions: ‘Right hand down – a bit more. Now straighten up. Keep it straight … more power –’ she felt a tiny bump – ‘and now stop. Forward a few yards. Stop again, I’m getting out.’

  He released her, climbed painfully out of the car, and went back to assure himself that the squirrel was dead.

  It was. And its crushed remains reminded him all too vividly of what had happened to Angela Arrowsmith on the A135. As he stood there, thinking about her death, it came to him that whoever had half-strangled Angela couldn’t possibly have risked leaving her semi-conscious at the edge of the road in the hope that she would be killed. Even if her assailant had waited until he heard a vehicle coming, he couldn’t be sure that she would be hit, let alone killed outright. So, having carried her to the edge of the road, he would have had to run her over himself. And then he would have had to make sure that she was dead before he left her – just as Quantrill was now doing with the squirrel, though for quite a different reason.

  He returned to his car. Hilary was sitting motionless behind the wheel, looking distant and slightly green. He would have liked to touch her shoulder again, in an attempt to convey reassurance and also to show his appreciation of her guts. Most of the women he knew – Molly, of course, and Alison; even Patsy Hopkins – would have been only too glad to relinquish the wheel and the killing to him.

  But the occasion for touching her had passed. Instead he said, ‘All right,’ and lowered himself cautiously into the passenger seat. Hilary unfroze. She bent her head to fit her seat belt into the unfamiliar anchor point on the floor of his car, and as she did so her dark hair fell forward on either side of her face, parting naturally at the nape of her neck.

  Quantrill found himself staring at her nape, helplessly fascinated. There was something very attractive about it: something to do with its unblemished skin, its youthful slenderness …

  ‘Let’s get going,’ he said peremptorily. ‘We won’t bother with a celebration tonight, we’ll leave it until we’ve cracked the Arrowsmith case as well. I’m going to spend this evening quietly at home, and I suggest you do the same.’

  His back was playing him up again, twingeing like the devil. His marriage might be dull, the nape of his wife’s neck unenticing, but when lumbago struck he found it an undeniable comfort to think in terms of going home to Molly and having his back rubbed.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The bells of St Botolph’s, the parish church of Breckham Market, were ringing for 9.30 Matins when Sergeant Lloyd drove from her riverside flat to divisional police headquarters. The morning was cool and overcast, the Sunday streets empty.

  With the Arrowsmith murder enquiry in progress, the CID offices were busier than usual. Chief Inspector Quantrill was already there, so concentratedly on the trail that he forgot about his back until an injudicious movement made him wince.

  ‘Interesting development, Hilary,’ he greeted her. ‘We’ve found the murder weapon.’

  She was puzzled. ‘I thought Angela was run over?’

  ‘So she was. But not by a passing vehicle. By her own car.’

  He explained the conclusion he had come to the previous afternoon, when they had killed the injured squirrel. ‘I assumed at first that her attacker must have used his own vehicle. But Simon Arrowsmith was still at the top of my list at that stage, and we’ve already found that his car is clean. Then I remembered how careful the killer had been to cover the traces of his presence, and I realised that the last thing he’d want would be her blood on his vehicle. So I had a word with forensic yesterday evening. They haven’t finished examining her car, but they’d found blood and tissue on one tyre and on the inside of the wheel arch. I’ve just had confirmation from the path lab that it matches Angela’s exactly.’

  Hilary sat down, weak at the knees. ‘When I think how it felt to run deliberately over a poor wretched squirrel –’ She closed her eyes and shook her head, trying not to imagine what it would be like to steer in cold blood at a human being, to feel the sickening bump as the murder weapon – a ton of metal and glass and rubber – crushed human flesh and bone.

  ‘The point is,’ said Quantrill, ‘that we now know for sure that her assailant was inside her car. We know that the mud on the floor didn’t come from her shoes, so it must have
come from his. And forensic say that if the mud originates from anywhere within thirty miles of the scene, it must be subsoil. They tell me it’s clay from a deep layer that doesn’t come to within more than a few feet of the surface, in this part of Suffolk. That means we’re looking for someone who has some occupation or hobby that takes him at least six feet deep –’

  Hilary looked up. ‘An undertaker? You mean Cyril Mutimer?’

  ‘When I called on him yesterday,’ said the Chief Insepctor, ‘I nicked some mud from his funeral shoes. It’s the same blue clay that Harry Colman found in Angela’s car. And when you think about it, Mutimer must be a prime suspect. We know that he went to see her on the afternoon before her death. She probably fluttered her eyelashes at him and gave him a few ideas – not that any Penthouse reader is likely to be short of those. Anyway, he’d know how to lure her out to meet him late at night – by promising rent-free occupation of his premises, something like that – in return for sexual favours. But perhaps Angela promised more than she was prepared to perform –’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ said Hilary. ‘You told me that Mutimer had an alibi for the night of Angela’s death.’

  ‘So he said. I’ve sent young Bedford round to Councillor Kenward’s house to hear whether he’s prepared to confirm Mutimer’s story. Jim should be back by now – the morning’s half over.’

  Quantrill looked pointedly at his watch. He himself had been in the office since eight. He didn’t begrudge the evening off that he’d given Sergeant Lloyd yesterday, but he didn’t want her to think that she could take advantage of him. After an early night, nine thirty was much too late to roll into the office when they were working on a murder enquiry.

  She took his point, and made one of her own. She told him that she had spent part of the previous evening at the infirmary, making some further checks on Simon Arrowsmith’s alibi. It had occurred to her that there might, at visiting time, be someone there who, like Simon, had had a relative in the intensive care unit on Thursday night.

  And she had found such a visitor, a man who had been at the infirmary from about 11 p.m. on Thursday until 2 a.m. on Friday. His father had been rushed in with a heart attack. He could remember exchanging a few words with a fellow visitor of Simon’s description, and had seen him dozing in a chair in the main waiting room at some stage during the night. Understandably, he was unable to be definite about timing; but he remembered having seen one or two other visitors hanging about the hospital, and Hilary proposed to follow them up.

  ‘We may not need to bother about Simon Arrowsmith, now Mutimer’s front runner,’ said the Chief Inspector as Dc Bedford appeared at the door of his office. ‘What did you find out from Councillor Kenward, Jim?’

  ‘Not a lot,’ said Bedford with a fresh-faced grin. ‘He’s a very worried man – anxious not to let down a friend and supporter, but at the same time determined not to land himself in any trouble. What he finally decided to say was that he can’t remember a thing about Thursday night, from the time he left the Conservative Club with Mutimer at eleven until he woke up at home the next morning.’

  ‘A very convenient case of amnesia,’ grunted Quantrill. ‘So?’

  ‘So I talked to his wife. Mrs Kenward says roundly that her husband arrived home at his usual time, just after eleven, had a large whisky and went straight to bed, as he always does.’

  ‘Mutimer was lying, then. Thanks, Jim.’ Quantrill reached for his hat. ‘Want to come, both of you? Let’s see if we can get this Arrowsmith case wrapped up.’

  Cyril Mutimer was not at home. The three detectives were turning away from his back door when they saw his builder’s pick-up truck approaching the yard, with a long plank jutting out over the roof of the cab like a pencil stuck behind a carpenter’s ear.

  Mutimer looked tidier than usual. He wore Sunday and undertaking best, a new black jacket and pinstripe trousers bought large to allow for future waist expansion. His babyish face was a picture of satisfaction and contentment, until he discovered why his visitors had come.

  ‘Last Thursday night –?’ He peered worriedly through his pebble glasses, his mouth drooping. ‘Well, perhaps I did make a mistake about Councillor Kenward coming back here with me …’

  ‘I think what really happened,’ said Quantrill, ‘was that when you got home from your club you telephoned Angela Arrowsmith. You persuaded her to meet you at the layby on the A135 –’

  Mutimer goggled. ‘The A135? I never went near it, Mr Quantrill. And most certainly not to meet Mrs Arrowsmith! No, no. I did go to meet a lady friend, I admit that. I’m not ashamed of it. And I did lie to you about Councillor Kenward. But that was only to protect the lady’s good name.’

  ‘Which is?’ said Dc Bedford, pocket book and pen ready.

  The detectives waited for Mutimer’s reply, sceptical partly of his revised story, and partly of the good repute of his lady friend. If she existed at all, they anticipated that they would already be aware of her activities in the town, whether or not she had ever been in breach of the Sexual Offences Act.

  After a great deal of hesitation, Mutimer finally blurted out a name. ‘It’s … it’s Miss Pringle. She lives at 26 White Hart Street, and that’s where I spent Thursday night. Last night as well.’

  Quantrill stared at him, faint with incredulity. ‘You don’t – surely you can’t mean the lady who keeps the wool shop?’ It was where Molly always bought her knitting wool; had done so for years, ever since their children wore bootees and bonnets. The owner’s reputation – like her virtue, Quantrill would have thought – was unassailable. ‘Not Miss Elsie Pringle?’

  ‘The same,’ admitted Cyril Mutimer. He stood his ground with orphan dignity, the shoulders of his jacket so wide that they drooped, the sleeves so long that they hid all but the tips of his fingers. ‘Miss Pringle and I were at school together, and we have an Understanding. Her friends and neighbours are aware of it, but I’m glad to say that they have the courtesy not to make it generally known. I visit Miss Pringle regularly, every Monday, Thursday and Saturday –’

  The detectives shuffled out of his presence. They checked his story, of course; and found it to be true. Quantrill was tempted to tell Molly and have a chuckle with her about it, but on reflection he had the courtesy not to.

  By early afternoon, reports and statements were beginning to pile up in Quantrill’s office, on his own desk and on Hilary’s. Most of the statements came from drivers who had travelled along the A135 at the critical time on Thursday night, but none of them admitted to using the layby or seeing any other vehicle enter or leave it. Several said that they had glimpsed a bundle lying on the road in the rain. Some said they had hit it, some that they had missed it, or swerved to avoid it; none admitted to having realised that it was a body.

  ‘Lab report on the interior of Angela Arrowsmith’s car, Sergeant,’ said Dc Bedford, bringing it in. Hilary skimmed through the report and passed it with optimism to the Chief Inspector.

  ‘Take a look at this, sir. Forensic have found some dark blue cotton fibres clinging to the fabric of the driver’s seat. They’re not from anything Angela was wearing, so with any luck they came from her killer’s clothing. And with a bit more luck, there’ll have been an interchange. He must have carried her in his arms from her car to the main road, so his clothing might well have picked up some fibres or hairs that are identifiably hers.’

  ‘And where would that get us?’ said Quantrill. His back was aching again, making him irritable. ‘The old firm of suspects, Simon Arrowsmith and Harold Wilkes, are back at the top of our list. They both have perfectly legitimate reasons for having been in close contact with Angela. Even if we do find something of hers on their clothing – or find that the dark blue fibres match something of theirs – it still won’t prove a thing.’

  ‘Pity,’ said the Chief Inspector later, reading another report. ‘Gary

  Hilton’s bicycle couldn’t have been used on Thursday night. There

  was a lot of road dust on it,
so it hadn’t been cleaned up to hide evidence of its use. But there were no dried rain splashes on the frame, and the tyres hadn’t been through mud, so it couldn’t have been out in that downpour.’

  ‘Did you really think that Harold Wilkes might have used it to get to the layby and kill his sister?’ said Hilary.

  ‘Why not? We’ve been assuming that the killer had a motor vehicle, but that’s not necessarily so. He could perfectly easily have cycled to meet her. Or walked, as that ex-con did who called on her in the summer. Or jogged, come to that. Ross Arrowsmith isn’t the only jogger round here – I’ve seen people of all ages padding through Breckham, and out into the countryside, at most hours of the day and night. In fact it would have been perfectly easy –’

  Quantrill paused, frowning in thought. Then he called for Detective Constable Bedford. ‘Ross Arrowsmith, Jim,’ he said. ‘You checked his alibi for Thursday night, didn’t you? The security guards at the Old Maltings told you that his car had been locked in the yard all night – but could he have gone out of the building for an hour or so, on foot, without their knowledge?’

  Bedford looked doubtful. ‘He told me that they’re a very security-conscious firm – even he can’t get in at night without being vetted.’

  ‘Damn that for a tale,’ said Quantrill vigorously. ‘If I were the founder and top brass of a firm, I’d come and go as I pleased. Wouldn’t you?’

  James Bedford gave a grin that made him look a mature sixteen. ‘Yes, come to think of it, sir, I would. Because if I were a micro-electronics wizard, I’d design the alarm system myself. And I’d make sure that my own private door was on a separate circuit.’

  The Chief Inspector nodded his approval. ‘Go and sus the place out, Jim. See if you can find a back door that Ross could use without being under the eyes of the security guards. And make a few discreet local enquiries about whether he’s known to go jogging from his office.’

  ‘Right, sir.’ Bedford made for the door, and then hesitated: ‘But why Ross Arrowsmith? We know that he disliked Angela, but I don’t see what he could possibly gain by killing her.’