Blood on the Happy Highway

by Sheila Radley

  ‘You call that evidence?’ scoffed Ross. ‘There was rain yesterday evening too, you know. And there’s nothing exclusive about my track suit – as you’ve seen from the label, I bought this one at Marks and Spencer. Thousands of people wear them. As for the mud: everyone who lives in Suffolk has mud on their shoes.’

  ‘This evidence will do, to begin with,’ said Quantrill. ‘And the other interesting item from Mr Arrowsmith’s private room, Sergeant Lloyd?’

  She placed on the desk a framed copy of a poem by A. E. Housman. It had hung beside the photograph of the boy Ross and his mother.

  Into my heart an air that kills

  From yon far country blows:

  What are those blue remembered hills,

  What spires, what farms are those?

  That is the land of lost content,

  I see it shining plain,

  The happy highways where I went

  And cannot come again.

  Ross protested. A copy of a poem couldn’t possibly be used against him. The phrase ‘an air that kills’was just a figure of speech – the poet hadn’t intended it literally. And no, he himself hadn’t taken it literally. Of course not. The police had no grounds whatsoever for accusing him of murder.

  But they had. There was still a great deal of work to be done on the case, but the Chief Inspector already had sufficient hard evidence to make an arrest.

  Quantrill had been lucky. He had found, on Ross Arrowsmith’s track suit, exactly what he had hoped for: two long golden hairs. They were clinging to the fabric of the upper arm, where Angela’s head would have rested as her murderer carried her semi-conscious body from her car to the edge of the A135 before running her over.

  Hairs, unlike fingerprints, are not positively identifiable. No expert witness can say that they belong without doubt to any particular person. But frequent chemical treatment can make them sufficiently distinctive to enable an expert witness for the prosecution to satisfy a jury as to their origin: and Angela Arrowsmith was a woman who for years had kept changing the colour of her hair.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  28 September; 11.15 on a radiant Saturday morning, and the bells of St Botolph’s church were pealing in celebration of the marriage of Woman Police Constable Patricia Anne Hopkins and Detective Chief Superintendent William George Mancroft.

  The one hundred and fifty adult guests, with a small vocal accompaniment of toddlers, streamed out through the south porch to wait in their finery among the lichened gravestones for the bridal party to emerge. Among those present, Mrs Douglas Quantrill and her younger daughter Alison, both becomingly dressed and hatted, edged their way to a position from which they would have an uninterrupted view as the photographs were taken.

  ‘Thank goodness your father’s back’s better,’ said Molly, ‘or he wouldn’t have been able to help.’

  ‘Poor Dad,’ said Alison. ‘I bet he’d prefer lumbago.’

  ‘Of course he wouldn’t! I’m sure he’s only too glad to give the Chief Superintendent some support. Look, that must be Mr Mancroft’s brother, with his ankle in plaster – such a shame that he should have fractured it, and only the day before the wedding, too. What a piece of luck that he’s a big man, and your father could wear the morning suit he’d hired … Oh, here they come!’

  Glowing with excitement, and slightly unsteady on her unaccustomedly high heels, Molly watched eagerly as the bridal party moved from the shade of the porch into the sunlight. The elegant bride wore a long dress of oyster-coloured Thai silk with a matching hat, and carried a bouquet of rosebuds, freesias and stephanotis; but Molly, usually avid for such details, could spare her only a glance.

  ‘Doesn’t your father look handsome?’ she sighed, her eyes on the substitute best man. ‘I always knew that a tail coat and top hat would suit him …’ She blinked away a prickle of tears as she thought of her own makeshift wedding, a hurriedly arranged formality held in a registry office because she was pregnant and Douggie, a national service aircraftsman in the RAF, was about to be posted to Germany.

  At the time, she’d been too greatly relieved that he was marrying her at all to mind that her girlish dreams of a proper white wedding in church had been shattered. It was only later, and particularly when she attended other weddings, that she had come to feel a sense of loss. But at least she could compensate through her own daughters: Jennifer and Alison would have weddings every bit as elaborate as Patsy’s, and Douggie would wear morning dress whether he liked it or not. Having done so for Patsy’s wedding, he could hardly refuse when he became the father of the bride.

  Molly glanced speculatively at her daughter. She wondered whether Alison’s eagerness to attend this wedding had anything to do with the fact that Martin Tait would be a fellow guest. True, Alison had seemed completely indifferent to the overtures he had made to her eighteen months ago; but they were both still unattached, as far as Molly knew, and in her opinion they would make an ideal couple.

  ‘Have you seen Martin yet, dear?’ she said, trying to sound casual. But Alison’s immediate concern was for her father. Though he was smiling for the photographer he looked uneasy.

  ‘Poor old Dad,’ said Alison. ‘He must be dreading the prospect of making a speech at the reception.’

  ‘It won’t hurt him,’ said Molly. She spoke without vindictiveness, but her pleasure at seeing her husband in morning dress was spiced by her knowledge of what he must be feeling. She wasn’t as unaware of his emotions as he liked to think – she’d known for years that he had an eye for Patsy Hopkins. Bad enough for him, then, that the shapely policewoman would be moving to Yarchester immediately after her wedding, and taking her long legs with her; but being asked at short notice to play a part in the ceremony of marrying her to his boss was bound to cause him additional vexation, and Molly intended to enjoy his discomfort to the full.

  Meanwhile, there was something of more positive importance to be pursued. ‘Have you seen Martin Tait yet, dear?’ she repeated.

  ‘He’s over there,’ said Alison, in a carefully neutral voice. ‘On the other side of the path, just behind the dark girl in the coral outfit. I heard someone saying that she’s Dad’s new detective sergeant.’

  ‘Which one? Where?’ demanded Molly, standing precariously on tiptoe. She hadn’t yet met Hilary Lloyd. Douggie had said very little about her, and Molly couldn’t decide whether or not the omission was significant. She stared challengingly at the female detective, trying to see her through her husband’s eyes; and in doing so, she gradually relaxed.

  Sergeant Lloyd was not particularly attractive. Her dress and hat were stylish, but she had what seemed to be a permanent frown. She was too thin, and her legs were not as long as Patsy’s. Foolishly susceptible though Douggie could be, there was nothing about his new sergeant that was likely to turn his head.

  That was all right, then, thought Molly comfortably.

  Hilary was looking with admiration at the bride’s dress. She turned to share her pleasure with Martin Tait, by way of apology for having snubbed him when they were last together. He had tried to persuade her to have supper with him, on that euphoric evening when they’d helped to crack both the A135 and the Arrowsmith murders; but the venue he’d suggested was her flat, and Hilary preferred to issue her own invitations.

  ‘Doesn’t she look lovely, Martin?’ she said of the bride.

  ‘Yes,’ mumbled Tait, with a humility that took him entirely by surprise. He wasn’t looking at Patsy, nor yet at Hilary; one glimpse of Alison Quantrill, more confident and even prettier than she’d been last year, and he’d lost all interest in older women.

  1.15 p.m., and in the Rights of Man, Breckham Market’s leading hotel, the wedding breakfast had been eaten, the speeches made, the toasts drunk and the cake cut. Formalities over, the bride and bridegroom began to circulate among their guests. The best man, looking slightly sheepish, rejoined his wife; Martin Tait and Alison Quantrill gravitated towards each other, and Harry Colman, his Prince Consort wh
iskers perky with pleasure, sought out Hilary Lloyd.

  He greeted her with a kiss on the cheek, a compliment on her dress, and congratulations on the excellent start she had made in the Breckham Market division.

  ‘Thank you, Harry. Yes, I’m very pleased with the way those two enquiries went.’

  She pushed from her mind the persistently recurring image of Jen Arrowsmith, unaware that she had already been persuaded to betray her husband, joking to her daughter that they would in future have to watch what they were saying in front of their friend Hilary. So much for the value of a police officer’s friendship; so much for a police officer’s chances of making friends at all, outside the force.

  Harry Colman observed the bleakness of her expression, and misinterpreted it. ‘I hope your new boss isn’t cramping your initiative?’

  ‘What?’ Then her face cleared: ‘Oh, no. No, we seem to have set up quite a reasonable working relationship.’

  Douglas Quantrill had just moved through the crowds into Harry’s view, looking for someone; his wife, who had been close behind him, paused to take an opportunity to speak to the bride. Drawing Hilary’s attention to Quantrill, Harry said, ‘That was a very neat speech that Doug made, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Very,’ she agreed. ‘Though I wasn’t surprised, after hearing him talk Ross Arrowsmith to the brink of making a confession. I wish you’d heard him. It was an impressive performance.’

  Harry chuckled. ‘I can believe it. A good detective – and Doug is good – needs to be able to rise to an occasion. And how do you think he looks, in morning dress?’

  Hilary glanced at Quantrill again, her scar puckering her forehead into what could be mistaken for a frown. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that he looks really rather distinguished.’

  Then she turned back to Harry Colman. ‘Oh, it’s good to see you again! I’ve missed you, you know –’ She gave him one of her rare, warm, wholehearted smiles.

  ‘Doesn’t she look lovely?’ said Molly Quantrill, returning to her husband’s side and unkindly directing his attention to the new and completely unattainable Mrs Mancroft. She glanced up at Douglas – who, as she knew, hated to be called Douggie – and tried to interpret his expression: slightly bemused, she thought, but definitely hankering.

  Exasperated, Molly pinched his arm. With a Japanese smile on her face for the benefit of the assembly, she hissed at him out of the corner of her mouth, ‘Pull yourself together, Doug Quantrill, for goodness sake! It’s no use your mooning after her like that, she’s married now –’

  But Quantrill hadn’t hankered after Patsy Hopkins for a week or more.

  Copyright

  First published in 1983 by Constable

  This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world

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  ISBN 978-1-4472-2646-8 EPUB

  ISBN 978-1-4472-2645-1 POD

  Copyright © Sheila Radley, 1983

  The right of Sheila Radley to be identified as the

  author of this work has been asserted in accordance

  with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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