Blood on the Happy Highway

by Sheila Radley

  Ross liked his half-brother well enough, though he found it difficult to remember that they were related by blood. Quite apart from their age difference – Simon was 27 – they had never lived under the same roof. Simon was a computer programmer by profession, and Ross had employed him for five years as a systems programmer. But then, immediately after their father’s death, Simon had been taken away from the company, in a fit of pique, by the predatory woman he’d married.

  Stupid young fool, to throw away an excellent job. Idiot, to allow a woman like that to capture him. Ross recalled with distaste Angela’s hard eyes and thin mouth, her extravagantly long red fingernails, the tarty way she’d half-lowered her metallic-grey eyelids at him when she’d cornered him, after his father’s funeral, and asked for a loan to start a beauty salon. It was only the second time they’d met, and the first time they’d exchanged anything more than minimal social courtesies.

  He’d refused her the loan, of course. For one thing, most of his money was tied up in Arrowsmith MicroElectronics. He’d only recently moved into the Old Maltings, and buying and renovating the building and equipping it with high-technology laboratories had taken every penny he could raise. Whatever he might be worth on paper, he was in no position to lend anyone ten thousand pounds, just like that, even if he wanted to.

  And he didn’t want to. He had been shocked that she should ask him for money at that time, not an hour after he’d buried his father … and that she should do it so suggestively, hinting that they could discuss it over a meal at a restaurant, just the two of them … God, what a bitch of a woman.

  The thought of her filled him with disgust; so much so that he couldn’t bear to run too near her house. Seeing it ahead, through the evaporating mist, he swerved from the dirt footpath and struck off across the wet white grass, so as to join the road back to Ecclesby about twenty yards from the chalet bungalow that Angela had named Tenerife. His thoughts returned with relief to the logic, the purity and the beauty of sub-micron geometry.

  7.45 a.m. The sun, now luminous, was rapidly hoovering up the remnants of mist. Cobwebs were draped over every bush, so wet and white that they looked like tatty linen spread out to dry. As he waded across dew-drenched roadside verges to deliver the mail, Brian Finch’s shoes lost all their polish and the bottom of his trouser legs became soaked; but he was too anxious about doing his new job properly to mind.

  Kenny Warminger had guided him round Ecclesby, pointing out that the house called New Maltings, architect-designed on a large open site, had recently been built for the owner of Arrowsmith MicroElectronics. Now, leaving Ecclesby, the mail van headed for Upper Wickford.

  ‘I generally see Ross Arrowsmith out jogging, somewhere about this time,’ said Warminger. ‘If I had his money – at least half a million, I’ve heard – I’d pay somebody to do the jogging for me. Yes, there he is, on the way back home. He usually runs up to Wickford common, though I’ve sometimes seen him on the other side of Ecclesby, going towards the A135.’

  The two postmen watched as the reputed half-millionaire, in running shorts and singlet, all sinewy arms and legs and lank, flopping hair, came padding steadily past. If he noticed the mail van, he gave no sign. Warminger grinned to himself, and then let out a guffaw.

  ‘D’you know what I did? When the police stopped me, after that body was found, they wanted to know what time I crossed the road every day, and what regular road users I saw. I was as helpful as I could be, but when they kept on asking, day after day, I got fed up. So I told ’em about Ross Arrowsmith. Not that I ever actually saw him on the A135, but he certainly does sometimes go in that direction. Let’em pester him, I thought. It’ll serve him right for making us deliver his firm’s mail.’

  He drove on, into Upper Wickford. ‘Here you go, Brian – first delivery, Mill House.’

  Brian Finch had looked forward to being on a country route, after spending his first few weeks as a postman doing a cycle delivery on a new town housing estate. The route was, however, much more difficult to learn than he’d anticipated. There were so many detours, to take in all the farms; and then, the complete absence of house numbers was baffling.

  But despite that, and the wet feet, there were compensations. The villages were so quiet and civilised, so free from graffiti and the evidence of vandalism. And though the dogs were a worry, there were cats too. Brian Finch loved cats. He understood their timidity with strangers, and whenever he spied one peeping at him round the corner of a house when he went up to the front door, he crouched down and – with one eye on his watch, because he didn’t want to get behind schedule – enticed it towards him. Very few cats could resist someone who crouched down and chirruped at them. ‘See you again next week,’ he whispered hurriedly as they ventured to sniff at his outstretched fingers with their whiskered noses.

  He saw yet another cat as soon as he opened the gate of the house called Tenerife, on the edge of the Nether Wickford side of the common, where he went to deliver a letter for the Mrs Arrowsmith who, according to Kenny, kept changing the colour of her hair. The cat, a Siamese, was lying on the front doorstep, and it made no attempt to move as he approached. Odd … and there was something very strange about the way it was lying … about what it was lying in …

  And then he saw the sticky wetness on the seal-brown paws, the darkly matted cream fur of the coat; saw too the jaggedly severed neck, and the wide pool of blood where the delicate wedge-shaped head should have been.

  On the front door of the house, in large red letters, were paint-sprayed the words, YOUR TURN NEXT.

  Chapter Two

  ‘Jealousy,’ deduced the detective chief inspector’s small plump wife, snatching the butter dish out of her husband’s reach and substituting low-fat margarine. When she was dieting, Molly liked to make sure that he suffered too, for his own good. ‘It’s sheer jealousy, Doug Quantrill, and you needn’t try to deny it. You’ve been as grizzly as a bear ever since you heard that your policewoman friend was going to marry your boss.’

  ‘It’s nothing whatever to do with Patsy Hopkins,’ growled Quantrill. ‘Good grief, woman, I’ve had a murder investigation on my hands for the past two months. The DCS is coming this morning for a conference about it, and all I can tell him is that I’m making no progress. Do you wonder I’m irritable?’

  ‘You can’t be expected to make progress, when someone comes and dumps a headless corpse in your division without so much as a by-your-leave,’ said Molly, ‘and Chief Superintendent Mancroft knows that just as well as I do.’ She unplugged the toaster, to deter her heavyweight husband from putting in another slice of bread. ‘Will this be the first time you’ve seen him since you heard about the engagement, Douggie? Because it really is lovely for him to be getting married again, after being a widower for so long, and you must congratulate him as though you mean it.’

  Quantrill muttered into his coffee cup.

  ‘Anyway,’ Molly went on slyly, ‘it isn’t as though you’ll be without feminine company at work, now the woman detective sergeant’s arrived. What did you say her name is?’

  ‘Lloyd.’

  ‘And about Patsy’s age, you said … Married, divorced, widowed or single?’

  ‘I really don’t know,’ he snapped.

  He did know, of course, because he’d seen her personal file. Detective Sergeant Hilary Lloyd, formerly a member of the county serious crimes investigation team based at Yarchester, had arrived at Breckham Market two days ago to fill the year-old vacancy left by the promotion of Martin Tait. She was thirty, and unmarried. Feminine, certainly; but she didn’t stir the air as she passed him, as Wpc Patsy Hopkins had done.

  Which was really just as well, if they were going to achieve a good working relationship.

  ‘All that either of us will be concerned about,’ he told his wife sharply, ‘is the job in hand. With Patsy it was different – she was in the uniformed branch, so she didn’t work with me except on the occasions when I needed a policewoman’s help. Yes, all right, I
enjoyed her company. But there’s been nothing personal in our relationship, and you know it. Dammit, I had no idea she was in the least bit interested in Bill Mancroft, until I heard that they were going to get married.’

  ‘And that’s why you’re so piqued, isn’t it?’ said Molly with triumph. ‘Not just because she’s leaving Breckham, or because she’s marrying a man four years older than you, but because you knew her so little that you had no idea she was falling in love underneath your nose! For a detective, Doug Quantrill, you’re sometimes hopelessly unobservant.’

  He rose with dignity from the kitchen table, and made for the door. ‘I don’t know when I shall be home,’ he said distantly.

  ‘All right, dear. I’ll do a cold supper, then. By the way – are Sergeant Lloyd’s legs as good as Patsy’s?’

  ‘I really haven’t noticed,’ lied her husband.

  The atmosphere in the CID offices at Breckham Market divisional police headquarters was both more concerned and more optimistic than it had been for weeks. At 8.27 a. m. a postman had telephoned from a call box – on behalf of an unnerved colleague – with the news of the finding of a decapitated cat and a threatening message at Nether Wickford, about three miles from the layby where the headless corpse had been found. Detective Sergeant Lloyd, who was on duty when the call came in, had gone out to investigate.

  The threat might, of course, have no bearing at all on the headless woman’s death – the A135 case, as the police referred to it prosaically, after the route number of the road beside which the body had been found. There were always people who were sufficiently sadistic to try to frighten others into submission by referring to crimes that were currently in the news, just as there were people unstable enough to copy or attempt to copy the crimes themselves.

  On the other hand, there could be a link with the A135 case. The police had hoped that the woman’s death had been an isolated close-relationship killing, rather than the work of a psychopath, but this morning’s threat to the owner of the cat could mean that they were looking for someone who would kill again. The fact that a murderer who had gone to the savage extreme of cutting off his victim’s head in order to conceal her – and therefore his own – identity would be crazy to make himself traceable by threatening another woman, merely reinforced the possibility that they were looking for a psychopath.

  The Nether Wickford incident could also mean that the murderer might be someone who lived relatively locally. In the absence of any other leads, the death of the cat had at last provided something positive for the CID to work on, and they welcomed it for that reason.

  Detective Chief Superintendent Mancroft arrived from Yarchester for the conference full of optimism. He hadn’t heard the news but he had other, more personal, causes for satisfaction.

  ‘Good to see you, Doug!’

  It was the first time, in the nine years of their acquaintance, that he’d said anything of the kind, thought Quantrill sardonically. Bill Mancroft had always been a spare, morose man, never wasting time on pleasantries, rarely relaxing with his subordinates over a drink, virtually friendless. Seedy, too, since his wife’s death; careless about his suits, the trim of his moustache, the encroachment of dandruff. This had been one good reason for Quantrill’s total disbelief that the immaculate and long-legged Patsy Hopkins could have looked on the man with favour.

  But love had transformed the fifty-two-year-old Chief Superintendent, inspiring him to renew his wardrobe and shave off the moustache. He’d found a new barber, too. His hair was thicker and glossier than Quantrill remembered it, almost as though he’d had it professionally shampooed and blow dried …

  Swallowing his resentment, Quantrill held out his hand. ‘First time I’ve had the opportunity to say it, Bill – congratulations! I can’t pretend we’re pleased that you’re taking Patsy away from Breckham, but we all think you’re a very lucky man.’

  ‘Realise that.’ Gruffly embarrassed, Mancroft accepted the handshake. ‘Know she’ll be sorry to leave, in many ways. She’s always spoken of you very warmly, Doug. Sort of father figure in her view, I think – on account of your being a married man, I mean.’

  Quantrill wondered what disciplinary action would be taken against a Chief Inspector who spat in a Chief Superintendent’s eye. He managed to smile instead, but thinly.

  Mancroft clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Lucky man yourself, though, eh? There’ve been some long faces at Yarchester since Hilary Lloyd left, you know. She’ll be missed. First-class detective, just the person you need to strengthen your team here. Must get this A135 case cracked – Chief Constable’s talking about calling in the regional crime squad, and we don’t want that … What? New development, eh? Nasty. Potentially very nasty. Interesting, though. Might have no connection, of course, but still … Who’s investigating? Hilary? Capital, couldn’t be better. As I said, you’re a lucky man.’

  Quantrill hoped the Detective Chief Superintendent’s coffee would choke him.

  They were joined by Detective Inspector Harry Colman, head of the county serious crimes team and Sergeant Lloyd’s former boss. His noble bald forehead, combined with vigorous sidewhiskers and moustache, gave him something of the appearance of Queen Victoria’s Consort. Like Prince Albert, he was a devoted husband and father. Much of his working life – he was nearing retirement from the force – had been spent at scenes of squalor and violence, analysing the immediate surroundings of the unnaturally dead, but privately he was a gentle, sensitive man, interested in photography and the cultivation of hybrid tea roses.

  He and Quantrill were old friends. He’d hated to lose Hilary Lloyd from his team, he told the Chief Inspector, but at least he had the consolation that he couldn’t have lost her to a better man.

  ‘Don’t you start telling me how lucky I am,’ Quantrill grumbled. He jerked a scathing thumb at the door through which the Chief Superintendent had just disappeared, muttering something coy about washing his hands before the conference began; as they both knew, he was really hoping for a glimpse of his fiancée. ‘I’ve had just about enough from the old man. All right, Hilary Lloyd’s a good detective. I believe you both. But there’s no need to go on as though she’s God’s gift to Breckham Market. We’ve managed perfectly well for the past year without a CID sergeant, and I could have waited a bit longer until a man was available.’

  ‘I thought you liked having women in the force?’

  ‘I do. But I don’t want a woman as my number two, Harry! I want a sergeant I can be easy with, someone I can swap ideas with at any time of the day or night, in the office or the pub or wherever. It’s not a matter of liking – you know how I felt about young Martin Tait – but of understanding. I’d spoken briefly with Hilary Lloyd half a dozen times before she was sent here, and I spent most of yesterday working with her, but I don’t know any more about her now than I did five minutes after we first met. That lively manner is superficial. She talks fast and laughs easily, but she doesn’t relax. She’s always self-contained, impersonal. Her smile doesn’t seem to get as far as her eyes. God knows what’s going on in her head, but I don’t feel comfortable in her company.’

  Harry Colman’s sidewhiskers fluffed out indignantly in his former sergeant’s defence. ‘Stop treating the girl like a suspect, then! She’s every right to clam up if she knows you’re trying to probe about in her mind. All I’m prepared to tell you is that she’s a career policewoman, determined to make Inspector, at least, but not pushily ambitious like Tait. As far as her private life is concerned, I’ve always taken the view that it’s her own affair. Whatever confidences she’s given me, over the years, I’m keeping to myself.’

  ‘Fair enough. But is there a regular boy friend? Tell me that, at least, Harry. I can’t have a sergeant whose mind isn’t on the job.’

  ‘If there is, she’s never yet let him interfere with her work.’

  ‘Hmm,’ muttered Quantrill, dissatisfied. He had the old-fashioned masculine suspicion that any young working woman who had a husband or a regul
ar boy friend would be bound to put him first, and would therefore be a nuisance; and that if she had neither, she must have a chip on her shoulder, and would therefore be a problem.

  He recalled Hilary Lloyd’s features. ‘Her scar’s a great shame, of course, but it’s not in any way disfiguring. No one could call her pretty, but she’s not bad-looking.’

  ‘Not bad-looking?’ Harry Colman, with his photographer’s eye, was incredulous and kindly pitying. ‘My dear old friend, it’s obvious that you don’t appreciate good bone structure when you see it! That girl has a splendid profile. And when she does give a wholehearted smile, it’s a beauty. I really do hope she’s not going to be wasted on you, Doug …’

  They left the Chief Inspector’s office, on their way to the conference room, and met a plain-clothes policewoman with straight dark brown hair. She was almost as tall as Patsy Hopkins, but not, to Quantrill’s regret, as shapely. He didn’t care for thin women.

  From a distance, she seemed to be frowning. Close to, it was apparent that her left eyebrow was puckered by a faint, permanent scar, a memento of her service in uniform. It missed her eye by less than an inch, and left an irregular line above the bridge of her nose, before disappearing under the thick fringe of her hair.

  Quantrill, trying to give her features the benefit of the doubt, watched to see whether Hilary Lloyd would bestow an illuminating, whole-hearted smile on her former boss. But all she gave Harry Colman was a passing grin.

  Aware of the Chief Inspector’s scrutiny – like all detectives, he was an inveterate watcher; a watcher herself, she disliked being watched – she looked him straight in the eye. Her voice, when she spoke, was quick and light, full of enthusiasm for her work but always carefully impersonal.