Fate Worse Than Death (15 page)

‘And then we need to find the girl's car. I've put out a watch for it on the roads, but I think it's more likely to be hidden somewhere.'

‘Probably deep in the forest,' said Wigby, blowing cigarette smoke down his nose. ‘God knows how big an area that covers …'

Martin Tait tapped him on the shoulder and handed him an ashtray. ‘Kindly stop flicking ash on to my aunt's carpet,' he said. ‘And for your information, the forest area's about eighty square miles.'

‘Bloody know-all –' muttered Wigby under his breath. He scowled, and disposed ostentatiously of his already spilled ash by rubbing it into the carpet with the sole of his shoe.

‘The forest's a big problem,' Quantrill agreed. ‘There are a surprising number of isolated old properties scattered about in it – keepers'and warreners'cottages and barns, some occupied and some disused. If necessary we'll extend our search to them, and it'll take time. But the forensic lab should be able to help when they've analysed the earth and grasses found on the girl's clothing. She must have died somewhere out in the open, probably not far from where she was held captive, and forensic will be able to tell us whether or not it was in the forest.'

‘One thing's puzzling me about that,' said James Bedford. ‘If Sandra died in the open air, in the forest or wherever, why did her captor go to the bother of bringing her back here and putting her to bed?'

‘Because he's weird,' said Wigby impatiently.

‘Weird he may be,' said Hilary Lloyd. ‘But I think he did what he did because he loved her.'

The briefing finished with the allocation of duties. Naturally enough, Martin Tait was excluded.

‘Anything I can do to help, sir?' he enquired politely.

‘No – you're on leave, remember?' said Quantrill. ‘Go and get on with it.' Then he added, with some suspicion, ‘You've been unusually quiet.'

‘As you wanted me to be. I was listening, though. And thinking.'

‘I don't doubt it.'

Tait smiled. As usual, he looked pleased with himself. No one would guess that within the past twenty-four hours he had heard that he'd been cut out of a large fortune; but anyone who knew him well would also know that Martin Tait was not a man to accept defeat if he could possibly plan his way out of it.

‘Give my love to Alison when you see her,' he said. ‘And now – if you really can't think of anything else you want me to do – I'll go and fly my aeroplane.'

Wigby, who had overheard the conversation, glared at the younger man's departing back. ‘
His aeroplane
… who does he think he is?' the detective constable seethed aloud. ‘Just who does he bloody think he
is
?'

It was something that Quantrill often – especially where his daughter's, and his own, future relationship with Martin Tait was concerned – wondered himself.

There was only one possible topic of conversation in Fodderstone on Wednesday 9 August. The Websdells were well liked and respected in the village, and the news that Sandra had been found dead had shocked the whole community.

No one was in any doubt about the identity of her killer. And because Desmond Flood was an outsider, no one had any hesitation in condemning him within earshot of a reporter from the local paper, a trainee journalist who looked like a cherub with acne. He had been sent to Fodderstone in a hurry, late on Wednesday morning, not so much to cover the story as to hold it until a senior reporter arrived. But the young journalist was tired of reporting village fêtes and sports events. Determined to prove that he could handle a murder story unaided, he followed the most vocal of the villagers to the Flintknappers Arms and offered to buy drinks all round.

Phil Goodwin was behind the bar. Lois had told him that she was too upset on Beryl's behalf to stand there listening to gossip. She had intended to insist that Phil must for once stay at home, but to her surprise he hadn't even suggested going out.

Taking advantage of the fact that her husband was unusually subdued and co-operative – and too thankful for it to wonder why – Lois had also declared that she had no intention of preparing a cooked meal. It was too hot, and she felt too sad, to bother. Her only regular customer for lunch, since Desmond Flood had stopped coming after Sandra's disappearance, was Howard Braithwaite; and he, Lois told her husband, could for once eat salad whether he liked it or not.

Phil Goodwin gave a surly reply to the reporter's greeting, refused a drink for himself, and tried with frowns and scowls to prevent the regulars from taking up the invitation. But knowing a good offer when they heard it, Charley Horrocks and Stan Bolderow and Reg Osler all asked for pints.

‘O'course Flood's the man the police want,' declared the balding and belligerent Stan. ‘Who else could it be? You can never trust a feller who comes from London and says he's an artist – stands to reason he's peculiar. And Desmond Flood's the most miserable sod I ever met. God knows why Sandra ever got engaged to him. She must ha'realized in the end that she'd made a mistake, but by then he wouldn't let her go. That must ha'been how it happened.'

‘It was him, definitely,' concurred Stan's sidewhiskered sidekick, Reg. Phil Goodwin, secretive behind his tinted spectacles, nodded in reluctant agreement; so did Howard Braithwaite, who had just come in. And from his usual bar stool Charley Horrocks made upper-crust sounds of approval, the baying ‘Wah wah wah'noise that appals sensitive listeners when they hear it being made by Members of Parliament during broadcast debates from the House of Commons.

Then they all fell silent. Charley buried his purple nose in his pint. But Stan and Reg, though they were smoke-blackened and thirsty as usual, drank more circumspectly.

‘What about Sandra Websdell herself?' asked the cherubic reporter, pen poised. ‘What can you tell me about her?'

‘Nothing!' intervened Phil Goodwin fiercely. ‘She'd lived away from the village for years. There's nothing any of us can tell you.'

Stan and Reg exchanged glances. ‘That's right,' agreed Stan, though he sounded surprised.

‘True enough,' confirmed Reg. They drank cautiously.

‘Yes, quite.' Howard Braithwaite moved up to the bar and put on a pair of gold-rimmed half-moon spectacles so that he could read the menu chalked on the blackboard. He was a spare, grey man: grey hair, grey skin, grey suit, completely urban despite the fishing tackle propped against the wall beside what he considered to be his private corner table. Everyone at the Flintknappers knew that fishing was his excuse for getting out of his wife's way, and having heard from their own wives about the organizing habits of Marjorie Braithwaite they couldn't blame him.

‘But what about when Sandra Websdell was younger?' persisted the reporter. ‘Surely some of you – ?'

‘Salad,'
barked Howard Braithwaite, staring with disbelief at the blackboard. ‘Ham salad! Is there no hot dish?'

‘No there isn't,' snapped the landlord, who even at the best of times found it difficult to take kindly to the proposition that the customer is always right. He used the forefinger and thumb of one hand to make a simultaneous tour of both sides of his catfish moustache. ‘Lois didn't feel like cooking today.'

‘
Didn't feel
like it?' Braithwaite exploded. ‘Your wife knows perfectly well that I detest salads. I'm a regular customer here, and I expect a hot meal. If she's prepared nothing else, then tell her that I'd like bacon and egg. Crisp bacon, two eggs, fried bread and fried tomatoes.'

The two men glared at each other across the bar counter. Phil Goodwin's eyes slid in the reporter's direction. ‘Oh well – I'll ask Lois to do you a fry-up,' he agreed sulkily.

‘What about you, sir?' the reporter appealed to Charley Horrocks. ‘Do you remember Sandra Websdell?'

Horrocks raised his nose from his mug and reached for his copy of the
Sun
. ‘Good-lookin'gel,' he mused with some regret. ‘Well developed … Titillatin', you might say. Pity about what happened to her, but there's no doubt she arsked for it.'

The reporter's eyes popped. ‘What makes you say that?'

‘He said it', broke in Stan Bolderow, bristling ominously, ‘because he's a dirty old fool.' He advanced slowly on Horrocks, his bald head glistening with sweat, his muscular body stretching the holes in his string vest to their limit. Charley Horrocks was twice Stan's size, and perched up on a bar stool; but Stan was younger and very fit. He took a sudden rush at the third Earl's grandson, butting Charley's beer-barrel of a body so hard that the man was knocked backwards, his purple face incredulous, his khaki arms and legs flailing as he fell.

‘And as for you, boy –' said Stan, breathing hard as he turned; but the spotted cherub was already half-way to the door, having

decided not to pursue this particular story until he had the support

of an experienced reporter.

‘Did you have to do that, Stan?' said Phil Goodwin angrily as he went round the counter to help heave Charley Horrocks on to his stool again. ‘The last thing we want is to draw attention to ourselves.'

‘The last thing we want is to have this stupid bugger shooting his mouth off to the press,' Stan retorted. ‘He might say anything. Besides, I'm not going to stand by an'listen to his dirty talk about the girl. I was fond of her. If you want to know, I'm wholly upset that she died.'

‘You're not the only one,' said Reg Osler.

‘We're none of us exactly happy about it,' snapped Howard Braithwaite. ‘It was extremely inconvenient for us, to say the least. There'll be reporters and policemen all over the village now, and I for one am going to keep my head down. As far as I‘m concerned, the rest of the project's cancelled.'

‘Oh no, it's not!' Phil Goodwin shouted. ‘We've gone to a hell of a lot of trouble to set it up, and there's too much at stake to cancel it now.'

‘Then don't attempt to include me. I've finished with it – and with all of you. We've never been equally involved, and I have no intention of being dragged down with you if you're caught.'

‘Haven't you, Mr Braithwaite?' Reg gave a jeering laugh. ‘Well, you'd better have another think about that, because you
are
involved. Doesn't matter which of us did what, or when or where. You played your part, and you're not going to wriggle out of it.'

‘I'd like to see him try,' threatened Stan.

‘He can't get out of it,' asserted Phil Goodwin. ‘He's in as deep as we are, and he knows it. That's why we've got to stick together. When the police come round asking questions, we must all be ready with the same story. Right?'

He suggested a communal alibi for the previous evening. Braithwaite and Bolderow and Osler argued hotly, but could think of no better alternative.

‘Right, Charley?' Goodwin demanded.

The third Earl's grandson lifted his nose from his mug and bayed his agreement.

When Desmond Flood left Fodderstone the previous day, he had told his landlady that he expected to return on the 5.15 bus from Saintsbury on Wednesday afternoon.

He could, of course, have been lying. That was one reason why Chief Inspector Quantrill had sent DC Wigby to Saintsbury in an attempt to trace the man. But on the off-chance that Flood would do as he'd said – either because he was innocent of Sandra Websdell's abduction and death, or because he was cunning enough to try to avert suspicion from himself by returning – Quantrill decided to go to Horkey and wait for the bus to arrive.

Horkey was a bigger, busier village than Fodderstone, with several shops, a post office, a school, and the invaluable bus service. The bus stop was outside a small brick and flint house in whose weedy garden a couple of tables and benches were parked in the shade of an elder bush. The garden was staked with hand-painted signs offering everything the owners could think of to tempt passers-by to stop and buy:
Country Crafts, Bric-à-Brac, Herbs, Victoriana, Hamsters, Salads, Teas
.

‘And not a bad cup of tea, either,' Quantrill admitted with grudging surprise. On his own, he would not have gone near the place; but Hilary Lloyd had made straight for it, and he had followed out of courtesy and thirst. ‘I never trust anywhere that advertises “country crafts”,' he went on. Suffolk born and bred, he recognized the hallmark of incomers and regarded them with the traditional countryman's mixture of suspicion and derision. ‘You can bet it's run by townies, playing at what they think is country life.'

‘That doesn't mean they can't make a perfectly good cup of tea.'

‘Hmm. I expected it would turn out to be herbal.'

Hilary had worked with him long enough to realize that she would never shift his prejudices, though she kept on trying. ‘I might have known you'd think that,' she said.

She smiled at him as she said it, and he took no offence. Although she was lively and womanly, she usually made a point of keeping her distance. She laughed easily, but she didn't often give a wholehearted smile. And that was a pity.

Quantrill knew that she'd been attacked, years ago when she was a uniformed policewoman in Yarchester, by a villain wielding a broken bottle. Although she wore her dark hair in a sideswept fringe, she couldn't completely hide the faint residual scar on her forehead. It jagged down towards her nose, just missing her eyes, and puckered her right eyebrow in a way that gave her what seemed from a distance to be a permanent frown. Really, he thought, she looked quite plain much of the time; but her smile, when it came, was a beauty.

Suddenly conscious that he had been looking at her for too long, he stood up and moved away. ‘Now there's a
real
country craft,' he said, pointing across the road to an old brick-built, pantile-roofed shed. It stood at a right angle to the road, facing an open yard that seemed to be part coal-dump, part ironmongery junk-heap. On the gable end of the shed, in painted letters so faded as to be barely legible, was the name STAGG, and underneath it the words VETERINARY SHOEING FORGE. And below, in bold paint on a modern display board:
Andrew Stagg, Farrier
.