The Bad Samaritan (14 page)

He didn't make a friend of Rosemary Sheffield, Charlie thought to himself.

“How did you get to know him?” he asked.

“Through the church, mainly,” she said, turning to him her deep eyes and unremarkable face. “As I say, I used to go much more regularly because I went with Dad. He's always been keen, particularly after Mother died. That was when I was ten, and I suppose he was looking for an interest to fill the gap. So it was at St Saviour's that Stephen and I met.”

“Where was he from? Did he have any family?”

“Not still alive. Both of his parents were dead.”

“Where was he from?”

“London. South of the river.”

“Was there any special reason why he moved to Leeds?”

“To get out of London, but still to have city amenities—theatre, music and so on.” She smiled reminiscently. “I remember talking to him about that when we were engaged. Stephen had a very sharp eye. He could see then that Leeds was a much better proposition for the future than Manchester or Birmingham.”

“And so he set up his business, and it did well,” Charlie continued. “Was it still doing well? Businesses are going to the wall everywhere.”

“It was—is—doing wonderfully well. There are all these new markets opening up in Eastern Europe. They want business know-how, and the British want to get into their markets. Oh no, the business is going better than ever.”

“Who will take it over?”

She shook her head.

“Oh dear. I hadn't thought about that at all . . . . There's Brian Ferrett, his second in command. Perhaps he'd buy me out, or go on running it for me . . . . I can't say anything about that because I simply haven't had time to consider.”

“I shouldn't have asked,” Charlie said quietly. “Of course it's much too early for you to have thought of that.”

“You see we're in a quandary,” resumed Mike Oddie. “Someone has murdered your husband, and yet you can't think of anything that he's done that might have made him enemies.”

“But I can't! It was a unique business where he had no competitors, and he and Brian Ferrett got on very well . . . . I just can't think of anyone who'd do
that
.”

Oddie tried to put the next question tactfully.

“There are areas in his life you don't know so well. If he travelled a lot . . . and of course the church.”

An expression came over her face that could only be described as mulish.

“I went to church now and then. I know the people there. Stephen did a lot of work for the church in all sorts of ways. If anyone resented him, then they'd be very ungrateful. But I don't believe for a moment they did.”

“And the travelling?”

The mulish expression remained set.

“As I said, he'd done much less recently, now the business was up and running. Probably not more than three or four times a year, short trips, within Europe.”

“Your husband was a handsome man,” put in Charlie.

She had to suppress a flush of irritation.

“Please don't treat me as if I were stupid,” she said sharply. “I can see the direction of these questions. You are a good-looking man, Constable. Does that mean I should take it for granted that you are stringing along five or six women at once?”

“No, but it means that if I wanted to I'd find it easier than someone who wasn't. I'm sorry if I offended you. I just meant that if he travelled a lot he might have had . . . relationships you knew nothing about.”

“You're not making things any better, Constable.”

“We weren't just thinking of . . . that kind of relationship,” said Mike Oddie, stepping in quickly. “Eastern Europe is a pretty murky area at the moment. Take Russia, for example: gangsterism is rife there—big-scale, highly organised gangsterism. There are some seriously rich people, and most of them didn't get that way by straightforward capitalist enterprise.”

Mrs Mills shrugged.

“That's the sort of thing I've just read about in newspapers. I'm quite sure Stephen would never get involved in it.”

“The big men there need contacts in the West.”

“They'd find they couldn't use Stephen—if they ever tried.”

“Your husband may have found that, with his job, he couldn't keep out of involvement.”

“You can always keep out of crime if you're firm about it. I think you're straying into fantasy, Superintendent.”

“I'm just trying over possibilities in my mind, Mrs Mills.”

“Talk it over with Brian. Look at the firm's records. I know you'll find everything was above board because that's the sort of man Stephen was. He was sharp, competitive and totally honest.”

“I've heard mention of the Rotarians,” said Charlie.

She turned to him, this time more openly hostile.

“Good heavens—are they considered suspicious now? Britain's Cosa Nostra?” She thought. “Stephen had been a member of the local branch for about seven years. A week or two ago he took over as treasurer from the Reverend Sheffield. That does not suggest that anyone in the Rotarians thought he was a dodgy character. But of course if you regard the whole organisation as suspect that won't cut any ice with you, will it?”

“I'm sorry. I seem to have the knack of offending you,” said Charlie, with no obvious contrition.

“I'm sure you know your job,” said Dorothy Mills. “But you don't know my husband.”

“No, we don't know your husband yet,” said Charlie quietly. He laid no particular emphasis on the last word, and she gave no sign of having registered it, but her next words seemed to be a response.

“He's hardly cold, and you seem to be scrabbling around trying to find out dirty secrets about him.”

“It's what happens in a murder enquiry, I'm afraid,” said Oddie.

“Haven't you thought that this may be casual, unmotivated violence?”

“That doesn't usually happen to healthy white males,” said Oddie. “It happens to women, and the springboard, one way or another, is usually sexual. But of course we'll keep all possibilities in mind.”

She swallowed.

“I suppose you want . . . Do you want me to . . . ?”

“Identify the body. Yes, I'm afraid we will want that, when you feel up to it.”

“One gets such a knowledge of things, doesn't one, from the television and books, but you never think it's going to happen to you . . . .” She paused, then made a decision. “I would like to do it now, if that's convenient . . . get it over with, start again, or try to think about starting again . . . .”

“Yes, of course,” said Oddie. “Could I just ring and find out if . . . everything is in order?”

“The telephone's over there.” She gestured to a corner of the sitting room where it sat on a small table. As Oddie was dialling the number the door to the hall opened and an old man came in. He had been tall, commanding, but his big, lean frame was now bent. His face was Scandinavian—big-boned, with sunken cheeks; but the chin was still firm and determined, like the last stones of a once-proud house.

“What's happening, Dot?” he said, looking from Charlie to Oddie, then back at his daughter. “Why are these men here?”

She got up quickly and went over to him.

“Sit down, Dad. We've had some bad news. Would you like your cup of tea?”

“I've had my cup of tea. You know I can make my own tea,
Dot.” He sat down, under a sort of protest, but almost sighing with relief. “What do you mean, bad news?”

She knelt in front of him.

“It's dreadful news, Dad. Stephen had an accident coming home from the party last night. I'm afraid he's dead.”

His mouth dropped open.

“Dead? Stephen dead? Dottie, he can't be.”

“I'm afraid he is, Dad.” She took his hand in hers and stroked it. “We've all got to be very brave. I've got to go and identify the body now.”

“Oh Dot, how terrible for you. I can't believe it, though. Stephen dead. Dottie, tell me it isn't true.”

He looked at her, bewilderedly, and seemed to see in her face that it was true. First one tear, then another, started coursing down his cavernous cheeks, and he began fumbling in his trouser pocket for a handkerchief.

“Poor Stephen. How can Stephen be dead? He was like a son to me. The only son I had. The best son I could have had.”

It was, Charlie thought, the most grief he had yet seen displayed for Stephen Mills. Because he was not entirely convinced that what Dorothy Mills felt was grief.

Mike Oddie gestured to WPC Morrison to stay with the old man, and together they led Mrs Mills out to the car. Twice on the journey into Leeds she made as if to ask something, then stopped herself. It was as they were drawing up at the West Yorkshire Police Headquarters that she said, “Is he going to look very dreadful?”

“They'll have cleaned him up as far as they can,” said Oddie. He adopted a businesslike tone because experience told him that was best. He led the way briskly inside. As they passed the desk the duty sergeant hailed him.

“Call for you, Mike.”

“Take it, Charlie, will you?” Oddie said, and went on at the same fast pace towards the police mortuary. Charlie picked up the phone.

“DC Peace speaking.”

“That's a constable, isn't it? I want to speak to the man in charge.”

“Superintendent Oddie is in the mortuary with a witness who is identifying the body.”

“Oh, that'll be Dorothy Mills, like as not, I suppose. How is she taking it? Well, I suppose you won't be able to say much, especially being junior, and I'll be brief with you, because I've got a Sunday dinner to cook . . . .”

Lancashire, thought Charlie, whose ear had refined itself in his three years in the North. And he very much doubted whether this lady was going to be brief.

“Now, of course the whole parish is devastated by the news, particularly as he was among us last night, and when you've been speaking to a man—not that I said more than ‘hello'—you can't believe, can you, that—?”

“Excuse me, but we are
very
busy here. Could you get to the point?”

“That, young man, is
precisely
what I am getting to. My time is valuable if yours isn't. The point is the incident that happened at the party last night, when the food arrived. I thought you might not have heard about that.”

“No, as a matter of fact we haven't, Mrs—?”

“Harridance. Florrie Harridance.”

“And address?”

“It's in the book. There's only one Harridance. Don't interrupt me, young man.
Now
, it was pizzas last night, and I can't think why, because it's never been pizzas before, and you can make what you like of that, because the person who brought them was
this young man from Pizza Pronto that there's been all this talk about. Not that I give the talk any credence, because I
know
Rosemary Sheffield, and I know she never would, not with someone so young. Though people say it's her time of life, and we all know people do funny things—”

“Did the incident involve Mrs Sheffield?”

“It did
not
. Or not directly. Don't be foolish, young man. It involved Stephen Mills, or why would I be ringing you? The boy came in with cartons of that foreign rubbish piled high in his arms, and he dumped them on the table, and it was then that it happened.”

“What happened?”

“He saw Stephen Mills, and Stephen Mills saw him.”

“And?”

“They were doomfounded. Well, the boy was doomfounded. Stephen Mills was very cool—he was always very cool, was Stephen—what you'd call a cool customer. Any road, all he said was ‘Hello, Stinker,' or that's what it sounded like, and the boy, this Silvio, he just stammered something and turned and ran out.”

“I see. Is that all?”

“Well, by all accounts the expression on that young man's face was
murderous
.”

“You say ‘by all accounts.' Didn't you see it yourself?”

“No, I didn't. I wasn't close enough to see.”

“And yet you were close enough to hear?”

“No, I was not, young man. What I've been telling you is what I've been told by those who were, and I've told you because it's not everyone who's public-spirited enough to come forward and volunteer information. If you want to talk to someone who was close by and who could both see and hear, you should go not to Mrs Sheffield, who may have her own reasons for not telling the
whole story, but to Mrs Gumbold, that's Violet Gumbold, in Severn Road, and no I don't know the number but it's in the book and it's an unusual name like Harridance, so use your initiative. And now, young man, if you've nothing more to ask me of any consequence, I'm going to go and turn the potatoes over—”

“Feel free,” said Charlie, and put the phone down quickly.

W
hen Oddie came back from the mortuary he ushered Mrs Mills out to the waiting car, driven by a comfortable-looking sergeant, then came back into the headquarters' outer office.

“How did she take it?” Charlie asked.

“Very well. They'd done a good job on him. She just nodded. She's got herself well under control.”

“Yes . . . . That phone call—”

“Oh yes. Anything interesting?”

“It was a woman who claimed there was some kind of incident while the food was being served at the party last night. Some kind of encounter between Stephen Mills and the young man who brought the food.”

“Anything in it?”

Charlie frowned in puzzlement.

“I don't know. If I'd just heard the story in isolation I'd have said she was making something out of nothing very much. But it's interesting that Mrs Sheffield didn't mention it.”