The Bad Samaritan (16 page)

“I believe he's been a member of the St Saviour's congregation for some time,” said Charlie, turning to Paul.

“Oh yes, quite a while. Since my time here, but it must be something like . . . oh, twelve years or more.”

“Do you remember how or why he started coming?”

“I can't say. I suppose he'd just moved here—that is the usual reason.” He paused, as his wife came into the room. “Do you remember how Dark Satanic—how Stephen Mills started coming to St Saviour's?”

His question had been drowned in a gale of laughter from his wife and daughter.

“Really, Father, you've given the policeman a totally false impression of the man!” protested Mark.

“Not so bloody false,” muttered his sister.

“Right,” said Rosemary, becoming businesslike again. “How did Dark Satanic Mills come to be a member of St Saviour's congregation? I've asked myself often enough why he was a member at all . . . . I somehow associate him with old Mr Unwin. That's his father-in-law. He was much spryer then, of course, and in complete control. I seem to think either he brought him along, or they were often together.”

“He and Dorothy weren't married then, though,” put in Paul. “And Mr Unwin wasn't a member of our church. He was a red-hot Evangelical. I married Stephen and Dorothy—what?—about ten or more years ago.”

“I rather think that marriage to Dorothy sprang from his friendship with her father,” said Rosemary. “Odd way round, that.”

“You said to me that you didn't think Dorothy Mills was a very
important element in Stephen Mills's life,” said Charlie. “What was it that made you think that?”

“It was only an impression,” said Rosemary thoughtfully. “It's just that you don't see them around together much. Oh, occasionally she'd come to church, or to one of our do's, but it was occasionally. If we were at a concert or the theatre in Leeds you might see Stephen, but to my recollection we hardly every saw him and his wife together.”

“If you had to make any sort of date or arrangement with him,” said her husband, “he'd take out his diary and consult it, but he'd never say he'd have to ask his wife. Most men do these days—as a sort of sop, I suppose—but he never did.”

“And you implied there were other women,” Charlie pressed him.

“That was certainly the impression given. I wouldn't be able to name any names.”

Mark nodded wisely, as if his previous strictures had been justified. Charlie could imagine Mark being exceedingly irritating. He turned to Rosemary.

“Could you name any names?”

“No, I couldn't. You might say that if there weren't he should have been sued for false pretences. It was really a question of manner. He exuded confidence in his powers of attraction. If any woman gave the slightest sign of responding he was in there pressing his advantage home. But as to
evidence
of his sleeping with any of them—no, I'm afraid I have none.”

“Isn't that odd?” Charlie asked.

“Maybe,” said Rosemary, not seeming convinced. “But maybe he took care to keep that side of himself away from the congregation. I've certainly seen him emerging from a pretty sleazy massage parlour in town—The Sinful Sunbed, in Potter Street. He just grinned, quite unembarrassed. So perhaps he didn't want to compromise his position at St Saviour's.”

“That suggests his position there was important to him,” said Charlie.

“Though there's also the possibility that the ladies there are just not very tempting.”

Once again Charlie could have sworn that a shadow passed over Rosemary's daughter's face.

O
n his way back to base Charlie dropped in at the flat he shared with his girlfriend Felicity. It was a one-bedroom affair, but with a large living room they had already made cheerful and personal by their own choice of pictures and bits and pieces of furniture. Felicity was surrounded by books and was hunched over a blank writing pad.

“So what made them summon you early?” she asked.

“It's a murder.”

“It's lovely being a policeman's partner,” commented Felicity. “You have such lovely casual conversations about perfectly horrible things.”

“I'm surprised none of your ghoulish university friends have rung to tell you.”

“They know I'm supposed to be writing an essay. Who was it?”

“Know a man called Stephen Mills?”

“Never heard of him.”

“Ask around of your friends—particularly women.”

“Particularly a certain sort of woman student, I suppose.”

“Yes . . . . Felicity, you go to Pizza Pronto more often than I do.”

“Don't I ever! All those nights when you say you'll be home and then ring to say you're working late.”

“Would you recognise the boys who work there?”

She frowned, sidetracked.

“The boys? Is it all right to call them ‘boys,' I wonder?”

“Spare me the intricacies of political correctness. Would you know them?”

“It's only recently that there's been two. I've only seen the new one once, and there was nothing very remarkable about him.”

“And the other?”

“Oh yes, I've seen him often. The proprietor speaks to him in Italian, but I don't think he is. Maybe North African.”

“Both the boys have scarpered, or so I suspect. The new one won't be in the Leeds area, if he knows what's good for him, but the other one may be. Neither of them has a work permit, if my guess is right.”

“You're not harassing illegal immigrants, are you, Charlie?”

“In my job I do what I'm told to do,” said Charlie impatiently. It was an old argument. “But no—the new one is involved somehow in the murder, and I'd like to know if he said anything to the other that might throw light on it. He's quite likely to have gone to some other pizzeria in town. Could you alert some of your student friends to look out for him?”

Felicity thought, then shook her head.

“I doubt that would work. He's probably gone to a quite different area of Leeds, hasn't he?”

“Probably.”

“Students change digs, but they don't often move right across town. You hear of something going in your area and you snap it up . . . . Quite apart from the question of whether they
want
to help the police . . . Wouldn't it be better to drive around and look?”

“When we have a spare week, I suppose.”

“It wouldn't take that long,” said Felicity confidently. “I'll look in the Yellow Pages for likely places and map out a route. I could cruise around myself, just look through the windows. You won't need the car, I suppose?”

“I'll be working all the hours God sends, and then some.”

When Charlie got back to headquarters he was told that Oddie had just come in with a witness. He found them in a corridor on the way to an interview room and was introduced to Brian Ferrett. He was a chunky, slightly chubby young man, with thick brown curls framing a moonlike face and a manner that would have been encouraging on a school playing field—cheery, a little too loud. If he showed signs of nervousness, that was to be discounted; it was one of the most common reactions to murder, among the innocent as much as among the guilty.

“It's just incredible,” he said to Charlie when they had been introduced. “Mind-blowing. I mean, you couldn't meet a more decent bloke than old Steve. And so full of life.”

That was as of yesterday, Charlie felt like saying. But he held his peace and, with Oddie, ushered him through to the interview room.

When the formalities had been gone through, it was Oddie who started the questioning.

“You were Stephen Mills's—partner, was it? Or second in command?”

“Second in command,” Ferrett said, readily and unresentfully. “Though he treated me more like a partner. I'd practically worked my way up from office boy.”

“In how many years was that?”

“I'd been with him eight years. The business had been going nearly a year when he took me on.”

“And I gather you do—you've been doing—a lot of the travelling involved in recent times.”

“Yes, I do a lot of that. Stephen still had his places where he had a special expertise, good contacts he wanted to maintain. But yes—a lot of it I'd been getting to do, and developed my own contacts and expertise. Due off tomorrow, as a matter of fact—” He saw something in Oddie's face and said hurriedly, “Nothing that can't be put off.”

“How did you come to get the job?”

He leaned back in his chair confidently.

“He wanted someone good with languages. It's something I've never found a problem. I graduated in Russian, but there were no jobs around. I had French and German as well, to Advanced level. Stephen saw that there was use for Russian in all the Eastern bloc countries where it was taught, and when he realised I was very fast at learning new languages he took me on. He was tremendously farsighted: he could see that things were loosening up in Eastern Europe. Hungary, Bulgaria, then gradually the rest—like the old domino theory in the Far East, only in reverse. Steve was just waiting for it to happen, then going in to see how he could help.”

“Help?”

“Do business with them. That is helping them. We had what they need—taught them the skills they need.”

“Is it in Eastern Europe where most of your business lies?”

“Oh no. But it's the
developing
part of our business. The bulk occurs in the Common Market countries. That's where the money is. In spite of all the processes of standardisation, each country has its peculiarities and quirks, its little hurdles you have to jump. It's those we can advise customers about, as well as putting them in touch with individual firms with marketing interests that coincide with their own.”

“I see. And is business flourishing?”

“Oh yes!” he said, with positively boyish enthusiasm. “Brilliant.
Of course we were hit by the recession, especially when it really started biting on the Continent as well. But we've weathered it—and now things are picking up in a big way.”

It was the first time Charlie had heard anyone outside government claim that things were picking up.

“So you were both busy?”

“No question of that. Still, we're used to it. There was a time when Steve was running his father-in-law's business as well. That
really
took twenty-five hours a day!”

“Not much time for personal life, when you're working that hard,” said Oddie neutrally. Ferrett shot him a glance, markedly less confident.

“Well, Steve was more or less only doing it as a favour to his wife's father.”

“Somebody commented that Dorothy Mills was something of an irrelevance in her husband's life,” put in Charlie. Brian Ferrett spread out his hands in a gesture of coming clean.

“Look, he was a bloke in a thousand. Straight as a die, old Steve. He'd never willingly have hurt Dottie. But maybe—and it
is
maybe, because we didn't discuss it—maybe he realised early on that he'd made the wrong choice. She's a nice enough lady, but she's got no class, to put it bluntly. She's not sexy or elegant, and she was no use at all in the business. Stephen was no monk. Maybe—again, maybe—he got what he wanted elsewhere. But he stayed with her, had her dad living with them, and I never heard him give her a cross word. Not every wife could say the same. Fair's fair. He did his duty to her.”

It was a long speech, but Oddie didn't find it an entirely convincing one. He certainly didn't believe this was a subject they had never discussed.

“Where was the ‘elsewhere' where he got what he needed?” asked Oddie. Ferrett shrugged.

“Search me. It wasn't something we talked about, like I said. I only know there were times when I didn't ask him where he'd been, know what I mean? My
impression
is that there may have been one or two affairs, but that mostly he got what he wanted by paying for it, if you get me.”

“I get you,” said Oddie with a man-to-man smile. “Now, obviously in this sort of enquiry we have to look for enemies of the dead man. Do you know of any?”

“Of course I've thought,” said Ferrett, engagingly candid. “Thought all the way here. It's what first springs to mind, isn't it? But there's none I know of in his business life. Why should there be? He was providing a service, and there was nothing to speak of in the way of competition. He'd carved out his own little niche.”

“Clever of him. What about dissatisfied customers?”

Ferrett shook his head confidently.

“It doesn't do to have dissatisfied customers. If there were any that felt they'd been given bad advice, or hadn't got their money's worth, Steve scrapped the bill or sent them a much smaller one. That was only sensible business practice.”

“What about his earlier life?”

“Before he came to Leeds? I've no idea. Never discussed it. I think he came from London.”

“But he never mentioned a father or mother? Or other family? Friends from the time before he came to Leeds?”

“Not to me. I've always had the impression that both parents were dead.”

“Unusual for a man in his forties.”

“Maybe. Could have been some kind of accident.”

“Of course. But from all we've found out Mills seems to have emerged in Leeds like some kind of phoenix from the ashes.”

“If you say so. By the time I met him he was already married to Dorothy and very much part of the family there. He and old
Unwin were thick as . . . very close. It never occurred to me to ask about his earlier life.”

For two people who had worked closely for years there seemed to be many subjects they had kept away from.

“We have to ask, though.
Somewhere
there's got to be a motive for his murder.”