Who Saw Him Die? (4 page)

But now, unexpectedly, she had had a breakthrough. This morning, glittering-eyed and fortified by gulps of strong tea and mouthfuls of bacon sandwich, she was trying urgently to make a telephone call.

‘Where is the fool?' she stormed, slamming down the unanswered receiver for the third or fourth time. Her patience with people other than her daughters had become shorter as her emotional strength increased.

A wail came from the bathroom, where Sharon was closeted. ‘I'm
here
,' Doreen's elder daughter protested tearfully. Since the sales manager had dumped her, Sharon had reverted to a childhood unhappier than her own had ever been. ‘Don't shout at me, Mum,' she sobbed, ‘I'm being as quick as I can …'

Doreen clasped the edges of her dressing gown across her protruding nightie and shuffled hurriedly towards the bathroom. ‘It's all right, my lovey, Mum's not cross with you,' she called through the door in an affectionate but absent tone. ‘Don't strain yourself, you've got all day …'

Thinking hard, Doreen returned to the telephone. She took another bite of sandwich and then riffled through the directory with greasy fingers.

‘Who're you ringing?' said her younger daughter huskily. Tracey, in brief pyjamas, skinny, white-faced, hollow-eyed, spiky-haired, was leaning against the open door between the kitchen and the living room. She wore a gold stud in the side of her left nostril. In one of her hands was a mug of coffee, in the other a cigarette. Both mug and cigarette were shaking.

‘Never you mind who I'm ringing,' snapped her mother. ‘It's not about you. Go back to your room, Trace, and shut the door. Go on. Yes, all right, I'll give you some money to go out with – just as soon as I've made this call.'

Tracey dragged on her cigarette and went, coughing and shuddering.

Doreen dialled another number. This time the telephone was answered.

‘Dave? Dave Wheeler? It's me, Doreen Goodrum. Where the hell have you been, I've been trying to get hold of you ever since last night … No, don't tell me, just listen.
I know where Jack is!

‘Yes, still in Suffolk! Only forty miles away. But his number's ex-directory, so we'd never have found him through the phone book. He was so cunning about covering his tracks, the devil, but now he's had his name and address published! A report on an inquest. Seems he ran over a drunk.

‘No, I don't s'pose it was deliberate. One thing I'll say for Jack, he wasn't violent. Never lifted a finger against me or the kids. Anyway, the Coroner said it was an accident.

‘Where? Ah, that'd be telling! We'd better meet, and come to some arrangement … Yes, I know how badly you want him, but so do I, Dave – me
and
my girls. Jack Goodrum's got a hell of a lot to answer for …'

In his semi-detached house at number 5 Benidorm Avenue, Breckham Market, Detective Chief Inspector Douglas Quantrill came down to breakfast in a bad temper.

For one thing, he had a thick head. He didn't usually drink much more than the odd pint, in deference to the drink-driving laws; but he'd just spent two days at county police headquarters, in company with his fellow divisional CID chiefs, on a computer familiarisation course that had been enough to turn any nontechnical man to drink.

He couldn't deny that he'd made the most of the after-course get-together, in the knowledge that a police driver would give him a lift home and that he could have a long lie-in next morning. Today should have been his day off. But he'd been hauled out of his morning sleep by a telephone call from the divisional superintendent, who wanted him to investigate an unlikely-sounding allegation of murder. And he was so bleary-eyed that he'd cut himself while shaving and was now decorated about the jowls with bloodstained scraps of green Andrex.

Quantrill – over six feet tall, and broad with it – sat down at the kitchen table and stared without enthusiasm at his breakfast. The one pleasure of going on the course had been the opportunity it gave him to spend a night of depravity at a good Yarchester hotel. He'd really enjoyed that. Having a bed to himself, sitting up in it drinking beer out of a tooth glass while watching a late-night Western on television, then breakfasting extravagantly on porridge, egg-bacon-tomato-and-sausage, and several slices of toast with lashings of butter and marmalade …

His wife Molly hadn't fed him as well as that for years. She believed in watching his weight, and he resented it, even though he knew (because she wouldn't let him forget) that it was for his own good. Despite the fact that nature had obviously intended her to be a plump woman, and that she was never going to win her long-running battle against two surplus stones of weight, she would regularly engage in a determined attempt to get rid of at least half of it. And when Molly went seriously on a diet (as distinct from reading
Slimming
magazine while absent-mindedly nibbling biscuits) she made quite sure that her husband dieted seriously too.

Quantrill sighed, and embarked glumly on his single slice of brown bread, moistened by a dab of low-fat spread and smear of Marmite. Thank God she'd made him a pot of strong tea, even though the milk was skimmed and she kept the sugar permanently hidden.

‘Did you enjoy your computer course, dear?' Molly enquired. Douglas never talked to her about his work, but she felt that this was one question she could safely ask him. He rarely listened when she told him about her own job, as a part-time receptionist at the local health centre, and he took no interest at all in her back-stage work with the Breckham Market and District Amateur Operatic Society; but she tried hard to keep her marriage in what she thought of as good repair, and she'd recently read an article in
Woman and Home
on the importance of talking to your husband. Unfortunately she had never noticed, in twenty-eight years of marriage, that Douglas – even when he was in a good temper – hated making bright conversation at breakfast.

‘No, I didn't enjoy the course,' he answered. ‘I never expected to.' He could see that the newly installed computer system would be invaluable for storing and retrieving the mass of information collected in the investigation of major crimes, but he himself could make neither head nor tail of the new technology and he resented being made to feel like an old-fashioned copper, even if he was one. ‘Computers,' he added, ‘are for the bright boys – the Martin Taits of this world, blast them.'

‘Was Martin there too?' asked Molly eagerly.

‘Oh yes,
he
was there. Detective Chief Inspector Martin Tait, Bachelor of Science … Knowing everything, as usual.'

‘Well, he
is
very clever, Douggie. When you think that he came here only four years ago as your sergeant, and now he's the same rank as you! And he's still only twenty-seven …'

Molly had hopes of an eventual marriage between Martin Tait and her younger daughter Alison. They seemed well suited, and Martin – who had just been appointed head of Saintsbury divisional CID – was definitely a good catch. But young people these days were so casual about getting married … ‘He's got a brilliant career ahead of him, hasn't he?' she said a little wistfully.

‘Do you wonder, with his advantages! University degree, special course at police college, accelerated promotion guaranteed –' Quantrill grumbled away, sore with envy. It had taken him twenty years'hard slog to attain the rank that had been bestowed on his former sergeant. ‘It's all right for
him
. The rest of us, the real coppers, have to do it the hard way.'

Douglas wasn't usually so bitter about Martin, Molly reflected. Peevish, yes; but fair-minded enough to concede that what really annoyed him was that the younger man was in fact as good a detective as he imagined himself to be. She might have spoken up in favour of her son-in-law elect, if it wasn't that she had a more personal subject on her mind.

‘And what about Sergeant Lloyd?' she asked with an over-elaborate attempt at casualness. ‘Was she on the course, too?'

‘No, she wasn't.'

Molly relaxed. She didn't really think her husband was having an affair with his present CID sergeant; but he was only forty-nine, still good-looking, and he had always been susceptible to women he met in the course of his work. When he'd been so keen to spend Monday night at an hotel in Yarchester, and again when he'd stayed on in the city so late last night, she couldn't help being suspicious. But happily, it seemed that her worries had been groundless.

‘I just wondered, Douggie,' she said, and hurried out to the hall to answer the telephone. After all, this was supposed to be her husband's rest day, and she liked to save him from outside interruptions whenever possible.

Quantrill, who hated being called Douggie, stared morosely after her matronly back. If only Hilary Lloyd
had
been on the course! Not that anything would have come of it … She'd never given him a word or a look that he could safely interpret as encouragement, and he didn't think he'd have dared to risk a direct approach. Better to keep on dreaming than to be rebuffed.

But he valued Hilary's company and her conversation. Just to be with her, off duty, would have been almost enough. She didn't appear to be attached to anyone else, and if only they'd had the opportunity to get to know each other better there might have been something to hope for in the future.

As things were, his outlook was dreary. There wasn't, he supposed, anything drastically wrong with his marriage; they didn't have rows, that wasn't Molly's way. But their life together was completely humdrum. He and his wife had had nothing to say to each other for years, and her persistent attempts at conversation bored and irritated him.

Worst of all – though Molly tried hard, experimenting with eye-shadow, having her hair done regularly, spending pounds in Marks and Spencer's on clothes – she no longer attracted him physically. It wasn't that he minded her plumpness. When they'd first met he had been captivated by the curves above and below her slim waist, and she'd put on the weight so gradually that he'd hardly noticed it. But that was the trouble, now: he hardly noticed her at all.

And there ought to be more to life than this. He felt a dissatisfaction, a restlessness, a sense of time slipping away, wasted …

His wife was chattering excitedly on the telephone, almost shrieking into it. Quantrill scowled, clutched his pounding head, and went upstairs to the bathroom in search of aspirin. He'd been a fool to drink so much last night. He'd stayed out, trying to enjoy himself, simply because he was in no hurry to return home; and the reason for
that
was that there was precious little for him to come home for.

‘Douggie! Oh, Douggie, the most wonderful news – you'll never guess!'

‘I don't intend to try.' Quantrill emerged from the bathroom sore-chinned, having stayed there long enough to ease the blood-caked scraps of tissue from his shaving cuts. ‘No doubt you'll tell me anyway.'

‘Oh, it's so exciting!' Molly was half-way upstairs, laughing, delighted, sounding – her husband suddenly realised – years younger. As she looked up at him, the happiness in her soft brown eyes and the engaging tilt of her nose gave him an unexpected reminder of the pretty girl she had been not all that long ago.

‘What's so exciting?' he said in a kinder voice.

Molly paused dramatically. ‘Would you believe it? Our daughter is going to have a baby!'

‘She's
what
?' Quantrill's kindly impulse was swamped by a surge of anger that reddened his face and swelled the veins in his temples. If that upstart Martin Tait had impregnated Alison –

And then he remembered something.

‘
Who
is?' he said uncertainly.

‘Why, Jennifer, of course! Jennifer and Nigel, after all these years … Isn't it marvellous?'

Quantrill simmered down. ‘Oh, yes – marvellous,' he agreed dutifully. His elder daughter had lived away from home for so long that there were times when he almost forgot her existence. She'd always wanted to be a nurse, and at eighteen she had chosen to go to London – possibly because, at the time, he and Molly were going through a bad patch and she'd wanted to get away from them – to train at Guy's Hospital. And there, now a ward sister, she had remained ever since.

His wife had hoped, of course, that Jennifer would marry a doctor. He knew that it had been a great disappointment to Molly that her daughter had fallen in love, instead, with a medical technician, though Nigel had turned out to be a good steady husband, keen on do-it-yourself jobs about the home and a steam railway enthusiast in what remained of his spare time. They'd been married for seven years and had seemed to show no interest at all in starting a family, to Molly's further disappointment.

But now some of his wife's hopes were going to be fulfilled, and Quantrill felt glad for her. Come to think of it, Molly must have been finding her life a bit dull, too … She'd always doted on babies, and enjoyed nothing better than knitting small garments, so perhaps the newcomer would help to keep her happy.

And, thinking about if further as he followed his excitedly chattering wife downstairs, he felt genuinely glad for Jennifer and Nigel. A marriage needed children. That was what had justified his own, and provided the adhesive that had kept it together for so long. He hadn't much cared for the nappy stage, but he had to admit that he'd thought the world of all three of their children when they were small. Still did think it of Alison –she'd always been Dad's special girl. If only their useless layabout of a son would show some indication of turning out half as well as either of his sisters …

‘It's time that boy got up,' he stated crossly.

‘Oh, but it's a free morning for him, Douggie. And he needs his sleep.'

But their son was already up. Nearly seventeen years old, and well on the way to being as tall and as broad-shouldered as his father (and in Molly's eyes as darkly handsome as Douggie had been when he was young), Peter came tottering dozily out of his bedroom wearing only a sweatshirt and a pair of briefs.