‘Just myself and my wife.’
‘Not Langley and his wife?’
‘Sir William was out attending one of the numerous functions to which he is invited. Lady Langley is away on a cruise.’
‘So what time did Langley get home?’
‘That, I cannot say. My wife and I, as is our custom, went to bed at around nine o’clock.’
‘That’s rather early, isn’t it?’ Beresford asked.
The butler sniffed. ‘For you, perhaps. But we have a household to run, and that necessitates being up very early in the morning.’
‘Very commendable, I’m sure,’ Beresford said.
But having seen the butler’s bloodshot eyes and the broken veins in his cheeks, he did not really think it was just tiredness which drove the couple to bed so early.
It was two young boys who found the van parked in front of the loading bay of one of the derelict mills in Whitebridge’s industrial wasteland.
They had not been expecting to find it. They had not been expecting excitement of any kind as they took a short-cut from their school to the games field. And – as they raced each other on their bicycles – perhaps they wouldn’t even have noticed it at all, but for the fact that it was on fire.
The boys dropped their bikes, and cautiously approached the burning vehicle. It was a yellow van, with two ladders strapped to the roof. Flames were licking the paintwork on the side, making the stencilled sign which said ‘Simon Stockwell, Painter and Decorator’ bubble and blister.
‘We shouldn’t get any closer,’ the older boy said worriedly.
‘It’ll be all right,’ the other assured him.
The first boy was not convinced. ‘When a car’s on fire, it can blow up,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen it on the telly.’
‘This isn’t a car, it’s a van,’ his friend said contemptuously.
But even so, he had come to a halt.
The flames had reached the roof by now, and were greedily devouring the wooden ladders, which were encrusted at their bases with earth from Sir William Langley’s estate, and would have been of great interest to Whitebridge Police’s forensic department.
There were other things about the van which would have been of interest to the department, too – in fact, it would have had a field day with the vehicle – but the fire was rapidly destroying them all.
The older boy checked his watch – which he had been given for his birthday – and saw that it was twelve-forty-seven. He must remember that, he thought. Somebody, he was convinced, had deliberately set fire to the van, and the police would surely want to know all the details.
He was already starting to see himself as the star witness, who would help to solve this serious – this very important – crime.
The bobbies would be very impressed with him, he thought. They might even give him a medal.
He looked around for any signs of the master criminal who had started the fire, but the arsonist seemed to be long gone.
It was the tins of paint thinner which finally brought the process to its spectacular end. As the van had got hotter and hotter, they had begun bubbling uncomfortably, and now they could bear the strain no longer. They exploded, and in the process ignited all other flammable liquids which surrounded them.
There was a terrific boom, and the van was lifted several feet into the air, before crashing down again.
The two boys were knocked over by the blast, but were otherwise unhurt.
‘Better than the pictures, this, isn’t it?’ asked the elder boy, as he scrambled to his feet.
And his younger companion could do no more than agree with him.
FIFTEEN
George Baxter was not, by nature, a corporate animal, but since he was the chief constable of Central Lancs – and since chief constables were expected to put in an appearance at all kinds of functions and events – he forced himself to go through the motions, and even did his best to look as if he was more or less enjoying himself.
Even so, these events never got any easier for him to take, and he often found himself wondering – usually about halfway through the proceedings – if he should jack in his current post, and go back to being a simple street-level bobby whose only job was to hunt down criminals.
Yet even as he toyed around with the idea, he knew it was never going to happen. There was no going back, because there wasn’t a chief constable in the entire country who would have been happy about having an ex-chief constable under his command.
Today, he was attending a Rotary lunch at the Whitebridge Golf and Country Club, and in order to make the whole thing as painless as possible, he had planned to arrive just as the pre-lunch drinks were coming to an end and the Rotarians were slowly making their way into the restaurant.
The moment he walked through the bar door, however, he saw that the expected exodus was far from happening, and realized that either he had got his calculations wrong or there had been some unforeseen delay.
‘What’s the problem, Terry?’ he asked one of the waiters who was standing near the door to the restaurant. ‘Shouldn’t we be getting stuck into the grub by now?’
‘You certainly should, sir,’ the waiter agreed. ‘But there’s been a power cut, you see, and it’s thrown everything out of kilter. You won’t be sitting down for at least another fifteen minutes.’
‘Well, bollocks!’ Baxter said, almost under his breath.
It wasn’t that he disliked the Rotarians as a whole, he thought, as he headed for the bar.
Some of them were great fellers, and the work they did for charity was outstanding.
But there were others who were so impressed with themselves that they were almost insufferable – and it was with one of these complacent, self-congratulatory toads that he invariably found himself stuck in a corner.
He looked around the room, and his eye fell on a red-faced man who looked so much like a country squire that the effect was to turn him into a grotesque parody of one.
‘A case in point,’ he thought.
Sir William Langley, investment banker and property magnate, was just the kind of Rotarian he most disliked.
Baxter knew quite a lot – more than he would ever have cared to – about the other man, including the facts that he hadn’t always been either Sir William or a banker.
Langley, he’d been told, had first gone into business in the fifties, just at the time when working-class aspirations had expanded to include ownership of their own vehicles. And he had, by all accounts, been brilliant at catering for that need, buying clapped-out cars from their middle-class owners for cash, and selling them on again at credit terms which would have made the Mafia blush with embarrassment.
But that was all behind the man now – or so he thought. He saw himself, as was obvious whenever he opened his mouth, as someone who had earned the right to be admired.
And maybe some people did admire him, Baxter thought, but that certainly didn’t include the older members of the Golf and Country Club. They still remembered being summoned to their doors by a knock – sometimes quite late in the evening – and opening it to find Langley standing there, with a roll of banknotes in his hand and an avaricious look on his face. Oh yes, they remembered all right, and sometimes – when he was not present himself, they would refer to him as ‘Bumptious Bill the Banger Buyer’.
Given that Langley had had a nasty shock that morning – and then been dragged reluctantly into the middle of a major investigation – Baxter supposed he’d better go and have a word with the man. But, as it happened, that proved unnecessary, since the moment Langley noticed the chief constable standing there, he made a bee-line for him.
‘Terrible business at my place this morning, George,’ Langley said, without preamble.
‘So I’ve heard,’ Baxter replied. ‘But you can rest assured that my officers are doing all they possibly can to get to the bottom of it.’
‘Not the sort of thing a chap expects to find on his morning constitutional,’ Langley persisted.
>
‘I’m sure it isn’t.’
‘And the thing is, George, it’s slightly unnerved me.’
He looked unnerved, Baxter thought. More than that – he looked as if there was something more he wanted to say, but didn’t know quite how to say it.
‘Yes, it’s rather unnerved me,’ Langley repeated. ‘So I was wondering whether it might be possible to give me some police protection for a while.’
‘Police protection?’ Baxter said.
‘I’ve heard a whisper that I might be appointed to the Police Authority next year,’ Langley ploughed on. ‘And it certainly wouldn’t do you any harm to have a friend on that august body, now would it?’
‘I’m still not quite clear what you mean by “police protection”,’ Baxter said, with a cautious edge to his voice.
‘Oh, nothing excessive, old chap,’ Langley said, attempting to sound airy and casual – and failing on both counts. ‘Nothing excessive at all. Three or four officers should do the trick.’
‘Three or four officers!’ Baxter gasped.
‘They’d have to be on duty round the clock, of course,’ Langley added hastily, in order to avoid any misunderstanding.
‘You do realize that my force is running a major murder investigation, don’t you?’ Baxter asked.
‘Yes, I do realize that,’ Langley said archly. ‘It was finding a corpse in my garden that really alerted me to the fact.’
‘And because we’re running that investigation, we’re already stretched to the limit?’
‘I appreciate you’ve got a lot of demands on your manpower,’ Langley said, in a more conciliatory tone of voice. ‘But it certainly wouldn’t help matters, from your point of view, if there was a third victim – especially if that third victim was someone of significance, like me.’
And then he laughed, to show that he was only joking.
‘Do you have any reason to think you might be the killer’s next target?’ Baxter asked, seriously.
Langley waved his right hand in a deprecating gesture.
‘No, of course not! That’s a ridiculous idea.’
‘Then I don’t see . . .’
‘Although, when you think about it, the body was left on my estate, wasn’t it? And so you certainly couldn’t blame me for thinking that the killer might have it in for me, could you?’
‘Couldn’t I?’
‘Well, no.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t see the connection,’ Baxter said. ‘Unless, of course, that connection comes through the victim. He wasn’t a close friend of yours, by any chance, was he?’
‘Of course not. He was a complete stranger to me, as I’ve already made quite clear to that dishy little policewoman of yours.’
‘I take it that you’re referring to Detective Chief Inspector Paniatowski,’ Baxter said coldly.
‘Yes, I . . . sorry, I should have shown her more respect, shouldn’t I?’
‘It would have been nice,’ Baxter agreed. ‘Did you know the other victim? Andy Adair?’
‘Is it likely I’d have known a common soldier?’
‘No, but then it’s not likely you’d end up with a naked dead man in your garden, either.’
‘I demand police protection!’ Langley blustered. ‘It’s my right as a citizen.’
‘If you take that argument to its logical conclusion, I should be assigning three or four of my bobbies to each and every person in Whitebridge,’ Baxter pointed out, reasonably.
‘Do I get the protection I need?’ Langley demanded. ‘Yes or no?’
‘Yes,’ Baxter replied.
‘Good!’ Langley said, with obvious relief.
‘Or, at least, you’ll get it the moment you can give me a good reason why you should have it.’
‘You’ll rue the day you crossed me,’ Langley said angrily. ‘I have considerable influence in this town, and I’ll pay you back for this if it’s the last thing I do.’
Baxter smiled, though he knew he shouldn’t have. ‘Then you’d better get a move on, hadn’t you?’ he said.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You said you’d pay me back if it was the last thing you did?’
‘Yes?’
‘And if your fears for your own safety are in any way justified, the last thing you do could be just around the corner, couldn’t it?’
SIXTEEN
It was a quarter past two, and the team had gathered around their usual table in the Drum and Monkey. Paniatowski had already outlined what she had discovered that morning, and now it was her inspector’s turn to present his report.
‘Thanks to the work done by Sergeant Cousins’ lads, we’ve got some excellent tyre prints from the van that took Stockwell’s body to Ashton Court,’ Beresford was saying. ‘Unfortunately, they’re unlikely to do us much good, because I firmly believe it was Stockwell’s own van that was used, and while the sergeant and I were out at Ashton Court, somebody else – most probably the killer himself – was torching that van. All of which means that that particular line of inquiry—’
‘Hang on a minute!’ Paniatowski interrupted. ‘Did you say you were out at Ashton Court, Colin?’
‘Err . . . yes, boss.’
‘But I put you in charge of the incident room! What were you doing at Langley’s place?’
Beresford shrugged awkwardly. ‘There wasn’t much happening back at headquarters, and I thought DS Cousins might need some help.’
‘And did you need help, Paul?’ Paniatowski asked icily.
‘I didn’t exactly need it, ma’am, but the inspector’s help was certainly appreciated,’ Cousins said, diplomatically.
‘So just what kind of help were you able to offer the sergeant, Inspector Beresford?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘I made a mistake,’ Colin Beresford thought miserably. ‘I made a big mistake. I’m sorry, Monika.’
‘I questioned the butler,’ he said aloud.
‘Really? And was that useful?’ Paniatowski asked, unforgiving.
‘He said that after the contract staff left at six o’clock, he and his wife were the only people in the house. He claims they went to bed early, and didn’t hear anything during the night, but it’s my guess that they were already drunk by the time they turned in, and wouldn’t have noticed if a Panzer division had driven through the house.’
‘Would the killer have known they’d be the only people left in the house?’ Paniatowski asked Cousins.
‘It’s more than likely, if he’d done his homework – and I’m sure he always does,’ the sergeant replied. ‘The contract staff are driven to and from the house in a company van, so it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to work out when they weren’t there.’
Paniatowski turned her attention to Beresford again. ‘What have your team found out about Stockwell’s movements yesterday?’ she said. ‘Or have you been so busy with other things that you’ve not had time to ask them yet?’
‘He was painting a living room in a house up on Hill Rise yesterday afternoon,’ Beresford said, ignoring the implied criticism because he didn’t know what else to do. ‘The woman he was working for was expecting him to be there until five o’clock, by which time the job should have been completed. But at around about three, Stockwell told her that he had to leave, because he had an important business meeting to attend. She wasn’t best pleased, as you’d imagine, but he promised her he’d turn up early this morning and get the job finished.’
‘Did he say who this meeting was with?’
‘No, he didn’t. She pressed him to tell her, of course, because she wanted the work finished, but he refused to go into any more detail, and just kept repeating that it was an important business meeting, and he had to leave. I think that was what the killer told him to say.’
‘You think it was the killer he was meeting?’
‘Yes, boss, I do.’
‘Why?’
‘Because to have reached the stage of rigor mortis he was in when he was found, he must have been killed within a m
aximum of two or three hours of leaving Hill Rise.’
‘Good thinking,’ Paniatowski said, but she was not quite prepared to let up on him yet, and added, ‘Now if you’ve managed to find a connection between Stockwell and Langley, I’ll be really impressed.’
‘I haven’t,’ Beresford admitted.
‘I wonder what Langley does on the Thursday nights,’ DC Crane said, almost to himself.
‘What was that, Constable?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘Well, ma’am, we know that Stockwell went missing on Thursday nights, and we also know, because the Sarge talked to his neighbours, that there were nights when Andy Adair didn’t get home until three o’clock in the morning . . .’
‘Were they Thursday nights, as well?’ Paniatowski asked Cousins.
‘The woman I talked to was a bit vague about what nights they were,’ Cousins admitted. ‘But I could try and pin her down.’
‘You do that,’ Paniatowski said. She turned to Crane again. ‘Carry on with what you were saying, Jack.’
‘Well, if it was Thursdays that Adair got home late,’ Crane continued uncertainly, ‘and if Langley also went missing on Thursdays . . .’
‘That just might be the link we’re looking for,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘Check on that as well, will you, Paul.’
‘Yes, ma’am, I’ll do that,’ Cousins agreed, but with a notable lack of enthusiasm.
‘You don’t think it will lead anywhere, do you?’ Paniatowski asked.
Cousins shrugged. ‘I think it was very clever of young Jack to come up with the idea, but I find it hard to picture Stockwell and Langley out on the batter together. I mean, can you really see Langley taking Stockwell clay-pigeon shooting, or Stockwell persuading Langley to join his darts team?’
‘No, I can’t,’ Paniatowski admitted. ‘Do you have a theory of your own, Sergeant?’
‘I have an idea, but it’s not as ingenious as DC Crane’s, and it’s certainly not grand enough to be called a theory,’ Cousins said, with some reluctance.
‘Let’s hear it, anyway.’
‘I think it’s possible the connection between the victims only exists in the killer’s own mind.’
The Ring of Death Page 13