‘I know you weren’t.’
‘So what did happen to the reporters?’
‘My Uncle Colin will have got rid of them.’
‘Why would he have done that?’
‘Because I asked him to.’
John Green looked horrified. ‘He didn’t … he surely didn’t …?’
Louisa laughed again – and this time, she felt better about it.
‘What are you imagining?’ she asked. ‘That a couple of black police vans will have swooped down, and big burly constables waving their truncheons in a menacing manner will have forced the cowering reporters into the backs of the vans, as if they were no more than cattle?’
‘Well, not exactly that, I suppose, but they are … you know … gone,’ John said.
‘Uncle Colin will have had a quiet word with them,’ Louisa said. ‘He will have said that I’m his niece, and so he’d appreciate it, as a personal favour, if they’d leave me alone. He will have hinted that when he has some really juicy information to hand out, he’ll remember their act of kindness, and see that they get it first. And he will have suggested – ever so subtly – that if they don’t do as he wishes, they will suddenly become invisible around police headquarters.’
John laughed. ‘That’s the second time in one afternoon you’ve made me feel like a naïve child,’ he said.
‘I didn’t mean to—’ Louisa began.
‘I don’t mind,’ John interrupted her. ‘I’ve been carrying the burden for so long, it’s a great relief to let it rest on someone else for a while.’
‘So what do we do now?’ Louisa asked.
‘Well, if there was a wake, we could go to that,’ John said, almost lightheartedly. ‘But there isn’t one.’ He paused for a moment. ‘I know! Let’s go and see your mother!’
‘Oh no, John, I couldn’t possibly impose on you to go and see her,’ Louisa said.
‘Why not?’ John Green asked. ‘You’ve been supporting me all afternoon, it’s only fair that I give you a little support in return.’
TWELVE
Barry Hodges sat sullenly at the table in Interview Room B, with his solicitor – a man who looked every bit the part, with his half-moon glasses and blue pinstriped suit – by his side.
The solicitor’s name was Andrew Selby, and it was a pity they’d drawn him, DS Higgins thought, because unlike many legal aid solicitors, he would generally go the extra mile for his client. Still, you had to play the hand you were dealt, he told himself as he made a great show of flicking through Hodges’ file, pausing occasionally to tut-tut.
‘You really have been a bit of a naughty boy, haven’t you, Barry?’ the sergeant asked.
‘No comment,’ Hodges replied.
‘None invited,’ Higgins told him, ‘it was a purely rhetorical question.’ He turned to the solicitor. ‘Would you like to explain to your client what rhetorical means?’
‘It means that Sergeant Higgins is doing his best to undermine your self-confidence by making you look and feel stupid,’ Selby said smoothly. ‘It means he’s trying to get you to believe that you’ll never win against him, so you might as well just give up now, and say whatever it is that he wants you to say – whether or not it happens to be true.’
Mistake! Higgins thought. I’ve just made a bloody big mistake by inviting Selby into the interrogation.
‘That’s not what it means at all, Mr Selby,’ he told the solicitor, doing his best to hide his anger.
‘You may well be right, on a purely linguistic level,’ Selby said calmly. ‘Nevertheless, that is how I have chosen to interpret it within the dynamics of an interrogation.’
And now – bloody idiot that I am – I’ve only made matters worse, Higgins told himself.
‘It’s your temper that always lets you down, isn’t it, Barry?’ he said, shifting his focus back onto the suspect, in an attempt to recapture some of the ground that he’d lost. ‘You just can’t help getting into fights when you think somebody is trying to take the piss out of you – and it seems as if virtually everybody you meet wants to do just that.’
‘There’s a lot of shitheads about,’ Barry Hodges said, ‘and I’ve never hit anybody who didn’t hit me back.’
‘True,’ Higgins agreed. ‘Of course, they wouldn’t have needed to hit you back if you hadn’t hit them in the first place. But you’re right, in a way – the fact that they did hit you back is probably what’s kept you out of prison. It hasn’t kept you completely out of trouble, though, has it? And if you’re wondering what makes me say that – not that you should be – it’s because, according to what it says here in your record, you still have two years of a probation sentence to serve.’
Hodges kept silent.
‘I said you still have two years of a probation sentence to serve, don’t you?’ Higgins repeated, with a new harshness to his voice.
‘Yes,’ Barry Hodges admitted.
Good, Higgins thought, making the little bastard admit it was the first step in regaining some of his authority.
‘I’m glad we’re both clear on that, Barry,’ he said, in a much softer tone. ‘You know that you really are in big trouble, don’t you?’
Hodges said nothing.
‘But if you work with me, I promise I’ll work with you, and together, we’ll find a way out of this mess,’ Higgins said.
Hodges maintained his silence.
‘I mean, when you look at it from a slightly different perspective, it was probably just as much her fault as it was yours,’ Higgins said. ‘She was a bit of a prick teaser and—’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Hodges interrupted. ‘Who was a bit of a prick teaser?’
‘Who? Why, the girl who was killed in Backend Woods last Sunday, of course.’
‘She was nothing to do with me.’
Higgins sighed. ‘You’re on video tape, driving through the main gate, with her sitting right behind you.’
‘Are you talking about the tape they showed on the television?’
‘That’s right.’
‘That feller was wearing a full-face helmet. It could have been me, but it could have been you, as well. It could even have been Mr Selby.’
‘Mr Selby and I are the wrong body shape,’ Higgins said.
‘You don’t even know the girl on the bike was the one what got done in the woods – because she was wearing a helmet, too.’
‘The fact of the matter is, that’s your bike on the tape,’ Higgins said, returning to the one thing he knew he could prove.
‘But it isn’t my bike at all,’ Hodges said. ‘It was – until last Saturday – but then I sold it.’
‘Who to?’
‘To a man I met in the back room of the Black Horse.’
‘What was his name, this man?’
‘Bob.’
‘What was his surname?’
‘I don’t know. He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask.’
‘Describe him to me.’
‘He was just like any other feller you might meet on the street.’
‘What colour was his hair?’
‘Brown.’
‘How tall was he?’
‘Average height.’
‘How was he built?’
‘Average build.’
‘What about his nose?’
‘He had one.’
‘You’re lying to me, Barry,’ Higgins said. ‘And do you know how I know you’re lying? I know because if this man really did exist, and if you really did sell the bike to him, then you would have had to put his name – his full name – in the log book.’
There was no log book, of course, but Hodges wouldn’t want to admit that, for obvious reasons, Higgins thought.
‘There was no log book,’ Hodges said, confounding expectation.
‘Every bike has a log book,’ Higgins said. ‘It has to. It’s the law.’
‘This one didn’t – because it was stolen.’
‘So you admit to buying stolen property, do y
ou?’
‘Yes.’
‘And then selling it again?’
‘Yes.’
Criminals could often be led into accidently confessing to a major crime in their efforts to avoid being charged with a lesser one, but, contrary to appearances, Hodges was obviously too smart for that, and was doing just the opposite.
Higgins wondered whether or not now was the right time to introduce the picnic basket. If he could have tied it directly to Hodges, there would have been nothing to consider, but unfortunately, his prints – if they were on the basket – were blurred beyond identification. Still, there was no way that Hodges could know that, and it might be worth taking the risk.
‘We’ve found a wicker picnic basket, Barry,’ he said. ‘It has your prints all over it.’
For a second, Hodges looked gobsmacked, then he smiled and said, ‘It must be my picnic basket, then, mustn’t it?’
‘So what was it doing in Backend Woods?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe the feller that I sold it to took it there.’
‘What feller?’
‘The same one I sold the bike to.’ Hodges clicked his fingers as if a brilliant idea had just occurred to him. ‘It must have been the feller I sold the bike to that you can see on the video,’ he said. ‘He must be the one that did the girl.’
The whole story was clearly ridiculous, Higgins thought, and no police officer worth his salt would accept it for a second. The lack of fingerprints on the picnic hamper raised a few awkward questions, it was true, but that was nothing that couldn’t be got round with a little creative thinking.
But he didn’t feel he could arrest Hodges for the murder yet, because it seemed unlikely that – on the evidence he had so far – the chief constable would be prepared to instigate a prosecution.
Sod it, then, he thought. It had been a bloody long day, and he might as well just charge the little toerag with dealing in stolen property – which was enough to keep him locked up overnight – then go to the nearest pub and get smashed out of his head.
John Green and Louisa stood at the side of the hospital bed, looking down at Monika Paniatowski.
Her mother had always been pale, Louisa thought – she was, after all, a Northern European, born far from the Mediterranean – but now her face was so white it was almost like candle wax.
Was candle wax what they made death masks out of? she caught herself wondering.
Oh God, how could you even think that? she asked herself.
But it didn’t matter if she thought it, did it? It didn’t matter if death masks were never off her mind – because her mum wasn’t going to die!
‘Hello, Mum,’ she said.
What next? she thought. What did you say to a woman who was unconscious and might not even be able to hear you?
You couldn’t talk about the weather, because, shut up in this room as she was, the weather was of no interest to her.
You couldn’t ask what she’d been doing – because the only thing she’d been doing was not dying (at least for the moment).
She felt helpless. She felt useless. And she knew that any moment now, she was going to burst into tears, which was just about the worst thing she could possibly do.
And then John took her hand in his, and gave it a squeeze, and she felt her strength and confidence returning.
‘I’ve got John with me here,’ she said. ‘John Green. You know him, don’t you?’
‘No, she doesn’t know me,’ John mouthed almost silently at her – though, as in the crematorium, there was probably no need to be quiet. ‘We’ve never actually met.’
‘We’ve just been to John’s sister’s cremation,’ Louisa said. ‘What made it extra sad was that we were the only ones there – except for Uncle Colin, of course, but he only came because he was a policeman.’
‘Louisa’s been a tower of strength to me, Ms Paniatowski,’ John said. ‘I don’t know how I’d ever have managed without her.’
‘She moved!’ Louisa said excitedly. ‘I swear her eyelid moved. Didn’t you see it?’
‘No, I don’t think I did …’
‘Say something else.’
‘Like what? I can’t think what to say.’
‘Say anything!’
‘Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow, and everywhere that Mary went, that lamb was sure to go.’
‘Did you see it that time?’ Louisa asked excitedly. ‘Did you see the eye move?’
‘Err yes, I think I did.’
Later, as they were leaving the hospital, John said, ‘I feel such a fool for reciting a nursery rhyme, but my mind seemed to go into a panic, and I couldn’t think of anything else.’
‘You could have been reading the telephone directory for all it mattered,’ Louisa said. ‘The fact is, it seems to have done the trick.’ She paused. ‘Oh, I know it didn’t seem much, but if she’s just a little better tomorrow, and then a little better the day after that, she’ll be back on her feet before any of us realizes it.’
THIRTEEN
Beresford, Meadows and Crane were sitting at their usual table in the Drum and Monkey. They were sitting further apart than usual, as if to disguise the fact that someone was missing – but if anything, it only seemed to emphasize Monika Paniatowski’s absence.
‘I screwed up,’ Crane said miserably.
‘We all screwed up,’ Beresford told him, ‘each and every one of us – and if the boss had been here, she would have screwed up, too.’
But would she? he wondered. Would she really?
‘I think I’ve got the general idea, but, if you don’t mind, I’d like to hear the specific details,’ Meadows said.
‘Two of the three boys who spent Sunday with Roger Smith – supposedly playing Diplomacy – have vanished into thin air,’ Crane said. ‘And it’s not just the boys who have vanished – their whole families have gone.’
‘You’re sure of this, are you?’ Beresford asked.
Crane nodded. ‘I went round to their houses, and when nobody answered the door, I had a word with the neighbours. All most of them could say was that they hadn’t seen any movement this morning, but there were a couple of old dears with bladder problems who said that they saw a black van at around two o’clock this morning.’
‘Was it a furniture van?’ Beresford asked.
‘No, it was much smaller than that. From what the witnesses said, I think it was probably a Ford Transit.’
‘So they didn’t take any furniture with them?’
‘No, it looked as if they had one suitcase each, and that was it.’
‘So what did you do next?’
‘I went back to the school, and asked if any other family had failed to turn up en masse. There were two more, and when I went to their houses, I found that they’d disappeared as well.’
‘And that’s just from one school,’ Meadows said. ‘It’s possible there are more of them, isn’t it?’
‘I’m bloody certain there are more of them,’ Crane said. ‘Anyway, I’ve started building up a profile of the missing families. I’ve not had much time, so it’s far from complete, but I’ve already found some striking similarities between them.’
‘Like what?’ Meadows asked.
‘None of the mothers worked outside the house, which, in this day and age – and especially in Lancashire, where there’s a tradition of women having jobs – is a rare thing. The fathers appeared to work, but none of the neighbours could tell me where they worked.’
‘So what?’ Meadows asked.
‘Again, this is Lancashire,’ Beresford said. ‘Everybody in a neighbourhood normally knows what everybody else does, and if Jack had asked those people on that street what any of their other neighbours did for a living, they’d have been able to tell him right away.’
‘Are we trying to find out if any of them really did have jobs?’ Meadows asked.
‘Yes,’ Beresford said. ‘We’ve contacted social security, and the Inland Revenue, but God knows how long it
will take those paper shufflers to come up with any answers.’ He paused to light a cigarette. ‘What else do we know about these families, Jack?’
‘The pastoral care department at the school was understandably very cagey about telling me too much, but from the few hints they were willing to drop, I think I’ve been able to build up some sort of a picture,’ Crane said. ‘Michael Gray, Philip Jones and John Green – the three lads who spent Sunday at Roger Smith’s house – are all pretty good students with a positive attitude and outgoing personalities. The other children in the cult, however—’
‘Wait a minute, Jack,’ Beresford said, ‘when did we decide to start calling it a cult?’
‘What else would we call it?’ Crane asked.
‘Fair point,’ Beresford conceded.
‘The other children who are members of the cult – and that includes Mary Green, the dead girl – don’t do anything like as well. Their main ambition seems to be just get by – and no more. And all of them – and again, significantly, this includes Mary Green – are complete loners.’
‘You mean they don’t mix with the rest of the kids in their class?’ Beresford asked.
‘I mean they don’t even mix with each other. And it’s the same at home. We know that the Grays and the Joneses are members of the cult, yet – according to the neighbours again – neither family ever visited the other. In fact, neither family ever had visitors. And it goes beyond that. Mr Gray never drops in at the local pub, even though it’s just on the corner, and when Mr Jones was invited to join the committee which was organizing the street party to celebrate the queen’s silver jubilee, he turned it down flat.’
‘And why do you think that is?’ Beresford asked.
‘It beats me,’ Crane admitted. ‘Most cults are quite open about themselves. They’re eager to recruit new members, because that’s how they survive. But this cult’s main aim in life seems to have been to hide the fact that it even existed, almost to the point at which it seems driven by very little else. But why belong to a cult that does nothing – a cult in which the members never even seem to get together?’
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