Fatal Quest

by Sally Spencer

  ‘I see,’ Woodend said.

  ‘I thought you might. But let us now return to the matter of how I should discipline you, shall we? There are several sanctions I could employ. I could suspend you, or I could dock your pay. If I decided to take you in front of a board, you might be reduced in rank, or even dismissed from the Force. But I have decided to let the matter rest with a mere slap on the wrist. Would you like to know why?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Woodend said – because there was really no choice in the matter.

  ‘There are two main reasons. The first is that while I am far from impressed with the simplistic, bull-headed way in which you have conducted this “private” investigation of yours, I recognize that at least it shows some initiative. But the second – more important – reason is that Commander Cathcart has interceded on your behalf. He has assured me that you have the makings of a very good policeman, and since I have considerably more faith in his judgement than I currently have in yours, I have agreed to let the matter rest there. But be warned, Sergeant Woodend, if you step over the line again, there will be no second chance. Have I made myself clear?’

  ‘Perfectly clear, sir,’ Woodend said.

  Naylor nodded. ‘Good. Well, in that case, you’re dismissed.’

  He had managed to make his exit from Naylor’s office appear reasonably civilized, but the moment there was a door between him and the deputy commissioner, Woodend exploded.

  Naylor had been talking bollocks, he told himself as he strode furiously down the corridor. Total and complete bollocks!

  He reached the stairs, and slammed his foot down heavily on the first one as he began his descent.

  Bang!

  He felt it jar his spine, and he didn’t care. He would almost welcome physical pain as a distraction from the rage that was burning him up.

  Bang!

  The Flying Squad had Smithers under twenty-four-hour observation, Naylor had said.

  Bang!

  Had they, indeed? Then why hadn’t they arrested him in connection with the murder of Wally Booth – because Woodend was now sure he’d been there in the Waterman’s Arms when it happened.

  Bang!

  Greyhound Ron Smithers was nowhere near the Charlton Club that night, Naylor had added.

  Bang!

  Like hell, he wasn’t! Shirley, the fat cloakroom attendant, had had no reason to lie. And she hadn’t lied! What she’d told him had been the absolute truth. And she’d told it even though she’d known she was possibly putting herself in danger – because like him, her heart bled for poor, tragic Pearl Jones.

  He had reached the foot of the stairs. He stopped and took a deep breath, in an attempt to calm down.

  And as he stood there, the words of Eddie, the Liverpudlian thug, floated back into his mind.

  ‘Even an idiot like you should have worked out by now that nobody wants the case solved – and that includes your bosses in the big cop-shop on the river!’

  And that includes your bosses!

  The words had been haunting him for two days. He had been trying to ignore them – because he didn’t want to believe they were true – but that was now no longer an option open to him.

  What Naylor had just administered to him hadn’t been a slap on the wrist for ignoring police procedure – it had been a warning.

  The deputy commissioner hadn’t actually said, ‘We want Smithers to get away with this murder,’ but he might as well have done.

  It wasn’t going to happen that way, Woodend promised himself. Whatever it took – at whatever personal cost to himself – he would see to it that Ron Smithers paid the price for killing Pearl Jones.

  Twenty-Five

  Woodend’s back ached, and his eyes prickled. He tried to work out how much sleep he’d had in the previous three days but gave up halfway through, because he was too tired to continue the calculation – and because, whatever the final figure turned out to be, he already knew it was too damn little.

  It wasn’t easy doing two jobs – grafting his private investigation on top of his official duties. It wasn’t easy forcing himself to come here every night, when he could be at home playing games with Pauline Anne or listening to an agreeable programme on the radio with Joan. And now it was raining – which didn’t bloody help at all!

  He watched the raindrops spatter against the windscreen of his borrowed car. Some of them, he noted, dimpled on impact, then clung to the glass like limpets. Others, of a more adventurous nature, were clearly determined to explore further, and slid down the screen at a snail’s pace, leaving a trail of translucent slime behind them.

  He wanted to turn on the windscreen wipers, to clear the screen so he would have a better view of the front of the Royal Albert – but he didn’t dare to, because nobody runs the wipers in a parked car.

  He wanted to light up a cigarette, but was afraid the telltale glow would alert the minders standing just inside the pub doorway to the fact that they were being watched.

  He wanted …

  He wanted to jack this whole thing in.

  But he knew that he couldn’t.

  He had little to show for the three nights of his self-imposed vigil. No, he corrected himself – he had nothing to show for them.

  On Wednesday night, a succession of lesser gangsters had visited the pub – no doubt to hand their boss his cut of the previous week’s takings – but Smithers himself had not once set foot outside. On Thursday night, he had taken a couple of his lieutenants out for a slap-up meal in the West End, but once dinner was finished, he had come straight back to his base. Now it was Friday night, and it was looking entirely possible that Greyhound Ron had decided to spend another night in.

  But whatever happened, he would have to see the woman eventually – because he was infatuated with her.

  ‘’E ’ad his lady-friend wiv’’im,’ Shirley had said, ‘an’ when ’e ’anded over the coats, ’e was in a very good mood – like ’e’d been looking forward to this night out all week.’

  ‘Maybe he’s not seen her yet because she refuses to see him,’ said the nagging voice in Woodend’s head.

  ‘Whose side are you on?’ Woodend demanded aloud.

  ‘Yours, of course,’ the voice answered. ‘But you have to face facts, Charlie – maybe she was so horrified by what he did to Pearl Jones that she’ll never see him again.’

  She’d see him, Woodend told himself. She was a gangster’s moll, used to the violence which was inherent to Smithers’s world, and even though this particular act of violence had shocked her initially – had, in fact, sent her running to the phone to call Scotland Yard – she’d soon learn to get over it, and then life would carry on as before.

  ‘If it makes you feel better, you just keep on tellin’ yourself that, Charlie,’ the voice in his head mocked.

  Besides, even if she doesn’t want to see him, he’ll want to see her, Woodend argued. He has to want to see her.

  ‘Why?’

  Because the way that he feels about her won’t have changed. He’ll want her back. An’ even if he’s given up that idea, he’ll need to see her just once in order to reassure himself that she has no intention of betraying him.

  ‘So they meet, an’ you see them. Then what?’

  Then he’d have a witness, if not to the killing, then at least to the prelude and the aftermath. Then he’d have all the leverage he needed.

  ‘An’ just how long are you prepared to wait for this leverage to fall into your lap, Charlie?’

  As long as it took, Woodend told the voice.

  A week, a month, a year – it didn’t matter.

  If he had to be here until either he or Smithers died of old age, then that was the way it was.

  Another hour had slowly ticked away, and with every minute that passed, Woodend’s craving for a cigarette had grown stronger and stronger.

  He peered through the windscreen – squinting between the raindrops – at the street which lay before him. There were a number of parked vehicles,
but none of them remotely resembled the ostentatiously nondescript vans that the Flying Squad used for their surveillance operations. Nor had there been any sign of such a van on the previous two evenings, either.

  It didn’t surprise Woodend that there wasn’t even a whiff of the Sweeney. He’d never believed Deputy Commissioner Naylor’s claim that Greyhound Ron was being watched round the clock. In fact, he doubted that Smithers was being investigated at all – because if the Yard was prepared to let him get away with such a heinous crime as murder, it could only be because someone, somewhere in the higher echelons of the Force, was making a hell of a lot of money out of protecting the man.

  One of Smithers’s cars, a flashy Cadillac sedan, pulled up in front of the Royal Albert. The driver got out and went inside the pub, but fumes continued to pump out of the exhaust pipe.

  Smithers came out a few moments later. He was flanked by a couple of his minders as he walked to the car, but it was only Greyhound Ron himself who got in.

  The fact that he was going out alone didn’t necessarily mean anything, Woodend thought, as the Cadillac pulled away from the kerb and he set off in pursuit.

  Maybe Smithers – like so many other London gangsters – had a grey-haired old mum tucked away somewhere, and was going to visit her.

  Or perhaps he’d just grown bored with being cooped up inside the Royal Albert, and had decided to drive around for a while, with no particular destination in mind.

  But while Woodend’s brain cautioned him against getting too excited, his heart was ignoring the warning, and beating out rapid messages of hope.

  Smithers drove along Whitechapel Road, an area which, sixty-odd years earlier, had been terrorized by the nocturnal activities of Jack the Ripper – a man who, like Smithers himself, had used a razor to slash and murder his innocent victims.

  Woodend wondered if, back then in the last century, there had been a policeman much like himself, who had made a vow that he would never give up until the killer was brought to book. There probably had been – because even in the most corrupt, most lethargic of societies, there were always a few dedicated fools like him.

  ‘But if there was such a copper, he never made his case,’ the voice in his head said. ‘An’ you might not, either, Charlie.’

  An image of his own gravestone flashed before Woodend’s eyes, and on it was written:

  That wasn’t going to happen, he told himself angrily. He wouldn’t allow it to happen!

  As Smithers turned left onto Bishopsgate the rain became heavier, and by the time he drew up in front of Liverpool Street Railway Station it was coming down in buckets.

  A woman, her head obscured by an umbrella, emerged from under the station awning where she’d been sheltering from the downpour, and walked quickly towards the Cadillac.

  In order to open the passenger door from inside the car, Smithers had only to reach across. But he didn’t do that. Instead, he got out of the Cadillac, walked around the front, and opened the passenger door from the outside!

  It was her, Woodend thought. It had to be her. Smithers would never have made such a gallant gesture – in the pouring rain – for just any woman.

  Once the woman was inside, the Cadillac sedan set off up Bishopsgate again.

  As Woodend followed, he found that he was already running through a future interview with the woman in his head.

  ‘I didn’t know anything about it,’ she would claim tearfully – because that was what they always claimed.

  ‘You knew he left the club with the young girl, didn’t you?’ Woodend would demand.

  ‘Yeah, I … I knew that.’

  ‘And that when he came back later, he’d already killed her?’

  ‘No … I … he said he’d just run her home.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me. If you hadn’t known she was dead, how could you have phoned me to tell me where the body was?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘More lies! I know it was you.’

  She would break in the end. She would break and – to save herself – she would tell him enough to ensure that, however many friends in high places Ron Smithers had, he would still end up with a rope around his neck!

  The couple’s destination, it turned out, was a nightclub on Bethnal Green Road, which went by the name of the Waldorf Club. Smithers drew up directly by the door, and he and the woman rushed inside to avoid the rain, leaving the bouncer on duty with the job of parking the Cadillac.

  Woodend himself parked a little further down the street, and lit up a Capstan Full Strength.

  Even from a distance, he thought, the Waldorf reminded him, in so many ways, of the Charleston Club. It had the same flashy lighting, which might appear sophisticated to those who knew no better, but in reality was merely tawdry. It had the same kind of bouncers, who acted out the part of hard men without really being hard. And it had the same kind of punters entering it, bank officials and their wives, city clerks and their girlfriends – people who relished the air of danger attached to the place, but only so long as they could be assured that it was safe danger.

  He wondered what could possibly have attracted Ron Smithers – a man who would know the real thing when he saw it – to a place like this. It didn’t make sense that he should have chosen to take his girlfriend to this particular club, any more than it made sense that he should have taken her to the Charleston.

  He felt a strong urge to go inside the club – to reward himself for his patient vigil with a glimpse of the woman who had been the object of it. But he knew that was not a good idea, because if Smithers saw him he would immediately realize what was going on.

  And then what would happen?

  The woman would quickly disappear off the face of the earth! Possibly Smithers might send her abroad – somewhere beyond the reach of the Metropolitan Police. Possibly he might even kill her – because, as fond as he appeared to be of her, he was undoubtedly even fonder of his own neck.

  And without the woman, Woodend thought, he had nothing.

  Without the woman, he would be back to square one.

  So he would fight his natural urge, and stay where he was – just sit there, chain-smoking, until they came out again.

  When they did eventually leave the club, he would follow them, and when they separated, it was the woman he would continue to tail. Because once he knew where she lived – once he knew who she was – he would have her!

  Another four hours passed before Smithers and his paramour emerged from the club again. It had stopped raining by then, but even so, the woman seemed eager to get into the waiting Cadillac as quickly as possible. Greyhound Ron, on the other hand, was in no hurry at all, and struck up a conversation with the bouncers, who were already treating him like the visiting royalty he actually was.

  The woman waited for about half a minute, then tapped him on the shoulder, and pointed to the car. But Smithers seemed to have had enough of playing the gentleman for one night, and shook his head brusquely.

  The woman was furious. She stood there impotently for a few moments, then began to march peevishly up and down in front of the car.

  Up until that moment, Woodend had not been able to get a proper look at her, but now, as she continually passed under the club’s flashing lights, it was almost as if she were taking part in an identification parade solely for his benefit.

  An involuntary tremble took control of Woodend’s cigarette hand.

  ‘I had it all wrong,’ he groaned.

  No, not all wrong, he corrected himself.

  He’d been right about Smithers committing the murder – the case for that was stronger than ever, now that he’d suddenly been handed a motive.

  But where he had been wrong – so wrong – was in his thinking about the cover-up. He’d fervently believed, until just a few seconds earlier, that the only reason the Yard seemed unwilling to pin Pearl Jones’s murder on Smithers was because he had someone important – perhaps even one of the top brass, like Deputy Commissioner Naylor – in his po
cket.

  Now he saw that that wasn’t it.

  It wasn’t it at all!

  Smithers finally decided it was time to go, and he and the woman got into the car and drove away.

  But, despite his earlier planning, Woodend made no effort to follow them.

  Because he didn’t need to!

  Twenty-Six

  His childhood was something that Toby Burroughs did his best not to think about. Yet as hard as he tried to keep it firmly locked away in a dark corner of his mind, he could not always keep it caged.

  Sometimes it seemed to take very little to set him off on a reluctant journey to the past. A picture, a word – even a perfectly ordinary sound – could be enough to fling him into the time tunnel and send him hurtling back to the last days of the Victorian era. And once he was there, it was as if he’d never been away.

  He felt the cold of those years – a cold so huge and all-encompassing that it had almost killed him. He relived the humiliation of being dressed in rags – of being mocked for it by other boys, almost as poor as he was. But most of all, he recalled the hunger.

  It seemed always to have been there – that hollow feeling, deep in the pit of his stomach. Walking past a pie shop, sniffing its aroma in the air, he would be conscious of the saliva forming his mouth – as if he were not a boy at all, but a dog. Standing with his nose pressed up against a cafe window, he would watch the people inside – people who had no idea what a precious gift they had been given – as they shovelled food carelessly into their mouths. And he had promised himself then, that one day – one day – he would eat when he wanted to, not just when he could.

  He was rich and powerful now. He owned property all over London, drove around in flashy cars, and told the time by expensive watches. But of all the things his wealth had brought him, it was food – and especially breakfast – which he valued the most.

  He was eating breakfast that Saturday morning when he was informed by one of his minders that DS Woodend was outside, and wanted to see him.

  ‘Did ’e say what he wanted?’ Burroughs asked.