‘But we could be talking about hundreds of people!’ Bannerman said.
‘Do you think so, Sergeant?’ Woodend asked.
‘Yes, sir. Don’t you?’
‘No, I think it’s more like thousands – but at least it’s a start.’
Bannerman pondered on the enormity of the task for a moment, then said, ‘So what do we do next?’
‘Next, though I’m not lookin’ forward to it at all, we go an’ see Lilly’s mother,’ Woodend replied heavily.
He took a last look around the bar before they departed. He was glad it hadn’t changed since the last time he’d been there, but he accepted, fatalistically, that the next time he was in Whitebridge and visited it again, it would probably be a completely different pub entirely.
He had no way of knowing, back then, that when he had his last drink in the Drum and Monkey – twenty-two years later, on the very day of his retirement – he would be sitting in exactly the same chair as he was sitting in at that moment.
Like Rome, Whitebridge was built on hills, but there the comparison with the eternal city ended.
The terraced houses which made up most of the housing stock in the town had been hastily constructed, a hundred years earlier, to accommodate the workers in the booming textile industry. They were two-up two-down dwellings, with no front garden and a back yard (containing the wash-house and the outside lavatory) which opened on to a narrow alley and a view of someone else’s backyard. The houses clung precariously to the hills, each one with a front door at an angle to the pavement, each with a roof which was a little lower than the neighbour’s on the right, and a little higher than the neighbour’s on the left.
‘Must be a bit of a change to what you’re used to,’ Woodend said to Bannerman, as they laboured up the steep slope.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t exactly say that,’ Bannerman replied. ‘There are slums in the south, as well, you know, sir.’
‘Aye, maybe there are,’ Woodend agreed. ‘But, you see, lad, the people round here don’t regard these houses as slums – to them, they’re little palaces.’
They came to a halt in front of a door which had been inexpertly painted in royal blue, and Woodend lifted the knocker and tapped it against the door.
The woman who answered his knock was in her middle thirties. Her hair was lank, her eyes were red, and there could be no doubt that she was Lilly Dawson’s mother.
‘We’re from Scotland Yard, Mrs Dawson,’ Woodend said softly.
‘I know who you are,’ the woman replied, in a flat, dead voice. ‘Would you like to come in?’
‘If you wouldn’t mind.’
She stepped back to admit them, then gestured towards the front room.
‘If it’s all the same to you, love, we’d prefer to go into the kitchen,’ Woodend said.
Bannerman gave him a questioning look, as well he might.
What the sergeant didn’t understand, Woodend thought, was that if they wanted Mrs Dawson to relax – or, at least, be as relaxed as she could be, under the circumstances – then the kitchen, her natural environment, was where the interview should be conducted.
Mrs Dawson nodded, and led them through.
‘It’s a bit of a mess,’ she said apologetically. ‘I’ve not had time to tidy up, what with . . .’ She waved her hands helplessly.
What with your daughter havin’ been murdered, Woodend supplied mentally. What with havin’ to live through every parent’s worst nightmare.
‘It’s fine, love,’ he assured her.
‘Well, sit yourselves down,’ Mrs Dawson said, doing her best to sound the brisk and efficient housewife that she probably normally was.
They sat at a solid old table which would serve as both the surface on which the food was prepared and the place at which it was eaten.
‘Cup of tea?’ Mrs Dawson asked.
Bannerman looked at Woodend for guidance, and Woodend said, ‘That would be most welcome. After walkin’ up that hill, I feel as if I’m spittin’ feathers.’
Mrs Dawson rewarded him with a thin laugh. ‘You get used to the climb,’ she said, then added sadly. ‘You can get used to everythin’ in time.’
I doubt that, Woodend thought. The ache may dull over the years, but it isn’t goin’ to go away, love.
Mrs Dawson brewed the tea in a dark-brown teapot which, in Bannerman’s ‘social circles’ would have been considered almost an antique, but in hers was just an old teapot.
‘Lilly’s dad died when she was nine,’ Mrs Dawson said, when she joined them at the table.
‘That must have been difficult for her,’ Woodend said, sympathetically. ‘For you, as well,’ he added.
‘If he’d got hit by a bus, it wouldn’t have been so bad,’ Mrs Dawson continued. A look of horror came to her face. ‘I . . . I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. Ted’s death would have been terrible, however it had happened, but if it had have been quick, it might at least have been easier to take.’
‘I understand,’ Woodend said.
He took a sip from his cup. The taste of tannin filled his mouth. This was how he liked his tea – strong enough to build bricks out of.
‘It was cancer that Lilly’s dad had,’ Mrs Dawson said – and her voice dipped when she used the dreaded word, as it did with all women in Whitebridge when they referred to the killer disease.
‘It’s a terrible way to go,’ Woodend said.
‘Yes, it is,’ Mrs Dawson agreed. ‘A terrible way. It took him over a year to die, an’ he was here at home for most of it. Our Lilly was marvellous with him. When she wasn’t at school or asleep, she hardly ever left his bedside. She was just a little kid, but he couldn’t have asked for a better nurse.’ A tear came to the woman’s eye. ‘She really loved her dad. She never got over losin’ him.’ Mrs Dawson gulped. ‘An’ now she never will.’
‘Tell me about her friends,’ Woodend said softly.
‘She didn’t really have any – not after her dad died. It was like . . . it was like, lookin’ after him robbed her of somethin’.’
‘It forced her to grow up quickly,’ Sergeant Bannerman said.
And he sounded as if he thought that that was a good thing, Woodend told himself – as though Bannerman believed that childhood innocence was a thing to be discarded as rapidly as possible.
‘That’s the thing, it didn’t make her grow up,’ Mrs Dawson said. She shook her head in frustration, desperate to express herself and yet unable to find quite the right words. ‘It . . . it froze her,’ she concluded, finally.
‘I’m afraid I really have no idea what you’re talking about, Mrs Dawson,’ Bannerman said.
Then you should bloody well take a few lessons in sensitivity! Woodend thought angrily.
‘What you mean is, she stayed the little girl that she’d been when her dad took ill,’ he said to Mrs Dawson.
‘That’s right,’ the woman agreed, gratefully. ‘She clung on to her dolls, long after all the other girls had got bored with them. An’ then there were the animals.’
‘What animals?’ Bannerman asked.
Mrs Dawson stood up. ‘Come an’ see,’ she said.
She led them into the backyard. Next to the hand-turned mangle stood a rabbit hutch, in which three plump complacent rabbits twitched their pink noses and scratched at the straw.
‘It wasn’t just rabbits she kept,’ Mrs Dawson said. ‘There were her guinea pigs and hamsters as well. An’ just before she . . . just before she died, she was mitherin’ me to get a budgerigar. She’d have turned the whole house into a zoo, if I’d let her.’ She paused for a moment. ‘I . . . I don’t know what to do with the rabbits now she’s gone.’
‘I’m sure there’s some little kid down the street who’ll be glad of them,’ Woodend said.
They all went back into the house.
‘Would it be all right if we had a quick look at Lilly’s bedroom?’ Woodend asked.
‘Why would you want to go in there?’ Mrs Dawson wondered, with something cl
ose to panic in her voice.
‘It might assist us in gettin’ a clearer picture of Lilly,’ Woodend told her.
‘But I don’t see how that would help,’ the grieving mother protested.
No, she wouldn’t, Woodend thought.
Because, to her, her daughter’s death had nothing to do with Lilly herself. The girl had been killed by an evil man – a monster – and there wasn’t anything that Lilly had done – or had failed to do – which could have prevented it.
She had to think that way, of course, because the idea that Lilly had contributed to the tragedy would have been unbearable to her.
But the sad fact was that while some victims were selected randomly, others were chosen because of a weakness that the killer detected in them – and while he thought that he already knew what Lilly’s weakness was, he needed to go the girl’s room to confirm it.
‘I don’t know . . . I’m not sure that I want you to . . .’ Mrs Dawson said hesitantly.
He was within his rights to insist, of course, but he didn’t want to do that unless he absolutely had to.
‘What about if I left Sergeant Bannerman here – to keep you company – an’ just went for quick look myself?’ he suggested.
‘Well . . .’ Mrs Dawson said, weakening.
‘I promise you, I won’t disturb anything,’ Woodend pressed her.
Mrs Dawson shrugged, as if she wanted to continue resisting but didn’t have the strength.
‘It’s the second door on the left, at the top of the stairs,’ she said.
‘I’ll not be more than five minutes,’ Woodend promised her.
And then he shot a look in his sergeant’s direction which he hoped would convey the message that, while he was upstairs, he didn’t want Bannerman saying anything that would make Mrs Dawson feel any worse than she already did.
SIX
How the hell can Lilly’s room be the second on the left?’ Woodend wondered, as he climbed the steep stairs which led to the first floor of Elsie Dawson’s home. ‘There is no second on the left.’
At least, he amended, there’d been no second on the left in any other terraced cottage he’d ever visited. Two-up two-down was what this type of house was called, and two-up two-down was exactly what you got – one bedroom over the front parlour, and another over the kitchen.
And yet, when he reached the top of the stairs, he saw that there was not just the small landing he had been expecting, but a narrow corridor to his left, with two doors opening on to it.
He opened the first door, and looked inside.
‘Well, bugger me!’ he said softly to himself.
The house had a bathroom! The Dawson family didn’t need to go outside to the toilet on cold, wet winter nights. They didn’t need to bathe in a large tin bath in front of the kitchen fire. They – unlike most of the other working-class families in Whitebridge, including Woodend’s own parents – had an indoor bathroom!
Up until that moment, he had been picturing Mr Dawson as the helpless invalid he must have been towards the end of his life. What he was looking at now changed all that. It showed him a man who had so wanted to make a comfortable home for his wife and daughter that he had done what few men from his background would ever dream of doing – he had scrimped and saved and built them a bathroom.
The man was a hero, Woodend thought – not the towering hero of legend, but a hero nevertheless. And his death, which already seemed tragic enough, took on a new poignancy.
The journey from the dead man’s monument to the dead girl’s bedroom was just two short steps along the cramped corridor.
Lilly’s room looked out on to the back yard, where she had kept her rabbits. It was small, and furnished with only a single bed and a cheap dressing table. There was a shelf above the bed, where most kids would have kept their books, but Lilly seemed to have no interest in reading, and instead the shelf was filled, from end to end, with stuffed toys – most of them cuddled threadbare.
Woodend sighed. What he was seeing was pretty much what he had expected to see – but, even forewarned, it was still sad.
What did come as a surprise were the drawings. They were pinned to the walls, and there were so many of them that very little of the purple-flowered wallpaper underneath managed to show through.
Some of the pictures were of animals – rabbits, hamsters and donkeys, inexpertly but loving drawn – but the majority of them were of a girl and a man.
‘So why are there no pictures of her mother?’ Woodend said softly.
Then, as he studied the pictures in more detail, the answer to his question slowly came to him – and, as it came, he started to feel nauseous.
The girls in the pictures never varied. They were all excessively small – totally out of proportion to the men – and had a desperate fragility about them. None of the men, in contrast, looked like any of the others. Some had dark hair, some were fair. Some smoked a pipe, others a cigarette. The only thing that they had in common was that they were holding the little girl’s hand.
There are no pictures of her mother because her mother’s not bloody well dead, Woodend thought, angry with himself that he’d taken so long to grasp this simple point.
What he was looking at, he now realized, were not pictures of her real dad – she had seen him slowly waste away, and knew he was not coming back.
No, they were an attempt to create a new dad for herself – someone who would fill the aching void she felt deep inside her.
She had tried, and she had failed. None of the men had seemed quite right, and so she had kept on drawing, hoping against hope that she could eventually produce a figure who she could believe in.
Her coloured pencils lay on the dressing table. They were Lakeland brand, Woodend noted, some of the most expensive available. Lilly’s mother, living on a meagre widow’s pension, must have thought long and hard before buying them. So perhaps the fact that she had bought them meant she understood her daughter’s need, and had seen to it that she had best tools available to her as she embarked on her hopeless quest.
He picked up one the pencils, and saw that the end had been bitten into so deeply that the coloured lead was exposed.
‘It didn’t really help, did it, Lilly?’ he asked, as he felt a great wave of sadness wash over him. ‘However hard you tried to draw yourself a new dad, it didn’t really help.’
He found himself thinking of his daughter, Annie – who, as his mother had pointed out, resembled the dead girl in so many ways.
The two girls’ faces merged together in his mind, and he pictured Annie in this room, drawing frantically as tears slowly slid down her cheeks.
‘Don’t do it, Charlie,’ he told himself urgently. ‘For Christ’s sake, don’t bloody do it!’
But the idea was in his head – the connection was made – and the thought would simply not go away.
He imagined Annie being dragged into a car against her will . . . taken to a shed on an abandoned allotment . . . having her legs roughly forced apart as she screamed out for a little kindness . . . gasping desperately as her killer’s hands closed around her throat . . .
He felt the sudden urge to vomit.
‘Easy, Charlie!’ he ordered himself, as he tried to regulate his breathing. ‘Remember who you are. You’re a hardbitten copper – a professional – an’ you should be able to keep all this under control.’
But he was fighting a losing battle – and he knew it.
He turned and rushed from Lilly’s bedroom to the bathroom. He only just had time to lean over the toilet bowl before his stomach heaved and all the sadness – and all the anger and all the fear – came spewing out.
It was a full ten minutes before Woodend felt he could face the world again, and even then his legs were still shaking as he re-entered the kitchen.
Bannerman was sitting at the table, a copy of the Evening Telegraph spread out in front of him, and his lips set in a supercilious twist. There was no sign of the woman.
‘Where’s Mrs
Dawson?’ Woodend demanded.
Bannerman looked up. ‘She said she needed to go outside for a breath of fresh air,’ he replied, with marked unconcern.
‘Why was that?’ Woodend asked, suspiciously. ‘You’ve not said anythin’ to upset her, have you?’
‘Me?’ Bannerman said, with a look of comic surprise on his face.
‘Well, I don’t see anybody else in the room, so, yes, I do mean you,’ Woodend countered.
‘Now what could I possibly have said to upset her?’ Bannerman wondered innocently.
‘Do you want me to give you a list?’ Woodend demanded. ‘Because, if you do, it’ll be a bloody long one!’ He sighed. ‘Sorry, lad, I didn’t mean it. I needed to lash out at somethin’ – an’ you just happened to be in the way.’
‘That’s all right, sir,’ Bannerman said, with easy grace. ‘What’s that you’ve got in your hand?’
Woodend looked down, and – though he didn’t even remember picking them up – saw that he was holding some of Lilly’s pictures.
‘Look at these,’ he said, laying them out on the table.
Bannerman studied the drawings for a few moments, then said, ‘Well, if we’re to believe her mother, she may indeed have been immature in some ways – but she certainly seemed to have a very grown-up attitude to men.’
An’ to think, it’s barely a minute since I apologized to this bastard! Woodend thought angrily.
‘Are we lookin’ at the same pictures, do you think, Sergeant?’ he asked, in a tone which was much leveller than the rage he was feeling inside.
‘I’m sorry, sir?’
‘Aye, an’ so you bloody well should be! From what you’ve just said, it sounds as if you think she was the kind of girl who was so hot for men that she had no elastic in her knickers.’
Echoes of the Dead Page 5