Echoes of the Dead

by Sally Spencer

  Paniatowski produced her warrant card. ‘We’re police officers. We’d like you to come down to the station with us, Mr Clegg,’ she said.

  Clegg’s smile melted away like rendered-down fat.

  ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘What have I done?’

  ‘We don’t know you’ve done anything,’ Paniatowski told him. ‘But there is a little matter we think you could help us to clear up.’

  ‘What little matter?’

  ‘I’d rather not discuss that here.’

  ‘But . . . but this is my busy time,’ Clegg protested. ‘Ten minutes from now, I’ll be swamped with women wantin’ to buy sausages for their husbands’ teas.’

  ‘Your lad should be able to handle that,’ Hall said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’ve been watching the way he works. He’ll have no trouble dealing with the rush.’

  ‘You’ve been watchin’ him?’ Clegg asked worriedly.

  ‘We’ve been watching both of you – very carefully,’ Hall said. ‘And we’ve noticed at least three breaches of the Health and Safety Act that we could arrest you for right now, were we of a mind to.’

  ‘I . . . I . . .’ Clegg spluttered.

  ‘It really would be much easier if you came with us voluntarily,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘All right, I’ll come,’ Clegg said, defeated.

  They left the market through the main exit – Paniatowski and Hall pointedly flanking Clegg – and headed towards the multi-storey car.

  ‘Look, I really need to know what this all about,’ the butcher protested, as they crossed the street.

  He was nervous, Paniatowski thought.

  And that was a good thing, because – though they rarely realized it themselves – nervous men were already doing part of their interrogators’ job for them.

  ‘I mean, I’m a law-abiding citizen,’ Clegg babbled.

  ‘Are you really?’ Paniatowski asked. ‘Have you never done anything wrong, Mr Clegg?

  ‘No, I . . .’

  ‘Not even in the distant past? Not even in 1951?’

  ‘1951?’ Clegg croaked.

  ‘Would it help you if I was more specific?’ Paniatowski wondered. ‘All right then, let’s say, you didn’t do anything wrong in April 1951.’

  They had reached the lower floor of the car park, and Hall broke rank to open the back door of the vehicle. Then, with his hand already on the handle, he seemed to change his mind.

  ‘What’s the point of going all the way down to the station when we can do the interview here?’ he asked.

  ‘Here?’ Paniatowski repeated, puzzled.

  ‘Well, not right here,’ Hall said. ‘But somewhere close. We could go up the steps to the top of the car park. I should think you get a lovely view of the whole of Whitebridge from there.’

  What the bloody hell did he think he was doing? Paniatowski wondered. If he wanted to change their plans – and she couldn’t see why he should want to change them – then he should have discussed it with her first.

  But she couldn’t argue with him – not in front of Clegg – so she said, ‘I suppose the top of the car park is as good a place as any.’

  As they climbed the stairs, Tom Hall maintained an almost breathless monologue.

  ‘Do you like going to the pictures when you have a bit of spare time on your hands, Mr Clegg?’ he asked, as they passed the first floor.

  Clegg said nothing, but that did not seem to deter Hall in the slightest.

  ‘I love it myself,’ the chief inspector continued, as they reached for the second floor. ‘I saw this film with Michael Caine in it. What was it called, now? Get Carter! That’s it! It was marvellous. Have you seen that one, Mr Clegg?’

  Clegg grunted, non-committally.

  ‘Of course,’ Hall cautioned, as they arrived at the third floor, ‘you have to do what they call “suspend disbelief” when you’re watching a film like that, because it isn’t very realistic. I mean to say – there isn’t any way that the police would have allowed a criminal like Carter to go on the rampage like he did. Still, it’s only a bit of fun, isn’t it?’

  What was this? Paniatowski asked herself. What the sodding hell was he playing at?

  Hall knew, as well as she did, that the only way they’d get Clegg to reveal whether or not he had been harbouring a guilty secret for twenty-years was by maintaining a united front – by signalling, through that unity, that they knew they were the ones in charge, and they would get their way in the end. And what that meant, from her viewpoint, was that she had to seem to be going along with whatever Hall was doing, because once Clegg sensed disagreement – once he could see a crack in the united front – they were finished.

  They had reached the top floor of the car park.

  ‘A wonderful view – just like I promised,’ Hall enthused. ‘That’ll be the cathedral, won’t it? And look, there’s the bus station.’ He lit up a cigarette. ‘The only thing that put me off in the film was Michael Caine’s accent,’ he continued, when he’d inhaled. ‘He was supposed to be a Geordie – born and bred – yet every time he opened his mouth, it was obvious he was a cockney.’

  ‘What’s all this about?’ Clegg asked nervously.

  This was about as good an opportunity as she was likely to get to take back control, Paniatowski told herself.

  ‘It’s about Fred Howerd,’ she said.

  ‘Fred Howerd?’ Clegg licked his lips nervously. ‘I don’t know the man.’

  ‘You’ve heard that he’s dead, haven’t you?’

  ‘Like I said, I don’t know the man.’

  ‘Everybody in Whitebridge has heard of Fred Howerd,’ Paniatowski said. ‘He was all over the newspapers back in 1951. Besides, your stall is in spitting distance of where Fred’s used to be.’

  ‘All right, I might have known him,’ Clegg admitted. ‘But just – you know – to say hello to when we happened to pass each other.’

  ‘That’s not what he said. He said you were the best of mates. He said you could give him an alibi for the afternoon that little Lilly Dawson was abducted.’

  ‘He was lyin’,’ Clegg mumbled.

  Tom Hall stepped forward, put his arm around Clegg’s shoulder, and steered the butcher across the car park to the very edge of the parapet.

  What the hell was he doing now? Paniatowski wondered.

  ‘It’s a long way down, isn’t it?’ Hall said, looking over the edge. ‘Look at the cars on the street. They could be toys.’

  Clegg twisted his head round, and gazed frantically at Paniatowski. ‘Help me!’ he pleaded.

  She had to intervene, Paniatowski told herself. However much that might upset the delicate balance she had been trying to establish, there was no choice but to intervene.

  ‘That’s enough, Tom,’ she said.

  But instead of releasing Clegg, Hall tightened his grip on the other man’s shoulder.

  ‘Do you know what my favourite part of Get Carter is, Terry?’ he asked. ‘It’s when Carter is questioning one the local villains – Bunbury, I think his name is – at the top of a multi-storey car park, which, now I come to think about it, is rather like this one.’

  Clegg had both his hands on the edge of the parapet, and was gripping it as tightly as he could.

  ‘Get away from him, Chief Inspector!’ Paniatowski said firmly.

  ‘And what do you think happens when Carter gets an answer he doesn’t like, Terry?’ Hall ploughed on. ‘He throws Bunbury over the bloody edge!’

  Another few seconds and she was going to have to do more than intervene with just words, Paniatowski thought desperately – another few seconds and she was going to have to get physical.

  ‘I told you to get away from him, Chief Inspector!’ she said, giving Hall one last chance.

  Hall removed his arm from around Clegg’s shoulder, and took several steps backwards.

  ‘Is that far enough for you?’ he asked.

  Ignoring him, Paniatowski turned her attention back to Clegg. The pork
butcher’s ruddy face had turned white with fear, and he was still holding tightly on to the parapet, as if he was frightened that Hall had not yet finished with him.

  ‘Tell me about Fred Howerd’s alibi, Mr Clegg,’ she said.

  ‘Look, you’ve got to understand my position,’ the butcher moaned. ‘It wasn’t easy for me at the time. I was engaged to be married and . . .’

  ‘Tell me about the alibi!’ Paniatowski repeated.

  ‘We . . . we went to Bolton that day, to see this girl that Fred knew.’

  ‘A girl?’ Paniatowski echoed.

  ‘I . . . I don’t mean a girl like Lilly Dawson. Nothin’ like that. This one was a prostitute.’

  ‘So the two of you went to see one prostitute?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did you arrange things? Did you take turns with her?’

  ‘No, we . . . we both did her at the same time. She . . . she didn’t mind. She said she liked it that way.’

  You really sicken me, you loathsome piece of dog shit! Paniatowski thought.

  ‘How long were you in Bolton?’ she asked, in as level a tone as she could muster.

  ‘We set off as soon as the market closed. We didn’t get back to Whitebridge until ten o’clock at night.’

  ‘If that’s what really happened, why didn’t you inform the police as soon as you’d heard that Howerd had been arrested?’

  ‘I . . . I was going to,’ Clegg gabbled. ‘I swear I was. But then Dyson Trypp came see me.’

  ‘Who’s Dyson Trypp?’ Hall asked Paniatowski.

  ‘He’s dead now, but he was a local solicitor,’ Paniatowski told him. ‘A very bent local solicitor. So Trypp came to see you, did he, Terry?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what did he have to say for himself?’

  Terry Clegg is sitting in his kitchen, polishing his best pair of shoes. He has been working on them for over an hour. Five minutes would have been more than sufficient for the job. Ten minutes’ work would have produced a shine which even a regimental sergeant major could not have found fault with. He knows that. But, even so, he cannot stop polishing.

  News of Fred Howerd’s arrest has quickly spread around the town, and Clegg knows he’ll have to come clean about what they did together on Saturday afternoon – if only because Fred is bound to come clean about it himself.

  But somehow he can’t bring himself to do it quite yet. It’s almost as if the further away from the actual event they get, the less the effect of the revelation will be, so that to reveal it a few days later would be very shocking, but after a couple of weeks it would perhaps not sound quite so bad.

  Besides, he needs time to prepare the story he will feed to his fiancée. His current plan is to tell her that he’d had no idea why he and Fred were going to Bolton that day, that once he realized it was to see the girl, he’d wanted to back out, and that the only reason he didn’t back out was because he was afraid that Fred would make fun of him.

  It’s not a good story. It wouldn’t fool even the most naive of girls – and Edith is anything but that. Yet he still clings to the hope that – given time – he’ll come up with something better. Because he knows he has to come up with something better!

  He hears a tap on the kitchen window, and looks up to discover that Dyson Trypp is standing in the yard. He feels his stomach turn to water. On shaky legs, he gets up and opens the door for the man who, he knows, can only be bringing him trouble.

  Trypp takes the seat he has been offered at the table, reaches into his pocket, and produces a half-bottle of cheap whisky.

  ‘Got any glasses?’ he asks.

  Clegg finds a couple of Woolworths’ tumblers, and Trypp pours a generous slug of Scotch into each one.

  ‘I represent Fred Howerd, who, as you probably know, has been arrested for the murder of Lilly Dawson,’ Trypp says.

  ‘Yes,’ Clegg agrees, hardly daring to breathe.

  ‘But what you also know is that Fred was with you all Saturday afternoon and most of the evening.’

  ‘I was just planning to go the police when you arrived,’ Clegg lies. ‘That’s why I was polishing my shoes.’

  ‘I don’t think that going to the police would be at all a good idea,’ Trypp says.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You remember the girl who you and my client “entertained” yourselves with that afternoon?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How old do you think she was?’

  ‘I don’t know – eighteen or nineteen?’

  ‘She was fifteen, Mr Clegg. You could go to prison for merely touching her – never mind all the disgusting things you probably actually did during your sordid little session.’

  ‘I swear I didn’t know . . .’

  ‘In the eyes of the law, ignorance is no excuse at all,’ Trypp says harshly. ‘But it is an excuse in the eyes of my client,’ he continues, in a much softer tone. ‘Fred didn’t tell you how old the girl was . . .’

  ‘That’s right – he didn’t. If he had, I’d never have touched her with a barge pole.’

  ‘I wonder if that’s true,’ Trypp says reflectively. ‘But no matter,’ he continues. ‘Whatever you would have done – or not done – if you’d known the truth, is irrelevant. Fred now he feels that he was wrong to keep you in the dark, and he does not wish to see you suffer because of his own misjudgement. He has therefore decided that he would prefer you not to come forward.’

  ‘But if I don’t give him alibi, he could be convicted,’ Clegg says.

  ‘If you don’t give him an alibi, he is very likely to be convicted,’ Trypp says. ‘But that is the price he’s prepared to pay to keep you out of prison.’

  It doesn’t make sense, Clegg tells himself.

  Fred Howerd is a mate, but he’s not that much of a mate. In fact, nobody is that much of a mate. There can’t be any other man in the whole of Whitebridge who would be prepared to go to prison for thirty or forty years, just to save his friend from being put away for two or three.

  And then he is suddenly engulfed in a huge wave of relief.

  It doesn’t matter why Fred’s doing it, he thinks.

  It might well be through a sense of duty to his friend, as Trypp claims.

  It might be that he’s gone completely off his head.

  But none of that is important!

  What matters – the only thing that matters – is that he himself is now off the hook!

  ‘If that’s what Fred really wants, then I’ve no choice but to go along with it,’ he says to Trypp.

  The solicitor favours him with a thin smile.

  ‘Do you know, I thought that’s what you’d say,’ Trypp tells him.

  ‘And that’s the story you’re sticking with, is it?’ Hall asked sceptically. ‘You’re saying the only reason you didn’t come forward is because Howerd – through his solicitor – asked you not to?’

  ‘It’s the truth,’ Clegg said. ‘I swear to you it is.’

  ‘You can go,’ Paniatowski told him.

  ‘Now just a minute, Monika,’ Hall said. ‘I’m not sure that I’ve finished questioning—’

  ‘You’ve finished,’ Paniatowski interrupted him. She turned to Clegg again. ‘Go on – piss off!’

  Clegg edged his way along the parapet, and when he was a fair distance away from Hall, he turned and ran towards the exit.

  Paniatowski watched him until he’d disappeared down the stairwell, then swung round to face Hall.

  ‘Just what the bloody hell did you think you were doing?’ she demanded angrily.

  ‘You said you wanted to keep him off-balance. I was just following your plan,’ Hall told her.

  ‘He wasn’t just off-balance, you bastard!’ Paniatowski said. ‘He was bloody petrified!’

  ‘You’re right, Monika,’ Hall agreed contritely. ‘You’re quite right. I misjudged it, and I’m very sorry. But I really did think that by putting a bit of pressure on him, I might get him to tell us the truth.’

&nb
sp; ‘And he did tell us the truth,’ Paniatowski said, still in a blazing rage, ‘but after the way you got that truth out of him, we’ll never be able to use it in court.’

  ‘Use it in court?’ Hall repeated, mystified. ‘Why would we want to use it in court? You surely don’t believe any of that rubbish, do you?’

  ‘Don’t you?’ Paniatowski asked, incredulously.

  ‘Not for a second. Come on, Monika, the man simply spewed out the first story that came into his head.’

  Her rage bubbling over, Paniatowski realized, for the first time in her life, what people meant when they said they could see red. She felt an almost overwhelming urge to do to Hall what he had been suggesting he might do to Clegg. He was a strong man – he’d shown that by the way that he had manhandled the butcher – but she had a Judo black belt, and she was prepared to take her chances.

  The madness passed, and she turned and walked towards the exit.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Hall called after her.

  ‘Away from you – before I do something I might enjoy,’ she said, over her shoulder.

  Colin Beresford took a deep swig from his pint glass, then said, ‘So where’s DCI Hall now, boss?’

  ‘I don’t know, and I don’t bloody care!’ Paniatowski replied. ‘Right up until we went to the top of the car park, I thought he was my kind of bobby. But he’s not. The way he handled Clegg was a disgrace. It was almost as if he was trying to sabotage the investigation.’

  ‘Maybe that’s just the way they do things down in London,’ Beresford suggested.

  ‘Well, it’s not the way we do things up here,’ Paniatowski said. ‘And this is my patch.’

  ‘Putting aside how the statement was obtained for the moment, am I right in thinking that you believe what Clegg said?’ Beresford asked.

  ‘Yes, I do believe him,’ Paniatowski admitted. ‘I don’t want to, Colin – but I do.’

  ‘Then if he is telling the truth, why did Fred Howerd decide to confess to killing Lilly Dawson? Why didn’t he just say where he’d been that afternoon?’

  ‘Because he was afraid to,’ Paniatowski said dully. She took her notebook out of her pocket, and flicked it open. ‘When I asked Elizabeth Eccles what you’ve just asked me, she said, “He told me it wasn’t as simple as that. He said that after what the policeman told him, he didn’t dare produce his alibi.”’