‘Which policeman is she talking about?’ Beresford asked. ‘Was she referring to Mr Woodend? Or did he mean Sergeant Bannerman?’
‘It could be either of them, couldn’t it?’ Paniatowski said.
‘And what exactly was it that this policeman – whoever he was – told him?’ Beresford wondered.
‘I haven’t got a bloody clue.’ Paniatowski said dispiritedly. She drained the last of her vodka. ‘And there’s only one way that I can find out, isn’t there? I’ll have to ask.’
‘Ask who?’ Beresford said. ‘If what DCI Hall told you about Bannerman is even halfway true, there’s not a chance he’ll run the risk of saying anything that might besmirch his precious reputation.’
‘You’re right,’ Paniatowski said. ‘So if Bannerman won’t cooperate, who does that leave us with?’
‘It leaves us with Charlie Woodend,’ Beresford said.
FOURTEEN
‘Another afternoon in paradise,’ Charlie Woodend thought, looking down from his terrace at the fruit trees in his garden.
And he meant it, he told himself. He really didn’t miss the cold winters and the wet summers. He was managing very well without the Drum and Monkey. He was even – and this took a little more self-persuasion – quite happy not to be investigating murders any more.
He heard a roaring noise in the distance, and, looking down the winding, single-track road which ran down the hill to the sea, saw that a car was approaching.
‘I wonder who that bugger is,’ he said aloud.
‘What bugger?’ asked Paco Ruiz, who managed to find a reason to drop in on Woodend most afternoons.
‘Him,’ Woodend said, pointing to the vehicle. ‘It’s a new car – and there’s not many of them round here. And whoever’s drivin’ it isn’t used to this road. You can tell that from the cautious way he’s approachin’ the bends.’
Paco laughed. ‘Always the detective,’ he said.
Woodend grinned, self-consciously. ‘Well, there are some habits which are a bit hard to break,’ he admitted.
The car turned another bend in the road, and was now close enough for them to see the driver.
‘It’s a woman!’ Woodend said, surprised. ‘A blonde!’
‘Perhaps it is your old friend, Sergeant Monika Paniatowski, come to pay you a visit,’ Paco suggested.
‘Can’t be,’ Woodend said, ‘because that would mean she was takin’ a holiday – an’ Monika never takes a holiday.’
And yet, despite his words – and the logic which undoubtedly lay behind them – Woodend felt a slight surge of hope that perhaps it was Monika, after all.
The car pulled up in front of the house, and Monika Paniatowski climbed out. Woodend was by her side immediately, flinging his arms around her and hugging her to him.
‘By, but it’s grand to see you, Monika,’ he gushed.
‘It’s grand to see you, too, Charlie,’ Paniatowski said.
And maybe she did think it was grand, Woodend thought, as he felt a slight disappointment stab into him – but from the hint of restraint in her voice, she certainly didn’t seem quite as enthusiastic about it as he was.
He led her on to the terrace of his little palace.
‘How’s that for a view?’ he asked, sweeping his hand grandly across the panorama.
‘It’s lovely, Charlie,’ Paniatowski replied.
But again he detected that something was missing – that Monika was not quite herself.
‘This is my good friend, Paco Ruiz,’ he pressed on. ‘I may have mentioned him to you, once or twice.’
‘It was a lot more than once or twice,’ Paniatowski told Ruiz, as they shook hands, ‘and once he did start talking about you, he found it very hard to stop.’
‘It is the same with me – when he talks about you,’ Ruiz said.
Something’s wrong, Woodend’s instinct told him. Something’s very wrong.
‘Where’s Joan?’ Paniatowski asked, with a casualness that sounded just a little too casual.
‘She’s gone over to England to spend a couple of weeks with our Annie,’ Woodend said.
And he could not fail to see the look of relief which came to Paniatowski’s face.
‘What’s this all about, Monika?’ he asked.
‘Trouble, Charlie,’ Paniatowski said bluntly.
‘Trouble?’ Woodend repeated worriedly. ‘For you?’
‘I wish it was, Charlie,’ Paniatowski replied. ‘I think I could handle that easier. But it’s you who’s in trouble this time.’
The sun still shone benevolently down, the sea glistened just as it had done half an hour earlier, but the magic had been sucked out of Woodend’s day, and it might as well have been the bleakest midwinter.
He sat with Ruiz and Paniatowski on the terrace, and listened, almost without interruption, while Paniatowski told her tale.
‘An’, in your opinion, this Terry Clegg feller is tellin’ the truth?’ he asked when she’d finished.
Paniatowski nodded. ‘I’ve rarely been surer of anything in my life.’
Woodend shook his head slowly from side to side. ‘You’re wrong,’ he said finally. ‘The alibi’s a fake.’
‘Why would Clegg want to fake the alibi, after all this time?’ Paniatowski asked. ‘He can’t have done it to help Fred Howerd – Fred Howerd’s dead. And, by providing it, he’s only building up grief for himself, because if there’s an official inquiry, everybody he knows will learn that their friendly neighbourhood butcher used to visit under-age prostitutes.’
‘Do you think that there will be an official inquiry?’ Woodend asked anxiously.
‘When you put Clegg’s alibi together with Howerd’s dying declaration, I don’t see how it can be avoided,’ Paniatowski said.
‘But I was there, remember,’ Woodend protested. ‘I was in that interview room with him, and I know he was guilty.’
‘It was early days. You’d just been made up to chief inspector,’ Paniatowski said softly.
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ Woodend demanded.
‘It means, Charlie, that you hadn’t had the experience you’d gained by the time that I started working with you. It means that you’re going to have to come to terms with the fact that, just that once, you might have been wrong.’
‘I wasn’t wrong!’ Woodend told her. ‘If Howerd had an alibi – a real alibi, one that would have stood up in court back then – why didn’t he produce it?’
Paniatowski sighed. ‘I’ve already explained that. There was something that either you or Bannerman said which made him afraid to.’
‘So you’re seriously askin’ me to accept that he was more scared by somethin’ we said than he was of the thought of goin’ to prison for life?’
‘We’ve started going round in circles, Charlie,’ Paniatowski said. ‘Why don’t we approach the whole thing from another angle?’
‘What other angle?’
‘I want you to go through that whole interrogation for me. I know it was a long time ago, but you need to tell me as much of what was said and what was done as you can remember – however little that may be.’
‘I remember a lot,’ Woodend said. ‘In fact, I remember the whole bloody thing.’
Paniatowski looked at him almost pityingly. ‘I understand that this is important to you, Charlie, but it won’t help us if you’re not brutally honest about what you do remember and what you don’t.’
‘I remember the whole bloody thing,’ Woodend repeated firmly. ‘Because it wasn’t just any case, it was my first case as a DCI,’ he prodded his forehead with his big index finger, ‘and it’s all up here.’
‘Let’s hear it then,’ Paniatowski said.
As he and Bannerman walk along the corridor to the interview room, Woodend keeps repeating the same phrase over and over to himself.
‘You’re a professional, Charlie, you can do this . . . you’re a professional, Charlie, you can do this . . . you’re a professional, Charlie . . .’
&
nbsp; Because however much he despises Fred Howerd – however he might want to crush the man’s skull to powder – he knows that he is a detective chief inspector, and that he has a job to do.
The two detectives enter the interview room, and sit themselves down opposite their suspect.
Fred Howerd is looking very nervous indeed – like a frightened rat trapped in a corner.
‘It’s time to come clean, Fred,’ Woodend says, and is pleased to note that he almost sounds sympathetic.
‘I . . . I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,’ Howerd replies.
There is a quiver in his voice, but that’s only to be expected.
‘Tell us about Lilly,’ Woodend suggests.
‘Who?’
‘Come on, lad, don’t give me that. You know perfectly well that it’s Lilly Dawson I’m talkin’ about. Lilly Dawson! The girl whose face has never been off the front pages of the newspapers for the last week.’
‘Oh, her,’ Howerd says weakly. ‘I thought you were talkin’ about some girl I actually knew.’
‘Are you sayin’ that you didn’t know Lilly?’
‘That’s right.’
‘But you both worked on the market.’
‘It’s a big place, the market.’
‘So you really don’t know her?’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘You’ve never even seen her?’
‘Not that I can remember.’
‘Then tell us about your pigeons, instead, Fred,’ Woodend suggests.
‘What about them?’
‘You spend a lot of time with them, don’t you?’
‘I have to. They’re champion birds, you know. They need a lot of looking after.’
‘Did Lilly like pigeons?’
‘How would I know? I told you, I’ve never even met the girl.’
‘Because, you see, she liked all kinds of dumb creatures – rabbits and hamsters, guinea pigs and—’
‘I don’t see what this has to do with me.’
‘I haven’t finished talking yet,’ Woodend says firmly.
Howerd looks down at the table. ‘Sorry.’
‘And hamsters and cats and dogs. She liked them, too,’ Woodend continues. He pauses for a second. ‘So it wouldn’t be at all surprisin’ if she also liked pigeons, now would it?’
‘I suppose not,’ Howerd admits.
‘In fact, I think she’d positively jump at the chance of seein’ some pigeons close to. Don’t you think I’m right?’
‘Maybe.’
‘We found a pigeon feather in Lilly’s clothes,’ Woodend says. ‘And another one in the potting shed where we discovered her body.’
‘So what?’ Fred counters. ‘Have you ever been down to the Boulevard? There’s hundreds of the buggers there. Queen Victoria’s statue is covered in pigeon shit.’
Woodend leans forward, so that his face was almost touching Fred Howerd’s.
‘Covered in pigeon shit?’ he repeats, with a new menace in his voice. ‘That’s swearin’, Fred. I don’t like people swearin’ at me – especially when they happen to be toe-rags like you.’
‘Sorry,’ Fred Howerd mumbles.
‘Sorry what?’ Woodend demands.
‘Sorry, sir,’ Howerd says, looking down at the table again.
‘There’s nothin’ wrong with that, is there?’ Woodend asked. ‘Yes, I shifted ground occasionally, to keep him on his toes, an’, yes, I slapped him down once or twice. But it was all well within the guidelines – all standard procedure.’
Paniatowski looked distinctly uncomfortable.
‘Am I right about that, or not?’ Woodend asked.
‘You’re right,’ Paniatowski admitted.
‘Well, there you are then.’
‘But . . .’
‘But what?’
‘I must have sat there and listened to you interviewing dozens of suspects over the years—’
‘Scores of suspects,’ Woodend interrupted.
‘. . . and none of those interviews sounded even vaguely like the one you’ve just described.’
‘Well, of course they didn’t. By the time you started working with me, I’d developed my own style. But you have to remember, back then I was just startin’ out, an’ feelin’ my way as I went.’
‘I know, Charlie,’ Paniatowski said. ‘That’s exactly the point I was trying to make earlier.’
‘What do you think, Paco?’ Woodend asked, appealing to his old friend.
‘If what you have given us is an accurate description of what actually occurred, Charlie . . .’ Ruiz began cautiously.
‘It is accurate! It’s bloody spot on!’
‘. . . then I would have to say that, from what we’ve heard so far, I can detect nothing that would have made Howerd afraid to produce his alibi.’
Well, that wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement, was it, Woodend thought gloomily.
‘Carry on, Charlie,’ Paniatowski said.
‘The thing is, any fool can tell the difference between a common pigeon’s feather and one that comes from a Sheffield tippler,’ Woodend continues. ‘But we can do even better than that. The boffins who work for us in the police laboratory have got this new technique called the Feather Identification Process. It can not only tell us what kind of pigeon the feather came from, it can pinpoint the exact pigeon. Did you know that?’
‘I don’t see what that’s got to do with—’
‘Did you know that?’
‘No, I . . .’
Of course he doesn’t know it, because no such technique exists – but Howerd doesn’t know that, either.
‘But we don’t even need to use the FIP,’ Woodend says, ‘because we’ve got a witness.’
‘A witness?’ Howerd repeats.
‘That’s right. A witness who says he saw you take Lilly Dawson to your pigeon loft!’
‘I never . . .’ Howerd protests.
He is lying. It’s obvious he’s lying. But Woodend is lying too, because though the witness – ‘Tinker’ Bell – is sure it was a girl that Howerd took to his loft, he cannot definitely say that it was Lilly Dawson.
‘And to top it all – to put the icin’ on the bloody cake, as it were – we’ve got the pencil,’ Woodend says.
‘What pencil?’
‘A Lakeland coloured pencil. A red one, as a matter of fact. It has bite marks on it which we can prove came from Lilly’s teeth, and we found it right there in your pigeon loft.’
‘No!’ Howerd gasps.
‘Yes,’ Woodend says firmly. ‘Lilly liked to draw things. She must have wanted to draw your pigeons – with the red feathers – which is why she took her pencils out of her satchel and—’
‘She never opened that satchel,’ Howerd interrupts. ‘I’ll swear she didn’t.’ A look of horror crosses his face. ‘I mean, she couldn’t have opened it, because she was never there,’ he adds, unconvincingly.
‘So there you have it!’ Woodend said. ‘The questioning had hardly begun, and Howerd had already as good as admitted that he took Lilly Dawson to his loft the night before she was abducted.’
On the face of it, he sounded confident – almost triumphant – Paniatowski thought.
But she’d known him a long time – had worked with him a long time – and she could see below the surface.
Whatever he might say, he was worrying about the alibi Terry Clegg had provided.
And he had other concerns, too. He was starting to question why – at the time – he had been so confident that Howerd was the right man.
‘I was confident because I had an airtight case,’ he would be arguing to himself.
But somewhere, at the back of his mind, there must be a nagging doubt. He had needed a result from that investigation, because it was his first major case and because his home town seemed to demand one. And perhaps it was that – rather than the facts – which had fuelled his conviction.
‘You see what I’m gettin’ at, don’t you, Paco?’ Woodend asked
Ruiz, pleadingly.
‘It may have been established that Howerd did take Lilly to his pigeon loft the night before she disappeared . . .’ Ruiz said sombrely.
‘That’s what I’m sayin’!’
‘. . . but that is still no proof that he killed her, is it?’
‘There’s more,’ Woodend said, with just a hint of desperation in his voice.
‘Then let’s hear it,’ Paniatowski said.
FIFTEEN
Now that Howerd has all but admitted he took Lilly to the pigeon loft, he is probably expecting his interrogator to keep hammering away at that point. But Woodend doesn’t do that. Instead, he moves on to the afternoon of the abduction.
‘It’s a lot harder to kidnap somebody than most people think,’ the chief inspector tells his suspect. ‘An’ it’s especially difficult at busy times of day – say, for example, when the market has just closed and everybody’s rushing home for their Saturday dinner.’ He pauses for a moment, to give Howerd time to consider the implications of what he’s just said. ‘So how do you grab a kid off the street, against her will, without anybody noticing?’ he continues.
Howerd says nothing.
‘I asked you a question!’ Woodend barks.
‘I don’t know,’ Howerd replies, in a cracked, croaking voice.
‘The answer is – you can’t. The kid will scream and kick and bite, because she knows you’re up to no good, and the last thing she wants is to get into your car.’ He pauses again. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, you don’t have a car, do you? You run a stall on the market, so you have a van. And, at this very moment, the forensics team are scrupulously examining that van for traces of Lilly Dawson.’
‘They won’t find any,’ Howerd says – and, for once, he sounds sure of himself.
‘Didn’t it bother you that Howerd seemed so confident you would find no evidence that Lilly had been in the van?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘No,’ Woodend said firmly.
‘Not even for an instant?’ Paniatowski persisted.
‘I said no!’ Woodend replied, with a trace of anger in his voice. ‘Look,’ he continued, in a more reasonable tone, ‘we all know that civilians have no real idea of just how good the forensic boys can be, so what I told myself at the time was that what Howerd was displayin’ was not innocence but arrogance. He’d probably done a thorough job of cleanin’ out the van, an’ so he thought he was safe.’
Echoes of the Dead Page 13