‘And how did you square that idea with the fact that he’d been sloppy about concealing the other evidence?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘What other evidence?’
‘The evidence you found in the pigeon loft – the lemonade bottle with Lilly’s fingerprints on it. Why hadn’t he got rid of that?’
‘At that point, we didn’t know that Lilly’s fingerprints were on the lemonade bottle, because the lab hadn’t finished checking it.’ Woodend said. ‘But you’re right, Monika,’ he conceded, ‘it’s certainly something I should have taken into consideration.’
‘Did the lab find traces of Lilly’s presence in the van?’ Paco Ruiz asked.
‘No,’ Woodend admitted, ‘they didn’t.’
‘I see,’ Paco mused.
‘So maybe Howerd was right about that, and I was wrong – maybe he had done a good enough job to remove all the evidence,’ Woodend said heatedly. ‘Then again, maybe he’d used some other vehicle for the abduction.’
Or maybe it wasn’t Fred Howerd who abducted Lilly, they all thought – though nobody actually said it.
‘So, we’ve established that if Lilly had put up a struggle, somebody would have noticed,’ Woodend presses on, seemingly impervious to Howerd’s confidence about his van. ‘That means she didn’t struggle, doesn’t it? And why was that? It was because she wasn’t being picked up by a complete stranger at all, but by someone who she regarded as a friend.’ He counts slowly up to five. ‘You were one of her friends, weren’t you. Fred?’
Howerd licks his lips. ‘I wouldn’t exactly say that.’
‘Then what would you say?’
‘I . . . I felt sorry for the kid.’
‘Of course you did,’ Woodend says, hating himself for sounding so sympathetic.
‘I mean, I’ve got a daughter of my own,’ Howerd amplifies, encouraged by this new tone.
‘She’s called Elizabeth, isn’t she?’ Woodend asks.
‘That’s right.’
‘An’ she’s older than Lilly.’
‘Not much. A few years.’
‘A few years,’ Woodend repeats. ‘So that would make her seventeen or eighteen. Now I understand!’
‘Understand what?’
‘I’ve got a young daughter of my own. I worship her – an’ I think she worships me. When she cuts her knee, it’s me she comes to for comfort. When the boys bully her at school, I’m the one who she wants to tell her everything will turn out all right in the end. And sometimes, when I think about the future – her all grown up an’ independent, an’ not really needin’ me very more – I feel sad. An’ it’ll be even worse when she finally gets married – when another man becomes the centre of her life.’ Another pause. ‘Your daughter Elizabeth got married recently, didn’t she?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you’ve lost her for ever, but you’re still not ready to give up the role of the all-comfortin’, all-knowin’ dad. And that leaves an achin’ void deep inside you. Am I right?’
‘Something like that,’ Howerd mumbles.
‘And then, one day on the market, you notice Lilly, and you can immediately sense how miserable she feels about not having a dad of her own.’
‘Yes, that’s it! That’s just how it happened!’ Howerd says, grasping at this wisp of understanding like a drowning man might grasp at a straw.
‘You did take her to see your pigeons, didn’t you?’ Woodend says, and though it is phrased as a question, there is no longer anything questioning about it.
‘She said she’d like to see them,’ Howerd explains. ‘She said she really loved birds.’
‘So, just to get things perfectly clear in my mind, am I right in assumin’ that not only did you take her to the loft, but you actually took her on the Friday night before she went missing?’
‘That’s right.’
‘By why did you go after dark?’ Woodend asks, the sympathetic listener he has become disappearing and the inquisitor temporarily taking his place.
‘Pardon?’
‘If you wanted to show her your pigeons, wouldn’t it have been better to do it in the daylight?’
‘I . . . er . . . I was busy at the market earlier. And I’ve got a storm lamp in the loft.’
‘Ah, that explains it,’ Woodend says. ‘An’ was it on that Friday night that you first touched her?’
‘I never touched her!’
‘Not at all?’
‘No.’
‘It must be quite cramped in the pigeon loft. Surely you brushed against her once or twice – purely accidentally, of course.’
‘I might have done.’
‘And maybe you patted her on the shoulder.’
‘I . . . err . . .’
‘Did you or didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And gave her a hug?’
‘Only like one I might have given to my own daughter, when she was much smaller.’
‘And then, on Saturday afternoon, you went out with her again, only this time you didn’t take her to the pigeon loft, you took her to the allotment.’
Fred Howerd begins to scratch, almost desperately, at his lower right arm. ‘No, I . . .’ he croaks.
‘Is there something bothering you about that arm?’ asks Bannerman, speaking for the first time.
‘No.’
‘Well, it certainly seems to be bothering you.’
‘It’s just an itch. That’s all.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Just an itch,’ Howerd repeats hauntedly, as if he is beginning to feel the trap start to close its jaws on him.
‘I know a bit about first aid, so why don’t you let me take a look at that arm of yours?’ Bannerman suggests.
‘I don’t want—’
‘I said, let me take a look at it!’
Reluctantly, Fred Howerd rolls back his sleeve to reveal a large sticking plaster.
‘So it’s not just an itch, after all,’ Bannerman says.
‘No.’
‘Then what is it?’
‘I . . . cut myself.’
‘Where?
‘On the side of the stall. There’s a lot of rough edges. It’s easy to do, if you’re not careful.’
‘You should always be careful, Fred,’ Bannerman advises.
‘I will be in future,’ Howerd says, and there is an element of relief in his voice which suggests he thinks the crisis is past.
But it isn’t!
‘Shall we take a look at the wound, then?’ Bannerman suggests.
‘There’s no need,’ Howerd tells him.
‘I think there is,’ Bannerman counters, and before Howerd has time to realize what is happening, the sergeant has reached across the table and ripped the plaster off.
Howerd howls and clutches the arm to his chest.
‘He should never have done that,’ Paniatowski said.
‘Probably not,’ Woodend agreed. ‘But you had to be there, Monika. I think, by that point, Bannerman was gettin’ such a buzz from the way the interrogation was goin’ that he didn’t even think about would he should or shouldn’t do – he just acted on instinct.’
‘That doesn’t make it right,’ Paniatowski said firmly.
‘What do you think, Paco?’ Woodend asked.
Ruiz shrugged awkwardly. ‘I saw much worse in my time with the police.’
‘Maybe you did, but that was in Spain before the Civil War, and this was in England in the 1950s – and Bannerman shouldn’t have done it,’ Paniatowski said.
‘Don’t be such a baby! Put your arm back on the table, so we can look at the injury,’ Bannerman orders Howerd.
‘I don’t want—’
‘Now!’
Howerd lays his arm on the table.
The wound, which has almost healed, is perhaps three inches long and an inch and a half wide. And it is not so much a scrape or a cut – it is a gouge.
‘It looks self-inflicted to me,’ Woodend says.
‘I told you, it was an accid
ent,’ Howerd protests.
‘You say you cut yourself on the stall?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then the boffins from the forensic department should be able to find traces of blood on the stall, shouldn’t they?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘We found bits of human skin under Lilly Dawson’s nails,’ Woodend says. ‘How do you think they got there?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What a lot of things you seem not to know,’ Woodend ponders. ‘You don’t know how Lilly was snatched from the street without anybody noticin’. You don’t know whether forensics will find blood on your stall. There are so many things you don’t know that it would take me all day to list them.’ He slams his hand down hard on the table. ‘You’re either very stupid or just pretending to be very stupid. It’s obvious to us that there’s skin under her nails because Lilly scratched her attacker. So what is the attacker to do? And don’t you dare say you “don’t know”, you bastard!’
‘I don’t . . .’ Howerd mumbles, before falling silent again.
‘He has two choices,’ Woodend says. ‘He can leave the scratch marks to heal naturally, hopin’ that nobody will notice until they do. Or he can disguise them by cutting them away – which is what you did.’
‘There comes a moment in any interrogation when you can sense it’s all over, bar the shoutin’,’ Woodend said. ‘Do you know what I mean?’
Paniatowski and Ruiz nodded. On this point, at least, they could agree with him – because they knew exactly what he meant.
‘The suspect may keep on protestin’ his innocence for hours after that – perhaps even for days – but he knows, just as clearly as you do, that the game’s up. An’ in that particular interrogation, the moment came when I accused Howerd of cuttin’ away the scratch marks. I could see him collapse. I could see him give up all hope. An’ though I didn’t expect a confession right away, I was convinced we’d get one in the end.’
Bannerman looks up at the big clock on the wall.
‘Do you know, I’m really feeling quite hungry, sir,’ he says to Woodend. He turns to the suspect. ‘Are you feeling hungry yourself, Fred?’
‘A bit,’ Howerd lies.
‘Well then, let’s get this wrapped up, so we can all have something to eat, shall we?’ Bannerman suggests. ‘Mind you,’ he continues, almost as an afterthought, ‘after I’ve told you what’s going to happen to you, I rather think you’ll lose your appetite.’
‘Happen to me?’ Howerd repeats.
‘The government claims that hanging’s a painless process, you know, but they have to say that, don’t they? And do you know why they have to say it? It’s because if the ordinary decent people on the street knew what it was actually like, they’d demand it was stopped immediately,’ Bannerman says.
‘I don’t want to hear this,’ Howerd tells him, clamping his hands firmly over his ears.
‘Your neck’s broken in the first second after the drop,’ Bannerman says – shouting, but, at the same time, managing to sound almost clinical. ‘That’s when your bowels open and you shit yourself.’
‘Please . . .’ Howerd begs.
‘But it’s at least half an hour before all signs of life are extinct,’ Bannerman continues. ‘Sometimes it’s much longer than that. I’ve looked at those hanging men myself, and I’ll swear to you that though they couldn’t move or say a word, they were suffering.’
Howerd starts to cry.
‘And it seems so unfair that you should hang, because I know you didn’t mean to do it,’ the sergeant says, dropping his voice again, so that now it is almost gently hypnotic.
Howerd lowers his hands from his ears.
‘What did you say?’ he asks fearfully.
‘I know you didn’t mean to do it,’ Bannerman repeats.
‘You let Bannerman seize control of the interrogation,’ Paniatowski said.
‘I wouldn’t exactly say that,’ Woodend replied. ‘He’d hit on a good line, and I decided to let him run with it. I’ve done the same with you, any number of times.’
‘Yes, but I’m not Bannerman,’ Paniatowski said, unyieldingly.
‘All you wanted to do, Fred, was to give her a bit of the loving she was missing,’ Bannerman says. ‘She probably encouraged you – maybe even led you on. And then, at some point, she changed her mind – which is just what women do. She decided that she’d been raped – though both of you knew that wasn’t true. You thought about going to prison and losing the family – and all because you’d tried to help the girl, to give her a little comfort. You panicked, which is perfectly understandable in the circumstances. Before you even knew what was happening, your hands were round her throat. All you wanted to do was shut her up. It never occurred to you that you might be strangling her. And then, suddenly, she was dead – and you’d certainly never meant that to happen for a minute.’ Bannerman pauses again. ‘Well, you can’t hang a man for that, can you? It simply wouldn’t be right.’
‘I’d still go to prison, wouldn’t I?’ Howard asks.
‘Oh yes, you’d still go to prison,’ Bannerman agrees. ‘And I won’t lie to you, Fred, you’d get quite a stiff sentence. But that’s still much better than the rope, isn’t it? With a bit of luck, you’d be out in time to play with your grandchildren – and that’s got to be worth something, don’t you think?’
‘That’s it!’ Paniatowski exclaimed.
‘That’s what?’ Woodend asked.
‘That’s what we’ve been looking for! Up to that point, you see, Howerd had been holding back his alibi – but he’d always been ready to produce it, if that should prove necessary.’
‘So what changed?’ Paco Ruiz asked.
‘What changed is that Bannerman painted him a picture of what death by hanging was like.’
‘I’m not following you,’ Woodend said.
‘The reason he didn’t want to say where he’d been that Saturday afternoon was that he knew it would show him in a very bad light. Remember, it was Howerd who took Clegg to see the young prostitute in Bolton, not the other way round.’
‘So what?’
‘So it probably wasn’t the first time he’d used her services – or those of some other girl who was quite like her. And once he’d produced his alibi, that would all come out into the open.’
‘Maybe that’s true,’ Woodend agreed, ‘but it would have got him off the murder charge.’
‘That’s how you see things,’ Paniatowski said.
‘That’s how anybody would see things,’ Woodend countered.
‘No, it isn’t,’ Paniatowski argued. ‘Put yourself in Howerd’s shoes for a minute. He’s convinced that you and Bannerman have him marked down for the murder, and that whatever he says is going to make no difference. So why should he give you more ammunition – why should he reveal to you what a nasty little pervert he really was?’
‘Because it would get him off,’ Woodend said stubbornly.
‘But he doesn’t believe that. He thinks that you’ll find some way to discredit the alibi, but still have all the damning information you’ve collected as a result of the alibi at your fingertips.’
‘You can’t possibly know what he was thinkin’,’ Woodend said.
‘He’s convinced he’s going to be convicted, whatever happens,’ Paniatowski pressed on. ‘So he’s faced with two choices, isn’t he? He can continue to deny he killed Lilly – in which case he’ll probably be hanged. Or he can make a false confession, which will mean, according to Bannerman, that he could be released in time to play with his grandchildren. Which of those two alternatives would you choose?’
‘He told me it wasn’t as simple as that,’ Elizabeth Eccles had claimed. ‘He said that after what the policeman had told him, he didn’t dare produce his alibi.’
‘I don’t buy it,’ Woodend said.
‘You mean that you don’t want to buy it!’ Paniatowski countered. ‘Look at the facts, Charlie. There was no evidence that Lilly had ever
been in his van, Terry Clegg has given him an alibi that no man in his right mind would ever have made up, and – most important of all – with his dying breath, and in the presence of a priest, he swore that hadn’t killed Lilly.’
Woodend stood up and walked over to the edge of the terrace. He stood staring at the sea for perhaps five minutes, and when he turned round again, he seemed to have aged ten years.
‘Oh, my God,’ he moaned, ‘we really did get the wrong man!’
SIXTEEN
Anyone watching the woman, who was slowly labouring up the steep street with a heavy shopping bag in each hand, could not have been blamed for assuming that she was at least seventy. In fact, she was much younger than that, and if her back was bowed, it was due more to the burden she had had to carry for much of her life than it was to the inevitable ageing process.
The woman laid her bags on the ground, and rested for a moment. She should shop more often, she told herself. But the truth was that she didn’t want to shop at all – didn’t want to leave the house at all – because every time she saw the look of pity in the eyes of those who knew her history, it was like going through the whole terrible ordeal again.
As she approached her own house, she noticed that a man was standing patiently outside her front door.
Perhaps it was a reporter. But surely, after all this time, the journalists had bled everything from her daughter’s tragedy that they possibly could. Besides, he didn’t look like a reporter. He wasn’t dressed in a smart suit, but instead was wearing a shabby jacket and grey flannel trousers.
All these thoughts passed through her mind, as thoughts will do, but none of them really interested her. Nothing that she saw or heard had really interested her for almost a quarter of a century.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked, when she had finally drawn level with the waiting man.
‘Mrs Dawson?’ the man asked.
‘Yes.’
‘I didn’t know it was you. If I had, I wouldn’t have just stood there and watched you struggle, I’d have come down the hill and helped you. I really am so sorry.’
Echoes of the Dead Page 14