Murder at Swann's Lake

by Sally Spencer

  The figures were on the ground now, one on top of the other. The lower one was a woman, her skirt billowing around her waist. The upper was a man; his trousers were round his ankles, his naked backside was stuck up in the air, pale and mottled. His face was turned towards the camera and there was a look of horror on it, registering the fact that he had spotted the photographer.

  “Read the back,” Woodend ordered.

  “Alice Priddy, Tom Tideswell. June 18th,” Dawson said mechanically.

  “There are six sets of photographs,” Woodend told him. “Six poor sods who have probably been payin’ through the nose for their bit of fun. It must have been quite easy, really. They came up here, had a few drinks in The Hideaway, and started to feel amorous. With the combination of alcohol and passion, they weren’t likely to be very careful. And once they were on the job, it would probably have taken a peal of bells in their ears to disturb them. Even if they did notice in the end – as this Tideswell feller seems to have done – well, it didn’t really matter, because you had that well-known hard-case, Robbie Peterson, along with you for protection.”

  “It wasn’t Ro—” Dawson began, before he realised what he was saying.

  “What was that, Mr Dawson?”

  “Robbie Peterson might have been involved in this, but I can assure you that I wasn’t.”

  “I assume you started out just with the smut, and then Robbie came up with the idea of blackmail,” Woodend said, ignoring Dawson’s protest. “How much did he give you as your share? Half?”

  “You can’t prove any of this,” Dawson said defiantly, mopping his brow with his handkerchief. “You wouldn’t be badgering me like this if you could.”

  Woodend did not look in the least dismayed. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “Only you know for sure whether that’s true or not.”

  “What do you mean?” Dawson asked, as some of his new-found courage started to desert him.

  “You don’t seem to me to be the kind of man to leave yourself without insurance – especially when you were dealin’ with a feller like Robbie Peterson. So I’m bettin’ that after you developed your mucky pictures, you gave most of them to Robbie, but kept some of the prints back for yourself. That’s why I asked Inspector Chatterton to get a search warrant sworn out – and why he’s havin’ your house gone over at this very moment. You may have destroyed the pictures after Robbie was killed, of course, but I’m bankin’ on you bein’ too greedy.”

  Dawson licked his dry lips as the bolt hit home. “I . . . is there anything I can do to make things easier for myself?” he asked, after he’d had time to consider his position.

  “Maybe,” Woodend conceded. “We’d certainly show our appreciation if you could tell us where we might find Mr Alexander Conway.”

  “Who?” Dawson asked.

  “Alexander Conway. I thought you might have heard the name durin’ your business dealin’s with Robbie.”

  “I never had any dealings with Robbie.”

  “It’s a bit late to start pleadin’ the innocent now, don’t you think?” Woodend said, suddenly angry.

  Dawson held up his hands in a placatory gesture. “I’m not denying I took the photographs,” he said, “and I knew what they were used for. But Robbie never mentioned them to me. He was too smart for that. Didn’t want the trail leading back to him if anything went wrong.”

  “So who did you deal with?”

  “That son-in-law of his. That Terry. He was the one who paid me. And he was the one who minded me when I went out takin’ photographs of all those couples on the nest.”

  Terry Clough had sworn he had had nothing to do with Robbie’s rackets, but now Woodend found himself wondering why he had ever accepted such a ludicrous statement at face value. Clough had worked for Robbie in Liverpool. Clough had married Jenny because Robbie had asked him to. Was it really very likely that if Peterson had wanted him to help run the rackets around Swann’s Lake, Clough would have had the strength of character to resist?

  “There is one more thing, Mr Dawson,” Woodend said. “And you might as well be honest, because whatever your answer, nothing bad’s going to happen to you as a result of it. It was you who tried – but failed – to break into this office the other night, wasn’t it?”

  “I never was much good with my hands,” Dawson said.

  “I take it you were hopin’ to get the photographs back.”

  “That’s right,” Dawson admitted. “I thought this was where Robbie would keep them. That’s why I kept trying to find excuses to be left in the office alone. Were they here?”

  “No,” Woodend said.

  “So where did you find them?”

  “In the engine room of the ghost train. Along with about fifty thousand fags and a few crates of whisky.”

  Dawson shook his head in reluctant admiration. “He was cunning bastard, that Robbie, wasn’t he?” he said.

  “If he was that cunnin’, how come he’s dead?” Woodend asked dryly.

  The time he’d spent in the Maltham holding cells had done Gerry Fairbright no good at all. He hadn’t shaved, and as a result had grown dark stubble on his chin and upper lip. It didn’t suit him. The rest of his face was no more appealing. His eyes were hollow and his jaw quivered spasmodically. When Woodend invited him to sit down, he virtually collapsed into the metal chair.

  “What amazes me, Mr Fairbright,” the Chief Inspector said, “is that for the last two days you’ve been content to sit and wait things out in a police station cell.”

  “Content!” Fairbright retorted. “I’ve hated every bloody minute of it.”

  “An’ yet you did nothin’ about it. You didn’t ask for a solicitor, you didn’t request bail. You didn’t even call your wife.”

  For a second, Woodend thought that Fairbright was going to cry. “I’m supposed to be on a special plant refittin’ job in Port Talbot this week,” he said. “That’s where my wife thinks I am anyway, and I don’t want her to know no different. Though Christ knows what I’m goin’ to say when she asks me for my pay packet.”

  Woodend held up some of the photographs he’d found in the ghost train engine room. “These might be what you were lookin’ for when you broke into the office,” he said. “Who’s the lady?”

  “Her name’s Elsie,” Fairbright said. “She’s married, like me.”

  “How do you get on with your wife?” Woodend asked.

  “I love her,” Fairbright replied, as though he considered it a particularly stupid question.

  “So what the hell were you doin’ playin’ away from home?”

  Fairbright shrugged. “The way I saw it, I was only makin’ up for lost time – sowin’ the wild oats I never got to sow when I was a lad.”

  “You’re a bloody fool,” Woodend said. “You know that, don’t you?” He slid the photographs across the desk. “Here you are. They’re yours. A little souvenir.”

  Fairbright picked up the photographs with trembling hands. Relief flooded his face, rapidly followed by fear.

  “Does my missus have to know about these?” he asked.

  Woodend smiled. “No,” he said. “She doesn’t. Nobody does. There’s nothin’ illegal about having a bit on the side, although in your case I would have thought the anxiety outweighed the pleasure. How much was it costin’ you to keep Robbie Peterson quiet?”

  “Two quid a week,” Fairbright said. “That was enough of a strain, but then Terry Clough came up to me on Saturday night an’ told me Robbie had decided to raise it to three and . . .” He stopped suddenly, the horrified expression on his face showing that he’d realised how what he’d just said gave him an even stronger motive for killing Peterson. “I didn’t . . . I wouldn’t . . . I couldn’t . . .” he gasped.

  “If you’d killed Robbie Peterson, you’d also have searched for your photographs,” Woodend said kindly. “And there was no evidence of anythin’ in the office being disturbed. Besides, you wouldn’t just have had to kill Robbie, you’d have had to get rid of T
erry as well.”

  “That’s . . . that’s true,” Fairbright said gratefully. “And I didn’t, did I? I mean, I’m not sayin’ I killed Robbie but I didn’t kill Terry. I’m sayin’—”

  “I know what you’re sayin’, Mr Fairbright,” Woodend interrupted. “Were you really down by the lake at the time Peterson was killed?”

  “No,” Fairbright admitted.

  “So where were you?”

  “Hangin’ around the club, waitin’ for a chance to break into this office.”

  “So why did you lie?”

  “I finally plucked up the nerve to come an’ have a look about ten minutes before Robbie was found,” Fairbright muttered. “The office was in darkness an’ the door was slightly open. I stepped inside an’ then . . . an’ then I lost my nerve. Robbie must already have been dead by then, but I thought if I told you I’d been here, you’d think it was me what killed him.”

  Woodend tried to picture Fairbright murdering Robbie Peterson. Creeping into the darkened office where Robbie was asleep at the desk. Taking a nail from the box and picking up the hammer. Placing the nail against Peterson’s temple and striking it so hard that it penetrated the brain. No, he just couldn’t see it. The murder had not been committed by an ordinary person. A killing of such a nature required either a man with ice in his veins or one driven on by complete desperation – and it was impossible to see Gerry Fairbright in either of those roles.

  “All right, you can go now, Mr Fairbright,” he said.

  “Go?” Fairbright repeated. “Go where?”

  “Wherever you want to. But I’d recommend you head straight home to Oldham.”

  “I . . . I don’t have to go back to Maltham police station?”

  “No,” Woodend said. “I’ve persuaded Inspector Chatterton that in view of the strain you were under, it would be wisest to let you off this time.”

  “But I’ve already been charged.”

  “Charge sheets get lost sometimes. It’s regrettable, but it happens.”

  Fairbright looked around the office as if he suspected this was all a trick, and any second half a dozen bobbies, truncheons in their hands, would come bursting out of the filing cabinet. “I can really go?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Woodend said. “But I was you, Mr Fairbright, I’d think twice before I opened my fly buttons the next time.”

  “I will,” Fairbright said. “I promise I will.”

  He stood up and rushed out of the door. Woodend watched him making his way back to his caravan – uncertainly, as if he still suspected a trick. “Good luck, Mr Fairbright,” the Chief Inspector said softly. “Because when you get back home to your missus and haven’t got that fat wage packet from Port Talbot with you, you’re certainly going to need it.”

  Jenny Clough had crossed the yard five times since Fairbright had made his hurried exit from the office, Woodend counted. Each time, she’d walked as far as the gate to the caravan site, stood there for a while – gazing at the office window – and then returned to the house. She looked like a lost child, the Chief Inspector thought, and in a way, he supposed, that was exactly what she was.

  On her sixth trip across the yard, Jenny hesitated for a second, then strode over to the office and knocked on the open door.

  “Come in, lass,” Woodend said.

  “I’d . . . I’d rather you came out,” Jenny told him. “I . . . I still can’t face being in the office.”

  “Is something the matter?” Woodend asked, then cursed himself for being so insensitive. “I mean – well, you know what I mean.”

  “You remember what you said about us having a talk like two ordinary people?” Jenny asked.

  “I remember.”

  “I’d really like to have that talk right now, if you can spare the time.”

  “’Course I can, lass.”

  Woodend stood up, and walked around the desk to the door. Jenny was not looking good, he thought. Her face – her whole bearing – seemed to have altered since her fight with her sister. There had been lines of grief for Robbie before then, but now there was hollowness in her cheeks, a pinchedness about her nose, a despair in her eyes.

  “Would you like a cup of tea?” Jenny asked. “It’s already made.”

  “That would be grand,” Woodend agreed.

  He followed Jenny into the living room, which, like the office, seemed to have been furnished on the principle that if it cost a lot, it must be in good taste.

  “Take a seat,” Jenny said.

  “Thanks, lass,” Woodend said, heading towards the leather rocker which had its back to the window.

  “No! Not there!” Jenny said, with a hint of panic in her voice.

  Woodend switched directions and lowered himself into one of the armchairs. “You’re goin’ to have to let it go in the end, lass,” he said gently, as he watched Jenny pour out the tea.

  “Let what go?” Jenny asked.

  Woodend sighed. “You’re goin’ to have to get used to the fact that your dad’s gone. You can’t stay out of the office for ever, an’ you can’t get into a ’tiswas every time somebody sits in his favourite chair.”

  Jenny passed him his tea. Her hand was trembling and the cup rattled in the saucer. “Do you have a family, Chief Inspector?” she asked, unexpectedly.

  “A wife and a daughter,” Woodend said. “My daughter’s called Annie, just like your sister. Well, not really, just like her. I mean, it’s not short for Annabel or anythin’ like that.”

  “Do you love your wife, Mr Woodend?”

  “I beg your pardon?” Woodend said, not sure he’d heard her correctly.

  “I asked you if you loved your wife.”

  There’d been no mistake. She had actually voiced the question. He wondered what had motivated her, and guessed that it was not so much to learn something about him as to understand something about herself through him.

  “You don’t have to answer me if you don’t want to,” Jenny said.

  “I don’t mind,” Woodend told her. “Do I love Joan? Yes, I do. Maybe I don’t feel the burnin’ passion I felt when we first got married, but yet in some ways I think I love her now more than I’ve ever done. Over the years, she’s become part of me.”

  “And have you ever been unfaithful to her?”

  It was an impertinent question, by any standards, but again Woodend had the distinct impression that there was a purpose behind it. “I’ve been tempted to stray a couple of times,” he said honestly, thinking about Liz Poole, “but I’ve never succumbed.”

  “Tell me about your father,” Jenny said, suddenly changing direction.

  “What do you want to know about him?”

  Jenny shrugged, as if she didn’t know the answer herself. “Anythin’.”

  “He’s dead now,” Woodend said. “He worked in the mills up in Lancashire. He was a tackler – it was his job to fix the looms when they went wrong.” He could read in her face that was not what she wanted from him. He tried harder. “You could always depend on my dad. He wasn’t like some fathers who say they’ll take you out fishin’ and never do. If he’d promised we were going down to the river on Sunday, we went – even if it was pourin’ down with rain.”

  “Did people like him?”

  “Oh, I suppose he was popular enough. He had his mates down at the pub and the cronies he raced his whippets with. There was a decent turn-out at his funeral. But he didn’t what you might call – stick out. If he thought he was in the right, he could be as determined as buggery, but most of the time he just drifted through life without leavin’ much impression.”

  “But you loved him, didn’t you?”

  Woodend chuckled. “Oh aye. He was me dad, and when I was little, I thought he was the best feller in the world.” He was hit by an unexpected revelation. “I still do think that, as a matter of fact,” he said.

  A tear fell from Jenny’s eye, making a dark stain on her white blouse. Woodend noticed that even her breasts seemed to have lost their firmness and thru
st. It was as if she was contracting into herself.

  “I mustn’t keep you from your work,” she said. “You can find your own way out, can’t you?”

  Then she stood up and ran into the kitchen.

  The police car pulled into The Hideaway’s yard just as Woodend was leaving the house, and a uniformed constable with a brown paper envelope in his hand got out of it. “Inspector Chatterton’s sends this with his compliments, sir,” he said, handing the envelope over.

  “Any idea what’s in it?” Woodend asked.

  “Mr Chatterton said it’s from the passport office in Liverpool. Apparently you put in a request for somebody’s application.”

  Alexander Conway’s passport application! Finally there was a chance of tracking the bloody man down. First there would be a picture of him, which – even though passport photographs were notoriously distorting – was worth a thousand words of written description. Secondly, and perhaps even more importantly, someone – a professional person who had known Conway for years – would have to have signed the photograph to certify that it was a good likeness. And there was a very good chance that that person, whoever he was, would be able to lead them to wherever Conway was hiding.

  Woodend took the envelope into the office, slit it open and pulled out the form. The photograph was clipped to the corner of the application. Conway appeared to be much as witnesses had described him – except that no one had mentioned the heavy spectacles he was wearing.

  The Chief Inspector ran his eyes down the form. Conway had given the flat in Doncaster as his home address, and under occupation had written ‘company director’. That was only to be expected – but the name of the guarantor took Woodend completely by surprise.

  “Bloody hell!” he said aloud, hardly able to believe his eyes.

  The man who had vouched for Conway claimed to have known the man for ten years. His occupation was listed as ‘teacher’, and it wouldn’t be at all difficult to contact him, because he lived very close to Swann’s Lake. His name was Michael Clough.

  Nineteen

  Just from the way Rutter walked across the yard, holding the brown paper bag in front of him like a trophy of war, Woodend could tell that his sergeant had met with success in Doncaster. And if any more proof were needed, there was the fact that the Sergeant did little more than nod to his boss before upending the bag and tipping the shoes onto the desk.