Stone Killer

by Sally Spencer

‘Does he know what happened to your husband?’

  ‘No. I’ve told him his dad’s just gone away for a while. But he’s a bright boy and I think he may have started to suspect that whatever I might say, Clive’s never coming back.’ Mrs Burroughs paused for a moment. ‘Do you have children yourself?’ she asked.

  ‘Two,’ Paniatowski lied.

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘A boy and a girl, like yours.’

  ‘And who looks after them while you’re out on police business? Your husband?’

  ‘Not him!’ Paniatowski said contemptuously. ‘He ran off with his bitch of a secretary, and left me to look after them myself. The swine!’

  ‘So who …?’

  ‘My mother! I have to rely on my mother. She doesn’t take a penny off me, but she certainly finds other ways to make me pay for it! She never misses an opportunity to remind me of just how much I’m in her debt!’

  ‘At least I’m spared that,’ Mrs Burroughs said, sympathetically. ‘Clive was a proper bastard, but he left me well provided for.’ She hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘I don’t suppose you’re allowed to have a drink while you’re on duty, are you, Sergeant Paniatowski?’

  Paniatowski laughed. ‘Not allowed to drink on duty, Helen? It is Helen, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Mrs Burroughs agreed.

  ‘And you must call me Monika. You’re half-right in what you’ve just said. The uniformed branch aren’t allowed to drink while they’re on duty. In the CID, on the other hand, it’s virtually compulsory that we indulge in the odd tipple.’

  Mrs Burroughs looked almost relieved. ‘In that case, would you like to share the bottle of wine I’ve got cooling in the fridge, Monika?’

  ‘I’d be delighted, Helen,’ Paniatowski replied.

  Mrs Burroughs produced the wine, and by the time Monika had taken a sip of hers, the widow had already knocked back a full glass herself. And it wasn’t, Paniatowski suspected, her first drink of the day.

  ‘Did it ever occur to you that your husband was playing around with other women?’ Mrs Burroughs asked.

  ‘No,’ Paniatowski said. ‘I thought we had a very happy marriage. It came as a complete shock when he announced that he was abandoning me and the kids. How about you?’

  ‘That Maitland woman wasn’t the first – not by any stretch of the imagination,’ Mrs Burroughs said bitterly. ‘There was a string of other women before her. In the end – and this was about two years ago now – I told him I’d had enough of it, and that I was divorcing him. And do you know what he did?’

  ‘No. Tell me.’

  ‘He begged me not to start proceedings. He actually went down on his knees and begged me. He said that he knew he’d done wrong, but that was all over, and he’d be a new man from then on.’

  ‘And you believed him?’

  ‘Yes, fool that I was, I did.’ Mrs Burroughs drained her second glass of wine, and filled up the glass again. ‘He really did seem to have changed after that, you know. He was much more attentive to me. It felt like it used to when we were first married. But he hadn’t changed at all. He’d just got sneakier!’

  ‘Sneakier?’ Paniatowski repeated. ‘How?’

  ‘You won’t believe this – I can hardly believe it myself – but he used Timothy, his own son, as a cover.’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand what you mean,’ Paniatowski confessed.

  ‘The way I always caught him out the other times was that he couldn’t account for the time he spent with his women. Well, he learned by his mistakes, didn’t he? He suddenly started taking Timothy out for treats – a trip to the zoo, a picnic in the country. I was pleased. More than pleased – I was delighted. But, you see, he only took Timothy to fool me – to hide from me the fact that he was seeing the Maitland woman.’

  ‘Good God!’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘I told you you’d find it hard to believe,’ Mrs Burroughs said, with grim satisfaction.

  Worse than hard, Paniatowski thought. Almost impossible.

  She tried to imagine her and Bob making love with his child present. They just couldn’t have done it. And Bob’s child had only been a baby!

  If that was what had actually happened – if Burroughs and Judith really had used Timothy as a cover – how the hell had they managed it? Had they drugged the child – or merely left him to play with an expensive new toy while they disappeared into some quiet corner and slaked their lust?

  ‘But surely Timothy wasn’t actually with your husband on the night he was murdered, was he?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘No, thank God,’ Mrs Burroughs replied. ‘Tim had a bad case of the flu that night. The poor little mite was almost burning up with it. So however much Clive wanted to, the lying swine simply couldn’t use him as an excuse for being out of the house that time.’

  ‘Are you sure it did actually happen like that?’ Paniatowski asked, still finding it hard to accept that any man would use his child as an alibi for his liaisons. ‘Have you talked to Timothy about it?’

  ‘A little,’ Mrs Burroughs said. ‘Enough to get him to admit that when he and his father went out together, they often met a nice lady. Yes, that’s what he called her. A nice lady! The selfish whore!’

  ‘But he didn’t … he didn’t see anything going on between his father and this woman?’

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t. It’s something I daren’t ask him. Because if he did see it, and I do ask, he might start to attach more importance to it than he has so far.’

  ‘I can see that,’ Paniatowski said sombrely.

  Mrs Burroughs filled her glass for the third time. ‘My big fear is that when he gets older – when he starts to learn all about sex – he’ll think back to what happened then and realize what was really going on. God alone knows what that might do to him emotionally.’

  ‘It’s too terrible to even think about,’ Paniatowski said – and she truly meant it.

  ‘I could kill Clive for it, I really could.’ Mrs Burroughs gave a laugh which was bordering on the hysterical. ‘But I can’t even do that, can I? Because the bastard’s already dead.’

  Paniatowski placed her half-full glass on the table, and stood up. ‘I think it’s about time I was going, Helen,’ she said.

  Mrs Burroughs’ mood suddenly swung from self-pity to anger. ‘What’s the matter?’ she demanded. ‘Can’t you take being in the company of the mad woman any longer?’

  ‘No, that’s not it at all,’ Paniatowski said. ‘I’d like to spend more time with you, but my boss …’

  ‘Do you ever blame yourself for what happened to you?’ Mrs Burroughs demanded.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Do you ever think that it might be your fault that your husband left you for another woman?’

  ‘I—’ Paniatowski began.

  ‘Because I do,’ Mrs Burroughs interrupted. ‘I sometimes lie awake at night wondering if it’s all my fault.’

  ‘You mustn’t—’

  ‘Because I don’t think I ever really satisfied him in bed, you see. But maybe if I’d tried a little harder, he’d never have strayed. Maybe if I’d been a better lover, he’d still be alive!’

  Eight

  The prison uniform consisted of a plainly cut dress and flat cloth shoes. The dress was dishwater grey in colour, and was an almost perfect match with the complexion of the woman who, just a few days earlier, had tried to take her own life.

  It had not been Woodend’s intention to visit Judith Maitland so early in the investigation – he’d wanted to fill in more of her background first – but finding he had unexpected free time on his hands, he had come to the prison almost on a whim.

  Or perhaps it had not been a whim at all, he suddenly thought.

  He remembered Stanley Keene’s parting words –

  ‘If, having talked to her, you still believe she’s guilty of this terrible crime, then you’re simply not the judge of character I took you to be.’

  Maybe, though he hadn’t
realized it on any conscious level, that was what had motivated him to come to the prison. Maybe, because Keene had seemed so sincere and so sure, he’d felt the need to find out for himself just how good a judge of character the caterer himself was.

  The prisoner was still standing uncertainly in the doorway.

  ‘Sit down, Judith,’ Woodend said.

  The woman hesitated for a moment, and then crossed the room and took the chair at the opposite side of the table from the Chief Inspector.

  Woodend studied her face, and thought he could detect, just below the surface, the prettiness and confidence which she must have shown to the world before her arrest.

  ‘Smoke?’ he asked.

  Judith Maitland glanced down at the packet of Capstan Full Strength he was holding out to her, then shook her head.

  ‘Are these too strong for you?’ Woodend asked. ‘Would you prefer cork tipped? Because if that’s what you want, I’m sure I could soon rustle up a packet from somewhere.’

  ‘I don’t smoke anymore,’ Judith Maitland said, in a voice which was almost a whisper.

  ‘Probably wise,’ Woodend told her. ‘Bad for your health. I wish I could give it up myself.’

  ‘If I cared about my health, I wouldn’t have slashed my wrists,’ Judith Maitland countered.

  ‘You’re right,’ Woodend said contritely. ‘I’m an idiot. I spouted out the first cliché which came into my head, without even thinking about it. I won’t make the same mistake again.’

  ‘It doesn’t bother me what you choose to say or you don’t choose to say,’ Judith Maitland told him flatly. ‘This whole interview is a complete waste of time because I really have no interest in talking to you at all.’

  ‘Why did you give up smokin’?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘Is that just another conversational gambit – words with no purpose but to break the silence?’

  ‘No,’ Woodend assured her. ‘I’m genuinely curious.’

  ‘I used to think that death was the worst thing that could happen to a person,’ Judith Maitland said. ‘Now I know that I was wrong. The truly terrible thing is to realize that you’ve lost your ability to control your own destiny – to understand that you’re totally in the power of others.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with smokin’?’

  ‘In here, it’s the warders who have most of the power. But what little is left over, when they’ve taken their share, belongs to the inmates who control the tobacco supply. You’d be amazed by what some women will do for a smoke. Well, not me. Not anymore.’

  ‘You’d really like a cigarette, though, wouldn’t you, Judith?’ the Chief Inspector asked.

  ‘I’d kill for one,’ Judith Maitland replied.

  What had made her use those particular words? Woodend wondered.

  Was it the kind of thing people said without thinking about it – just as he’d said smoking was bad for the health? Or had she done it deliberately – to provoke him?

  ‘Have a cigarette,’ he coaxed. ‘I promise you, Judith, there’s no strings attached.’

  ‘There’s always strings attached,’ Judith Maitland said firmly. ‘Can I go now?’

  ‘If you want to. But if you do go now, what would have been the point in holding this interview in the first place?’

  ‘None. I told you, there was never any point.’

  ‘So why did you agree to it?’

  ‘You think there was a choice in the matter?’ Judith Maitland asked, incredulously.

  ‘There’s always a choice. You’re not obliged to talk to me if you don’t wish to.’

  Judith Maitland laughed. ‘Haven’t you been listening to a single word that I’ve said?’ she demanded. ‘This is a prison. There’s no such thing as free will in here.’

  ‘I repeat, it’s your right not to talk to me, if you do not wish to,’ Woodend said.

  ‘Do you have any idea at all of how things work in this bloody place?’ Judith asked. ‘Don’t you understand that there are a hundred ways – a thousand ways – that the warders could make my life even more unpleasant than it is already if I refused to co-operate with one of their own?’

  ‘I’m not one of their own,’ Woodend pointed out.

  ‘Oh yes, you are. Or, at least, you’re close enough for it to make no difference. Because you’re certainly not one of my own.’

  ‘So you’re talkin’ to me because that’s the lesser of two evils?’

  ‘Essentially.’

  ‘If I were in your situation, I wouldn’t see talkin’ to me as an evil at all,’ Woodend said. ‘If I were innocent – as you claim to be – I’d want to talk to the man who just might get me off.’

  ‘So that’s what you’re here for, is it? To get me off?’

  ‘If you are innocent, then I’ll certainly do my damnedest to,’ Woodend promised her.

  ‘Then listen very carefully,’ Judith said. ‘I am innocent. Clive Burroughs was not my lover, and I did not kill him.’

  ‘But when you were arrested, you told the officers that you already knew he was dead.’

  ‘Well, of course I knew he was dead. I was there, wasn’t I? I’d seen him lying in his office, in a pool of his own blood. I’d have to have been an idiot not to know that he was dead.’

  ‘Why did you go to see him that night?’

  ‘We had a business meeting.’

  ‘The local police think otherwise.’

  ‘That’s scarcely surprising, now is it? The local police have refused to believe anything I’ve said from the start.’

  ‘And what about the other times you saw him?’

  ‘They were business meetings, too.’

  ‘Then why did he always seem to have his son with him?’

  ‘I don’t know. You’d have to ask him about that. Only you can’t, can you? Because he’s dead.’

  ‘Once you’d discovered the body, you got straight back into your van, drove to a lay-by which was less than a couple of miles from the scene of the crime, and got drunk.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Most people’s reaction would have been to phone the police immediately. Didn’t it even occur to you to do that?’

  ‘No, it didn’t.’

  ‘So I’ll ask you again. Why?’

  ‘I suppose I must have panicked.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ Woodend said.

  ‘I don’t care what you believe.’

  ‘Don’t you want to get out of here?’

  Judith Maitland shuddered. ‘The only way that I’ll ever leave this terrible place is feet first. They stopped me from ending it all the last time, but they won’t the next.’

  ‘I still don’t see why you decided to get drunk,’ Woodend persisted.

  ‘I should have thought that was obvious, even to a flatfoot like you. I’d just seen a body.’

  ‘Of a man who was no more to you than a business associate?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In your situation, most people I know would probably have got drunk, too. But I doubt they’d have done it alone. They’ve have wanted someone there to hold their hands.’

  Judith Maitland smiled. ‘You keep using this phrase, “Most people”,’ she said. ‘I’m not “most people”, Chief Inspector. I would have thought you’d have realized that by now.’

  ‘When “most people” do choose to get drunk alone,’ Woodend said, ignoring her comment, ‘they do it either because they can’t tell anybody else why they’re doing it, or because they’re afraid of what they might say when they’re drunk. Which of those was it in your case?’

  ‘Neither. I’d had a shock. I needed a drink.’

  ‘You had your caterer’s overall with you that night, didn’t you?’

  ‘I always had it with me. I wasn’t the kind of boss who thought it demeaning to work side-by-side with my staff when the need arose.’

  ‘Were you wearing it when you went into Burroughs’ office?’

  ‘
No. As I said, it was a business meeting, so I was naturally wearing my business suit.’

  ‘Then where was the overall?’

  ‘It was in the back of the van, where I always kept it.’

  ‘And at what point did you put it on?’

  ‘I didn’t put it on at all.’

  ‘So what happened to it?’

  ‘Happened to it?’

  ‘You say it was in the back of the van when you got to the builders’ merchant’s yard, but by the time the police arrested you it had gone missing. Where do you think that it went?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe the police took it away.’

  ‘They said they didn’t.’

  ‘Perhaps they’re lying.’

  ‘They think you got rid of it because it was covered with bloodstains,’ Woodend said.

  ‘Well, they’re wrong.’

  ‘Did you like Clive Burroughs?’ Woodend asked.

  A look of revulsion appeared on Judith Maitland’s face for the briefest of moments, and then was gone. ‘I never really thought about it one way or the other,’ she said.

  ‘Or did you hate him?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘You’d like me to say that – to admit I hated him – wouldn’t you?’ Judith Maitland demanded. ‘Then you could go back and tell your friends – the screws – that they’ve got the right person in here after all. Well, forget what I said earlier, about not thinking about it. I did like Clive Burroughs. I thought he was a wonderful human being.’

  ‘You hated him because he’d robbed you of the power to control your own destiny,’ Woodend guessed. ‘Exactly what kind of hold did Burroughs have over you, Judith?’

  Judith Maitland stood up so violently that she sent her chair flying off behind her.

  ‘I want to go back to my cell!’ she said, almost hysterically. ‘I don’t want to talk to you any more.’

  ‘Don’t you even want to hear why there’s this sudden new interest in your case?’ Woodend wondered. ‘Wouldn’t you like to find out why I’m even here in this prison at all?’

  ‘No,’ Judith Maitland said, backing towards the door. ‘I don’t care. All I want is to be left alone.’

  ‘We’ve got a real problem on our hands back in Whitebridge,’ Woodend told her. ‘Three heavily armed men are holdin’ twenty innocent people hostage in the Cotton Credit Bank.’