Stone Killer

by Sally Spencer

  Sanders nodded. ‘Yes, I think you are.’

  ‘Good,’ Paniatowski said pleasantly. ‘Then let’s make a start, shall we? How long have you been working here?’

  ‘Twelve years.’

  ‘And how long have you been the manager?’

  ‘Only since Mr Burroughs was murdered. I was the assistant manager until then.’

  ‘There are some people who’ll kill for a promotion,’ Paniatowski said. ‘You’re not one of them, are you?’

  ‘Now, look here—’ Sanders blustered.

  ‘Only joking,’ Paniatowski said sweetly. ‘So you know the business well, do you?’

  ‘Well enough.’

  ‘And you must have known Clive Burroughs well enough, too, mustn’t you, now?’

  ‘He was my boss,’ Sanders said. ‘You never know that much about your boss, do you?’

  ‘Oh, I’m not so sure about that,’ Paniatowski said airily. ‘I seem to know a fair amount about mine. You were aware, weren’t you, that Clive Burroughs was a bugger for the ladies?’

  ‘I knew he had girlfriends, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Single men have girlfriends,’ Paniatowski said. ‘Married men have mistresses.’

  ‘I knew he had mistresses, then,’ Sanders said sullenly.

  ‘And you didn’t see the need to inform his wife of the fact?’

  ‘No. It wasn’t my place to.’

  ‘Quite right,’ Paniatowski agreed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said you’re quite right – it wasn’t your place to.’

  ‘Well, in that case, maybe we don’t really need to talk about—’

  ‘Did you know about his last mistress – the one who allegedly picked up a hammer and bashed his brains in?’

  ‘No, but I knew about … about …’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘About the fact that he was sleeping with the landlady of the Philosophers’ Arms?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘And did you know all about the mistress whom he took to Manchester with him?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t mess me about,’ Paniatowski said impatiently.

  ‘I’m not. I promise. But Mr Burroughs took a lot of his girls into town for the night. They liked it. Bright lights, big city. That sort of thing.’

  ‘I’m not talking a single night,’ Paniatowski said. ‘I’m talking about a month.’

  Sanders looked blank.

  ‘Oh, come on, Freddie, boy!’ Paniatowski said. ‘Round about seven years ago, he spent a whole month in Manchester with one of his mistresses. You must remember it.’

  ‘I remember him being away for a month. It was the first time he left me in charge of the business. But I didn’t know he was in Manchester, and I didn’t know he was with a woman.’

  ‘Didn’t you? Well, it’s not really important,’ Monika Paniatowski said dismissively.

  ‘Look, I really am trying to help you, but—’

  ‘I said it wasn’t important. I was merely testing the range and extent of your knowledge.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You’re not very bright, are you, Freddie? I wanted to establish just how much you did know, so I could decide which line of questioning it would be profitable to follow. I merely used the question of his mistresses as a tin-opener – so I could see what was in this particular can of worms.’

  ‘You’ve lost me,’ Sanders confessed.

  ‘Of course I have. I never expected anything else. So let me put it in even simpler terms – ones even you can understand. I’m not interested in his mistresses, Freddie, old son. The only person who actually concerns me is the one who battered him to death.’

  ‘But that was one of his mistresses, wasn’t it?’ Sanders asked.

  ‘That remains to be seen,’ Paniatowski said. ‘Tell me about Clive Burroughs’ enemies.’

  ‘He didn’t have any.’

  ‘Pull the other leg, why don’t you? It’s got bells on,’ Monika Paniatowski said sceptically.

  ‘It’s true what I’m telling you. Mr Burroughs was a salesman, through and through.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Salesmen get along with everybody. It’s an instinct they develop. They can’t help themselves.’

  ‘Doesn’t seem to have rubbed off on you,’ Paniatowski said. ‘You’re sure about this, are you? He didn’t have any enemies? Not even the husbands of his mistresses?’

  ‘They never found out. Mr Burroughs was very clever about keeping his affairs quiet.’

  Which was pretty much what Hal Greene had said, Paniatowski thought. And Greene was living proof of it. He didn’t know about his wife’s affair with Clive Burroughs until she told him herself.

  ‘Nobody can avoid unpleasantness altogether,’ she said. ‘Clive Burroughs must have had disagreements with somebody.’

  ‘Customers got annoyed occasionally, when they didn’t get exactly what they ordered, but Mr Burroughs would take them out for a pint, and it would all be forgotten.’

  ‘And you don’t recall anything a bit more serious, in the weeks before he died?’

  ‘No, I can’t say that I do.’

  ‘What about worries? Did he have any?’

  ‘None.’

  Monika laughed. ‘Come on, Alfredo, this is your old mate, Sergeant Paniatowski, you’re talking to here. Don’t try to piss me about or I’ll find a way to make you regret it.’

  ‘The business was in trouble,’ Sanders admitted. ‘We were finding it difficult to pay our bills. But Mr Burroughs said all our worries would soon be over – that there was a big injection of cash coming into the company. He sounded very confident about it, and I believed him.’

  ‘And was his confidence justified? Was there a sudden injection of cash into the business?’

  ‘Well, no,’ Alfred Sanders conceded. ‘But there might have been, mightn’t there?’

  ‘Might there?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Who’s to say what would have happened if Mr Burroughs hadn’t died when he did.’

  ‘Let me see if I’ve got this straight,’ Paniatowski said. ‘The business was ailing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Burroughs was killed before he could do anything about it?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So why does the sign over the door still say Burroughs’ Builders’ Merchant? Why isn’t somebody else’s name there instead?’

  ‘Because Mrs Burroughs owns the business now.’

  ‘And where did she find the money from to keep the company afloat?’

  ‘Where do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.’

  ‘It came from the insurance company, of course! Mr Burroughs had a whacking great policy on his life – and it paid double if he happened to meet a violent death.’

  As Paniatowski walked back to the car park, she couldn’t help noticing that she had developed a bounce in her step.

  Well, why not? she asked herself.

  Life didn’t always have to be serious. Or earnest. Or tragic. You were allowed to enjoy yourself once in a while.

  And she had enjoyed the interview with Sanders. He was an unpleasant, self-important man who had lorded it over her when she entered the builders’ merchant’s, and it had been a real pleasure to make him jump through all the hoops.

  But the interview had been rewarding in other ways, she thought. Up until the moment she’d spoken to Sanders, the investigation had been focused on – almost obsessed with – a single possible motive for Clive Burroughs’ murder. He had been killed, so the thinking had gone, because someone – either Judith Maitland or a person or persons yet unknown – had hated him enough to want to see him dead.

  Now, another possibility had presented itself. Alive, Clive Burroughs was in imminent danger of losing his business, and possibly his home. Dead, his widow would have enough money to save both of them. And any scruples she might have had about kill
ing for money would surely have been mitigated by the fact that, though murder was always wrong, it was less wrong when the victim was a right proper bastard like Burroughs.

  Yes, Paniatowski thought, she could well imagine Mrs Burroughs using that as a justification for reducing her husband’s brain to a pulp.

  Eighteen

  The White Swan Restaurant – better known, by everyone who used it, as the Dirty Duck – was just off Whitebridge High Street, a location which would normally guarantee it a steady trade, especially during the Christmas period. But it wouldn’t be doing much business on that particular day, Woodend thought, as he knocked on the side door of the restaurant – not with the High Street itself completely blocked off, and parking temporarily prohibited on all the streets that fed into it.

  Woodend knew the man who answered the door, and thus also knew that though he looked as if he were in his late forties at most, he was, in fact, pushing sixty. So if Giles Thompson was anything to go by, the Chief Inspector decided, the restaurant business must be far less stressful than police-work.

  The two men shook hands. ‘It was good of you to spare me the time, Giles,’ Woodend said.

  ‘If I can do or say anything to help Judith, then I’m more than willing to,’ Thompson replied. ‘I’d crawl on my hands and knees over broken glass for that sweet girl.’

  The restaurant owner led Woodend up to the office, and offered him a chair. ‘Judith had her wedding reception here at the Swan, you know,’ he said. ‘She could have catered it herself, or chosen somewhere much posher. But as far as she was concerned, it had to be here. She never forgets her old friends, doesn’t Judith.’

  ‘If she had the reception here, you must have met her husband,’ Woodend said.

  ‘I did. But only briefly.’

  ‘Still, you must have formed some kind of impression of him. How did he strike you?’

  ‘As a thoroughly decent sort of chap. And I can’t tell you how relieved I was at the time, because I’d always felt that Judith deserved more than life had thrown at her. And now this.’ He pointed in the direction of the Cotton Credit Bank. ‘Whoever would have thought it?’

  ‘Whoever would have thought Judith would murder her lover?’ Woodend asked provocatively.

  Thompson’s eyes flashed with sudden anger. ‘He wasn’t her lover, and she didn’t murder him.’

  ‘Do you know somethin’ about the case that the bobbies investigatin’ it didn’t?’ Woodend wondered.

  ‘I know Judith,’ Thompson said.

  ‘Then tell me about her,’ Woodend suggested.

  ‘Not if you’re going to twist everything I say round, just so it will fit into your preconceived theories,’ Thompson said, his anger still evident.

  ‘I said what I just did to see how you’d react,’ Woodend told him. ‘And maybe I shouldn’t have.’

  ‘Damn right, you shouldn’t have,’ Thompson growled.

  ‘The truth is, I agree with you about Judith,’ Woodend continued. ‘I don’t think Burroughs was her lover, an’ I don’t think she killed him. But believing it is one thing, an’ provin’ it is quite another. To get proof, I’m goin’ to need your help – so why don’t you tell me what you can about her?’

  ‘All right,’ Thompson agreed, though there was still an edge of caution to his voice. ‘She was fifteen when she first came to work for me. There’d been talk of her staying on at school – maybe even of going to university – but when her dad died, her mother said that just wasn’t an option any more.’

  ‘How did her dad die?’ Woodend wondered.

  ‘If you’re looking for something mysterious about his death, then you’re out of luck,’ Thompson told him. ‘The poor bugger had cancer. He was riddled with it, from what I heard. Anyway, her mother said Judy needed a job in order to be able to help out with the household expenses – and needed it quick. So that’s how I met her.’

  ‘What kind of work did she do?’

  ‘The menial sort at first – washing-up, floor cleaning, and the like – as befits somebody starting at the bottom of the ladder, with absolutely no experience of catering. But she worked so hard at the jobs I’d given her that it wasn’t long before I’d promoted her to vegetable preparation. The next thing was, she asked if she could wait on the tables, and she was soon one of the best waiters I’d ever had. Which was just as well, really, because she’d never have managed to live on just a skivvy’s wages after her mother left.’

  ‘Her mother left? Where did she go?’

  ‘To Australia. To start a new life.’

  ‘And Judith didn’t want to go with her?’

  ‘She wasn’t invited to go with her,’ Giles Thompson said bitterly. ‘Her mother had remarried by then, and her new husband didn’t get on with his stepdaughter. So when they talked about a new life, what they really meant was a life without Judith.’

  ‘How did she manage?’

  ‘Very well, as you would have expected, if you’d known her like I did. She got her own little flat – no mansion, but it suited her well enough – and set about mastering the few aspects of the business she’d yet to learn. She was content enough. No, more than content, she was happy. Everything was going along swimmingly – and then she met him!’

  ‘Him?’

  ‘Sebastian-bloody-Courtney-Jones. He was the regional manager of one of the big wine firms. You know the sort of man I’m talking about – sports car, blazer, regimental tie. He really had a high opinion of himself. The only problem was, Judy shared it. She went out with him for two years. She thought he was going to marry her.’

  ‘But that didn’t happen.’

  ‘No, of course it bloody didn’t! When push came to shove – when she demanded to know where they were going with their relationship – he told her that he couldn’t wed her, because he had a wife and three kids already. Then, straight away, he put in for a transfer and got moved down south. The bastard!’

  ‘She took it badly?’

  ‘She was totally devastated. It had never occurred to her that he might be stringing her along, you see – because that’s the last thing she’d ever think of doing to anybody else herself. Anyway, her work went completely to pot. She turned up late, and even when she was here, I couldn’t rely on her. And she looked terrible. So in the end, I called her into the office and said she needed to get herself some professional counselling.’

  ‘That took some guts on your part,’ Woodend said.

  ‘Well, I certainly hadn’t been looking forward to it,’ Thompson admitted. ‘Some people hit the roof when you tell them they should see a shrink. But Judith accepted it all quite calmly. She said she thought I was right. In fact, she told me, she’d already looked into the possibility herself, and had found a place that would take her in for a course of residential treatment. Her one worry was that she wouldn’t have a job to come back to.’

  ‘An’ what did you say to that?’

  ‘I said I was delighted she was being so sensible about it all. I told her there’d always be a job for her here, however long it took her to get herself straight. One year, two years – it made no difference to me.’

  ‘That was generous of you.’

  ‘She was worth it. But as it turned out, she didn’t need that much time at all. She was back within a few months.’

  ‘An’ how was she when she returned?’

  ‘I’d be lying if I said she was a completely new woman. You could tell she’d been to hell and back. But at least I could see some evidence of the old woman – the woman Judy had been – just below the surface.’

  ‘Did you give her her job back, as you’d promised you would?’

  ‘The offer was still there, certainly, but she said that wasn’t what she wanted any more. She told me she’d been doing a lot of thinking while she was away, and she’d decided she wanted to make something of her life. Her exact words, if I remember correctly, were, “I want to create something that I can call my own.” Then she asked me if I’d help her fulfil
her dream.’

  ‘She wanted money, did she?’

  Thompson shook his head. ‘You really don’t know Judy at all, do you? All she asked was that I’d serve as guarantor for the loan she’d negotiated with the bank, and I said I’d be more than willing to.’

  ‘You were still takin’ a bit of a chance, weren’t you?’

  ‘Not really. I knew that she’d make a success of whatever she’d set her mind to.’

  ‘Still, most men would have thought twice before makin’ themselves responsible for somebody else’s debts – especially in a risky enterprise like caterin’. You must surely have had just a few misgivings.’

  ‘None at all. And what if her business had flopped? I’m a single man, with no heirs to consider. I’ve made a fair amount of money out of this restaurant in my time, and could well have stood the loss.’

  ‘I see,’ Woodend said, thoughtfully.

  ‘Anyway, I made the right judgement, didn’t I?’ Thompson continued. ‘Judith’s business turned out to be a roaring success. She could probably buy me and sell me now.’ Thompson gulped. ‘Did you hear that?’ he asked. ‘I talked as if she were still around. But I can’t help it. It’s almost impossible to imagine a vital girl like Judy in prison.’

  ‘Did you see her often in the last couple of years?’

  ‘Not as often as I used to do. She was very busy. She catered all over Lancashire. We met perhaps three or four times, and then only briefly.’

  ‘No heart-to-hearts?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘So if she had been havin’ an affair with this man Burroughs, you wouldn’t have known about it?’

  ‘I told you, there’s absolutely no possibility that she—’

  ‘Yes or no, Giles!’

  ‘If she’d been looking for a bit on the side,’ Thompson said reluctantly, ‘she’d have most likely gone back to her old love, Sebastian Courtney-Jones, don’t you think?’

  ‘But the affair had been over for years, hadn’t it? There was probably no possibility of going back.’

  ‘That’s what you or I might think, but it certainly wasn’t a view that Courtney-Jones seemed to share.’