But perhaps she wouldn’t. Perhaps, after what had happened with Annie, Joan would be as glad as Diana Houseman had been to see the back of her husband. And who was to say she’d be wrong? Who was to say that he deserved any better?
‘Sir!’ Paniatowski said sharply.
Woodend pulled himself back from the brink of his own misery, and turned his attention to Diana Houseman again.
‘Did your husband have any enemies?’ he asked.
The widow smiled – almost pityingly. ‘You don’t have much experience of the world of entertainment, do you, Chief Inspector?’ she asked.
‘No, I don’t.’
‘I thought not. If you had known a little more, you’d have asked if he had any friends.’
‘An’ did he?’
‘He had allies.’
‘I’m only a simple bobby, so I’m afraid you’re goin’ to have to explain in words of one syllable just how those two things are different.’
‘Friends are people who you’re nice to because you like them,’ Diana Houseman replied. ‘Allies are people you’re nice to because you need each other, which means that, as situations change – and they can change very quickly in television – allies can quickly become enemies, and enemies allies.’
‘But that’s just business, isn’t it?’ Woodend asked.
‘There’s no such thing as just business, if this is the business you’re in. People like my husband don’t live in television, they live for it.’
‘So you’re suggestin’ that he was killed for what you might call “professional” reasons?’
‘Of course,’ Diana Houseman replied, as it had never occurred to her to consider any other possibility.
‘Why were you in the studio this mornin’?’
‘Because staying in the house bores me. There are some woman who can play the role of being the little home-maker, but I’m simply not one of them.’
‘Where were you when the alarm went off?’
‘Talking to one of the girls in the make-up department.’
‘Why?’
‘She was giving me some professional tips.’
‘We can check on that, you know,’ Woodend warned.
‘I’m sure it’s already down in black and white – in the statement she gave to one of your officers.’
‘You left the buildin’ immediately?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Who did you talk to while you were standin’ in the car park, waitin’ for the all clear?’
‘I carried on my conversation with the girl from make-up for a while, then I went for a stroll in the direction of the village.’
‘You’re sure you didn’t nip back into the buildin’, take a knife from the cafeteria, an’ plunge it into your husband’s back?’
‘I lived with Bill. If I’d wanted to kill him, I’d have had ample opportunity to have done it somewhere there was no chance of me being observed.’
‘True,’ Woodend agreed. ‘But if you’d killed him at home, you’d have been the obvious suspect, whereas doin’ it here, there are scores of other people to choose from.’
‘Then I suggest you talk to some of them,’ Diana Houseman said, ‘because while I’m not entirely devastated by the thought of being a moderately prosperous widow who can do as she chooses from now on, I had nothing at all to do with Bill’s death.’
She was a cold, hard bitch, there was no doubt about that, Woodend thought. But how calculating was she? How much was her callousness simply her nature, and how much of it was simply designed to make him think that anyone who was so candid couldn’t possibly have deeper secrets that she was attempting to hide from him?
‘Tell me about your relationship with Valerie Farnsworth.’
‘My relationship with her? Well, I certainly knew Val.’
‘In the biblical sense?’ Paniatowski asked.
Instead of taking offence, Diana Houseman merely looked amused. ‘Are you asking me if I slept with her?’ she asked.
‘That’s right,’ Woodend agreed.
‘No, I didn’t. Valerie, like most of the men I meet, would probably have liked me to sleep with her. She may even have dropped hints about it once or twice. But, I never went to bed with her, because, unlike Val, I’m no lesbian.’
‘So where did George Adams get the idea that was exactly what you’d done?’ Woodend asked.
Diana Houseman shrugged indifferently. ‘He probably got it from my husband. Or from someone else who Bill had blubbered out his self-pitying worries to.’
‘An’ where would your husband have got the idea from?’
‘From me.’
‘But you just said you hadn’t—’
‘I told him I’d slept with her, but that doesn’t mean I really did.’
‘Most people lie about havin’ committed adultery, not about not havin’ committed it,’ Woodend pointed out.
‘I’m not most people. I was angry with Bill. I wanted to say something which would hurt him, and I knew that that would.’
‘An’ how did he react?’
‘He asked me to give her up.’
‘An’ you agreed?’
‘Since there was nothing to give up – and since the lie had already served its purpose – yes, I did.’
‘And I’ll bet he bought you a nice present for being such a good little girl,’ Paniatowski said.
It was the first barb which had come anywhere near to hitting its target, and Diana Houseman flinched a little.
‘He was always buying me presents,’ she said, sounding just a little uncomfortable.
Aye, I bet he was. An’ I wouldn’t put it past you to have told that particular lie in order to get the present, Woodend thought.
He wondered if Diana Houseman realised that by telling the lie she had sealed Valerie Farnsworth’s fate – and if she did, whether she cared! He hoped that she was the one who had stuck the knife into Bill Houseman’s back, and that he could lock her away for a long, long time.
‘Tell us about you an’ Paddy Colligan,’ he said.
The producer’s wife smiled again. ‘Now there’s someone who I have slept with.’
‘Good in bed, is he?’ Paniatowski asked sneeringly.
The smile disappeared, and Diana Houseman looked Paniatowski straight in the eyes. ‘You may not believe this, but I really do love him,’ she said.
‘An’ you were goin’ to leave your husband, an’ move in with him?’ Woodend asked.
‘Who told you that?’
‘Paddy Colligan himself.’
‘People believe what they want to believe, whatever you try to tell them,’ Diana Houseman said calmly.
‘Then you weren’t goin’ to leave your husband?’
‘The situation Paddy and I found ourselves in was far from ideal – but it was certainly better to live apart, as we were, than to live together in penury.’
‘Weren’t you takin’ a big chance, carryin’ on like you were?’
‘Not really. Bill had forgiven me for my other affairs – both the real and the imagined ones. He would have forgiven me for this one, too.’
She was lying, Woodend thought. No, that was not quite it. What she was doing was trying to make the whole situation seem a lot more straightforward than it actually was.
‘He might have forgiven you for the affair, but he wouldn’t have forgiven Colligan,’ Woodend said. ‘Paddy would have been out of a job, and Bill would have seen to it that he never worked for NWTV again. So what would Paddy have done then? He’d have had to move away from the area to find new work – probably down to London – and you’d hardly ever have seen him.’
Diana Houseman smiled again. ‘For that to happen, Bill would have had to catch us at it, wouldn’t he?’
‘People who are havin’ a bit on the side never think they’re goin’ to get caught – but they usually do,’ Woodend pointed out.
‘That’s because they don’t take precautions.’
‘An’ you did?’
&nbs
p; ‘Oh yes.’
‘Are you goin’ to tell us what they were?’
Diana Houseman considered it. ‘No, I don’t think I am,’ she said finally.
‘Even if it will clear you of the suspicion that you played a part in your husband’s death?’
‘I did not kill Bill, and nothing I tell you about my precautions will help to either prove or disprove that.’
‘So why won’t you tell us?’ Paniatowski demanded.
Diana Houseman looked a little uncomfortable again. ‘Because I’m . . . because I’m a little embarrassed by it.’
‘I find it very hard to believe that you could be embarrassed by anything,’ Paniatowski said cuttingly.
‘I don’t give a toss what you believe,’ Diana Houseman told her. She turned her attention back to Woodend. ‘Is there anything else you want to ask me, or can I go now?’
‘You can go,’ Woodend said. ‘But don’t leave town without lettin’ us know where you’re goin’.’
‘Leave town?’ Diana Houseman repeated. ‘Why should I want to do that?’
Thirty-Five
As Woodend drove towards the village which he had lived in just long enough to start thinking of it as his home, he found his mind contemplating the long and tortuous series of events – many of them occurring even before he was born – which had led to his present dilemma.
He pictured the long-dead cotton magnate, dressed in top hat and frock coat, selecting the site for the mill which would add to his already considerable fortune. If only the bugger had chosen a plot of land just a little closer to Manchester . . .
He thought of the boundary commissioners, a large-scale map of the area spread out on the table in front of them, deciding just where to draw the line between the city and the county. Would it have hurt them to have inked it in a hundredth of an inch further south?
He imagined the meeting at which the Big Wheels at NWTV had decided to go ahead with the purchase of the mill. Wouldn’t there have been a few dissenting voices, men who had felt it might be wiser to locate the new studio closer to the rest of the organisation? And if there had been, why, for God’s sake, had they not won the day?
But it was pointless to speculate on what might have been. The mill owner had chosen that spot, the boundary commissioners had drawn that line, NWTV had decided to buy the studio – and instead of the double murder being Manchester Police’s headache, it was his.
And a real bugger of a headache it was – a champion among migraines. John Dinnage would have understood the complexities of the case, but Dinnage was dead, and a much lesser man had stepped into his shoes. If it would protect his own back, Henry Marlowe would be more than willing to see other men’s heads roll, and there was no question about whose would be first on the block.
Not that his would be the only one, Woodend thought miserably. The stink of failure would cling to Bob Rutter and Monika Paniatowski, too, and though the axe would not fall on their necks as quickly as it fell on his own, their careers were as doomed as his.
Bob and Monika were good, loyal bobbies – and they deserved better than that. Yet though he accepted that he was the only who could save them from their fate, he did not even know how to begin. He was never going to prove that Bill Houseman had killed Valerie Farnsworth, and though he had at least three plausible suspects for the murder of Houseman himself, they had only to keep their nerve to escape scot free.
He was surprised to discover that he had reached the centre of the village, and that the post-office store was just ahead of him.
Might as well buy an evening paper while I’m here, he thought, signalling and pulling up in front of the shop.
He’d grown accustomed to receiving a cheery greeting from Ted Bryce, the postmaster, but that early evening he was out of luck. Far from being pleased to see him, Bryce looked as if he’d be much happier if the chief inspector took his custom elsewhere.
‘Somethin’ the matter, Ted?’ Woodend asked, concerned. ‘Not had bad news, I hope.’
Guilt replaced embarrassment on the postmaster’s face. ‘No . . . er . . . nothin’ like that,’ he said awkwardly. ‘It’s . . . it’s been a long day, that’s all.’
‘Most of them are,’ Woodend agreed. ‘Has the evenin’ paper come in yet?’
Bryce nodded. ‘It has,’ he admitted reluctantly. ‘You don’t want one, do you?’
‘Actually, I do,’ the chief inspector replied. ‘That’s why I asked if they’d come in.’
The postmaster reached for a paper from the stack, but as he handed it over his eyes were fixed on a point somewhere on the other side of the shop.
So that’s why it feels like the Antarctic in here, is it? Woodend thought. Because there’s somethin’ about me in the paper!
He stepped out of the shop and unfolded the newspaper. He saw the headline right away – it would have been very hard to miss it!
SECOND DEATH AT NWTV
THE RESULT OF POLICE BUNGLE?
By our special correspondent Elizabeth Driver
One of the signs of a good police force is that it arrives on the scene shortly after a crime has been committed. In the case of the murders at NWTV’s Maddox Row studios, however, the Mid-Lancs Police were already on the scene – investigating the death of popular actress Valerie Farnsworth – when a second murder, that of producer Bill Houseman, took place.
‘I’m completely baffled,’ Chief Inspector Woodend, the officer in charge of the case, admitted to me in an exclusive interview this afternoon. ‘The killer appears to be fiendishly clever, and has left no clue behind him whatsoever.’
‘Bollocks!’ Woodend swore.
There was more – several columns more – but he saw no reason why he should waste his time reading it and, aware that he was being watched from inside the shop, he stuffed the paper into the litter-bin.
Well, you had to give the lass credit for one thing, he thought – she’d promised to make him look like a buffoon, and anyone reading the article would have no doubt that he was. If DCS Ainsworth and his pal Acting Chief Constable Henry Marlowe needed any more ammunition to fire at him, Elizabeth Driver had certainly provided them with it.
As he got into his car again, he was tempted to turn around and head back to the studio. But what would have been the point of that? The show did not go out until the following evening. Aside from the NWTV security men and the few uniformed bobbies he’d left behind to keep an eye on things, there would be nobody there. And even if there had been, he was not sure that he had anything to ask them which had not already been asked.
It had been dark for some time. Woodend stood alone, on the edge of the moors of his childhood – looking up at the stars and listening to the wind moaning softly in distance. Then, almost before he realised what was happening, he found himself replaying in his head the conversation that he and Joan had had about Annie’s disappearance.
Slowly and painfully, he analysed what Joan had said, then pulled apart his own comments to see if they still made sense. When the process was finally over, he was exhausted but convinced that he’d handled the situation correctly. The worst thing they could possibly do would be to drag Annie back against her will, he told himself. Doing that would lose them the part of her they still had left.
‘I made the right decision!’ he shouted into the darkness.
Right decision? Right decision?
The whisper he heard was no echo – there was nothing in front of him for his voice to echo against – so he knew it must be coming from inside his head.
Would he have handled Annie’s disappearance in exactly this way if he hadn’t been up to his neck in a murder investigation which threatened to rob him of everything he had worked for all these years? he agonised.
Wasn’t there something in him – just as there was something in the people most involved in Maddox Row – that would do its best to deceive himself and deceive others, because the truth was an inconvenience and a diversion?
And because, whatever el
se happened, the show must go on?
Friday
Thirty-Six
The rain should have been pouring down in buckets, Woodend thought as he drove along the snaking road which ran across the tops of the moors. There should have been thunder and lightning, and a wind which shrieked like a soul lost in hell. That kind of weather would have matched his mood perfectly. And what had he got instead? A sunny morning which gave the indications of turning into a perfect autumn day. It seemed as if even nature was against him!
He turned to Paniatowski, who was sitting silently in the passenger seat beside him.
‘Say somethin’ to cheer me up, Monika,’ he told her.
‘I wish I could, but nothing really springs to mind,’ Paniatowski confessed. ‘Shall I tell you what’s in the papers?’
‘Oh aye, you do that,’ Woodend said sourly. ‘Readin’ about what a bungler I’m supposed to be would really perk me up.’
‘There’s other things in the news,’ Paniatowski pointed out. ‘Shall I go to the sports page and see how the Rovers are doing?’
‘Don’t bother with that, either,’ Woodend said dismissively. ‘If it weren’t for the fact that even at the best of times you have to be half-pissed to sit through one of their matches, the way they’ve been playin’ this season would turn any man to drink.’
Paniatowski rifled through the paper. ‘Here’s something interesting,’ she said. ‘Preston Vance is dead.’
‘Oh aye? Shot straight through the heart with a Comanche warrior’s arrow, was he?’
Paniatowski chuckled. ‘No, it was a car accident, apparently. Do you want me to read it out to you?’
‘Aye, you might as well.’
‘Hollywood film star Preston Vance died on Wednesday at the age of forty-eight, Orange County officials confirmed last night,’ Paniatowski read. ‘Mr Vance died as a result of a road accident in which his was the only car involved. Preliminary findings suggest that he had been drinking, and had possibly taken illegal drugs.’
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