Dying Fall

by Sally Spencer

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  By Sally Spencer

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Part One: The End of an Era

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Part Two: Laying Down the Burden

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Epilogue

  By Sally Spencer

  The Charlie Woodend Mysteries

  THE SALTON KILLINGS

  MURDER AT SWANN’S LAKE

  DEATH OF A CAVE DWELLER

  THE DARK LADY

  THE GOLDEN MILE TO MURDER

  DEAD ON CUE

  THE RED HERRING

  DEATH OF AN INNOCENT

  THE ENEMY WITHIN

  A DEATH LEFT HANGING

  THE WITCH MAKER

  THE BUTCHER BEYOND

  DYING IN THE DARK

  STONE KILLER

  A LONG TIME DEAD

  SINS OF THE FATHERS

  DANGEROUS GAMES

  DEATH WATCH

  A DYING FALL

  FATAL QUEST

  The Monika Paniatowski Mysteries

  THE DEAD HAND OF HISTORY

  THE RING OF DEATH

  ECHOES OF THE DEAD

  BACKLASH

  LAMBS TO THE SLAUGHTER

  A WALK WITH THE DEAD

  DYING FALL

  A Chief Inspector Woodend Mystery

  Sally Spencer

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2008 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  eBook edition first published in 2013 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2008 by Sally Spencer.

  The right of Sally Spencer to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Spencer, Sally

  A dying fall

  1. Woodend, Charlie (Fictitious character) - Fiction 2. Police - England - Fiction 3. Murder - Investigation - Fiction 4. Detective and mystery stories

  I. Title

  823.9'14[F]

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-6609-7 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-059-4 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-44830-120-1 (ePub)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  Prologue

  The moment the weak watery sun had finally set in the darkening sky, the temperature began to plummet, and by midnight a freeze had set in which made the ground crack and groan. It was a bad night to be homeless, and Nature – in her cruel, unrelenting winter mood – had not finished yet.

  A wind sprang up – the kind of wind which is not content merely to chill those who stand in its path, but instead must hunt and harry its victims, turning corners with apparent ease and rushing forcefully through almost-invisible gaps in walls.

  The old tramp, huddled in a corner in the disused cotton mill, felt this wind cutting into his flesh – working its way slowly and stealthily towards his bone – and shivered.

  It was on nights like this that men like him died. It was on mornings following nights like this that bodies were discovered curled into stiff frozen balls.

  The tramp rummaged through the pockets of his dirty, threadbare overcoat. In the left pocket, his arthritic fingers grasped a box of matches and the cigarette ends he had picked up off the street. From his right, he produced the bottle of methylated spirit he had bought earlier in the day.

  He sighed. He had something to drink, and something to smoke. What more could any man want?

  He unscrewed the bottle, and was on the point of raising it to his lips, when the sudden – and totally unexpected – thought came to his mind that this would be his last night on earth – that he would die before dawn broke, and someone would find his frozen body in the morning, just as he had found so many others in the past.

  It was then that he heard the stealthy, shuffling sound, and realized that he was not alone.

  ‘Who is it?’ he called out in a hoarse, fearful voice.

  There was no answer.

  ‘I’ve got a knife!’ he said. ‘And I’ll use it if I have to.’

  Minutes passed in silence.

  It had been nothing but a rat, dragging its dropsied belly along the ground, the tramp persuaded himself.

  He raised the meths bottle and took a swig. A shudder ran through his body, but he felt no desire to vomit, as he had the first few times he’d forced himself to swallow the noxious liquid.

  He heard the shuffling sound again, and knew that it wasn’t – couldn’t be! – a rat, after all.

  And then he saw the dark figure moving towards him.

  ‘Go away!’ he said, in a voice which was half-command, half-plea.

  But the dark figure kept on coming – could almost touch him now.

  The tramp began to struggle to his feet. But he had left it too late – far too late! – and he was still on his knees when he felt the heavy boot smash into his chest.

  He fell back into the corner, his head banging against the wall, his spine jarring as it hit the floor.

  The dark figure’s arms began to rock rhythmically, there was a swooshing noise – and, suddenly, the tramp was soaked in a cold liquid.

  But it was not water he was being doused with, the tramp told himself.

  Water didn’t feel like this.

  Water didn’t smell like this.

  ‘Please, no!’ he gasped.

  His attacker struck a match.

  Now, for the first time, the tramp could see his face. And what he saw in it filled him with horror – because though the face itself was human, the expression it had contorted itself into was not.

  The man’s eyes were blazing with hatred and anger. His nose was flared like that of a wild animal moving in for the kill. And the twist of his mouth said – more clearly than words could ever have done – that compassion and mercy were strangers to him.

  ‘Don’t …!’ the tramp croaked.

  But he knew he was wasting his time, because this man was driven by contempt – for his victim, for the world in
general, and even for himself.

  So his earlier forebodings had been right, he thought with that one small rational part of his brain which had not yet been engulfed in panic. He would die that night.

  But his death would not be the slow, gradually numbing one brought on by the cold. Instead, it would be swift, and hot and agonizing.

  Even the idea of it was enough to drive a man mad.

  But there was no time for such madness to develop, because his attacker threw the match at him, and soon every nerve in his body was screaming with agony.

  Part One

  The End of an Era

  One

  A dozen corporation buses – each one packed with hunched, coughing smokers in flat caps – trundled along half a dozen arterial roads towards factories in which screeching hooters were already announcing the imminent start of the day’s work. In the shops, assistants were busy polishing the windows and counters, as a prelude to opening the doors through which the customers would soon begin to walk. And in the old abandoned cotton mill which formed part of Whitebridge’s industrial graveyard, two men stood on the threshold of the former manager’s office, looking down with disgust at what lay on the floor.

  One of them, Chief Inspector Charlie Woodend, was a big feller who looked like he had been hurriedly – and carelessly – carved out of a piece of very hard rock. He was dressed in his customary hairy sports jacket and cavalry-twill trousers, and had a Capstan Full Strength cigarette tightly held between two nicotine-stained fingers in his right hand. His companion, Inspector Bob Rutter, was younger, slightly smaller – and much more elegant. He was dressed in a smart blue suit, and though he, too, had a cigarette in his hand, it looked more like a prop, and less like a natural appendage, than his boss’s did.

  Woodend sniffed. The air was thick with the smell of cooked meat – and the source of the smell lay in a charred mound next to the large hole in the wall which had once contained a window.

  ‘Bastard!’ Woodend murmured, almost to himself.

  Rutter nodded. ‘The fire started there,’ he said, pointed to a piece of blackened concrete in one corner of the room.

  ‘Aye, there was one hell of a wind last night, an’ he’d have been hunkerin’ down to get what protection from it he could,’ the chief inspector replied.

  ‘We think he jumped to his feet, and tried to make it out of the window,’ Rutter continued.

  ‘More than likely.’

  ‘Which was, of course, precisely the wrong thing to do. By exposing himself further to the wind, he would only have fuelled the fire. What he should have done was roll over and over on the ground.’

  ‘The man must have been a complete bloody moron, mustn’t he?’ Woodend said.

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir?’

  ‘I said he must have been a complete bloody moron to do exactly the wrong thing.’

  ‘I’m not sure I would go quite that far myself, sir. What I was doing was merely pointing out that …’

  ‘Mind you, it is a little hard to think straight when you can feel your flesh meltin’ on the bone.’

  His boss was angry, Rutter thought. And the source of that anger was that he was taking this case personally. It was something he often did – and it was both his greatest strength and his greatest weakness.

  ‘What’s our main purpose, Bob?’ Woodend asked. ‘Why are we in this job at all?’

  ‘To see that justice is served?’ Rutter suggested.

  ‘To protect those who are least able to protect themselves,’ Woodend said. He paused, to light up a fresh Capstan Full Strength from the still-smouldering stub of the one he’d just been smoking. ‘I’ll have the swine who did this,’ he continued, blowing smoke down his nose. ‘I don’t care how clever he’s been – I’ll have him.’

  Chief Constable Henry Marlowe looked down at the official request which was lying on his desk, and then up at the big man in the hairy sports coat who was standing in front of it.

  ‘What you’re proposing would cost us a fortune in overtime, Chief Inspector,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, sir, I imagine it will,’ Woodend replied flatly.

  ‘We seem to be talking in different tenses,’ Marlowe pointed out. ‘I say “would” and you say “will”.’

  ‘You say “tomarto” an’ I say “tomayto”,’ Woodend agreed. ‘Unfortunately, sir, this bein’ a murder inquiry, we simply can’t “just call the whole thing off”.’

  Marlowe frowned. ‘I’m not sure I like your attitude, Chief Inspector,’ he snapped.

  As understatements went, it was the equivalent of saying that Genghis Khan might just possibly, on rare occasions, have been a little bit aggressive.

  The truth was that the chief constable hated Woodend’s attitude – and on numerous occasions he had done his damnedest to get rid of the bloody man.

  ‘You have to consider what the newspapers might say, if you’re seen not to be takin’ this seriously, sir,’ Woodend said innocently.

  Henry Marlowe shivered, as he always did at even the thought of getting a bad press.

  ‘I’m not saying that we shouldn’t investigate the incident, Chief Inspector,’ he conceded.

  ‘Investigate the murder, you mean.’

  ‘But I wonder, given the scale of the investigation you seem to be envisaging, if you’re not perhaps attempting to crack a peanut with a sledgehammer. After all, it should be a relatively simple case to solve.’

  ‘Should it, sir?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘Of course. Who could have any interest in killing a down-and-out but another down-and-out?’

  ‘So you believe that a tramp did it, do you?’

  ‘I should have thought that was obvious.’

  ‘The victim wasn’t knifed, an’ he wasn’t beaten to death,’ Woodend pointed out.

  ‘I can read, you know,’ Marlowe countered. ‘I have seen the report. I know he wasn’t stabbed or bludgeoned. He was burned alive.’

  ‘Well, there you are, then,’ Woodend said.

  ‘Where am I, exactly?’

  ‘For a start, where would a tramp get a can of petrol from?’

  ‘From a garage, of course – like everybody else.’

  ‘So he goes to a garage to ask for it, even though he knows that will lead us straight to him?’

  ‘Lead us straight to him?’ Marlowe repeated, mystified.

  Woodend sighed. ‘The garage owner would be bound to ask himself how a man who couldn’t even afford a decent jacket could possibly own a car, wouldn’t he? So the transaction would stick in his mind. An’ the tramp in question would have to be pretty stupid not to realize that.’

  ‘Tramps are stupid. They would never become tramps in the first place, if they weren’t,’ Marlowe said dismissively.

  Woodend shook his head. Even after all his experience of dealing with Marlowe in the past, he could still be amazed by the chief constable’s one-dimensional, black-and-white vision of the world.

  ‘There’s a lot of reasons, other than stupidity, that a man might become a tramp,’ he said. ‘But even allowin’ that you’re right, sir, an’ the killer is as thick as two short planks, he’d still never have used that particular method to murder his victim.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’ve lost me again,’ Marlowe said.

  ‘Tramps come from all kinds of backgrounds, but they nearly all have one thing in common.’

  He paused, giving the chief constable the opportunity to do a little independent thinking, but rather than avail himself of the opportunity, Marlowe said, ‘And what might that one thing be?

  ‘They’re alcoholics.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So if the killer was a tramp, an’ he did get his hands on some money, he wouldn’t go wastin’ it on petrol. The first thing he’d do is buy booze, because nothin’ would be as important as that to him. Not hatred! Not revenge! Not anythin’!’

  ‘You may have a point, but I still think …’

  ‘He’d get blind drunk, an’ it wouldn’t be until
he’d sobered up that he’d start thinkin’ about killin’ again. An’ when he did think about it, he’d choose a knife or a blunt instrument, because they’d cost him nothin’.’

  Marlowe smirked. ‘I would not wish to question your expertise on drink-dependency, Chief Inspector, since from what I have observed of your own habits, you seem to have a great deal of personal experience,’ he said. ‘However, I am responsible for overseeing a great deal more than one simple little murder. Traffic has to be regulated, football matches have to be policed … I could go on, but I see no need to. The simple truth is that there are a thousand tasks which must be accomplished within my budget, and I am reluctant to commit as many resources as you seem to be demanding to your investigation.’

  ‘The press …’ Woodend began.

  ‘You have already used that particular threat once today,’ Marlowe pointed out. ‘For a moment, I freely admit, you unbalanced me, but thinking about it, I can’t really see why the newspapers should be the least bit interested in this sordid little killing.’

  ‘Maybe the newspapers in general wouldn’t be interested,’ Woodend conceded. ‘But I’m a little concerned – lookin’ at it from your point of view, as the man in charge of this police force – that Elizabeth Driver would.’

  The remark hit home, just as Woodend had known it would.

  Elizabeth Driver, a tabloid journalist with the moral compunctions of an earthworm, had been a thorn in Woodend’s side since his days in Scotland Yard, but recently – since she had embarked on a so-called secret affair with Bob Rutter – the chief constable had been her main target. In fact, it was only due to one of her articles in support of Woodend that Marlowe had back-pedalled on his intention to get rid of his least-favourite chief inspector. Woodend still worried about why she had done it – nasty motives being the only ones she had – but he saw no reason not to turn it to his advantage now.

  Marlowe had started to sweat. ‘You think she might take an interest in this case?’ he asked.

  ‘I wouldn’t know, sir,’ Woodend said. ‘But it’s always better to be safe than sorry.’

  Marlowe nodded resignedly. ‘Very well, Chief Inspector, I will give you free rein for your investigation for the moment. But I will expect – no, I will demand – a very rapid result on this case.’