She was still feeling as if her feathers had been ruffled, Woodend thought, and as illogical as that feeling might be, he could understand it.
‘Look, I’m not rulin’ Scranton out of the picture, by any means,’ he told his sergeant, in a placatory tone. ‘I’d even go so far as to say that if it’s not him who’s financin’ Barry Thornton, it’s likely to be one of his friends or associates – or at least somebody he knows well.’
Paniatowski shot him a look which suggested she thought he was doing no more than humour her.
‘If you really believe that, it follows that it’s as important for us to get as close to Scranton as it was for Colin to get close to the hard mods,’ Paniatowski said challengingly.
‘Yes, it is,’ Woodend agreed, rising to the challenge. ‘An’ I was thinkin’ of usin’ young Beresford for that job, too, since the hard mods seem to be some of Scranton’s closest supporters.’
‘Colin would have to get to him through Bazza, and Bazza isn’t here,’ Paniatowski pointed out. ‘Besides, the hard mods are no more than Scranton’s foot soldiers. He’s never going to take any of them into his confidence.’
‘Then who do you suggest we use?’ Woodend asked.
‘Me,’ Paniatowski said.
‘An’ how do you propose to get close to him?’
‘I don’t,’ Paniatowski said. ‘I’m going to make him want to get close to me.’
‘An’ how do you propose to do that?’ Woodend wondered.
‘How do you think I propose to do that?’ Paniatowski countered.
‘If he’s going to be a primary target, we need to do a very deep background check on him,’ Rutter said, out of the blue.
Woodend was surprised, not so much by the suggestion itself as by the fact that it had been made by a man who, for the previous half an hour, had been sitting at the edge of the table like a ghost at a banquet – a man who, despite his earlier hopes, seemed scarcely a part of the team any more.
‘Go on,’ he said encouragingly.
‘The key to a man’s present often lies in his past – especially in some big event in his past,’ Rutter continued. ‘That was one of the first lessons you drummed into us.’
‘Aye,’ Woodend agreed cautiously. ‘It was.’
‘A big event in Ron Scranton’s past, as we’ve just learned from Monika, is his dishonourable discharge from the RAF. That needs to be looked into in much more detail.’
‘You’re right,’ Woodend agreed. ‘I’ll give the Abingdon police a call, an’ see what they can turn up.’
‘No disrespect intended to the Abingdon bobbies, but I think you need to do more than that,’ Rutter said.
‘What have you got in mind?’
‘Send one of us down there. We know how to ask the right kinds of questions. We know about the need to clog it around and get a feel for the place – because that’s another thing you’ve drummed into us.’
‘You’ve got a point,’ Woodend agreed. ‘But since Beresford’s tied up with hard mods, an’ Monika will be workin’ on getting’ close to Councillor Scranton, the only person available is you.’
Bob Rutter smiled. ‘I’d already managed to work that out for myself, sir,’ he said.
Woodend chewed the idea over in his mind.
It was a long shot that Bob would turn up anything useful in Abingdon, he argued – but then long shots had been known to work before. Besides, since the two strongest leads in the case were already being handled by Beresford and Paniatowski, there was little to keep Rutter busy in Whitebridge – for the moment, at least.
He pulled himself up short, recognizing the arguments he was making were just window-dressing, and that the real reason the idea was so appealing was that the inspector seemed so enthusiastic about it himself – and letting him follow it through might just be a way of pulling him back from the brink.
‘All right, Bob, you go down to Abingdon,’ he said, and was gratified to note that Rutter seemed delighted at the prospect.
‘Where exactly is Abingdon?’ Beresford asked.
‘Somewhere down south,’ Rutter said vaguely, giving him, Woodend noted, an unexpectedly hostile look.
‘I think it’s in Oxfordshire,’ Paniatowski said. ‘About twenty miles from Oxford itself.’
Barry Thornley had never really believed in heaven – at least, not a heaven for the likes of him – but now he realized he’d been wrong about that all along. There was a heaven – and he’d landed in it an hour and a half earlier.
Standing on the promenade, watching the palm trees sway in the breeze, he was still not sure it was anything but a dream. Except he had never – could never have dreamed anything like this.
The sea was so blue, and so was the cloudless sky. The people on the promenade were dressed in bright, casual clothes – shorts or white trousers, sandals and brilliantly coloured shirts – and for the first time in his life, he felt out of place in his drab industrial clothing.
Not that there was any real need to feel out of place, he realized. These holiday-makers, if they noticed him at all, neither pointed him out for ridicule nor tried to shy away from him in fear. They didn’t care what he looked like. They were there to enjoy themselves – dipping in the sea, sitting on the pavement in front of the small cheery bars which made the pubs and off-licences of Whitebridge seem so incredibly dingy – and that was all they were interested in.
The Boss had said he would like it here, and the Boss – as always – had been right.
As the gentle breeze caressed his cheeks, Bazza closed his eyes, and found himself thinking about the day the Boss had recruited him.
‘You are a warrior of purity and freedom, operating within a secret army,’ the Boss had told him. ‘And it is because the army is secret that you must have a code name. I will call you the Avenger.’
Bazza had liked the sound of that. ‘An’ what should I call you?’ he’d asked.
‘Since you will report only to me, and talk to no one else about me, I leave that up to you. What would you like to call me?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You may, if you wish, address me as the Leader, which is how Hitler’s and Mussolini’s followers addressed them.’
But Bazza hadn’t cared for that name. It seemed to him to sound very un-English.
The Boss, seeing his obvious discomfort with the name, had smiled and said, ‘Or, if you prefer it, you may call me the Boss.’
‘Yes, I’ll call you the Boss – because that’s what you are,’ Barry had said.
He admired the Boss more than any other man he had ever met. He would die for him, if needs be. And yet, he thought guiltily, despite all the admiration and devotion he felt, he had shown weakness and disobeyed the Boss’s direct orders the previous night.
‘As long as you’re in England, the Whitebridge police can find a way to get at you,’ the Boss had said. ‘You’ll be much safer abroad. But you must tell nobody where you’re going. Not your mother. Not your friends. Nobody! Do you understand, Avenger?’
‘Yes, Boss,’ Bazza had said obediently.
And he’d meant it. He really had. Yet somehow, when he’d been with the lads the previous night, he’d found himself unable to resist telling them.
He still wasn’t sure quite why it had happened. Perhaps there was a part of him that wanted to make them jealous. But there was also a part of him, he had convinced himself, which had wanted to give them hope.
To dangle the idea of escape in front of them.
To plant in their minds the idea that maybe, one day, they could follow in his footsteps.
There was another order that the Boss had given him over the phone, just before he took off.
‘Don’t get yourself noticed out there, Avenger,’ he’d said. ‘Don’t look for trouble, and don’t get into any fights.’
And that was one order that Bazza was now sure he would have no difficulty following. Because why would he want to get into any fights in Malaga? He had found somethi
ng that was perfect, and he was not about to do anything that might damage that perfection.
In one short week he would be going back to England to complete his mission, he reminded himself. But when that mission was over, he would not stay in Whitebridge. Instead, he would come straight back to Spain.
He would have a new life!
He would become a new man!
For the purposes of his investigation, there were still a great many tramps he needed to talk to, Pogo told himself. Yet here he was, not looking for fresh sources of information at all, but heading towards Brian’s pipe.
He wondered why he was doing it, and tried to convince himself it was because he might have missed some piece of vital information the first time they talked.
But he knew, even as he was making the argument in his head, that it didn’t hold water.
The fact was that Brian was too simple to be able to tell him anything useful, and lived too much in a world of his own to have noticed anything significant happening around him.
So why, then, was he wasting his time making this second visit?
As the pipe came into sight, Pogo found himself coming to the reluctant – and surprising – conclusion that he must be doing it because he liked the man.
Brian smiled when he saw Pogo approaching.
‘You can come in if you want to,’ he said. ‘And this time there’ll be no charge.’
Pogo squeezed into the pipe. ‘Are you planning to spend the night here?’ he asked.
‘Maybe,’ Brian replied, noncommittally.
‘I wouldn’t, if I was you,’ Pogo told him. ‘You’re too much out in the open. Too exposed.’
‘That sounds like army talk,’ Brian said.
‘It is,’ Pogo agreed. ‘And there’s a lot of good solid sense behind it. When there’s a maniac on the loose, you need all the protection you can get. That’s why I’m sleeping in the park.’
‘Don’t like the park,’ Brian said. ‘You see, what I need is a roof over my head, and a solid wall against my back.’ He tapped the pipe gently with his knuckles. ‘This place is ideal.’
This place is a death trap, Pogo thought.
‘There must be plenty of pipes like this in other towns,’ he said. ‘Maybe even nicer than this one.’
Brian sniffed. ‘There probably are,’ he agreed.
‘So why don’t we go and look for them – you and me,’ Pogo suggested. ‘We could start out now, and by tomorrow we could be in Bolton or Burnley.’
‘Can’t be done,’ Brian said flatly.
‘We don’t have to walk,’ Pogo cajoled. ‘I’ve still got a bit of money left. We could take a bus.’
‘They won’t let us on a bus,’ Brian said dismissively.
‘Maybe not on the first two or three we try,’ Pogo agreed. ‘But eventually we’ll find a kind-hearted bus conductor with a nearly empty bus, and he’ll say it’s all right. And even if we have to walk, we can take our time, and it’s not that bad once you get used to it.’
‘It’s not the walking that bothers me about going,’ Brian said.
‘Then what is it?’
‘I can’t leave this town until I’ve done my bit of business.’
‘And what bit of business might that be?’
‘I can’t remember. That’s the problem. But it will come back to me, in time.’
‘And what if it doesn’t come back?’
‘It will. I remembered it before. That’s what brought me here. But somehow, on the way, it slipped out of my mind.’
‘Are you sure it was this town you meant to come to?’ Pogo asked. ‘It could have been one of the others.’
‘It was this town,’ Brian said firmly. ‘Whitethorpe.’
‘Whitebridge,’ Pogo corrected him.
‘That’s what I meant.’
Pogo turned his head, and looked around him. The pipe was in the middle of a piece of wasteland, and the nearest house was more than a hundred yards away. It would be so easy for the Germans … for the killer, he corrected himself … for the killer to sneak up on poor unsuspecting Brian and drench him with petrol.
‘Would you mind if I hung around tonight?’ he asked.
‘Thought you said that you wanted to spend the night in the park,’ Brian replied.
‘I can change my mind, can’t I?’
‘Suppose so,’ Brian agreed. ‘Only, the thing is, there’s not enough room in this pipe for both of us to sleep.’
There was plenty of room, Pogo thought. But despite their blossoming friendship, Brian still wanted a little privacy in the night. And why wouldn’t he?
‘I’d make room if I could, but it just can’t be done,’ Brian said.
‘I didn’t say I wanted to stay in the pipe,’ Pogo pointed out. ‘I just asked if you minded if I hung around.’
‘But where will you sleep?’
‘I’ve no intention of sleeping,’ Pogo said.
Nor had he. His plan was to stay awake all night, keeping watch over Brian – protecting a holy innocent who seemed incapable of protecting himself.
Seventeen
The lawn outside the Woodend’s kitchen window was covered with a layer of shimmering frost, and the robin redbreasts, perched on the bare branches of nearby trees, shivered and ruffled their feathers.
It was a cold, bleak start to what promised to be a cold, bleak day, and as Joan Woodend flicked fat over the breakfast eggs in the frying pan, she found herself wishing – not for the first time – that she and Charlie could spend their winters somewhere a little warmer.
She turned around to face her husband, who was enjoying a pre-breakfast cigarette.
‘Food on the table in two minutes,’ she warned.
‘Grand,’ Woodend replied. ‘I’m really lookin’ forward to it.’
And there was no doubt he was, Joan thought. But despite the fact that she knew he genuinely loved her cooking, she calculated that, in all their years of married life, she had made less than a couple of hundred such meals for him.
It wasn’t that Charlie didn’t eat breakfast – like many northern men, a fried heart-attack special was his favourite meal of the day – but he normally had it on the job, either in the police canteen or at a cafe close to the scene of his latest murder investigation.
Which was why she found it strange that, that morning, he was not only eating his breakfast at home, but had not glanced at his watch once.
‘There’s a bit of a lull in the investigation – at least in the part that I’m involved with,’ Woodend said, seeing the questioning look in Joan’s eyes as she transferred the fried egg, bacon, sausage and black pudding from the frying pan to the plate which she’d laid in front of him.
‘Does that mean that you don’t know what to do next?’ Joan asked.
‘Far from it,’ Woodend replied. ‘I’ve got a lot of ideas, but until my prime suspect comes back from Spain, they’re pretty much left floatin’ in the air.’
He said no more, and she didn’t want him to. They had never discussed his work. It was something he did – something that was a big part of him – but, like muddy shoes, Joan had always felt his investigations should be left in the doorway of their home.
‘How’s young Colin?’ Joan asked, going back into the kitchen to cook up some fried bread before the lard in the frying pan had had time to cool down.
‘I’m very pleased with him,’ Woodend told her between mouthfuls of sausage dipped in egg yolk. ‘He’s comin’ on really well.’
Joan smiled to herself as she turned the bread over in the pan. ‘He’s become a bit of a protégé of yours, hasn’t he?’ she said.
‘I suppose he has,’ Woodend agreed.
‘You’ve taken him under your wing, just like you took Bob under it, years ago. An’ how’s Bob doin’?’
‘He’s goin’ down to Oxfordshire, to see if he can get any leads there,’ Woodend said, avoiding the question. ‘Anyway, to get back to Beresford, he’s doin’ so well that I’m thinkin’ of pushin�
�� for him to be made up to sergeant as soon as I possibly can.’
‘Won’t that put Monika’s nose out of joint a bit?’ Joan asked, with a hint of concern in her voice.
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ Woodend said. ‘Monika’s not the kind of girl to resent other people gettin’ on, if they deserve to.’
And anyway, he thought, by the time Beresford was ready to be made up to sergeant, it was more than likely, despite Bob’s recent surge of interest in the case, that there would be an inspector’s post going spare on the team for Monika.
Beresford was as uncomfortable with the trilby hat as he had been with the hard mods’ braces, though for a different reason.
The braces – apart from itching damnably – made him look far too young, and robbed him of the gravitas he wished to display as an officer of the law. The hat, on the other hand, was something that old men wore, and did not at all fit in with the image of a rising young detective constable he was attempting to cultivate.
Yet the hat had to stay – there was simply no choice in the matter – because while he was just about credible as a plainclothes policeman in the trilby and his best suit, there was no way he could have carried it off with his best suit and a shaven head.
His assignment that morning was to track down the travel agency which had sold Big Bazza’s ticket to Spain, and it was at the third agency he visited that he struck lucky.
‘Yes, I remember it,’ the rather sweet girl behind the counter said. ‘Be hard not to, wouldn’t it?’
‘Why’s that?’ Beresford wondered.
‘Well, most of our clients book their holidays months in advance. Some even book the next one the moment they get back from the one they’ve just been on. But this gentleman …’ She paused and looked around the agency.
‘Yes?’ Beresford said.
‘To tell you the truth, he wasn’t much of a gentleman at all,’ the girl continued, in a much lower voice. ‘In fact, he seemed like a bit of a lout, to me.’ She paused again, looked at him sideways, then said, ‘It’s a bit hot in here. Wouldn’t you be more comfortable if you took your hat off?’
Dying Fall Page 15