Dying Fall

by Sally Spencer

  ‘You’re probably right,’ Woodend agreed. ‘But I’d still like to speculate on what happened, if you don’t mind. It’s possible you never intended to kill your brother. That’s something only you will ever know. But the fact is that he was in the car, and he survived the crash. Now why was that a problem for you?’

  ‘It’s your fantasy,’ Lowry said. ‘You tell me.’

  ‘I’m guessin’ again,’ Woodend admitted, ‘but once more, it’s a guess based on what happened later. My theory is that Brunel saw you tinkerin’ with his dad’s car. It didn’t mean much to him at the time – maybe you were able to explain it away – but as the Rolls veered out of control, he must have realized why it was happenin’. But fortunately for you, he’d lost his mind, an’ – as a consequence – had forgotten what it was that he’d seen.’

  ‘With every wild accusation you make, you’re digging yourself deeper and deeper into a big hole,’ Lowry said.

  ‘So Brunel was locked away in Stanton Hall,’ Woodend continued. ‘You must have thought you were safe enough with him in there, because, after all, he was a nutter. But all the time Brunel was in that place, he was tormented by the fact that he knew there was somethin’ he needed to do, but he couldn’t quite bring it to mind. Then, two years ago, he escaped – an’ he was never recaptured. Now why didn’t we read about that in the papers?’

  ‘Go to hell!’ Lowry said.

  ‘I’ll tell you why,’ Woodend said, unperturbed. ‘Since Brunel was a voluntary patient, there was no legal requirement to report him missin’, an’ it was neither in your interest, nor in Stanton Hall’s interest, for it to become public knowledge.’ He paused for a second. ‘But you must have lain in bed at night worryin’ about it, Mr Lowry.’

  ‘I was naturally concerned about what had happened to my brother.’

  ‘But as worried as you must have been by the disappearance, you must have been literally terrified when he turned up again in Whitebridge.’

  ‘I didn’t know he’d turned up in Whitebridge.’

  ‘Oh yes you did. One of the tramps we interviewed reported seein’ a man in a blue suit, goin’ round checkin’ on the tramps. DC Beresford thought it must have been a council official. But it wasn’t, was it? It was you. You’d caught sight of Brunel earlier – maybe as you were drivin’ through town – an’ you wanted to find where he’d got to.’

  ‘More lies,’ Lowry said.

  ‘Brunel had come back to Whitebridge to see if anythin’ about the place would jog his memory. And there were things that did just that. He recognized the Engineers’ Arms, for example. And then there was a big expensive Bentley which, accordin’ to his mate Pogo, he seemed particularly fascinated by. That particular car didn’t give him the answer he was lookin’ for. But what if it had been a Rolls-Royce, instead? Then the floodgates might really have opened. And you couldn’t risk that – so Brunel had to die.’

  ‘Is this true?’ Mrs Lowry asked. ‘Did you kill your own brother?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Lowry told her.

  Mrs Lowry rose shakily to her feet. ‘I need … I need to lie down,’ she croaked.

  ‘Help her, Monika,’ Woodend said.

  Paniatowski put an arm around Mrs Lowry’s shoulder and ushered her gently towards the door.

  ‘Well, there’s one person at least who thinks you’re guilty as sin,’ Woodend said, when the two women had gone.

  ‘She’s a confused old woman,’ Lowry said dismissively.

  ‘It’s true she’s old,’ Woodend agreed, ‘though I’d also have to say she seems to me to be far from confused. But to get back to Brunel – the problem was how to kill him, wasn’t it? You could simply have bashed his head in, but then there was a strong chance we’d identify the body, an’ the trail would lead back to you. You could have disposed of the body somewhere it wouldn’t have been found. But it’s a dicey business movin’ bodies around. Lots of things can go wrong, an’ you’d be surprised at the number of killers who’ve been caught while tryin’ to dispose of their victims.’ Woodend paused again, as if a new thought had just struck him. ‘Or maybe you wouldn’t be surprised at all,’ he continued. ‘Maybe you did your research before you finally formulated your plan.’

  ‘I don’t have to sit here and listen to this nonsense,’ Lowry said.

  ‘As a matter of fact, you do. Unless, of course, you’d rather hear it down at police headquarters.’

  ‘Get on with it,’ Lowry said.

  ‘Even if you had managed to dump the body somewhere without gettin’ caught, your problems weren’t over. Because unless you cut it up into tiny little pieces – an’ you don’t strike me as the kind of man who’d have the stomach for that – there was always a chance it would be found eventually, an’ could still be traced back to you. An’ that’s when you hit on the idea of makin’ the body unidentifiable – that’s when you decided to burn him.’

  ‘He wasn’t the only tramp to die in that way,’ Lowry pointed out.

  ‘Of course he wasn’t,’ Woodend agreed. ‘He couldn’t be. You had to find a way of establishing the idea that Brunel hadn’t died because he was Brunel, with all that damaging information in his head – he’d died because he was a tramp. Hence the need for more deaths. An’ that’s when you hit on the idea of using Bazza.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Barry Thornley.’

  ‘Ah, now I see what you’re building this flimsy case of yours on!’ Lowry said. ‘Barry Thornley worked for me – as I discovered when I read about it in the papers.’

  ‘So you’re sayin’ you didn’t know him personally?’

  ‘Of course I didn’t. I have hundreds of people working for me. I may have seen him. I may even have spoken to him – I like to have a few words with all my men from time to time – but I can’t even put a face to the name.’

  ‘Bollocks!’ Woodend said. ‘Scranton liked to address meetings right outside your factory – probably with the specific intention of annoying you – and Bazza liked to attend those meetings. All you had to do was look out of your office window, and you’d have seen straight away that he was the right man for the job you had in mind.’

  ‘The more you say, the more insane you sound,’ Lowry told him.

  ‘So what did you tell Bazza at your first meetin’ with him?’ Woodend mused. ‘That Scranton was only the public face of the BPP, a distraction to hide the fact that the real work was being done by the real leaders, like you, behind the scenes?’

  ‘I hate everything the BPP stands for!’ Lowry said.

  ‘Aye, you probably do,’ Woodend conceded. ‘But we’re not talkin’ about your principles here – we’re talkin’ about your survival instinct. An’ you knew that if you were to survive, you’d have to do whatever was necessary – includin’ pretendin’ to be a rabid racist.’

  ‘I would never …’

  ‘Of course you did, Mr Lowry. All you had to do was say the sort of things that Scranton has been sayin’ outside your factory an’ in the council chamber, an’ Bazza would have been convinced you were the genuine article. An’ once he was convinced, he’d do anythin’ you wanted him to do. He carried out the first attack for you, an’ was all geared up to commit the second an’ third murders when I came along with my insistence on night patrols. You knew that would make the job harder for Bazza, so you tried to talk me out of it. But when I wouldn’t budge, you realized that if you pushed any further, I’d start getting’ suspicious. That’s why findin’ out about DC Beresford must have seemed like a godsend.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You didn’t so much as blink when I mentioned his name earlier, so don’t pretend you don’t know who he is now.’

  ‘I really have no idea …’

  ‘You knew that if Beresford was beaten up, all the bobbies out on the street would rush to his rescue, leavin’ Bazza free to kill Brunel, an’ you free to kill Bazza. An’ please don’t try an’ pretend that the attack on Beresford was all Bazza’s idea, because he didn’
t have the brain for it.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know whether he has the brain or not. As I said …’

  ‘I know – you can’t even put a name to the face.’ Woodend paused to light a cigarette. ‘Of course, Bazza’s really big mistake wasn’t made because he was stupid – it was made because he didn’t really know what was goin’ on.’

  ‘I still have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘The whole scheme only worked as long as the police saw the killings as random. But Bazza didn’t know that was how we were supposed to see it. As far as he was concerned, you an’ he were simply riddin’ the town of vermin. He might have wondered why, when you didn’t care who the first two victims were, you were very specific about the third. But I doubt that, since, as I’ve already said, Bazza wasn’t much of a thinker. Anyway, it was because you kept him in ignorance of the full plan that he set his lads on a tramp called Pogo, who’d been actin’ as Brunel’s unofficial bodyguard. That was what told us that Brunel’s murder wasn’t random at all – an’ that’s when your scheme started to unravel.’

  ‘You can’t prove any of this,’ Lowry said.

  ‘Of course we can. You’ll have made mistakes, because murderers always do. There’ll be some physical evidence to tie you into Bazza’s murder – a footprint at the scene that we can match to shoes in your wardrobe, a splash of petrol on the clothes you were wearin’ at the time. An’ then there’s the money that Bazza spent on his Spanish trip. Our forensic accountants could trace Judas Iscariot’s thirty pieces of silver back to the source – so they’ll have absolutely no problem provin’ that Bazza’s money came from you.’

  For the first time since the interview had started, Lowry smiled. It was a strange smile, one which said that though he knew his career in politics was probably over, and though he accepted that his mother now believed he had killed both his father and his brother, there was still one small victory he could take comfort in.

  ‘To do all you’ve just described, you’ll need search warrants,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I will,’ Woodend agreed.

  ‘You can’t get a search warrant without at least some evidence. And you have no evidence at all.’

  ‘If I can connect you to Barry Thornley …’

  ‘Ah, but that’s just the point! You can’t! Perhaps it’s true, as you say, that I paid for his holiday, but without a search warrant, you’ll never know.’

  ‘When Bazza went to Spain, what we should have asked ourselves was not where he got the money from, but where he got the time from,’ Woodend said.

  ‘The time?’

  ‘He’d already used up all his holiday time for this year. So who gave him permission to take an extra, unscheduled holiday? Well, we both know the answer to that, don’t we? It was his boss! You!’

  ‘He … he told me his mother was sick, and he wanted to look after her,’ Lowry said.

  ‘His mother wasn’t sick, an’ even if she had been, he wouldn’t have asked you for time off, he’d have put in a request to his supervisor.’

  ‘That’s just what he did do, and—’

  ‘No, he didn’t,’ Woodend interrupted. He took Rutter’s letter out of his pocket. ‘The supervisor said, an’ I quote, “You could have knocked me over with a feather when Mr Lowry told me he’d personally decided to give Thornley the time off, because he’s normally such a stickler for goin’ through the proper channels”.’

  ‘He’s mistaken,’ Lowry said weakly.

  ‘An’ he goes on to say, “Mr Lowry was really shaken by Thornley’s death. He told me the lad had him completely fooled with that story about his mother’s illness, an’ if it ever got out, he’d not only be a laughin’ stock, but his kindness might even get him in trouble with the police. So he asked me to keep quiet about it, an’ I agreed”.’

  ‘Lies, all lies,’ Lowry moaned.

  ‘He seems a decent enough feller, an’ out of loyalty to you I doubt he’d ever have said a word about it, unless he was given a good reason why he should,’ Woodend continued. ‘An’ that’s just what Inspector Rutter gave him – a good reason.’

  ‘I … I …’ Tel Lowry gasped.

  ‘A couple of minutes ago, you denied even ever havin’ met the lad, but the truth is that you singled him out – despite the fact that he was only a lowly shop-floor worker – for special treatment. Now if you can produce a satisfactory explanation as to why you did that, then you’re right in what you say – we will never get the warrant. But if you can’t – an’ you know you can’t – then your goose is well an’ truly cooked.’

  Woodend was standing in front of the Old House. One police car, taking Tel Lowry into custody, was just disappearing down the driveway. Several others – containing forensics experts and the officers who would conduct the search – were just arriving.

  It was all over bar the shouting, the chief inspector thought. By nightfall they would have all the evidence they needed.

  If they needed any evidence at all.

  If Tel Lowry – clearly now a broken man – hadn’t spilled his guts and confessed everything by then.

  He saw Paniatowski approaching him, and was shocked by how dreadful she looked.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he asked.

  ‘I’ve just been on the radio to headquarters,’ she said, as tears streamed down her face. ‘They’ve found Bob’s car.’

  ‘What do you mean, they’ve found Bob’s car?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘It … it was at the bottom of a steep drop – and there were two bodies in it,’ Paniatowski sobbed.

  A uniformed constable was standing in the middle of the high moorland road, and when he saw the Wolseley approach­ing, he signalled it to stop.

  Woodend grasped the gear lever as gingerly as he could, but it still hurt like hell. He knew he’d been a fool to insist on driving himself, but Monika had been in no state to do it – no state even to come with him – and on this particular journey, she was the only one he’d have wanted to have by his side.

  He came to a halt, and the constable walked over to the car.

  ‘I’m afraid you can’t go beyond this point, sir,’ he said, when Woodend had wound down his window. ‘There’s been a major accident ahead, and the road’s closed.’

  The chief inspector flashed his warrant card, held ­clumsily in his bandaged hand. ‘I know there’s been an accident,’ he said. ‘An’ one of my lads is in it.’

  ‘Sorry, sir, didn’t realize,’ the constable said. ‘It’s about another half-mile further up the road.’

  I know that an’ all, Woodend thought, as he pulled away. We’ve picnicked at that spot – me, Joan an’ Annie – an’ it’s one hell of a drop.

  Yet even now, he had not quite given up hope. Maybe the people in the car were not dead, but just badly injured. And even if they were dead, that didn’t necessarily mean that one of them had to be Bob. Why would he drive around in his own cheap little car, when he could be behind the wheel of Elizabeth Driver’s beautiful Jag? Wasn’t it more than likely that he’d simply lent his car to somebody else?

  He turned the bend, and the whole scene was laid out in front of him. There were five vehicles there – two police cars, one Land Rover, a heavy lorry with a crane on its back, and an ambulance.

  The lorry was parked close to the edge of the drop, and was working hard at pulling the car back up the steep slope down which it had plunged. The ambulance men were loading two stretchers into the ambulance. The people lying on them had their faces covered.

  Woodend slammed on his brakes and opened the door, but before he could get out, he found his way blocked by Dr Shastri.

  ‘Don’t, Charlie,’ the doctor said.

  ‘Is it …?’ Woodend began, then found himself completely unable to finish the sentence.

  Dr Shastri nodded. ‘Yes, I’m afraid it is Inspector Rutter on that stretcher, and yes, I’m afraid he’s dead.’

  ‘I want to see him,’ Woodend said.

  ‘You can’t,’ Dr S
hastri said firmly. ‘Not now. You may view him at the undertaker’s.’

  ‘Damn it, woman, he was my lad!’ Woodend exploded.

  ‘And now he is in my care, and I will not permit you to see him,’ Dr Shastri replied.

  ‘Why?’ Woodend asked. ‘Is he horribly disfigured or somethin’?’

  ‘No. His chest was crushed and his neck was broken, but there was very little damage to his face. Nonetheless, I have decided that you will not see him yet, and that is that.’

  Aye, Woodend thought, if Shastri said so, that was that.

  Epilogue

  They buried Bob Rutter the following Wednesday, in the same grave as his wife.

  There was an official wake, held in the Crown and Anchor – a pub which specialized in catering for policemen out on the razzle – and it was attended by most of the members of the Force not actually on duty, as well as a fair smattering of those who were.

  Woodend, Paniatowski and a wheelchair-bound Beresford made a brief appearance at the Crown for form’s sake, but, as far as they were concerned, there was only one place to properly drink to Rutter’s memory – and that was where they went.

  Once they were established at their usual table in the Drum and Monkey they talked their way through Rutter’s career – his many triumphs and his occasional failures.

  ‘He was a bloody good bobby,’ Woodend said, summing it all up. ‘One of the best. He was maybe a bit patchy in the last few weeks of his life, but he came up trumps in the end.’

  Yes, Paniatowski and Beresford agreed, he had definitely come up trumps in the end.

  ‘Did I ever tell you the story about how he had to fly to Germany, in connection with the Dark Lady case?’ Woodend asked.

  No, the other two said, he hadn’t.

  ‘Well, you see, what I didn’t know at the time was that—’

  ‘How did it happen?’ Paniatowski interrupted. ‘He was a good driver, so how the bloody hell did it happen?’

  It was a question they’d all been secretly wondering about, Woodend thought, and it was typical of Monika that she’d been the one with the balls to bring it out into the open.