He is sitting in the narrow strip of dirt between the end of the asphalt and the fence which separates the school from the street. He has his head pressed down on his knees, and he is softly sobbing to himself. He cannot have been there long, but to him, it feels like a lifetime.
Someone touches him on the shoulder. He looks up, and sees William standing there.
‘What’s the matter?’ William asks.
‘Phil Briggs has been picking on me again. He’s always hitting me.’
‘Then I’ll go and put a stop to it. I’ll hit him so hard he won’t dare go near you again.’
‘But he’s a lot bigger than you.’
‘That doesn’t matter.’
‘Thank you,’ Roger says.
‘That’s what friends are for,’ William tells him, ‘but before I do that, you’ll have to do something for me.’
‘What?’
William looks around, and sees a beetle rummaging in the dirt. He scoops it up in his hand.
‘Eat this,’ he said, holding the panicking insect level with Roger’s mouth.
‘Why?’
‘To prove you’re my friend, just like I’ll be proving I’m your friend by beating up Phil.’
‘Couldn’t I do something else?’
‘No, you have to eat the beetle.’
‘Can I kill it first?’
‘No, you have to eat it alive.’
He takes the beetle from William, and puts it in his mouth. He can feel it wriggling as it searches for a way to escape this damp cavern which has suddenly enclosed it.
He bites into the beetle, and it stops struggling, but now his mouth is filled with a bitter, foul juice.
He swallows. The beetle goes down, but he knows it will not stay down, because he is about to be sick.
‘Don’t throw up,’ William warns him. ‘If you throw up, it doesn’t count.’
Somehow, he manages to avoid vomiting, and after a minute or so, all is left of the experience is a vile taste which will linger for days.
William nods his head, satisfied.
‘Right, now I’ll give Phil Briggs a real good hammering,’ he says.
He doesn’t succeed on the first day – in fact, he gets a good hammering himself – nor on the second, but on the third, he does manage to knock Briggs down, and he has won this battle, as he will win many in the future.
The playground recedes, and Lucas is back in the Danburys’ living room.
They both passed the test of friendship that day, he thinks, but the difference was that William did it by being heroic, whereas he had done it by humiliating himself.
Jane still has her back to him. She was right when she said he would never dare tell William that Melanie was his daughter, he realises.
But why did she have to say it out loud?
They had both known – deep inside themselves – that he would be too frightened, but until she had put it into words, he, at least, had been able to pretend that he wouldn’t.
He feels as humiliated as he did back in that playground, all those years ago – he can almost taste the beetle in his mouth – and it is all Jane’s fault.
He sees the statue on the mantelpiece, and almost before he knows what is happening, it is in his hand.
‘I asked you why you killed her,’ says a voice which has no place in his own personal tragedy, and which drags him back to the present.
‘Why did I kill her?’ Lucas asked Paniatowski. ‘I killed her out of kindness. For years, I’ve been protecting her from William as far as I was able, but once she was in Canada, she’d have been on her own. It was better for her to die then than to endure more years of misery.’
Paniatowski didn’t believe it. He didn’t believe it himself, she thought, but give it a little time and he would persuade himself it was true. Give it a little time, and he would finally see himself as a hero.
‘If you hadn’t made one careless mistake, you might just have got away with it,’ she said.
Then she sat back and waited.
Almost a minute passed before Lucas said, ‘And what mistake was that?’
‘You needed us to think Melanie was William’s child, so you changed the blood group on his medical record.’
‘Yes, I did. So what?’
‘Once we’d had William’s blood sample analysed, we knew that the medical record had been changed.’
‘I always knew there was a risk you’d take a sample of his blood and make the comparison, but what choice did I have?’
‘You could have left his record alone, and changed Melanie’s so it matched our sample.’
‘I thought I was being so clever – but, you’re right, that’s what I should have done,’ Lucas said, in a voice which mingled anger with disgust at his own stupidity.
Then, suddenly, he seemed to cheer up again.
‘It will have to come out at the trial – or maybe even sooner – won’t it?’ he asked.
‘What will have to come out?’
‘The fact that Melanie isn’t William’s daughter at all, but mine.’
‘Yes, that will have to come out,’ Paniatowski agreed.
A broad smile – a look of pure happiness – came to Lucas’ face.
‘William won’t like that,’ he said. ‘He won’t like it at all.’
THIRTEEN
Tuesday, 1lth October 1977
The wind had changed direction, and the purple heather, which had been waving towards Whitebridge for the previous hour, had turned its back on the old mill town and was now favouring the lands further north.
William Danbury, dressed in wellington boots, thick trousers and a heavy combat jacket, strode through the heather in search of small animals whose lives he could terminate.
He was carrying a Purdey shotgun. He had purchased it, second-hand, from a local aristocrat down on his luck, but even so, it had cost him an arm and a leg.
He hadn’t bought the gun for himself, it had been intended as a gift for his father, but Archie Danbury would have none of it.
‘It’s not the gun in front of the man which matters,’ he had said dismissively, ‘it’s the man behind the gun. So you keep it, and then maybe someday …’
Maybe someday you’ll be as good as I am, he had meant.
He was always doing that, the old man – leaving thoughts unsaid, but nevertheless clear enough.
He had never been able to truly please his father, Danbury thought. However hard he’d tried, he had somehow always managed to fall short.
He could imagine what his father would have said if he’d known what he himself knew now.
‘Cuckolded by a weed like Roger Lucas! You should be ashamed of yourself. Do you think your mother would ever have had an affair behind my back? No, she wouldn’t have dared.’
‘No, Dad, but she dared to blow you to pieces with your own shotgun,’ he said into the wind.
Yet, in a way, that only proved his father’s case. His mother had recognised that his father was so much of a man that there could be no half-measures – that if she was going to defy him in any way, she must also completely destroy him.
His own wife, on the other hand, had felt free to humiliate him – admittedly, only in secret, but it was still a humiliation – and that was more his failure than it was hers.
How they would laugh, those rugby players who had so admired him, those fresh-faced members of the Boys’ Brigade who had wanted to be just like him when they grew up.
His wife had betrayed him with his dupe – his clown – and no one who knew him would ever forget it.
Worse yet, his own sons would be bound to learn about it eventually, and when they did, they would snigger behind his back.
His thoughts shifted to Ernest Hemingway. Now there was a real man, he told himself. Hemingway had driven an ambulance in the Spanish Civil War. Hemingway had caught big fish, and shot huge, strong creatures. Even his father had approved of Hemingway.
He turned to look back at the town in which he had
once been a presence, and was now no more than a joke.
Well, what was good enough for Papa Hemingway was good enough for him, he thought.
His gun was already loaded and cocked. He put the barrel in his mouth, and pulled the trigger.
It was early evening, and in the public bar of the Drum and Monkey, Monika Paniatowski was having a quick drink with her team before going home to her children.
Not that she was likely to have a team for much longer, she thought, because she had made enemies on the police authority, and that was the kiss of death for most careers. They wouldn’t sack her, of course – they had no grounds for that – but they would get her pushed into traffic or administration, so that instead of a quick execution, she would be forced to endure a living death.
The door opened, and Alderman Cudlip entered the bar. He looked around, located Paniatowski’s table, and made a beeline for it.
‘Trouble,’ Meadows said.
‘You’re not wrong,’ Paniatowski agreed.
Cudlip arrived at the table. ‘I’d like a quiet word with DCI Paniatowski, if you don’t mind,’ he said to the rest of the team.
They didn’t mind. When the chairman of the police authority asked you to clear off, it was wisest not to mind – even if you did.
Cudlip waited until Beresford, Meadows and Crane had gone over to the bar, then he sat down.
‘Can I get you a drink?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘No, thank you, I’m not intending to be here long enough for that,’ Cudlip said. ‘You’ll have heard what happened to William Danbury, won’t you?’
And so it begins, Paniatowski thought. As far as Cudlip is concerned, I not only arrested Danbury for a crime he obviously hadn’t committed, but also refused to release him even when the police authority practically begged me to. The strain that put on him was so great that he took his own life – and that makes it my fault.
‘Yes, I’ve heard,’ she said.
‘I want you to know that when we came to see you, it was because we were genuinely concerned about William’s children. I’d like you to believe that.’
‘I do believe it,’ Paniatowski said, ‘but you were also there because one of your own was not getting the privileged treatment you thought he was entitled to.’
‘Aye, there may have been a bit of that behind it, as well,’ Cudlip conceded. He paused. ‘You were right about him, you know.’
‘What!’
‘I said you were right about him.’
‘I was totally wrong – he didn’t kill his wife.’
‘That’s as maybe, but you were right that he was a coward and a bully.’
‘I never said that – at least, not to you.’
‘You might not have said it, but I could read it in your every word and gesture,’ Cudlip said. ‘You’ll hear a lot of people expressing a lot of sympathy for William Danbury in the next few days, but you won’t hear any from me. A man who blows off his own head, and leaves his little children to fend for themselves, is no kind of man at all, in my book.’
Cudlip stood up.
‘I’m a traditionalist, chief inspector. I don’t like to see a woman doing a man’s job, especially when that woman is as bloody-minded as you are, so I think it’s more than likely that we’ll lock horns again, and maybe next time I’ll do my damnedest to see you get shifted into a job which is more suitable to your sex. But that’s next time. This time, I’m here to tell you, you’re off the hook as far as I’m concerned.’ He gestured to the team that they could now return to the table. ‘I’ll see you around, Detective Chief Inspector Paniatowski,’ he said.
‘I’m sure you will, Alderman Cudlip,’ Paniatowski agreed.
EPILOGUE
Monday 5th December 1977
It had snowed overnight, and the speed of Beresford’s journey from Whitebridge to Preston had been determined by the maddeningly slow snow plough he was following. But he had made it in the end, and now he sat in Preston Crown Court, listening to the closing stages of Regina v. Ethel Danbury.
Monika has been lucky with her crusade, he thought. Reginald Holloway, who had secretly buried one of his children in order to protect the other four, had been given the suspended sentence which his boss had argued was merited.
His own crusade had fared less well. Despite the story he had concocted for her, Ethel had been charged with her husband’s murder, and now stood in the dock, soon to hear the verdict of her peers.
The Crown had presented a very good case, and perhaps the strongest evidence against Ethel had been delivered by the medical experts. It would have been impossible, they all agreed, for Archie Danbury to have moved more than minimally after he had been shot in the chest. Therefore, it followed that he no longer posed a threat to his wife. Therefore, her claim, that she only shot him in the head because she was in fear for her life, was simply not true. And finally, therefore, the jury had no alternative but to bring in a verdict of murder.
And as much as I like and pity her, if I was on that jury, that would be my verdict, too, Beresford thought miserably.
The counsel for the defence, Rodney Harding QC, was on his feet and was making his closing remarks to the jury.
‘Ethel Danbury has suffered a lifetime of abuse,’ Harding said. ‘You have heard that her husband branded her with a hot iron when she singed his shirt. You have heard that he beat her – brutally and regularly. Is it any wonder, then, that she was in fear for her life?’
But none of that mattered, Beresford thought – because she wasn’t in fear for her life when she shot him in the head.
‘You have heard the prosecution’s medical experts say he could not have posed any threat once he had been shot in the chest,’ Harding continued, ‘but what they should have said is that it was unlikely he could have posed such a threat. Every day, in the newspapers, we read of extraordinary physical feats which astound medical science. Frail women who find the strength to lift up cars in order to release their babies trapped underneath. Explorers, speared by hostile natives, who nevertheless manage to walk hundreds of miles through harsh jungles – with the spears still sticking in them. I could list countless other examples, but there is no need to. The point is that Archie Danbury could have started to get to his feet, and Ethel Danbury could have felt threatened. There is an element of doubt here, ladies and gentlemen of the jury – and where there is doubt, there can be no conviction.’
It was a noble effort, Beresford thought, but the jury simply weren’t buying it. They wanted to let Ethel off – that was obvious from their faces – but unless Harding gave them something more, they could not, in all conscience, reach any verdict other than guilty. And the problem was that Harding had shot his bolt, and there was nothing more he could give.
‘Finally, you must ask yourself whether Ethel Danbury could kill in cold blood,’ the barrister continued. ‘This is a woman who, as anyone who knows her will tell you, has a heart of gold. This is a woman who, if she were found not guilty, would gladly bring up her three grandchildren – one of whom is not even a blood relative – as her own, rather than see them abandoned to an orphanage …’
The prosecutor was on his feet, outraged, but his intervention was unnecessary, since the judge already had the matter in hand.
‘Mr Harding!’ he said sternly. ‘Mr Harding! You are on the verge of contempt of court.’
Harding looked suitably contrite. ‘I apologise, your honour,’ he said, ‘my last comment was totally inappropriate, and I withdraw it unreservedly.’
The judge turned to the jury.
‘You have heard what Mr Harding just said. He withdraws his comment unreservedly. And rightly so, because what Mrs Danbury would, or would not, do if she was found not guilty of the crime with which she is charged is totally irrelevant to these proceedings. Therefore, I am instructing you to disregard the comment, and to let it play no part in your deliberations.’
There was no chance of that, Beresford thought happily, just as there wasn’t a chance
in hell now that this jury would ever find Ethel Danbury guilty.
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