Dying in the Dark

by Sally Spencer

  Doyle thought about it for a moment. ‘Mr Higson comes down the workshop now an’ again,’ he said finally, ‘an’ when he does he usually brings – he usually brought – Pamela with him to take notes. Well, you’ve never seen such a little mouse as Pamela when she was trailin’ in the boss’s wake. Doormat? She was more like a mud-scraper.’

  ‘But there were other occasions …’ Woodend prompted.

  ‘She went out with one of my lads – young Malcolm Shirtcliffe – for a while an’—’

  ‘Mrs Higson told me Pamela had nothin’ to do with the shop-floor workers,’ Woodend interrupted.

  ‘An’ no doubt she believes it,’ Doyle countered. ‘But how many bosses really know what’s goin’ on in the private lives of the people they’ve got workin’ for them?’

  ‘True,’ Woodend agreed.

  ‘Anyway, as I was sayin’, she went with Malcolm, an’ she was a real fire-breather to him. The poor lad never looked happy all the time they were seein’ each other. Mind you, it was even worse when she broke it off. He was destroyed. In the end, he went an’ took one of them assisted passages to Australia. I can only hope he found an angel waitin’ for him there. Goodness knows, he deserves it, after what Pamela put him through.’

  ‘You didn’t like her much, did you?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘Oh, it probably wasn’t her fault,’ Doyle said hastily.

  ‘I’ve never understood people who say that you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead,’ Woodend told him. ‘Dyin’ doesn’t suddenly turn an arsehole into a saint. The fact that somebody’s gone doesn’t suddenly mean they didn’t do harm while they were here.’

  ‘You misunderstand me,’ Doyle protested. ‘I said it probably wasn’t her fault, an’ I meant it.’

  ‘Then who’s fault was it?’

  ‘Nobody’s I suppose. Unless you’re keen on blamin’ God or nature – an’ neither of them’s ever done any harm to me. You see, there are some lads you meet who are so soft an’ gentle that you can just tell they’d have been happier if they’d been born girls. An’ there are some women – even nice-lookin’ ones like Pamela – who’d have been much better adjusted in life if they’d come out of their mothers’ bellies with somethin’ hangin’ between their legs.’

  ‘You’re a philosopher, Mr Doyle,’ Woodend said.

  ‘I’m an upholsterer, Mr Woodend,’ the little man replied.

  Woodend looked around at Doyle’s elves again. ‘What’s that he’s usin’?’ he asked, pointing to one of the workers who was bent over a chesterfield.

  ‘It’s special adhesive tape,’ Doyle said. ‘We use it to hold pieces of wood together while we’re workin’ on them. The advantage of it is, you see, that when we strip it off again, it doesn’t leave any marks.’

  ‘Could you spare me a roll?’ Woodend asked.

  Doyle grinned again. ‘You should never try fixin’ things yourself, you know,’ he said. ‘Leave it to the craftsmen. That’s what we’re here for.’

  ‘I really would appreciate it,’ Woodend said.

  ‘All right, if that’s what you want,’ Doyle agreed cheerfully. ‘But don’t blame me if your sofa collapses when you’re havin’ a bit of downstairs how’s-your-father with your missus.’

  As Woodend walked towards the door, the tape in his hand, he realized he was now more focused on the case than he had been at any point since Bob Rutter was taken in for questioning.

  ‘Special adhesive tape’, Doyle had called it. It was strong enough to hold two heavy pieces of wood firmly together, yet could be stripped off without doing any visible damage. Ideal for furniture making – and ideal for immobilizing and gagging your victim while you tortured her.

  He paused near the doorway, to examine a row of tools hanging on a rack. Some – like the tack hammers and chisels – he recognized, but others were so specialized that he had no idea what they were used for. But at least half of them could have been used for the terrible things that were done to Pamela Rainsford.

  Monika Paniatowski put the diary into the glove compartment of her MGA. Under normal circumstances, she thought, she would have taken it straight back to Woodend. But these were not normal circumstances, were they? Since the diary didn’t relate to the Maria Rutter murder, it would be of very little interest to the man who had taught her almost all she knew about detection – and now seemed to have forgotten most of those rules himself.

  So what should she do? She would drive out on to the moors, she decided, park in a wild, elemental spot, and study the dark secrets of Pamela’s diary in seclusion.

  She was on the point of turning the key in the ignition when she noticed the curtain twitch in the flat below Pamela’s. A nosy neighbour! Every investigating officer’s dream. Paniatowski got out of her car, and marched up to the downstairs’ neighbour’s front door.

  The woman who answered her knock was in her mid-sixties. She was wearing a padded housecoat and huge, fluffy slippers. Her hair was set in a tight, blue-rinsed perm, and the edges of her mouth were turned down in a permanently dissatisfied expression.

  ‘Are you the police?’ she asked.

  ‘Not all of it,’ Paniatowski replied, with a smile. ‘There are a couple of fellers who help me out now and again.’

  The woman did not return the smile. ‘I don’t like people using the term “fellers”,’ she said. ‘You should have called them “gentlemen”. That’s the proper thing to say. Do you have a warrant card?’

  Paniatowski produced it. ‘Could you tell me your name, please?’ she asked, as she held it out.

  ‘I’m Mrs Walton,’ the woman said. She examined the warrant card carefully, but did not look impressed.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘A sergeant!’ Mrs Walters said disdainfully. ‘I would have thought they’d have sent a much more senior officer to talk to me.’

  ‘I’m just here to do the preliminary work. My boss’ll be along later,’ Paniatowski lied.

  ‘You should not refer to him as your “boss”,’ Mrs Walters rebuked her. ‘That’s common. The correct term is “superior”.’

  ‘My superior will be round later,’ Paniatowski said. ‘In the meantime, I was wondering if you could spare me a few minutes of your valuable time.’

  Mrs Walters hovered between the desire to give the impression of having a full social calendar and the urge to have someone to talk to. The latter won. ‘If you would like to accompany me into my withdrawing room, I believe I can accommodate you,’ she said.

  The front parlour was as close to looking like a room from the pages of Country Life as could be managed on a limited budget and in a limited space. The sofa was large, and far too bucolic for a ground-floor flat in a declining neighbourhood. The hunting prints on the wall would have looked more at home in a pub lounge. Paniatowski searched in vain for a mounted stag’s head on the wall, and – since Mrs Walters would not have appreciated it if she’d suddenly burst out laughing – was quite relieved that she didn’t find one.

  Mrs Walters gestured her to a seat. ‘No doubt you are wondering why I choose to live here,’ she said.

  ‘No, I—’ Paniatowski began.

  But it was only the sound of her own voice that Mrs Walters was interested in hearing.

  ‘I did have a little place in the country,’ she said. ‘Nothing too grand, you understand, though the neighbours were kind enough to say that it was charming. But, alas, things have gone completely downhill since the war. The government seems determined to make the better class of person pay through the nose, in order that the dregs of society can live in luxury, and I was forced to abandon my lovely home and move here.’

  ‘It must have been a bit of a trial for you,’ Paniatowski said, with mock sympathy.

  ‘It was a great trial,’ Mrs Walters corrected her. ‘But I make the best of it, as I was brought up to do. I keep myself to myself, and avoid the riff-raff who live around me as much as possible.’

  ‘Would you describe Pamela
Rainsford as one of the riffraff?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘I would use quite another word for her,’ Mrs Walters said severely. ‘One that I would never even dream of voicing out loud.’

  ‘Could you give me a little clue as to what that word might be?’ Paniatowski wondered.

  ‘I met the late Mr Walters at church,’ the other woman said. ‘For the first six months of our acquaintanceship, we were never alone. And when we did finally decide to walk out together, Mr Walters – always a gentleman – came to our house to ask my father’s permission first.’

  ‘That wouldn’t have worked in this case. Pamela Rainsford didn’t live with her family,’ Paniatowski pointed out.

  ‘I used to know any number of young men who went out to work in the colonies,’ Mrs Walters said. ‘They told me that even when they were in the depths of the jungle, with no one but a servant to attend on them, they would still dress formally for dinner.’

  ‘What’s your point, exactly?’

  ‘That there is never any excuse for letting your standards slip, whatever circumstances you find yourself in. Not that I suppose Miss Rainsford had any standards in the first place. When I lived in the country, I saw bitches on heat show more restraint.’

  ‘She had a lot of boyfriends, did she?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘A positive stream of them. They were always calling for her. Not that they went to her front door to call, of course. That would have been a far too gentlemanly thing to do. No, they sat in their cars on the street and hooted their horns – not caring who they disturbed.’

  ‘Did she ever take them upstairs?’ Paniatowski wondered.

  ‘She most certainly did not take them upstairs! Even she was not quite as shameless as that!’

  Or to put it another way, she much preferred to lose all restraint in places where there was a risk of getting caught, Paniatowski thought.

  ‘Could you tell me anything about her last boyfriend?’ she asked aloud. ‘The one she was seeing just before she died?’

  A look of grave distaste came to Mrs Walters face. ‘It wasn’t a man at all,’ she said. ‘It was a woman!’

  Who’s to say the killer was a man? Woodend had asked. Why couldn’t it have been a woman?

  ‘Could you describe this woman to me?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘No, I could not. She stayed in the car, just as all the men had. Made Miss Rainsford come to her. No respect! Not that I necessarily believe the baggage from upstairs deserved any respect.’

  ‘You knew she was a woman,’ Paniatowski prodded, ‘so you must have seen something of her.’

  ‘I may have caught just a quick glimpse of her,’ Mrs Walters reluctantly agreed.

  ‘So what did you see?’

  ‘She had long blonde hair. No natural blonde, of course. That would have been too much to expect.’

  ‘Then what colour was it, exactly?’

  ‘It was what I believe is called “platinum” blonde – like those cheap American film actresses used to have.’

  ‘There’s just one thing about what you’ve said that I don’t quite understand,’ Paniatowski confessed.

  ‘And what might that be?’

  ‘From the way that you talk you seem to assume she was Pamela’s girlfriend.’

  ‘And that’s a polite way of putting it,’ Mrs Walters said.

  ‘But why couldn’t she just have been Pamela’s girl friend?’

  ‘Girl friends don’t kiss,’ Mrs Walters said.

  ‘Actually, they do,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Not in the way that they did,’ Mrs Walters insisted. ‘It wasn’t just a peck on the cheek with them. They went at it hammer and tongues. It seemed to last forever. I was so disgusted I can hardly bear to look.’

  Twenty-Two

  Woodend was just draining his first pint when the phone rang behind the bar of the Drum and Monkey. It could have been absolutely anyone, calling about absolutely anything, but his instincts told him it was for him, and by the time Jack the landlord glanced across the counter to see if he was at his usual table, he’d already got out of his seat.

  ‘Woodend!’ he said, into the phone.

  ‘Go to Melton’s Garage,’ a vaguely familiar voice on the other end of the line said.

  ‘Now why should I want to do that?’ Woodend wondered.

  ‘Ask them about the spot of trouble they’ve been having with their new Cortina GTs.’

  ‘Who is this?’ Woodend demanded.

  ‘Say you want to look at the service records for any recent work they’ve done.’

  ‘An’ what good will that do me?’

  ‘If you’re even half as good as they say you are, you should be able to work that out for yourself, sir.’

  Sir? Woodend repeated in his mind. Sir?

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked. ‘Are you a bobby?’

  But the line had already gone dead.

  Melton’s Garage was located just off the Whitebridge bypass. It was very much one of the ‘new’ businesses – a combination of car salesroom and workshop – which had sprung up in the previous ten years, as motor cars had made the transition from luxury to necessity. A large sign on the forecourt proudly proclaimed that it was an official Ford dealer.

  When Woodend arrived, the salesroom had closed for the day and the workshop was very definitely shuttered, but there was still a light burning in the office. When he knocked on the office door, a voice from the other side of the door called out, ‘Bugger off! We’re closed.’

  Woodend turned the handle. The door was not locked. He pushed it open and entered the office.

  The man seated at the desk was in his late forties. He was wearing a loud check suit, and had a thin moustache of the kind that spivs sported at the end of the War.

  He glared at the new arrival. ‘What’s your problem?’ he demanded. ‘Are you deaf – or just thick?’

  ‘I rather like to flatter myself that I’m neither,’ Woodend said, producing his warrant card.

  The man examined the card carefully. ‘Oh, I say, a chief inspector!’ he said, his voice losing some of his irritation. ‘We are honoured!’

  ‘Would you mind tellin’ me who I’m talkin’ to?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind at all. I’m Paul Melton, of Melton’s Motors, provider of quality, reliable vehicles to the cream of Whitebridge society. Or to put it another way, if the buggers who come in here can just about scrape together the deposit, I’ll sell them the motor.’

  Woodend grinned. ‘You don’t seem to be exactly encouraging new customers.’

  ‘I’ve no need to. To tell you the truth, I’ve got more work than I can handle. There’s a waiting list for the new Cortina GT, and some of the impatient sods on it are ringing me up every single bloody day, demanding to know if their wheels are here yet.’

  ‘Good car, is it?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘Good car? It’s a bloody great car!’ Melton said enthusiastically.

  ‘That’s funny,’ Woodend said.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Well, somebody I’ve just been talkin’ to led me to believe you’ve had to do a lot of remedial work on these new models recently.’

  ‘Oh, that!’ Melton said dismissively.

  ‘That,’ Woodend agreed.

  ‘I wouldn’t call it “a lot” of work. The new model had a bit of teething trouble, that’s all.’

  ‘What kind of teething trouble?’

  ‘A slight technical hitch in the gubbins.’

  Woodend grinned again. ‘Well, that’s certainly made it clear enough,’ he said.

  ‘Look, there’s no point in askin’ me about technical matters,’ Melton said. ‘I drive the cars and I sell the cars, but I leave my grease monkeys to work out what’s going on under the bonnet. Anyway, as I said, it turned out there was this itsy-bitsy problem.’

  ‘They were worried the wheels might fall off or somethin’?’ Woodend suggested.

  Melton looked horrified. ‘Nothing like that!’ he p
rotested. ‘Nothing to do with safety at all. There was just a slight adjustment which needed to be made in order to ensure driver convenience. A piffling little job, really. Didn’t take my lads more than a couple of hours to put it right on each vehicle, and when the customers drove them away again, they were as pleased as punch.’

  ‘Was Bob Rutter one of those customers?’

  Melton pursed his brow. ‘Rutter?’ he repeated. ‘Rutter? That name sounds familiar. Wait a minute! Are we talking about Inspector Rutter? The man who was arrested for murdering his wife?’

  ‘We’re talking about the Inspector Rutter who’s helping the police with their inquiries into the murder of his wife.’

  Melton grinned. ‘Oh I get it,’ he said, winking. ‘Official terminology. We use a lot of that in the motor trade. Helps to confuse the punters.’

  ‘Is he one of those customers?’ Woodend repeated.

  ‘Yes, I think I do remember him now. Late twenties, early thirties? Dark hair? Snappy dresser?’

  ‘That’s him,’ Woodend agreed.

  ‘He didn’t say he was a policeman – well, you don’t do you, it makes people feel uncomfortable – so I didn’t connect him to the feller who’d topped his wife.’ Melton paused, then grinned again. ‘Sorry, I didn’t connect him with the feller who’s helping the police with their inquiries.’

  ‘Was his car in for one of these revisions of yours?’

  ‘Definitely. Unless my memory fails me, he’d only had the vehicle for a matter of days.’ Melton swivelled on his chair, opened a drawer in the filing cabinet, and extracted a file. ‘That’s it. Said he couldn’t be without a car, because he needed it for work, so out of the goodness of my heart I lent him one of my old bangers while his was being fixed.’

  ‘When exactly was this?’

  ‘Day before yesterday. Brought his Cortina in first thing in the morning, picked it up the same evening.’

  ‘What time?’ Woodend demanded.

  Melton consulted the file again. ‘Signed for it at half eight.’

  Woodend glanced at his watch. ‘It’s just after half eight now, and you’re closed,’ he said.