Monika Paniatowski made good time on the first stretch of her journey, thanks mainly to using the recently opened M6 motorway. But the going was considerably slower after she left it, and by the time she was clear of central Birmingham she was already well behind the schedule she had set herself.
Not that it really mattered, she thought, as she cut across country to join the busy A6. A schedule only had real significance when it was leading towards a definite aim, and she had no more than the vaguest idea of what she would do once she reached London.
Perhaps the whole idea of travelling down to the capital was crazy, she pondered, as her foot pressed down more heavily on the accelerator pedal and her eyes scanned the near distance for signs of police traffic vehicles waiting in ambush for drivers like her.
But what other choice did she have than to go down to London? None at all! Because she was tired of playing by the rules that no one had bothered to explain to her, in a game where she did not even know what the prize was.
She had learned a great deal from working with Cloggin’-it Charlie Woodend, and one of the most important lessons had been that to look at the present without also examining the past was like treating a photograph as if it were a living person.
Nobody came without a personal history. And it was that history which made them the kind of people they were, and determined how they would react in any particular situation. Which was why it was pointless to pretend, as Horrocks seemed to be doing, that Verity Beale simply had no past – that she had suddenly appeared in Lancashire, a few months earlier, already fully-formed.
Or perhaps he didn’t really think that at all, she told herself. Perhaps he only wanted her to think that – was trying to con her into believing that one snapshot in the life of Verity Beale was the whole picture.
Well, if that was the way his mind was working, he was in for a shock. Because she was not the kind of detective to spend her time feeding her brain with dusty library files while there was a chance to sink her teeth into the juicy meat of real evidence.
Twenty-Eight
The air in Bob Rutter’s office was thick with the smell of cigarette smoke and desperation.
‘Why would he do it?’ Woodend asked anguishedly. ‘Has all the pressure he’s been under tipped him over the edge? Has he gone completely insane? Because if he hasn’t, I just can’t see what the hell he thinks he’ll get out of it.’
‘You’re certain you’re right about him?’ Rutter asked cautiously. ‘You’re absolutely sure that there couldn’t be some other rational explanation for the pencil case?’
‘I’d like there to be,’ Woodend confessed. ‘Honest to God, I would. But I can’t think of one. Can you?’
‘No,’ Rutter answered. ‘No, I can’t.’
‘So he has to be the one, doesn’t he?’
The sound of the phone ringing made both of them jump like frightened rabbits. Rutter reached for it. ‘Yes?’ he said. ‘Oh, hello, Hans. How are you?’ He covered the mouthpiece with his hand. ‘Inspector Kohl,’ he told Woodend. ‘He says he’s got something interesting for us.’
The chief inspector nodded, and found himself wishing that the British police could be half as efficient as the Germans seemed to be.
‘Yes?’ Rutter said into the phone. ‘Yes, I see . . . You’re sure of that? . . . What? . . . You’ve seen the reports yourself?’
The conversation lasted for three or four minutes, and when Rutter finally put the phone down, his face was grim.
‘Even before the base commander reported Janice Dunn’s death to them, the German police already had a file on her,’ he said.
‘A file? On a kid? What, in God’s name, for?’
‘She’d made friends with some German lads who were just a bit older than she was. One of them stole a car, and they all went off for a joyride. Naturally, Germany being Germany, they were caught before they’d gone more than a couple of miles.’
‘An’ what did the German police do about it?’
‘Very little. It was a first offence for the boy who’d stolen the car, and anyway, from what Hans hinted, his father was somebody quite important in local government. As for the rest of them, it was never clearly established that they even knew the car was stolen, so they all got off with a slap on the wrist.’
‘An’ a file on them.’
‘And a file on them,’ Rutter agreed.
‘But did Reginald Dunn find out about it?’
‘Oh, yes. All the parents were informed.’
It was all starting to make sense, Woodend thought – though the sense it was making was sickening him deep down in the pit of his stomach. ‘Did Kohl tell you the details of Janice’s death?’ he asked.
‘Yes, he did. She was quite a strong swimmer, apparently. She’d won some local competitions, and was in training for a regional contest. She did her training at the indoor pool on the base, but, of course, she could only do that when there was somebody qualified on duty to supervise her.’
‘Naturally.’
‘The story is that she felt she needed more practice than she was getting, and so, one night, she went to the pool alone.’
‘Why wasn’t it locked up?’
‘The man in charge swears that it was.’
‘Then how did she get in?’
‘That’s never been satisfactorily established. Anyway, the point is that when she failed to go home at the time she was supposed to, the Dunns raised the alarm. They searched everywhere, including the town outside the base. But, of course, nobody thought to check the swimming pool. They found her the next morning, when they opened up for business. The general opinion seems to be that she got cramp when she was halfway across the pool.’
‘The man’s a monster!’ Woodend groaned.
‘You really think he killed his own daughter?’
‘I don’t want to, but look at the facts. Reginald Dunn’s just about the most ambitious man I’ve ever met in my life. Worse than that – he’s convinced himself that it’s not a personal ambition which is drivin’ him – that he only wants to do well for the good of his country. He went into marriage like a medieval prince––’
‘What do you mean by that, sir?’
‘He married into the right kind of family – an RAF family. An’ I don’t think that’s done him any harm. He’s already a squadron leader, an’ is all set to move up to wing commander, especially if the war he’s been praying for actually comes to pass. Probably havin’ a family was part of the plan, too. It gives him stability – makes him look like the kind of man you can rely on. But that’s where things started to go wrong for him. He wanted his daughters to shine, because the credit would be bound to reflect on him. But then Janice went off the rails. It was only joyriding in a stolen car the first time, but who was to say where it would lead from there? And would you trust a man to control a squadron of very expensive planes flown by highly trained men when he couldn’t even seem to control his own daughter?’
‘So he decided to kill her before she could do his reputation any more damage?’
‘That’s how it seems to me.’
‘But wouldn’t there be physical evidence of that. Bruising? The signs of a struggle?’
‘Not if he drugged her first. An’ even if there were some bruises, so what? Athletes are always gettin’ bruised. For a doctor to detect foul play, he’d probably have to be lookin’ for it – an’ what doctor on a carefully guarded air-force base is ever likely to think that he’s got a murder on his hands?’
‘But to murder his own child . . .’
‘He won’t see it in those terms. He probably justified his actions by convincin’ himself that the RAF needs him more than it realises, an’ if sacrificin’ his daughter was the price of makin’ sure that he continued to rise in the Air Force, then it was a price well worth payin’.’
‘And then, once they were back in England, Helen started to go off the rails as well,’ Rutter said.
‘Exactly. She was caught shop-lift
in’. The school doesn’t think her parents know about it, but I’m willing to bet that Dunn does. So he finds himself faced with the same problem again. There’s no tellin’ what she might do next – what disgrace she might bring on him. But it’s even more complicated to deal with this time, because it’ll look very suspicious if he stages another drownin’ accident. In fact, it’ll look suspicious if he stages any kind of accident. So he comes up with the idea of pretendin’ that some nutter has snatched the poor bloody kid. Nobody can blame him for that, can they? If it’s anybody’s fault, it’s the school’s for not takin’ care of her properly, and the police’s for not findin’ her in time. Don’t you see how all that makes sense?’
‘The other night, when we got the call, we couldn’t work out why he was ringing,’ Rutter said. ‘It didn’t seem to conform to any known pattern.’
‘That’s because it doesn’t,’ Woodend said. ‘He wants to be above suspicion himself, so he has to create the very clear impression that there really is a nutter out there. An’ what better way to do it than by ringin’ the bobby in charge of the investigation?’
‘And that’s where the pencil case comes in.’
‘Exactly. He had to have some proof that the nutter who he was pretendin’ to be had actually got the girl. The pencil case gave him that proof. He’d been plannin’ to send it to me long before he actually snatched the girl.’
‘So what happened?’ Rutter asked. ‘How did it come to end up under a bush in the park?’
‘I don’t know,’ Woodend admitted. ‘Maybe Helen lost it in a struggle – though I can see no reason why she would have struggled with her own father. So maybe, instead, she started to sense that somethin’ was wrong, an’ threw the pencil case under the bush as a means of tippin’ us off. But the details don’t really matter. What is important is that when Dunn got her to wherever he was takin’ her, he discovered that she didn’t have the pencil case with her anymore. So what was he to do?’
‘He could have sent us something else,’ Rutter suggested.
‘Like what?’
Rutter shrugged. ‘Her skirt? One of her socks?’
‘I’m sure he thought of it,’ Woodend agreed. ‘An’ then he probably realised that anybody could lay his hands on a bit of school uniform, an’ even her mother probably couldn’t say that it was definitely Helen’s. No, the pencil case was better. The pencil case was personal and unique. The problem was, he didn’t have it. But he knew where he could lay his hands on another one – in Helen’s bedroom.’
‘But if what you’re saying is true – if the kidnapper really is her father – then keeping her alive would be a huge risk.’
‘I know,’ Woodend agreed gravely.
‘So you think he’s probably killed her already?’
‘What I’m prayin’ is that he’s not yet been able to steel himself to murderin’ her. But if he has already killed one of his daughters, then I don’t really see what’s holdin’ him back from killin’ the other.’
Rutter put his head in his hands. ‘So what do we do now?’ he asked. ‘We can’t just pull Dunn in and beat the truth out of him, can we?’
‘If I thought it would help us find Helen alive, that’s precisely what I’d do – even if it meant me goin’ to prison myself,’ Woodend said. ‘But it wouldn’t do any good. However much we hurt him, Dunn wouldn’t come clean, because if he did he’d have lost everything.’
‘So what are we going to do?’
‘The only thing we can do is keep him under round-the lock surveillance, an’ hope that he leads us to her.’
‘That’s not much of a hope, is it?’ Rutter asked.
‘No,’ Woodend agreed. ‘It isn’t.’
Twenty-Nine
Monika Paniatowski walked up to the pleasant Edwardian terraced house which was listed as Verity Beale’s address on her driving licence, and knocked confidently. There was the sound of two sets of footsteps – one plodding, the other scuffling – in the hallway, then the front door opened to reveal a woman in late middle age and a small boy. The woman was holding firmly on to the boy’s reluctant hand, and from the identical sulky expressions on their faces, it was obvious that they were related.
Paniatowski smiled. ‘You must be Verity’s mum,’ she said. ‘What a pleasure to meet you at long last. I’m Elaine. Elaine Pardoe.’
The woman frowned. ‘Elaine who?’
‘Elaine Pardoe,’ Paniatowski said brightly. ‘Surely Verity’s mentioned me to you? I shall be very offended if she hasn’t.’
‘I don’t know who you are – and I don’t know who this Verity is, either,’ the woman said.
Paniatowski laughed, then stepped back to examine the number on the door. ‘But there must be some mistake,’ she said. ‘This is the address Verity gave me, and she’s always answered my letters, so she must have received them, mustn’t she?’
‘Nanna!’ the small boy cried.
‘Shut up, Cedric!’ the woman said, glancing briefly down at him, then turning her attention back to Paniatowski. ‘I’ve lived here ever since I got married, which is nearly thirty years ago now and––’
‘Nanna!’ the small boy insisted.
‘The bogeyman comes and gets little boys who can’t be quiet when they should be,’ the woman said. ‘I’ve brought all my children up here,’ she continued, addressing Paniatowski again. ‘I’ve never had anybody living here but my own family, not even during the war.’
‘Perhaps I have got the number wrong, after all,’ Paniatowski said dubiously. ‘Maybe Verity lives somewhere else down this street.’
‘I’ve told you, there’s nobody called Verity lives around here,’ the woman said, with growing impatience.
‘But you must have seen her,’ Paniatowski persisted. ‘She’s in her mid-twenties. A very attractive girl. She’s got flaming red hair, all the way down to her shoulders.’
The woman sniffed. ‘I go up to the Artillery Arms once in a while,’ she said. ‘Just for a glass of port, you understand. It’s on doctor’s orders.’
‘And you’ve seen her in there?’
‘Up until a few months ago, there was a young woman with long red hair in the pub nearly every night. But there’s no point in asking me her name, because I don’t know it.’
‘You never heard anyone else call her anything?’
‘I never got close enough to her for that. I’m particular who I rub shoulders with.’
‘Was there something wrong with her?’ Paniatowski asked.
The woman turned to her grandchild again. ‘Cover both your ears, Cedric,’ she said.
‘I can’t when you’re holdin’ my hand,’ the boy pointed out.
‘Then cover the one that you can cover,’ his grandmother told him. She waited until the boy had done as instructed, then said to Paniatowski, ‘We get a lot of soldiers drinking in the Artillery Arms.’
‘I suppose you must, with being so close to the barracks,’ Paniatowski said.
‘I’m pleasant enough to them myself – they’re protecting Queen and country, when all’s said and done – but I’ve always been careful never to let myself get too familiar with them.’
‘And this woman with the red hair did?’
‘It’s not my place to say, especially if she’s a friend of yours,’ the woman said. ‘You’re not listening, are you, Cedric?’
‘No, Nanna.’
‘But if you leave the pub with a different man every night, then you’re bound to get yourself talked about, aren’t you?’
‘You’re probably right,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘You said she was there every night until a few months ago. Do you happen to remember exactly when it was she stopped going?’
‘Not exactly, no. But I’d say it was somewhere towards the end of the summer.’
Or to put it another way, just before Verity Beale first appeared in Whitebridge, Paniatowski thought.
‘Well, it’s obvious to me now that my old friend Verity never actually lived here at all,’
she said, ‘which is strange because I could have sworn that she said it was Raglan Road.’
‘Raglan Road!’ the woman repeated. ‘This is Ruskin Road. Raglan Road’s five or six streets away from here.’
Paniatowski gave an embarrassed giggle. ‘I am a dizzy thing, aren’t I?’ she said. ‘Fancy getting the names mixed up like that. Sorry to have bothered you unnecessarily.’
‘It’s no trouble,’ the other woman said, without much conviction. ‘You can unplug your ears now, Cyril.’
Squadron Leader Dunn lowered himself on to his living-room sofa and took a measured sip of the whisky and soda he held in his right hand. He had never much cared for alcohol, but he had noticed early in his career that men who did not drink at all tended to be viewed with suspicion by their fellow officers. And now drinking had become so much a part of the persona he’d created for himself that he indulged even when he was not being observed by others.
He found his mind – unbidden and unwilled – turning to thoughts of Woodend. When they’d first met, he’d seen the chief inspector as no problem at all. Even the way the man dressed – in that ridiculous hairy sports coat of his – had seemed to indicate that he had neither the discipline nor the self-respect to pose much of a threat. But that feeling of security had not lasted long. Woodend had asked questions about Janice – questions which a small-town policeman should never have thought to ask – and as loath as he was to admit it, Dunn was forced to accept the fact that the man was not a run-of-the-mill policeman.
That wouldn’t have mattered if everything had gone strictly according to plan, because even a smart cop, as it now appeared Woodend was, would not have seen through the smokescreen that should have been thrown up. But everything hadn’t gone according to plan. The pencil case, which had been a cornerstone of the whole operation, had somehow gone missing, forcing him to improvise by using the one he’d found in Helen’s bedroom. And that had been a big mistake, he realised now.
He should have used a piece of her clothing instead, he told himself, because while that would have been less immediately convincing, it would also have been far less risky. But he had used the pencil case, and, as a result, had opened a breach through which a clever man like Woodend just might be able to glimpse the truth.
The Red Herring Page 19