The policeman sighed. There were times, he thought, when he wished he really was as smart as the cops on Dragnet.
Eighteen
Woodend and Paniatowski were already sitting at their usual table in the Drum and Monkey when Rutter entered the bar. The inspector had already dropped one bombshell that afternoon. Now, from the expression on his face, it looked as if he were about to drop another one.
Rutter pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘There’s nothing in Sharpe’s case notes about the murder of Marcus Dodds,’ he said.
‘Nothing?’ Woodend repeated incredulously.
‘Nothing,’ Rutter confirmed. I’ve been through all the documentation three times since I got back from Simcaster, and there’s not a single mention.’
‘Why are you so surprised?’ Monika Paniatowski asked.
‘Shouldn’t we be?’ Woodend countered.
‘No. Sharpe probably left out anything on Marcus Dodds for the same reason that he made no mention of the two cars which drove down Hebden Brow on the night of Fred Dodds’ murder. Because it would have been a distraction – a little annoyance which might threaten to divert attention away from his claim that Margaret Dodds killed her husband.’
‘I know it doesn’t seem likely, given the fact that the first murder occurred less than thirty miles from here,’ Woodend said tentatively, ‘but perhaps Sharpe didn’t even know about the Marcus Dodds case.’
Rutter shook his head. ‘He knew, all right.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Because after I failed to find any mention of Marcus Dodds in Sharpe’s records, I had a close look at the transcript of the trial.’ Rutter reached into his briefcase and handed Woodend a folder. ‘The relevant part has a blue line in the margin.’
Woodend flicked through the pages until he came to the passage Rutter had marked.
Edward Mottram QC: Were you aware, Chief Inspector Sharpe, that Fredrick Dodds’ father, Marcus Dodds, was also murdered?
Sharpe: I was, sir.
Mottram: And not only murdered, but murdered in exactly the same way as his son. Were you aware of that?
Sharpe: Yes, sir.
Mottram: And yet it never occurred to you that there might be a connection between the two murders?
Sharpe: No, sir. As far as I can ascertain, Margaret Dodds never met her late father-in-law. And even if she had, I can think of no reason why she should have wanted to murder him.
Mottram: Are you being deliberately obtuse, Chief Inspector?
Sharpe: I’m afraid I don’t understand.
Mottram: I was not suggesting that Margaret had killed both Fredrick and Marcus. Rather, I was suggesting that she killed neither of them – that both were murdered by a third party as yet unknown, a third party whose preferred method of murder was with a hammer.
Sharpe: Margaret Dodds had the means, the motive and the opportunity. She could provide no alibi for the time her husband was killed, there was blood on her dress and her fingerprints were on the murder weapon. She killed Fredrick Dodds. To suggest anything else is fanciful.
Mottram: Is that so?
Sharpe: Yes.
Mottram: Then can you tell me why she used a hammer to kill her husband? Why, of the hundreds of ways available to her, she selected exactly the same weapon as had been used on her late father-in-law?
Sharpe: Because it had been used on her father-in-law.
Mottram: I beg your pardon, Chief Inspector.
Sharpe: Because she hoped that by using the hammer she would create exactly the kind of confusion that you are referring to now. Because she hoped that the police would accept the absurd theory that there was a mad hammer killer on the loose, a mad killer who just happened to have a grudge against the Dodds family.
Mottram: And isn’t it possible that was, in fact, the case?
Sharpe: Yes. In a ‘whodunnit novel’, it’s perfectly possible. But I’ve been a policeman for a long time, and I can tell you that sort of thing doesn’t happen in real life.
‘An’ that’s it?’ Woodend asked. ‘That’s all there is?’
Rutter shrugged. ‘Not quite. Mottram mentions Fred Dodds’ father’s murder again in his summing up to the jury, but even just reading it cold, you can tell his heart isn’t really in it.’
‘That’s not surprising, after the way he’d handled the cross-examination,’ Woodend said. ‘If they’d rehearsed it together, Mottram couldn’t have done a better job at feeding Sharpe just the lines he wanted to be fed.’
‘Are you suggesting that the defence lawyer made a deliberate hash of the cross-examination?’ Monika Paniatowski asked.
Woodend shook his head. ‘No, I don’t see any conspiracy here – at least no conspiracy which involved the defence counsel. Mottram was incompetent, rather than corrupt. Sharpe had anticipated all his questions, but he simply wasn’t prepared for Sharpe’s answers.’
‘You have to have a grudging admiration for the cunning way Sharpe handled it,’ Rutter said. ‘He never had to defend his theory that Marcus Dodds’ murder was irrelevant to this case, because he never even admitted it was a theory. The way he talked, it was if he were stating no more than the plain, unvarnished truth. And he obviously swung the jury round to his viewpoint.’
‘Maybe Marcus Dodds’ murder was an irrelevance, just as Sharpe claimed,’ Woodend said. ‘Even if we rule out Margaret Dodds as the murderer, it’s possible that the real killer did copy the method used by Marcus Dodds’ murderer.’
‘Why should he have done that?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘For the reason Sharpe gave – to confuse the issue. An’ while I have nothin’ but contempt for the way Sharpe did his job, it is still possible that he only played down the first murder because he really did believe Margaret Dodds was guilty of the second.’
‘There’s a “but” isn’t there?’ Rutter said.
‘What makes you say that?’
‘When you’ve got that look on your face, there’s always a “but”.’
Woodend grinned, but Paniatowski did not. Instead, she let her hand hover over Rutter’s head, as if she were about to pat him for being such a clever boy. Rutter, who was looking at Woodend, did not notice the gesture. Woodend, who could see both his sergeant and inspector, did notice, but decided – for the moment at least – to ignore it.
‘I’ll tell you what the “but” is,’ the Chief Inspector said. ‘There was a dark shadow hangin’ over Fred Dodds long before he was killed. His father was murdered. His best friend – his only friend, by all accounts – committed suicide. His partner sold up – for no apparent reason – an’ put thousands of miles between himself an’ Whitebridge. Any one of those things could have happened to one of us. But all three of them together? I don’t really think so!’
‘Then there’s the fact that his wife’s first husband died as a result of an accident,’ Rutter pointed out.
Paniatowski sighed loudly.
‘Is something the matter, Sergeant?’ Rutter asked.
‘If it’s left up to you, we’ll be like a dog forever chasing round after its own tail,’ Paniatowski said. ‘I see no reason at all why we even need to consider Robert Hartley’s death.’
‘Don’t you?’ Rutter asked. ‘Then perhaps I’d better explain it to you. We know that Margaret was having an affair with Fred Dodds before her first husband died and––’
‘We know there are people who think they were having an affair,’ Paniatowski interrupted. ‘But if there were any actual proof, Sharpe would have produced it at the trial.’
‘I thought you said he didn’t like distractions,’ Rutter responded cuttingly. ‘I thought your theory was that he’d pare away everything except for the evidence which supported his own simplistic view of the case.’
‘But that would have helped his simplistic view of the case,’ Paniatowski countered, raising her voice to such a level that customers at other tables turned round to look at her. ‘He’d probably have argued – and you’d pr
obably have agreed with him all the way – that a woman who was capable of adultery was equally capable of the brutal and bloody murder of her husband.’
‘I never said anything like that!’ Rutter retorted. He was furious, but still enough in control of himself to keep his voice down. ‘I never even went so far as to suggest––’
‘Enough!’ Woodend ordered. ‘There’s plenty of people already tryin’ to shaft us, without us makin’ things any worse by fightin’ amongst ourselves.’
‘Sorry, sir,’ Paniatowski muttered sheepishly.
‘I don’t think I’m the one you should be apologizin’ to, Monika,’ Woodend told her.
Paniatowski glared defiantly at Woodend for a second, then slowly turned towards Rutter.
‘Sorry, Inspector,’ she said, dragging the words up from somewhere deep inside her, then forcing them out of her mouth.
‘It’s all right,’ Rutter replied. ‘I was probably as much to blame as you were.’
She didn’t like him saying that, Woodend thought. She didn’t like it at all. She’d have been so much happier if Rutter had thrown her apology back in her face, because the last thing she wanted was peace and harmony. He wondered what the hell was happening to his sergeant.
‘Let’s get back to Robert Hartley’s death, shall we?’ he said. ‘You’re right, Bob, when you say we should consider it – because we can’t afford to overlook any possibilities. An’ you’re right, Monika, when you say that such considerations don’t seem to be leadin’ us anywhere.’
Who would ever have seen me as a diplomat? Woodend asked himself silently. An’ what a diplomat! People had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for less than this.
‘Maybe Margaret was havin’ an affair with Dodds before her first husband died,’ he continued. ‘An’ maybe it was convenient for Dodds that Hartley had his accident. But it was an accident. There were too many witnesses for it to have been anythin’ else. Can we all agree on that?’
Paniatowski smiled triumphantly, and nodded.
Rutter said, ‘Yes, I suppose so.’
‘So we’re left with the other things – Marcus Dodds’ murder, Sidney Hill’s suicide an’ Cuthburtson’s sudden departure for Canada. It seems to me there’s a thread runnin’ through them.’
‘A thread?’ Rutter said. ‘What kind of thread?’
‘Ah, now there you’ve got me,’ Woodend conceded. ‘I don’t know. But I can sense that it’s there! An’ that once we’ve found one end of it, we should be able to untangle the whole bloody mess.’
‘Where do you want us to start looking for the ends of this thread?’ Rutter asked.
‘I want you to start with the Marcus Dodds case,’ Woodend told him. ‘Did Fred kill him, an’ if he did, why did he kill him? Were there any other serious suspects? Is it even remotely possible that whoever killed Marcus also killed his son? Got that?’
‘Got it,’ Rutter agreed.
‘An’ I want you to look into Sidney Hill’s suicide, Monika,’ Woodend continued. ‘Did he an’ Fred really have a secret shared interest, as the people they went to school with seem to think? An’ does that interest – if it exists – have anythin’ to do with Sidney throwin’ himself in front of a train?’
‘And what if we can’t pick up the thread? Or we do pick it up and it leads nowhere?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘Well, if that is the case, then I’d have to say that, in my professional opinion, we’re well an’ truly buggered,’ Woodend told her.
Nineteen
The layer of black dust covered both the floor of the yard and the storage sheds that ran around its perimeter. It clung to the windows of the office, and the chassis of the lorries. It insinuated itself into the creases on the coalmen’s faces. And though he had only been in the yard for a couple of minutes, Rutter could already feel the dust beginning to tickle the back of his throat.
The office door opened, and a middle-aged man emerged. Perhaps to distinguish himself from his workers, he wore a dark-blue suit rather than an overall, but it was a suit that must already have been looking back nostalgically to a time when it could have been described as having seen ‘better days’.
‘Inspector Rutter?’ the man in the blue suit asked. ‘I’m Horace Saddleworth, the owner.’
Saddleworth held out his hand for the inspector to shake. It had been well scrubbed, but even so, the traces of coal dust were still evident.
Rutter remembered that Mr Bithwaite had commented on the fact that when they were both working in the Peninsula Trading Company, Fred Dodds had constantly been examining his own hands.
‘When did you buy this coal yard?’ the inspector asked.
‘Coal yard?’ Saddleworth repeated with mock horror. ‘This isn’t a coal yard.’
‘What is it, then?’
Saddleworth grinned. ‘It’s a solid fuel distribution centre.’
Rutter returned his grin. ‘Sorry! When did you buy this solid fuel distribution centre?’
‘Back in 1955. It looked like a real good prospect then. How was I to know that central heating and poncy coal-glow electric fires would ever catch on? Did it ever cross my mind that the government would go all namby-pamby on me and start passing clean air acts? It did not!’
‘So you never knew the Dodds family?’
‘No, they were well before my time.’
‘Is there anybody still working here who might have?’
‘I couldn’t say with any degree of certainty, but you might try talking to old Clem there,’ Saddleworth said, indicated an elderly man who was slowly filling a coal sack from a huge mound of loose slack. ‘I know for a fact that he’s been in the business since Moses was a coalman.’
‘Thanks,’ Rutter said.
‘My pleasure. And if you ever decide you’ve had enough of the clean-living bobbies’ work, and want to buy yourself a real man’s business, I’d be willing to let this place go at a very good price.’
Rutter grinned again. ‘When I start to see my future as a solid fuel distribution merchant, you’ll be the first one I’ll come to,’ he promised.
Clem Hodnut was only too happy to stop shovelling slack and accepted one of the cork-tipped cigarettes which Rutter offered him.
‘So you were here in Mr Dodds’ time?’ the inspector said.
‘Both Mr Dodds. The father an’ the son.’
‘What was Mr Marcus Dodds like to work for?’
‘He was a right bad bugger. He treated his horses terrible, an’ his men even worse. I’d have left, but I was livin’ at home at that time, an’ my dad wouldn’t let me.’
‘So Marcus had a few enemies?’
‘No,’ Clem Hodnut said. ‘He had a few – a very few – friends. An’ even they didn’t actually like him.’
‘How did you get on with his son?’
‘I didn’t really do what you might call “get on with him”. Nobody in the yard did. He was neither fish nor fowl, you see.’
‘I’m not sure I do.’
‘His father treated him like he treated all the other men. But he wasn’t like us, was he? He was educated. If things had turned out as they planned, he would have gone to university.’
‘So what stopped him?’
‘Goin’ to university had been his mother’s idea, an’ she died durin’ the great influenza epidemic of 1918. She was no sooner buried than Mr Marcus yanked Fred out of school an’ put him to work on the wagons.’
‘How did Fred feel about that?’
‘I couldn’t say for certain, but if I’d been in his place, I wouldn’t have been too thrilled.’
‘Can you remember anything about the day of the murder?’ Rutter asked hopefully.
‘Of course I can. It’s not every day your gaffer gets himself killed, now is it? It kind of impresses things on your mind, does somethin’ like that.’
‘What do you remember specifically?’
‘Come again?’
‘What sticks in your mind most?’
‘The b
obbies swarmin’ all over the place.’
‘Anything before that?’
Clem Hodnut scratched his balding head. ‘Are you talkin’ about the row the night before?’ he asked.
‘What row?’
‘The one that Fred had with Mr Marcus.’
‘I wasn’t,’ Rutter admitted. ‘But I’d like to hear about it anyway.’
‘It was nearly knocking off time, an’ I was in the yard loading up one of the wagons for the next mornin’s delivery. Fred come rushin’ out of the office with Mr Marcus right on his heels. It was obvious that they’d been arguin’ an’ Fred just wanted to put it behind him, if you know what I mean.’
‘Yes, I know what you mean,’ Rutter assured him.
‘Anyroad, Mr Marcus grabbed Fred’s shoulder and twisted him around so they was facin’ each other. Mr Marcus said somethin’ like, “You’ve been a bloody fool. You could go to jail, you know.”’
‘Go to jail? What for?’
‘I’ve been puzzlin’ about that for over forty years, an’ I still haven’t got no answer,’ Clem Hodnut said.
‘What happened next?’
‘Fred said somethin’ like, “You’re the one who should be in jail.” Then his dad said, “That’s as maybe, but I won’t be goin’ – because I’ve been clever about it.” Well, Fred looked as if he was about to be sick all over the yard. “Clever!” he said, an’ he was so upset that he was pretty much gaspin’ his words out by this point. “Do you call what you’ve done clever?” The old man nodded, like he was really pleased with himself. “If you want to go doin’ that sort of thing, why don’t you get married?” he said.’
‘I suppose you don’t know what he meant by “that sort of thing”, either.’
‘I haven’t got a clue. But I could see that them words had driven Fred into a rage. “Get married!” he said. “Like you! Bein’ married to you was what killed my mother!” I could tell Mr Marcus didn’t like that. “Your mother died of the flu,” he said. “She caught the flu, but she died of a broken heart,” Fred says. An’ the next second he’s rollin’ around on the ground, clutchin’ his belly – because Mr Marcus could pack a mean punch when he wanted to. Anyroad, Mr Marcus leaves Fred lyin’ there an’ goes back into the office. An’ the next time I saw him was the followin’ mornin’ when I found him lyin’ on the office floor, with his head stove in.’
A Death Left Hanging Page 15