‘An’ what question might that be?’
Paniatowski took a deep breath. ‘Have you ever done anybody a favour in return for them doing one for you? Have you ever taken a bribe – or accepted a present which might possibly be construed as a bribe?’
Woodend felt as if he had suddenly been doused in icy water. ‘You shouldn’t even need to ask that,’ he said bitterly.
‘I know I bloody shouldn’t. But when things happen which start to make you question your own judgement, you have to ask. So what’s the answer? Have you ever taken any bribes?’
‘Get back to the station, Sergeant,’ Woodend said coldly. ‘Get back right now, before your new boss – the excellent Inspector Harris – starts wonderin’ where you are.’
‘I need to know,’ Paniatowski persisted, anguishedly. ‘If I’m going to put my own career on the line, I need a straight answer. Give it to me now, and I promise I’ll never ask again.’
‘If you don’t know me by now⎯’
‘Please! Please tell me, just this once, Charlie!’
‘I’ve never taken a bribe in my life,’ Woodend said. ‘An’ if I’ve done anybody favours – which I have when justice has needed temperin’ with a bit common humanity – it’s never been in the hope of gettin’ anythin’ in return. Does that answer your question?’
Paniatowski let out a gasp of relief, and then was instantly businesslike again. ‘You’re in big trouble.’
‘I know that.’
‘No, you don’t. At least, you don’t know quite how big it is. Have you ever heard of a bobby called Stan Evans?’
‘DCI Evans, do you mean? Bullet-head Evans. Based in Preston?’
‘That’s the man,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘I met himself this morning. Mr Evans is the one who’s been called in to investigate the case against you.’
‘Shit!’ Woodend said.
‘Shit is right,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘He’s only been on the job for a few hours, and he’s already started to turn the station inside out.’
‘What the hell for?’ Woodend demanded. ‘The complaint’s a simple one. He doesn’t even need to be in the station at all.’
‘You still don’t get it, do you?’ Paniatowski asked, almost pityingly. ‘Evans isn’t just interested in what you did to that reporter. He wants a lot more than that.’
‘More of what?’
‘More evidence. Evidence that you’re dirty.’
‘He’ll not find any,’ Woodend said firmly.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Haven’t I just told you that I’m not bent?’ Woodend exploded.
‘And I believed you when you said it. But that doesn’t mean that, if Evans digs long enough, he won’t be able to come up with something that makes you look bent.’
She was right, Woodend thought. There were cases in his past which had not been solved. There’d been criminals he’d arrested who’d escaped custodial sentences because the evidence hadn’t been quite strong enough to convince a jury.
Who was to say, with absolute certainty, that these failures had been no more than bad luck? Who could claim, with complete conviction, that when the guilty went unpunished it wasn’t because Charlie Woodend had been pulling the strings behind the scenes, in return for a thick wad of cash?
He pictured himself defending his career in front of a committee of cold-eyed men bent on his destruction, and knew that no man’s record was protection against organized malevolence. Then, in a sudden burst of irritation, he pushed the image to the back of his mind.
Whatever the future held in store for him, there was nothing he could do about it now, he told himself. So there was really no point in dwelling on it, was there? Especially when there were more pressing matters to be dealt with.
‘Tell me about how the case is goin’,’ he said. ‘What new leads have you got?’
‘None,’ Paniatowski said. ‘And, as much as I’d like to, I can’t really blame all of it on DI Harris. Whichever way we turn, we seem to be running into dead ends.’
‘You must have done somethin’ constructive since the last time we spoke,’ Woodend persisted.
‘We’ve asked Battersby do a second comparison between the prints he lifted at the farm and the ones we’ve already got on record.’
We’ve asked, Woodend noted. She was speaking about a team of which he was no longer a part.
‘With what result?’ he asked.
‘There were no matches.’
‘Not a single one?’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘An’ you’ve just left it at that, have you?’
Paniatowski sighed. ‘No, of course, we haven’t just left it at that. We’ve sent the prints down to London, so that Scotland Yard can check them against the national records – but that kind of thing all takes time.’
She was starting to talk to him as if he were an outsider, Woodend thought – starting to regard him as a civilian who couldn’t even begin to appreciate the pressures and complexities which came from being involved in this particular investigation. In a way, he supposed, she was right to think like that – because even after less than twenty-four hours off the case, he could feel himself starting to lose touch with it. And the feeling would only get worse as time went by, unless he could find a way to plug himself firmly back into the case – unless he could find a way to convince Paniatowski that she really needed him. If there was ever a time for him to pull a rabbit out of the hat, that time was now.
‘How many sets of prints did Battersby manage to lift from the farmhouse?’ he asked.
‘Without more detailed study – and that takes time as well – it’s difficult to say with any degree of accuracy.’
I know it takes time, Woodend thought. Stop treating me like an idiot.
‘Doesn’t Battersby even have a rough idea?’ he asked.
‘He thinks there may be around twenty sets of prints,’ Paniatowski admitted.
‘An’ has anybody bothered to ask themselves why there are so many sets?’
‘I don’t think I’m following you, sir.’
‘If you dusted my house down, you’d find my prints, Joan’s, Annie’s, a couple of the neighbours, three or four friends and maybe the ones left by the man who came to read the electricity meter. That wouldn’t come to anythin’ like twenty sets. Yet we’re a fairly sociable family. So how did a lonely old farmer livin’ out on the moors end up with so many visitors? What possible reason could twenty people have had for goin’ to Dugdale’s Farm?’
Paniatowski grinned. ‘I’ve only been without you for a day, and I’m missing you already,’ she said.
Woodend felt a surge of relief run through him, but was well aware that he could not afford to relax yet.
‘So who are all these people?’ he asked. ‘Does Wilfred Dugdale have a large family?’
‘Not as far as we’ve been able to establish. He was an only child. His parents are long dead, and he doesn’t seem to have any cousins in the area.’
‘Friends, then? Did he belong to any particular organization? The Lions or the Rotary, for example?’
‘No. He seems to have kept pretty much to himself. Apart from the occasional shopping expedition into Whitebridge, he hardly ever left the farm.’
‘An’ yet nearly two dozen people came to visit him. He had a lot of visitors – an’ now he’s vanished into thin air. What do you make of that, Sergeant?’
‘If he’s not lying under a couple of feet of snow somewhere, maybe one of those visitors is hiding him?’ Paniatowski suggested.
‘Who would you hide?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘What would it take for you to agree to hide someone the police were looking for? Who would you run the risk of goin’ to jail for?’
Paniatowski thought about it for a second. ‘Close family. Close friends,’ she said finally.
‘But we’ve already established that Dugdale had neither close friends nor family. So where does that leave us?’
‘Com
pletely mystified?’
‘Aye, it does that,’ Woodend agreed. ‘So what else has DI Harris been up to?’
‘Well, he’s working on identifying the victims.’
‘An’ how’s he going about it?’
‘He’s trying to trace the shops where the girl’s clothes were purchased.’
‘But not the man’s?’
‘There wouldn’t be much point in that. His clothes were all bought from Marks and Spencer’s or C & A, and they’re from the bottom of the range. They must have sold thousands of suits just like the one he was wearing.’
‘But the girl’s clothes are different?’
‘Oh yes. You noticed that yourself, at the time. She was wearing some very pricy labels. I don’t think you could even have found half the stuff she had on in Whitebridge.’
‘So you’re sayin’ that they must have been bought in a big city?’
‘That’s the thinking at the moment.’
‘Bennett – that reporter from BBC Manchester – said whoever phoned him early on Sunday mornin’ had a Manchester accent. Maybe that’s where the girl’s from.’
‘Or Liverpool,’ Paniatowski countered. ‘Or London, Birmingham, Glasgow or Leeds.’
True, Woodend thought. Assuming that she came from Manchester was clutching at a straw – and he wasn’t quite ready to go in for any straw-clutching yet.
‘Has there been an autopsy?’ he asked.
‘Doc Pierson put both the victims under the knife early yesterday afternoon.’ Paniatowski smiled slightly. ‘Which means that he must have been over his hangover by then, don’t you think?’
‘I imagine so,’ Woodend agreed. ‘An’ has the Doc been able to tell you anythin’ useful?’
‘Nothing we hadn’t deduced for ourselves, just from looking at the bodies. The male victim was in his early forties. The female was somewhere between thirteen and fifteen. Cause of death in both cases was shotgun pellets – him to the chest, her to the face. Approximate time of death: eight o’clock yesterday morning – which probably means after Bennett got his mysterious phone call.’
‘No other findin’s? Was there any evidence that the girl had been interfered with?’
‘Sexually, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not even a hint of it.’ Paniatowski looked around her and, as if gaining inspiration from her surroundings, she added, ‘Dr Pierson said she was as pure as the driven snow.’
Doc Pierson was not a man to make mistakes, Woodend thought. True, he’d slipped up on the time of death at the farmhouse, but as he pointed out at the time, he was feeling rough. And even if there hadn’t been the evidence of the broken wristwatch to make him question his initial estimate, he’d probably have amended it anyway, once he’d had the victims on the table.
‘I’d better be getting back before I’m missed,’ Paniatowski said.
‘As bad as that, is it?’
‘Worse. DI Harris doesn’t work like you, sir. He’s not content to let his team follow their instincts and report back to him when they’ve got something solid to contribute. He wants to know where we are every hour of the day.’
A real paper-pusher and rubber-band counter, Woodend thought. Just like dear old Deputy Chief Constable Ainsworth. But it wasn’t the Harrises and Ainsworths of this world who came up with the solutions to serious crimes – it was the men like him, men who weren’t afraid to get their hands dirty when the situation called for it.
‘When can we meet again?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Paniatowski said awkwardly. ‘It’s difficult to fix a definite time.’
Was that another way of saying that she’d rather they didn’t meet again? Woodend wondered – a gentle way of breaking it to him that things were getting too hot for her, and she’d rather pull out while she had the chance?
‘Let’s make some kind of arrangement,’ he suggested. ‘If it doesn’t work out, you can always cancel or simply not turn up.’
‘I don’t want to waste your time,’ Paniatowski said.
‘Time seems to be all I’ve got plenty of at the moment. I can afford to waste hours of it.’
‘The best thing you could do would be to go home and wait for me to ring you,’ Paniatowski said.
Or to put it another way, ‘Don’t call me, I’ll call you,’ Woodend thought.
He didn’t want to go home. He dreaded the idea of sitting around in an empty house, twiddling his thumbs while others did the work. But what other choice did he have?
‘You will ring me, won’t you?’ he said.
‘When I can,’ Paniatowski replied evasively.
She got back into her MGA and fired up the engine. The dogs behind the chain-linked fence had been relatively quiet for a while, but now, with these new signs of activity, they pressed their muzzles fiercely through the wire.
Woodend watched Paniatowski’s MGA disappear down the road – and tried to tell himself that his hopes were not disappearing with it. Then, when the MGA was finally out of sight, he turned back to contemplate the moors.
In the distance, well beyond the other side of the road, he saw two small brown shapes scurrying across the snow.
Rabbits!
He wondered what it would be like to have a life as simple as theirs – a life driven only by the primeval desires for food, sex and shelter.
An ominous black shadow glided across the snow and, looking up, he saw a large kestrel hawk. He had been wrong about the rabbits, he decided. Their lives weren’t so simple after all – other creatures, with different needs to their own, had ensured that.
He thought about his own, personal predator, DCI Stanley Evans, who had swooped down from Preston that morning, and was already hovering over his career, waiting to strike.
‘You won’t get me, Evans,’ he said loudly, to the empty moors. ‘I swear you bloody won’t.’
He took his packet of Capstan Full Strengths out of his overcoat pocket and, cupping his hand, lit one. When he looked up again, there was no sign of either of the rabbits or the hawk.
Had the furry little animals escaped the feathered killer? he found himself wondering. Or had the hawk soared off in triumph, a trembling rabbit held tightly in its cruel claws?
If he’d been watching, he’d have had an answer to that question. But he hadn’t been watching, and now he would never know whether there had been yet another unwitnessed murder on the moors.
He glanced down at his wristwatch. It was only half past twelve, which meant that most of the day was still ahead of him. Unless something really dramatic broke in the investigation, it was unlikely that Monika Paniatowski would ring him again until the following morning. How the hell was he going to fill in the time until then?
He sighed heavily, and reached into his pocket for his car keys.
Eight
It was just after the grandfather clock had struck nine when Woodend realized that though he’d been staring at the television screen since the evening news came on three hours earlier, he had not even the vaguest idea what programmes he’d sat through.
Well, it was pointless being there any longer, he decided, hauling himself off the sofa and reaching for his coat. Even if he couldn’t do much about his mind, he could at least treat his body to a few pints of best bitter.
It had been years since he’d gone out drinking on his own, he thought as he headed up the lane towards the Victoria Hotel. But that was because it was years since he’d needed to. At that end of any normal day, there was always an ongoing case to discuss with his team – and where else but in the pub would he have chosen to discuss it? There was a case that wanted talking over that night, too, but he had neither the information which would make his own contribution worthwhile, nor the available subordinates to bounce his ideas off.
Poor old Charlie, he mocked himself. Has that nasty Mr Ainsworth taken all your toys away from you? Won’t he even let you play with your little friends any more?
There were a number of cars parked
in front of the pub, but two of them stood out clearly from the rest. One was a Jaguar ‘E’ type – a car which was still uncommon enough in Whitebridge for it to turn the envious heads of drivers of more humble vehicles The second was a Mercedes Benz 300S, an even rarer sight in the town. But it was not so much the vehicles themselves which caught his attention as the colour schemes their owners had chosen.
The Jag’s owner had selected a deep, muted blue, whereas the Merc was painted in a vivid red which, it seemed to him, served to rob it of some of its inherent dignity. Parked as they were, side by side, they presented a bizarre contrast, and the detective who was deeply ingrained inside Woodend decided that while both the owners of the Jag and the Merc undoubtedly had plenty of money, only one of them really knew how to use it.
He entered the bar, walked up to the counter, and looked around him. There were some familiar faces there, but also quite a number of customers who were unknown to him.
Even local pubs had stopped really being local, he thought. The days when everyone had walked to the boozer, as he had done himself that night, were gone forever. Now that so many people had cars, they were travelling further afield for their entertainment, often abandoning the town centre altogether, and making country pubs like this one their chosen destination. It was, he supposed, just another example of the townees’ yearning for the country – just one more example of the trend which had allowed places like Moorland Village to come into existence.
‘Well, speak of the devil!’ he exclaimed.
He hadn’t meant to say the words out loud, but from the reaction of the drinkers standing on either side of him, he realized that he must have done.
‘Are you, by any chance, referrin’ to me when you mention the devil?’ asked a voice from the other side of the bar.
Woodend turned to the red-faced man who was standing beside the till and grinning at him.
‘No, not you, Arthur,’ he admitted, returning the landlord’s grin. ‘I was meanin’ that feller over there.’
He pointed to a man dressed in an expensive blue suit, sitting at one of the tables in the corner and looking so self-absorbed that he seemed barely aware of the world around him.
Death of an Innocent Page 6