Paniatowski shook her head regretfully. ‘I have detective constables to do that for me, sir. Besides – for the moment at least – you don’t have any official standing.’
For the moment at least!
‘You’re right,’ Woodend agreed. ‘I don’t have any official standin’. But you’ll still keep me in touch with developments, won’t you?’
‘I’ll . . . I’ll do my best,’ Paniatowski promised. She glanced down at her watch, though Woodend was sure she knew exactly what time it was. ‘I have to be getting back.’
‘Of course you do, lass.’
Paniatowski stood up, folded her newspaper, and dropped it into the bin. Woodend watched her as she walked up the slippery path towards the park gates. There was only so far he could push her, he thought. She was already running a big enough risk just by meeting him and keeping him abreast of the investigation – to ask for more could make her shut down on him entirely. She owed him – and they both knew it – but she would not sacrifice her own career in a desperate attempt to save his. And who could blame her?
He lit up and watched as the smoke from his cigarette drifted through the chill air. He was waiting – like a starving dog – for Monika to throw him a few scraps from the investigation to chew on. And she might just do that, whatever she had said about him having no official status. But he was not certain that he could stand the wait – was half-convinced that before he got the scraps, the hunger which was gnawing away inside him would drive him mad.
So what was he to do? As far as he could see, he had only one option. If he could not investigate the murder as the police officer in charge of the case, then he would just have to investigate it as a private citizen.
Ten
Turner’s was the fourth moorland farm Woodend had visited that afternoon. It was closer to the main road than the one which belonged to the missing man, but other than that, with its thick stone walls and heavy slate roof, it was almost the twin of Wilfred Dugdale’s property.
Woodend parked in front of the main building, and climbed out of his car. The chill wind which was blowing, unhindered, off the moor, enveloped him immediately in its icy fingers. He stuck his hands firmly in his overcoat pockets, and shivered.
The oak door of the farmhouse swung open, and a man stepped out into the yard. He was short and broad. His face was as wrinkled and weather-beaten as a gnarled oak tree, which probably meant he was the same age as Wilfred Dugdale, if not a little older. He was in his shirtsleeves, and if the cold scything in from the moors was bothering him, he certainly didn’t show it.
‘Mr Turner?’ Woodend asked.
‘That’s me. How can I help yer?’
‘I’m a reporter,’ Woodend lied. ‘I’m writing a story on the murders up at Dugdale’s Farm.’
The old man’s eyes narrowed. ‘Work for the Whitebridge Evenin’ Telegraph, do you?’ he demanded.
Woodend forced a laugh. ‘Nothin’ as grand as that, Mr Turner. I’m what they call a freelance.’
‘A free-what?’
‘I write the story first, then I try to sell it to whichever paper shows an interest.’
‘A man your age should have a proper job,’ the old farmer told him disdainfully. ‘A job where you can make good use of them strong arms an’ broad shoulders of yours.’
‘Blame it on me old dad,’ Woodend told him. ‘It was always his ambition to see me end up wearin’ a collar an’ tie to work.’
The old farmer nodded sagely. ‘Well, maybe your dad was right, at that,’ he conceded. ‘There’s so much of the work done by machines these days that there’s little room left for a bit of honest hard labour.’ He paused for a second. ‘So you’re writin’ a story, you say?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Well, I don’t see what use we can be to you. We’re too far away from Dugdale’s to have heard anythin’ here.’
‘I appreciate that you can’t tell me anythin’ about the murders, but I was wonderin’ if you could give me any background information on Mr Dugdale himself,’ Woodend said.
The old farmer’s eyes hardened. ‘I haven’t spoken to Wilf Dugdale for over forty years,’ he said.
‘I see.’
‘An’ if we both live for another forty years I won’t be speakin’ to him in that time either. So if you’re lookin’ for background information, as you call it, then you’d better take yourself off somewhere else.’
A white-haired woman appeared in the porch behind Turner. ‘We weren’t expectin’ company,’ she said.
‘He’s not company,’ her husband told her. ‘He’s one of them reporters, writing a story on Wilf Dugdale. I told him we didn’t know nowt.’
The old woman ran her eyes quickly up and down Woodend. ‘So you’re a reporter, are you?’ she asked.
‘That’s right,’ Woodend agreed.
The old woman nodded, though it was plain to him that she didn’t believe a word of it. ‘You’d better come inside then, hadn’t you?’ she said.
‘We can’t help him, so what’s the point of that?’ her husband asked. ‘He’d just be wastin’ his time as well as ours.’
‘You’re probably right,’ Mrs Turner agreed. ‘But while he’s wastin’ it, he can get a good, strong, hot cup of tea down him – an’ by the look of him I’d say he could use one.’
The old man shrugged. ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ he admitted.
‘That’s the trouble with you, Jed Turner,’ his wife said good-naturedly. ‘You never do think of things like that.’ She turned back to Woodend. ‘Come inside, lad, an’ get some of that chill thawed out of you.’
She went back into the house, and the two men followed her. The living room lay immediately beyond the porch. It had a flag floor, broken up occasionally by pieces of carpet which looked as if they were nothing more than mill off-cuts. There was a battered oak table under the window, and a number of mismatched armchairs arranged around a blazing log fire. The air near the doorway was almost as cold as it was on the outside, but nearer the easy chairs the fire threw out a semicircle of heat which was far more welcoming than anything a central heating system could have possibly produced.
This was how Dugdale’s Farm should have looked, Woodend thought. This was exactly how it should have looked.
‘Sit yourself down, then,’ Mrs Turner said.
Woodend lowered himself into a creaking leather armchair with bits of horsehair sticking out of the arms. Mr Turner simply stood where he was – his backside to the fire – as if he were uncertain what to do next.
‘You might as well take the weight of your feet, an’ all, Jed,’ Mrs Turner said. She smiled at Woodend. ‘I won’t be a minute makin’ the tea. The kettle’s always kept just off the boil in this house.’
Jed Turner, after some hesitation, sat down on a chair at the extreme edge of the semicircle. He did not offer to resume the conversation they had begun outside, and since Woodend did not wish to push him for any more information until his wife returned, they sat together in an awkward silence for the two or three minutes it took the old woman to make the tea.
Mrs Turner re-entered the room with three steaming mugs of tea on a battered tin tray. Woodend took a sip of his. It tasted heavily of tannin, and was strong enough to make bricks out of – which was just the way he liked it.
‘You said you hadn’t spoken to Mr Dugdale for over forty years, Mr Turner,’ he said, when he’d taken a couple more sips of tea. ‘Is there any particular reason for that?’
‘Aye, there’s plenty of reasons for it,’ the old farmer replied. ‘But none that I want to go readin’ about in a newspaper.’
‘He was away from Whitebridge for a good few years, wasn’t he?’ Woodend said, trying another tack. ‘Do you have any idea where he went?’
‘None at all – an’ I don’t care, neither. He should have stayed away for ever, if you want my opinion.’
Woodend turned his attention to Mrs Turner. ‘Do you have any idea⎯’ he began.
&nb
sp; ‘No, she does not,’ Jed Turner interrupted him – but not before Woodend had had time to read the flicker in the old woman’s eyes.
‘So there’s really not much you can tell me about him, is there?’ Woodend asked.
‘I can tell you that he’s a real bad bugger – allus was – an’ that if it turns out he was responsible for them killin’s up at that so-called farm of his, I wouldn’t be the least surprised.’
‘A real bad bugger?’ Woodend repeated. ‘What exactly do you mean when you⎯?’
‘I’ve said all I’m goin’ to say on that particular matter,’ Turner snapped. He stood up, and placed his half-finished mug of tea on the stone mantelpiece with an air of finality. ‘So now, if you wouldn’t mind . . .’ he continued, gesturing towards the door.
‘Let the lad finish his drink before you turn him out into the cold again,’ Mrs Turner said. ‘An’ while he’s doin’ that, you could make yourself useful an’ go an’ fetch some more logs for the fire.’
Turner glanced down at the pile which already stood by the fireplace. ‘We’ve plenty of⎯’
‘I know you of old, Jed Turner,’ his wife said with mock severity. ‘There might be plenty of wood for now, but later on – when we’re runnin’ low – you’ll be moanin’ that it’s too dark an’ miserable to go an’ fetch some more. So you’re better doin’ it now.’
Turner gave Woodend an uncharacteristically friendly look – a look which said that even if Woodend didn’t have a real job, they were both still men and so both understood that when you were dealing with women it was easier just to do what they wanted, however unreasonable that might seem. Then he rose to his feet and headed for the door.
Mrs Turner waited until her husband had closed the door behind him before saying, ‘We haven’t got long, so you’d best save time by bein’ straight with me right from the start.’
‘Straight with you?’ Woodend repeated.
‘You’re not really a reporter at all, are you?’
Woodend looked into the woman’s faded, but still intelligent, eyes and decided there was no point in pretending any longer.
He grinned. ‘Was I that obvious?’
‘Well, you weren’t very good at it, if that’s what you mean. But even if you’d been able to carry it off better, it still wouldn’t have worked. As far as my Jed’s concerned, the world revolves around this farm – but I read the papers.’
‘An’ you’ve seen my picture in them?’
‘More than once. An’ my niece once pointed you out to me. She works in the police canteen in Whitebridge, an’ always speaks very highly of you. Says you’re not stuck up like some of the buggers in plain clothes she has to serve.’
Woodend grinned, then grew serious again and said, ‘So if you knew I wasn’t who I said I was, why didn’t you tell your husband right away?’
The old woman smiled. ‘Partly because of what my niece said about you, and partly because I was curious. You may not believe this, but we don’t get many bobbies pretendin’ to be reporters round these parts. Do you want to tell me what it’s all about?’
‘I can’t investigate the murder in the way I normally would because I’ve been suspended from duty,’ Woodend confessed.
‘Suspended from duty,’ the old woman repeated. ‘Did you do somethin’ wrong?’
Woodend shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘So if it’s really nothin’ to do with you any more, why are you still workin’ the case?’
‘Because I think that I have a better chance of solvin’ it than anybody else does,’ Woodend said. ‘An’ because I don’t think it’s right that a kid should be robbed of her life before she’s had the chance to even start livin’ it fully.’
The old woman nodded slowly, as if she were prepared to take his explanation at face value. ‘Have you got any children of your own, Mr Woodend?’
‘One. A girl. She’s trainin’ to be a nurse in Manchester.’
‘I’ve had six. Of course, they’re all grown up now, an’ have their own families.’ The old woman paused. ‘My youngest granddaughter’s about the same age as the poor kiddie who was killed up at Dugdale’s Farm. Do you think it was Wilf Dugdale that killed her?’
‘Do you?’
‘Not a chance. Wilf has been a bit of a bugger in his time – my Jed’s quite right about that – but he’s no murderer.’
‘You’ve got somethin’ you want to tell me, haven’t you, Mrs Turner?’ Woodend guessed.
The old woman looked down at her lap. ‘Maybe,’ she said hesitantly. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘Whatever you have to say won’t go beyond these four walls,’ Woodend coaxed. ‘If Mr Dugdale’s innocent, then what you tell me won’t hurt him. An’ if he’s guilty, don’t you want to see him behind bars?’
‘When Wilf had that big row with his dad an’ moved away, he went to Rochdale,’ Mrs Turner said quickly, as if she wanted to get the words out before she changed her mind. ‘The first street he lived in was called Derby Avenue. He lodged at Number Forty-six. I don’t know how long he stayed there, or where he went after that.’
‘How do you know all about this, when your husband doesn’t?’
Mrs Turner gave him a sad smile. ‘You’ve already guessed that, haven’t you, lad?’
‘Perhaps I have,’ Woodend agreed.
‘Wilf Dugdale was a good lookin’, well-set-up, young feller forty-odd years ago,’ Mrs Turner said. ‘An’ I was no drudge myself.’
‘I’m sure you weren’t,’ Woodend agreed.
‘The difference between us – an’ it was a big difference in them days – was that I was married – an’ he wasn’t.’
‘Is that what he had the blazin’ row with his father about, just before he left home?’
‘Old Clem Dugdale had very strict morals. He wasn’t goin’ to harbour a sinner under his roof.’ There was a hint of a smile on the old woman’s face again. ‘Especially a sinner who wasn’t a very good farmer.’
‘Did your husband ever find out what had been goin’ on?’
‘Let’s just say that he had his suspicions.’
‘When Wilf Dugdale moved down to Rochdale, you went to visit him, didn’t you?’
‘A few times.’
‘What made you stop goin’?’
‘I got pregnant with our Harold.’
‘An’ whose baby was he?’
‘My husband’s,’ Mrs Turner said with sudden, unexpected ferocity. ‘Well, he had to be, didn’t he? Because even if I could have got a divorce, Wilf would never have married me.’
‘So you didn’t see him again?’
‘Not until he came back to the farm after his father died. An’ then it was only from a distance.’ A tear trickled down her wrinkled cheek. ‘It was too late for me by then, you see. I was too old to start again.’
The front door swung open and Mr Turner entered the room, laden down by logs.
‘Are you still here?’ he asked his unwelcome guest.
Woodend rose to his feet. ‘I was just leavin’,’ he said. He turned back to the old woman. ‘Thank you for the cup of tea.’
‘You’re welcome,’ Mrs Turner said. ‘I hope you find what you’re lookin’ for.’
‘Me, too,’ Woodend agreed.
Old farmers like Jed Turner did not shake hands unless they were buying or selling cattle, so Woodend merely nodded to him and stepped through the front door and out into the cold winter air.
He was getting somewhere at last! he thought as he lit up a cigarette. He had discovered something that all the efforts and all the resources of the Central Lancs police force had failed to come up with.
He gazed out on to the snow-covered moors – where Wilf Dugdale might, at that very moment, be lying frozen stiff – and wondered what he should do with his discovery. All his training dictated that he should immediately communicate his findings to his superior, DCC Ainsworth – but his instincts told him that would be a big mistake, both for the investigation and fo
r his own teetering career.
He took a deep drag on his cigarette, and wondered which was the quickest way to Rochdale.
Eleven
The housing estate was on the outskirts of Rochdale, just off the road leading to Todmorton. It consisted of row upon row of neat, semi-detached dwellings with red-tiled roofs, large bow windows and small, but well-tended, front gardens. The streets had names like Willow Close and Cedar Drive, and if such places had existed when they were both growing up, Woodend would have been willing to bet that Mickey Lee would have ended up in just the kind of home he now owned.
Woodend walked up a path flanked by garden gnomes and a flower bed which looked forlorn in the dead of winter but would, no doubt, be a blaze of colour once the spring came around again. He came to a stop at the recently painted front door and rang the bell. From the hallway he heard a tinkling musical chime announcing his arrival.
The man who answered the summons had grey, clipped hair and a perpetually worried, sulky expression etched into his face. Though they had sat next to each other all the way through Sudbury Street Elementary School, the other man could have been the senior by at least ten years, Woodend thought – and then he wondered if that was what all middle-aged men told themselves when suddenly faced with a contemporary.
‘Hello, Mickey,’ he said.
‘Hello, sir,’ the grey-haired man replied, without much enthusiasm.
Sir! That was a bad sign!
‘I wasn’t “sir” to you the last time you an’ I met,’ Woodend said, with a conviviality that he didn’t really feel. ‘It was at the federation dance, as far as I can recall.’
‘It was.’
‘An’ if I remember rightly, you called me “Charlie, you miserable old bugger”.’
‘That was a social occasion,’ Lee said, not willing to give an inch. ‘This isn’t.’
‘So you know why I’m here, do you?’
‘I know that there’s been a double murder up on the moors near Whitebridge. An’ I know you’d probably be leadin’ the inquiry yourself, if you hadn’t been suspended.’
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