‘I will – first thing in the morning,’ Paniatowski said. ‘And in the meantime, while we can’t quite cross Jerry Talbot’s name off our list, we can at least put a pencil mark through it. Are we in agreement on that?’
The rest of the team nodded.
‘Right, moving on again,’ Paniatowski continued. ‘One of the crucial questions that we need to ask ourselves is why Mark Cotton was killed on Monday night. Jack thinks the murderer wanted an audience for his crime because that would make his revenge all the sweeter, and I think he’s probably right about that. But it would have been a better audience – and hence an even sweeter revenge – on Tuesday night.’
‘Better?’ Beresford asked.
‘More important,’ Paniatowski clarified. ‘No one famous was booked to watch on Monday night, because Jerry Talbot – who was a nobody in the acting world – was playing the main role. Tuesday was a different matter – Mark Cotton would have been centre stage. The critics were coming up from London, as were several well-known names in the entertainment world. If the murderer wanted to make a real splash, that would have been the night to do it. Yet instead, he chooses Monday night.’
‘Which was a gamble, because even though he knew Cotton was an egomaniac, there was always a chance he’d allow Talbot to play Hieronimo on Monday, just as he’d promised he would,’ Beresford said.
‘I don’t think it was a gamble at all,’ Meadows said. ‘It couldn’t have been, because the murderer knew that he only had one chance to kill Mark Cotton in the way he wanted him to be killed, and given that everything else was so meticulously planned, I’m sure he also did something to make certain that Cotton would play Hieronimo.’
‘Like what?’ Crane asked.
‘Well, there you’ve got me,’ Meadows admitted.
‘So why did the killer decide to strike on Monday night rather than waiting until Tuesday?’ Crane asked. ‘What made him decide he had to do it then?’
‘If we knew that, it would probably be obvious who the killer was,’ Paniatowski said.
She looked at her watch and saw it was eleven twenty. So it hadn’t just felt like a long day – it had actually been one.
‘Right, that’s it,’ she told her team. ‘Kate, we’ll start re-interviewing first thing in the morning. Jack, it’s back to the monitors for you. And Colin – I’ll see you when I see you.’
Paniatowski looked up and down the street. The mourning fans had started to drift away once darkness had begun to fall, and the police barriers had been removed shortly after seven. Now, everything was almost back to normal, with only the high mound of rapidly perishing flowers along the theatre wall to suggest that anything extraordinary had happened there.
She turned to the left, and when the constable on duty in front of the boarding house saw the bulky figure waddling towards him, he clicked his heels together and saluted smartly.
‘Good evening, ma’am,’ he said.
‘Good evening, Constable …?’
‘Johnson, ma’am.’
‘Well, then, Constable Johnson, do you have anything to report?’
‘Nothing of earth-shattering significance, ma’am. There were a few journalists sniffing round earlier, but when I made it plain to them that I could neither be bought nor charmed, they cleared off.’
‘What have the actors been doing?’
The constable produced his notebook and moved to the edge of the pavement, where there was a street light.
‘A couple of the women – Ruth and Sarah Audley – went out shopping in the late afternoon,’ he said, ‘and three of the men – Brown, Quirk and Talbot – went to the pub in the evening.’
‘Together?’
‘Quirk and Brown together, but Talbot went alone.’
‘What state were they in when they got back?’
‘You could tell they’d all been drinking, but only Talbot looked really the worse for wear.’
‘And now they’re all inside?’
‘Yes, ma’am. The first bedroom light went off at ten fifteen, and by a quarter to eleven, all the rooms were in darkness. There’s not much of the glamour of show business about that, is there, ma’am?’
No, there wasn’t, Paniatowski agreed. She wondered if the murderer was lying awake in the darkness, bathed in sweat. It was perfectly possible. But she had also known killers who could sleep like a baby with their victims lying dead in the next room.
‘When are you due to be relieved, Constable Johnson?’ she asked
‘At midnight, ma’am.’
‘Then please tell your replacement that I want to see …’
Who did she want to see? Which one of the actors might actually have something useful to tell her?
‘… tell him that I want to see Phil McCann, in the theatre, at nine o’clock sharp.’
‘Will do, ma’am,’ the constable promised, and she turned to walk away, he added, ‘Good luck with the baby, ma’am.’
‘Thank you,’ Paniatowski said, realizing he’d meant well, but still wishing he hadn’t spoken.
She knew she was pregnant – she was becoming more painfully aware of it every day – so why did nearly everyone she met feel a need to bloody well remind her of the fact?
EIGHTEEN
30th March 1977
It was just after seven in the morning when Florrie Hodge left her kitchen – holding a tray on which she’d placed a small teapot, a cup, a milk jug, a soft-boiled egg and two rounds of toast – and began to ascend the stairs.
At the landing at the top of the first flight of stairs, Florrie stopped to catch her breath. Normally, she didn’t offer her paying guests any room service – they all had their breakfast in the dining room, like civilized people – but she was making an exception for Bradley Quirk.
Bradley was such a nice boy. But he could be a naughty boy, too, and for the last two mornings he had missed breakfast completely – which was not good for him at all. Thus, Florrie was determined that that morning he would have a proper start to the day, even if it did entail her taking what was starting to feel like quite a heavy tray up two lots of stairs.
When she reached the second landing, Florrie put the tray down on a small table, and took her comb out of her nylon overall pocket.
It was silly for a woman of her age to care about how she looked in the eyes of a young man like him, she thought as she ran the comb through her hair, but you should always strive to make the best of yourself, and she was sure that he appreciated her making the effort.
She picked up the tray again, and knocked on the door.
‘Breakfast, Mr Quirk,’ she called out. ‘Are you decent?’
She heard a giggle, and realized it came from her.
You daft old bat, she rebuked herself affectionately.
She knocked again.
‘Mr Quirk?’
There was still no answer.
‘Well, I’m coming in, ready or not.’
She turned the knob with her free hand, and pushed the door gently open with her left foot.
And then she dropped the tray and starting screaming.
Bradley Quirk was naked, lying face down on his bedroom floor. The back of his head had been smashed in, and the resultant mess was enough to put anyone not used to such displays of gore off their food for several days.
Dr Shastri was used to it. For her, this was just another day at the office, and as she looked down at the corpse she was even humming to herself.
‘The attack will have occurred at least two feet from where he is lying now,’ she told Monika Paniatowski. ‘The force of the blow will have thrown his body forwards. With this amount of damage, I would be surprised if death was not instantaneous.’
‘We think we have the murder weapon,’ Paniatowski told her, holding out a metal statue about eighteen inches long and pointing to the blood that was sticking to its base. ‘Could this have done the job?’
‘Indeed,’ Shastri said. ‘It would have been more than adequate. Do you think your
murderer brought it with him, or was it already here?’
‘It was here. It’s called Oscar. Quirk’s landlady says he takes it everywhere with him.’
‘Oscar?’ Shastri said. ‘It does not look much like the one I expect to win for my screenplay about a simple Indian doctor who is forever being bullied by insensitive police officers.’
‘It’s Oscar Wilde,’ Paniatowski explained.
‘Ah!’
‘Is a woman capable of striking a blow with that much force?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘It’s unlikely, but not impossible. Women are capable of great feats of physical strength if they are driven by a strong enough emotion, and while I am not saying that is the case here, it is certainly evident that whoever killed Bradley Quirk was rather cross with him.’
‘How long has he been dead?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘Not less than two hours, and not more than four.’
Paniatowski looked down at her watch.
‘Listen, Doc,’ she said, ‘I—’
‘You need the results of the postt-mortem as soon as possible?’ Shastri interrupted her.
‘Yes.’
Shastri smiled. ‘Now that is something I do not think I have ever heard you say before.’
Jack Crane and Kate Meadows were standing out in the street, just in front of the boarding house.
‘The boss was worried about the press gaining access during the night, so she had uniforms posted permanently on both the front door and the back door,’ Meadows said.
‘So it seems I was wrong,’ Crane mused. ‘This isn’t Murder on the Orient Express at all – it’s actually And Then There Were None.’
‘That’s another Agatha Christie, is it?’
‘Yes, there are these ten people on an island, completely cut off from the world, and one of them is murdered. Then a second person is murdered, and then a third—’
‘Fascinating,’ Meadows interrupted him, ‘but if I was you, I wouldn’t mention your latest flight of fancy to the boss.’
And almost as if she’d been waiting for her cue, Paniatowski appeared in the doorway.
‘Get on to Inspector Beresford, and tell him that what I want him to do, right away, is …’ She stopped herself. ‘Shit, Colin isn’t here, is he?’
‘No, boss.’
‘Do we know when he’ll be returning?’
‘He’s hoping it will be sometime today.’
‘How can we contact him?’
‘We could leave a message at this Sergeant Parry’s house, I suppose, but he won’t get that until he’s in Sussex.’
‘Damn, bugger, sod it!’ Paniatowski said – and wished she had a cigarette. ‘In that case, forget DI Beresford.’ She turned to Crane. ‘Jack, you’re going to have to take over from me as Kate’s sidekick in the interviews for a while.’
‘But … but I’ve never been part of formal interrogation before,’ Crane protested.
And if I could get hold of Colin Beresford, you wouldn’t be part of one now, Paniatowski thought.
But aloud, she said, ‘You’ll be fine.’
‘Wouldn’t you rather do it yourself?’ Crane asked, still unconvinced.
‘Well, of course I’d rather do it myself,’ Paniatowski said irritably. ‘But now the shit’s hit the fan, I’ll be so busy fielding the flak that there’ll be no time left over for doing proper police work.’
Beresford had studied the railway timetable with great care, and had been quietly proud of his efficiency in planning a route which was at least an hour shorter than any other he might have taken.
What he hadn’t planned for – what no one could have planned for – was that a goods train would come off the rails somewhere between Crewe and Birmingham, and that, as a result, the train he was travelling on would be sent on a long country excursion. And it wasn’t just long – it was slow. Even the sheep seemed to be moving faster than they were, and half the time the train was not even crawling along, but was waiting in railway sidings for other – luckier – trains to pass.
It had been a mistake to ever embark on this particular expedition, he fretted as the minutes ticked away. Sergeant Parry was probably no more than a nutty old man with a grudge, and he’d have been far better getting whatever he could out of the Sussex Constabulary over the phone, and leaving it at that. Yet having already wasted so much time, he supposed he might as well stick to his original plan.
If he had been Jack Crane, he might well have quoted directly from the ‘Scottish Play’: ‘I am in blood stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.’
But he wasn’t Jack Crane, and he didn’t.
The chief constable picked up a paper clip, examined it for a second, and then embarked on the task of straightening it out.
‘This is a terrible mess that you’ve landed in, Monika,’ he said. ‘Really quite awful.’
Well, at least he hadn’t said, This is a terrible mess you’ve landed yourself in, Monika, Paniatowski thought.
‘No one went in or out of the boarding house during the night, sir,’ she said. ‘And that means that if we exclude the old landlady from our inquiries, the murderer can be only one of six people.’
‘And is it your opinion that that person was also responsible for Mark Cotton’s death?’
‘It’s more than likely,’ Paniatowski said.
But it was also possible that either Geoff or Joan Turnbull killed Cotton, she thought. Or – even worse – that Bradley Quirk had killed him, in which case there would never be a satisfactory conclusion to the Mark Cotton case.
‘I think I should bring in a second team to investigate the second murder,’ Pickering said.
‘I really don’t think that’s a very good idea, sir,’ Paniatowski cautioned. ‘Since both teams would be questioning the same people, we’d be constantly tripping over each other.’
‘Then perhaps the new team could take over both murders,’ Pickering suggested.
She had never wanted this case, and the chief constable was offering her a way out. But if she went now, she would forever be the woman who didn’t solve the murder of the handsome DCI Prince.
‘It would take me nearly all day to brief the new team, and that would be a day wasted,’ she said.
Pickering wavered. ‘Are you prepared to give a press conference in which you, as the officer in charge of the case, announce there has been a second murder?’ he said finally.
He wasn’t looking for a scapegoat – she was sure of that – but what he was doing was setting out his pieces on the board in such a way that if a scapegoat did eventually become necessary, she would be the logical choice.
She didn’t like the idea much, but if that was his price – and clearly it was – then she was willing to pay it.
‘Yes, I’ll do the press conference,’ she said.
‘Excellent,’ the chief constable replied – perhaps just a little too enthusiastically.
Meadows and Crane were sitting in the police canteen, and Meadows was examining the package she had just received from New Scotland Yard.
‘How many of the Whitebridge Players do have criminal records?’ Crane asked.
‘Much to my disappointment, it seems to be just the one,’ Meadows said, shaking the envelope as if hoping that something else would fall out.
‘And which one is it?’ Crane asked.
Meadows handed him the folder.
‘Oh,’ Crane said, ‘that is a surprise.’
‘You men!’ Meadows said, in mock disgust. ‘You’re always such suckers for a pretty face, aren’t you?’ She stood up. ‘Right, are you about ready to lose your virginity on the interview table, Jack?’
‘Lose my …’ Crane gasped. Then he smiled and said, ‘Ah, now I see what you mean.’
‘That’s another thing about men,’ Meadows said. ‘The mention of virginity nearly always makes them break out into a hot flush.’
Paniatowski felt as if she was having a hot flush under the lig
hts of the press conference, but she was not sure whether to put that down to the difficult position she now found herself in as a senior police officer, or to the child who was quite clearly trying to kick his way out of her womb.
She cleared her throat and switched on her microphone.
‘Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,’ she said. ‘I am Detective Chief Inspector Monika Paniatowski of the Mid Lancs Police. The gentleman on my left is the chief constable, Mr Pickering, and the one on my right is Chief Superintendent Holmes. I will first make a formal statement, and then answer any questions you might care to put to me.’
She trotted out the usual clichés on the Mark Cotton murder – the police were following several strong leads, they could not promise an arrest in the next day or so, but they were certainly expecting to make one at some point in the future … blah, blah, blah.
And then she came to the big one.
‘At seven o’clock this morning, the body of a forty-four-year-old man was discovered in the boarding establishment two houses down from the theatre. His skull had been crushed by a small metal statue, which has since been identified as being his own personal property. We are treating the death as murder, and an investigation has been opened.’
The assembled reporters sat in shocked silence for a moment, and then an almost-ecstatic expression came to most of their faces as they realized that a story which was already very meaty had just got juicier.
‘I’ll take questions now,’ Paniatowski said.
‘Are the two murders related?’ someone asked.
‘For the moment, we simply don’t know,’ Paniatowski replied. ‘On the one hand, the two victims both knew each other well and worked together, but on the other, while the first murder was carefully planned, the second shows all the signs of being spontaneous.’
‘Do you have a prime suspect?’ another reporter asked.
We have six of them, Paniatowski thought.
‘I’m afraid that I can’t go into any of the operational details at this stage,’ she said.
‘I’m really rather worried about you, Chief Inspector Paniatowski,’ said a third reporter, a woman called Claire Hitchens, who worked for one of the more sensational daily newspapers and was widely known as Hitch the Bitch.
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