Best Served Cold

by Sally Spencer

  ‘The problem is, you see, that you’re almost an old man,’ Quirk says.

  ‘I’m the same age as you.’

  ‘Yes, but I can still pull men who are much younger. Oh, don’t get me wrong, it was quite pleasant, this evening, to relive old times, but once is quite enough. As the old joke has it, nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.’ Quirk pauses. ‘I think you’d better go.’

  ‘I won’t go,’ Tony says firmly. ‘I’m going to stay here until I can talk some sense into you.’

  Quirk gets out of bed. ‘I’m going to open the door, and when I do, I’d like you to walk through it,’ he says.

  And suddenly, Tony is engulfed by a rage so fierce that it would terrify him if he stopped to think about it. But he doesn’t stop to think about it. Instead, he leaps out of bed, grabs the statue of Oscar Wilde, and pulverizes Bradley Quirk’s skull.

  ‘I’ve been celibate ever since I left the Whitebridge Players,’ Tony Brown said, ‘and despite what you seemed to be suggesting earlier, I never touched any of the boys at school where I work. You have to believe that.’

  ‘I do believe it,’ Crane said. ‘It’s something a nice man wouldn’t do, and everybody agrees you’re a very nice man.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  Arresting Tony Brown had bought her a little time, Paniatowski thought, as she sat at her desk – but not that much. Bradley Quirk had never been more than a sideshow for the press, and what the hacks really wanted was the man or woman who had killed television’s DCI Prince. And the irony of the whole situation was that Bradley Quirk’s murder had not reduced her suspect list in the Mark Cotton case at all, because being dead didn’t prove Quirk’s innocence – it just proved he wasn’t alive any more.

  So what had she actually got to work with?

  Both Lucy Cavendish and Maggie Maitland claimed to have seen a woman up in the fly loft. That might be a lead. But Lucy could have been lying to divert suspicion from herself and on to one of the Audley sisters or Joan Turnbull. And as for Maggie – well, when she looked into the mirror, she saw a beautiful woman staring back at her, so how credible was anything she said?

  The phone rang, and Paniatowski picked it up.

  ‘DCI Paniatowski?’ asked the voice at the other end of the line.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘This is Lew Wiseman speaking.’

  Who?

  ‘What can I do for you, Mr Wiseman?’ Paniatowski asked.

  There was a pause, then the caller said, ‘Excuse me, Chief Inspector, but this is the point at which you’re supposed to say, “Not the Lew Wiseman?” and I tell you that it is.’

  ‘I take it from what you just said that you think I should have heard of you,’ Paniatowski replied.

  ‘I’m starting to get the idea here,’ Wiseman said. ‘You don’t watch much television, do you?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘And you don’t go to many variety shows, either.’

  ‘I can’t remember the last one I saw.’

  Wiseman sighed. ‘Life’s always ready to kick you in the teeth, isn’t it?’ he asked. ‘You’ve struggled for years to become a household name, and just when you think you’ve made it, you talk to one person who’s never heard of you, and you feel a complete schmuck.’

  Whoever had put this man through to her was due a good tongue-lashing, Paniatowski thought.

  ‘Listen, Mr Wiseman, I’m afraid I’m really rather busy just at the moment—’ she began.

  ‘I know you are, darling. I’ve seen you on the telly. He’s going to be a giant, that baby of yours.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but—’

  ‘I’m the head of Midlands TV,’ the caller said, before she had time to cut him off. ‘The television company that makes DCI Prince.’

  ‘Ah!’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Ah, indeed,’ Wiseman agreed. ‘I’ve sent you something by special courier that I think you ought to see, and the courier’s just rung my office to say he’s delivered it.’

  There was a knock on the door, and one of the clerical officers stepped inside and placed an envelope on Paniatowski’s desk. Across the top of the envelope, in large black letters, were the words: ‘From the desk of Lew Wiseman’.

  ‘It’s arrived, hasn’t it?’ Wiseman asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Paniatowski agreed, ‘it’s arrived.’

  ‘Timing,’ Wiseman said, with obvious satisfaction. ‘That’s the secret of success in my business.’

  ‘Would you hang on while I open it?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘Be glad to.’

  She slit open the envelope, and extracted a smaller envelope, from which she took a single sheet of paper. It was a letter – typewritten and brief – and it was clear, even at first glance, that the writer was no expert typist.

  Daer Lew,

  I’ve just heaRd that Sarah Audley has been offered a role as my co-star in Prince. I wish to make it per ectly clear that I will not tolerate this.

  It was signed, ‘Mark Cotton’.

  ‘When did you get this?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘It arrived in the last post on Friday, but, as you can see for yourself, it’s in a plain envelope.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t think I quite see the significance of that,’ Paniatowski admitted.

  ‘Important people – and people who like to think they’re important – make sure their name is prominently displayed on the envelope.’

  Paniatowski glanced down at Wiseman’s own envelope, which had his name displayed prominently in one corner.

  ‘I see what you mean,’ she said.

  ‘If there’s no name on the envelope, it means that even the person who sent it doesn’t think he’s got much clout, and it goes to the bottom of the pile – and since nobody looked at the mail over the weekend, that meant it went to the bottom of Monday’s pile. Now Monday’s a big day for mail – people like to give us the whole week to consider their proposals, and as a result, my secretary didn’t get around to the letter until this morning.’

  ‘It’s genuine, is it?’

  ‘If you’re asking me if that’s Mark Cotton’s signature …’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘I’d say it’s either a brilliant forgery or the real thing.’

  ‘Did you anticipate this kind of reaction from him?’

  ‘Let’s just say I thought it was a possibility. But what choice did I have? Ratings for DCI Prince have been slipping, and the demographics are shifting from the viewers who have money to spend to the ones who don’t. It’s not a big change at the moment, but when the first small pebbles start rolling down the mountainside, you worry that an avalanche might follow.’

  ‘Could you get to the point, Mr Wiseman?’

  ‘So we began to wonder what we could do about it, and what with The Bionic Woman being so successful and Joanna Lumley really making a difference in The New Avengers, we thought a woman might be just what we needed. That’s when somebody came up with DCI Mary Holland.’

  ‘And you didn’t think to tell Mark Cotton in advance about this new direction the show was taking?’

  ‘We thought it might be easier face-to-face, but he wasn’t in London, was he? He was somewhere out in the sticks.’

  ‘He was in Whitebridge,’ Paniatowski replied, feeling a small stab of local pride which instantly irritated her.

  ‘That’s what I said – out in the sticks.’

  ‘And so was Sarah Audley.’

  ‘Yes, but we didn’t know that, did we? Mark’s been keeping this whole little theatre project of his very quiet indeed, so we had no idea who was involved. But if it was Sarah who told him about Mary Holland, she’s been a very bad girl, because she was supposed to keep it under her hat until we’d made the press announcement.’

  ‘How would you have dealt with the situation if Mark Cotton hadn’t been murdered?’

  ‘I suppose we’d just have had to bite the bullet.’

  ‘And what does that mean, exactly?’

  ‘Mark’
s a known quantity and Sarah’s still just a maybe. There would have to have been someone playing Mary Holland whether he liked it or not – and he wouldn’t have liked it at all – but if he really hadn’t wanted to work with Sarah, we’d have cancelled her contract and paid her off.’

  And just how angry would Sarah have been if she’d found out about Mark’s letter, Paniatowski wondered.

  Would she have been angry enough to kill him?

  ‘Thank you for calling, Mr Wiseman,’ she said.

  ‘Listen, before you hang up, there’s something I have to ask you,’ Wiseman said hurriedly. ‘I’ve been very cooperative, haven’t I?’

  ‘Yes, you have.’

  ‘And what I’ve just given you is a very good lead for your investigation.’

  ‘It may or may not be a lead, but I couldn’t possibly discuss that with you,’ Paniatowski said cautiously.

  ‘The thing is, if it doesn’t take you anywhere – I mean, if it turns out that Sarah had nothing to do with Mark’s death – then I’d really appreciate it if you’d let me know the second you know yourself.’

  ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘Look, cards on the table,’ Wiseman said. ‘Mark Cotton’s death has left a big gap in the schedule, and we need something to plug it with pretty damn quick. We toyed with the idea of Prince having a brother, who’s also a DCI, but while you can get most viewers to believe practically anything you put on the screen, we thought that was just—’

  ‘As I said, I’m a busy woman, Mr Wiseman.’

  ‘Anyway, one of my writers wondered why we couldn’t take the character Sarah was going to play in DCI Prince, and give her a show of her own. Well, that would seem to tick all the right boxes and—’

  ‘Would Sarah have known that possibility existed?’

  ‘That’s hard to say. When we signed her for DCI Prince, we did toss around the idea of her doing something else for us once that series had ended. But to get back to what I was saying – the new show would be moulded very much around Sarah, and, off the top of my head, I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather have playing the role once we’ve developed the script in that particular direction. So if it was likely that she was about to be arrested for murder …’

  ‘You’d like to know, so that you could drop the idea of DCI Mary Holland and try and come up with something else.’

  ‘I knew you’d understand.’

  ‘I can’t treat you any differently to any other member of the public, Mr Wiseman,’ Paniatowski said. She smiled. ‘But I’ll tell you what I will do – I’ll try and arrest the murderer as quickly as possible, so you’ll know one way or the other.’

  ‘I’d appreciate it,’ Wiseman said.

  ‘That was a joke, Mr Wiseman.’

  ‘Was it?’ Wiseman asked, sounding puzzled. ‘It must be northern humour, then.’

  He was right, she realized – that was exactly what it was.

  Paniatowski understood – better than most people – just how complex a murder investigation could be; how some strands of it overlapped other strands, sometimes hiding those other strands completely; and how strands which looked so very promising at first glance could wither and die under closer examination. She knew, and accepted, that waiting for a lead was a little like waiting for a bus – you stood there for ages, with no sign of one, and then two of them came along at once. So when she got Beresford’s call, ten minutes after she finished talking to Lew Wiseman, she felt a great sense of relief – but couldn’t honestly have said she was very surprised.

  They found Sarah Audley in her room at the boarding house. She was packing her suitcase.

  ‘I haven’t given any of you permission to leave town, Miss Audley,’ Paniatowski pointed out.

  Sarah smiled. ‘I wasn’t planning to leave Whitebridge, Monika – just this house of horrors,’ she said. ‘And is it really necessary to sound so formal?’ She noticed Meadows standing in the doorway. ‘What’s Sergeant Creepy doing here?’

  ‘I’m going to examine your possessions,’ Paniatowski told her. ‘I do have a search warrant.’

  ‘This is a joke, isn’t it? It has to be a joke.’

  ‘I’d appreciate it if you’d step out into the corridor while we conduct the search,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘And if I refuse to?’

  ‘Then I’ll have you forcibly removed.’

  ‘You are serious, aren’t you?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘You’d better believe it,’ Paniatowski told her.

  The scissors were at the bottom of Sarah’s suitcase. They were of a pre-war design, and the blades had serrated edges. One tiny piece of fabric – so small that only examination under a microscope would reveal its true nature – was clinging heroically to one of the blades.

  Paniatowski took the scissors out into the corridor, where Sarah was being watched by a uniformed constable.

  ‘Are these yours?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, they are.’

  ‘And do you always carry them with you?’

  ‘I always carry some scissors with me, but I only acquired that particular set recently.’

  ‘Aren’t they rather large scissors for personal use?’

  ‘Perhaps, but they have sentimental value. They belonged to my mother, you see.’

  ‘I’d like you to come down to police headquarters with me, Miss Audley,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Am I under arrest?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I must decline your kind invitation.’

  Paniatowski wondered whether Sarah would make a run for it if she had the chance. Given her wilful nature, it was more than likely, and while she would be caught eventually, it could take a considerable time, during which a certain DCI Paniatowski would be ridiculed in the press for allowing Mark Cotton’s murderer to slip through her fingers.

  ‘It really would be easier all round if you came in voluntarily,’ she said.

  ‘No, it wouldn’t,’ Sarah contradicted her. ‘It would be easier for you.’

  Paniatowski sighed. ‘Sarah Audley, I am arresting you on suspicion of murdering Mark Cotton,’ she said. ‘You do not have to say anything, but anything you do say may be taken down and used in evidence against you.’

  Sarah Audley looked more defiant than shocked when the WPC led her into the interview room.

  ‘This is a complete waste of time,’ she said. ‘I’ve phoned my solicitor, but he’s based in London. He won’t get here until tomorrow morning, and until he does, I’m saying nothing.’

  ‘Why do you need a solicitor, if, as you claim, you’re innocent?’ Paniatowski wondered.

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Because all you have to do is say you’ve changed your mind about having him present, and we can clear up what you’re obviously convinced is nothing more than a misunderstanding.’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Otherwise, it will mean a night in the cells. You do realize that, don’t you, Sarah?’

  ‘No comment.’

  So that was that.

  It was getting harder and harder to squeeze her bloated body into her beloved MGA, Paniatowski thought as she walked across the car park, and before the baby was born in three weeks’ time – or was it four weeks? – she was going to have to exchange the car for a more baby-friendly vehicle.

  If she’d seen the woman as she was approaching the MGA, she’d have gone back into the station and asked for assistance. But the woman must have realized that was likely, and had been squatting down beside the passenger door, only to rise up like a spectre in the night as Paniatowski inserted her key.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Is it true you’ve arrested my sister?’ Ruth Audley asked.

  ‘I can’t talk about it – not to you.’

  Ruth Audley came around the front of the car while Paniatowski was lowering herself into the driver’s seat.

  ‘You’ve made a mistake,’ she said. ‘Sarah really didn’t kill Mark Cotton. It w
as me.’

  ‘And why would you have done that?’

  ‘I did it for her. She was still in love with him, and I could see how miserable he was making her.’

  ‘So why didn’t you kill him back in 1957, when he first rejected her? Why, instead, did you persuade her to stay with the company and tough it out?’

  ‘I … I didn’t know how deeply she was in love with him then. But when I saw that she still felt the same way after twenty years, I knew I had to do something about it.’

  ‘So it was you who changed the ropes, and you who cut through the harness, was it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who taught you how to make a hangman’s knot?’

  ‘I got a book out of the library.’

  ‘What was it called?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘What about the knife you cut through the harness with? What did you do with that?’

  ‘I threw it in the canal.’

  Which was exactly what Sarah would have been wise to do with the scissors she’d used, Paniatowski thought.

  ‘You didn’t do it, Ruth,’ she said.

  She slipped her key into the ignition, and tried to close the door, but Ruth stood in the way.

  ‘Please,’ she begged, ‘you have to understand. Now that Mother’s dead, Sarah’s the only person I’ve got left to live for – and how can I live for her if she’s in prison?’

  ‘How can you live for her if you’re in prison?’

  ‘At least then I’d have the consolation of knowing that she was free. And it wouldn’t be so bad for me. I’ve got used to living within four walls this last ten years. In some ways, it’s very comforting.’

  ‘You’re going to have to learn to live for yourself again, Ruth,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘I’m not sure I could now.’

  It was hopeless, Paniatowski thought.

  She switched on the engine.

  ‘Step away from the car, Ruth,’ she said.

  Ruth Audley took three steps back.

  ‘Please arrest me and let Sarah go,’ she pleaded. ‘No one need know but the three of us.’

  Paniatowski closed her door and slipped the MGA into gear. As she left the car park she looked into her rear-view mirror and saw that Ruth Audley had not moved.